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Latest News
Since August 2014, the Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund has made 2 new investments, $300,000 in Fame & Partners and $118,000 in Instaclustr. The Fund has also made 4 follow-on on investments, $279,511 in Ingogo, $229,500 in Jayride, $145,332 in Nexus eWater, and $116,000 in Ninja Blocks.
In accordance with the partnership deed, investors will receive the Fund's unaudited balance sheet and P&L report for the 6-month period ending 31 December 2014 by 1 March 2015. If you have any enquiries regarding financials please contact Pankaj Khanna in Melbourne on +61 (3) 9288 9401.
Sydney Angels Deal Pipeline
The latest Sydney Angels members' meeting is being held at 5.30pm Tuesday 17 February with 3 startups presenting at the PwC, Darling Park Tower 2, Level 10, 201 Sussex Street, Sydney. The deals presenting at this meeting are:
- Kindy - Kindy lets parents find, book, and pay for the best verified local nannies and babysitters across Australia.
- Predikkta - Our surveys as compared to traditional surveys need LESS people for MORE accurate results. We get you to the Apex for your Click through rate the fastest.
- RecycleSmart - Recycling program that engages Australians in improving their everyday recycling, helping Councils to divert waste from landfill and saving valuable resources.
Sidecar Fund Portfolio Summary
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Bubble Gum Interactive
Fund investment:
$200,000 (1st round)
$300,000 (2nd round)
$75,000 (3rd round)
Description:
an independent game and entertainment development studio creating multi-platform gaming and interactive experiences with a focus on creativity, quality and entertainment value.
Website:
bubbleguminteractive.com
Update:
- The short term focus is to consolidate current partnerships in Q1, bring in enough co-production revenue by end of Q2 to self-fund operations through to the end of 2016, and diversify the product portfolio so its 50/50 between licensed and own IP (to guarantee baseline operational revenues while we build opportunity for future hits).
- A great deal of knowledge, partnership opportunities and mobile/social framework level IP were consolidated last year, and Bubble Gum Interactive (BGI) are poised to leverage these for longer term success.
- The team in Manila are doing well after much effort in mentoring and skill building to be a competitive world class team. Given the total annual operational costs of the team is less than $150K p.a. we are in a very competitive position as we move forward with various partnership and internal opportunities.
- The team is capable of producing 3 major projects per year with the help of freelancers for art and QA. Current team of 8 will expand to 12 in the next 2 months if new deals are successful, upping production capacity/redundancy.
- The BGI project 'Wild Grinders' has been picked up by Nickelodeon US. BGI are currently working with Nickelodeon to rebadge the game, for re-release under the Nick banner Feb 25 as a $3.99 paymium title. Nick and Apple will support the game and drive sales via their game, social and TV networks. The US based deal is estimated to net $1.5m in gross revenue over the next 18 months, of which Bubble Gum should receive about 30%. Additional revenue is expected as Nick commit to other markets including UK, AU, Canada and key EU territories – pending success in the US.
- Relationship building with DeNA based in Singapore and Japan has evolved into a 6 week project to build a puzzle game prototype on the strength of Cake Bake Blitz. BGI are confident the project will be greenlit for full production over 9-12 months with a budget of $200-$250K and a 20% revenue share.
- BGI's new flagship card collectible game, 'Neo Tokyo League of Samurai' is close to being finished and is earmarked for pen beta release end of Q1. DeNA are still assessing the game for co-publishing, and BGI will start pitching to other publishing partners towards the end of this month.
Recent Press:
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Ninja Blocks
Fund investment:
$75,000 (1st round)
$116,333 (2nd round)
Description:
the internet of things - a hardware and web-service platform that lets you control and build apps that talk to connected devices
Website:
- Ninja Blocks (NB) have raised $725K of a US$1m convertible note issue which will fund the business through to a proposed Series A venture round.
- NB joined the Citrix Startup Accelerator, taking US$250k in a c-note from Citrix.
- NB opened a San Francisco office and have hired a Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Partnerships.
- They are currently shipping Kickstarter units and are refining the product with this audience serving as Beta testers.
- NB are looking at various channels for distributing the Ninja Sphere,including through brick-and-mortar retail stores and via partnerships with incumbent players in various verticals such as security, energy saving, etc.
