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. 🚀
Sponsor shoutout:
We've been working with We Are Eight as a sponsor, a specialist recruitment agency focused on Startups and Scaleups, supporting founders in hiring the right people for the critical early stages of growth.
This week, we're sharing a piece by Sam Rice, in which he digs into how the Product Manager role is changing in 2026 and the practical steps the best PMs are taking to keep up.
👀 Headlines 👀
🥝 Are New Zealand-founded startups having a better 2026 than Australia? Well, now they’re rolling out the red carpet to Aussie founders.
Supabase, the open-source backend platform co-founded by New Zealand-born CEO Paul Copplestone in 2020 and powering much of the "vibe coding" boom, has raised US$500 million (~A$770 million) at a US$10.5 billion (~A$16.2 billion) valuation, roughly doubling its October mark!!! (CNBC, Supabase Series F Announcement)
The round was led by GIC, with Accel, Y Combinator, Craft, Felicis, Coatue and Stripe participating. Copplestone, who founded the company in 2020, says that, according to his LinkedIn post, Supabase has 10M users. AI coding tools like Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex now generate the majority of databases on the platform, with Claude Code the largest contributor in 2026.
New Zealanders are rolling out the red carpet to attract Aussie founders in light of the proposed CGT changes. DataMasque founder and CEO Grant de Leeuw, featured in the Startup Retro below, says setting up a company in New Zealand is "very, very, very straightforward," citing zero capital gains tax, R&D incentives comparable to Australia's, and strong government support for going global through New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Grant also mentioned the slightly nicer timezone crossover with the US.
🌱 Airtree has launched Frontier, a residency for very early-stage founders in Sydney, offering a $250,000 uncapped SAFE.
James Henderson, GP at Airtree, announced Frontier on LinkedIn. The program runs weekly cohort sessions, infrastructure credits and access to Airtree's network, and welcomes everyone from pre-idea to early prototype.
The program seems pretty flexible, with Fridays in the office being the only fixed schedule.
There’s not much public information on who’s currently participating in the program so far, but it’s already attracted some ex-startup operators, including Alan Nguyen (former PM at Constantiople and Airwallex), Justin Teo (former Eucalyptus operator) and Harry Hamilton, who has PM experience across Lyka, Tracksuit and co-founded Fuzzy, the career accelerator.
🏚️ Property buyer's platform Dashdot has collapsed into voluntary liquidation, with its founder pointing the finger squarely at the government's tax reforms (Capital Brief)
Founder Glenn "Goose" McGrath has made more than 40 staff redundant. In his farewell letter to Dashdot, he cited macro headwinds such as the cost-of-living crisis, rising Meta ad costs following the platform's shift to the Andromedia model, and the proposed changes to negative gearing and CGT. He said clients' borrowing power had fallen 20 to 33%, pushing his target market into "a state of paralysis."
Customers who paid $15,000 to $25,000 in upfront fees fear being left stranded.
According to my research, I can’t find any public references to external investors. According to this SPI article, the founders’ entire 96.58 per cent shareholdings were transferred to the British Virgin Islands-domiciled G Squared Holdings for $100 on 5th February 2024.
🏛️ The CGT fight rolled on, with the government legislating its broader changes first and signalling only narrow relief for startups. (AFR)
The budget's tax changes passed the lower house this week, with targeted carve-outs to be finalised after further consultation.
Atlassian co-founder and Tech Council chairman Scott Farquhar says many expat Australian startup founders have put plans to move back on hold, waiting to see the final budget and CGT rules before deciding.
Farquhar argues that the Albanese government's proposed capital gains tax changes would effectively double the tax rate on startups, discouraging new business creation. He stressed that the country is competing with the US, New Zealand and others for tech talent and capital, and shouldn't make staying in Australia punitive (though he's not pushing to match Singapore's tax rates).
🔍 Blackbird has proposed a legal definition of "startup" to try to resolve one of the CGT campaign's core problems: the lack of an agreed definition of a startup, so we know exactly what would be carved out.
According to Capital Brief, Blackbird put forward that a startup would qualify if it's under 15 years old and meets at least one of: active ESS, successful RDTI claim, ESVCLP/VCLP investment, or ESIC eligibility — plus passes the ESVCLP predominant activity test
All securities (shares, options, SAFEs, convertible notes) held by founders, employees, or investors in qualifying companies would retain the existing 50% CGT discount.
