Thought waves on seed venture

In the ever-evolving world of technology and investment, where timing can dictate destiny, a spur-of-the-moment encounter between Tidal Managing Partner Grant McCarthy and renowned tech evangelist Guy Kawasaki led to a fruitful dialogue. As Grant recalls, what began as an ambitious plan to host an event during Guy’s visit to Sydney soon faced logistical hurdles reminiscent of the challenges startups often encounter. Luckily, fate intervened, leading to a meeting in San Francisco where, sharing surfboards and experiences, a connection formed. Beyond their love for surfing, Guy and Grant share a keen eye for tech investment opportunities shaped by their respective journeys.

For Guy, it has been marked by his pivotal roles during the early Apple days and advising Canva during their early product development. Grant’s journey to becoming the technologist he is today is equally storied. Amidst the frenetic energy of the dot-com bubble, Grant dove headfirst into the tech scene, joining Yahoo as its 14th Australian employee. He played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s trajectory, working across some of its earliest investments, including industry leaders like Seek and Carsales. At Tidal, he’s backed ventures like Shippit, now valued at $300m and FrankieOne from their earliest stages.

These shared early tech experiences make for a good yarn filled with valuable insights into how to build and grow a tech company, offering a firsthand perspective on what it truly takes to succeed.

The role of luck and timing

Grant emphasises the importance of recognising the “corporate lotto cycle” in startups, where success often depends on fortuitous timing and circumstances. Reflecting on his journey, Guy candidly acknowledges, “Yeah, I worked for Apple. I worked for Canva. I was on the Wikipedia board of directors and a Mercedes Benz brand ambassador. I’m trying to paint this picture, but I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing all the time.” Guy believes that luck isn’t merely a matter of chance but a culmination of factors aligning at the right moment. “It’s not just because you have growth and grit,” he asserts. “It takes luck, and it takes, you know, some teacher in your past, some coach in your past, some mentor in your past. A lot of things have to line up to be remarkable.”

Guy’s journey with Canva mirrors the unpredictable nature of startup fortunes. Drawing parallels to his early days at Apple, he recalls the pivotal moment when Canva’s potential became apparent. His social media manager’s recommendation and personal experience led him to adopt the “Peter Lynch theory” of investing in products he uses. This mix of personal conviction and timing underscores the relationship between luck and strategic insight. Just as luck and timing played a role in Guy and Grant’s meeting in San Francisco, so too do they shape the trajectories of startups—highlighting the importance of seizing opportunities and cultivating meaningful connections.

Remarkable founders know how to “turn and burn”

Luck and timing aren’t the only things that matter; remarkable founders also know how to make good decisions and be flexible when things don’t go according to plan. Guy, the surfer he is, likens this process to the “turn and burn” manoeuvre, which requires founders to seize opportunities, adapt to evolving conditions, and navigate uncertainty with confidence and precision.

As Guy puts it, “As soon as you make your decision, you switch from, is this the right decision to making the decision right?” In the same vein, he elaborates on the intricacies of surfing, highlighting how “you’re trying to sit in the right place, you’re trying to turn at the right time, you’re trying to paddle in the right direction, you’re trying to pop up at the right time. There’s a lot of variables.” Guy emphasises, “That’s what makes surfing so hard... at some level, once you turn and burn and start paddling, it’s all about making the decision. You got to compensate. You got to change. You got to do whatever you got to do. It’s about making the decision right when push comes to shove.”

Grant highlights that unique early-stage challenges, like figuring out product-market fit and scalable go-to-market strategies, can often involve guesswork. “A lot of the time, particularly in the early stage, at the seed stage, you’re guessing a lot of the time,” Grant explains. Grant’s insight adds another dimension to the “turn and burn” approach, underscoring the delicate balance founders must have between intuition and strategy.

You’re trying to align yourself with people you think are quality, people you can work with who will make hard and fast decisions and have a cadence of speed in doing things.

Finding the balance in product development and sales efforts

Every successful startup’s heart lies in a dual focus: building a remarkable product and effectively selling it to the market. As Guy succinctly says, “100% of your focus should be on making and selling it.” Take, for example, the iconic partnership between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, where their synergy in product innovation and sales acumen laid the foundation for Apple’s unprecedented success.

Grant echoes this sentiment, emphasising the need for startups to prioritise product excellence early on. He affirms that startups armed with a remarkable product, addressing a pressing problem across geographies, often find themselves ahead in the sales game. “With a great product that solves a really hard problem,” Grant advises, “you don’t have sales problems.” However, he highlights that the real challenge for startups with a great product lies in acquiring the right sales talent and capabilities to leverage this product advantage effectively. Grant’s insight sheds light on the pivotal role that sales capability plays in translating product potential into tangible business growth.

How Grant and Guy identify founders with promising potential

Having spoken to countless founders over the years, both seasoned investors pay close attention to the founder’s character—specifically their potential to grow and endure the challenges of the startup journey. Grant points out how important it is to understand the founder’s mindset early on, stating, “One of the things that we’ve always tried to do at Tidal is spend as much time with these founders early in their problem-solving product mindset of what and how they’re going to build something.” For Tidal, it’s not solely about assessing a founder’s technical skills or industry knowledge but also about predicting the founder’s evolution as they go on their journey.

Grant explains:

It’s not only how good they are at product or what knowledge they have about the problem, but also what kind of person they will be as they go through that process.

This is at the core of Tidal’s investment principles, primarily driven by our distinctive operator-led approach. Unlike conventional venture capital firms led by investors, being operator-led means your investors are individuals with firsthand experience as founders and builders of tech companies. Tidal is committed to working closely with founders, offering them insights and advice from practical experience rather than mere theoretical knowledge.

Being the right “asshole” leader

Drawing from four decades of frontline experience, Guy asserts his authority on a subject, saying, “I have become an expert in assholes.” He swiftly clarifies, not in the proctology sense, eliciting a chuckle from Grant. Guy distinguishes between two breeds of such leaders: the egocentric and the mission-driven. The former, he elaborates, is consumed by self-glorification, exemplified by an entourage and a penchant for ego gratification.

In contrast, the mission-driven “asshole” is driven by a singular purpose, unyielding in the pursuit of their vision. He cites Steve Jobs as a prime example of the latter, lauding his focus on creativity and productivity over self-aggrandisement. Grant concurs, emphasising the importance of tyrannical focus in realising one’s mission, a trait reminiscent of Jobs’ legendary dedication. Guy reflects on his time working with Jobs, acknowledging the fear he instilled while underscoring his genuine desire to revolutionise the computer business.

