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Articles by Phil Morle
Corporates should bet on the future, not wait for it
Skip to content Printed by for personal, non-commercial use only. For other rights, contact licensing@capitalbrief.com. Ideas Offtake agreements let companies back emerging tech before it scales, turning cautious buyers into the driving force behind the next wave of innovation. Innovation often falters in the gap between invention and scale.
It’s normal for start-ups to expand and contract: Here’s why
There is never a straight line to success – startup teams expand and contract all the time as they learn what they need to become. Being in a startup means trying things that may not work. In fact, most things we try in startups don’t work the first time and many variations of an idea are attempted before the winning solution is discovered. Sometimes a solution cannot be found.
OG VC OneVentures is on the hunt for $200 million in its 7th fund
Buoyed by the sale of its stake in Employment Hero last last year and with more exits on the horizon, pioneering Sydney VC fund OneVentures says it will return around $100 million more to investors over the next eight months as it looks to raise a new $200 million fund. OneVentures founding partner Dr Michelle Deaker said that Fund VII, new Growth Equity fund aims to raise $200m to support the growth of later-stage technology companies.
Retail marketplace Little Birdie to fly again after Cashrewards takeover
Online retail deals marketplace Little Birdie will spring back to life two months after its sudden shuttering after being acquired by cashback sales platform Cashrewards The terms of the deal were not disclosed. But Little Birdie’s resurrection is undoubtedly is a big win for ANZ’s venture team, 1835i, over rival CBA. CommBank was part of a record $30 million pre-Seed investment in Little Birdie, taking a 23% stake in 2021.
Acorn Capital pours $9 million into Westpac-banked home loan assessment fintech in Series B extension
Artificial intelligence-based loans assessment platform Rich Data Co has topped up its Series B, nine months on, with another $9 million, this time from Acorn Capital, for a total raise of $37 million. The fintech banked $28 million last November in part 1 of its Series B, led by Westpac and Nasdaq-listed cloud banking firm nCino, supported by existing backer BMYG and a new investor, Singapore-based Octava Fund.
Data centres have an energy problem. Here's what needs to be done about it
Our insatiable demand for digital content and services has been driving a rise in energy-hungry data centres. The International Energy Agency reports global data centre electricity consumption could double in a few short years, reaching 1,000 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2026. That’s roughly the same as generated by the whole of Japan per year. Some predictions estimate 8–10% of the planet’s electricity production will be needed to sustain the relentless growth in data centres.
Applications for evokeAG's Groundbreaker program for future agtech leaders are now open
AgriFutures is on the hunt for the next generation of agrifood innovators with applications opening for the evokeAG. Groundbreakers program. The annual leadership mentoring event has rebranded from Future Young Leaders to the 2025 evokeAG. Groundbreakers Program. It will give five innovators the chance to present their ideas or research to an international audience at evokeAG. in Brisbane in February next year.
Remarkable picks 10 disability tech startups for its latest accelerator - here they are
Disability tech accelerator and investor Remarkable has chosen 10 startups, including five from the US, for its latest 16-week program, spanning AI-driven health solutions to mobility aids to help people live better lives. This year, startups from Australia, the US, the UK and Canada are part of the accelerator, with the global cohort, managed by Remarkable’s Australia-based team under Emma Earley, while Remarkable US director Molly Lazarus takes care of things in the States.
What founders need to know about a successful board - and 7 things to build a better board pack
️ “One of my core jobs is to give the CEO oxygen.” Peter James – Chairman of Macquarie Telecom and Droneshield. I chair a number of boards and have trusted relationships with the company’s CEOs. Indeed, when this trust falls away – which it can do – I do what I need to do to get it back quickly. The job is impossible without it. The Chair manages the conversation and owns the task of getting decisions made. The CEO can focus on listening, understanding and providing insight.
Atlassian to acquire US video messaging startup Loom for $1.5 billion Original
Atlassian is spending US$975 million (A$1.5bn) to acquire seven-year-old US video messaging startup Loom. The deal represents around 2% of Atlassian’s (NASDAQ: TEAM) current market capital of around US$48 billion. But it’s also something of a bargain, with the price less than two-thirds of Loom’s peak valuation of US$1.53 billion in May 2021 following a US$130m Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z.
