Thought waves on seed venture

Today, we are thrilled to congratulate TheLoops co-founders Somya Kapoor and Ravi Bulusu, and their entire team on a remarkable milestone: their acquisition by IFS, a global leader in enterprise software. This landmark achievement is not just a testament to the team's incredible vision and execution, but also a powerful validation of a shared belief in the transformative power of AI to revolutionise customer experience operations.

For us at Tidal Ventures, this is a moment of immense pride. We are honoured to have been a partner to TheLoops since their 2020 Seed round, and this outcome is a brilliant success for the founders, the team, and our investors.

Investment principle: Backing founders with domain expertise

When we first met Somya and Ravi, we saw an accomplished, product-led duo with deep domain expertise. Somya's experience leading product management at ServiceNow, combined with Ravi's background in AI at Splunk and as a multi-time founder, immediately stood out. They had identified a critical and growing pain point: customer support operations were overwhelmed, and existing tools weren't fit for purpose.

As we wrote in our original investment notes, our conviction was rooted in bringing the principles of observability to the front office. For too long, customer success and support had been a black box. We saw a powerful opportunity: what if you could make these operations observable, turning a traditional cost centre into a company's primary growth driver? TheLoops was the answer. Their platform was designed to bring the context, collaboration, and intelligence needed for true observability, empowering teams that had been left behind by modern data tools. We knew this approach would deliver a true step change in the customer experience, and that founders Somya and Ravi were the killer combination with the deep domain expertise to make it happen.

A shared vision realised

TheLoops has executed on this mission with passion and precision, evolving into a leader in AI Agents for the next era of Customer Success. Their platform doesn't just assist agents—it amplifies their expertise. By delivering intelligent routing , proactive insights, and knowledge that evolves with every interaction. Imagine knowing what happened in a customer product interaction when a ticket is opened without them having to explain it! TheLoops has empowered businesses to resolve complex cases faster and more consistently and in turn scale customer operations.

This journey culminates in today’s acquisition by IFS. The strategic fit is undeniable. As a customer of TheLoops, IFS experienced the power of their AI-driven platform firsthand. IFS shares TheLoops' vision for the future of Autonomous AI Agents and provides the global scale and resources to accelerate this mission.

Validating the AI-driven strategy

This successful exit demonstrates the power of Tidal’s investment strategy. Software and AI startups can create immense value and generate strong, early returns with differentiated, AI-driven products that attract significant buyer interest. TheLoops built a platform with compelling intellectual property that delivers tangible ROI, proving that a company with a distinct technology advantage can achieve a great outcome.

This is a formula we believe in, and it is just the beginning. We are proud to see our Seed II portfolio company's successes and are actively replicating this strategy in our Seed III fund, backing companies with cutting-edge AI, real technology advantages, and rapid global potential.

We want to extend our deepest gratitude to Somya, Ravi, and the whole team at TheLoops. Thank you for your relentless hard work and for including us on this incredible journey. We are delighted to have partnered with you and will be cheering you on in your next chapter with IFS.

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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.

When you’re sitting on some really smart technology with loads of potential applications, what do you do? You choose one market vertical first, and focus on it. For Hone, it’s Agtech.

According to government and industry sources, Australia’s Agtech sector is predicted to be worth $100 billion by 2030, and companies like Hone are at the bleeding edge of this rapid growth.

We recently spoke to one of Hone’s founders, Antony Martin, and he revealed the team’s journey from necessity, through invention, to market identification. Here’s their story and how Tidal got involved.

Starting with the problem

Hone co-founders and scientists Antony Martin, Will Palmer and Jamie Flynn have known each other for years, and worked together at the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI). It was while working together on a research project about biofuels, they found themselves out in a blistering hot field of sorghum, wishing there was an easier way to get the data they needed.

With months of sample processing and analysis ahead of them, including hundreds of lab hours, they came up with a part of the answer: let’s analyze the samples faster using spectroscopy.

A simple definition of spectroscopy is that it measures the interaction of light with the chemical make-up of samples. In practical terms, a spectrometer can quickly tell the difference in quality between different sorghum varieties. So the team hacked together a solution using off-the-shelf components, mathematics, and a unique methodology, and began processing their samples in record time.

It occurred to them that if it could do that for sorghum, it could do that for other crops as well. And so Hone started.

From faster labs to field tech

One of their early customers was a rice breeding institute in the Philippines. In two weeks, the team had processed 60,000 test results and provided data that would have taken years for the institute to get processed manually. Not satisfied with just fast processing, the team set about making a device to collect data on the spot, from the crop, soil and grain, cutting out the lab altogether.

