Victoria adds $10 million to the Alice Anderson Fund, which has invested more than $9 million alongside private backers in 46 companies.
Victoria is adding $10 million to the Alice Anderson Fund, bringing its total size to $20 million and extending a source of early-stage capital for women-led startups. The fund’s track record points to the practical role it can play: pairing public capital with private investors who identify and back deals.
Since beginning in 2021, the fund has deployed more than $9 million across 46 Victorian companies. Those investments have attracted more than $64 million from angel investors, family offices and venture capital firms. Innovation Victoria head of funds management Olga Hogan said every dollar invested through the fund had drawn almost seven dollars in co-investment.
A sidecar model that follows private investors
The new allocation keeps the fund’s sidecar structure. Private investors bring forward early-stage opportunities, and the Alice Anderson Fund can invest alongside them. That arrangement gives founders access to another source of capital within a round, while allowing private backers to lead the deal assessment.
Hogan invited angels, family offices and venture capital firms backing Victorian women-led companies to put forward opportunities. She described the fund as a co-investment partner that follows private investors’ lead and adds weight to a financing round.
For founders, that additional backing may help close a round with fewer separate fundraising conversations. Fundraising still takes time and depends on a company’s circumstances, but bringing another investor into a deal can give a young business more room to focus on product work, customers and hiring. The fund’s stated approach also makes private investors central to sourcing opportunities, rather than asking founders to approach a stand-alone pool on its own terms.
The co-investment figures offer one measure of the model’s reach. More than $9 million has gone into 46 companies, while those deals brought in over $64 million from other backers. The reported totals show how public capital can sit alongside private money; they don’t establish how much any one company raised or what results each investment produced.
Companies across different sectors
The fund’s recent investments span several kinds of business. Butter is building community management software intended to address adult loneliness. Spektrum tracks critical minerals value chains. Misti is developing aerosol technology to improve delivery of inhaled medicines, with potential uses in treating asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cystic fibrosis.
These examples show the fund’s range, from software to industrial tracking and health technology. For early-stage companies, the financing need can vary sharply by sector: a software business may be working on a product and customer base, while a health technology company may need to advance product development and research collaborations. The source does not provide investment amounts for these three companies, so their individual deal sizes can’t be compared.
GonGlobal’s funding path
GonGlobal, which is developing a needle-free IVF solution, illustrates how support from different programs can build over time. Cofounder Ellen Gonda took part in an Innovation Victoria pre-accelerator. The company later secured seed funding in a $1.2 million round, then received a separate $1 million investment through Innovation Victoria’s University Innovation Platform.
The company used its initial backing to advance product development and build investor confidence. The later investment is set to support work with RMIT University researchers and commercialisation. That sequence shows how early funding and founder development programs can connect with later capital and research support. It doesn’t mean every company will follow the same route; GonGlobal’s experience is one example of how multiple sources of backing can serve different stages of a business’s work.
A fund named for a business pioneer
The fund honours Alice Anderson, a businesswoman and mechanic who opened Australia’s first all-women garage workshop in Kew in 1919. She died in September 1926, aged 29. The name links the fund’s focus on women founders with a figure whose business challenged the expectations of her time.
Innovation Victoria CEO Rod Bristow said access to capital was central to building the state’s innovation sector. The additional $10 million extends the fund’s capacity, while the sidecar approach keeps private investors involved in selecting opportunities. For founders and backers, the next practical measure will be how the expanded pool translates into investments and follow-on capital for Victorian companies.
This article was first published by Startup Daily.
