Influencers wanted to spruik top tech startups

Launching this month, Voice Capital will invite celebrities to co-invest and help propel tech companies’ growth through investment – and influence – and make science start-ups a sexier and more palatable proposition for the general public.Chef and restaurateur Neil Perry is Voice Capital’s first member.He’s been a fan of “meat-free meat” producer v2foods since its launch in 2019, but is taking his involvement to the next level through direct investment in the company and a pledge to help promote its work.“Plant-based solutions are very much part of the total mix of how we should live our lives, and because I believe that so strongly, I’m keen to invest in it, to promote it, and for whatever reason people stop and listen to us, so I want to be able to promote something that can help save the planet,” Perry says.“For me, it has to be authentic, and I’m hoping I can do something really powerful both with my words and with my investment.”Voice Capital boss Jason Fielding is on the hunt for more high-profile investors to join Perry, and says his company’s ­efforts are all about flipping the typical celebrity endorsement model completely on its head.“Celebrities in the past would get paid to talk about something, well here we’re giving them the opportunity to say ‘I really believe in this, so I’m going to invest in it, and be a voice for it’,” Fielding says.“This really is a world-first initiative, we think, and we’re talking to people across the globe and we’re very excited to bring more people on board. “We’re not able to discuss any other names specifically right now but we are talking to a wide group of people in Australia, ­Europe, the US and Asia.“We need new solutions that take the best of entrepreneurs, breakthrough science and engineering and turn them into great companies that make the world better.”Main Sequence was founded in 2017 and manages CSIRO’s Innovation Fund. Its first fund has invested in 26 companies, ranging from industrial productivity to outer space. Main Sequence principal Gabrielle Munzer says Australia is doing a better job now at turning its R&D efforts into globally significant companies, but that influential voices like Perry’s would help accelerate it.“Deep-tech start-ups don’t tend to get much of an audience, even though they’re changing the world,” she says. “For the most part, the founders of these companies are very technical. They might be superstars in their own fields of inquiry but maybe not the experience or the audience to communicate to the world.“Voice Capital is going to be a community for social impact, filled with influential individuals, who will directly invest into Main Sequence portfolio companies. And we think it can be this really unique thing, tackling these big planetary challenges and helping these companies succeed.”

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November 10, 2021 at 11:30PM
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Launching this month, Voice Capital will invite celebrities to co-invest and help propel tech companies’ growth through investment – and influence – and make science start-ups a sexier and more palatable proposition for the general public.Chef and restaurateur Neil Perry is Voice Capital’s first member.He’s been a fan of “meat-free meat” producer v2foods since its launch in 2019, but is taking his involvement to the next level through direct investment in the company and a pledge to help promote its work.“Plant-based solutions are very much part of the total mix of how we should live our lives, and because I believe that so strongly, I’m keen to invest in it, to promote it, and for whatever reason people stop and listen to us, so I want to be able to promote something that can help save the planet,” Perry says.“For me, it has to be authentic, and I’m hoping I can do something really powerful both with my words and with my investment.”Voice Capital boss Jason Fielding is on the hunt for more high-profile investors to join Perry, and says his company’s ­efforts are all about flipping the typical celebrity endorsement model completely on its head.“Celebrities in the past would get paid to talk about something, well here we’re giving them the opportunity to say ‘I really believe in this, so I’m going to invest in it, and be a voice for it’,” Fielding says.“This really is a world-first initiative, we think, and we’re talking to people across the globe and we’re very excited to bring more people on board. “We’re not able to discuss any other names specifically right now but we are talking to a wide group of people in Australia, ­Europe, the US and Asia.“We need new solutions that take the best of entrepreneurs, breakthrough science and engineering and turn them into great companies that make the world better.”Main Sequence was founded in 2017 and manages CSIRO’s Innovation Fund. Its first fund has invested in 26 companies, ranging from industrial productivity to outer space. Main Sequence principal Gabrielle Munzer says Australia is doing a better job now at turning its R&D efforts into globally significant companies, but that influential voices like Perry’s would help accelerate it.“Deep-tech start-ups don’t tend to get much of an audience, even though they’re changing the world,” she says. “For the most part, the founders of these companies are very technical. They might be superstars in their own fields of inquiry but maybe not the experience or the audience to communicate to the world.“Voice Capital is going to be a community for social impact, filled with influential individuals, who will directly invest into Main Sequence portfolio companies. And we think it can be this really unique thing, tackling these big planetary challenges and helping these companies succeed.”