That’s where things really changed for Hone. From scientists using technology, they became technology builders themselves and sought backing for their ideas.

Tidal entered the picture after a few smaller and one larger angel investor had already taken the lead. It was through one of the angel contacts at the HMRI, that Grant McCarthy was introduced to Hone and the relationship began.

From tech builders to company builders

While not an inexperienced team by the time Tidal came on board as investors, Hone was ready to go from a science tech business to a growth company. “They came in and worked with us on the foundations of the business, particularly on the commercial side and the go to market strategy”. Both Grant and Wendell Keuneman were involved in the early days, “getting their hands dirty and helping out with pricing, identifying customers and really working out who we were trying to serve.”

Hone’s technology can be adapted for use in multiple industries, and they started out with a wide testing field. “I think that there was definitely a sort of aha moment there where it was like, this is not scalable to try and develop every application under the sun.”

Knowing they had to focus, Tidal helped them narrow in on the AgTech vertical before scaling into others. “Wendell, especially, helped us set up our processes around software teams and how we deliver products.”

They called him the “whiteboard warrior” and many sessions were held to discuss “how we were structuring things, how we were thinking about the business, and how to scale the team up.”

The learning and commercial curve

“People tell you stories about VCs”, Antony says. “They say be careful who you bring on. But we have always found Tidal very supportive. They really understand what we're going through. They've seen it all before and have the best intentions to help us get to the next level.”

Hone is currently emerging from what Antony describes as an engineering and R&D  phase, to a new commercial phase. And Grant is a “wealth of knowledge when it comes to that.” Apart from sitting on the board, he has been “pulled into offsite planning sessions, advising on the business roadmap, the org structure, capabilities, and culture.”

“Learning and doing well at the same time is hard”, Antony remarks. “We’ve got to learn fast while building up the commercial side of the business.” Since coming on board, Grant and Wendell have “always been there to advise on the strategic direction of the business.”

When asked about the learning curve, Antony responded, “we thrive on the process of learning. We want to operate in a mode of constant reflection and constant learning, so that we constantly improve.”

No limit to scale

The selection of Agtech as the focus vertical is meaningful to Antony and his team. And the focus on primary crop data is significant. “Primary data inputs are a rare commodity in agriculture and really help the farmer maximize the productivity of their crop and their land.”

It’s the same with VCs. Choose one that helps you achieve your primary goal. Or in Antony’s words, “if you’re going to get in bed with a VC, choose someone who's there to support you and the business, and help you through all the difficult things. Find one focused on founders, rather than just providing money.”

By honing in on their primary market, Hone is on track to develop countless other applications for their tech. Starting with the whole farming lifecycle and encompassing soil health, regenerative agriculture, carbon offset measurements, and moving into food and beverage testing, environmental monitoring, medical testing and more. Antony is excited about the possibilities, “I think if we can just nail it with one key vertical, the sky's the limit.”

When I talked with Drive Yello co-founder and CEO Steve Fanale for this interview, he was in a car, driving towards Canberra. I mean, he was the passenger, but it still somehow seemed appropriate to be talking about his company while he was on the move.

Drive Yello is a bit different to other startups. They are a platform connecting retailers to a gig driver network. Their network of drivers delivers to consumers on behalf of their customer base of major retailers, connected through Drive Yello's intelligent product layer. The Australian economy was protected somewhat during the pandemic because of a strong supply chain, so Drive Yello did well, delivering grocery and convenience items to locked down retail consumers.

More than just a convenience service business, however, Steve describes changing customer behaviour in the last few years. “Retailers like Amazon are innovating in this area, and Australia is still a bit behind. But we’re catching up, now that consumer behaviour has changed and retailers are finally getting systems in place to meet the demand.”

Solving a simple problem is a great start

The business value proposition is simple: help retailers get products to their customers. Starting with restaurant delivery through Menulog and then later cracking the retail sector with major players Woolworths and BWS, Drive Yello has always had its sights on national market presence. But the road was sometimes rocky.

Like many startups, building on a central idea or technology is one thing, but building a business requires scale and market reach, which is a whole other thing. With Steve Fanale at the helm, Drive Yello was always going to get the best shot possible.

“I'm a problem-solver and a product guy,” says Steve. “I’ve got a business background and I studied commerce and marketing at Uni, and I have worn many hats.” Versatility has been a key driver of business growth and for weathering the many challenges of being a gig economy-reliant business.

The solution is not always simple

Gig-economy businesses have challenges that are unique. Steve notes that one of the biggest ones is a lack of “real clarity around a gig economy worker from a legal perspective.” It’s hard, he says, to “come up with a model that is valid”, but adds that “the gig economy is not going anywhere and it’s a matter of making it work in terms of the legislation and policies around work models. To get the network effect, you also need scale and critical mass.”

