Today we're joined by Chris Gillings, founder of Cut Through Venture, talking about their just-released

State of Australian Startup Funding 2025 report. Chris is also part of the Venture Capital team

with 5V capital investing in

high-growth Australian and New Zealand software startups that power business. Joining Chris is

Albert Belinko, a partner of folklore ventures. Prior to joining folklore, Albert spent the last 10

years as a general partner of Titanium, which was formerly Telstra Ventures, and Focalore's an early stage

investor, often investing the first check. There's a lot for founders and investors to take away from

this report, so let's get into it. Chris and Albert, really great to have you to unpack this report. How are you doing?

We are well.

I think this is report number five. You pretty well kicked off in the beginning of COVID.

And we obviously had that short-term spike, but it's been somewhat down most reports for the last few years. But I get a sense that

this report, things are on the up and up. Yeah. Look, we started at a very opportune time. It was

party, party central and Ventureland. And I think, I mean, one of the ironic things about that

is the report is aged, that 2021 report has aged very, very poorly.

We feature a lot of quotes from different investors throughout the ecosystem and I think everyone

was pretty oblivious to what was around the corner, which was obviously a very tough couple of years

in eventual world. But yeah, last year, as I think it was well documented, everyone was saying we had cautious

optimism.

I don't think those words were used in this year's report.

Everyone's feeling a lot better and clearly the headline numbers are really good.

But generally, in terms of the investors that we gathered feedback from and the founders as

well, everyone're feeling pretty

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