G’day and welcome to your weekly edition of Overnight Success - your download on all the important things that have happened in the Aussie startup ecosystem. 🚀
A huge week for Australian startups and the local LinkedIn servers as the ecosystem took to social media to rant about changes to capital gains tax. The mob was out in full force, with the entire feed clogged with AI-generated images of Anthony Albanese joining hundreds of companies as the new co-founder, as he’ll take ~47% of the exit.
The collective mobilisation was impressive, and I believe it’s been noticed by Canberra, which is interested in hearing more from the industry. The boffins at the Tech Council of Australia are leading the charge, led by Scott Farquhar.
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably someone who wants to see more founders, more funding, more companies started, jobs created, and wealth generated for all. If you’d like to channel your energy into collective action, drop your information in this form for a grassroots coalition led by GovTech Australia.
Sponsor shoutout:
I’m also still working with We Are Eight, a recruitment consultancy built specifically for founders, VCs and tech leaders who need to hire well from the jump. As well as helping to hire top tech talent, We Are Eight also offers startups and scaleups Fractional HR + P&C Support from the wonderful and highly talented Abbie Brice, who brings more than 15 years of transformative People and Culture expertise to Founders and their teams. More information below 👇
👀 Headlines 👀
📉 The Labor government released their budget this week, with some big changes that will affect startups. The capital gains tax change removes the 50% discount on capital gains and replaces it with an indexation model. It’s fair to say the startup sector had something to say about this.
The conversation online was huge. Here’s a cherry-picking of the voices that stood out.
Kim Teo, founder of Me&u (Mr Yum), took to LinkedIn to express interest in starting a conversation with the treasurer about how this change removes massive incentives and makes it harder for founders to build in Australia.
Adam Schwab, founder of Luxury Escapes, shared how homeowners benefit from the indexation on big gains, while founders creating jobs and productive businesses get little to no discount.
Paul Bassat, Co-founder of Square Peg, made the point that most new jobs are created by young companies, and now the founders of those companies have less incentive to start in Australia.
Treasurer Chalmers has agreed to consult; the proposed change — replacing the 50% CGT discount with an inflation-linked model with a 30% floor — is still set to take effect July 1, 2027. (AFR)
Critics say adjusting the cost base won't help because most start-ups have near-zero cost bases to begin with; they're pushing for a concessional tax rate instead.
➕ Positives from the budget: R&D offset thresholds will be increased, VCLP and ESVCLP have been improved, and there are some tax benefits for loss-making companies that are paying payroll tax.
ESVCLP and VCLP tax incentives have been adjusted for inflation for the first time since program inception. ESVCLP asset cap has been lifted, so investee business assets at entry raised from $50M → $80M, with the exit cap raised from $250M → $420M.
ESVCLP fund size cap lifted: Maximum committed capital raised from $200M → $270M, VCLP asset cap lifted: Investee business assets raised from $250M → $480M
All ESVCLP/VCLP changes take effect on 1 July 2027 and apply to new and existing funds.
On the R&D side, offset rates for core experimental activities will increase by approximately 4.5%, resulting in a 48% rebate instead of the current 43.5%.
Support for 'supporting' activities will be removed entirely. The aggregated turnover threshold for the refundable offset will rise from $20 million to $50 million, allowing more medium-sized businesses to qualify.
Access to the higher R&D tax offset beyond 10 years will still be available, but it will no longer be refundable and must be carried forward. The intensity premium threshold will be lowered from 2% to 1.5% of expenditure. The cap on eligible R&D expenditures will increase from $150 million to $200 million. Lastly, the minimum spend threshold will rise from $20,000 to $50,000, and research activities below this amount must be conducted with recognised research organisations.
🌳 Airtree has appointed Elicia McDonald as CEO, with co-founder Craig Blair moving to chair the investment committee, as the $2 billion firm restructures to keep pace with AI's rapid change. (Capital Brief)
McDonald joined Airtree as an associate in 2016 and remains on the investment committee. She's the first internal CEO succession at the firm.
The restructure follows the close of Airtree's $650 million Fund V last year and lands in a market where the LP base is increasingly questioning what a "modern VC firm" should look like operationally.
❤️🩹Mark Woodland, founder of Kismet, spoke to the Joint Standing Committee on National Disability Insurance Scheme in Parliament House on Friday. (Timestamped YouTube Video)
Kismet is a Melbourne-founded healthcare platform focused on the NDIS. It's built a community engagement ecosystem that digitally connects care receivers, caregivers, health insurance, and healthcare providers in the in-home, disabled, and aged segments.
Kismet was funded by AirTree Ventures, Black Nova, Flying Fox, Prosus Ventures and Singapore-based MassMutual.
A core part of the pitch is tackling NDIS fraud: the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission estimated as much as A$6 billion in NDIS funds could be misused yearly, with A$1.4 billion lost to fraud and payment errors in 2022 alone. Kismet addresses this with a digital check-in system that verifies customer attendance, ensuring that services paid for are actually delivered.