The challenges don’t stop there, with the capital intensive nature of gig-economy businesses and historical scarcity of funding in Australia. “You can grow organically with most businesses to a point of profitability, whereas in a gig economy business, it's all about scale and you can't achieve that scale without funding.” At times just scraping by, Steve says Tidal’s support has been invaluable to gaining the momentum to to turn the corner and scale.

When an investment injection came at around the same time as securing some major new retail clients and the arrival of the pandemic, Drive Yello was poised to boom.

A long history and a more recent connection

Steve has known Tidal’s Grant McCarthy for over 20 years, through Steve’s previous businesses and around the once relatively small Australian startup sector. But back in 2016, Grant reached out to Steve and suggested an investment partnership. He saw the potential in Drive Yello and Steve’s vision, and wanted to invest.

“We're pretty good at separating our friendship and commercial relationship. We’re quite open with each other, and pretty direct, which means we are transparent on both levels.” He goes on to say that “Grant's been a sounding board and a personal support, as well as a funding support.” Through some tough times in late 2019, Steve explains how Grant was there through some of the hardest business decisions.

“He's probably the main person I go to when making a decision on strategy and direction. Whether we're considering mergers or being acquired or acquiring, or thinking about new product opportunities.” Grant is there, even as Steve is looking ahead to the next move.

The calm voice in the storm

Among a number of anecdotes about working with Tidal, Steve mentioned the “calm voice” and solid support of Wendell Keuneman when it comes to product strategy, senior hiring and technology decisions.

Wendell has been “a great sounding board from a product strategy perspective, offering advice and helping to hire a VP of engineering.” Accustomed to wearing multiple hats and juggling strategic, tactical and technical problems, Steve welcomed the expertise on product direction and building technical teams. “I know that our CTO has reached out [to Wendell] and I know he's always there if we need to help enhance from that perspective.”

Being a CEO can be a lonely gig. “If you haven't done it, it's hard to relate to how tough it is, particularly when you're dealing with people.  It's not just about the numbers, it’s people's lives and when there's tough times and you have to let people go, or when there's a conflict on a human resource level, that affects you personally as well." External support can be critical at these times.

Not just cash, but connections

When I asked Steve what he looked for in an investor, he said “cash is good, but it's really important that you get along, and you feel that they are going to contribute to your business beyond just the money.”

The relationship between co-founders, he says, “is like being in a marriage and so is the relationship with an investor and an entrepreneur. You’ve got to think about what the relationship looks like in one year, two years, three years time, because you're going to be hanging out together pretty closely.”

The other thing to look for is connections and a strong network. You want your investor to connect you to people who can help your business beyond what it does now. “Grant's been heavily involved in introducing us to a range of people that can assist us and also support what we need to do next."

Tidal has also got “good experience across the board that they can bring to the table and any situation; whether that be a funding scenario, a growth scenario, or going international. There’s plenty of things that they can get involved in beyond just funding.”

When it comes to investors, Steve says, it’s part of his due diligence to check out the nature of the investor. “You don't want everyone to be hands-on and you don't want everyone to be passive. It's good to have an investor that can actually assist in the business and help us grow, and luckily I’ve got that with Tidal.”

Growing with greater clarity

Steve describes the business as having a clear north star. A clarity of mission that has really only solidified in recent times. “The maturity of the business around our values and our mission has evolved over the last 12 months. That’s been the ‘aha’ moment if I had to sum it up. We’re more confident now in what we’ve achieved. We know what we offer the market and having that real clarity will enable us to grow to another level.”

The next step for Drive Yello is to partner internationally and break into new markets. With the confidence in decision making and the strategic steers provided by Tidal and other investors, Steve is looking to the future. When I ask if he would do anything differently, he thinks for a moment and then answers that it's very easy to look back in hindsight, but “if I look at every decision that we made, we thought we made the best decision at the time.” Words that are true for all of us.

Data is a valuable business asset. It can be used to analyse performance, monitor customer satisfaction, make design decisions and more. When strong patterns emerge, it tells a story, so why not use those stories to predict the future? That’s what Campbell Brown, co-founder of PredictHQ asked back in 2016, not long before he met Tidal’s Grant McCarthy.

Both Grant and Campbell were at similar stages as company founders when they met, and the way Campbell tells it, it was a match made more from design than fate. Grant immediately saw PredictHQs enormous potential and set about cultivating a relationship, while Campbell related strongly with Grant’s product and market know-how, and was on the hunt for an Australian investor. “Grant's a product guy, I'm a product guy. We're always talking about it.”