Navigating different mindsets and self-belief in leadership

The distinction between growth and fixed mindsets has profound implications for leadership. Guy believes that having a fixed mindset constrains personal advancement and leads to biases hindering company growth. He articulates, “The fixed mindset is the mindset that you believe that you cannot gain new skills, that, if you open yourself up to the vulnerability of learning new things, it may be at one level embarrassing or even worse, it’ll mark you as a failure.”

This mindset often permeates hiring practices, leading founders to favour candidates who mirror their own attributes, potentially limiting diversity and innovation within the team. Fostering a growth mindset empowers founders to embrace continual learning and adaptability. As Guy highlights, “The growth mindset, by contrast, says that you can grow, you can expand, you can learn, you can do things.”

The three common founder mistakes to avoid in early-stage startups

Mistake 1: Hiring biases and lack of diversity

Guy highlights the detrimental impact of hiring biases, particularly when founders gravitate towards hiring individuals who mirror their personas or demographics. He argues that such bias reflects a need for a growth mindset, stifling innovation and progress within the startup ecosystem. Companies that embrace diversity show they’re fostering a mission-driven culture where the focus is on potential hires being part of a solution to a problem.

Mistake 2: Neglecting sales efforts

Another critical mistake is the tendency for early-stage founders to neglect sales efforts, leading to running out of funds. As Guy emphasises, “sales fixes everything.” He cautions against diverting excessive resources towards superficial “strategic” initiatives at the expense of core revenue-generating activities, stating, “When you start throwing around a strategic... you’re full of it. Because you know what? We don’t want strategic shit. We want money. We want sales.” Guy’s insight underscores the necessity of prioritising tangible sales outcomes over abstract strategic pursuits, highlighting the importance of generating revenue for sustaining business growth and viability.

Mistake 3: Underestimating time and effort in feature implementation

The final mistake is when founders don’t understand the complexity and effort required to build their technology. This tendency often leads to overpromising delivery timelines and revenue potential, resulting in disappointment among stakeholders. Guy stresses the necessity of realistic planning and diligent execution to avoid the pitfalls of overcommitment and subsequent under-delivery. Guy jokes, “Whenever a CEO tells me when something will ship and how much revenue will be generated, I add one year to the shipping date and divide it by 100.” Grant adds to this, suggesting, “I would say add a year, double the cost and half the revenue.”

How to win the AI race

To Guy, AI is a transformative force poised to revolutionise the world—a sentiment aligned with Tidal’s thesis. His belief in the transformative power of AI is unwavering, as he asserts, “I think that AI is a bigger deal than mobile phones, Internet, social media, personal computing.” This conviction stems from his extensive experience in the tech industry, where he has witnessed firsthand the profound impact of technological innovations. Amidst the growing impact of AI, Guy emphasises the importance of authenticity and substance, cautioning against the superficial use of AI as a buzzword. “Show me a company that isn’t using AI,” Guy challenges.

“If you’re saying you’re using AI, you better really be using AI in some significant way. You’re not just blowing smoke to increase the valuation of your company. I think when all the dust settles, you know, you cannot bullshit your way out of this.”

Grant, aligning with Guy’s perspective, recognises the increasing ubiquity of AI in everyday business operations. He acknowledges, “The really interesting thing is people are just generally starting to use it in their everyday business for everyday things.” This observation underscores the growing adoption of AI across various sectors, reflecting its expanding role in driving efficiency and innovation. However, Grant emphasises the importance of substance over rhetoric, echoing Guy’s sentiment that mere lip service to AI is insufficient. “You got to look at that and figure out that just saying the words AI is not going to buy you much longer,” Grant asserts. “Show what you’re actually doing with it as a product.”

Both Guy and Grant advocate for a pragmatic approach to AI adoption—one rooted in genuine innovation and tangible impact. Their insights highlight the need for founders and businesses to move beyond buzzwords and focus on delivering real value through AI-powered solutions. As the AI landscape continues to evolve, their guidance serves as a beacon for navigating the complexities of this transformative technology.

The key to navigating different market cycles

In navigating the ever-shifting market tides, seasoned tech veterans offer invaluable insights honed through weathering multiple market cycles, including the dot-com bubble, the global financial crisis (GFC), and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Grant talks about the enduring nature of successful journeys amidst fluctuating market cycles. Reflecting on the prolonged timelines inherent in building successful startups, Grant emphasises the futility of fixating on market cycles:

When you start businesses, you are often on potentially multi-decade journeys. So, worrying about where a market cycle is up is out of your control. What you do have control over is your product and your sales.

Guy agrees that market fluctuations are insignificant compared to the laser focus founders must maintain on their companies’ goals. “I don’t care if venture capital is up or down or startups are up or down. All an entrepreneur needs to care about is your company.” His perspective underscores the importance of prioritising your own company over external market forces, regardless of prevailing conditions.

Tips for founders pitching their startups

Guy’s mantra, the 10-20-30 rule, serves as a guiding light for startup pitches. It advocates for ten slides, twenty minutes, and a minimum font size of thirty points. Yet, beyond slide counts and font sizes, Guy addresses a common pitfall among founders: the tendency to ramble instead of delivering a concise pitch.

At the heart of Guy’s advice lies a sense of urgency. Founders, he insists, are not flying lumbering Airbus 380s with endless runways at their disposal; they’re strapped into F-16s hurtling off aircraft carriers, where every second counts. In this high-stakes environment, the opening moments of a pitch are make-or-break. “So that means in the first 15 seconds, explain what the hell you do,” Guy advises. “Because until you explain what the hell you do, nobody gives a shit about your world-class technology or world-class background”.

We’re passionate about backing founders who disrupt markets and build transformative products that shape the future. If you’re working on an ambitious product that has the potential to revolutionise industries, get in touch.

My journey to get here

Much like Taylor Swift, I’ll categorise my life in eras. Here’s my professional journey in a nutshell:

• Student era: After completing a Commerce degree in Finance and Accounting at the University of Queensland, I began my career at KPMG in Audit and Transaction Services while getting my Chartered Accountant qualification.
• London era: I relocated to London and worked at Goldman Sachs in Product Control and Finance and at Lloyds Bank in PMO. I started the CFA program and passed Level 1, but I quickly realised it wasn’t for me.
• Sydney era: I got engaged in the Swiss Alps before settling in Sydney and transitioning to Macquarie Bank in project management. Wanting to escape the machine that is a large corporate, I moved over to a small private cloud and managed service provider called VMTech.
• Founder era: I co-founded Hometime, where I assumed various roles, including leading go-to-market teams, serving as CFO, managing acquisitions, and navigating team scaling.
• Investor era: In late 2022, I wanted to find that happy spot where I could put my financial expertise and startup background to good use, partnering with other founders to grow and thrive—that’s when I joined Tidal, and here we are!

