In a time of increasingly high-profile data breaches and cyber-attacks, Sydney Angels are pleased to announce that one of our most recent portfolio investments, Apollo Secure have completed their pre-seed funding round, raising $600,000 AUD. 24 investors from Sydney Angels have backed Apollo Secure and the syndicate was coordinated by Federico Quaia. Other investors in the round included Brisbane Angels and Angel Loop. Apollo was recently featured in the The Australian Financial Review.
Founded by Damien Cantelo in 2022, Apollo Secure is an automated platform for startups and SMEs to achieve and maintain security compliance. Startups and SMEs have often missed out and fallen behind the curve on data security and compliance, often because of the prohibitive cost of traditional solutions or the lack of knowledge and training required to protect their data and the data of their customers. The Apollo Secure SaaS platform delivers a number of key security features that would otherwise be out of reach for most small businesses. These include a security policies generator, security awareness training, vulnerability scanning, dark web monitoring and a security controls library.
The Sydney Angels team appreciated the team’s ability to put together a simple but effective platform that addresses the needs of an under-served market segment at a time when compliance obligations are increasing. The syndicate expects to see favourable tailwinds for the business in the years ahead.
Congratulations to Damien and the team at Apollo Secure. We look forward to following the team's developments in the months and years ahead.
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company - Edrolo
Congratulations to Sydney Angels portfolio company Edrolo, who have recruited a fantastic new CEO, David Wright after a 12 month search by the founders. David has an excellent track record and commitment to education to help take Edrolo's mission of improving educational outcomes for young people, both in Australia, and abroad, to the next stage. Well done Duncan Anderson, Jeremy Cox and Ben Sze, in getting David to join the team!
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company - InSpace
Congratulations InSpace on closing a $6M Series-A round. Sydney Angels members and sidecar fund first invested back in 2018, alongside others.
Australian Biotec
The Australian pavilion is prominent at #bio2023 - while formal partnering meetings are important and I’ve attended some great educational content, there’s just so much value in hanging out with clients and professional colleagues in an informal setting, and meeting passers-by with an interest in the Australian #biotech industry!
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company - Atomo Diagnostics
Some of our members invested in Atomo right at the beginning in 2010. It's always a pleasure to see how the company has developed and grown over the years. John Kelly, the founder and MD, has tirelessly pursued the vision. Atomo is now poised for broad-based sales growth, with several proven easy-to-use self-test devices being sold in multiple countries, and a pipeline of new devices coming, all based on Atomo's technology platform. We wish everyone at Atomo the best for the future. Thank you!
Sydney Angels - Overview
Every 6 months we compile an overview of our progress as an angel group, and of our investment process, activity, and portfolio. We hope you find it interesting and useful. Please share it with founders you know whose startup is at the right stage for our members to consider investing. Thanks!
Sydney Angels Members Meeting at Johnson Winter Slattery
The Sydney Angels Cycle 3 Members Meeting was held last night to an enthusiastic group of members, guests and founders! A special thank you to our friends at Johnson Winter Slattery for hosting this event. We were excited to kick off this cycle face to face, a great evening was had by everyone!
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company: Ping Services
Congratulations Ping on your strategic merger with Eologix. Sydney Angels members and sidecar fund first invested in Ping in 2020. The merged value propositions expand addressable markets and should accelerate growth.
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company: Novapep
We're pleased to announce the recent investment in biopharma Novapep by a syndicate of 19 of our members through our team-based process. We're also delighted that the University of Sydney is involved, along with other world leading research institutions and scientists.
Founders: How to apply to Sydney Angels...
Founders, are you thinking about applying to Sydney Angels? Click here to find out!
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company Update: Carly Holdings Limited
Congratulations to portfolio company Carly Holdings Limited (ASX:CL8) on the announcement of a $10m asset finance facility to build the fleet of motor vehicles. 4x the size of the owned fleet means lots of revenue growth in the bag and on track towards profitability! Well done to the team.
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company Update: Kapiche
Great to see portfolio company Kapiche be well recognised by G2 for its amazing product. Congrats to Ryan Stuart, Brendan Brummer and the entire Kapiche team on a fantastic 2022!! Can't wait to see what you deliver in 2023...
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company Update: Trendspek
Congratulations to Trendspek on closing its $6.3M Series-A recently. Sydney Angels members and sidecar fund first invested in 2019/20. Watch and listen to co-founder Derek Feebrey talk about Trendspek and their opportunity
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company Update: ExtrasJar
The co-founder of Sydney Angels portfolio company ExtrasJar was interviewed by Finder in relation to Private Health Extras cover. Who would have thought the insurance companies don't always help like the could (or should)? Sydney Angels members liked the ExtrasJar concept so much, they invested in it!
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company Update: Carly Holdings Limited
Sydney Angels has been a proud supporter of Carly Holdings Limited (ASX:CL8) from early concepts. Our members are still large supporters & shareholders. Here is an early stage, high growth opportunity in a market leader creating a new category in Australia that everyone can invest in via the ASX. Anyone can be an angel!
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company News: SiteMate
Sydney Angels congratulates the SiteMate team on their latest fund raising, and their continued business growth. Sydney Angels members invested $0.4M in SiteMate in 2017, and followed on each year after that, for a total of $1.2M, plus $0.6M from the Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund over 4 rounds. Blackbird's support for SiteMate's next stage of growth augurs well for the future.
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company News: ExtrasJar
Sydney Angels is very pleased to have backed ExtrasJar (www.extrasjar.com) and is excited to see them launch their evolutionary offering, starting with Pets (and Health coming soon). Traditional Pet Insurance and Health Extras Cover has been poor for consumers (but very profitable for insurers). ExtrasJar is looking to fix that.
Check them out at www.extrasjar.com
Sydney Angels Portfolio Company News: NOA The Brand
Congratulations to Sydney Angels Portfolio Company NOA The Brand for their successful launch on Kickstarter! They were fully funded in under 12 hours!
Welcome Seitec!
Sydney Angels are pleased to welcome Seitec as the latest addition to our investment portfolio.
The completion of the company's initial seed round led by Sydney Angels and coordinated by Adrian Waters raised almost $600,000 from a consortium of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane-based Angel groups as well as a pool of independent high-net-worth investors. The Sydney Angels syndicate drew heavily on members' technology, commercialisation and Defence industry expertise during the due diligence process. The round was fully subscribed with a pre-money valuation of $3.1 million.
Seitec is a veteran-founded firm based in Canberra ACT that was born through a commercialisation process from Defence Australia. Seitec has developed a new technology for detecting and locating unexploded ordnance on military test ranges using a system of seismic sensors. With an increasing awareness of the need to ensure unobstructed ranges both domestically and abroad, the UXOTrackS technology saves range operators time and money while also making ranges safer and more environmentally friendly. UXOTrackS is nearing market readiness and Seitec are currently in discussions with the Royal Australian Air Force.
Seitec founder Daniel Stevens is confident of the technology's ability to be expanded to other use cases including vehicle and footstep detection for security applications in a product the company calls Nightingale. Development of Nightingale is ongoing and the technology is expected to be ready to demo from Q3 2022.
Congratulations Instaclustr!
Woo!!! Congratulations to the Instaclustr team, all the Sydney Angels members and Sidecar Fund who invested way back, and all the other investors along the way.