PredictHQ was also aiming at a US market, from an Auckland base. Campbell explains how they were attracted to Tidal because they were Australian, but with global experience. “They had already taken a business from Australia to the US. That's why I went with them.” Tidal had the specific expertise needed.

A strong business starts with a strong product

Events impact demand. Founded with this insight in mind, PredictHQ makes businesses smarter by helping them anticipate how external conditions will influence sales, profits, product demand, etc. Their customers access comprehensive datasets related to conditions like major sports events, severe weather, scheduled holidays, etc., so they can capitalise on their understanding of demand, plan labour and resourcing, adjust pricing, and adapt for better efficiency. It is a winning idea and rapidly gaining traction in the US and Europe markets that are digital-first and ready to optimise. Uber was one of their first big enterprise customers.

But even with the solid product, Campbell realised early that they “needed to start going from just building a product to building a business.” That meant having a strong and clear sales pipeline and tangible financial goals. So the PredictHQ team, Grant, and another independent investor, got in front of the whiteboard and spent time working out a plan.

Campbell remembers discussing questions like “what do we expect to get from our customers? What if we only get 10% of these customers? Working backwards from a $1million target, what do we need and how are we going to do it?” He goes on to say “that meeting in particular was a very critical leap. Because a million dollars seems really achievable, but actually when you step back from it, without salespeople, your pipeline is actually pretty small. And if conversion is low, you have to increase the pipeline.”

So in the end, Campbell said, they “sat there for a couple of days and worked through a plan and it came true. I look back on those times fondly because Tidal gave up their time and energy to help us get to our first goal. Which ultimately led to us to raise a Series A and then Series B and here we are.”

Connecting to the right knowledge and people

Even though they are in the business of insights, Campbell says they sometimes need a bit of help themselves in that area and Tidal’s analyst Max Kausman provided it. Max has a successful track record in corporate advisory roles and shared his experience and knowledge with Campbell to help with customer acquisition strategy. The information enabled Campbell to formulate an enterprise pitch that integrated familiar corporate language. “It helped the customer have a lightbulb moment about us. They could relate.” This same strategy was effective in moving a number of big deals forward.

At the other end of the sales pipeline is product creation, which is equally important to PredictHQ business success. Luckily, finding a great fit for senior product roles is something Tidal’s Wendell Keuneman is great at, and he did not disappoint when PredictHQ started looking for a VP of engineering. “It was a critical hire,” Campbell noted and Wendell, Tidal’s product-led growth expert, “met with the candidate before we hired him and then helped us to understand how we wanted to structure the team.” Anticipating rapid expansion of the business, they needed more than just a new senior hire, they needed to to get the team mix right in order to handle scaling. “We ended up splitting development and data teams. Which will ultimately let us scale faster.”

You’re never alone, but it can get lonely

I’ve spoken to a number of founders for Wavemakers pieces and they usually travel in pairs. Speaking to Campbell alone (co-founder Robert Kern was not available) provided a different insight, which came out toward the end of our conversation.

“It's such a lonely, lonely job, you know, and a lot of CEOs talk about it as so bloody lonely. But Grant's got empathy, and he knows that I’m going to feel that and need support, which is great.” Campbell talked a fair bit about Grant and their relationship. “He’s always there on the other end of the phone. So whether it's me sending a text message or me calling him when he's at his kid's football game… he's always been my point person.” And the respect and trust is mutual.

Campbell is not alone, with nine people in his senior leadership team, but sometimes a different kind of feedback is needed. For example, when Campbell disagreed with an idea put forward by the board, he called Grant to check that his resistance was logical and warranted. There have been other times where Campbell needed to pause in a decision and seek a bit of feedback, and Grant was there to bounce ideas and talk through things.

“The rose-tinted view of startups is that it's all sunshine and lollipops, but it's only sunshine and lollipops maybe 5% of the time. 95% of the time there’s something wrong that you're trying to solve. You need someone who's going to be there, who can listen to you and who is going to partner with you.”

Why people come first

When you’re choosing an investor, Campbell advises founders to “focus on the partner, not the fund. It's so critical because you're going to go through some hard times...and there's only so many people you can turn to that are actually going to say ‘mate, it's okay. Let's try to figure a way through’.”

It’s this kind of personalisation of data and genuine care that has become a foundation of PredictHQ’s values. Caring for their people, with a “ family and friends first” policy that means things like paying for flights home to care for sick parents or to attend important celebrations. “In the past year and a half, because we've had such an amazing culture, we have leaned on it and we've helped people through it. And I think if we didn't have that culture, that would have been really tough.”