The definition has been shared with industry groups for feedback and has since been revised.
🤝 ASX-listed Scalare Partners has bought startup community Fishburners out of administration, reviving one of Australia's oldest founder brands. (Startup Daily)
Scalare (ASX: SCP), led by CEO Carolyn Breeze, picked up the Fishburners brand, programs, IP and community assets in a cash deal that’s apparently “not material” to the ~$5M market-cap business, roughly three weeks after KPMG was appointed. In the transaction, no employees or liabilities were assumed.
Fishburners collapsed over more than $2 million in unresolved rental debt from the former Sydney Startup Hub.
Scalare said it would “preserve and strengthen” the Fishburners community while bringing members into its existing network of startup services, including Tank Stream Labs, The Founders Union, Planet Startup, Tech Ready Women, InHouse Ventures and the Australian Technologies Competition.
Scalare is also planning a Fishburners Investment Vehicle and a national relaunch of its Pitch Nights.
🌏 Brisbane startup Alloovium and NSW-based GutGutGoose have joined a prestigious US accelerator, the latest name in what The Australian has dubbed a local "tech exodus." (The Australian)
Brisbane construction software startup Alloovium is relocating to San Francisco after winning a place in Y Combinator's latest batch, one of three Australian companies accepted, which comes with US$500,000 (A$700,000) in funding. Gutgutgoose, a company that builds personalised probiotics based on the person's gut microbiome, will also relocate to California for the intensive three-month accelerator.
The AI platform, which automates compliance and reporting paperwork, is already deployed across more than $400m in active construction projects after graduating from Startmate's S26 cohort, and is targeting $1m ARR and 75 partner companies by year's end.
Co-founder Zander Schweitzer says tax policy didn't drive the move, but the exit adds to a growing founder exodus amid Chalmers' proposed CGT overhaul.
If you’re ready to make the bet on expanding to global markets as your next growth lever, you’re probably starting to map out what go-to-market, operations or compliance will look like as you tackle the US or European markets.
This checklist from Vanta is a guide on how to validate demand, build a repeatable GTM engine and meet global compliance requirements early, so you can build trust with customers and unlock new deals from day one.
Use it to spot gaps, reduce risk and nail your expansion to global markets.
⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
QuantX Labs raises a US$5M Seed round to take Australian atomic clocks from the lab to orbit
Founders: Andre Luiten and Martin O’Connor
QuantX Labs, based in Adelaide and specialising in high-precision optical atomic clocks, has secured $5 million USD (A$7 million) from Serendipity Capital, a deep-tech investment firm co-founded by ex-Commonwealth Bank executive Rob Jesudason. This investment grants Serendipity about 15% ownership and signifies QuantX's first significant outside funding after years of self-funding.
Accurate timing is essential for GPS navigation, defence, and power grids, all of which require high precision. Even a microsecond discrepancy can cause costly mistakes. The challenge lies in supply: few companies can develop stable timing technology robust enough for clients such as space agencies or defence departments.
QuantX's atomic clocks operate at optical frequencies rather than microwave frequencies. The company claims its clocks are up to 100 times more stable than current systems, and they are also smaller and more durable, making them suitable for space and field applications, not just labs.
Its main products are CRYO: An ultra-low-phase-noise oscillator (cryogenic sapphire clock) designed for over-the-horizon radar, deep-space tracking, and high-precision timing. Targeted for defence radar programs (including Australia's JORN over-the-horizon radar) and space-tracking. TEMPO: Compact optical atomic clocks offering a next-generation "holdover" solution that maintains network synchronisation when GNSS signals are unavailable, both on land and in space. The TEMPO subsystem reached orbit via SpaceX, marking the first optical frequency comb in space. SENTIO: A small, ultra-high-performance quantum magnetometer capable of detecting underground, undersea, and low-earth-orbit targets. Used by defence and intelligence agencies, for example, to identify covert subterranean activities. SYNCHRO: A precise time and frequency synchroniser for reliable time transfer, synchronisation, and distribution. Suitable for network and critical infrastructure operators needing dependable timing distribution.
