This chapter chronicles the speaker's journey from Canada to Australia and their pivotal role in the local startup ecosystem. It details their experiences founding 'StartCon', overcoming challenges as a female angel investor, and launching Aussie Angels to enhance early-stage investing opportunities. The discussion also covers their insights into navigating the evolving landscape of startups while emphasizing the importance of storytelling and community engagement.
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Transcript
Episode notes
My guest for Ep201 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Cheryl Mack.
Cheryl started her journey launching and growing Startcon, which was Australia’s largest startup conference at the time.
She’s now involved with a number of different projects including The Pillars, 361 Angel Club and the First Cheque Podcast but she is best known as the Co-founder & CEO of Aussie Angels.
Aussie Angels is a platform that manages the backend infrastructure of investments, allowing angel investors to invest in startups via syndicates. To date, over 1,700 angels have invested $23M through their platform.
In this interview we covered a range of topics including:
The importance of brand, marketing and storytelling
How to get started with angel investing
What founders should look for when adding angel investors to their cap table
What investors really mean when they say they look for “good” founders, markets and investment opportunities
& much more!
Timestamps:
1:43 Cheryl’s background
3:54 Growing up in Canada and moving to Australia
8:25 Building StartCon, Australia’s biggest startup conference in Australia at the time
14:31 Choosing themes/sectors as an Angel Investor
20:49 What Cheryl looks for when personally investing in companies
29:26 Learnings from early mistakes as a new Angel Investor
35:41 Advice for new Angel Investors
38:00 Benefits of joining a syndicate
47:43 How founders should think about taking money from angel investors
54:06 Signals investors should look for when deciding whether to invest
1:00:44 Challenges and benefits of working with your partner, balancing family life
1:10:13 Redistributing wasted toys
Our partners:
A big thank you to Tom Worden and Alexandra Lewis for their help with this interview!
Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:
Scendar
Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com
Vanta
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