Ecosystem Profile: Jelix VC
Andrea Gardiner, Australia
What Does Your Organisation Do?
“Jelix Ventures is a venture capital firm, based in Sydney. We invest in early stage technology companies, backing daring founders to make the world better. With over $50 million in funds under management, we’ve invested in over 45 companies that have collectively raised hundreds of millions in further capital.
Jelix is sector agnostic, and we invest broadly, however, we take a special interest in:
Deep or frontier tech - world changing solutions at the frontiers of science.
AI - empowering people to do more and achieve things at a pace and scale never before possible.
Climate change & sustainability - these technologies will transform our world. The scale of the problems, and the potential opportunity for solutions, is vast.
Software tools & development - relating to proprietary operational systems or, leveraging proprietary data unable to be scraped by AI.”
What Is Your Origin Story?
“In 2003, Ian Gardiner co-founded Innovation Bay (IB) to provide educational and networking opportunities for technology startup founders like himself in Sydney. Later, Innovation Bay organised regular angel investment pitch dinner events. (IB has since evolved into managing startup community groups of investors and of founders).
In 2015, I led a syndicated investment into StorReduce after it pitched at an IB event. It was rapidly oversubscribed. So, I founded Jelix Ventures to provide a way for investors to access highly vetted investment opportunities in early-stage startups with confidence.
Since then, Jelix has invested over $45m into 45 startups, over a 100+ investment rounds, through both syndicated co-investments and the Jelix $30m fund. Jelix plans to start raising another, larger fund later this year.”
What Are You Celebrating Now?
“The recent exit of Jelix portfolio company Clipboard. We were proud to be first round investors and so returned over 9X to our syndicated co-investors and circa 4.5X to the fund.
After investing early, in the very young founders who had recently graduated, and supporting them on the roller coaster of growing their startup, it was immensely exciting to be part of a great outcome for them and our Jelix investors.
We are particularly proud because so few Australian venture funds have returned capital to their investors in this wave of VC funds, and we will do this in the next couple of weeks.”
What Is One Lesson You Wish You Learned Earlier?
“I will give you three...
Back myself and my judgement with strong conviction.
Be more assertive with green founders making the potentially fatal rookie error of hunting big whale sized customers at the expense of developing the less sexy, bread and butter lifeblood revenue that can keep them alive until they land the whale.
Great tech founders who ‘don’t know what they don’t know’, and continue to spend investors’ capital on further tech development at the expense of building the commercialisation team. Revenue is paramount; it is the lifeblood of all companies, and it keeps startups alive to grow and thrive and diminishes reliance on the increasing uncertainty of obtaining further capital investment.”
How Do You Keep Your Energy Up On Tough Days?
“That is easy. I love what I do. This is the best job I have ever had.
It is a genuine privilege to back extraordinary founders to make the world better and provide fuel for the economic growth of Australia and New Zealand, as our portfolio companies grow and create jobs.
I learn from them every day and I never get bored making my way up the learning curve of different technologies and different sectors.”
Learn More
Who: Q&A with Andrea Gardiner of Jelix VC
HQ: Australia
Web: www.jelix.vc
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