Skalata

A massive congratulations to Ken Brand, Assaf Stizki and the whole Restoke.ai team on this major milestone. I'm re-stoked you are finally getting recognised publicly for all the amazing work I've had the privilege of seeing you do behind closed doors over the past 3 years. A big thank you to Andrew Poesaste and Rampersand for leading this round and joining the Restoke journey with Skalata. Thank you to all other incoming and existing supporters. Paul Naphtali Timothy Hui Mandalay Venture Partners Ben Armstrong Archangel Ventures Rohan W. Rob Greco

Join us next week for our "Navigating the Funding Landscape" webinar, where Matt Vitale, Tom Smalley, Maxine Minter, and LUNA's very own Josh Sharma will provide insight into the state of the funding ecosystem in 2024 and what it means for startups. We'll be discussing: ✍️ State of the funding ecosystem in 2024 ✅ Top tips for startups looking to secure investment 🔎 What to expect in 2025 You won't want to miss this one. Register now: https://lnkd.in/gqsNiT9q Birchal Skalata Co Ventures

This is why Matt Cohen and I bet our previous business on building ‘Canva for data’. From 2018-2022, Matt and I ran a social enterprise data consultancy. I was about a year out of uni when we started and already fairly disillusioned about the state of data analytics. I’d worked in a not-for-profit and saw first-hand how, even when people were trying to use data to change the world, it was super expensive, difficult and unintuitive for most people to work with. So we got a team together and consulted for awesome corporates, and used the profits to donate over $220k worth of in-kind hours to social impact projects. ... but then we got tired. We kept hearing the same thing from businesses and NFPs alike: people wanted to analyse their own data but the software was too hard. Someone needed to build a platform as easy as Canva, but for data. And with essentially 4 years of user research under our belts, why not us? So we bet every last dollar we made consulting (alongside support from the City of Melbourne & the Telematics Trust), and pivoted. We built a prototype with the help of stats legend Mitchell O'Hara-Wild and started sharing it with users. People who told us they’d spent 3 days trying to learn Tableau to make basic graphs (to no avail) were now finding insights on their own - with no training - in about 30 seconds. We knew we were onto something and needed the right people to back us to go to the next level. And last year, these amazing people did: Tom Smalley - Skalata Alex Zaccaria Dominic Pym Jon W. Anthony Zaccaria Nick Humphreys 🌱 Judy Anderson-Firth Michael Gonski Adam Milgrom Jason Atkins Jane S. Martino Rachael Neumann Alon Abraham Damien Chung Edward Hooper Ella Nguyen Jaddan Comerford Paul Baron Xavier Shay Then we found the incredible Simon Grant and for over a year have been building with early adopters. And in the process, found the sweet spot to use LLMs for what they’re great at - text analysis. We’ve since had researchers go from ✨ weeks to minutes ✨in analysing survey responses. We've had one consultant tell us he’ll save approx $30k this year by cutting his analytics time down 80%. We’ve had non-technical teams (who previously spent hours trying to wrangle ChatGPT to give them insights that made sense) making beautiful, reliable charts. And as of today, we’re doing what we dreamed of from the start: going freemium. This means anyone can use WhyHive for free. We've also open-sourced our raise data as a demo project in the app when you sign up. We hope this will help first-time founders like us! If you're up for backing us, here's how you can help our next lofty goal - hitting our first 1000 users in the next fortnight. 👉 You can sign up (link in comments), analyse some of your data, and let us know what you think. 👉 Share this post, tell your mates. Every bit of feedback gets us one step closer to our mission: make the power of data accessible for everyone.

