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

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

Cheryl’s links:

• Cheryl’s LinkedIn
• Aussie Angels
• The Pillars
• 361 Angel Club
• First Cheque Podcast

People mentioned:

• Mike Cannon-Brookes
• Matt Barrie
• Rod Drury
• James Harrisson
• Thomas Worden
• Adrian Osman
• Cliff Obrecht
• Melanie Perkins
• Alexandra Lewis

Companies mentioned:

• StartCon
• The Startup Network (formally Startup Victoria)
• Freelancer
• Xero
• Airtree
• Blackbird
• Playbook Ventures
• AWS
• Cut Through Venture
• me&u (formally Mr Yum)

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here