Your journey starts here

No, we’re sector agnostic. The truth is, we don’t want to box ourselves into a particular industry, because growth and good ideas can come from anywhere. Our current portfolio includes everything from Agtech and logistics to healthcare.

We’re looking for founders who are honest, determined, driven and open to feedback. They’re not afraid of hard work or the unknown, either. At Skalata, we champion all backgrounds, languages and abilities. What’s more important is your attitude. Not sure if that’s you? Check out our analysis of successful founder personas.

We do work with solo founders (meet Lisa and Declan), although we’d encourage you to build a team ASAP. Running a company is already a lonely road, so we need to see you’ve got the skills, and the support, to scale.

1. Initial Investment – we offer flexible initial investments of $50k to $300k. In return, Skalata receives an equity stake in the company. That stake is based on your valuation, and is determined on a case-by-case basis. 

2. Follow-on Investment(s) - at any stage of the journey, we can make further investments up to $1 million. When you need additional capital beyond this, we'll open the door to our fund investors, and do all the heavy lifting.

The ball’s in your court on this one. We’ve outlined our general process here, but this can change depending on the stage and readiness of your company. Due diligence is what tends to slow things down, so if you have your data ready to go, we can often streamline the process. On average, investment takes about 6-8 weeks from pitch to investment, but it can also take as little as 4 weeks.

Not at all! Quite a few of our portfolio companies raised funds at a higher valuation than implied by Skalata’s initial investment. The difference is, our founders tend to recognise that value beats valuation, and the hands-on experience of working with Skalata (through dedicated coaching, access to best-practice business resources, and a broader advisory network) will help materially increase the value of their business.

The most important thing to remember is that this doesn’t mean it’s a bad company, or a bad idea. Usually it’s because your business either didn’t meet our investment mandate, or, after diving into your value proposition, we weren’t able to develop a strong enough business case to move things forward. At the end of the day, we get things wrong just like anyone else. We also know how emotionally draining this application process can be, so we’ll try and be as transparent and speedy as possible. Whatever the outcome. And even if you miss out on Skalata funding this time, that doesn’t mean you won’t be successful down the track, or come away from the interview process with actionable advice.

There are a few areas that we don’t invest in, including gambling, tobacco and weapons (we want our founders to have a net positive impact on society). We also don’t invest in pure e-commerce plays, biotech or pharma, capital-intensive businesses (which require significant funding to get off the ground) or anything based solely around banking, insurance, provision of capital, leasing, property development, infrastructure acquisition, land ownership, construction, or making investments to derive rental / royalties / interest / dividend income. Phew.

We’re after companies at the seed stage who have already built some momentum or traction within the business. You’ll need a unique proposition (some defensible IP, special industry insight, or market solution) 12+ months of cash flow, and a market-ready product. There are over 30 data points we look at, but this is broadly what we need to see before we invest.

Our investment cap is currently $1 million, but that isn’t the end of the story. Once you’re in with Skalata, you’re in. You’ll never need to look beyond our network for growth funding down the track – whether you’re raising in one year or ten. We’ll make the introductions to our investors, and help refine your pitch. Anything we can do to make your next round a success.

Skalata counts a number of very successful entrepreneurs among our fund investors. These include: Anthony Eisen (Co-founder, Afterpay), Jan Cameron (Founder, Kathmandu), Alex Waislitz (Founder, Thorney Investment Group), John Rubino (Founder, Monadelphous), Paul Dwyer (Founder, PSC Insurance Group), WA entrepreneur Ian Trahar and Bell Potter’s Hugh Robertson. They’re always on the lookout for co-investment opportunities in great companies.

Unfortunately not. We could go into all the ins and outs – it’s complicated – but we think our article here sums things up.

Feedback on the investment outcome is a perfectly reasonable thing to want! We aim to be as transparent as possible with investment decisions (and often provide as much detail/feedback as we can), however, it isn’t always possible for us to provide comprehensive feedback for every company. In short, we’ll do our best.