As you can see, I’m a generalist with a foundation in finance. My finance background equips me with solid analytical skills to navigate complex problems. What you can’t surmise from my CV is my love of people. I’m all about understanding, relating to people, and building strong, authentic relationships. This also extends to connecting others—with just the slightest hint of common ground; I can connect with the right people at the right time if I see a mutual benefit. This blend of financial acumen, emotional intelligence, and a genuine love for connecting people makes me, me.

What I love about Seed

My passion for Seed phase technology investing springs from a profound appreciation for this particular phase of company building. There’s an undeniable allure to being part of a company’s early growth, where progress is swift, and the potential for impact is vast.

What truly captivates me is the opportunity to engage with diverse ideas, innovations, and technologies. As an investor, I leverage my expertise to collaborate with different visionaries, having a larger circle of impact and contributing to meaningful change.

Beyond the excitement of innovation and growth lies the human connection inherent in early-stage investing. Witnessing a founder’s triumphs and supporting them through challenges enriches the journey. Sharing in the highs and lows with passionate founders adds a profoundly gratifying dimension to the investment process, transforming it from a mere business endeavour into a deeply personal one.

Something I believe that others don’t

I believe in the profound importance of intuition in decision-making, a belief not everyone shares. In a world dominated by data and rational analysis, the intuitive, ‘gut feel’ is often dismissed. Combining intuition with rational thought leads to more holistic and satisfying outcomes, acknowledging the complexity of human emotions and experiences that data alone can’t capture.

If I really ponder this one, I see intuition as our own internal database—it’s all about recognising patterns. ‘Gut feel’ is our brains picking up on subtle clues and nudging us in the right direction based on things we’ve seen or experienced before.

Going from founder to investor

Well, for one, I deeply empathise with founders because I’ve lived that challenging and rewarding journey myself. I know how hard building a business can be and know the lingering feeling of having a million things to do. At the same time, I understand how profoundly fulfilling it can be and how it offers unparalleled rewards that are sometimes impossible to see at the time.

• I’ve lived the reality of sobering scenarios. I’ve lived losing 80% of revenue in a single month because of COVID-19, necessitating hard and fast strategic decisions that fundamentally changed the business model and our organisation at every level (including minimising headcount by 80 in a matter of weeks)—knowing that without these changes the business would have died in a matter of months.
• I’ve lived the need for optimism. As a founder, you are always optimistic; you need to be; otherwise, you would never have taken on the challenge, but maintaining the same level of optimism throughout the journey can be challenging. I’ve lived the balancing of setbacks with a healthy dose of perspective and pragmatism.
• I’ve lived culture starting with the founders. I know it can take years to build and moments to destroy. A great culture can influence things as important as employee (and ultimately customer) satisfaction, your ability to recruit great talent, that talent’s performance and productivity, and their ability to adapt with resilience.

My battle scars help me see around corners for my portfolio companies. My experiences building, managing, acquiring, and restructuring teams across GTM, Finance, and HR shape the way I partner with our portfolio founders to navigate the complexities of growth.

Characteristics of a top founder

• Resilience is key. More will go wrong than right, so you need the resilience to see it through and roll into the good times.
• Driven by “why”. The founder needs to champion the “why” because it’s ultimately why employees and customers choose to join and stick around. They’re all buying into the vision.
• Being coachable. You have to take on feedback and advice like it’s your job. You won’t know every answer, but if you speak to the right people and listen to those who have been there before, you might just find them.
• Customer focus. Customers pay the bills; you should focus on them. Some founders build what they think customers want but don’t spend enough time truly understanding what they need, what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.

How the world will change in 10 years

Mark my words: quantum computing will revolutionise the world. Quantum computing can process and analyse vast amounts of data more efficiently than classical computers, which can significantly enhance the capabilities of AI and machine learning algorithms. This could lead to advances in natural language processing, image recognition, and predictive modelling. Given the amount of quantum computing investment, advancements, and activity, the industry is set for a dynamic change similar to that caused by AI – increased performance, functionality, and intelligence. This also comes with the same challenges presented by AI, such as security, as outlined in the recent Quantum Safe Cryptography article. But just like AI, quantum computing is coming. You might say that quantum computing is where AI was in 2015, fascinating but not widely utilised. Fast forward five years, and AI has been integrated into almost every platform and application. In just five years, quantum computing could take computing and humanity to a new level of knowledge and understanding.

What keeps me up at night

Aside from my reoccurring nightmare of getting sent a Microsoft Teams meeting link, the widening inequality between those with and without access to technology keeps me up at night. Ensuring equal access and digital literacy is vital to preventing social and economic disparities. Governments must intervene to make technology and education widely available, especially in schools. Starting tech education early is critical to nurturing a world-class technology sector and boosting our economy.

That being said, I stay awake thinking about how technology impacts the generations of tomorrow. Outside of work, my passion lies unequivocally with my family. I am immensely proud to be the parent of two delightful little girls, aged 5 and 3, who are at the very core of my universe. They are not just an integral part of my life; they serve as my anchor, providing a perspective that transcends the daily hustle and bustle. As a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the pervasive influence of technology in our daily lives. I yearn for a future where my children can uphold genuine, meaningful human connections, recognising their importance for our mental well-being. While advancements like VR and AR continue to shape our world, I worry that they may further consume our precious time and divert our attention from what truly matters—cherished moments spent with loved ones.

What excites me about Australia’s tech scene

The Australian tech landscape is still in its infancy, with substantial growth to come. Despite being a newer market than established tech hubs like the US and Europe, Australian founders and businesses have demonstrated remarkable resilience, often having to punch above our weight to be recognised internationally. As Tidal partner Georgie pointed out in her article in Startup Daily:

The perception that Aussie companies excel in capital efficiency and early monetisation remains unchanged. A slight advantage is that we’ve created a reputation that we can achieve significantly higher annual recurring revenue (ARR) levels at the Seed and Series A stages than our American counterparts raising at similar stages.

Because of the size of the Australian market, founders adopt a global mindset from day one. They know that to reach the scale required, they‘ll need to think beyond Australia. This collective mindset underscores the ongoing evolution of the tech industry in Australia, signalling promising developments on the horizon.

My investment wish list if I had a time machine

I could say Apple because I’m a massive fanboy, and it would have been a very lucrative call if I had invested early on. Or I could say OpenAI because it is so hot right now and is providing some revolutionary products. But I’m going to pick Notion, the platform I use almost every day, and it has truly revolutionised how loads of people work. Notion epitomises coolness with its sleek UI and spot-on UX design.

The advice I live by

Don’t ask, don’t get. You’ll be surprised at what answer you might get.