🏚️ An exclusive Startup Daily investigation has surfaced the sublease structure that left Fishburners holding unrecoverable rent from the Sydney Startup Hub era — adding fresh political detail to the administration story covered last week. (Startup Daily)
Following the closure of the Sydney Startup Hub, Fishburners operated under a subsidised sublicence agreement with Stone & Chalk at Tech Central Innovation Hub (TCIH) in Haymarket from September 2025, with Stone & Chalk acting as the primary site operator.
Unlike the original Sydney Startup Hub model, the NSW Government no longer held a direct tenancy relationship with Fishburners under this structure.
However, according to ASIC filings from October 2024, Fishburners had accumulated over $2 million in rent arrears tied to the former Startup Hub site, with auditors flagging "material uncertainties" about its ability to continue as a going concern.
Because of this legacy debt, Fishburners entered voluntary administration last week, with KPMG overseeing an EOI process to recapitalise or sell the organisation. The EOI closed 15 May (yesterday).
Chair of Fishies, Bilyana Smith, described the administration as a "reset" to shed legacy debt while keeping programs running, pitching Fishburners as a "strategic opportunity" for buyers in innovation, tech, education, and property sectors.
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⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
Arkeus raises $25M Series A to scale AI sensing technology for military drones
Founders: Simon Olsen, left, and Dr Jonathan Nebauer
Arkeus, the Melbourne deftech startup building AI-powered hyperspectral sensing systems for autonomous craft, has raised $25 million in a Series A round led by QIC, the Queensland government-owned investment corporation. New investors R+VC, Folklore Ventures and DYNE Ventures joined the round, with existing backers Main Sequence Ventures, Salus Ventures and Beaten Zone following on. The raise values Arkeus at $100 million — a sevenfold increase from its seed round two years ago.
Founded in 2020 by Olsen and aerospace engineer Dr Jonathan Nebauer, Arkeus builds "eyes and brain" sensing payloads that use signals across the electromagnetic spectrum — from ultraviolet through infrared — to cut through smoke, haze and dust.
Most drones and autonomous systems still rely on sensing hardware designed to be operated by a human, with data sent over congested communication links, which limits the ability to scale deployments and act at speed. Arkeus flips that by building sensors optimised for AI ingestion from the ground up, processing intelligence at the edge rather than routing it back to an operator. arkeus
Their product suite covers wide-area search, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (SISR) across air, land, and maritime domains, for Defence, Homeland Security, and Civil Defence missions.
In competitive evaluations with the US Department of Defense, the system detected and tracked targets at eight times the range of comparable payloads in active service. Revenue has grown eightfold over the past 18 months, with the US now representing 80% of the business.
Funds will be used to establish manufacturing in Queensland and the US, and build out a dedicated US sales team.
Due Diligence: Forbes, Folklore Investment Notes
ProcurePro raises US$11M Series A to take Australian construction procurement global
Founders: Alastair Blenkin (CEO), Tom Newby, Jesse Dymond, Nathan Denchman, and Tim Rogers
The construction industry has been one of the last large sectors in the Australian economy to digitise its procurement workflow — tenders still routinely run through spreadsheets, email chains and paper sign-offs.
Brisbane-based ProcurePro, a B2B SaaS platform that consolidates construction tendering, contract management and vendor relationships into a single workflow, has raised USD $11 million (~A$17 million) in a Series A round led by QIC Ventures, with French construction giant Bouygues and Glitch Capital participating. The round values the business at more than USD $80 million (~A$124 million).
Capital will fund a 100-person hiring sprint, the opening of a US office, and expansion across Brisbane, London and Dubai. The QIC-led round is notable for two reasons: it's a sovereign-style cheque from a Queensland-headquartered institutional LP, and it brings in a strategic in Bouygues — one of the world's largest construction groups — which could open European and Middle Eastern channel partnerships.
Due Diligence: AFR
Former Up Bank team raises A$4M Seed for AI consumer finance play Extraordinary Money
Founders: Anson Parker and Sam Mendelsohn
Most neobanks spent the last decade showing you what you already spent. A Melbourne startup thinks the next wave is about what you're about to spend — and who's spending it for you.
Extraordinary Money (XMO), an AI-native consumer finance startup, has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding co-led by AirTree Ventures and Triple Bubble, with participation from Arconic Capital and angels. The company was co-founded by Anson Parker, former chief product officer at Up Bank, and payments executive Sam Mendelsohn.
XMO is building what it calls a predictive financial model. One designed not to surface historical spending charts but to anticipate future decisions, including via AI agents acting on a user's behalf.
Funds will go toward hiring, AI infrastructure and securing an AFSL and ACL ahead of a planned Australian launch within the next 12 months.
AirTree GP James Cameron said the firm had been waiting for a team to build natively for the GenAI inflection in consumer finance, rather than retrofitting existing products.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
BuildPass secures venture debt to double down on US expansion as market hits 20% of revenue
Founders: Matt Perrott, Aaron Vanston
Six months after relocating to Austin, Melbourne construction software platform BuildPass has secured a non-dilutive venture debt facility from Sydney-based lender Mighty Partners to accelerate its US push with it structured deliberately to avoid diluting shareholders as the company hits its stride in one of the world's largest construction markets.