Two Australian startups are part of this year's Ocean Impact Pitchfest
Ocean Impact Organisation (OIO) has selected 12 finalists in The Ocean Impact Pitchfest 2023, including two from Australia OIO’s CEO Nick Chiarelli, who’s just returned from New York Climate Week, the final 12 were chosen from 200 applications across 54 countries and embrace.
What founders need to know about investment term sheets
For founders seeking funding, the term sheet is a critical document that can make or break a deal. Yet, it remains shrouded in mystery and can be intimidating for first-time entrepreneurs. Investment rounds are pivotal stages in the growth journey of any startup. They are the juncture where dreams are fuelled with capital, and visions start to take tangible shape. Yet, this exhilarating phase is often marred by one intimidating document—the term sheet.
Healthy children's snack brand Nourish Foods lives on after Tempo Group acquires it from the receivers
Nourish Foods, the parent company of organic children’s food brand Whole Kids, has new owners, with the Tempo Group buying the brand’s intellectual property from the company’s administrators. John McInerney and Matt Byrnes from Grant Thornton took charge of the business as receivers in mid-September, a week after it was placed in voluntary administration following an unsuccessful $1 million raise via crowdfunding.
Phil Morle on everything VC Main Sequence Ventures is doing at SXSW (and some other events that caught his eye)
Main Sequence is ‘all in’ on SXSW Sydney, co-sponsoring the 2050 stream with our friends at CSIRO, Nourish and v2food. Here’s what we will be doing during the week. Throughout the week, we’ll be hanging out in our lounge on the main conference floor – Room C3.1. We’ll be in and out of meetings, intimate fireside chats and podcast recording sessions. Come and say hello and see who’s around. Come and see Main Sequence Partner Mike Zimmerman.
Claudia Goldin is the first woman outright to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for examining why we still have gender pay gaps
In an astonishing act of timing, Harvard University’s Professor Claudia Goldin published a paper on Monday titled Why Women Won. It mapped milestone moments in women’s rights in the United States from 1905 to 2023. A few hours later, she was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
Aconex cofounder and Bluescope back $1.5 million Seed round for proptech software
BlueScope Steel’s venture capital arm, BluescopeX, Aconex cofounder Rob Phillpot’s Gravel Road, and Archangel Ventures have co-led a $1.5 million Seed round for a Melbourne proptech software startup that educates commercial builders on the benefits of engineered timber for commercial construction. The raise for CLT Toolbox was also supported by Flying Fox Ventures and Dan Madhavan’s LaunchVic-backed angel network Ecotone Ventures, as well as Jodie Imam, Adrian Hondros and Peter Lam.
Western Australian VC Purpose Ventures adds $8 million to its fund, now worth $45m
Six months after launching Purpose Ventures with a $37 million war chest to back Western Australian startups, strong support from local investors has seen the VC top up its first fund with another $8 million as it backs its third company.
Grok Ventures backs renewable energy startup gridmo in $500,000 Seed raise
A renewable energy software startup to emerge out of the Startmate program has raised $500,000 in its first external round. Power systems engineers Jarman Stephens and Damien Vermeer cofounded gridmo earlier this year to fast track renewable energy grid connection studies. It was built to MVP in Startmate’s summer 23 cohort. The raise was led by the Cannon-Brookes family fund, Grok Ventures, which chipped in 80% of the $500k round.
Reaching milestones with less runway: How this AI startup used venture debt to fuel customer acquisition
Equity may be tough to secure in the current market, but it’s not the only option for startups looking to weather the funding storm. For some, it’s not always the right choice either. AI eCommerce software platform Particular Audience is fuelling its expansion using ‘growth credit’ – venture debt funding suitable for scaling companies, which acts as a complement to traditional equity funding.