My first founder question

What problem are you solving, and how are you solving it?

If you’re a visionary founder ready to chat about what problem you’re solving, then we should chat!

Cutting my teeth in transactional law

The first eight years of my career were in corporate law, where I found my niche in M&A and investments. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so I thrived in the fast-paced and high-risk nature of transactional work. What energised me most was the diverse range of activities in a single day. In the morning, I’d help a client with their ESOP, then find myself drafting a SAFE for another client before jumping into an acquisition negotiation in the afternoon.

Amidst all that excitement, what truly made me tick was the opportunity to form deep relationships with founders during pivotal moments in their lives. However, the transient nature of transactional law was a challenge; after closing a deal, you’d swiftly move on to the next one. This constant shift had me wishing for a more lasting connection, a desire to continue the journey with the folks who I had become so close to. That was my primary motivator to jump out of law into the world of tech (that said, I can still get pretty nerdy about deal structuring and will always appreciate a well-drafted Russian roulette provision 😉).

Seeing technology M&A through to success

Following law, I found myself in the M&A team at Atlassian. M&A gets a pretty bad wrap; reports indicate that 70% and 90% of all deals are deemed “failures,” marked by management dropouts, insufficient value realisation, or even complete divestitures a few years later. I’ve long believed that the lion’s share of these failures can be attributed to a lack of emphasis on the people part of these transactions.

My role at Atlassian was focused on addressing the people experience within transactions. At the outset of each deal, we delved into understanding founder motivations and aspirations, aiming to decipher how they could thrive within the Atlassian environment post-deal. On the backend, we’d act as a founder’s “chief of staff”, helping them integrate into Atlassian’s culture and ways of working and ensuring their teams were set up for success in their new home.

Becoming the G&A whisperer

Though the structure of tech companies varies, I generally categorise them into three distinct organisational units: Governance and Administration (G&A), Research and Development (R&D), and Go-To-Market (GTM).

G&A typically encompasses what some might call the “unsexy” or boring work like people, legal, and financial. But it’s exactly where I like to play (hear me out). In my view, robust G&A is the linchpin that distinguishes a good company from a truly great one. The foundational work of implementing effective governance structures, enhancing productivity, spearheading people programs, and aligning company goals and OKRs serves as the bedrock for scaling companies. These elements empower R&D and GTM teams to do their best work.

At Tidal, where we focus on Seed Phase investments, we seek founders who are already displaying early signs of product-market fit and witnessing the beginnings of a repeatable GTM motion. What they need are the right foundations to supercharge those motions and achieve MMF (model market fit). And that’s precisely where my expertise comes into play!

I get to engage with incredible founders every day, from seed to exit and beyond, while also leveraging my legal, people, and project management skills to provide invaluable support. Whether it’s offering governance insights at the board level, negotiating deal terms, or contributing to workforce planning and people systems, I am deeply passionate about making a meaningful impact.

Pioneering the future of work

Driven by my passion for people programs, productivity, and governance, it should come as no surprise that I have a keen interest in investing in the future of work. I’m convinced that the trajectory of AI will be a game-changer in reshaping the way we work, allowing us to focus on the parts of our roles that actually require deep thinking and genuine human involvement. Rather than machines assisting humans, I expect we’ll see a paradigm shift towards humans assisting machines. Against the backdrop of the slowest productivity growth in 60 years and the unprecedented rate of AI adoption, it looks like a thrilling window of opportunity is emerging for new players to join the race.

With my unique cross-section of legal, governance, and people programs expertise, I’m well-positioned to identify and advocate for companies at the forefront of this transformative wave.

Get ready for my first question

Tell me about you and the journey that got you to this moment.

When I come across a prospective investment, my first question is simple: “Tell me about you and the journey that got you to this moment.” People are at the core of what I do, and starting with the founder’s journey helps create a relaxed atmosphere for a more fruitful conversation.

If you’re a visionary founder ready to make waves, please hit me up. Let’s chat about your market-shaking, ambitious product that’s changing the world. I’m all ears and excited to explore the possibilities with you! 🚀

Orkestra is revolutionising the energy industry with its game-changing platform that enables critical decision-making throughout the lifecycle of renewable energy projects.

The Tidal team is excited to share our investment notes from our second investment in Orkestra to give you a glimpse into our decision-making process. At Tidal, our investments across various markets, models, and products are guided by our core foundational principles that help us define a great Tidal Seed Investment.

Markets with tailwinds

The global transition towards cleaner, more efficient energy sources is no longer a mere aspiration; it’s an imperative driven by environmental factors, regulatory pressures, and evolving consumer preferences. By 2030, this burgeoning sector is poised to become a colossal +$2 trillion global market. As we stand at the cusp of a transformative shift away from fossil fuels, we look to navigate the intricate landscape of clean energy and uncover promising opportunities within renewable technologies, energy storage, and the broader sustainable ecosystem. At Tidal, we look for markets ripe for disruption, and it’s clear that the market Orkestra exists within fits that mould. A few of the factors we’ve taken into account when assessing this opportunity include:

• Bloomberg declared that the energy sector must collectively deploy five times more wind power, three times more solar energy, and a staggering twenty-six times more batteries annually until 2030 to meet basic clean energy targets.
• There is a critical need for enhanced controls in generating and distributing clean power to the grid.
• The future of the power grid is set to be substantially more decentralised in contrast to the conventional centralised fossil fuel-based grid.
• Batteries will emerge as an indispensable component, seamlessly integrated into every renewable energy deployment.
• Virtual or Distributed Power Plants (VPP or DPP) aggregate and scale distributed power generation to normalise supply based on demand to the grid. There is a significant opportunity for a data player to emerge in orchestrating VPP’s power distribution to the grid by improving yield and, in turn, potential margins.

The magnitude of this opportunity is immense, and the race to meet these ambitious climate targets will largely depend on innovation from industry disruptors like Orkestra that empower the industry with much-needed tools that help drive quick and accurate decisions about renewable energy projects at scale.

Products that change the game

Orkestra’s B2B feasibility platform is helping drive the transition to clean energy by providing modern energy companies with the tools they need to analyse, sell, and manage their energy solutions and projects.

Historically, Excel was the go-to tool for analysing the feasibility of clean energy projects, demanding extensive hours from skilled analysts. However, as the urgency of achieving the net-zero targets intensifies, there’s a need to arm sales teams with easy-to-use and accurate tools to quicken the time to a decision. Orkestra’s software is pivotal in the renewable energy transition, enabling teams to set up and evaluate 250 solutions in just ten minutes, compared to the days it would have taken with Excel and expert analysts.

