Side Stage Ventures – Startup Investor Profile

Side Stage Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund located in Melbourne, Australia. They invest primarily in pre-seed and seed-stage companies, providing checks ranging from USD 100k to 2M. The fund focuses on industries such as enterprise software, consumer internet, mobile, and healthcare. Their investment thesis is to back Australia’s best founders at the pre-seed/seed stage. Side Stage Ventures has made investments in companies like Leonardo AI and Outstaffer. The founding partner, Markus Kahlbetzer, has a track record of over 12 years in finding successful venture capital investments. The firm operates actively in Australia and has a preference for startups based in New South Wales and Victoria. For partnership and collaboration styles, there was limited specific information available.

Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3002

Country: Australia

Investment Regions: EA, OC

Investment Stages: pre-seed, seed

Website: http://www.sidestage.vc

AI Reasoning: Side Stage Ventures publicly announced an investment in Leonardo.Ai (the Medium post dated Dec 7, 2023). Calculating from Dec 7, 2023 to November 1, 2025 gives a gap of nearly 23 months, which is greater than 12 months. However, the Medium post also notes participation in a seed round earlier in 2023; the latest clearly dated investment activity is Dec 7, 2023. That places the most recent known investment as having occurred more than 12 months and less than 24 months ago, fitting the “active” window between 12 and 6 months? Wait – correction: more than 12 months ago corresponds to “low-active”. But the December 7, 2023 date is 23 months prior-therefore it exceeds 12 months, so the correct tag should be “low-active”.

Low Activity – Only known angel investments more than 12 months ago.

Active – Known angel investments between the last 12 and 6 months.

Very Active – Known angel investments in the last 6 months.