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What startups get wrong about VCs, according to Lorikeet’s Steve Hind

AI customer support startup Lorikeet just closed its third funding round — but CEO Steve Hind says the real secret to raising capital is rarely shared by VCs.

Hugo Mathers
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Lorikeet's co-founders Steve Hind (left) and Jamie Hall. Supplied.

Steve Hind makes startup life look easy. Just four months after securing a USD5 million seed round for his artificial intelligence startup Lorikeet, he popped up again with a USD9 million “pre-Series A” raise.

The latest round, announced in February, brings Australia’s largest VC firm, Blackbird Ventures, onto the startup’s cap table, alongside existing investors Square Peg and Skip Capital.

Hind co-founded Lorikeet less than two years ago, following nearly a decade in the US leading product teams at fintech giant Stripe and climate-tech unicorn Watershed.

Now based in Sydney, he teamed up with former Reserve Bank economist and Google AI engineer Jamie Hall to build AI-powered customer support agents for clients including digital health provider Eucalyptus and cryptocurrency company Immutable.