Reflecting back, Campbell says he didn’t always value teams in this way. “I tried to build everything myself and I ended up getting three hours sleep a night. Not really getting anywhere fast.” But his focus is quite different these days, “my job now is the culture in the team and making sure we're going the right way. Being there to jump in on sales calls and being that support mechanism in the business.”

Campbell has definitely drunk the PredictHQ data Koolade (of his own making), “I am data-driven in my day-to-day life. I'm always optimising my life with data. I'm just always looking to squeeze out a bit more.”

When I asked Campbell about the impact of Tidal’s support, he said “I know there's a lot of analogies that you probably hear all the time, but Tidal gets in the trenches with you. And it's what founders crave, because if you don't see that people are going to get their hands dirty with you, they're probably never going to be fully supportive.”

Somya Kapoor and Ravi Bulusu are co-founders of Loops. Both veteran product people and serial entrepreneurs, they saw the challenges faced by customer service and support agents struggling to work through mountains of tickets with little context, and they decided to fix it.

TheLoops is all about collecting data from software interactions, including logs, alerts and errors, to make customer support mechanisms smarter and faster. Insights can then be fed into product development cycles to enhance the customer experience.

It’s not the first time Somya and Ravi have been founders, but it’s the first time they’ve done it together and they make an unstoppable team. We interviewed them about their journey, and if you're a startup greenthumb, they have some excellent advice.

Finding investors can be a gruesome grind

Finding and pitching to VC funders is a “gruesome process” and a “necessary grind” according to Somya. But there’s an upside. It helps you refine your story and more strongly formulate your vision, which is critical to finding the right VC fit. Because not all VCs are the same and many will not be right for you.

Her advice is take as many interviews and meetings as you can to learn about what you need and weed out the VCs who are unsuitable. “It's not about getting the money, it's about finding a partner in your journey of where you want to get to.”

Ravi says he’s seen startups with the wrong VC match and “it's not just the founders that get really messed up in the process, it’s employees too.” You need to have someone aligned to your long-term perspective, is how he puts it, the way Tidal is for TheLoops.

“It's not about getting the money, it's about finding a partner in your journey of where you want to get to.”

- Somya Kapoor, Loops

How Tidal got looped in

Tidal came along as TheLoops were looking to raise their second round of funding, which coincided with the beginning of the global COVID outbreak in March 2020. Despite the circumstances, TheLoops had plenty of VC investors knocking on the door. But it was through conversations with investment expert Andrea Kowalski and product leader Wendell Keunemann at Tidal that prompted TheLoops to sign a deal.  

“They were super helpful in getting us to think from a founder's angle on why we need the money.” says Somya, “They wanted us to look at it from a place where it would help us grow the company and be beneficial for the customers.” Where other investors look primarily for the potential return, Tidal was looking to how (not just if) TheLoops could succeed. “When you’re building products that customers like, a lot of VCs want to get involved. But Wendell and Andrea were really different.” They offered an insider perspective.

Win the crowd to win investors

The best way to prove a point is to not have to make it yourself. But how do you do that? Somya says you should talk to your customers (lots and lots of them) and get them on side, and Ravi says get your team in a room and “whiteboard the #$&* out of it!” By which he means build a great product based on what customers say. When you do both, you end up with mountains of evidence for why VCs should throw money at you.

“Nothing speaks louder [to a VC] than customers validating your product,” says Somya, even louder than “knowing your cap tables”. Ravi advises to look for synchronicity with VCs, to make sure they understand what you do, the market, the ecosystem. To succeed, “you’ll need their network, so be sure they have a good one and the right one for you.” Tidal fills this role, acting as “advisors and mentors, helping us think through the pros and cons of decisions.”

It’s all about perspective with Tidal, says Ravi, and being “product futuristic”. They bring “the right approach and a really different product perspective. Not just about how to build features, but also how to go to market and put them in front of customers.”

The best relationships come with hard truths

The reason Somya and Ravi make an amazing team is their complementary perspectives. Not just complementary skills (Somya is more go to market and Ravi is more product builder), but the way they see things and make decisions from different experiences.

When asked what Tidal brought to the table, they talked about compatibility at first, admiring the product-led growth mindset and understanding of the B2B tech market. What emerged as most important, though, was that Tidal “understood” them and felt trustworthy, showing an openness and friendliness beyond what Somya and Ravi expected. “We thought it was because they’re Australian,” Somya says with a laugh.

Ravi welcomes Tidal’s product perspective and advice, because “they love products” and are a “founder-led VC firm who live their values.”

Somya advises less experienced founders to seek this kind of trust, but also seek the truth. You want to be able to get bad news and constructive criticism too. “You don’t want to think of your founders as bosses,” she says, you need to be able to approach them with problems “without fear it will have a negative impact.”

