Key to Rampersand’s unicorn hunt is its “product counsel” – a team effort to bring in start-up veterans who will share knowledge and insights with companies at their earliest stages.
The counsel will be led by Hamilton, who served as Culture Amp’s chief product officer for 12 years and will join the likes of Hatch co-founders Adam Jacobs and Chaz Heitner, A Cloud Guru co-founder Sam Kroonenburg, Jigspace co-founder Zac Duff and former Seek and Envato executive Helen Souness.
Hatch co-founders Chaz Heitner and Adam Jacobs with investor Taryn Pieterse.Credit: Steven Siewert
“Rod is one of Australia’s most successful founders and entrepreneurs, helping to build a global unicorn whose products are relied on globally by millions of users,” Naphtali said.
“We believe that Rampersand has a bunch of unicorns in our portfolio already … Rod will be instrumental in guiding our founders as they build and scale highly valuable businesses and in helping to unlock the unicorns of 2034.”
Hamilton said that after a two-year gap since leaving Culture Amp, he’s excited to be working hands-on with start-ups who are still finding their feet.
“Things you typically need help with at those early stages are things like product strategy and getting the right product-market fit, pricing and packaging strategies and product hires as well; sometimes company founders are giving away their baby to the wrong hire,” he said.
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“Ultimately, finding the right people and the right combination of people, and giving those people the right amount of support, is the single best thing you can do.”
Rampersand has deployed $100 million in funding to 35 companies, most recently investing in 3D visualisation spatial computing platform JigSpace and AI-powered digital advertising agency Cuttable.
The firm appointed two new partners, Taryn Pieterse and Andrew Poesaste, this year and is investing out of its fourth fund, the Future Tech Fund, which focuses on AI, business-to-business software, and emerging technologies such as quantum computing.
“We think when we look at the opportunity set in Australia, it’s easily the best we’ve ever seen by an order of magnitude,” Naphtali said. “The founders are 10 times better, and the ecosystem is 10 times better.”
It was time to pass knowledge on to the next generation of tech stars, he said.
“Ten years ago, if you had some success as a tech entrepreneur, you would have bought property. That’s just what happened. This generation coming through wants to help the next generation.”
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