Recent Press:
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StageBitz
Fund investment:
$50,000 (1st Tranche)
$50,000 (2nd Tranche)
Description:
online platform for theatre, film and TV allowing you to maintain a full inventory of props needed for a show, and borrow things you don’t have
Website:
Update:
- StageBitz (SB) is currently looking to re position their focus away from inventory management software for the theatre & entertainment industry.
- Although promising much, the theatre and entertainment focus has failed to produce a reliable revenue stream
- SB is looking to rebrand as SmartPro Solutions (site still in draft form)
- SB has signed a reseller agreement with Canberra-based document management firm Intelledox to market their product to universities and other tertiary education institutions.
- To implement this new direction SB has hired a new CEO, Richard MacMillan, He has 20 years experience in technology including 15 years in enterprise security and software,
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Ingogo
Fund investment:
$321,296 (1st round)
$127,346 (2nd round)
$2719,511 (3rd round)
Description:
puts you in direct contact with the nearest taxi to you so you can get from a - b, quickly, safely and easily.
Website:
Update:
- Ingogo successfully raised an additional $9.1 million in a pre-IPO funding round toward the end of 2014.
- This takes the total capital raised by the company to $16.2 million and values the business at more than $45 million.
- Ingogo announced a partnership with cloud accounting software Xero. The partnership with Xero will allow small business owners, such as tradesmen, direct sales people and small product enterprises, to process payments immediately from customers on site using Bluetooth technology connecting ingogo’s app to a very small portable payment terminal.
- The funding injection will also help the company prepare for an intended listing on the ASX, potentially, in the second half of 2015.
- Ahead of a potential listing, Ingogo has hired former GE Capital general manager Craig Hopper as his new chief commercial officer and former AAPT executive Trent Jerome as chief financial officer.
Recent Press:
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CriticalArc
Fund investment:
$185,000
Description:
CriticalArc Safezone is revolutionising the way safety and security is managed on open campuses. It's a powerful, easy to use command and control system that extends the Security Team's view of any situation and allows everyone to communicate and coordinate in response to any incident.
Website:
Update:
- CriticalArc (CA) plan to raise a $2M round at pre money valuation of $8M commencing late-Feb.
- The proposed use of the funds will include (1) US Expansion - immediate full-time presence in the US to support partners and delivery; (2) US-focused marketing - additional support and technical sales resources as sales are made; (3) EMEA Growth - add support and operations resources in EMEA now that CA is in delivery mode and market potential is understood; (4) Fund accelerated development of roadmap items for international market; (5) Provide working capital to take advantage of opportunities fully and underpin operations
- Sales in Australia continuing and international market entry occurring faster than originally planned.
- 7 universities universities are now signed and more expected in the next 6 months.
- As of December/January CA has their first sales in the UK with University of York and Northumbria University, already live and up to 5 more following in the next few months
- The University of Zurich is CA's first European customer and is now live.
- CA has entered the Middle East market with their first customer being a large residential compound in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
- Early activity in the US has yielded results with Northeastern University in Boston being CA's first US-based pilot customer.
- New product features continue to reinforce our significant differentiation in the market.
- CA is also diversifying their customer base with new prospects in major transport networks, major international events and multi-national corporations.
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Clarity Pharmaceuticals
Fund investment:
$70,000
Description:
a leader in innovative radio-pharmaceutical technologies (using technology licensed from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the University of Melbourne) developing targeted therapies (asset development) and assisting in the development of novel therapies for companies globally (contract services).
Website:
Update:
- Clarity believes that their mix of low-risk low-reward and high-risk high-reward business models positions them uniquely in the Australian life sciences ecosystem.
- Despite the diversity of their business model, they remain committed to a focused strategy of being one of the pre-eminent radio- pharmaceuticals companies globally.
- Clarity's sales and marketing efforts are crucial for their contract services business, as they not only have a predominantly international prospective client base, but their services are also cutting edge. The market is still learning the benefits of imaging technology.
- Clarity is working toward a more diverse client base in relation to assets being developed, geographic reach, and size of company.
Recent Press:
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Venuemob
Fund investment:
$215,000
Description:
find the perfect function venues for your event
Website:
Update:
- In Q4 2014, Venuemob (VM) entered into a seasonal peak for bookings and revenue.
- First profitable month in December 2014: $51,000 bookings revenue invoiced in December (400% growth vs Dec 2013).
