A big headline number of $1.5 billion of funding this quarter. I think the reality is, though, is that a big chunk of that was raised by a very small number of companies.

I think the end of the golden burst of COVID and low interest rate fueled growth in venture kicked in at the end of 22.

And so you can see the shapes of those curves show that even like last year was where it really slowed down,

where we're now marginally above where we were last year, which is great.

The mood has definitely shifted and it is moved to an environment where if you're a good

founder with a business that's got solid fundamentals and you've survived the last 18 months,

you're going to be in a good shape to be able to raise, as my view.

I think the headline that a lot of people will pick up on this quarter is that AI has finally reared its head in the Australian market.

And so we saw AI top the number of deals.

If you think about what companies were focused on this time last year, it was very much

cost management. In some instances, it was rationalising the team and the shift that I've

seen to say, okay, I think we're out of the woods now. The topics we're discussing are

definitely shifting to growth. So whether it's new markets, new key hires, all the things

that have been

a little bit on the nose to talk about. Not encouraging spam, but I am. Sending a very short email

that says, hello, my name's Sarah. I run a business called X. It does this. We do X of revenue.

We're growing at X, we're raising X.

If those X's are impressive, then almost every Australian investor, if it fits their mandate, will respond.

When things slowed down and everyone was a little less willing to invest and

founders didn't want to potentially go out and raise venture debt was a great vehicle or a great mechanism to extend runway and allow companies to grow into their valuation before they actually had to hit up equity markets again.

When we started reporting on cut-through venture, we did include equity crowdfunding. However, as I looked into the regulation and what the platforms were required to do in order to open up the platform to retail investors,

I wasn't convinced that the regulation really ensured what it was potentially setting out to do. What we suggested were seven things

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