Spaceship keeps its investors close – and advisers closer

afr.com:

Superannuation and investing start-up Spaceship, which is backed by tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, is sounding the market for potential buyers once again.

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes was an early investor in Spaceship.  Louie Douvis

It is understood boutique corporate advisory firm North Ridge Partners has been testing buyer appetite for Spaceship in recent weeks. That’s just 2½ months after existing investors Grok Ventures and Horizons Ventures tipped $6 million into the business via convertible notes.

North Ridge is a long-time Spaceship adviser, having steered it through two capital raisings in the past 18 months. Sources close to the company told Street Talk on Monday that North Ridge was on a retainer to assist with growth and strategy, including discussions with potential investors – but that it was not engaged to oversee a formal two-stage auction.

As reported by this column earlier in the year, Spaceship collected bids from a handful of parties in February but didn’t see it through to a signed deal.

The big question is how much time Spaceship’s got. It has tripled funds under management over the past three years to $1.3 billion, including via its high-performing and low-fee tech heavy funds during the era of zero interest rates. Earlier this month, it launched a US investing service.

But as fund-raising documents from mid-2022 show, it had barely enough cash to keep the lights on without raising. At the time, revenue was expected to come in at just $9 million on an annualised basis off $1.01 billion in FUM – the contrast is striking. It has also had several run-ins with regulators over the year, the latest being an ASIC stop order that was resolved in mid-June.

And in the background, there are