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Investment & Growth Series

For tech companies at every stage of growth: a forum for practical, peer-to-peer, and partner-led insights.

The Compliance Stack: Navigating the FinTech Regulatory Landscape

March 2026

The Going Public Playbook: Navigating the IPO Journey

October 2025

Inside the Deal Room: M&A as a Growth Strategy

August 2025

International Scaling: Key Insights for Australian Tech

May 2025

From Lab to Market: Research Commercialisation

March 2025

March 2026

The Compliance Stack: Navigating the FinTech Regulatory Landscape

Key Takeaways

The Maturity Shift: From Growth at all Costs to Sustainable Scale

The global FinTech sector is entering a new phase of maturity. While global funding reached a high of US$116 billion in 2025, deal volumes hit an eight-year low. This ‘larger checks, fewer deals’ trend signals a shift in investor appetite toward resilience and profitability over speculative growth. This maturity is forcing a strategic pivot: 

 

  • Regulation as a Tailwind: Strategic leaders are identifying where regulation creates tailwinds (e.g. mandatory digitisation like Single Touch Payroll) versus headwinds (pure compliance burdens).
  • The 80/20 Rule for Global Scale: For global SaaS businesses, core product architecture can be 80% global, but FinTech jobs – such as tax, payroll, and payments – often require 90% local customisation due to varying regulatory perimeters.

The Payments Overhaul: Managing the Multi-Regulator Perimeter

The overhaul of Australia’s payments licensing framework (Tranches 1a and 1b) represents the most significant shift for the sector in years. The practical challenges of navigating this transition include:

 

  • The Tranche 1b Ambiguity: While Tranche 1a defines the scope of products, the industry is still navigating the exceptions expected in Tranche 1b. This uncertainty makes it difficult for firms to map their business models accurately.
  • Regulatory Overlap: A recurring theme was the friction caused by bouncing between regulators. Firms are facing increased complexity as they satisfy the overlapping requirements of ASIC, APRA, and the RBA, particularly regarding stored value thresholds and banking access.

Data and Digital Assets: Moving Beyond the Handbrake

While Digital Assets and the Consumer Data Right (CDR) offer immense potential, the real-world experience remains complex. 

  • The CDR Reality Check: The current state of CDR is characterised as a handbrake due to its complexity and the continued delay of action initiation. Many firms are still defaulting to direct data-feed agreements over the official CDR framework to maintain operational speed.
  • Unlocking Institutional Participation: Drawing parallels to international regimes like MICA in Europe, Regulatory Certainty is the primary factor unlocking institutional investment in digital assets and stablecoins. Without defined perimeters, global firms find it difficult to justify bringing innovative products to the Australian market.

The Compliance Stack: Risk Transfer and Exit-Readiness

In a maturing market, a robust compliance stack is no longer a cost center; it is a technology domain and a source of competitive advantage.

  • Safeguarding and Insurance: As new licensing requirements emerge, the role of insurance is shifting from a simple policy to a core part of the safeguarding architecture. Regulators must work in tandem with the insurance market to ensure that risk-transfer products (covering cyber, insolvency, and advice) remain viable. 
  • Professionalising for Valuation: For firms looking toward exits or major raises, regulatory readiness is now a primary driver of due diligence. Professionalising the compliance stack early is essential to avoid organ rejection during future institutional investment or M&A.

Further Reading

October 2025

The Going Public Playbook: Navigating the IPO Journey

Key Takeaways

The Strategic Case: ASX vs. US Market Dynamics

Australia’s tech sector is now the third largest on the ASX, along with healthcare, commanding significant investor attention. A key strategic advantage for a local listing is the potential for premium valuation. Fueled by Australia’s massive pension pool (one of the world’s largest), a relative scarcity of large-scale tech and high growth stocks drives higher valuation multiples. Data shows that ASX-listed tech companies with attractive growth profiles often trade at a premium compared to their US-listed peers of a similar size. Furthermore, the all-in costs of an Australian listing are often around half that of a US listing.

The IPO Playbook: A Multi-Year Strategic Journey

IPO readiness is not a 6-month sprint; it’s a multi-year journey that should begin long before advisors are formally engaged. The pre-IPO round can be a key tool in this process, used not just to raise capital but to strategically bring in long-term institutional investors (like super funds) who can anchor the IPO and to provide liquidity for early investors or founders, cleaning up the cap table.

 

This is also the time to get your numbers right. Companies must engage accounting firms early to ensure their financial statements (often 3 years of historicals) are audit-ready to public company standards before the pre-IPO round, not after. A key internal step is securing 100% buy-in from the senior leadership team – an IPO is a demanding process that requires the entire team to be fully committed.

