Community VC Yearly Roundup 2023

8 December 2023

Author

jock fairweather
December 07, 2023

Hello folks!

Welcome to the final edition of the Community VC Newsletter for 2023 🚀 

Firstly, Thank you!!

It’s taken me 17 years of trial and error to find the exact matrix that matches what I am good at, bad at, love doing, and hate doing.

If I listed it all out (and it's a long 'bad at' list), you’d see that there is no better fit for an endeavour than what Community VC is for me, and importantly, for our close-knit community working on it.

We're building a process, community, and brand that enables more deserving companies to be funded, more people to learn about venture investing, and allows contributors to add value and gain upside without feeling compelled to invest all their hard-earned savings.

It’s not special - it’s obvious, and that’s the best bit.

We’re creating a structure and a community engagement ecosystem that enables a flywheel of insights and support with long-term alignment, where everyone gets out what they put in.

It’s about helping people do what they do best at scale, save time, increase learning, expand their high-value network, and most importantly, giving founders a platform to engage with feedback and build momentum early in their capital strategies.

To the founders who’ve endured our manual, hacky process, our disorganised moments, and accidental microphone cut-outs - thank you for engaging, answering the myriad DD questions, and sharing your company's information and endeavours openly, so that we all can learn and be inspired.

For all the companies in the pipeline we haven’t yet reached - you are still in our line of sight and remain visible in the stack rank across our community. Just because we can’t attribute direct value to you right now, doesn't mean we won’t one day. Unfortunately, as we do this on the side, our time is finite.

To the contributors who heeded our calendar reminders to complete your stack ranks and provided insanely valuable inputs and insights into the process, all for free - thank you!

And to everyone else watching, learning, and sharing - we promise to continue creating ways for you to get involved and to improve our content to make it as valuable and accessible as possible.

Next year, we plan on:

  1. Reducing the time needed to get your DD fix even further.

  2. Increasing the ease of contributing to the deals and being rewarded for doing so.

  3. Improving the quality of the deals by filtering them throughout the entire ecosystem.

  4. Ensuring that your interests, questions, and comments are easily delivered, captured, and responded to.

So, that's it for this year. The team is taking a break to work on the four points above, and we’ll be back in action in mid-January to continue our mission of building an educational platform that offers insights and access into live retail and syndicated ventures.

Enjoy this final edition where we look back at our year and some of the achievements, insights, and success stories from our community 🌟

Get ready for an even bigger 2024!

🔍 Reflecting on Community Insights

Over the past few months, we’ve been actively polling our community members to understand their interests in various companies and their grasp of angel investing.

Here’s what we learnt:

  • Top Venture Picks: Xailient, Ordr, and Sonnant emerged as the top community picks for our due diligence process.

  • Participation vs. Recognition: Many of our members are here for the love of the game, focusing on due diligence out of genuine interest in the ventures rather than just carry perks. And for those with an eye on recognition like capital raising fees or carry, we've got some cool updates coming next year!

  • Our Community Segments:

    • Investors: They're the go-getters, actively hunting and investing in deals, and diving into due diligence themselves. Their goal? To spread the due diligence load, spark more interest in their deals, and encourage community engagement to promote their ventures.

      Contributors: Eager about venture and early-stage investing, our contributors are keen to lend their knowledge to due diligence on ventures that resonate with their interests or experience. They’re looking for access to vetted deals, recognition, efficient engagement, and networking in the venture community.

  • DD Preferences: We've discovered that our community prefers a maximum of two Community DD Memos monthly (that take no longer than an hour to consume). So….we've crafted them to be more concise and comprehensive going forward. This will mean our members can get thorough due diligence on a venture in under 45 minutes.

🌟 Shaping Our Community with Your Input

Thanks to your feedback, we’re going to continue rolling out:

  • Crystal-clear transparency in our pipeline and due diligence.

  • More chances to invest and contribute to quality private deals.

  • Real talk on venture investments and raising capital.

  • Fair play in pay for everyone involved.

  • Content that's easy to get and fun to read.

Don’t miss out on being part of our community in 2024 - sign up here.

🚀 Our Community Due Diligence in Review

This year has been huge for the CVC community! We've reviewed over a thousand opportunities, leveraging our Stackrank table for effective comparison.

🌟 Contributor Spotlight:

  • Xailient: Jordan Duffy contributed his expertise in hardware, AI, and defence.

  • Ordr: Elliot Heitman went deep into market size research.

  • Grow it Local: Jess Pattison brought us on the journey of what the future potential for food monitoring looked like.

  • Sonnant: Chris Johnson outlined exactly the workflow that Sonnant fixes in the customer journey.

✨ Key Highlights of the Year:

🏆 Success Stories to Celebrate:

  • Quantflo and Downsizer both 3-6x their pre-seed vals.

  • Ordr successfully secured their $5M USD lead investor.

đź’ˇ The Impact We've Made:

  • Ordr: Our Community DD Memo received 4562 reads, leading to 30 expressions of interest from High-Net-Worth individuals.