QuantX advanced its clocks from concept to prototype and then to commercial sales while bootstrapping. Its customers include SpaceX and the Australian Department of Defence.
The market outlook is positive. Serendipity predicts demand for atomic clocks will reach around $600 million USD by the early 2030s, with QuantX positioned in a small group of credible suppliers.
Due Diligence: The Quantum Insider, AFR
DataMasque secures US$4M to unlock sensitive enterprise data for AI
Founders: Grant de Leeuw, Greg Daniel, and Aimee Lin
Every enterprise AI project eventually hits the same wall: the most valuable training data is also the most dangerous to touch. For banks, insurers, telcos, and government agencies, feeding sensitive customer records into AI systems risks regulatory exposure and catastrophic breaches — so the data sits idle.
DataMasque, an Auckland-based sensitive data discovery and masking platform, has raised US$4 million (approximately AU$6.2 million) in a round led by Wavemaker Partners' early-stage fund, with OIF Ventures and Icehouse Ventures both doubling down on the company's 2023 seed round.
DataMasque's platform allows organisations to generate synthetically identical versions of their most sensitive data — customer records, call transcripts, financial logs — that retain full fidelity and integrity for AI training, testing, and analytics, without the underlying personal information ever leaving the organisation's own infrastructure.
Alongside the raise, DataMasque has launched what it calls a first-of-its-kind capability for unstructured data: emails, call transcripts, and system logs that represent the vast majority of enterprise data but have historically been too privacy-sensitive to activate. The unified platform now connects both structured and unstructured data pipelines, opening a new category of AI-ready data for regulated industries.
Since the 2023 seed round, headcount has tripled, ARR has grown 6x, and the customer roster now includes New York Life, ADP, Best Western Hotels and Resorts, One NZ, and TAL, as well as government agencies across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.
According to Wavemaker's Paul Santos, DataMasque customers have reduced traditional data masking workflows from days to hours, a claimed 7x speed improvement, enabling enterprises in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), government, and telecommunications to unblock AI projects that were previously stalled on data access grounds.
Due Diligence: Press Release
Oscorp Energy raises $1.3M to stop lithium-ion batteries from setting the recycling industry on fire
Founder: Ani Goswami
Every misplaced lithium-ion battery is a small bomb moving through the waste system. An Australian Council of Recycling study estimates there are between 10,000 and 12,000 battery-related fires in Australian waste and recycling streams every year, igniting in trucks, material recovery facilities and sorting sites.
Oscorp Energy, a Sydney startup building AI-powered vision and robotics for the waste industry, has raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding led by Antler. Chief executive Ani Goswami co-founded the company during Antler's Australian residency, and the firm followed on at the pre-seed round.
Oscorp's systems identify, classify, and remove materials from fast-moving waste streams in real time, with its initial focus on the sector's most urgent safety problem: detecting and removing lithium-ion batteries before they trigger a fire. Founded in 2024, the company is targeting an industry that has been slow to automate but is now facing rising insurance costs and regulatory pressure as battery fires multiply.
The broader vision is an intelligence layer for waste facilities, giving operators real-time visibility across material flow, contamination, recovery losses and operational performance across multiple lines and sites. Batteries are the starting point; the same layer is meant to extend to plastics, contamination and overall material recovery. For: waste-facility operators wanting line-level analytics and, over time, more autonomous sorting.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
Nitrosend mails in a $700K Seed round to build an AI-powered email marketing platform
Founder: Edward and George Hartley
Nitrosend, an Adelaide AI-native email marketing platform built by brothers Edward and George Hartley — their second email startup after SmartrMail (one of Shopify's top-rated marketing automation tools, ~6 billion emails sent, acquired by Relay Commerce in 2022). The product is essentially one platform with a conversational, AI-first interface rather than the usual drag-and-drop editor.
The raise was led by Eastend Ventures Fund 1, with Archangel Ventures and Aussie Angels.
The platform is fundamentally AI-first, so it features an AI campaign builder, automated workflows, and deep integrations with LLMs.
For campaign building, instead of dragging blocks around a template editor, users describe in plain language what they want a campaign to do, and Nitrosend writes, designs and sends it, then reports back on what worked.
