About
Blackbird is a venture capital firm whose mission is to invest in wild hearts, with the wildest ideas, right at the beginning. We do this by raising venture capital funds, investing in the best startup companies and helping them succeed. We have more than a billion dollars under management and a portfolio of over 70 companies including some of the most successful Australian startups such as Canva, Zoox, SafetyCulture and Culture Amp.
This is our North Star. Meet our team. Get in touch.
2012
Blackbird was founded by Rick Baker and Niki Scevak in Sydney, Australia. Rick and Niki thought there was an opportunity to build a new venture capital firm for product-obsessed Australians who dared to attack global markets from the beginning.
Ambition magnet
We raised a $29 million first fund from the Australian technology founder community. We invested this in the first rounds of four unicorns; Canva, Zoox, SafetyCulture and Culture Amp. Since then, we've gone on to raise a fund in 2015, 2018, a New Zealand fund, and a fund in 2020.
Community
We believe the best help for our founders comes from other founders. Every day, our expert ecosystem shares their knowledge on building lasting businesses from the ground up. Part of Blackbird’s Master Plan is to surround our community with founders who have built successful technology companies before.
Our Values
We wear t-shirts
Blackbird is a startup and will always be run as a startup. Our style, our office, our events and our communications relate to the founders we back.
We are true believers in founders
Founders come first, they are our reason for being. We work for our founders, they don’t work for us.
We believe in love at first sight
We make high conviction decisions after careful research and debate, but also trust our instincts built up over years of pattern matching.
We are comfortable with the misunderstood
We don’t need to know all the answers to make an investment decision. We’ll look to maximise the upside, rather than minimise the risks.
We think in decades not days
We invest for the long term. Building iconic businesses takes the best part of a decade or longer. We don’t plan for exits.
We will make our kids proud
Everything we do, we do with integrity, in a way that we’d be happy to tell our kids about.
Locations
We are a fully distributed workforce and embrace flexibility for our team in where and how we work. We have offices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland, and two of our team work remotely in Hobart and Orange.