The platform seamlessly integrates its user-friendly interface with sophisticated algorithms and analytics to significantly reduce the time and expense associated with assessing project viability while also enhancing project outcomes from both economic and sustainability standpoints. Orkestra Co-Founder, Chris Cooper, summarised their strategic vision:

We aim to be the intelligence layer that underpins clean energy projects worldwide. Teams that previously used Excel spreadsheets or outdated software instantly see the value in Orkestra’s offering.

Founders that hustle

Co-founders Chris, James, and Michael have deep domain experience, having met at a new energy consultancy, where they worked together on innovative solutions for leading energy and property companies. The team has used their industry expertise and mathematics and data science background to develop sophisticated modelling capabilities for the Orkestra platform. They are deeply data-driven, and their passion to help drive the world towards its climate targets is second to none.

They have built a powerful and capable team that has proved that they can build world-class technology that is loved by its customers and is delivering real-world impact by unlocking clean energy solutions for businesses all around the world.

A compelling business model

The Orkestra team has created a mission-critical product and currently offers subscription plans across three tiers that appeal to a broad spectrum of customers, from small-scale businesses to some of Australia’s largest energy retailers.

Driven by a strong commitment to unlocking the potential of the renewable energy sector, Orkestra is dedicated to enhancing its capability for precise site feasibility modelling. This enhancement will play a pivotal role in facilitating the implementation of a greater number of renewable projects.

Customers have successfully modelled numerous projects and conducted over a million solution simulations through their innovative platform, solidifying their status as the industry benchmark for energy feasibility assessment. With an ambitious goal of sustaining its remarkable growth rate exceeding 200% since the start of this year, Orkestra is poised for substantial expansion.

As time progresses, Orkestra envisions numerous opportunities for further growth by introducing new products that assist energy companies in assessing, tracking, and managing energy assets throughout their entire lifecycle.

Global appeal

Orkestra’s solution addresses a universal problem, which is why they’ve set their sights on further international expansion beyond Australia, New Zealand, and Japan and are eyeing Europe’s thriving renewable energy markets.

By achieving critical mass in their various markets, they can secure a significant data advantage, tapping into a broad spectrum of primary data sources. This wealth of information, combined with Orkestra’s top-tier AI capabilities for modelling, benchmarking, and offering optimisation insights, positions them for excellence in overseeing existing and newly established sites within a multi-site portfolio or virtual power plant (VPP).

The Seed phase and beyond

In its Seed Phase, Orkestra has assembled a highly capable team, demonstrated strong product-market fit, and built a global-ready product. The funding from this round will support their global expansion, enable them to build exciting new product features, and implement a scalable and repeatable go-to-market approach. We see a significant opportunity to ramp up growth efforts with all product and sales activities working in harmony and provide customers with different maturity levels with the opportunity to either self-serve or tailor their offerings with a higher degree of support.

If you’re a visionary founder ready to make waves, please reach out via our website.

Flagship’s retail tech platform is poised to become integral to retail operations, driving data-driven insights and ushering in transformative changes across all retail establishments. This evolution has the potential to reshape the way retailers conduct business, empowering them to encapsulate their expertise within an embedded knowledge system.

The Tidal team led Flagship’s Seed round, and we’re excited to share our investment notes with you below. Our investment strategy encompasses diverse markets, models, and products, guided by a set of core principles fundamental to our decision-making process. If you’d like to explore the key pillars that define an exceptional Tidal Seed investment, you can learn more about how we invest here.

Markets with tailwinds

Simply put, retail is a massive market—with a staggering global expenditure of US$28 trillion in 2022. For those who can see beyond the challenges of a discouraging macroeconomic landscape, the post-COVID retail trends offer intriguing opportunities to identify emerging tailwinds. Trends like:

• Shoppers remain strongly inclined towards traditional brick-and-mortar stores, with a whopping 85% of global retail sales happening physically in-store.
• Interestingly, pure-play e-commerce brands are venturing into the world of physical retail. They recognise that in-person shopping experiences offer a unique dimension that their online counterparts can’t replicate.
• The concept of omnichannel retail has shifted from a nice-to-have luxury to an absolute necessity for any brand aspiring to thrive in today’s market.

As elucidated by Shopify:

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Retailers are using stores to deepen the consumer connection with the brand. In a crowded social and e-commerce space, stores can drive engagement and loyalty.

Tidal has been steadfast in our conviction regarding the e-commerce theme for quite some time now. We have demonstrated our commitment through investments in innovative companies like Shippit, Search.io, Carted, and Drive Yello. We haven’t yet seen a proposition around critical technology infrastructure that truly enables omnichannel retailers to reach the same level of sophistication in-store as they have online.

Products that change the game

Over the past six months, our close collaboration with the Flagship team has given us a profound insight into the incredible potential to transform retail operations management. It’s evident that retailers are eager to unify their segmented business units, bridging the gap between online and offline realms to create a cohesive operating system. Flagship envisions a future where they solve this—with the workflows and metrics of diverse departments, such as Buyers, Planners, E-commerce, In-store Visual Merchandising, and Marketing, seamlessly integrated.

Operational efficiencies often start and end with better data, and retail isn’t any different. Flagship’s leading product is a visual merchandising tool for retailers that provides unique primary data insights around granular store-based revenue performance. It enables retailers to centrally and digitally manage the roll-out, track the compliance, and get performance insights into their visual merchandising guides.

We firmly believe that better data and improved workflows can enable retailers to harness their experience and knowledge, convert it into embedded expertise, and subsequently codify their intellectual property for iterative improvements.

Founders that hustle

Flagship’s founder, Simon Molnar, brings a wealth of retail experience to the table. He served as CEO at Ice Jewellery and held various roles at Afterpay, giving him a dual perspective as both retailer and retail technologist. Simon is deeply customer-focused, collaborating closely with retailers to ensure that the product genuinely addresses their challenges and delivers tangible value. His unique background fuels his passion for helping retailers expertly position their products, optimise sales, minimise waste, and drive business growth.

Simon has meticulously assembled an exceptional team of individuals who have achieved remarkable success at renowned Australian tech giants such as Atlassian, Canva, and Afterpay and possess a profound understanding of the retail industry. This collaborative strength has enabled Flagship to successfully onboard some of Australia’s most prominent retail brands, including Venroy, LSKD, Aje Athletica, and SIR.

A compelling business model

Flagship’s mission is to become an integral component of retail operations, driving data-driven insights and facilitating transformations across diverse business units. They aim to supercharge mid-sized retail groups that are currently burdened by manual processes—significantly impacting their efficiency and effectiveness.