The same conversational approach handles the recurring marketing plumbing: welcome email sequences, abandoned-cart flows, customer segmentation and similar tasks that traditionally needed a marketer or agency to set up. Users also don’t need to use the platform itself; they can drive campaigns from inside the AI tools they already use rather than logging into a separate app.
Nitrosend is targeting small and mid-sized businesses and early-stage startups who'd otherwise need a marketing person or agency — replacing the template-editor workflow with "describe it, and it ships."
Early traction includes 190 users since April, including startups Elita Genetics and Fast Lane. SmartrMail CTO Kam Low is joining the founding team.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
Nardo raises $1M to bring grassroots clubs into the modern era of swag and apparel
Founders: Beau Catley, Rhys Adams and Adam Famularo
Kitting out an amateur sports team is a deceptively broken process: fragmented suppliers, opaque pricing and a manual back-and-forth that can run to more than 130 separate touchpoints before a single jersey lands. Nardo, a Sydney software startup taking aim at that mess, has raised A$1 million in pre-seed funding, with former Socceroo Tim Cahill among the backers and signed on as a strategic partner for its offshore push.
Professional clubs have had world-class branding, systems and operational support for years. Grassroots clubs have had email chains. Nardo founder Beau Catley — also a co-founder of streetwear label Geedup Co — stumbled onto the gap in 2023 when a local club asked him for help and he realised how tangled the supply chain behind a simple team kit really was.
Catley worked directly with grassroots and semi-professional soccer and rugby league clubs to map the full journey, design, sampling, production, delivery, and then teamed up with cofounders Rhys Adams and Adam Famularo to turn it into a scalable platform.
Clubs can design custom apparel ranges, build digital lookbooks and order collections, pull live pricing and quotes, manage approvals and sampling, and track production and delivery in real time.
Due Diligence: Notice, SoccerScene
We've been working with We Are Eight as a sponsor, a specialist tech recruitment agency supporting founders to hire senior product, engineering and GTM talent.
This week, we're sharing a piece from Sam Rice, where he digs into how the Product Manager role is changing in 2026, and the practical things the best PMs are doing to keep up.
Drawing on what he's seeing work with the best startups in Australia, Sam lays out four concrete moves any PM can make this week to level up. Automate the boring work. Ship demos instead of memos. Learn to build evals. And sharpen your taste through reps until your judgement is the thing people trust.
Worth a read if you're a PM trying to stay sharp, or a founder thinking about who to hire into your product team next. Got any questions? Book a chat with Sam.
🤝 M&A 🤝
🤝 Perx Health has split itself in two, selling its US arm to Clutch and merging its Australian business into Navigator Group. (EIN Presswire)
In 2021, Perx Health secured a $3M seed round led by AirTree Ventures and backed by Brandon Capital.
Clutch, an AI-powered customer engagement and loyalty platform, folded Perx USA into its dedicated Clutch Health arm, marking Clutch's second healthcare acquisition.
Perx Australia merged with Navigator Group, a clinical-recovery provider in personal injury and workers' compensation.
🤙 Aether, a New Zealand–based AI-powered SaaS platform for marketing presentations, has been acquired by Ideally. (Founder Post)
Founded in 2025 by Carsten Grueber and Ursula von Keisenberg, Aether helps marketing, insights, and communications teams create on-brand presentations and documents by integrating both structured and unstructured data into live workflows, cutting manual updates and institutional knowledge loss.
Aether had raised NZ$3.8M (A$3.4M) in Seed funding led by Icehouse Ventures with support from Brand Fund 2.
🚀 Wins 🚀
🎓 NZ edtech Kai's Education has struck a US distribution deal with the American Printing House for the Blind for its tactile coding robot. (Caffeine Daily)
The deal puts its KaiBot coding robot in front of more than 600,000 blind and low-vision students across the US, extending hands-on STEM learning to a group usually locked out of screen-based coding.
🧑⚕ ANDHealth's ANDHealth+ funding and acceleration program saw a record 65% increase in applications compared with the previous four cohorts, making it the most competitive round in its 9-year history.
Australia's digital and connected health sector is projected to surpass A$45 billion by 2033, but ANDHealth's new FY2026 data reveals a widening gap between rising funding demand and shrinking funding availability.