The Prospectus: From Compliance Document to Deal Momentum

The prospectus should not be treated as a tedious legal formality. It is a key asset in the competition for capital. The most effective prospectuses are authentic, use clear and simple design to demystify complex business models, and tell a compelling story. The Chairman’s Letter and the Business Model section are the two key areas to capture investor interest.

 

Common pitfalls include cut-and-pasting from internal investment decks or using un-finessed, AI-generated content, which can come across as inauthentic. Ringing the bell is a key milestone but ‘it’s when the game really starts’ – the game of competing for capital as a public company.

Life as a Public Company: The New Reality

The most important rule for a newly listed company is to under-promise and over-deliver. Missing your first public forecast is a major blow, impacting management credibility. This new reality demands a shift in governance and communication. Boards must evolve, and bringing in experienced Independent Non-Executive Directors early (6-12 months before a listing) is critical.

 

A robust Directors & Officers (D&O) insurance policy is not just a defensive tool; it’s a proactive tool for attracting high-calibre board members who require assurance that their personal liability is protected. This is crucial as regulators like ASIC are increasingly focused on individual accountability for everything from financial reporting to non-financial risks like cybersecurity.

The Operator's Reality: The Tangible Benefits of Listing

While often seen as restrictive, a public listing can be liberating. It provides a clear, transparent structure that can be preferable to the prescriptive, hands-on control of a few private equity owners. A listing also provides two other powerful, tangible benefits:

  1. Credibility: It provides an immediate and powerful signal of credibility, transparency, and stability, which is a major advantage when selling to large enterprise and government clients.
  2. Attracting Talent: It is a superior tool for attracting and retaining top talent. A public, liquid employee share scheme is far more transparent and valuable to an employee than obscure private options with no clear path to liquidity.

Further Reading

August 2025

Inside the Deal Room: M&A as a Growth Strategy

Key Takeaways

The Strategic Choice: M&A is a Lever, Not a Strategy

M&A must be an enabler of a pre-existing strategy, not the strategy itself. The default position for many high-growth tech companies is to build organically. The decision to buy is a strategic trade-off, with leaders sharing two key drivers for acquisition:

 

  • Time-to-Market: Acquiring a company with a finished product can save years of development, fill a critical product gap, and defend against market risks, such as over-reliance on a single partner.
  • Geographic Expansion: Buying a business in a new country can provide an immediate ‘springboard’, delivering customers, a team, IP, and local regulatory knowledge that is incredibly difficult to build from scratch.

The Deal Playbook: Due Diligence, Earnouts, and the Human Element

Executing a successful deal requires mastering several key mechanics:

  • Modern Due Diligence: The expectation around data has completely changed. Buyers now expect – and get – full, raw transaction data to run deep analytics on a target’s value drivers. The focus is also shifting from purely finding downside risks to identifying potential upsides. A target’s lack of preparation for this intense DD process is a common reason for deals slowing down.
  • The Earnout ‘Knife Fight’: Earnouts are a useful tool for bridging valuation gaps but also a frequent source of post-deal disputes. Buyers and sellers often have a natural tension: the seller wants independence to hit their earnout targets, while the buyer wants to integrate the business. Sellers should ask, ‘Would I do this deal without the earnout?’ and for buyers to question if they really want to be in a ‘knife fight’ with the team they just acquired.
  • Founder Education: Managing the human element is crucial. Providing founders with a ‘handbook’ explaining the M&A process (including warranties, disclosures, and other legal practicalities) can pre-empt conflict by setting clear expectations early on.

Beyond the Deal: Where Acquisitions Truly Succeed or Fail

Integration is what ‘makes or breaks’ a deal, and is often the weakest muscle in a fast-growing tech company.

  • Culture & Comms: You must spend significant time with a target’s leadership team to ensure cultural alignment. Post-deal, clear and constant communication is the most important factor for success.
  • The Risk of ‘Organ Rejection’: There’s a real danger in integrating ‘too hard, too fast’. Sometimes it’s best to give the acquired business space to flourish within the new organisation before forcing full integration, to avoid ‘sucking the oxygen out of the beautiful thing you just bought’.

The Market Context: A Tale of Two Pipelines

While global and Australian deal volumes are running ahead of long-term averages, this is largely driven by ‘mega-deals’. Capital flows have pivoted, with significant investment now coming from the US, Japan, and the Middle East.

 

Public and private tech M&A activity diverged. Public tech companies have been attractive targets due to open capital markets and fewer defenses, forcing them to respond when a bid is made. Conversely, private sale processes have been slower, with a higher failure rate, as vendors wait for the perfect moment.

Further Reading

For further context on the global market trends discussed, our co-hosts at J.P. Morgan have made their 2025 Global M&A Mid-year Outlook report available.

 

You can access the full report here.

