2 weeks Ago By David Swan
One of the nation’s leading venture capital funds is accelerating efforts to find and fund billion-dollar technology businesses as statistics show Australian start-up investment has slowed after a prolonged fertile stretch. Rampersand, which was founded in Melbourne and has a significant Sydney presence, has appointed Rod Hamilton, co-founder of the $2 billion software firm Culture Amp, to serve as its venture partner. He becomes Rampersand’s third major hire in under four months as the company ramps up its hunt for Australia’s next billion-dollar start-up, or “unicorn”.
Hamilton’s appointment is part of the firm’s efforts to develop the next generation of Australian technology success stories, according to Rampersand partner Paul Naphtali. Canva, Culture Amp, Atlassian and SafetyCulture all grew from small start-ups into globally significant companies and are between 10 and 20 years old, necessitating an effort to back the next wave. Rampersand venture partner Rod Hamilton and co-founder Paul Naphtali.
Investment in large technology start-ups fell off a cliff last year, and no new unicorns were crowned as venture capital funding shrank. The annual State of Australian Startup Funding Report , which compiled data from more than 1000 start-up founders and investors, found that $3.5 billion was invested in Australian start-ups across 413 deals last year – a precipitous 53 per cent drop in funding from a year earlier.
The report found that dozens of local start-ups shed staff as interest rates rose and venture capital funding dried up, with 90 per cent of investors witnessing lay-offs at their portfolio companies. Some 41 per cent of investors reported that one or more of their portfolio companies shut down entirely. ‘The founders are 10 times better, and the ecosystem is 10 times better.
’ Rampersand co-founder Paul Naphtali “We’ve been around for 10 years, and things are going really well, but we just think that the opportunity over the next 10 is much, much bigger,” Naphtali said. “Australia is now an incredible market to be building from, both from an investment and entrepreneurship perspective, and the question from the beginning about whether Australia will produce world-class entrepreneurs is no longer a question.” Key to Rampersand’s unicorn hunt is its “product counsel” – a team effort to bring in start-up veterans who will share knowledge and insights with companies at their earliest stages.
The counsel will be led by Hamilton, who served as Culture Amp’s chief product officer for 12 years and will join the likes of Hatch co-founders Adam Jacobs and Chaz Heitner, A Cloud Guru co-founder Sam Kroonenburg, Jigspace co-founder Zac Duff and former Seek and Envato executive Helen Souness. Hatch co-founders Chaz Heitner and Adam Jacobs with investor Taryn Pieterse. Credit: Steven Siewert “Rod is one of Australia’s most successful founders and entrepreneurs, helping to build a global unicorn whose products are relied on globally by millions of users,” Naphtali said.
“We believe that Rampersand has a bunch of unicorns in our portfolio already ...
Rod will be instrumental in guiding our founders as they build and scale highly valuable businesses and in helping to unlock the unicorns of 2034.” Hamilton said that after a two-year gap since leaving Culture Amp, he’s excited to be working hands-on with start-ups who are still finding their feet. “Things you typically need help with at those early stages are things like product strategy and getting the right product-market fit, pricing and packaging strategies and product hires as well; sometimes company founders are giving away their baby to the wrong hire,” he said.
Loading “Ultimately, finding the right people and the right combination of people, and giving those people the right amount of support, is the single best thing you can do.” Rampersand has deployed $100 million in funding to 35 companies, most recently investing in 3D visualisation spatial computing platform JigSpace and AI-powered digital advertising agency Cuttable. The firm appointed two new partners, Taryn Pieterse and Andrew Poesaste, this year and is investing out of its fourth fund, the Future Tech Fund, which focuses on AI, business-to-business software, and emerging technologies such as quantum computing.
“We think when we look at the opportunity set in Australia, it’s easily the best we’ve ever seen by an order of magnitude,” Naphtali said. “The founders are 10 times better, and the ecosystem is 10 times better.” It was time to pass knowledge on to the next generation of tech stars, he said.
“Ten years ago, if you had some success as a tech entrepreneur, you would have bought property. That’s just what happened. This generation coming through wants to help the next generation.
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License this article Funding Venture capital Investing David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper. Connect via Twitter or email .
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