CapitalPitch Partners on $10M Venture Capital Fund

Funding platform CapitalPitch is raising $10 million for its own fund to co-invest in early-stage startups that raise money through its website platform.

“[Co-founder] Emlyn Scott and I have launched a new venture capital fund to invest in every startup that successfully raises capital on the CapitalPitch investment platform,” co-founder Jeremy Liddle announced in an online statement.

“The fund is raising a minimum of $10 million and will invest 15 per cent of the raise target for each business.

“CapitalPitch launched in January 2015 and we now have over 1,392 startup members, nine of which have successfully completed investment rounds of over $13 million.”

He said the latest successful capital raisings include $1.94 million raised by OpenMarkets and $450,000 by Care Guidance.

Liddle said the fund had already received interest from strategic global investors from Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and San Francisco (Silicon Valley) as well as some of Australia’s most respected angel investors, venture capital investors, family offices and corporate venture units.

“This includes a partnership with Trevor Folsom from Investible and the Tulla Group which is the investment arm of the Maloney Family office headed by Kevin Maloney,” he said

Maloney sold The Mac Services for $689 million in 2010 and is on the BRW rich list.

(L to R) Jeremy Liddle from CapitalPitch, Trevor Folsom from Investible, Emlyn Scott from CapitalPitch and Kevin Maloney from Tulla

Liddle said that as part of the strategic partnership, both Investible and the Tulla Group intended to use the CapitalPitch Investment Platform to “screen, nurture and curate” early-stage technology investments.

“Investment funds and family offices in Australia and globally are being approached by an ever growing number of businesses seeking funding. CapitalPitch’s platform offers a clever way for investors to be able to outsource a component of the due diligence process,” Maloney said on the launch of the fund.

Liddle told Pro Bono Australia News that there was a rigorous five-step process involved in selecting early startups.

“We have built an online system where they can run through it step by step… the first step is an evaluation and delivers a report into the type of business they are and scores them out of 100 with an indicative evaluation,” he said.

“The final part of the process is three one-day boot camps.

“What we are trying to do, ultimately, is de-risk the asset class for investors because there are a lot of people who lose a lot of money making silly decisions raising money for start-ups going early when they don’t really know what they are doing. They haven’t put the rigour into testing that they actually have a viable business while risking other people’s money.

“So what we are trying to do is de-risk the whole process. For the start up founders they can get some expert feedback without risking too much of their own money and there own time on something that’s not viable as well as assisting investors to make sure that if they are going to put money into something it has a more likely chance that they will get some sort of return out of it.”

Liddle said there was a lot of money “wafting around in Asia” looking for Australian opportunities.

“There’s a lot of money trying to get out of China and Hong Kong into more secure… countries and now with the significant investment visas there are a lot of people trying to migrate here.

“It will be a big part of growing the fund from $10 million to a much larger amount and bringing capital and investors into the fund… they are our future…the capital raising market in Australia is not big so we were always planning on a global move searching for strategic investments that help us enter those markets up into Asia and the US.”