May 2025

International Scaling: Key Insights for Australian Tech

Key Takeaways

Getting to Market: Intel, Partners and Localisation Matter

Successful market expansion starts with the right intel and partners. Trusted, localised support – especially from networks of experienced operators – proves more effective than navigating government portals or programs alone. Accelerated success often comes not from formal programs, but from business networks linked into major US or Asian integrators and distributors, highlighting a potential awareness gap regarding initiatives like Austrade’s Launchpads.

When it comes to Asia, cultural fluency and respect are critical. Unlike US or EU expansion – where barriers are lower and local adaptation is modest – Southeast Asia demands deep localisation. Every market, from Indonesia to Japan, presents unique challenges in regulation, consumer behaviour and tech maturity.

Capital Ambition: Fueling for the Funnel

Australia’s capital ecosystem, while holding significant funds, shows a limited appetite for the risk required to build generational tech companies (for example, those with $500M+ in annual revenue). We should increase investment at every stage: emerging, scaling, and beyond. Global winners require deep, repeat investment over time, and the current funnel can be too narrow.

There is a need to shift away from a ‘dig and ship’ mindset – our prosperity may lie in IP. We should also make Australia an attractive destination for capital and talent, while also ensuring our tax and regulatory systems don’t punish companies for scaling offshore.

Rethinking Support: Founder-Led, Agile, Inclusive

Current government support models need a reset – while potentially impactful, they can be hindered by administrative burdens. Founder-first, agile models that operate at the speed of business are needed.

Other regions are already doing this. New Zealand’s NZTC stands out for its co-investment approach, market expertise, and clear national strategy. There’s a ‘Team NZ’ mentality – something Australia lacks. Collaboration between government agencies like Austrade and TCA could unlock greater scale and coherence.

Breaking the Barriers: Policy and Tax Reform Needed

Regulatory and policy friction continues to hold Australian companies back. From complex cross-border digital trade rules to outdated tax structures, founders face unnecessary hurdles when looking to scale globally. Even well-resourced multinational firms struggle – for example, it can take over a year to secure cloud licences in some Southeast Asian countries.

Australia’s tax system can also be better streamlined. Companies looking to ‘flip’ to the US or EU face audit risks, and current VC tax incentives aren’t fit for purpose. If we’re serious about producing the next global tech champions, we need urgent reform to remove red tape and provide clarity for scaling companies.

Building a Global Ecosystem: Relationships, Networks and Experience

Time zones, distance, and culture are perennial challenges when scaling to Australia, but we have a secret weapon: its people. Many founders have already walked the hard road to global scale. This knowledge, paired with trusted advisors and legal experts embedded in key markets, can unlock opportunities for the next generation of Australian tech companies.

March 2025

From Lab to Market: Research Commercialisation

Key Takeaways

The Cultural Divide: Navigating Two Different Worlds

The biggest hurdle is often a deep cultural misalignment between academia and industry. The incentives are different: researchers are often driven by publications and grants, while industry is driven by commercial outcomes. This can lead to a ‘tall poppy syndrome’ within universities, where commercial success is sometimes viewed with skepticism. Bridging this divide requires a mindset shift, particularly in fostering a business-oriented perspective within research teams from an early stage.

The IP & Ownership Hurdle: Getting the Cap Table Right from Day One

The most significant point of friction in the commercialisation process is often the negotiation of IP ownership and equity. For a deep-tech spinout to be successful, it must be ‘investable’ from its inception. This means universities need to be flexible on their upfront equity stake. A ‘broken’ cap table, where the university holds too large a share, can make a company unattractive for future funding rounds. Innovative models, such as universities ‘earning in’ equity through ongoing research collaborations, offer a potential solution.

The Path to Success: Relationships, Trust, and Industry-Led Problems

Successful partnerships rely on deep, long-term relationships built on trust and transparency. Real-world examples show projects thrive with initial trust-based investments and a willingness to be honest when the initial research path failed. Crucially, the most successful collaborations are often ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ – that is, they are designed to solve a clear, pre-existing problem identified by an industry partner, rather than a university trying to find a home for its research.

Building the Ecosystem: The Need for Repeatability and a Broader View

Moving beyond ad-hoc deals requires a more robust and repeatable commercialisation ecosystem. Key needs include standardised frameworks across different universities, which can create unnecessary friction and delays. A broader support system is also vital, including:

  • Founder Education: Better educating researchers on the realities of venture capital and the journey of a founder.
  • Government’s Role: The need for a clearer national R&D strategy and more effective incentives to encourage risk-taking.
  • The Flywheel Effect: Showcasing success stories to create a ‘flywheel’, where successful founders and seasoned operators pay their experience back into the ecosystem by mentoring the next generation.