The fresh capital arrives as the US contributes more than 20% of global revenue and is growing by more than 50% month-on-month. Globally, BuildPass is running above 100% year-on-year, with more than 1,000 customers, 400,000 users and 100,000 subcontractors across four countries.
Early US traction is already translating into operational scale. New York-based Reidy Contracting Group rolled out BuildPass across more than 85 simultaneous commercial projects within weeks of signing, joining Pennsylvania's Burkentine Builders and Austin's ECI Group as early adopters.
The platform handles compliance, contractor management and site operations, with AI tooling from OpenAI and Anthropic baked in — competing against NYSE-listed Procore and Autodesk's Construction Cloud.
The facility will fund US hiring and go-to-market spend. BuildPass previously raised a $7.5 million in seed funding led by Carthona Capital in late 2024.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily, Mighty Partners Announcement
As well as helping to hire top tech talent, We Are Eight also offers startups and scaleups Fractional HR + P&C Support from the wonderful and highly talented Abbie Brice, who brings more than 15 years of transformative People and Culture expertise to Founders and their teams.
Abbie helps growing companies build the people foundations they need: leadership development, employment compliance, organisational change management, but without the full-time overhead.
Abbie has guided companies like Envato, RedBubble, REA, Carsales, Rosterfy, Tactiq, Medigrowth, Packsmith, PlayHQ, and Stile Education through exactly these challenges, helping them build:
Strategic people foundations that scale with growth
Leadership capability that drives high performance
Compliant HR frameworks across jurisdictions
Culture that becomes a competitive advantage
Abbie offers a free HR/P&C Discovery call for any Founders who are keen to get a sense of where they're at and what they need to think about/action before they start scaling. You can check out her pitch deck here.
🤝 M&A 🤝
🤝 Wellington HR firm Humankind has acquired Blackbird-backed management training platform The Mintable, a notable cross-Tasman deal and clean Blackbird portfolio exit. (Startup Daily)
The Mintable raised a $6.8 million Seed round three years ago, with Blackbird leading. Deal terms not disclosed.
For Humankind, the Mintable platform extends its product surface from HR services into management training and L&D — a clear "buy vs build" decision driven by AI, shortening the cost of integrating new product capability into an existing customer base.
🚀 Wins 🚀
🏗️ 🐑 Firmus Technologies has been confirmed as the developer behind a $7 billion AI data centre project on South Australian sheep stations. (The Australian)
According to land records that surfaced, the development sites are Firmus's largest publicly known infrastructure footprint to date.
🌱 SEEDS, a Melbourne-based bootstrapped tech skills school and ANZ tech-builder publication, has launched out of Sanders Place Impact Hub in Richmond.
Partnerships with Sanders Place and Tractor Ventures were announced at launch. First masterclass series and articles are live.
📆 Notice Board 📆
💄 L'Oréal has opened applications for the 2026 Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program, offering ANZ startups a fully funded commercial pilot with one of L'Oréal's 40 global brands plus a year-long mentorship.
Local delivery partners are Stone & Chalk and HEC Paris Incubation & Acceleration Center. Applications close 3 July 2026. ANZ finals in September, apply here.
🎓 UNSW Founders has opened applications for its 2026 10x Accelerator — a 10-week program offering a $100,000 SAFE, expert coaching and access to UNSW's R&D network across three streams: Health, Climate and All Industries.
The Health and Climate streams are open to any Australian founder regardless of UNSW affiliation. Applications close 18 May. Apply here.
📡 Curtin University's DeepStart program is now accepting applications for its three-month deep tech accelerator, aimed at research teams and startups commercialising breakthrough science.
Each accepted team receives a A$5K grant, access to an investment pool of up to A$500K, a two-day NSW immersion at Tech23, and pathways to global networks via Greentown Labs.
The program is delivered in partnership with Cicada Innovations and Greentown Labs, and supported by the Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer and Melt Ventures. It runs from 30 July to 8 October 2026.
Open to researchers, startups and innovative SMEs with strong commercial potential. An online discovery session runs on Wednesday, 20 May (12–1pm AWST). Applications close 12 June. Apply or learn more here
Would you like to promote an event or an opportunity? Enquire about a Notice Board promotion by replying to this email.
🧠 KaaS (Knowledge as a Service)
Will’s Pick 💁♂ Data and Defensibility: When does data confer defensibility? by Abraham Thomas
In the AI era, data is the new moat (apparently?) But most thinking about "data moats" is sloppy.
Abraham Thomas argues that every data moat falls into exactly two categories: data control (you alone can access the value) and data loops (a positive feedback cycle between data and business value). Not all data moats are real, and not all real ones are durable.
In this essay, he dives into how data moats are formed, the different uses of data and what a data loop is and how you can strategically use them.
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will