Her parting advice is this: “Don't wait to build a perfect slide deck or perfect product. Just get out there and start raising.

If amazing and life changing ideas are the heart of every startup, then technical know-how and persistence must be the brains. This is particularly true for Hamish Ogilvy and David Howden, the two brilliant science and mathematical minds behind AI search engine Search.io (formerly Sajari).

Frustrated by poor search capability on websites and hearing that frustration echoed among colleagues, Hamish and David decided to fix it by building a more intelligent search engine, and they have succeeded. Not only that, they have found a powerful niche in e-commerce that enables the conversion of search queries into transactions.

The DIY roots

As a startup, their story is not unusual. They did most things themselves as they gained some momentum: built a website, developed beta prototypes, learned to code, looked for customers, paid the payroll, insurance and themselves (sometimes).

Their early learning curves were steep: What do we charge? How do we make that recurring? How do we scale? What are the best use cases for our idea? Who do we target?

And the biggest question of all: How do we get to the next step?

Tidal becomes Search.io's first VC investor

Having had angel investors to help with some early hires, Search.io started looking to the next horizon. “Tidal was really the first decent size investment that actually allowed us to think about scale.” according to Hamish. “Angel funding doesn’t quite provide enough for the next proof point, but Tidal has been really good at working with us on this.”

He goes on to say how this was “more of a factor for us than money and valuation”, as they were seeking “alignment in terms of where we saw the business going and the product-led attitude of Tidal was the right fit.”

Location was not an issue with Hamish in San Francisco and David in Australia, matching with Tidal’s product expert Wendell in Sydney and investment leader Andrea in New York. “Having someone who understands Australia and the world is handy because Australian and US markets work differently.”

Hamish adds, “when you find people that you click with and you have common opinions on what's important, then decisions become easier.”

Putting the pieces together to scale

Deeply technical products like Search.io take time and are complex to build, then once you get there technically, there’s still the business part to think about. “Scale is very much about process,” says Hamish. Starting a business is “like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces on the floor and you’re trying to find bits that fit so you can start moving in the right direction. But scaling a business is more about putting structures of repeatability in place.” This is where Tidal offered expertise, they helped with the scaling strategy, providing advice on structure and   “understanding some of the gaps that we needed to fill.”

Having reliable sales models was one of those gaps. Scaling isn’t just about spending money to get more inbound sales, Hamish points out, “you have to work out where you can spend it to get repeatable impact to the business. And that brings in a different way of thinking that's not necessarily where we had been. We needed help to build out the structures to make that actually work.”

Scaling a business is not something that you’re born knowing, says Hamish “the more advice and assistance that you get from people who know parallel businesses, the better. I can ping or talk to the Tidal team anytime and that has been really helpful.”

Hiring isn’t just bums on seats

Working with Tidal, they had to determine the best way to recruit and then “hand off efficiently while keeping the vision and the quality in terms of what you want to do.” It requires thought and planning to get “people in a position to get up to speed and execute on things.”

Through meetings and conversations, Search.io and Tidal developed a hiring plan that included the identification of key positions, numbers and mixes of roles, that would set them on a path to “transition from being resource-efficient to growth efficient.” The plan eventually went to the board with Tidal support.

There’s a power of numbers in hiring, as Hamish explains, “you don't hire one person in sales. You hire two. Even if you only need one, you hire two.” This avoids a single point of failure where if one person does not work out, you've lost a hundred percent capacity. Building teams in cross-functional sales pods was exactly the kind of shift in thinking that Tidal steered Search.io through.

“Future hiring is a key part of the ongoing planning and thought process.” Producing more and selling more can only be supported with carefully managed recruitment, not just more people.

In hindsight, Hamish says they “we’re probably a little bit conservative, which slowed us down.” But in their defence, it is difficult to know how aggressively to hire at the beginning of a pandemic.

Sales isn’t just selling more

Like in hiring, it’s not a matter of more, it’s a matter of being repeatable. Tidal was there to advise on how to restructure billing for scale. “Overcoming those challenges were really important growth factors for our business, and Tidal gave us great advice on that.”

His heavy but true parting advice for new founders is to remember that “you're building a revenue machine. At the end of the day, that's the only thing that allows you to grow and do what you want to do. So put that into your strategy and priorities from day one, being able to understand all the numbers. And if you don't find that interesting, or don’t want to do it, then don't start a business.”

When they say that necessity is the mother of invention, it also means that when you want something invented, you have to invent it yourself. That’s how Bonjoro came about, according to Matt Barnett and Grant Dewar. 

