Founder Focus Ep 10: Katherine McConnell of Brighte, raising $145Mil in equity and $1Bil in debt.

Transparent Venture Capital by Tribe Global Ventures

Tribe Global Ventures

Investing, Business:investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s Founder Focus Guest is Katherine McConnell of Brighte, Australia’s leader in solar finance and one-stop-shop for sustainable upgrade solutions. Katherine talks about the conditions that lead her to start Brighte, and the ingredients professionally and personally that drove it to happen. Katherine has raised $145Mil in equity from investors such as Grok Ventures, the investment company of Mike and Anni Cannon-Brookes, Kim Jackson and Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital, AirTree Ventures and Singapore Venture Capital firm Qualgro. Kim talks through this process and working with venture capital in general. In addition to the equity raised, Katherine and her team have issued $1Bil in debt financing for clean energy loans for solar and battery technology. It has not all been easy sailing, and Katherine talks through her approach to leadership and creating a culture that can rapidly adjust and change. Success leaves clues, and we think there is a lot here for founders and investors to apply to their own companies and investments from this episode. [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Transparent VC by Tribe Global Ventures, the B2BVC.
0:13.0	Today's founder focus guest is Catherine McConnell of Bright, Australia's leader in solar finance and one-stop shop for sustainable upgrade solutions.
0:21.6	Catherine talks about the conditions that led her to start bright and the ingredients professionally and
0:26.6	allowed and drove it to have it.
0:28.6	Catherine has raised 145 million in equity from investors such as GROC ventures,
0:33.6	the investment company of Mike and Annie Cannon Brooks, Kim Jackson and Scott Farquire Skip Capital, Airtree Ventures and Singapore's venture capital firm, Qualgrove, and shares her experience of this capital raising process and working with venture capital in general.
0:47.3	In addition to the equity raised, Catherine and her team have issued a billion dollars in debt financing to their customers for clean energy
0:54.7	loans for solar and battery technology. It's not all been easy sailing and Catherine talks through
1:00.0	her approach to leadership and creating a culture that can rapidly adjust and change. As we regularly say,
1:05.8	success leaves clues and we think there's a lot here for founders and investors to apply to their
1:10.4	own companies
1:11.1	and investments. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it with
1:15.6	Catherine.
1:21.2	Catherine, thank you so much for joining us today. I know we did have to shuffle this once because of
1:28.6	some stuff going on in my world and I appreciate you you juggling to fit us in. So thank you for
1:32.7	coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thanks Aaron. Thanks, John, for having me. We got to know you through
1:37.5	the founder series and we had Luke and here on a podcast. Actually, I think it was our first podcast episode with Luke and chatting about the series
1:47.0	and then got to see and learn more about yourself and Bright through that.
1:51.7	And I think for listeners, we probably won't recap the Genesis story because a lot of that is
1:55.9	captured in the series.
1:57.2	But I think for listeners, it would be good to have some context to yourself and also the work
2:02.4	you do with Bright. Okay. So, Aaron, I started Bright eight years ago. And so just before starting
	...

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