- Reached $1M in gross booking value for clients in December alone.
- Venue partner growth: VM added 362 venues to partner network in the last quarter alone (this is at a pace 5x faster than same time last year). This was managed largely with low-touch sales or venue self signup.
- Growth in margins: All new venue partners since November are paying VM 10% commissions, vs historical average of 5% of total spend. Average spend per client ~$4000 in the last quarter.
- Customer demand growth: VM has experimented with the best way to assist more customers and providing venue partners more business.
- In November, VM generated ~$15M worth of leads.
- In January, VM deployed a large scale SEO content rollout- 40,000 new pages were created to generate growth in traffic.
- VM are now seeking opportunities to scale our audience, including partnerships and marketing activity.
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Fame & Partners
Fund investment:
$300,000
Description:
a vertically-integrated, personalised eCommerce destination for special occasion dresses, with a special emphasis on the school formal and prom market.
Website:
Update:
- A full supply chain audit was completed in December 2014 over 3 days in China
- F&P have opted to be more conservative in their forecasts for the first 6 months of 2015, recognising the rapid scaling risks in customer delivery and product quality as they gain increased visibility through successful marketing activities.
- Confident that the current factory base can deliver up to 3,000 units p/month without any issues
- Key Hires: CTO, Toby Hede; Head of UX & SEO, David Price; Head of Marketing & Operations, Naomi Roth
- Major new marketing partnerships include: ASOS, Teen Vogue, Gurl.com, Lover.ly, Shopstyle, iBotta, DDB Australia, The Iconic
- New, fully responsive website to launch March 2015.
Recent Press:
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Zenogen
Fund investment:
$161,000
Description:
has developed graphite electrodes for Water Electrolysis: the only zero-carbon-emissions method of producing industrial gases such as Hydrogen.
Website:
Update:
- Disappointingly, the Zenogen technology has proven to be unscalable - as the current is increased anywhere close to commercial scale, the catalyst is not efficient/stable.
- Moreover, in a commercial application the anode/cathode must be moved close together with a membrane in between (in the lab tests there was no membrane and the anode/cathode were not close together) and when this happens all efficiencies are lost.
- As late as August 2014 Zenogen were planning the next round of funding and getting positive progress reports of the scale up. When it became clear to management/board in August that there were serious problems with the technology the team put forward a plan to get to the root cause of the problems in order to make a determination about the viability of the technology. Those results were presented to the board on 17 October and were negative.
- In light of the bleak outlook for the technology, as well as the entrepreneurs’ wish to move on, the Board's only option at this point is to reduce costs to almost nothing, secure the tax credits and other funds due to the company, and at the end of the FY distribute any remaining funds to the inventors and then liquidate the company.
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Jayride
Fund investment:
$150,000 (1st round)
$250,000 (2nd round)
$$229,500 (3rd round)
Description:
a platform to find unique, cheap and fun land transport. Carpool, rideshare, bus, shuttle, relocation cars and more. Compared with other current ride-sharing and carpooling startups, Jayride’s unique angle is to provide a single interface for finding all your transportation options, including commercial transport, and combining that data with the available ride-sharing options.
Website:
jayride.com.au
Update:
- Continuing growth in commission revenue booked per month, this quarter increases a further 49%, an average of 14% month-on-month growth.
- Continuing growth in gross bookings per month, this quarter increases a further 44%, an average of 13% month-on-month growth.
- In December a new milestone was reached, a $1m annualised monthly gross bookings run-rate ($83k+ per month), while still maintaining 20% average margin and a positive contribution after advertising on every booking.
- Bookings via travel agencies increased dramatically in Q4 2014. Signed agents activated on the platform reach 500+ agents, new brand names signed and yet to be activated include Travel Associates (a subsidiary of FlightCentre with an additional ~200 agents)
- Continuous product enhancement on the new Jayride web-booking product yields further improvement in conversion rates from visit to booking. In December, conversion is 3%+ in key markets and still increasing.
- Jayride closes first $180k tranches of Series A investment round as convertible notes, with the full round set to close in January. At the time of writing, Jayride has now closed its $1.5m Series A investment round at post money valuation of $8.4M.
Recent Press:
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Posse
Fund investment:
$150,000 (1st round)
$200,000 (2nd round)
Description:
helps you find all the best places in the world according to people whose tastes you can trust - your friends.