  • Grow it Local: Achieved 1834 reads on our Community DD Memo, with $231,000 in attributable retail investments.

  • Sonnant is still under review but sitting at 1405 reads and $150k invested.

  • And we’re finalising Xailient Inc. this week

(No phone calls or anything old school. Just digital deal collaboration!)

🚀 Opportunities to Invest:

We’re psyched to announce we’ve also secured two $250k allocations in both Xailient and Foodini. For these deals, we've set a 6% fee and 20% carry, which will be shared with those who helped bring these opportunities to life.

Rewards will be distributed equally among experts and community members for:

  • Bringing the deal.

  • Leading the due diligence.

  • Supporting the due diligence.

  • Referring experts and investors.

  • đź“ť TL;DR: Xailient boasts deep, scalable IP that, if applied effectively, could be integrated into every hardware device with a camera.

  • 🌍 Country: Australia

  • 🎯 Type: Edge Computing

  • 🎲 The Bet: The future of hardware devices hinges on camera usage and facial recognition technology.

  • 🌟 The Wow: A top-tier founder with an exceptionally innovative business model.

  • đź“Š Deck link: Explore Here

  • đź“ť TL;DR: Foodini is a game-changer in dining, connecting one in three individuals with dietary needs to suitable eateries and menu items. Their extensive network of over 7000+ restaurants has been rigorously reviewed by registered dietitians.

  • 🌍 Country: Australia

  • 🎯 Type: Foodtech

  • 🎲 The Bet: Poised to become the global leader in food allergy detection and matchmaking.

  • 🌟 The Wow: Impressive reach with 50k users, 10k restaurants, and $500k in raised capital.

  • đź“Š Deck link: Explore Here

Interested? Click here to apply. Questions? Check out our Stackrank for more info!

🚀 To the legends that made it all happen…thank you!


đź‘Ź A big shoutout to the incredibly talented individuals who have actively participated in our community due diligence this year:

Marc Wilson
Charlotte Connell
Maxie Juang
Matthew Anderson
Steve Allan, CFA
Chris Johnson
Elliot Heitman
Christian Thaler-Wolski 🚀
Jess Pattison
Gavin Preston
Manushree Bahukhandi
Robert Nicholls
Andrew Birt
Claude MICHEL
Alycia Purcell
Isabella Jolly
Carl "CC" Bischoff
Yash Varma
Lauren Jarrett
Jordan Duffy
Simon Scarf
Vicki Stirling
Haris Qureshi
Cameron Yuill
Ben Johnston

And a huge thank you to the 6,500+ people in our community who engage, share our mission, and support our goal to democratise access to Venture Capital. Your involvement is crucial in fostering the growth of these ventures and joining the incredible journeys alongside founders who dare to risk it all!

Are you a founder keen to get feedback on your venture? Submit your details here and become the next focus of our due diligence process.

🌟And finally….some incredible feedback we’ve received from our community!

Evan Wain - Ordr Founder

"I've been genuinely blown away by Community VC's due diligence process for Ordr. The amount of feedback and insights gained from the process has helped me as a founder understand how to better position my company. Learning where we could improve our offerings is immensely valuable. For anyone looking for a holistic and community-driven approach to due diligence, Community VC is the gold standard. Their blend of traditional diligence with community feedback is nothing short of spectacular. Bravo to the team for pioneering such an impactful model!"

Darryl Nichols - Grow it Local Co-Founder

"Jock & the team at Community VC played a powerful role in engaging the investment community around our Grow It Local capital raise. Their due diligence process helped us build awareness, grow connections, and secure new investors."

Zane Keely - Community Member

“Honestly the idea of doing live tear-ups is one of the best things I’ve seen on LinkedIn within the investment / VC / entrepreneurship space. What I love about it:

1. It’s practical and does a lot to mirror real-world processes

2. It’s low risk. It’s easy for people to just jump in and get involved, practice their skills and get started with the community.

3. It’s inclusive - as you already mentioned - investing (especially VC), often feels very “exclusive” (people who are on the “inside” and people who are on the “outside”).

4. It’s messy (which is awesome). I think doing things live/having a mash-up of random questions, and having live discussions before/during/after are awesome for learning

5. It has a lot of potential to get people involved within the actual community. I would love to see stuff like this lead to opportunities to get involved in the space more (whatever that pathway looks like).”

đź“Ł GET IN TOUCH 

🎖Calling all current and future angels

Access global, pre-vetted, VC-quality deal flow and supercharged Due Diligence: pop your name down here.

🎯Calling all pre-seed/seed Ventures

Submit your decks for a free public or private review to support your capital-raising or improvement efforts: pop your name down here.

At the Community VC, we believe investing should be accessible to everyone, not just those in the know. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to invest and contribute to vetted ventures that move the world forward.

Please do not take this as Financial advice or a guide of what any outcome will be. This isn't financial advice, nothing in this email is, I am not guaranteeing or recommending an investment or outcome in anything. I am simply just listing opportunities I believe should be accessible to everyone.