💫 Ramplify: May Montage
Let us pitch you. Tech is for grabs. AI Launch Days. 20 operating lessons.
(Helen Souness, Venture Partner at Rampersand at StartSpace Flip the Pitch, which crackled as Melbourne investors and operators pitched their expertise to founders.)
👋 The Game is afoot by Andrew Poesaste
The moats are leaking.
Google’s search share finally slipped below 90 % after two decades on top—proof that users now reach for AI sidekicks as readily as they do a blue‑link page.
Apple’s 30 % toll booth is giving way to EU‑mandated alternative stores and single‑digit fees, with Epic’s own iOS store already approved.
OpenAI just bought Jony Ive’s hardware studio (“io”) for a cool $5–6 B to build a screen‑less, always‑on AI companion—an explicit swipe at the iPhone itself.
The incumbents are scrambling.
Google I/O 2025: Google had its most impressive demo day maybe ever. Gemini went premium ($249/mo “Ultra”), Project Astra sees through a phone camera, and Search now defaults to an “AI Mode.” Behind the showmanship sits a staggering 50× jump in workload—480 T tokens processed each month, up from 9.7 T a year ago. Almost every Google product picked up fresh AI polish. This photo of CEO Sundar Pichai with DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis (now firmly in leadership) captures the energy they're bringing—it's my personal "Beatles crossing Abbey Road" moment.
Microsoft Build 2025: Satya pitched an "open agentic web." GitHub Copilot became an async coding agent, Windows/Azure AI Foundry can run everything from Grok 3 to Claude (on-device or cloud), and they're open-sourcing Copilot in VS Code while adding Deepseek to their foundry. Classic Microsoft move: commoditise competitors' advantages while leveraging enterprise relationships.
Why does this matter to you, the founders?
If search, distribution, and hardware are all in flux—the winners of the next decade are still to be written.
The game is truly afoot—let’s build. Reach out if you are daring to dream, we should chat.
🗞️ Tech News:
Google I/O 2025: Slam Dunks and AI Mode for Search. As mentioned above, at Google I/O 2025, the company rolled out total reimagining of Search to Agent Mode, Veo 3 and more.
OpenAI to Acquire Jony Ive’s Hardware Startup for $6.5 B in Stock. In a stunning surprise to coincide with Google’s big week, OpenAI announced it will acquire Jony Ive’s hardware venture in a $6.5 billion stock deal. The aim: co-design a new generation of AI-powered devices that could redefine consumer tech.
Anthropic Launches Claude 4 Opus & Sonnet Models. Anthropic unveiled its next-generation Claude 4 family—Claude Opus 4, a premium coding and agentic-workflow model, and Claude Sonnet 4, a free-tier model with advanced reasoning and extended memory—both capable of interleaving AI “thought” with tool use for complex, multi-step tasks. Opus 4 tops coding benchmarks like SWE-bench with 72.5% and sustains performance over thousands of steps.
🛠️ How to Startup:
20 Hard-Earned Startup Lessons from Wondercraft Co-Founder Dimi Nikolaou
Dimi Nikolaou, Co-Founder of Wondercraft—an AI audio studio for teams—reflects on the 20 most important lessons he’s learned since entering Y Combinator three years ago.
The First 40 Months. Michael Dempsey the Managing Partner at Compound, has a new piece why instead of sprinting from one financing round to the next, founders should hypothesise and model the milestones across their first 40 months—spanning pre-seed through Series A and B—to navigate the randomness of capital, talent markets, and shifting investor conviction.
Loops Over Hype: Hiten Shah on Sustainable Startup Growth. Hiten Shah argues (we agre) that while hype can fuel a launch and media attention, it cannot sustain a company—lasting startups are built on self-reinforcing loops like referrals, network effects, and content flywheels that compound over time. By engineering systems where each new user drives the next, founders create genuine, earned growth rather than chasing fleeting spikes.
“Hype burns resources. Loops build leverage.”
👕 VC in Australia/New Zealand:
Canva & Atlassian Employees Join Professionals Australia over AI Fears. Over 100 staff at Canva and Atlassian have signed up to Professionals Australia since December, driven by concerns that AI-tool rollout could render their roles redundant.
ANZ Startups Lead Globally in ESOP Participation. Australia & New Zealand startups allocate a median 12.6% of fully diluted equity to employee stock option pools—outpacing the APAC average of 10%.