Choir of angels lands on small business cybersecurity startup Apollo Secure in $600,000 pre-Seed raise
Sydney startup Apollo Secure, which focused on helping small business deal with the complexities of cybersecurity, has raised $600,000 in pre-Seed funding. The round was by 24 investors from Sydney Angels with support from Brisbane Angels and a consortium of investors from Angel Loop. Apollo Secure is an automated platform for startups and SMEs to achieve and maintain security compliance at an affordable price.
Phil Morle's research commercialisation manifesto
Not Phil writing out his manifesto. Image: Life of Brian/HandMade Films
Software logistics giant WiseTech acquires shipping container marketplace MatchBox Exchange
ASX-listed WiseTech Global is back in acquisitive mode, snapping up Melbourne shipping container marketplace MatchBox Exchange. While the cost of the acquisition was not disclosed WiseTech (ASX:WTC) announced it had issued 445,769 new shares, worth around $27.6 million, “to the vendors to part-fund the consideration in relation to the acquisition of MatchBox Exchange”.
CSIRO has launched a free online innovation program for agrifood startups
Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is offering a new online learning program for free for startups focused on innovation in agrifood. The ‘Innovate to Grow: Agrifood’ program runs for 10 weeks from November and is designed to help early-stage companies assess how they can advance their technologies, solutions and ideas through research and development (R&D).
3 Aussie startups: Rammp, Cape and Theodore, land slots at TechCrunch's ‘Startup Battlefield’
Three Australian startups have been chosen from more than 3000 applications globally to take part in the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield event at Disrupt in San Francisco this week. AI-based marketing B2B Rammp, fashion tech venture Theodore, and fintech Cape will follow in the footsteps of unicorn alumni such as DropBox, Cloudflare and FitBit in taking part in the annual gathering.
Breakthrough Victoria pours $43 million into five universities to help turn research into startups
The Victorian government’s $2 billion investment fund, Breakthrough Victoria has backed five Victorian universities to help them bring research to market in a deal worth $87 million. Deakin, La Trobe, Monash and Swinburne universities have contributed $9 million funding matched by Breakthrough Victoria, with RMIT matching the $7.5 million it has received.
Why you should meditate if you're still using Twitter
While owner Elon Musk denies X, his rebranded Twitter, is an even bigger cesspit of abuse, racism, and unfettered nastiness than it already was, perhaps one way to improve things is meditation, according to Kiwi academics. Researchers from University of Auckland (UaA) trawled through more than 60,000 Twitter posts by users who’d completed a two-month mindfulness course to see if it changed how they tweeted, and it turns out that yes, it made them nicer.
Startmate reveals the 13 new startups it's backed ahead of SXSW Demo Day
Female founders are involved in nearly 40% of the 13 startups in the Startmate class of winter 2023, with climate tech and AI among the key themes backed by the accelerator and investment program. The Winter23 Accelerator cohort spans everything from AI-powered recruitment to misdiagnosed prenatal ultrasounds and inflatable space solar panels.
How to founder: a VC's guide to thinking like a startup leader in bigger companies
But what does it take to start something? What do founders actually do? I believe it is the behaviour of a founder that makes it possible to deliver something that most people consider impossible. In this post, I will break down those characteristics and suggest some ways that an institution can adopt them. Institutions often start new ventures, but they rarely behave as a founder.
Help for founders: Dell for Startups gives Aussie startups a boost with new program
Hearing the calls of founders tangled up in tech stacks and dealing with increasingly tight runways, global tech leader Dell Technologies has stepped up its local support for Aussie startups at a crucial time. We may be going through a dip in Australian startup funding, but the bigger picture is bright.
Why climate tech is where the smart money is right now
Our mission? To limit global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. To put that into context: We need to decarbonise globally at a rate of 15.2 percent per year: last year we decarbonised by 0.5 percent. Fossil fuels need to decline by 6 percent per year – last year they went up by 2 percent.
Artificial intelligence has a massive image problem, even among younger Australians
A majority Australians see AI as a negative 20% believe it will end humanity in the next 20 years. ANZ businesses using AI fell in the last 12 months Using AI in safe and secure way remains a concern AI adopters more likely to report profitability increase Artificial intelligence (AI) is about as popular as a coal-fired power station in the public mind, with a majority of Australians (57%) believing artificial intelligence creates more problems than it solves, according to new research.
