But it has also left the sector reliant on the flow of money from a handful of players. This has made the chief investment officers of those funds major players in the local venture capital scene, negotiating co-investments into high-profile rounds and extracting special side-car fund treatments. “Before super money arrived, it was a very miserable scene,” Bassat adds. His funds, launched in 2012, have been backed by Hostplus and AustralianSuper money since 2015.
“The venture industry is unquestionably reliant on superannuation,” Paul Bassat, founder of Square Peg Capital, says. Sicilia’s Hostplus had just backed a new fund at Bassat’s Square Peg.
#Iconiq ventures driver
The slow-moving, long-term returns world of retirement investments is not the most obvious source of capital for a sector where valuations skyrocket and quickly fade away, and where money moves fast to the next big thing.īut over the past 10 years, super funds have become the single most important driver of venture capital growth, particularly for the highest-profile funds, Blackbird, AirTree Ventures and Square Peg Capital, which are majority-backed by the likes of Hostplus, Aware and AustralianSuper. Those, it turned out, were some of the biggest names in industry superannuation: Hostplus and Aware Super. Those investors, both from the United States, took a small stake from Blackbird Ventures – allowing Australia’s largest venture capital fund to pay back some of its backers. On Tuesday, Canva found new investors – ICONIQ Capital and Coatue Management – as it pondered following Atlassian to a New York float.
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