Noticing the diminishing effectiveness of email campaigns to engage new customers and secure sales, they decided to hack something together from duct tape and blu-tac, and record personalised videos instead. 

“Hey [potential customer’s name], as you can see we’re here in sunny Sydney at the moment [shows Opera House backdrop], but we’re heading to London soon for [insert reason]. We’d love to meet up and chat about [the thing we can help with] as we have also done [that thing] for [other high profile customers] too. Give us a call. Byeeee. [Waves into camera from Manly ferry.]

- Dramatic reenactment of an early Bonjoro customer video

Then someone saw the idea and wanted to make videos for their customers too. Then another person wanted to integrate it with their CMS and their campaign software. Google became customers and so did Firefox. That’s how the product was born and since then there's been no looking back for Bonjoro.

Tidal meets Bonjoro

Tidal’s Grant McCarthy met Matt and was interested in Bonjoro early, when they were initially seeking Angel investors. By the time Bonjoro was ready for seed funding, the conversations between Grant and Matt had developed into a relationship, and Tidal came on board as an investor.

Matt says he “likes investors with a lot of energy and who can contribute to what we’re doing.” That’s why Tidal was a natural fit, because they had the right mindset, and it was “a relationship as well.” 

Tidal “understood our space” is how Matt puts it. “They understood our customer success space, the SaaS space, and the US market.” An alignment, he said, that was critical to their next stage of growth. Where other Australian VCs focus on the local market, Bonjoro was confident that Tidal had the experience and reach to support their US market growth from day one.

Wearing the founder hat and the Tidal hat

Matt points out how unusual this is among investors, saying “funds tend to approach things as a fund, but Wendell is able to approach things from different angles” due to his background and experience. He adds that “Tidal is willing to get their hands dirty and directly contribute to the success of each of their companies, more so than most funds I’ve seen.”

This has been Grant’s experience too, noting that Tidal has “got us through some strategy and ideation points where their product experience and expertise has been really invaluable, which is something I wasn't quite expecting.”

“Tidal is willing to get their hands dirty and directly contribute to the success of each of their companies, more so than most funds I’ve seen.”
- Matt Barnett, Bonjoro

How the engagement goes deep

Like many startups, Bonjoro faced the common founder challenge of juggling product growth with capital raising and business scaling. Matt describes this as “like climbing a hill and then you get to the top, but it's not the actual top, it's just the first peak. And you've got to put your pack on and start climbing again.” When asked how Tidal has helped climb some of those hills, both Matt and Grant had a ton of examples.

There’s support from tidal on multiple levels, according to Matt. On the business and management side, Tidal has helped with C-Suite, R&D recruitment and mentoring, developed and defined skill sets for senior positions, and supported the founders to prepare for and get the most from interactions with the board. 

On the product side, Wendell has dived into Bonjoro product activities, by chairing workshops with global teams, running product challenges and positioning pieces, and helping with strategy and roadmaps. 

Bonjoro says it’s unusual to receive such in-depth, tangible support from VC investors. But the benefits seem immeasurable.

Choosing between a safe plateau or rapid growth 

When it comes to choosing VC investors, Matt says “it's about being pushed as well.” This became vitally important as Bonjoro looked to their next big growth stage. They had just reached break even (congrats!) and it seemed like a good time to assess.

That’s when Tidal challenged them with a few big questions that would shift their thinking into a higher gear: How much do you need to raise next? How many hires do you need to make? In other words, how do you want to grow?

Through lengthy conversations, in-depth workshops and meetings, Tidal and the Bonjoro founders discussed whether Bonjoro should grow fast or steady, to hire across the year or all at once, spend a lot now or spread it out. It was a matter of staying on the break-even plateau or taking a risk and going for it! Matt observed that being able to have “this level of transparency builds great trust and understanding.” Ultimately, Bonjoro decided on the riskier move, but noted that “looking back we should have gone even faster!” 

Having decided on the speedy path, Tidal was right there to help shape Bonjoro’s challenging transition from product to platform, which would be a pivotal part of maturing their offering. “Workshops with the management team and Tidal helped crystallise the strategy into an actionable plan. The best attack plan.” Part of this included commercially aligning the planned value-adds going into the product, by revising the pricing and packaging model. This is always a risky area and can result in customer churn. By providing “feedback and education on the importance of packaging alongside actual pricing,” Tidal helped Bonjoro better target by segment and make revenue-improving changes. 

Never slack on advice

Bonjoro has noticed “a lot of other investors tend to be more hands-off.” They respond when you call on them, but they’re not part of the team. Tidal is different. They are “proactive and that’s what we look for, someone who can actively bring value.”

