OIF Ventures

Congratulations to Syenta on closing their highly oversubscribed USD $26 million Series A, led by Playground Global and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation. Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel, now joins Syenta's Board. We first backed Syenta's co-founders, Dr Jekaterina Viktorova, Ben Wilkinson, Luke Connal, Zachary Dowse and the entire Syenta team co-leading their Pre-Series A. Syenta are tackling one of the most critical bottlenecks in the global semiconductor supply chain. As AI workloads and demand for semiconductors scale, the infrastructure holding it together hasn't kept pace. Syenta's platform allows this bottleneck to be unblocked. OIF Ventures' Partner Laurence Schwartz commented: "We're so proud to have partnered with Jeka and the entire Syenta team having co-led their Pre-Series A. They're an incredible example of the exceptional talent and technology coming out of Australia and leading the world in one of the most critical industries globally. We're so excited for Jeka, Syenta and the entire Australian tech ecosystem and welcome Pat, Playground and the NRF to the journey." Congratulations to Jeka and the entire Syenta team 🚀💪 Onwards and upwards Read more in the comments below 👇 #backedbyOIF #ifyouwillititisnodream

SaaS is not dead, but not everyone will survive. The opportunity in software has never been bigger. The questions founders are navigating have never been harder. What does durable look like in an AI era? Which fundamentals still hold, and which assumptions need rethinking? That's the conversation we want to have. We're excited to be partnering with our friends at Five V Capital as they bring back SaaS Summit Sydney for 2026. We're bringing together a focused group of founders, software leaders and investors to unpack what actually separates the businesses that will endure from the ones that won't. If you're building in software, this is the room to be in. Spots are limited. Link in comments to register 👇

We're excited to double down on our support for Ideally as they close their $16M Series A, led by Shearwater Capital 💡 We first backed James Donald, Joshua Nuu-Steele, Brendan Cervin and the entire Ideally team in 2024 and they continue to go from strength to strength. Two and a half years in, 250+ brands across APAC and the US are using Ideally to embed research into everyday creative and commercial decisions. Treasury Wine Estates built an innovation engine that takes a new product from brief to shelf in under 90 days compared to 6 months. Burger King tests limited-time offers before they go to market. Google connects user understanding to creative development. The premise was always clear: brands shouldn't have to wait months and spend six figures to understand what their customers think. The team has built exactly that, an on-demand insight platform that any team can act on, without the wait or the price tag. Complex research, made intuitive. Insight in the hands of the people who need it most. Congratulations to the whole Ideally team. Onwards and Upwards🚀 Read more in the comments below 👇 #backedbyOIF #ifyouwillititisnodream

Today we're thrilled to share that Isabella Rich has been promoted to Partner at OIF Ventures. Isabella has been at OIF Ventures for over seven years. In that time, she's become a driving force behind our investments, partnering with some of our most ambitious founders and helping their businesses grow. Her conviction and dedication to the founders we back speaks for itself. Sitting on the board of several portfolio companies, Isabella brings experience, expertise and perspective that makes a real difference to the founders she works alongside. She understands what it takes to build a business from the ground up.  Asking the right questions, challenging when it counts, and backs founders with confidence and care. That combination of commercial sharpness, genuine care for founders, and deep pattern recognition across cycles is what sets her apart. It's what has made her such a central part of what we do. We're proud to have her stepping into this next chapter with us, and we know the founders we back feel the same way. Congratulations Isabella, happy birthday and onwards and upwards 🚀 

Find your dream role right here 👇 🔗 Linkby is hiring a Customer Success Executive 🔒 Fortiro is hiring a Pilot Support Engineer, Marketing & Events Specialist, and a Customer Success Manager 📚 Go1 is hiring a Senior Product Manager ⚛️ Atomi is hiring Content Creator & Reviewer roles for English, Econ, Legal, Health, and more 🏠 Bridgit is hiring a Head of Mortgages and a Technical Lead – Banking Keen to see details or find other roles of interest?   Check out our jobs board and subscribe to our Talent Network! We’ll help match you to the right opportunity & make sure you’re first to know about opportunities across the OIF Ventures network.   Link in comments 👇👇👇

The benchmarks we used to evaluate SaaS companies are changing. Early stage AI-native companies are growing at 3x to 10x. ARR per FTE is running at $500K to $1M+ vs a SaaS 1.0 benchmark of $150K to $200K. Gross margins are lower today, but that signals customer value and inference costs are falling fast so the margin gap will close. Most fundamentals haven't changed. Retention to support revenue durability remains critical. The companies that win this cycle will offer AI features that customers use repeatedly as part of their work and so highly value. Such companies will see durable revenue growth and growing margins as token costs fall. Full breakdown in the comments below 👇

Investment team member Adam Goldschmidt on the lessons that stick ⬇️ Trust your gut. There's usually a reason it's telling you something. And never chase your losses. In venture, limiting your downside when things don't go to plan matters just as much as picking the winners. Watch the full clip below 👇 #backedbyOIF #ifyouwillititisnodream

We’re thrilled to welcome Jessica Heffernan as the newest member of the OIF Ventures team 👋 Jess joins us as Head of Distribution and Investor Relations to help us drive our distribution strategy and ensure our investors have a world class, seamless experience. Jess brings over a decade of institutional investor relations experience having spent 12 years helping build one of Australia's leading VC firms from the ground up — leading IR and distribution, raising over $2bn. We asked Jess what she's watching closely right now 👀 “We’re only just scratching the surface of AI. This is a once in a generation tech shift - and we’re still in the demo phase. The real opportunity comes when AI stops being a tool and starts doing the work, across every part of how businesses operate.” Welcome to the team, Jess 🚀

What's been happening across the OIF Ventures portfolio! 👀🏆🌟 🛍️ Pagaleve landed on Endeavor's Outliers 2026 list, a global recognition reserved for the highest-growth, highest-potential companies in the world. 👩💻 Linkby picked up three nominations at the 20th Anniversary Performance Marketing Awards, including Best Brand Awareness Campaign and Best Use of Content Commerce. 💜 Rosterfy welcomed Bellyful New Zealand to the Rosterfy community, using the platform to help bring volunteers together to cook and deliver meals to families with young children who lack a support network. 🕊️ estateXchange added Great Southern Bank to their network, growing an ecosystem of organisations committed to making deceased estate administration better for everyone who goes through it. ⚖️ Josef launched their new Rapid Ingestion Engine, letting legal teams skip manual intake forms entirely and upload emails, meeting notes and draft summaries instead. AI extracts the key terms, flags gaps, routes approvals and generates consistent outputs from pre-approved templates. #backedbyOIF #ifyouwillititisnodream

Founders run through brick walls. Every day. The resilience isn't occasional. It's constant. It's how they operate. Oliver Darwin has seen it up close across a lot of founders. That kind of observation stays with you, and has left him with a lot of respect for the founders he works with. Watch the full clip below ⬇️ #backedbyOIF #ifyouwillititisnodream