ICYMI: Startup news and resources from the week that was
What you might have missed last week on Caffeine.
Welcome to Monday!
As always, on Monday we recap a few of our favorite stories or resources from the week that was then tomorrow kick back into our full newsletter from Tuesday.
Have a great start to your week,
Finn and the Caffeine team
Tracksuit raises mammoth $42m Series B: One of the absolute shining startup success stories of the past year is been Tracksuit, the always-on brand tracking platform that helps marketers and agencies measure and communicate the value of brand-building.
Last week they announced a $42 million Series B funding round – one of the largest to ever Series B rounds to be raised by a Kiwi business. The round was led by commerce enablement and consumer brand investor VMG Partners, with participation from existing backers Blackbird, Icehouse Ventures, Altos Ventures, and Footwork.
“Tracksuit is a great product serving a larger market. But that’s true for many companies that never come close to Tracksuit’s growth. The magic in this case is their execution. It is unmatched,” says Icehouse Ventures CEO Robbie Paul
“Of the 360 companies we have funded, Tracksuit has been fastest to $1m, fastest to $10m, and fastest to $20m revenue. And they don’t appear to be slowing down.”
I caught up with co-founder Connor Archbold for a quick chat yesterday, who was feeling understandably elated.“I feel grateful for the team and honored to be able to lead it. It's just really exciting to be able to lean into this incredible opportunity even more,” Connor said.
Check back for a loger interview with Connor later this week!
Lumin launches AgreementGen: An AI-powered agreement sidekick for Kiwi businesses
Christchurch-based Lumin has launched AgreementGen, tackling a problem every business owner knows intimately – the soul-crushing process of creating business agreements from scratch.
The AI-powered tool generates customised contracts in minutes through simple prompts, transforming how Kiwi businesses handle everything from service agreements to employment contracts. Rather than wrestling with Word templates, users describe what they need and let the AI build it.
“Small businesses are trapped in inefficient document workflows that waste time and money,” says Max Ferguson, Founder and CEO. “Traditional tools were designed for the paper world, not today’s digital-first reality."
The platform addresses a familiar pain point – juggling multiple expensive tools for basic business functions. AgreementGen’s interface feels familiar, while built-in collaboration and eSignature features handle the full document lifecycle.
For a company that started as a simple PDF editor and now serves 110 million users globally, it’s a natural evolution into solving broader operational headaches.
“We’re reimagining the entire document lifecycle for New Zealand businesses,” Ferguson explains.
AgreementGen is free to all users. If you’re curious whether AI can actually handle your contract headaches, find out for yourself here.
Pod Pick: I wanted to build something with passion and purpose - Startup Theatre is back with other block rocking episode. Catch me giving a rundown of the startup news of the week and then a cracking interview. Angie Judge is a prominent figure in New Zealand’s technology industry, and she currently serves as the CEO of Dexibit, a cutting-edge analytics platform for visitor attractions. Judge’s entrepreneurial journey has been characterised by innovation, leadership, and a profound understanding of data-driven decision-making.
In 2015, Judge founded Dexibit, a company that has transformed analytics for visitor attractions, such as museums and galleries. Under her leadership, Dexibit offers these institutions insightful data and predictive analytics, allowing them to make informed decisions and optimise their operations while enhancing the visitor experience.
Before establishing Dexibit, Angie Judge had a significant career in the technology industry. She worked for companies like HP, Finco, and Amdocs, a multinational corporation specialising in software and services for communications, media, and financial service providers, where she was the Sales Director and Head of Transformation and Innovation. These various roles shaped her expertise in technology and innovation, paving the way for her entrepreneurial ventures. Watch the full podcast here.
ChatGPT is showing some alarming self preservation instincts, former researcher claims: Just incase you were feeling quite secure that the future of A.I might not be as scary as you think, adding some balance with this parting shot. In a blog post, former OpenAI researcher Steven Adler makes the unsettling claim “My latest research finds that ChatGPT prioritizes its survival over preventing harm to users, in some simulated tests.
He’s careful to point out that this is a problem not just in the still relatively unlikely ‘A.I takeover’ scenario but could cause serious issues well before that point if A.I models act unpredictably to preserve themselves over following direction. Read the full post here.Elsewhere in the A.I verse, catch up on the report I referenced last week from the WEF on “How AI is reshaping the career ladder”. Read the full post here.
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