Picture, if you will, a conference room in Sydney or Melbourne. It’s always Sydney or Melbourne. On stage, a panel of venture capitalists —predominantly male, predominantly white — are engaged in what they believe to be a cutting-edge discussion about the future of tech investment in Australia.
But if you listen closely, you might ask yourself — haven’t we heard this before?
The names of the panellists might change, but the script is always eerily familiar. There’s the obligatory mention of Canva, Australia’s unicorn darling, trotted out like a prized show pony. “We need more Canvas!” they exclaim, as if simply willing it into existence would make it so. It’s the VC equivalent of the high school quarterback reliving his glory days, that one perfect game where everything aligned, and he threw the winning touchdown.
“We need more women in tech!” they proclaim, voices filled with conviction. Heads nod in solemn agreement. It’s a sentiment so frequently expressed that it has become a mantra, a verbal talisman warding off accusations of systemic bias. But when the rubber meets the road, when it’s time to put their money where their mouths are, the story takes a familiar turn.
The funding rounds are announced, the press releases crafted, and lo and behold, it’s another white male founder at the helm of the latest multi-million dollar investment. And predictably, whenever they’re questioned over it, the same VCs trot out the same excuse. “Look,” they say, “We invested in Mel, from Canva”.
The cycle continues. A snake eating its own tail while writing its own reviews.
The Australian VC scene is caught in a paradox of its own making. On the one hand, it desperately wants to be seen as forward-thinking, innovative, and a worthy player on the global stage. On the other hand, it seems unable — or unwilling — to break free from the comfortable patterns of the past. It’s like watching a bird in a cage, wings fluttering against the bars, dreaming of flight but never quite taking off.
This stagnation isn’t a matter of optics or fairness — those are crucial concerns, but I’m not holding my breath for anyone to give a damn — it’s a fundamental threat to the vitality and future of Australia’s tech ecosystem. Innovation thrives on diversity, on fresh perspectives, on the collision of different viewpoints and experiences. When the same voices dominate the conversation year after year, when the same hands control the purse strings, when the same demographic gets the dollars, the well of ideas inevitably begins to run dry.
The irony is palpable. Venture capital, by its very nature, is supposed to be about taking risks, about seeing potential where others see only uncertainty. It’s about backing the outliers, the disruptors, the ones crazy enough to think they can change the world. And yet, in Australia, it has calcified into a system that seems allergic to real change, content to pay lip service to progress while clinging to the familiar.
This isn’t a failure of imagination; it’s a failure of courage. It’s easier, after all, to stick with what you know, to fund the founders who look like you, who speak your language, who move in your social circles. It’s comfortable. Safe. But comfort is the enemy of growth, and in the fast-paced world of tech and innovation, standing still is the same as moving backward.
The conferences roll on, each broadly indistinguishable from the last. The panels drone, the promises are made, the same buzzwords float through the air like confetti. “Disruption,” they say, without a hint of irony. “Innovation,” they proclaim, while retreading the same well-worn paths. It’s a performance, a charade, a Kabuki theatre of progress where the actors know their lines by heart but have long since forgotten their meaning.
The thing about time loops: they can be broken. It takes awareness, yes, but more than that, it takes will. The will to step off the merry-go-round, to face the discomfort of real change, to do more than just talk about diversity and actually embrace it. It takes courage to look beyond the comfortable confines of existing networks and seek out the truly new, the truly different.
The potential is there. Australia is not lacking in talent, in ideas, in ambition. What it lacks is the boldness to truly harness that potential, to create a VC ecosystem that doesn’t just mimic the surface-level Substack musings of Silicon Valley.
Imagine — just for a moment, I beg of you — what could happen if the energy currently expended on maintaining the status quo was redirected towards genuine change. If instead of rehashing the Canva story for the umpteenth time, VCs actively sought out and nurtured the next wave of diverse founders. If the promises made on panels were backed up by concrete action plans, measurable goals, and accountability.
I’m not asking for charity or tokenism. I’ll be accused of it anyway, but I’m used to that. I’m asking folks who claim to have a talent for pattern recognition to see that in a global, interconnected world, diversity isn’t a nice to have — it’s a competitive advantage. It’s about understanding that the next big idea, the next Canva, is just as likely to come from a woman in Western Sydney or a first-generation immigrant in Perth as it is from the usual suspects.
The Australian VC scene is at a crossroads. It can continue on its current path, caught in its comfort loop. Or it can seize the moment, break the cycle, and reimagine what venture capital can be in the unique context of Australia.
The choice is clear, but the execution is hard. It requires more than talk, more than promises, more than good intentions. It requires action, sustained and meaningful. It requires the courage to fail, to learn, to adapt. It requires, in short, the very qualities VCs claim to value in the founders they back: vision, resilience, and the audacity to challenge the status quo.
The last time I spoke out on this, I was called a man pretending to be a woman, a fraud and a hack, who doesn’t get what it’s like to be “The Man In The Arena,” who attacks helpless VCs for attention. I’m expecting nothing less this time around. A few VCs will hold up some cherry-picked data. One of the few women who have been funded will post on Linkedin about how “Fund X is different” even if they’re the exception that proves the rule. I’ll get weary, exhausted messages from other women in tech who have been burned so many times they’re shocked to read anything realistic about the so-called ecosystem.
So it goes.
But as the next conference looms, as the next panel is assembled, as the next funding round is prepared, I hope a few folks reading this might ask themselves: will this be the time it’s different? Will this be the moment when the loop is finally broken, when the merry-go-round stops spinning and a new narrative begins?
Or will we keep on playing the same VC drinking game — do a shot when they pat themselves on the back about Canva, do a shot when they pat themselves on the back about diversity, and do a double shot every time they fund another three white guys.
Joan Westenberg is the founder of Idle Ventures.
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Joan Westenberg is a writer, investor, philosopher and founder who has been published by numerous publications. Through @Westenberg on X, she covers tech, economics and humans. As a creator, she helps technology companies market their platforms and tell better stories. Westenberg founded Idle Ventures, a portfolio company, studio and fund.
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