Open The Pod Bay Doors

This week on #OPTPBD Ian is joined by Rick Baker, partner with Blackbird Ventures. Founded in 2012, Blackbird is a venture capital fund with a vision to accelerate and champion the most ambitious founders. Their portfolio includes an impressive line-up including; Canva, CultureAmp, Zoox and RedBubble. Prior to breaking new ground with Blackbird, Rick was busy running the venture portfolio at MLC where he invested half a billion dollars into venture capital. He also cofounded two software companies, spent some time in the UK and in Silicon Valley, but is now happily back in Sydney as Australia’s startup ecosystem truly gathers momentum.In this fascinating and open discussion with Ian, Rick takes us through Blackbird’s ‘Secondary Strip Sale’ and their hugely successful Fund One from 2013 which drew $30million from 97 investors. This was an enormous feat for the time which now sees them as Canva’s biggest investor. He also shares Blackbird’s philosophy of splitting their investments between classic software mark