5 things Main Sequence's Phil Morle learnt about venture capital from hanging out with 100 other investors
Venture capital can be a solo, transactional game: meeting founders, building conviction, and making a case to an investment committee before allocating capital. Some firms learn how to exploit the aggregated super-power of their whole group to discover unique investments and unlock value. What we don’t talk about enough is how the firms themselves collaborate to understand each other as a system to build our industry from different perspectives deliberately.
The Ignition Lane Wrap: Canva's top o' the clouds, VCs struggle to raise, returning Fyre
Welcome to Ignition Lane’s Tech Wrap, where they cut through the noise to bring you their favourite insights from the technology and startup world. Ignition Lane works with ambitious business leaders to apply the Startup Mindset to their technology, product and commercialisation problems. This wrap goes out free to subscribers. Don’t forget you can catch Gavin Appel regularly on the Startup Daily show on ausbiz. If you miss it, you can catch up on the week’s shows here.
Australia’s quantum industry: Our 'exciting' next frontier
Published on May 3, 2023 While television and movies may have brought the quantum field into mainstream conversation, Australia’s long-standing reputation as a global leader in quantum research has been drawing overseas researchers to our shores for over 25 years. Unfortunately, we also have a reputation for our poor track record in research commercialisation. Long before we invented WiFi, Australia was one of the earliest nations to invest in building a new wave of electronic computers.
How to make Chat GPT-4 your venture science co-pilot for imagining new companies Original
Venture Science is a practice for founding and building new companies with designed advantage at the start. We’ve done this a lot at Main Sequence to create companies like v2food, Samsara Eco, Eden Brew, Endua and Quasar Sat. I’ve been using Chat GPT-4 to help me imagine new companies. Here’s how you can too. #1 – Teach GPT-4 how to think about the problem Paste this prompt into the Chat GPT-4 interface: I am going to teach you a model for imagining a new startup company called “Venture Science”.
VC investor Phil Morle on 7 ways to find time for thinking
The natural flow of time in venture is towards the ‘transactional’. Without a deliberate other process, days become 30-minute zoom window slices. These become a terrible blow to big thinking because they gobble up the available time but also because: The default is ‘out’ rather than ‘in’. ‘No’ is easier than ‘yes’. Assessing/judging someone else is easier than imagining what is possible. A clear outcome is needed in a short time, meaning it is probably shallow in impact.
Building the Machines: Main Sequence VC investor Phil Morle on his plans and the possibilities for startups in 2023
Main Sequence Ventures partner Phil Morle I’ve always struggled to write a year in review. Not at the end of the year, at least. The end of a year tends to involve a burned-out shell with no time or energy, too busy thinking about the future to focus on the past. But it is worth a quick look. What did I learn, and what am I going to do this year because of it? Reflections on 2022 Going into 2022, I did not anticipate how much I was determined to rebuild momentum after Covid.
Building Out Loud - Digest #1
Last year, I tried a writing experiment to ‘build out loud’ my venture-building life. That was brutal with one atomic post per day but I loved it. This year will have a lower volume and when there is enough interesting stuff, I will roll it up into a digest on this substack. I hope you find it useful. If there are questions you want me to answer, let me know.
A venture capital investor reveals his top 4 'red flags' when reviewing startup pitches
In this essay, we are imagining a pitch from an early stage deep tech company, probably still working inside a university. An investor red flag might not be obvious to a founder. Why would it? They build up over years as signals of weakness and they are best avoided. Knowing what they are makes it possible to avoid them. This is not about how to build a strong pitch. More about avoiding an accidental weak pitch.
How to imagine the investor perspective when you're pitching
Before you start pitching, roleplay the investor perspective Pitches need to be given from the perspective of the investor. These things are too often forgotten The investor’s job is to make a financial return for their investors. They get thousands of pitches per year. This means they are distracted and also that they’ve probably heard a similar pitch to yours already. Put your investor hat on Ask yourself: Did you understand the value quickly? Did it activate your greed?