Website:
Update:
- The merger between Posse and BTQ was closed successfully, and the combined teams are now performing post completion activity.
- Post merger total staff is 30, including 13 in Manila and 17 in Sydney.
- Posse has recently hired a VP of Engineering, Chaitanya Kuber, who has played senior development roles at Big Commerce and Yahoo, and a Sales Manager who previously managed a chain of successful cafés and is a big advocate for the Posse/BTQ product.
- In Q1 2015 Posse will be continuing to build out the new app, re-brand the business and grow through a number of campaigns. Please download Beat the Q from the relevant App Store (iOS or Android) and try it at your local café. Then you can experience our progress first-hand.
- Beacon-led table service is now live at The Exchange in Balmain, Please go there and order food and drinks from the app. Posse uses beacons to prompt patrons to order and tell the wait-staff where the person is located. Posse will roll these out to other pubs later this month, and eventually replace buzzers and number-on-a-stick systems everywhere.
- We're also running focussed campaigns at Australian university cafés this quarter, as classes return for the academic year. We already process substantial numbers at Sydney Uni and UTS as students order ahead from their lectures. Look out for a major 'back to work' campaign in Sydney's CBD next week.
- Posse/BTQ collectively are currently fundraising, looking to close a Series A round early March. The exact terms and amounts are still being negotiated.
Recent Press:
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Collaborate Corp Ltd
(ex-DriveMyCar Rentals)
Fund investment:
$130,000
Description:
Collaborate Corporation Limited (ASX: CL8) operates peer-to-peer marketplaces where the ‘trust’ it creates makes it possible for individuals and companies to transact with each other for mutual benefit. Collaborate disrupts traditional business models by enabling owners and renters to transact directly with each other, monetising assets that would otherwise sit idle.
Website:
Update:
- On 15 December 2014 Qanda Technology Ltd shareholders resolved to change the company's name to Collaborate Corporation Ltd .
- On 21 January 2015 Collaborate Corporation raised $1.26 million to advance development of its collaborative consumption business. The funds were raised through a heavily oversubscribed placement of 63 million shares priced at $0.02 each to high net worth and institutional investors.
- Proceeds will be used to advance the evolution of the company’s proprietary trust and reputation platform, enabling the company to launch into new peer-to-peer markets, and support marketing and PR activities for the soon to be re-launched DriveMyCar website.
Recent Press:
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Muzeek
Fund investment:
$62,500
Description:
revolutionary platform that streamlines live music booking and operational processes for venues, promoters, agencies, managers, artists & DJs
Website:
Update:
- Muzeek finalised their beta testing for customer payment plans
- In Q1 of 2015 Muzeek is implementing expanded payments and billing tiers with their first high-level sales campaign in Australia and the U.S.
- Muzeek currently has over 5,000 active users on our platform with strong month-to-month user growth.
- They recently raised $170K to extend their runway until at least the end of 2015
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Instaclustr
Fund investment:
$118,000
Description:
lets developers effortlessly run and scale Apache Cassandra, the world's most powerful NoSQL database, across multiple cloud hosting providers. Instaclustr's hosted Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise solutions power mission-critical, highly available applications for customers, enabling them to transform their business and engage like never before with their customers.
Website:
Update:
- Instaclustr has performed well over the last quarter, exceeding targets for almost all performance measures.
- They currently have 7 active paying customers with 3 having committed to annual plans. Customers are located in Australia, UK and US.
- Instaclustr have hit an internal milestone of having 50 servers under management.
- Over the last quarter revenue averaged just over $38K per month with an average of over $8K per month in gross margin.
- Instaclustr are seeing solid increases in market engagement statistics with almost 250 signed-up users, and increased web traffic and access to blogs and marketing material.
- The sales pipeline is strong and it is expected this to grow significantly on the back of the next release of Instaclustr and expansion to new cloud provider platforms, including Microsoft’s Azure, Google and IBM.
- Have significantly boosted developer stocks, with a current team of 6 dedicated developers located in Australia.
- Ben Bromhead (CTO and co-founder) has relocated to the San Mateo office and is currently working with existing customers and further leads. Ben is in the process of hiring both technical and sales team members to operate out of the US.
