I have spent the better part of twenty-five years helping Australians turn ideas into companies. In that time I have backed ventures in artificial intelligence, agtech, legal technology, intellectual property, education and advanced manufacturing. Some have gone on to raise serious capital and approach public markets; others were wound up within a year. Both outcomes are part of the same discipline, and learning to hold them in the same hand is the most important thing this work has taught me.
Early-stage investing is a numbers game — and that is fine
The uncomfortable truth of backing new companies is that most of them will not succeed. That is not a failure of the model; it is the model. Innovation is, by definition, a search for things that do not yet exist, and a search has misses. The skill is not in avoiding the misses — that is impossible — but in telling them apart from the hits early, and acting on the difference without sentiment.
Decide quickly, and be honest about it
The most expensive thing in early-stage investing is not a company that fails; it is a company that takes three years to fail. Capital, attention and a founder’s best years get poured into a venture that the evidence stopped supporting long ago, because no one wanted to make the call. The founders I have backed most successfully are the ones who agreed, at the outset, on what the early signals of traction would be — and on what we would do if they did not appear.
The kindest thing you can do for a founder is tell them the truth early, while they still have the energy and the runway to start again.
Wind things up professionally, not painfully
When a venture will not work, how you close it matters as much as how you started it. A disciplined, well-governed wind-up — obligations met, records clean, lessons captured — protects the founder from the trauma of a drawn-out collapse, protects the investors, and frees the talent and the capital to go again. Done well, closing a company is not a failure to be hidden; it is a professional act that keeps the whole ecosystem healthy. Founders who experience a clean wind-up are the ones most likely to back themselves a second time — and second-time founders are often the best ones to back.
Structure and governance are not bureaucracy
Good structure is what lets a promising company move fast without falling over. Clear shareholdings, sensible governance, proper records and an eye on tax and compliance from day one are not a drag on a startup — they are what make it fundable, and what make an eventual success or an eventual wind-up orderly rather than chaotic. My legal background has been as useful here as any investment instinct: the companies that scale cleanly are almost always the ones that were built cleanly.
Why Australia is worth backing
Australia produces far more good ideas than it commercialises. We have the researchers, the founders and, increasingly, the frameworks — such as the early-stage innovation company incentives — to support them, but too many promising ventures stall for want of patient capital and disciplined support. Backing early-stage innovators here is not charity; it is a bet that Australian ingenuity, given the right structure and honest guidance, can build companies that matter. After twenty-five years, it is a bet I would make again — with the same discipline about the ones that work and the ones that do not.
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