• Angel investor community Innovation Bay opens branch in Brisbane
• Horizon is moving to agnostic deal flow
• Queensland founders can apply to pitch through Dealum

Innovation Bay, the longest-running community for technology startups, scale-ups and investors in Australia and New Zealand, will launch in Queensland in 2023.

Horizon, the 20-year-old organization’s angel investor community, has Sydney and Melbourne chapters that collectively invest in more than a dozen of the country’s most exciting tech companies.

In keeping with the founder’s buzz, Horizon will hold its own first investor day in Brisbane on February 15-16, with three Queensland-based startups chosen by Innovation Bay pitching how they will change the world.

Phaedon Stough, CEO and co-founder of Innovation Bay said they were thrilled to have oimprisoning for members in Brisbane and Queensland in general.

“Innovation Bay is entering our 20th year in 2023 and we are so excited to officially extend the scope of our community to investors and founders in Queensland,” he said.

“On the founder side, we see a lot of great potential coming out of the region and we are attracted by investors there as well. There is so much to look forward to and as we open up to agnostic deal flow we know we will see many more exciting deals.”

Stough said youUntil now, Innovation Bay pitch events have heard from startup founders within a predefined industry – be it proptech, healthtech, edtech or fintech.

Next year they will move to a constant agnostic deal flow and are now accepting applications to pitch from any industry, in any location across the country, at any time.

Investor Aurora

In addition, Innovation Bay’s venture capital community, known as Aurora, will be bringing around 100 of the country’s best and most active VCs to the Gold Coast for their annual Aurora Retreat.

“In a collaboration between Innovation Bay, Advance Queensland and the Office of the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur, the retreat will feature a startup showcase where a select group of founders from the region’s most promising companies will have the opportunity to pitch to the VC- community, plus a handful of South East Queensland’s most dynamic high net worth investors,’ said Stough

EduVidd Founders Kaitlyn Sapier, pitched at an Innovation Bay event in Sydney last September and said it was a huge boost to the business.

“Innovation Bay and Horizon have supercharged my founding journey by connecting me with incredible mentors and investors, helping me raise 600k in a very short period of time that would otherwise have taken me 6-9 months on my own,” she said .

Founders from any industry looking to make money are encouraged to create a Dealum profile and sign up to pitch to Innovation Bay’s investor communities.

While Queensland is the focus from now to March, Stough said Innovation Bay’s dealflow funnel is always open and open accept requests here.