- Instaclustr R2 has now been released. The majority of this engineering effort has been making fundamental changes to the underlying technology stack. The main change has us moving to CoreOS as the underlying operating system with Docker containerisation for management purposes. This change makes it easier to release updates and will significantly accelerate our feature release cadence.
- The team have also made improvements to our monitoring system by adding alerts and configuration items that the customer will see and so have a better view of the value our system provides.
- Currently working on a lower cost offering that will capture many of the developers that get to the signup stage, but who fail to take the next step to become a paying customer and launching a cluster.
Recent Press:
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Have submitted $500K net proposal to Commercialisation Australia
Nexus eWater
Fund investment:
$125,726 (1st round)
$145,332 (2nd round)
Description:
commercialising the world's first integrated water and heat reCycler. Using patent-pending processes, reCycler offers, for the first time, an affordable, reliable solution to onsite domestic water recycling and wastewater heat recovery.
Website:
Update:
- TargetingLancaster City Council in California to establish/implement home wastewater recycling program utilising Nexus eWater products to capture and recycle grey water and energy.
- Continuing partnership discussions with KB Homes and other property developers to incorporate Nexus eWater products in new green housing developments.
- Continued marketing efforts including trade shows, website update and sales/marketing reporting system
Recent Press:
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ModaUnica
Fund investment:
$145,006 (1st round)
$165,627 (2nd round - 1st tranche)
$165,627 (2nd round - 2nd tranche)
Description:
a global brand management company designing or sourcing unique product for the pet market with licensed and proprietary brands.
Website:
modaunica.com.au
Update:
- ModaUnica continues to review and negotiate new licensing deals with the RSPCA under their 10-yr master licence contract.
- The most successful new licensing deal in the last quarter is the RSPCA animal trading cards launched in conjunction with Atlas cards. Featuring all animals from the cute and cuddly to creepy and crawly, many of the cards have special effects, including 3D, metallic and textured finishes.
- ModaUnica has refocused its efforts on licensing opportunities and has shelved plans to launch the proposed ModaUnica Retail e-commerce site.
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TheBestDay
Fund investment:
$131,488 (1st round)
$131,488 (2nd tranche)
Description:
make plans happen - calculate the best day for your plan
Website:
Update:
- After being featured as ‘Best New App’ in the Australian App Store, TheBestDay (TBD) were able to analyse data providing deeper insights into the behavioural problem of organising social plans and, TBD's performance in providing the solution.
- Several fundamental insights emerged that ignited a new approach to the solution. Consequently, TBD are launching a brand new iOS and Android app, called Beasy.
- The core insight that lies behind Beasy is that people want an easier way to make plans and keep track of options for time and place and who can do what. However, they do not want to sacrifice the banter and natural flow of messaging to change their behaviour and use a new, more structured, planning tool.
- Beasy helps groups of friends to have a natural conversation about a social plan and anytime a message includes a time or place the app automatically interprets it from the text, using natural language processing techniques, and adds it as an option to be voted on.
- You may be familiar with how iMessage detects times such as tonight, this is difficult to do, but what’s really a breakthrough is TBD's ability to parse places such as bars, restaurants, cafes, landmarks, parks etc.
- TBD has worked with two PhD’s at Sydney University to develop this innovative technology that can detect places and have submitted a patent in the US
- TBD are currently in New York to undertake a beta pilot with a target 1,000 users to prove that Beasy is feasible.
- Using the metrics of this case study TBD expect to project the growth and revenue from our built-in suggestions functionality to support a Series A financing.
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Controlabill
Fund investment:
$150,000 (1st round)
Description:
makes direct debit easier, more cost effective and simply better, removing the paper processing pains, expensive support outlays and helping billers reduce set up costs.
Website:
controlabill.com
Update:
- The board and management are working towards facilitating a co-ordinated sale process of key company assets.
- They are in the process of completing an IM, and plan to start actively marketing the IP and technology by the end of this month.
- They have had some high level discussions with some banks and payments companies. It is too early to say whether sale efforts will be successful.
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International Bodyboarding Association
Fund investment:
$100,000
Description:
the governing body of world bodyboarding. The world's best bodyboarders competing at the world's best locations.
Website:
Update:
- Despite efforts by the new management to restructure the business it appears that IBA will not be able to continue as a going concern
- Currently, discussions are being held to identify a buyer for the assets of the company which include boarders contracts (until 2015) and licensing rights to events.
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