Venture Capital Investment in Australia FY2004 to FY2019

The Department of Industry Science Energy and Resources recently put out the latest edition of the Venture Capital Dashboard tracking the sector going back as far as 2004.  This is compiled based on data that venture funds who are part of two government programs are required to report to the Department.  Here at Techboard we were interested to see how our data capture compared to what was reported to the Department (who by the way was Techboard's first data customer) and thought you might be too.

The Venture Capital Dashboard is definitely well worth a look if you are interested to see how the industry has developed over the years. 

Here at Techboard we were interested to see how our da ta capture compared. So on the second page of the dashboard document you can see that the total reported amount invested by Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships (ESVCLPs) in 2018/19 was $299.88m and the amount invested by Venture Capital Limited Partnerships (VCLPs) was $797.56m, totalling $1,097.44.  We compared that total to Techboard's  data capture for the 2018/19 FY and were surprised to the that over the same period Techboard captured $2.273b of private investment going to Aussie startup and young tech.

Now Techboard has to date been bundling all private investment together, not differentiating between the source of investment (but we have been capturing the identity of the investors where this has been revealed. So the amount of $2.273b includes investment from Venture Capital funds (both VCLPs and ESVCLPs), corporates, family offices and angel investors. This means that at this stage we don't know how much of the ESVCLP and VCLP investment we captured but it would be fair to say that our data highlights the significance of non-VC funding in the context of the whole funding environment for startups and young tech companies in Australia. This is something we will be working on.

If you add in investment via the ASX via placements and IPOs of $1.347b and investment from other sources such as ICO and crowd funding and accelerators you get to $3.733b and you get to $6.872 if you consider grants, acquisitions and debt financing... more than 6 times the funding from VC alone.

Techboard published its annual report for 2018/19 back in October 2019. That report is available for free download via the links below. We also have recently published our report for the December quarter 2019 which also includes an analysis of calendar year 2019 compared to 2018 also available below.

WE NEED YOUR HELP

Techboard collects this funding data in three ways, via algorithmic collection, manual research and direct reports received from companies and investors. While Techboard endeavours to be as comprehensive as possible in its collection activities there will be published funding events that we miss. 

Our Data helps to fuel the growth of the Startup and Tech Ecosystem in Australia, informs the work of groups like StartupAus as well as governments around the country. Our data is also available to investors.

Please report your funding events to us to help our data be as comprehensive as possible.