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. 🚀
👀 Headlines 👀
🏛️ Australian founders and VCs have come out hard against proposed changes to the capital gains tax discount, with industry voices calling the shift "catastrophic" for early-stage capital formation ahead of next week's federal budget. (AFR)
The proposal would swap the 50% CGT discount for a return to the pre-1999 inflation-indexation model, but experts note this offers founders and employees little protection, given that startup equity typically carries a cost base close to zero.
VC fund managers would also be hit: general partners at funds including Airtree, Blackbird, and Square Peg, and at any other fund, stand to lose the CGT discount on carried interest, which is currently taxed entirely as a capital gain with a minimal cost base to index.
Looking internationally, the US and UK both cap CGT at roughly 24%, while the proposed Australian rate could reach 47% for founders and employees on tech salaries, prompting warnings of founder flight to lower-taxing jurisdictions. E.g. if you’re the ambitious person taking a bunch of risks for an outsized return, you may as well head to the US, UK or other countries where your upside isn’t taxed nearly as much.
The human cost is already being calculated: Realbase co-founder Jacques Greeff said his tax bill on the $180 million Domain sale of his startup would have doubled from $6.2 million to more than $12 million under the new regime. Leigh Jasper, who sold Aconex to Oracle for $1.6 billion and has since founded Firmable and Glitch Capital, said the change would be a "disaster" for VC-backed companies and that he would have built Aconex outside Australia had the regime been in place at the time.
Paul Bassat (Square Peg/SEEK co-founder) and SafetyCulture CEO Luke Anear are among those calling for a startup-and-employee share scheme carve-out if the broader change proceeds. Treasurer Chalmers has gestured at "transitional" arrangements for existing assets but has not confirmed an exemption, which is probably causing a few founders and GPs to sweat. 😅
🏛️ Fishburners, one of Australia's oldest startup co-working communities, has entered voluntary administration, but will continue to trade, with KPMG appointed to oversee a restructuring and accelerated sale process. (AFR)
The collapse follows unresolved rental debt accumulated during the state-led Sydney Startup Hub program, compounded by ongoing operating losses. The board says formal administration is the most viable path to keeping the organisation alive for its founders.
KPMG partners Gayle Dickerson and Phil Quinlan will run an expressions-of-interest process targeting buyers in the innovation and tech sectors. Fishburners will continue to trade in the interim. You can check out the ASIC documentation here.
Founded in 2011, Fishburners has hosted more than 35,000 entrepreneurs over its 15-year run. Alumni include Koala, Mad Paws and Car Next Door.
It’s interesting to speculate on who could be a strategic buyer for the entity. Some of the larger venture funds could be interested at the right price; however, Blackbird already has deep ecosystem roots with Startmate, Giants and Foundary. Airtree have space in the new Stone and Chalk coworking space. It’d be a coop, but Stone and Chalk could absorb the membership into their own model. Otherwise, I’d wager Scalare Partners could be interested, having already acquired Tank Stream Labs, but that may also be why they’re not interested in this opportunity.
📔 Victoria's 2026-27 budget confirmed the merger of LaunchVic and Breakthrough Victoria into a new body… but offered almost no detail on what comes next. (Startup Daily)
The successor organisation is listed in budget papers only as "New Co" in a footnote under the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions, with no specific funding commitment attached. LaunchVic's last budget allocation was $37.2 million over four years in 2024-25; the new entity is expected to launch at a lower funding base.
New Co is on track to go live in the second half of 2026 with a chair, board and CEO in place. Until then, LaunchVic and Breakthrough Victoria continue operating as usual.
Elsewhere in the budget, Victoria committed $14 million to an AI investment package… including $8.2 million for a career conversion program aimed at workers displaced by AI, and $30 million for a Digital, AI and Technology TAFE Centre of Excellence at Chisholm Institute in Frankston.
⚖️ Canva has been hit with $792,000 in ASIC fines for lodging its FY24 financial statements 11 months late. (Startup Daily)
The fine arrives in the same fortnight as longtime CTO Brendan Humphreys announced his departure (covered last week) and as Canva continues a deep operational restructure focused on AI-first product delivery.