Melburnian? 🚋 Passionate about sustainability? 💚 Free tomorrow evening? 🍻 Join us for must-hear panel discussion on building circular economy products. We've gathered some super impressive leaders in the space: Tina Funder, CEO & Founder of Alt. Leather Max Moolman , Co-Founder of Wonki Ben Chamberlain, CEO & Co-Founder of Authentified Hosted by Melissa Mack, a seasoned PR expert and director of Silkie Communications. This is your chance to network with fellow sustainability champions (founders and investors), enjoy sustainable sips, and gain insights to transform your approach to product development and startup growth. 📍 Location: Shadowboxer Office, Richmond, VIC 📅  Date & Time: 6pm, 22nd August. Last chance to RSVP: https://lu.ma/lstxm7p7 Fantastic to be hosting with our friends at Shadowboxer and Overnight Success 💛

Early childhood educators are losing heart. 💔 Stressed, burnt out, slogging through hours of paperwork a week - and in many cases, falling out of love with the profession entirely.  The laundry list of compliance reporting is prying them away from actual teaching - for up to an hour each day. It’s especially damaging in early-years education, where children need highly reciprocal learning to develop their brains. 👶 Turning educators' observations into learning stories, lesson plans, and reports, LoveHeart is giving educators the space to actually make the observations in the first place! It’s reducing hours of weekly reporting to minutes, and acting as an in-the-pocket teaching aide, translator, and coach. More on why we invested, and how founder Himal Randeniya is teaching us a thing or two about teaching, via the link in comments 👇 Stoked to be backing LoveHeart alongside Andrew Yeo and Adam Goldschmidt at OIF Ventures 🙌

Composting is ripe for disruption. 🍌 But it’s not your typical Silicon Valley glamour... The industry is literally - in Monty Compost Co founder Ashley Baxter's words - a “big stinking pile of food waste”. It’s also set to be a big stinking problem for humanity in future decades. Nutrients and carbon are extracted from natural systems to feed the world. And they’re not being restored. Recycling all organic waste back into our food systems would cut over 14% of global emissions. ♻️ But it’s cheaper and easier to ship it to landfill - and bury our heads in the sand along with it. Monty is solving the huge problem by monitoring and analysing composting conditions and quality - starting in gardens, and scaling to industrial plants - to help restore natural systems and return precious nutrients to the earth. Ash is joined by the formidable Junior Joyce, Kellie Walters, and Andy Hill 🙌 More on why we invested via the link in comments 👇

Congrats to Lochie Burke and Afonso Firmo from NetNada (Best Sustainability Startup 🌏) and Sean Law from Doohly (Best New Founder ✨) for your nominations in Startup Daily's Best in Tech Awards  🏆 We may have also made the Startup Investor of the Year shortlist... 🫣

Hats off to Jeanette Cheah 💁🏻♀️, Jodie Imam, and Rachel Yang who clinched top honours at LaunchVic's Governor of Victoria Startup Awards this week! 🍾 You are all incredible ambassadors for our ecosystem. From everyone at Skalata, thank you for everything you do to support the next generation of Victorian founders 🙏🫡

It's official. Skalata is the most active investor in Australia this year. 🏃♀️🏆 Investing at the pace we do, while prioritising portfolio support is no mean feat... A special thank you to Claire Bristow, Rob Greco, Tuong Cat Tran 🐱, Tom Smalley and Shahirah Gardner who put in the hard yards every day to make sure our value prop is more than just words on a website. We may not scream it from the rooftops, but we're quietly proud to have the highest support-to-cheque size ratio in Australia. We’re anti-hype, anti-insane pressure - instead giving pre-seed startups what they need at the time… which it turns out is time. With more people on hand and more hands-on support, we're helping founders build the capabilities for long-term success. Keep your eyes out for another investment shortly... 👀 Read the full article (link in comments) 👇

📢 “Must see event of the week (Caveat: In Melbourne, in the startup space)” - Rani Heraputeri Tomorrow (this Wednesday)! In Collingwood. Open Mic Night 🎭 presented by Airwallex, Skalata, Antler, Rampersand: ▶️10x 2-min pitches from founders ▶️1x prize for the audience choice of best pitch ▶️1x musical performance ▶️2x comedy performances ▶️1x fun night of networking <25 tix left. Registration link in comments. Artwork by: Taylor Fox-Smith, Scott Dommett, ChatGPT.