Why Telstra Ventures fears 2024 will be ‘challenging for the entire startup and VC ecosystem’
The VC fund, which started as an arm of the telco behemoth, has quietly become one of the most successful Australian startup investors — backing 16 unicorns since 2011.
Telstra Ventures managing director Matthew Koertge joined VC at the start of the dot com boom and survived the crash. Today he heads up one of Australia's oldest funds, Telstra Ventures, which started in 2011. Capital Brief chatted with Koertge about how the VC fund has morphed and thrived into the fund it is today — independent from Telstra.
What’s the most common misconception about Telstra Ventures?
One thing that many people don't realise is that Telstra Ventures is independent from Telstra Corporation. Telstra Ventures started in 2011 as a fully owned Telstra subsidiary which invested Telstra’s capital on its balance sheet. In 2018, we completed a re-structure where we created a separate new management company and all of the portfolio company investments were transferred into a new fund which was capitalised by a number of institutional investors including HarbourVest, who is one of the largest private equity investment managers globally.
Today, we have $1.5 billion funds under management. We have also raised capital from some Australian Superannuation funds as well as a number of other institutional investors and family offices.
Whilst we're now separate from Telstra, Telstra is still an investor in our funds and we continue to be part of the “Telstra family”. They're an important partner, which is why we have kept the Telstra name. We've always tried to build a business which provides Telstra and Telstra’s customers access to world leading innovation, as well as a powerful go-to-market path for our portfolio companies.
