2024 Year in Review

Every year, we set out with the same goal: find the most ambitious Australian and Kiwi founders building generational companies, and back them from the very beginning. 2024 has been a great year for this!

As we come to the end of this busy, often challenging but overall rewarding year, we wanted to reflect on the year that was by the numbers, and share some of our highlights.

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In 2024, we deployed $229M across 20 new and 30 follow-on rounds. This was a slight increase on the total number of investments we made compared to 2023, but the total amount we invested was consistent with the last four years. 

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These investments spanned from a $100k cheque into a pre-seed company to a $46M Series C.

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And we stayed steadfast in backing founders right at the very beginning, with 85% of new investments into pre-seed and seed stage companies in 2024. 

‍It’s never too early to pitch us for investment.

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From AI automation to clothing adhesive, EV fast-charging to security camera software, in 2024, we met more than 1600 new wild hearts from across Australia and Aotearoa, and we invested in 41 of them. 

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This year, we continued our commitment to investing in more women and non-binary founders, with progress so far at 45% of all new investments in calendar year 2024 with at least one woman in the founding team. 

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And to complete the lifecycle, a highlight for us this year was returning $1.1B to our investors.

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A system-wide impact 

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Some of the most special moments over the past year have included…

Hosting 97 events with 2,035 founders and operators across ANZ.

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Bringing together thousands of our community under one roof with Sunrise Australia and Sunrise Aotearoa. 

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Taking Blackbird to New York, San Francisco and London, hosting 17 events with 1,364 people from across the Aussie and Kiwi diaspora, widening the global networks our portfolio can access.

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Launching Season 5 of our Wild Hearts podcast with Mason and Melia welcoming guests including Bluey creator Joe Brumm, Vow’s Head of Engineering & Process Development Ines Lizaur, Canva’s Head of Product Robert Kawalsky and Blackbird’s own Robyn Denholm.

‍Jo driving our best ever founder satisfaction rate of 95% in our Giants program, connecting 112 founders and 79 mentors across 341 mentoring sessions. 

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“The highlight of Giants for me was the incredible mentor insights, which have been so impactful that they’ve led to a complete pivot for us. This program has truly reshaped our direction.”

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Saron helping 10 teams of PhD students and post-docs get their ideas pitch-ready in just 8 weeks, with each of them presenting at our 2024 Foundry Competition. 

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The Blackbird Foundation achieving Registered Charity status and granting $190k to 92 new Protostars and 5 organisations or groups unleashing creativity in young people.

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And to top it all off, we grew our flock

In 2024, we added Maddy, Tristan, David and Georgia to our 19-strong investing team. 

We announced the arrival of David and Georgia earlier this year, and now we would love to introduce you to: 

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Maddy Guest is the co-founder of investing podcast, You’re In Good Company, and previously a Manager in PwC’s Deals team.

Having set the challenge of meeting with 100 founders by Christmas, Maddy is most excited to dive headfirst into the wild world of startups and work alongside some of the smartest and most ambitious founders in the country. 

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‍Tristan Edwards joins us from Medicxi, a European VC at the leading edge of biotechnology.

Combining his drug development expertise and prior machine learning research, Tris is most excited to work with founders at the intersection of biology and computer science… now down under! 

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Of course, not everything was rosy in 2024. Like every year, there were challenges for us to work through at Blackbird and the rollercoaster of startup life is never smooth. But it's also been a great year for investing into venture capital, with lots of great new companies starting and a bunch of our more mature companies starting to hit their straps. These are the good old days!