Victorian Startup Ecosystem Mapping 2022 (LaunchVic)

Summary

• An estimated $4 billion in total capital raises were completed by Victorian startups and scaleups in 2021, up from an estimated $778m in 2019.p.6
• 2021 saw a 3.25x increase in the number of capital raises over $1m and a 5x increase in total value across those deals compared to 2019.p.6
• Firms employ more than 52,000 employees across the Victorian Startup Ecosystem.p.6
• 88% of total firms are in the Early and Seed phases.p.8
• The share of firms aiming to create a new market grew from 24% to 58%.p.7
• There are approximately 2300 startups operating in Victoria.p.11
• In the past 8 years $12.24b has been invested in Victorian firms across 778 deals.p.33

Key insights

1. There have been four exits worth over $100m, including A Cloud Guru's $2b acquisition by Pluralsight.p.6
2. A third of startups (up to 33% from 27% in 2020) participated in accelerator programs in the past year.p.8
3. 93% of firms are based in the Greater Melbourne Region and 7% in Regional Victoria.p.14
4. FinTech contributes 25% of all jobs at unicorn firms, with 4,065 current employees.p.26
5. Women represent only 22% of all founders across all firms.p.38
6. 33% of firms with a woman founder raised more than $5m, compared to 52% of firms without a woman founder.p.39
7. The share of firms with more than 10 employees grew from 21% to 32%.p.6