SEPTEMBER 15 2021

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Welcome to Edition II of Blast OIF, a monthly(ish) roundup of what’s been happening across the OIF portfolio.

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THE PORTFOLIO

It’s been a HUGE few weeks for all of our portfolio companies, so in this edition of Blast OIF, we’re shining the spotlight on their achievements and recognising their recent successes.

We continue to be extremely proud of the founders and teams we’ve partnered with, our portfolio companies and the impact they’re having.

• Three OIF portfolio companies Go1, Matrak and Neara were featured in The Australian’s inaugural Top 100 Innovators List, showcasing the very best in Australian technology and innovation.
• XM Cyber won a 2021 Cyber Defense Black Unicorn Award in the new category of Baby Black Unicorn. It’s the third consecutive year that XM Cyber have received a Black Unicorn Award, and the Baby Black Unicorn Award recognises a cybersecurity company that has the potential to reach unicorn status in the next three to five years. Congratulations go to Kasada, who were also recognised a finalist for the Baby Black Unicorn Award.
• Open source as-a-service company Instaclustr, placed #33 on the CRN 2021 Fast Growth 150 list. This list recognises the fastest-growing North American technology integrators and solution providers as well as their significant growth over the last two years.
• Accounting integrations platform Amaka, have been announced as a finalist for Emerging App of the Year in the Xero Awards. These awards recognise companies that are leading positive change and have shown resilience over the past year.

Making headlines

• Paperchain, a platform providing creators in the creator economy with visibility and access to their earned income in real time, were featured in Rolling Stone magazine — true rockstars!
• SaaS-based ‘low code / no code’ employee engagement platform Arcade, featured on the cover of The BOSS Magazine. They’ve also launched their slick rebrand and new website which is fully loaded and packing the punch their customers already love them for.

Product launches and new features alert

• Customer video testimonials platform Vouch, emerged from three months of beta phase. Check out Vouch CEO and co-founder Gary Zurnamer’s reflections and learnings on growing out of beta phase ahead of the company’s next big milestone, their public launch.
• FinTech Bookipi launched BookiPay in the United States.
• Employee benefits platform Circle In, launched their new user experience, which introduces a whole new level of automation, communication and tailored engagement.

New customers and partnerships

• Go1 have partnered with Employment Hero to support users during lockdown across Australia by providing free access to 20 mental health and wellbeing courses.
• Go1 have also announced their global partnership with Adobe that will see Go1 equip Adobe Captivate Prime learning management system users with their extensive workplace learning online library and access to more than 70,000 titles.
• Arcade announced that it has joined the CDK Global Partner Program, which is one of the largest in the industry, bringing Arcade’s workforce engagement solution to thousands of automotive dealers around the world.

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OUR COMMUNITY

The success of our founders and their teams is the most critical element to our success, and it’s why we’re dedicated to helping and supporting them to reach their professional and personal potential.

The OIF community were recently treated to an exclusive masterclass from the legendary Ben Crowe, on finding your mojo and unlocking new perspectives through three mindsets: connection, purpose and performance. Ben is Australia’s most in-demand mindset coach, working with some of the highest performing athletes, business leaders and talent globally, including Ash Barty, the world number 1 tennis player, and ‘golden slam’ champion, Dylan Alcott.

We also recently launched our Leading Edge webinar series, designed to provide the founders and leaders of our portfolio companies with the edge when it comes to leading their organisations to success. Our first session explored how to build a culture-first organisation and we were lucky to hear from OIF founding partner, David Shein, on why culture is the operating system of your organisation; as well as Alana Bennett from Connected Experience on how to attract, engage and retain the best talent in today’s extremely hot talent market.

Next up we’re exploring international tax and transfer pricing with the team at PwC, which many of our community will be interested in as they look to grow their organisations beyond Australia.

We’re seeing and investing in some exceptional founders of early stage technology companies. So please reach out if you’re creating something iconic, we love to partner with great people building something we can all be proud of!

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Until next time …
The OIF team

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