Flagship’s inaugural visual merchandising product drives a wedge in retail operations by creating primary data insights on store performance that have not existed before. From there, they can offer insights and workflows into the broader retail operation, capturing additional wallet share. With a huge market to target, a product that adds a lot of value, and a cross-section of teams and functions to serve within retail ops—Flagship has the makings of a seamless land and expand SaaS business model with a hybrid product-led-sales strategy.

The Seed phase and beyond

Flagship is currently in its Seed Phase and has already shown strong product-market fit, successfully onboarding industry-leading retailers, including Venroy, LSKD, Aje Athletica, and SIR. These partnerships have positioned them for the next phase of growth on the global stage, with the allocated funds primarily fuelling the development of an exceptional team to enable them to bring their visionary products to life.

From day one, Simon’s unwavering focus has been on establishing Flagship as the backbone of retail operations not only in Australia but also on a global scale, and we wholeheartedly support this mission. We look forward to continuing to support the Flagship team as they set out to transform how retail operations are managed.

If you’re a visionary founder ready to make waves, please reach out via our website.

Six months after our investment into Fair Supply, I’m reflecting on why we invested in this incredibly mission-driven company and how the business has continued to exceed our expectations. In early November 2022, I picked up a call from friend and fellow investor Jackie Vullinghs:

I’ve got one for you. It’s complicated to explain, but our diligence confirms that there isn’t anything like it globally.

After an introductory call with the founders, I dropped everything to get this investment through diligence and in front of our investment committee. Why? The potential of the core technology is enormous, and the founders, Kim and Arne, were nothing short of exceptional. I often tell people that while Tidal’s due diligence process is thorough (and can take a while), I always know in my bones when I’m talking to a Tidal company—and this was one of those situations. The synergy was also apparent for Fair Supply, who were excited about our unique early-stage product and operational expertise.

Businesses face mounting challenges when attempting to reduce ESG risk exposure

More so than ever, it’s clear that market tailwinds are the make or break of a great investment. It’s a combination of the right place, the right time, and of course, the right product. You can spot companies continuing to outperform their targets, despite the current macro environment—and Fair Supply is one of these companies.

You might ask, what’s driving that growth?

For starters, Global legislation is being passed requiring private entities to identify and report on ESG risk beyond Tier 1 of the supply chain. This has now become an urgent priority for the world’s largest organisations. From Global Asset Managers to Fortune 500 companies, the “Chief Sustainability Officer” is morphing from a luxury to a must-have.

The need for better data and tooling in ESG is abundantly clear with existing methods largely falling short:

• For modern slavery, many companies rely heavily on the global slavery index, which only measures modern slavery risk by the prevalence of modern slavery in each country.
• To measure Scope 3 carbon emissions, companies have relied on a methodology of “Emissions Factors”, which is fraught with issues—even going as far as to suggest it may be a gross generalisation that doesn’t reduce emissions at all.
• More recently, incumbents and startups alike have been creating makeshift solutions. They’ve been using a combination of existing datasets and enriching them with primary data to develop automated benchmark reporting tools in an attempt to align with emerging global reporting standards. We believe this system is flawed; most of these players are ‘marking their own homework’ where they’re creating a benchmark and then marking themselves against it.

The leading product in this category will be grounded in deep supply chain data expertise

I remember the overwhelming ‘aha’ moment when we truly understood the product’s uniqueness and potential. ESG risk is hidden deep within supply chains, and visibility into them has been overwhelmingly unavailable to date. Fair Supply co-founder, Arne, spent the last 15 years understanding and solving the data challenges of building global economic supply chain databases. He leveraged this expertise to create Fair Supply, a product that:

• Extends an academic methodology into a commercial proposition for company-specific supply chain analysis, and
• Extends into a System of Action by aligning with reporting guidelines.

Fair Supply is a SaaS platform that provides objective data and insights to help companies understand and manage their exposure to ESG risks across their supply chain. The platform combines proprietary algorithms with data from public sources to help companies map out their exposure to risks (including Modern Slavery, Carbon Emissions, and Biodiversity) and can provide visibility 10+ layers deep into the supply chain.

And that’s just the first act—our thesis indicates that Fair Supply has the best competitive advantage to create an industry standard and market-leading product globally. It’s set to become the indispensable SaaS tool that ESG procurement and investment professionals use as an integral part of their everyday business practices. Their mission is to abolish modern slavery, and they have a product that could actually make it happen.

Execution during the investment process mirrors execution in the first 12 months post-investment

Time and time again, we’ve seen the skills and expertise displayed during the investment process mirror that seen in the first 12 months post-investment. The signs we look for include:

• When you meet a founder that can push a clean fundraising process from end to end and build the investors’ conviction when sharing each new piece of information.
• Objections and concerns are quickly resolved with accurate data and thoughtful responses.
• No stone is unturned, and in the process, a strong working partnership is established between all parties.
• During the time it takes to complete the deal, there’s an open forum, whether a WhatsApp thread, a daily phone call, or on Slack, where insights are shared, and signs of deal progress are displayed.

The speed and pragmatism with which Arne and Kim execute are second to none. Before the money hit the bank, they had already attracted top-tier product and go-to-market leads into the business. Kim has always said that to be the best, they needed to surround themselves with the best. Other traits we tend to find in our best founders: humility and the ability to drive swiftly toward an outcome. These founders get on a plane, champion their cause, rally their troops around them, manage their stakeholders, push their people to be the best, and never take their eye off the ball. It’s infectious and what early-stage company building is all about. That’s a Tidal company.

We were delighted to have taken part in Fair Supply’s round alongside Airtree, Minderoo Foundation, and QIC. And since then, we’ve been excited by every step forward the team at Fair Supply has made.

We invest across a range of markets, models and products. We live and die by core principles in our investment decisions. For more information on the pillars that make a great Tidal Seed investment, see how we invest here. If you’re a visionary founder ready to make waves, please reach out via our website.

Since 2016, we’ve demonstrated an unwavering commitment to partnering with seed-phase founders and bringing their world-changing ideas to life. This dedication has led us to activate our third Seed Fund with the same passion for investing in determined, insightful founders with the tenacity to scale and grit to persevere. We look for game-changers developing innovative and disruptive products, addressing universal problems with global appeal in markets with strong tailwinds, and are backed by clear and demonstrable business models.

For those considering Tidal as their lead investor, we thought we’d proactively answer some questions you may have about how we think about investment.

What does an ideal Tidal Ventures investment look like?

A Tidal Company has the following traits:

• A founding team made up of domain experts that exhibit solid product-building fundamentals.
• A global addressable market that’s ripe for disruption.
• Founders that have cracked a novel way to address customers’ needs and win the market.

