Company
Every investor coverage indicates participated in a round Instagram raised.
Companies Instagram acquired or merged with, per published coverage. Buying a company is not investing in one: nothing here counts in the deals column.
| Name | Role | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Ken Cheung | APAC Head (former) | Startup Daily |
Stories naming Instagram. Where several outlets covered the same round, they are bundled under whichever ran the fullest account.
Australian social app Spoony, built for neurodivergent and disabled users, will close in May after a planned raise collapsed; the piece recalls its $1 million raise and notes a pending asset sale.
Carted, the wishlist and commerce API startup, is shutting down on 22 October 2025. Its 2021 seed round raised $13m with Blackbird leading, alongside Grok Ventures and Tidal Ventures.
Also Startup Daily
Interview with Sunroom co-founder Michelle Battersby on her path from Citibank and Bumble to Kic and Sunroom; Blackbird partner Nick Crocker recalls backing the company.
Agentio announces a $12m Series A with Benchmark leading and earlier backers Craft and AlleyCorp returning, taking the creator-advertising platform's total funding to $16.25m.
Interview with Sunroom co-founder Michelle Battersby on her path from Bumble's first Australian employee and Kic CMO to founding the creator platform, plus investor Nick Crocker on backing the team.
Interview with Sunroom co-founder Lucy Mort on founder life and product lessons, recalling three funding rounds totalling $10.4 million from backers including Blackbird and Red Swan Ventures.
Interview with angel investor Carl Hartmann covering his Temando exit, co-founding Compono and Lyre's, what he looks for in founders, and his early-stage portfolio strategy.
Profile of EQL, an Australian hype-commerce platform founded by ex-Google staff, which powered the Nike x Tiffany sneaker launch and previously received early backing from AirTree.
Ignition Lane's weekly wrap: Tiger Global's losses and past Australian bets, MilkRun and TradeSquare closures, Cyara's Spearline acquisition, a Co Ventures pre-seed fund, Square Peg's partner promotion and LaunchVic's 30×30 picks.
Coverage of Andrew Tate's deplatforming and his shift to Rumble, which then topped the app charts; the piece also notes the video platform's backers and its earlier stated plan to list on Nasdaq.
Blackbird profiles Lucy Mort, co-founder and CEO of creator monetisation app Sunroom, covering its origins, her Hinge background, and the seed round's majority-female investor base.
Profile of Sunroom, a subscription platform letting women and non-binary creators earn from content, started by two dating-app veterans and backed in a seed round by Blackbird.
Weekly venture roundup covering Scalapay's giant series A, numerous Australian raises, acquisitions of Clipchamp, Paidy and CipherTrace, Houseparty's closure, crypto regulation developments, and Atlassian appointing a Cloudflare founder as director.
Wholesale Investor profiles Buildz.pro, a Queensland social platform for project builders, citing revenue growth to $32,500 by May 2021 and a newly launched seed offering seeking $200,000 for 10% equity.
Weekly roundup covering ANZ trade sales including A Cloud Guru's multibillion-dollar sale, several Australian raises, Tenacious Ventures' agritech fund close, Xero and Cochlear appointments, and global deals such as Etsy buying Depop.
Also SmartCompany
Finnish ecommerce personalisation platform Nosto has acquired Stackla, the Australian user-generated content marketing startup, on undisclosed terms, with backer Bailador's stake converting into Nosto shares.
Also Startup Daily
Daily tech roundup covering Alphabet and Microsoft quarterly results, Songtradr's purchase of Tunefind, Facebook banning Craig Kelly, and NSW consultation on food delivery rider insurance.
Also Startup Daily
Roundup covering SoftBank's takeover of WeWork, Facebook's misinformation labels, OpenLearning's planned ASX listing, Yume CEO Katy Barfield's award win, and new Australian space cooperation agreements.
Tech roundup: WeWork pulls its US float, a listed VC writes down its Stackla stake, Investible closes its debut fund, NAB loses its cloud chief, and a payments firm's shares surge.