We’ve started and worked for startups ourselves and know what it’s like to survive the early stage rollercoaster. If we back you, we believe in you, and we believe in you from the very beginning. Our belief in you means we put our egos aside to help you in any way we can.
The majority of capital from our first fund came from successful technology founders, who invested their capital and time to help the next generation. Today, our portfolio of 100+ companies share advice, learnings and resources - from salary benchmarking to profit margins.
We invest in companies, not rounds. We invested in Canva when it was an idea, in Zoox before there was a product. 67% of our investments in 2021 were pre-revenue. We will invest from the beginning and every subsequent round.
Our Founder Success team is here to help you reach your wildest ambition. From levelling up your leadership capabilities, to telling your story with communications support and surrounding you with knowledge and connections through our five-week Founder Academy, we’ll help you grow from founder to great CEO.
Startups are the people they hire, and we know nearly every dollar of capital a startup raises goes to building that team. We’ll introduce you to vetted talent through our Lilypad platform and Startmate’s Fellowship programs. And we will run programs to upskill portfolio operators, and nurture your journey from founder to CEO with coaching and mentoring.
Our whole team works for you, not just your lead investor. From specialist advice to 1:1 support and introductions, you can count on any Blackbird to lend a hand on your journey.
We create products to get thousands more people to find their way into startups.
From connecting you to board advisors to finding your next executive hire, we combine our ecosystem programs and 1:1 support to bring the best people into your orbit.
Our community of founders come together with special programs, events and content. Get advice from the group in real-time, spend quality time together at our Founder Retreat, and join special programming tackling your thorniest questions.
You might be introduced to us directly, or you share your initial pitch deck directly with us here - no warm intro required! Either way, we’ll take a look at your deck and let you know what we thought within a week.
It's never too early to talk to us. We have invested in great founders who are pre-product, and in some cases, pre-idea.
If we’d like to hear more, one of our investment team members who is most passionate about what you’re doing will get in touch. The conversation is always friendly, but you should expect you'll be challenged on a few things, usually related to what we look for in founders. This is your chance to interview Blackbird as well. Ask any questions you have - don’t be shy about pushing us either!
Whether we are keen to move forward or not, the investor you met will be in touch with you pretty quickly. We will dive deeper into your vision, metrics, team and how you plan to use the capital you are raising. This is when our version of due diligence starts, to help us prepare to share your business or idea with our Investment Committee.
Once ready, we will pitch your business or idea to our Investment Committee on your behalf. The Committee comes prepared with context and key information explaining why we believe so much in you and why we think your startup will become a generational company. This is the chance for our Investment Committee to give feedback, ask critical questions and provide input before approval.
You will hear immediately from us after pitch with feedback from the Investment Committee. This may be a ‘no’, ‘yes’ or a request for more info to help us make a final decision. If we are not going to invest, we want to tell you no quickly and also tell you the key reasons that contributed to our choice. If we are looking to invest, we will work with you to answer any Investment Committee questions and address their feedback before approval.
Once pitch questions are answered, we will seek Investment Committee approval.
If it’s a ‘yes’, congratulations! We will work on a term sheet for you - we work from standard docs as much as we can to make it quick for you and minimise pain, time and lawyers in the future. If you accept the term sheet, we move forward with the information we need to wire the money.
Once this is complete, you’ll receive a money transfer soon after with the agreed capital. We can also introduce you to like-minded investors locally and around the world if it’s something you need.
Once the docs are done we begin onboarding you and your team into our Blackbird community and the magic really starts happening. You’ll meet other founders, get support from our Community team on common startup challenges, and be invited to take part in our Founder Academy, a 2 day intensive program, to help you build your business and learn alongside other Blackbird founders.
Portfolio Company
Financing Round Participation
Blackbird Ownership
Seed 2012 Funds
Series A 2012/2015 Funds
SeriesA1
2015 Funds
SeriesA2
2018 Funds
Investment 2015/2018 Funds
Series A3-A4 2018 Funds
SeriesA5 2020 Funds
Investment 2020 Funds
Seed 2012 Funds
Series A 2012 Funds
Series B 2015 Funds
Series C 2015 Funds
Series C 2018/2020 Funds
Secondary 2020 Funds
Series C2 2020 Funds
*Includes co-investment
Series A 2012 Fund
Series B 2012/2015 F
Series C 2015 Funds
Series D 2018 Funds
Secondary 2018 Funds
Series E 2018 Funds
Series F 2020 Funds
*Includes co-investment
Seed 2012 Fund
Series A 2012/2018 Funds
Series B 2020 Funds
Secondary 2020 Funds
Seed 2018 Funds
Seed extension 2018 Funds
Series A 2018 Funds
Series B 2020 Funds
Seed 2015 Funds
Seed extension 2018 Funds
Series A 2015 Funds
Secondary 2018 Funds
Series A extension 2018 Funds
Series B 2020 Funds
Series A 2015 Funds
Series B 2018 Funds
Series C 2020 Funds
We've covered that above, but keep an eye out for a blog on this soon.
We love to see how your team is thinking about the product roadmap, a financial model that underpins your strategy and a cap table with any existing investors, as well as evidence from your customers, previous investors and other stakeholders.
For investment? Share your vision here and we’ll let you know what we think within a week. For everything else, you can contact us.
You can also get involved with our community - you might get mentoring from our Giants program, attend our Sunrise festival or join Startmate’s next accelerator.
We pride ourselves on not being rigid investors. The very definition of novel is "not like anything before". We get excited when something doesn't easily fit a category or seems strange. We are guided by our founders' ambition, not just a top down investment thesis.
We invest broadly from software to space and have invested repeatedly in deep tech areas. Our current portfolio spans enterprise and healthcare software, consumer, medical devices, autonomous robotics, AI infrastructure, clean energy systems and quantum technologies. We also update our investment thesis with every fund - read our current thesis here as well as previous ones.
Your pitch happens in the first few meetings you have with our investment team. In these meetings, we will be excited, curious and ready to learn from you! Our team will be ready to deep dive into your pitch deck, as well as ask some questions about your vision, goals & the future you see for your company.
The lead investor will then prepare a writeup that includes why they believe your startup will become a generational company - ready for them to pitch you and your company to our investment committee.
How convenient - we recently wrote a blog on the qualities we look for in founding teams! Read it here.
We love to invest pre-product and pre-revenue and most of our first cheque investments fit this bill (pun intended).
We prefer to make our first investment into a company at the pre-seed, seed or Series A round, but we will invest in later rounds too.
We invest in founders that have a strong connection to Australia or New Zealand. Maybe you’re based here? Perhaps you lived in New Zealand for a certain time? Maybe one of your co-founders is Australian?
Whether you are geographically placed in Australia or New Zealand is far less important to us.
We invest in Australians and New Zealanders because everything we have done at Blackbird has been about building a community of founders here that give us a chance to meet tomorrow’s great founders.
Every deal is different, but we prefer to draw as much as possible from the Australian Investment Council Open Source Funding docs. We prefer clean industry standard terms.
Our goal is to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars right at the beginning of a company’s life before there is product or revenue, earn a courtside seat to the best companies by building a great relationship with them and then invest hundreds of millions over their lifetimes.
We have invested as little as $30,000 in a seed and in some cases $5M in a Series A.
