Capitalhq

03/09/2026

The new founder morning ritual. Coffee. Emails. Then check whether Anthropic launched anything that just made your last 18 months of work redundant. 🤣

02/09/2026

Every founder is being told to build in AI right now. Yash Varma 🧠 🚀🦄 has a sharper read on where the durable defensibility actually sits.

"There's very little moat in pure software right now."

Yash is the Founder and General Partner at Empress Capital and one of the early Australian investors in Anthropic. His follow-up at Capital 2026 completes the argument. Trust is the moat, because nobody hands their data and their computer to software they do not trust.

That reframes what founders should actually be building. Not the model. Not the feature. The proof that the software can be handed the keys.

Which category produces the first venture-scale trust moat?

01/09/2026

The winners in AI right now are not the ones with the most compute. They are the ones with the clearest values.

That is Yash Varma, Founder and General Partner at Empress Capital and one of the early Australian investors in Anthropic, at Capital 2026.

His observation. Anthropic has grown. OpenAI has, by comparison, stalled. The gap is not primarily about model capability. It is about how each company has answered questions their enterprise customers now ask before signing a contract. How do you make decisions. What do you refuse to build. How is this auditable. Where does the data live.

Those questions used to be procurement paperwork. They are now buying criteria.

Which means every AI product category is generating a shadow category alongside it. Explainability tools. Audit infrastructure. Data provenance systems. Security layers. The gap between what these systems can do and what people can actually verify has become a market of its own.

Each of those categories is a business yet to be built.

The AI thesis has quietly shifted. From what the model can do, to what the customer can verify.

Which trust-adjacent category produces the first venture-scale winner?

31/08/2026

Is India the next $10 trillion equity market, and are offshore investors missing out?

India’s equity market is projected to reach $10 trillion by 2030. Yet for many offshore investors, accessing that growth has meant navigating complex KYC requirements, tax filings and administrative hurdles.

So, what’s the playbook?

In this interview, Suneet Jain, CPA, MAICD, Co-Founder of Capital47 and former 18-year JPMorgan veteran, breaks down:

→ Why India’s equity market could become one of the world’s most significant investment opportunities

→ What has kept offshore investors on the sidelines

→ How wholesale investors can navigate the barriers to accessing Indian equities

→ What investors need to understand before allocating to the market

🎥 Watch the full interview on the Wholesale Investor YouTube channel.

If you're serious about understanding where the next wave of global equity growth could come from, this is one conversation worth watching.

👉 Subscribe to Wholesale Investor on YouTube for more conversations with leading investors, fund managers and market experts.

https://buff.ly/kjziu8r

Why is India projected to become a $10 Trillion equity market by 20...

28/08/2026

Australian public-market capital formation is running above trend.

A$9.4B of total new capital quoted on the ASX in July 2026, up 21% on the prior corresponding period.

92 new listings across calendar 2025, up from 67 in 2024. Capital raised by new listings hit A$6.3B, a 54% lift on 2024, above the 5-year average of A$5.1B, and the largest amount raised from new ASX listings since 2021.

The Q2 CapitalHQ carousel showed venture capital concentrating into fewer larger funds. The ASX read is the mirror image: public-market capital formation broadening, not narrowing.

Two different markets, two different signals. Read together, they map the shape of Australian capital right now.

27/08/2026

Institutional capital has spent a decade walking past the defence category on ESG grounds. That walk-past has produced sustained undervaluation in sovereign Australian defence-capable companies, exactly the kind of companies that will matter most to national security capability over the next decade.

Beaten Zone Venture Partners is Australia's only venture capital fund that openly invests in lethality and survivability. ESVCLP structure. 10% upfront tax credit for investors. Capital gains tax free on profits.

The investment case is not that defence tech is the trade. It is that the mispricing produced by capital that refuses to enter the sector is the trade.

26/08/2026

Skjander trawls every development application filed on any NSW government website. Extracts what each project is doing. Cross-references with mapping data. Estimates the resulting land clearing impact.

The analysis that used to take up to a year of manual work is now completed in minutes.

That is Dr Karel Nolles, CEO and co-founder of Skjander, on the specific AI capability his fund built after hiring a PhD in mathematics dedicated to the problem.

The commercial application is not incidental. Skjander operates Australia's first dedicated biodiversity fund, buying NSW biodiversity credits now against compliance demand from major infrastructure developments expected to come online over the next three to seven years. The fund's edge depends on knowing which developments are coming, where, and what compliance demand they will produce, before the market prices any of it in.

Most AI stories in investment management are directional claims about technology adoption. The Skjander story is a real, applied, competitive intelligence system that compresses a year of analytical work into minutes, in a market where informational asymmetry is the entire trade.

25/08/2026

Global VC funding just hit a five-year high. The number of funds sharing it keeps shrinking.

1,744 VC funds closed in 2025. 727 have closed in H1 2026, tracking below last year's pace. Commitments are concentrating in funds of US$1 billion and above.

That is the shape of the current market. Record capital, fewer winners.

Q2 2026 was the second-strongest quarter ever recorded (US$227.4B invested across 8,440 deals). US$1.9 trillion of exit value in a single quarter, more than any previous annual record. 87% of Australian capital allocators expect conditions to improve or hold steady.

Sitting underneath those numbers is a specific structural condition. Fewer funds are closing. The ones closing are larger. The rounds are longer. Capacity is now the constraint on deal volume, not effort.

A concentrated market rewards preparation, not hope.

Full Q2 2026 breakdown in the carousel below.

24/08/2026

What can a 50-year career in Australian cinema teach us about endurance, risk and opportunity?

Few people have seen the Australian film industry evolve quite like John Jarratt.

From Picnic at Hanging Rock to The Last Outlaw, John has built a career spanning 50 years and more than 100 screen credits, while crossing paths with some of the biggest names in Australian and international cinema.

In this keynote, John shares the stories behind an extraordinary career, including how he competed with Mel Gibson for iconic roles, helped introduce emerging talent to the industry, and witnessed the renaissance of Australian cinema firsthand.
But the conversation goes beyond Hollywood stories.

John also reveals why his upcoming film, Endurance, could present an intriguing opportunity for investors, business leaders and anyone passionate about the future of Australian film.

🎥 Watch the keynote and hear directly from one of Australia's most enduring screen veterans.

How did a 50-year Australian cinema veteran beat out Mel Gibson for...

21/08/2026

Raising more is not the same as raising well.

John Jarratt on budgeting: "I don't believe in high budgets or low budgets. I believe in responsible budgets."

He defines it plainly. Enough to take the story off the page and onto the screen without compromise, delivered on time with a competent line producer.

Founders rarely fail because they raised too little. They fail because the number they raised was chosen to signal ambition rather than to fund a specific, costed outcome. Every extra dollar raised is a dollar the return has to justify later.

The raise is not the achievement. It is the obligation.

John Jarratt's keynote presentation: https://buff.ly/K4XOf0L