Let’s be honest, though, the fine is less than a speeding ticket for a $4 billion ARR business, which likely delayed submitting the ASIC financials to stop competitors from seeing under the hood.
🗣️ ElevenLabs has opened a Sydney office, marking the USD $11 billion AI voice startup's first ANZ presence. (Capital Brief)
The company has appointed former Slack regional VP Damian Naughton as general manager for the region, with local enterprise customers already including Australia Post, Xero, Employment Hero and Heidi. The Sydney office is positioned as a regional hub for ANZ, citing strong customer demand from local enterprises adopting voice AI.
ElevenLabs has surpassed USD $500 million in annual recurring revenue, following a USD $500 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital earlier this year, which valued the company at USD $11 billion. Its fastest-growing product is now its agentic conversational platform, not its underlying voice models.
💰 Legora, the Stockholm legal AI platform, has acquired Melbourne RegTech Graceview as Legora takes fresh cash from Airtree (announced last week) and continues its drive into Australia with AFL sponsorship.
Melbourne-based regulatory monitoring startup Graceview has been acquired by Legora, a legal AI platform founded in Stockholm and valued at USD 5.6 billion ($8.8 billion AUD). This acquisition follows Graceview's recent Series D extension, which raised USD 50 million ($79 million AUD).
The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Prior to this, Graceview had raised $1.5 million in a seed round in August 2024, led by Singapore-based entrepreneur Patrick Linton and including Brisbane-based Black Sheep Capital.
Full write-up in the M&A section below!
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⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
Enaxiom secures $2.5M Seed to cut data centre water and energy waste
Founders: Bijan Rahimi and Tia Collings
Data centres rely on vast quantities of water to manage heat, and as compute demands scale, water consumption is becoming as constrained a resource as energy.
Sydney-based climate tech startup Enaxiom, founded in 2023 by Bijan Rahimi and Tia Collings, has raised $2.5 million AUD ($1.8 million USD) in Seed funding to address it. The round was led by Singapore-based all-female investment collective Epic Angels, with participation from BlackNova and Antler. Total funding to date sits at $3.7 million AUD ($2.7 million USD).
Enaxiom's product, Hydrocool, targets heat rejection, the stage of data centre cooling that handles waste heat once it has been transferred away from hardware. The patented system, developed over a decade of research, is designed to sit alongside modern liquid cooling approaches, including direct-to-chip and immersion cooling. It runs on non-potable water, including wastewater streams, and is engineered to recover high-quality water as a by-product. A 40kW pilot system has demonstrated proof of concept.
Proceeds will fund commercial deployment of Hydrocool, headcount growth, and accelerated expansion into the United States. CEO Tia Collings argues that as AI infrastructure scales, the real constraint is shifting from compute to energy and water.
For lead investor Epic Angels, the thesis goes beyond the technology. Founding partner Maaike Doyer noted that Enaxiom had "flipped the problem" by treating water recovery as a design goal rather than an afterthought, and pointed to Collings as the kind of female founder in deep tech the fund was built to back.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
ReadySteadyPlug lands $1.51M in grant funding to roll out apartment charging network
Founder: Jukka Sintonen
ReadySteadyPlug, a Sydney-based EV charging startup, has secured $1.51 million in grant funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to accelerate the rollout of its apartment-focused charging network. The funding forms part of a broader $3.49 million project to install up to 428 EV charge points across Australian strata and apartment complexes.
Apartment-dwellers have largely been locked out of at-home EV charging by two structural barriers: the upfront cost of installing charging infrastructure and the electrical complexity of retrofitting shared buildings. Owners' Corporations have had little incentive to foot the bill, particularly for residents who don't own an EV.
ReadySteadyPlug's Charging-as-a-Service model sidesteps both problems. Rather than requiring dedicated hardware installation, the platform enables Level 1 charging via standard power outlets, with smartphone access control, cloud-based metering, and automated billing. Dynamic load management keeps the building's overall electricity supply stable. Residents who use the service pay for what they consume; those who don't pay for anything.
The economics work at the building level, too — Owners Corporations are reimbursed quarterly for electricity used. With the average Australian driving around 30km per day, a 10-hour overnight Level 1 charge can deliver up to 200km of range.