This is supposed to be a blog about the company Shippit, one of the first investments by Tidal (or the company that was to become Tidal) back in 2017. The two companies sort of grew up together.

I could have written at length about how they are revolutionizing the way shipping works in Australia and overseas and raising capital left and right, but when I interviewed the Shippit founders, I decided to focus on their magic partnership and the relationships that have helped them succeed. 

It’s hard not to reach for words like ‘bromance’ and ‘misterhood’ to describe the easy rapport and sentence-finishing communication that long-time friends and business partners Rob Hango-Zada and William On enjoy. And it doesn’t take a startup genius to realise that their relationship is a key ingredient of their success.

Relationshippit first

Great relationships seem to be at the centre of all Shippit’s growth success, from building rapport with customers, finding the right investors and employees, and realistically assessing the gaps and making the right call on how to scale up. 

Will says their approach to most things is “we don't know all the answers and our focus is to get the right people around us.” When applied to investors, Rob explains that “any investor coming in is a long term relationship; and we want to partner with people who are really invested in our company.” 

If the three most important things in an investor are “getting along on a personal level, having a solid understanding of the domain and people, being able to push us in terms of our thinking,” then Tidal is an ideal fit.

Grant McCarthy and Murray Bleach were Shippit’s first Tidal contacts. “Grant and Murray took a more US VC style of approach that added value beyond the checkbook.” This was important, according to Will, because having input about product, finance and deal flow meant that Tidal became part of the team. 

Co-investing in Series A with Aura Ventures, Grant was keen to participate. He has “a lot of knowledge around the last mile logistic space, understanding of where the market was going. He also really understood the macro themes of an open network two-sided marketplace with logistics and e-commerce.” which Rob says made them a great match.

“90% of the battle is having the right people around you.”

- William On

All work and no playbook

Getting to Series A from angel and seed stage takes a lot of work and a lot of grit, getting to Series B, even more. Fortunately, the Tidal team were able to help in the form of a go-to-market expert called Georgie Turner.

According to Rob, Georgie literally “implanted herself at Shippit for about six months” to help set up an operational manual that became their Series B Playbook. This was rich enough guidance on how to set Shippit up for success to a [future Series B raise]. Being there in person made a huge difference to the founders.

The playbook for Shippit contained all the “key metrics that needed to be landed” in order to drive the business forward. Will and Rob nod at each other, “we ran our whole business off that.” It prepared Shippit for the next capital raising round, laying the groundwork for success they enjoy now. 

When reflecting on what Tidal is like compared to other investors, Rob observes that “we've got more investment [dollars] from other partners who don't give us anywhere near as much counsel and guidance, or encouragement.” In business speak, he jokes “they definitely over-index on their investment versus their involvement.” What a compliment!

Think big and then think bigger 

A pivotal moment for Rob and Will was during a conversation with Grant, who said “you don't realise this yet, but this is a billion dollar company. You need to be thinking in terms of a billion dollar business, how you are going to change the world and what you're going to do.” It’s this kind of Tidal truth bomb that has helped Shippit to realise they are “no longer building a product, but building a company.”

Will explains that “the conversations that we're having now are around organisational design, having the right people on the bus, checking they are sitting in the right seat.” This is where Tidal has steered them, in part, toward being that billion dollar business and thinking like one too. 

When I asked if this meant they no longer felt so green, they concluded there’s always something to be green about. And despite onboarding many investors since the start, Tidal is often the go-to for advice and guidance. This can mean hands-on help or a late night phone call with Wendell or Grant to “have a glass of wine and talk about the business.”

Regardless of what you're going through, they're there for the good and the bad, thick, and thin to get you through what you need to get through.”

- Rob Hango-Zada

Foundational friends and future relationships

Rob and Will have been friends for 17 years, and in some ways it’s hard to believe they are first time founders. They are wise and self-aware. Perhaps this comes from knowing each other really well or maybe they’ve just learned to be confident and believe in their team. 

Will reveals his secret to staying calm through everything, “whatever happens you and I will figure it out and that's my secret.” Rob says their biggest strength is being able to “take outside information and apply the concepts that we've got to come up with the best answer.” Either way, they work as an inseparable team. 

When it comes to Tidal’s place in things, the founders say they “take more of a partnership based approach, which is empathy, understanding and pushing us, or encouraging us to think bigger about the problem, which is why they have been so important to us over the last couple of years.”

“Having Wendell on the board from a product perspective, Georgie on board from a finance perspective, then capital raising and how we think about our future state from Grant. All of these different people from Tidal make up a really good front for us. They’re fully part of our team.”

As Rob concludes, “regardless of what you're going through, they're there for the good and the bad, thick, and thin to get you through what you need to get through.”