Susan Oliver & Carol Schwartz hand over women-focused angel startup fund Scale Buyers to the subsequent technology

There’s been a altering of the guard at Australia’s first angel investor community for women-led startups, Scale Investors, with the founding workforce promoting the enterprise to the present administration workforce

Scale was created a decade in the past by Susan Oliver, Carol Schwartz, Annette Kimmitt and Laura McKenzie. Over that interval the angel traders backed 47 women-led startups investing greater than $20 million throughout a portfolio of at the moment valued at $260 million, with a NASDAQ listing for Cognition Therapeutics and a 30x exit for Trademark Vision.

Co-CEOs Samar Mcheileh and Chelsea Newell, and Chief Funding Officer, Roo Harris have purchased Scale from the founders for an undisclosed sum.

Schwartz stated the buyout is “a pure development” for her cofounders, who’re “at all times on the hunt for distinctive ladies innovators and chief”.

“We now have each confidence that the brand new house owners will proceed to evolve the enterprise, whereas additionally making certain continuity and stability,” she stated.

“I’m wanting ahead to the subsequent chapter, and can proceed to help Scale Buyers as an lively angel investor.”

Talking on behalf of the brand new possession workforce, Co-CEO Chelsea Newell thanked the outgoing house owners for his or her service and help, noting that their pioneering method has led to the carving out of a complete area of interest within the start-up ecosystem. She additionally prolonged her gratitude to the Scale Buyers Board, with particular point out to Chair Catherine Robson and Scale’s founding sponsor companion, PwC, led by Sean Gregory and extra lately Adam Pascoe.

Her successor, Chelsea Newell, stated they’re aware that there’s nonetheless loads of work to be performed with 97% of venture capital funding going to males working startups.

“Samar, Roo and I are honoured to be the brand new house owners of Scale Buyers, having every labored within the enterprise for a number of years now, we uniquely perceive its legacy, its DNA, and the way we will construct on the unbelievable success of the final 10 years,” she stated.

“We now have a powerful imaginative and prescient for the longer term, which incorporates evolving into funds administration, following the instance of Golden Seeds within the US. With the latest launch of the Scaling Girls’s Fund – a extremely differentiated and rolling fund product, we’re accelerating that mission.”

Newell reiterated that investing in ladies in merely good enterprise.

“‘Gender various groups outperform, and with valuations far more enticing and the boundaries to entry decrease than ever for girls founders on account of broadly distributed AI, the time is now to shut the entrepreneurial funding gender-gap,” she stated.

Susan Oliver, who stays chair of Scale in addition to chairing LaunchVic’s feminine founders-focused Alice Anderson Fund, stated that they had helped catalyse a motion in Australia to help extra ladies in enterprise.

“We’re extremely pleased with the capital we ourselves have invested in ladies founders and in addition the various different traders who’ve joined us in our mission,” she stated

Extra on the Scale Investors fund and angel network here.