Whilst we obsess over differentiated products, we are in the business of building companies, not tools. At the point where we invest, the business model validation is still early, but it shows signs of lucrative economics over time. We are ready to lead your $1-3 million seed funding round and work with you and your team to create a sustainable advantage and pave the path to success.

What phase does Tidal Ventures invest in?

We specialise in seed-phase investing, often serving as a company’s first institutional investor. Typically when we invest, the founder has an early version of their product in the market, and they are exploring early customer acquisition tactics to secure paying customers. We work alongside founders to build their companies and use our lived experiences to avoid common pitfalls and solve problems. Our track record shows success in taking companies from seed to scale and beyond, and we hold reserves to double down on a vision in future rounds.

Is it too early or late to approach Tidal Ventures for investment?

We encourage founders to reach out to us regardless of where their company is on the journey—but the ideal time to start the conversation is when you decide to start your company. We’re product builders by nature and thrive on early product conversations.

How many investments will Tidal Ventures make in their Seed III fund?

Rather than spreading our investments thin, we choose to focus on a select number of new investments each year. Over the next three years, we’ll focus on 20-25 investments, making each investment significant for Tidal and the founder. This approach allows us to dedicate our resources and attention to nurturing each investment and providing comprehensive support to help our founders succeed.

What is Tidal Ventures’ macro outlook?

As we see it in our daily lives at work and home, technology continues to accelerate and evolve. It’s broad, complex, and investable across the early, growth, late, and public market stages. We’re not alone in our prediction that technology will be the leading global focus for growth at scale and will create the type of jobs that will advance people and their economies. We’re currently living in yet another technology cycle that is having an outsized impact on our world. 75% of all computing is still on-premise. Still, with the onset of AI, we’re already seeing global forward capital expenditure investment in data centre processing capacity starting to accelerate, with cloud spending predicted to be $592 billion by the end of 2023.

What is Tidal Ventures’ investment thesis?

Our investments will relate in some way to the following three broad areas that reflect our investment thesis:

• Focal Points: We’re looking for technologies and people that can drive scalable optimisations, resulting in platforms that can dominate a sector.
• Cognitive Cloud: Over the next decade, every app will be a data-centric app (DaaS), with leaps being made in AI/ML that will fundamentally shift how work gets done. We are excited to invest in this transformative space.
• Inflection Aware: We go beyond themes by identifying emerging inflections that drive significant shifts in value chains within sectors. Our investments cluster around the inflections we believe will have an outsized chance of displacing existing practices, including the future of consumption (commerce, sustainability, agtech), the future of enterprise (cybersecurity, observability and insights, productivity automation), and the future of service delivery (smart logistics, API infra and dev tools, fintech, regtech).

How can Tidal Ventures help build my startup?

We might be product-obsessed, but we are here to build long-term sustainable companies that create value for founders and investors. Our team of experienced ex-founders and ex-operators offer tailored assistance with strategy, product, and resources, helping companies create sustainable advantages. Unlike traditional investors, we act as a “brains trust” for our founders, providing direct operational support. We are passionate about building companies and guiding our portfolio companies through their critical firsts. When we extend a term sheet to a founder, we effectively offer ourselves a part-time job, a testament to the depth of our conviction and belief in the company’s potential. Our expertise supports our steadfast commitment to delivering outstanding results.

What impact can Tidal have on my product strategy?

We help portfolio companies unlock their product’s potential by providing expertise in product-market fit, product-led growth, and go-to-market strategies. Our focus is on creating bold and courageous product-led businesses that are viable, marketable, and profitable. We invest our resources where we can add the most value and work closely with our founders to build momentum and create game-changing products. We aim to foster organisations with mission-critical products that customers can’t live without.

What sort of advisory network does Tidal have access to?

Tidal connects portfolio companies with a network of proven technology founders and executives who have scaled some of the world’s top tech businesses. This expert network helps portfolio companies tackle significant challenges by providing valuable expertise and guidance from a team of C-suite executives, mentors, advisors, board directors, investors, and thought leaders. Tidal also offers portfolio companies access to vetted specialists who can help their businesses thrive. This is especially useful for seed-phase founders who often do the job of an entire C-suite for the first time.

How will Tidal back me in future fundraising rounds?

Tidal has two complementary funds investing in the best companies from seed to growth. This provides stability and consistency for our portfolio companies and delivers excellent returns for our investors. In addition to doubling down on existing investments, Tidal’s follow-on fund is used to invest in larger companies it missed out on backing at an earlier stage. Approximately 60% of our fund is allocated for first-time investments, while 40% is for follow-on investments. Tidal is a long-term partner with the capacity to invest more in later rounds, meaning we can continue to support our portfolio companies as they grow.

How do I get funded by Tidal?

We are open and actively investing in our next generation of founders. Here are some tips for getting in front of our team:

• Warm introductions are great but not essential. Find the team member you want to talk to and send us a summary of your idea.
• Let us know what your product does (or will do) for customers, steering clear of any buzzwords and tell us why now is the best time to build this.
• Be clear and confident. We’re interested in who you are as a founder, the strength of your product story, your ambitions and vision, the gaps, the opportunities, and why you think you’ve got an idea that can make waves.
• Make sure you check us out, too. Accepting investment is a big deal and a multi-year commitment. We can connect you with our founders to learn first-hand what it’s like having us in your corner.

The time is now. Get in touch with us if the above resonates with you and you want to join our growing family of Tidal Companies.

Get to know Tidal's Grant McCarthy

Which experiences have shaped you as a venture capital investor today?

I think working in the technology and product-led operating teams at Yahoo really opened my eyes to how digital businesses could be built, scaled and developed into profitable businesses. There was such big target audience we needed to attract, engage and retain, and that was a key challenge. The technology sector might have changed since the early 2000s, but the principles for growing core customer segments remains the same. I think having a broad set of experiences and accumulating knowledge in different technology market conditions has shaped my approach to venture capital investment significantly. It not just about identifying opportunities and allocating capital, it’s about building audiences into products, and that’s how we think when we invest in companies at Tidal.

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started as an investor?

I now have over 20 years of experience investing in and advising early-stage companies, and one of my earliest learnings was to take extra time in making decisions around thematic investments. We know that the venture capital market is about velocity and 'fast decisions', but to get real conviction at an early stage it takes research, patience, and time. There’s not always much information available to you as an early stage investor, so during interactions with a founder you have to form assumptions.

And even if what you learn is very appealing, you need to keep acquiring more information. Waiting for a clearer picture to emerge about a sector, founders, products and customers means our investment decisions and formed from strong convictions rather than just enthusiastic assumptions.

