Real Founders, Real Funding
We've worked with hundreds of Australian startups since 2019. Here's what they experienced when navigating early-stage fundraising with our team—and what happened after they closed their rounds.
What Founders Tell Us
These aren't scripted success stories. They're real conversations from founders who sat in our Sydney office (or joined us over Zoom during lockdowns) and worked through the messy, uncertain process of raising capital.
Elara Vossler
AgriTech Founder, MelbourneI thought I needed to pitch 50 investors. Turns out, I needed a better story and three investors who actually understood regenerative farming. varionexalu helped me figure out which one mattered more. We closed our seed round in February 2025—and I talked to 12 investors, not 50.
Thaddeus Eklund
B2B SaaS Co-Founder, BrisbaneThe financial model they built with me wasn't just numbers for investors—it became how we actually run the business. I still open that spreadsheet every Monday morning. It's the most useful thing that came out of our fundraising prep, honestly.
Solveig Haagensen
HealthTech Founder, PerthThey told me my valuation was too high. I didn't want to hear it, but they were right. We adjusted, closed the round three months later with better terms than I expected, and kept more equity than I would have otherwise. Sometimes you need someone to tell you the truth.
Beyond the Pitch Deck
Most founders come to us thinking they need a prettier slide deck. What they actually need is clarity—about their market position, their unit economics, and which investors won't waste their time.
We've been doing this since early 2019, back when "pre-seed" wasn't even a common term in Australia. Here's what we've noticed with the 200+ startups we've worked with:
- Founders who built financial models closed rounds 40% faster on average
- Clearer positioning led to fewer investor meetings but better conversion rates
- Most successful raises happened between 6-9 months of starting the process
- Startups with realistic valuations saw 3x better follow-on funding in 2024
These aren't guarantees. But they're patterns we've seen repeatedly with the companies that did their homework and stayed patient through the process.
Why We Started varionexalu
Because raising money in Australia felt needlessly complicated—and we thought we could make it simpler.
From a Founder Who's Been There
I raised my first round in 2017. It took 11 months, about 60 investor conversations, and more rejection emails than I care to remember. The hardest part wasn't the "no"s—it was not knowing what I was doing wrong.
When I finally closed that round, I realized something. Most of the advice out there was either too generic ("just tell a great story!") or written for Silicon Valley founders raising $50M Series Bs. There wasn't much practical help for Australian founders trying to raise their first $500K.
So in 2019, my co-founder and I started varionexalu. We wanted to build the resource we wish we'd had—something practical, honest, and designed for the Australian fundraising landscape. Not the American one you read about on TechCrunch.
We've worked with over 200 startups now. Some raised successfully. Some didn't—and pivoted or found different paths forward. But every founder who came through our program left with a clearer understanding of what they were building and why it mattered. That's what we care about most.