Why startup founders need speed
Recently I introduced a startup to a potential investor and they followed up in 4 minutes. How a startup works with time is a clear indicator of their culture and can be an indicator of their future success. Why time matters Time is everything in a startup. The resources that we have fuel a timeline. When the resources run out, the timeline ends. The job is to extend the timeline before the hour glass runs out. Time between actions is waste.
Have startup accelerators reached their use-by date? Why it's time to cancel demo day
Do we still need startup accelerators? Were they for a point in time that has now passed? I have been designing and running accelerator programs since 2010 and believe they have been a significant contribution to the innovation system we have today. Ten years ago, few people aspired to start a company, and there was little funding and capability-building support. Most universities have their accelerators, and tens of accelerators operate outside of universities. But do we still need them?
How to handle the hardest conversation an early stage investor will ever have with a founder they backed
The hardest conversation for an early stage investor happens when you choose not to follow on in a company you have invested in. This great tension is rarely discussed but lies at the core of the founder/investor relationship. We both know that these moments of decision will come and it matters how we handle it. My context – what it feels like Don’t come to me if you want a cheque and then be left alone. I am a high touch investor. I started as a founder and I know what it is like to raise money.
How to deal with imposter syndrome when you're the founding CEO of a startup
OMG, the pressure of being the founding CEO of a startup. Most people come into the role with limited experience and start the daily process of building something from nothing. The job is to learn what to do faster than the wheels can fall off. Every startup CEO feels like this. A quiet voice tells them they are an imposter and they should not have the job. This essay is about what to do with that feeling.
4 red flags for VCs when reviewing pitches from deep tech startups
Welcome to our new column by Main Sequence Ventures partner Phil Morle. Every fortnight Morle will share his wisdom and insights with Startup Daily readers and also discuss it on the Startup Daily show. His first column is part of the Venture Capital Primer for Scientists series, based on hundreds of workshops he’s given during his time as a deep tech VC. In this essay, we are imagining a pitch from an early stage deep tech company, probably still working inside a university.
Deep Tech; most people don’t understand you, the rest don’t believe you
Great ideas don’t mean much if they’re not communicated properly. When it comes to deep tech, founders often tend to believe that there’s no point communicating their idea to the public until the technology is ready. It’s understandable – the technology does need to work in order to progress the company, but to what milestone? Why should the public suddenly care about technology that they’ve never heard of before, especially when it’s a solution to a problem they haven’t noticed?
These three words will bring out the best in your startup team
Main Sequence partner Phil Morle. Source: Supplied/Jessica Hromsa. As teams grow, it becomes challenging to operate cohesively. When scaling past 10 people, a peer-to-peer network becomes too complex for simple communication. Pathways break down, information doesn’t make it through to where it needs to be. A company becomes the sum of its fragmented individuals and fails to get the compound value from a unified team.
Phil Morle: What I am learning from the best board chairs — part two -
Main Sequence partner Phil Morle. Source: Supplied/Jessica Hromsa. I’ve been spending time with some of the best board chairs I know to ask them what they do. I spoke to David Thodey. He was chair of CSIRO at the time and is currently chair of Tyro and Xero. I shared my favourite tip from him in part one. He also opened my eyes to the most important hat I should wear in my role as chair. As directors, it is not our job to manage the company It seems obvious, but few operate this way.
Phil Morle: What I am learning from the best board chairs
I’ve been spending time with some of the best board chairs I know to ask them what they do. I spoke to David Thodey. He was chair of CSIRO at the time and is currently chair of Tyro and Xero. “I am currently chairing three boards and learning what it takes to do the job well,” says Thodey.
Startups are building the future with synthetic biology
Main Sequence partner Phil Morle. Source: Supplied/Jessica Hromsa. Towards the end of his life, Steve Jobs came to a realisation: “I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.” He wasn’t wrong. We are in the midst of the most important technological revolution of our time.
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