Tim Ayres Outlines Early Industry & Innovation Agenda. Just days into his tenure, Minister Tim Ayres pledged to integrate Australia’s research ecosystem with industrial policy under the ‘Future Made in Australia’ framework, targeting green hydrogen, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing.
Breakthrough Victoria Funding Trimmed; New $150 M Fund Announced. Victoria’s flagship Breakthrough Victoria fund has been revised to $1.68 billion over 15 years—down from $2 billion over 10 years—leaving roughly $100 million annually available for innovation investments. In response, the state budget unveiled a new $150 million Victorian Investment Fund focused on advanced manufacturing, defence, and healthtech to complement existing programs.
Airwallex First Check. What a story. The Greatest Angel Investment You Have Never Heard Of: Airwallex Seed Round: 20% for $1M.
🤩 Portfolio News
Hatch’s 2025 Hotlist: Australia’s Most Desirable Workplaces. Hatch has opened nominations for its annual Hotlist, aiming to identify the country’s top places to work in 2025. Share what makes your organisation stand out by filling out their quick survey and help shape the definitive benchmark for employee experience.
“What makes a workplace truly great? We’re looking for the insights that go beyond perks and ping-pong tables.”
Cuttable Founders on the Story Behind Their Startup. Sam Kroonenburg and Jack White join Sachin and Adam to recount the origins of Cuttable, from initial concept through product development. They discuss the technology reshaping out-of-home advertising and reveal the passion that keeps them innovating in a legacy industry.
“Building Cuttable isn’t just about tech—it’s about reimagining how brands connect with people beyond the screen.”
Johnny Di Francesco on Scaling Hospitality with Restoke. Pizza maestro Johnny Di Francesco breaks down the systems he’s put in place for kitchen and front-of-house operations to guarantee consistent quality and genuine hospitality. He highlights how Restoke’s waste-reduction platform underpins his operational excellence, letting him balance hands-on passion with business growth.
“Restoke has become the backbone of our service—keeping things running smoothly and sustainably so we can focus on what we love: great pizza and great hospitality.”
JigSpace WWDC25 Spatial Meetup in Cupertino. JigSpace invites AVP enthusiasts and spatial‑computing curious developers to join them for food, drinks, and networking during Apple’s WWDC 2025 in Cupertino. Spaces are limited.
Spaceship. Spaceship’s acquirer Etoro Group shares rose as much as 42 per cent in the firm's first session as a public company, after the trading and investment platform and some of its backers raised almost $US620 million ($965 million) in an upsized initial public offering.
💼 Portfolio Job Board
Location & type: Gold Coast or Hybrid, Full Time
What they do: Cake Equity is the intuitive equity platform for fast-growing startups.
What you’ll do: You'll lead front-end development, transforming complex requirements into high-performance, user-friendly designs. Collaborating with product, design, and engineering teams, you'll shape the product.
Data Success Engineer at Dexibit
Location & type: Auckland or remote, Full-time
What they do: Dexibit is a data intelligence platform that helps visitor attractions, and entertainment venues optimise operations through data aggregation, predictive analytics, and reporting tools.
What you’ll do: In this role at Dexibit, you'll develop data pipelines, integrate third-party APIs, and analyse customer datasets using Python and SQL.
Enterprise Account Executive at PredictHQ
Location & type: New York or San Francisco, Full-time
What they do: PredictHQ is a demand intelligence company that provides AI-powered event data to help businesses forecast demand fluctuations caused by real-world events.
What you’ll do: Primary focus on new customer acquisition across multiple verticals leveraging a land and expand-based sales strategy. Selling at the most strategic level and forming a broad strategy for winning customer buy-in and implementation.
Do you have a job you’d like us to promote? Add it to Hatch and share the link with us.
See all jobs across the Rampersand Portfolio.
🌏 Rampersand Travel Diary:
Melbourne: Andrew and Taryn will be in Melbourne on 25 - 26 June 2025, reach out for a coffee!
🎉 Upcoming Events:
Live Podcast Recording: In the Blink of AI – Featuring Andrew McCarthy of Notion. Join Taryn Pieterse and Georgie Healy for a live taping of the “In the Blink of AI” podcast, featuring special guest Andrew McCarthy, Head of Notion for ANZ, SEA, and India. They’ll dive into how AI is reshaping productivity tools and what’s next for collaborative work platforms.
Thanks for being part of the Rampersand Community! You can stay updated with even more news and info on our LinkedIn and X/Twitter pages.