Founded in 2024, ReadySteadyPlug is targeting a structural gap in Australia's EV infrastructure, with 4.2 million Australians living in strata buildings.
Due Diligence: AZO CleanTech
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🤝 M&A 🤝
🤝 Melbourne regtech Graceview acquired by Stockholm legal AI platform Legora (Artificial Lawyer)
While the terms were not disclosed, Graceview had previously raised $1.5 million in a seed round in August 2024, led by Singapore-based entrepreneur Patrick Linton with participation from Brisbane's Black Sheep Capital.
Founded in 2023 (as Gracenote) by Simon Quirk, Jules Ioannidis and Dan Hunter, Graceview monitors tens of thousands of regulatory sources across 100-plus jurisdictions in real time via a proprietary global regulatory taxonomy
The deal integrates Graceview's regulatory change tracking directly into Legora's workflow, giving Australian law firm clients, including MinterEllison, Allens, Herbert Smith Freehills and K&L Gates Australia, the ability to identify affected clients without leaving the platform
Legora's Series D backers include Atlassian, NVIDIA's NVentures and Australian VC firm Airtree; the company plans to double its Australian headcount within three months of the deal closing
🤝 The Leibovich brothers, who founded Catch.com.au, have acquired Click Frenzy out of administration. (Startup Daily)
The deal continues a pattern of the Leibovich brothers acquiring Australian e-commerce assets at distressed valuations and rebuilding them within their broader retail group.
💆 Australian wellness franchise group Endota has been put on the block by Canterbury Partners, with the business reportedly carrying a $200 million-plus price tag. (AFR)
Canterbury Partners has been appointed to run a sale process for Endota Group, a national network of 110 spas turning over $213 million in annual revenue and earnings approaching $20 million
Founded in 2000 by Melanie Gleeson (then 26) on the Mornington Peninsula, Gleeson remains the largest shareholder and may stay on under new ownership
Business is structured across seven revenue pillars: spa treatments ($100m), skincare retail ($30m), gift cards ($75m across 500,000 units in FY25), e-commerce ($30m), 500-plus corporate partnerships, a therapist training college, and a digital subscriptions platform
Other major shareholders include directors Peter Bourne, Brian Singer, Craig Mathieson and Alan Green.
👀 People Moves 👀
🧠 Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has joined PsiQuantum's board, where he was already an early investor and adviser. (Capital Brief)
The government-backed Australian quantum company is targeting a fault-tolerant quantum computer in Brisbane by the end of 2027.
🚀 Wins 🚀
🏆 Repeat Builders has launched in Sydney's Tech Central. The venture builder pre-funds startups with $3 million, an embedded HQ team, and no fundraising required from founders.
Founded by former quant trader and Zenify founder Andonis Sakatis, the model validates ideas before recruiting a founding team, who start with 30% equity and two years of runway covering salaries, tech, growth and marketing.
Sakatis describes it as inverting the traditional VC model by targeting the gap between a working MVP and a sustainable business, which he argues is "where most startups fail." Repeat Builders has set a target of launching five ventures in its first year. (Startup Daily)
📆 Notice Board 📆
🎓 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 💁♂ We're all founders now: The Founder Industrial Complex
The word "founder" has undergone identity inflation: what was once a descriptor for someone solving a specific problem has become a personal brand, a title, and a content strategy - accelerated by cheap AI tooling that's made it easier than ever to ship a working prototype in a weekend
I’ve found this article a really interesting read, since it picked up something I’ve noticed (and been guilty of). Everyone these days is a founder!
The author argues that fear is a major driver: when every headline tells a 20-year-old their career may not exist by 2028, "become a founder" starts to look like a rational hedge, but that fear-driven urgency tends to produce exactly the kind of directionless, hype-optimised company that won't survive.
I’d go one step further and say when you have a generation of young people who feel priced out of ever owning a home, who have been raised in a media world that loves sharing stories of individuals building huge companies and wealth, people start looking for the alternative path to wealth creation.
The counterpoint: the tools themselves aren't the problem. As the piece's sources argue, the survivors, and people who actually make it, will likely be the people who never cared about the title. In other words, those who built real trust, genuine community, and something people actually need.
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will