With over two decades of Australian investment in building capability in research and universities, Australia now enjoys some of the most extraordinary talent and globally leading minds.
This talent is creating knowledge and has the capacity of solving some of the big problems of our time but if we can’t take this know-how and intellect into the world, then this brilliance is lost and the opportunity we have will remain just that – an opportunity.
As business builders and investors, Significant has been taking up this challenge for nearly two decades. Working in collaboration with universities, researchers and state governments, we, as a collective group have a track record in translating this knowledge bank into technology, into products, into services and ultimately into businesses that:
- Have become global companies
- Re-shaped markets
- Solved sustainability problems
- Created jobs and
- New career pathways for Australians
Significant has the capacity to create high value niche modern manufacturing industries and exports for Australia and are extremely proud of their achievements.
Significant leads by example to show that Australia can commercialise its inventions, that sustainable globally competitive businesses can be created in Australia, and that early-stage investment can create immense value for investors, demonstrating that through action Significant is able to attract more capital to invest in this important space and is be able to shift the mindset (read the AFR article) that Australia is great at innovation but not at execution.
Backing Australia
Our vision is a country that backs its researchers for the intellectual capital advantage they provide.
Our mission is to back this talent, entrepreneurs and innovators to take these ideas and concepts to the world and create its own self-funding eco-system that results in the formation of new industries.
Through our 4-way all-encompassing unique eco-system, our university investor partners provide us with access to the ‘very earliest’ investment opportunities possible, opening the door to concepts, ideas and innovations well before other venture capital funds.
Our investment approach
We invest in applied technologies that address high-impact global niche markets and will bring about social, environmental or economic change. Every potential investment must have a pathway to being a sustainable business and contributing impact to the UN Sustainable Development Goals either through the technology or through their business model.
We look for technologies that provide a market advantage that is hard to replicate. They will have emerged either from researchers who have had long well-funded R&D cycles or innovators who have deep domain specialisation in an industry and so know their market problem exceptionally well.
We are sector agnostic driven by the thematics that arise from the core capabilities of our partner universities and the innovations we uncover.
The accelerators
Strong market-fit and early industry engagement are imperative. We seek to accelerate the path to market dramatically by sourcing early adopters to validate the market need and aim to achieve market traction within 12-24 months. Our ability to find these early adopters is a key part of Significant’s initial due diligence.