A great example is one of our Tidal portfolio companies Upflowy. Their ability to find product-market-fit is what was initially appealing, but by also seeing how they built their low-code product and gained early validation with customers, gave us both enormous confidence in their team and more certainty in our investment decision. Read Upflowy Investment Notes - here.

As a ‘seed stage' investor you have to be willing to wait for signals that prospective companies are finding market-fit and growing product proof points. In saying this, sometimes it is also purely about the founder and the vision in the right segment, but that’s the exception to the rule.

What was your most memorable first meeting with a founder?

In my first meeting with PredictHQ's Campbell Brown, he was pitching his new company to me while simultaneously sending a fax to sell his current business. Great founders never wait to solve a problem they truly care about and Campbell was a perfect example of this in action. His passion and drive was right on his sleeve, and this kind of energy and hustle is something we really look for in our Tidal Wavemakers. It was also quite memorable to see him using an actual fax machine to do business - surely one of the most important innovations in human communication (at the time)!

Advice to live by

While there’s much wisdom in the world, my top piece of advice is don’t use the past as a point of reference for the future.

What are you interested in that might surprise other people?

I’m an avid reader of European history, from the late 1800s to 20th century events like WWI and WWII. The geopolitical dynamics that led to these turning points in history are fascinating to learn about. For example, the end of the Czar dynasty in Russia might have been precipitated by successive defeats to Germany during WWI, but underneath it was also a nation desperate for change. The build-up of war with Japan, constitutional reforms that were not delivered on, and systemic poverty, ended up pushing Russia over the edge in 1917.

What new technology do you wish you could experience again for the first time?

Oh that’s easy: Bose noise cancelling headphones. They’re essential for getting through long flights and noisy commutes. There are a variety of noise cancelling options on the market nowadays but I have found the Bose to be the most effective for my sanity.

What advice do you live by?

While there’s much wisdom in the world, my top piece of advice is don’t use the past as a point of reference for the future. If Steve Jobs had just replicated the functions of a traditional phone, we would not have the iPhone. At the time, a handheld device with internet, apps, photos and video capability was revolutionary. The first car was not invented by thinking about how to make “faster horses”. Innovation is always forward-looking.

Loopit’s mobility platform drives car subscription management and billing solutions for automakers, dealerships, fleet leasing, rental companies and startups.

The Tidal team recently made an investment into Loopit, and we're publishing our investment notes below. We invest across a range of markets, models and products. There are core principles that we live and die by in our investment decisions. For more information on the pillars that make a great Tidal Seed Investment, see how we invest here.

Markets with Tailwinds

With the transformation to cloud, consumers and businesses alike are consuming software online using subscription as the standard arrangement. This transformation is occurring across many other industries, and the automative industry is undergoing its own digital transformation that is set to change the way:

• consumers or businesses interact with car brands (e.g. Care by Volvo)
• consumers obtain the vehicle (e.g. subscribe to an EV through your energy provider)
• consumers experience the entire lifecycle of acquiring, running, managing, and selling a vehicle (e.g. subscribe to a car, maintained by the vendor, only fill fuel, return it when done or swap they vehicle if the plan allows it)

We believe that there is a compelling case emerging for the growth of car subscriptions as a viable alternative to long term rental, leasing, and ownership in many cases.

This transition is aligned with changing consumer behaviour that seeks greater flexibility and convenience around mobility. There is waning interest in owning physical products, particularly among younger generations; hybrid and remote work is changing the way cars are used, and climate consciousness and improving infrastructure are driving a shift to electric vehicles. In addition to being highly flexible, vehicle subscription programs are also perceived as being more cost-effective than traditional car leases, rentals, or outright purchases. The experience of buying and selling a car can be tedious, and, factoring in on-road costs, registration, taxes, servicing, and depreciation, the total cost of ownership is often under-estimated by more than 50%.

In parallel, the auto industry is undergoing its own transformation. Tesla has led the way, disrupting the industry through both its car and its go-to-market approach. Newer micro-mobility categories (e.g. e-bikes, scooters) were born online and have been early adopters of a subscription model, and now the traditional car industry more broadly is transitioning to online retail, which will emphases personalisation and better customer communication.

We expect the subscription market to continue to grow at pace through improvements in price competitiveness, the customer experience, and consumer awareness. According to market research, the current vehicle subscription market is US$4.1B and will grow at 22.8% CAGR to 2030 to a market size of +$31.7B. Over the next eight years, BCG estimates that up to 15% of new car sales will be via a subscription.

Products that change the game

Loopit provides a turnkey subscription management solution that helps automakers, car dealerships, fleet rental companies and startups to introduce car subscription offerings to their own customers.

Loopit’s SaaS platform facilitates the end-to-end subscription process, providing mobility companies with the ability to control, configure, and provide a subscription offering quickly and easily. The platform handles the customer-facing touchpoints such as onboarding, billing, and ongoing customer management, as well as back-office management features such as management of inventory, pricing, and utilisation.

This is game changing for both new entrants who wish to get to market quickly, and existing automotive players who largely run their businesses on legacy platforms that are tailored to other customer models.

Loopit not only powers the shift to subscriptions, they improve the overall customer experience, back office management and economics through software.

Founders that Hustle

Co-founders (and brothers) Michael and Paul Higgins have lived their customers’ problems and built the industry-leading solution to solve it. They initially built Loopit’s software to support their car subscription marketplace HelloCars, before realising the opportunity to provide it more broadly across the mobility industry.

Michael, Paul, and the broader management team combine both strong functional capabilities in building a software business with extensive domain knowledge in the automotive industry. They have demonstrated strong execution, building a healthy and scalable business that has won several key automotive brands as clients and expanded globally prior to any venture backing.

A compelling business model

Loopit have built out an attractive business model and demonstrated strong unit economics. They earn both a subscription fee for ongoing use of the platform, as well as consumption revenues through a clip applied to the underlying subscription payment of the end consumers.

Over time, we see the opportunity for continued growth through expansion into new markets, and further influencing the economics and experience of car subscriptions through the product. With critical mass they can obtain an unfair data advantage with access to inventory, pricing intelligence and a future opportunity to launch their own aggregation play via a marketplace.

The Seed Phase and beyond

Loopit is in its Seed Phase. It has demonstrated strong product-market fit and built out a highly capable team, having bootstrapped the business to date. This round is intended to support with global expansion and implementing a more scalable and repeatable go-to-market approach. We see significant opportunity to ramp up growth efforts with product and sales / marketing activities in harmony, providing customers with different maturity levels with the opportunity to either self-serve, or to localise and tailor their offering with a higher degree of support.

We look forward to continuing to support the Loopit team as they enable the transition to car subscription models.

If you're a visionary founder who is ready to make waves, please reach out via our website.