92% of digital and connected health SMEs plan to raise growth capital in the next 12 months, and 90% want to expand geographically (up sharply from 49% in FY2023).
90 startups competed for a share of up to $9 million, ultimately awarded to the following companies to Australis Scientific (NSW), Corcillum (SA), Earflo (WA), Kraken Coding (NSW, founded in NT), and More Good Days (VIC).
⚡️ Amber Electric has secured a $13.6 million ARENA grant to scale Australia's largest residential vehicle-to-grid trial from 50 homes to 1,000. (Startup Daily, The Driven)
The grant lifts total government backing for the project to $16.8 million and also doubles Amber's smart-charging trial from 950 to 2,000 households.
The plan turns customers' EVs into grid batteries; manufacturing partners BYD and StarCharge are on board, with BYD warranting participating vehicles.
The original 50-home trial drew more than 6,000 expressions of interest; Amber is targeting a commercial V2G product launch this year.
🧠 Build Club has launched Campus, a free virtual AI school where anyone can learn, build and get certified for AI skills. (Startup Daily)
🙏 Startup Muster has been saved for 2026. Australia's annual startup health-check survey, founded by Murray Hurps in 2013, will continue after more than 22 organisations, including 10 universities and the federal government, stepped in with funding. (Startup Daily)
Hurps had announced at Southstart that he couldn't secure money to keep it going.
Supporters include the City of Sydney, Stone & Chalk, Canberra Innovation Network, 1000 Women in AI, Pledge 1%, CareSuper, ANU, Charles Darwin University, ARENA, NAIC, IP Australia and DISR. Entrepreneurship program leaders at 21 universities co-signed a statement (led by QUT's Prof. Rowena Barrett) urging support.
Suggested survey questions can be emailed to [email protected] by June 15. State-based coordinators will again ensure national representation. The survey runs across July and August, with a free national report published in November 2026 and deeper free reports to follow.
📆 Notice Board 📆
🗺 The Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP), run through the University of Melbourne's entrepreneurial ecosystem, is now taking applications for its 2026 cohort.
Founders get $20,000 in equity-free funding, weekly workshops and coaching, a dedicated workspace at Melbourne Connect, a Claude team account for the duration of the program, and access to Entrepreneurs in Residence, mentors, and the wider MEC ecosystem. You must be affiliated with the University of Melbourne, building social impact ventures, or a team tackling challenges connected to the climate crisis. Applications close on 14 June. Apply now
🛠️ Blackbird has opened its Foundry Fellowship, a remote program for technical builders weighing up whether to start a company.
It is aimed at engineers, mathematicians, researchers, and technical operators across Australia and New Zealand who are interested in startups and frontier tech. Nominations and EOI’s can be made here.
🏛️ The NSW Government has selected the University of Newcastle's Integrated Innovation Network (I2N) to run its new $4 million Diversity Pre-Accelerator Program, expanding I2N's existing FLIP program statewide. (NSW Government)
The 16-week program will support up to 188 female founders across NSW over two years, with applications opening in June 2026, and no affiliation with the University is required to apply. Apply here!
❤🩹 NSW Health is offering grants of $500,000 to $5,000,000 to help take local medical device innovation to market. The fund supports companies, hospitals, research institutes, universities and individuals developing cost-effective medical devices that improve patient outcomes.
The funding is for device development and prototyping, clinical assessment, manufacturing trial samples, market and product assessment, IP management, commercialisation and capital raising. Preliminary applications close 9 June 2026, 5:00 pm, apply 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: The sound of Heidi by Massive Music (case study, but it’s actually interesting)
I’m currently reading a book on video game design, and they’re obsessed with the idea of flow, where a user loses track of the real world around them and is deeply focused on the game. One element they cite is a good soundtrack and sound elements that build the world and keep you in flow. That got me thinking that it’s very rare to use software in a b2b setting that has any sound associated with it.
That’s why I loved reading about the recent Heidi sonic branding and how they aimed to build a coherent sound that would work across product, marketing, and clinical environments.
Massive Music aimed to deliver a sonic identity that gives Heidi a consistent presence for patients, clinicians, and practices alike, building recognition at every touchpoint while staying true to the best clinician-feeling at its core.
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will