About
I've been in the tech startup space for 10+ years, founded StartCon & Pitch for $1M, and helped 1000s of startups raise capital. Angel investing for nearly 6 years with 32 portfolio companies & 8 fund investments. I co-run 361 Angel Club with 400+ angel investors. I've been an investor & top 5 mentor at Startmate Accelerator for multiple cohorts. I'm a Venture Partner at Black Nova Venture Capital. I co-host the First Cheque Podcast with Maxine Minter. Yes I'm known as the unicorn queen (but not because I have any in my portfolio, yet).
Feel free to check out my LinkedIn.
MY APPROACH
I've built a pretty strong deal flow pipeline, I see 500+ deals a year, and I track them pretty diligently so I can analyse my decisions and make adjustments. Most of my investments come from referrals within my personal network.
My investment thesis is pretty simple; I look for B2B companies that meet the following four criteria:
- A+ Founders: I need to believe that these founders are the best ones to win in this space, that they have deep domain expertise, unique insight, and are going to run through walls to get where they want to go. I also need to believe that they're going to be able to run a very large company one day.
- Painful problem: I need to believe that they are solving a very painful problem. Something that customers are going to be willing to pay to solve - they experience it frequently enough and it causes them a big enough negative impact in terms of time/effort/money.
- Huge market opportunity: I need to believe that this is a very large market opportunity, that there are enough people who experience this problem for this to be a a potential $1B+ exit. They don't necessarily have to be tackling the whole market right now. In fact, often I prefer they don't. But I need to see a line of sight towards that huge market opportunity.
The fourth criteria is that I ask myself: Can I help this company?
Top 3 ways in which I can be helpful to a startup:
- Marketing, GTM, branding, content, storytelling, B2B sales funnels - my background and expertise is in this area and I'm happy to jump in a get my hands dirty if needed
- Target audience is other tech startups/companies - this customer group is my bread & butter, and I can open doors
- Planning on going the VC-backed route - I have great relationships with many VCs so I can help open doors
I'm often called one of the most helpful people a founder can have on their cap table, and I work hard to ensure it stays that way. I always tell founders:
I won't be your biggest cheque, but I will be your biggest champion.
Things you probably won't see from me: B2C, DTC, Enterprise (anything with long sales cycles), bio/medtech, hardware-only, crypto, mobile apps, or games.
There are of course some exceptions, like when I really love the founder.
Some of my portcos:
- Cake Equity (recently raised US round led by Jason Calacanis)
- Upflowy (recently #1 of the week on Product Hunt)
- Tiliter (live in Woolies stores across Australia)
- Bridge (other investors include the founders of Github, Teachable, and Pipedrive, along with Hustle Fund and Lofty Ventures)
Team
Cheryl Mack - Founder, mentor, investor, community builder.
Cheryl wears a few hats, investor, founder, mentor, advisor, but most importantly, startup champion. Cheryl is the CEO & Co-founder of Aussie Angels, and on a mission to democratise angel investing in Australia & NZ. She’s a Venture Partner at Black Nova VC, co-founded the now famous 361 Angel Club, and is an active angel investor with 32 investments. She also leads an angel syndicate of her own, CMACK Ventures with nearly 500 investors, writing checks into seed startups. Cheryl is passionate about supporting the growth of the Australian startup ecosystem. She’s a mentor for programs including Startmate and Founder Institute, and a strategic advisor for several startups.
Before going full-time as the support person to help angels write their first check, Cheryl built thriving communities in her roles as the National Head of Community at Stone & Chalk, and the NSW GM at the Australian Computer Society. Before those, she was the CEO of StartCon for 4 years, where, in addition to running the largest startup event in Australia, she also hosted the largest startup pitch competition in Asia Pacific with 600 startups and a $1M prize. She’s helped 1000s of startups secure funding, customers, and partners.
Cheryl hails from Canada over many years ago where she founded the Vancouver Chapter of Startup Grind and has since hosted over 400 interviews with high-profile founders, investors, and industry experts.
Her motto is ‘If I can help, I will.’ and she loves nothing more than doing so over a glass of vino.