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Co-Founder & Partner

Paul Bassat

Paul co-founded SEEK, with a vision to help people pursue their career dreams. At SEEK he learnt how to scale a global business. He co-founded Square Peg in 2012, and is passionate about backing the next generation of founders.

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"Paul has been both a mentor and a champion for Airwallex. Being a co-founder himself, he has brought a wealth of experience and perspectives. He has continuously challenged us while demonstrating that he is always on our side, supporting us throughout our journey to become one of the fastest-growing fintechs today."

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Michael Carden
Elad Walach
James Bowe
Natali Tshuva
Michele Ferrario
Jack Zhang
George Peppou
Emma Weston
Get to know

Paul Bassat

We're one global team but we've got our own stories. Here's what makes us tick.

Finish this sentence: Today I’m excited by…

"…Talented and passionate founders who want to change the world."

How should a company build its core values?

"The values of an organisation should be the authentic embodiment of the things that are most important to the company. They need to be real and the company needs to consistently live its values. Values should be driven bottom-up; founders, of course, have an important input but every person in the organisation should have a say in formulating them and in ensuring that everyone lives and breathes the values."

Recall a memorable first meeting with a founder?

"We are really excited by opportunities for disruption in financial services but you don’t often meet founders who “get” financial services and also have the capability and mindset to build a startup. I was excited when I first met Nathan and Michael from Athena because they possessed both attributes in spades and had a clear vision of how they were going to build an amazing business that would offer a fairer deal for home-owners around Australia. We get excited by world-class entrepreneurs and even more excited when they are making a substantial positive contribution to the community."

What advice do you live by?

"It’s better to be lucky than smart!"

What did you learn at SEEK that makes you a better investor?

"Everything looks easy when you are an investor, and everything looks much harder as a founder. My background as a founder helps me understand it is much, much harder than it looks from the outside and hopefully allows me to really empathise with founders. However, I also understand that founders sometimes need to be prodded to go outside their comfort zones; I certainly need to be pushed at times. As investors, we are able to bring to bear perspective and a diverse set of experiences which can be utilised to support founders."

What do you know to be true about business?

"Most companies focus on making money as a goal in itself. That isn't a very motivating goal and is self-defeating. If you set out to solve your users' or customers' most important needs and are passionate about solving them, you are much more likely to build a highly profitable and rewarding business. Business should be about solving important problems in a way that others can't do, with profit as an output of that."

What’s the most under-appreciated skill in founders?

"Curiosity; a desire to learn, a thirst for knowledge and a need to understand the “why” and not just the “what” is incredibly valuable."

Where did you learn the most in your career?

"You usually have the steepest learning curve in the early stage of your career and in the early stages of a new role. My first few years at SEEK was an amazing learning curve. I was young and had never founded a company or even managed people. It was so much fun and an incredible experience."

Why should someone build a startup?

"You should build a startup if you have the wisdom to have identified the solution to an important problem, the resilience to overcome huge obstacles, the capability and mindset to surround yourself with a world-class team and the preparedness to accept failure as a possible outcome. There are very few more rewarding things in the world than building your own startup."

Read my

Insights

Investment Notes: Constantinople A$32M Seed

We are thrilled to lead Constantinople’s A$32m seed round, with participation from AirTree Ventures and Great Southern Bank. This is Square Peg’s largest ever seed investment and Australia’s largest ever seed round.

Square Peg Investor Letter Half Report 31 December 2022

This is our most recent half-year investor letter, covering what has happened in the markets to date and what we think will change in the next few years.

New Funds Raised: Square Peg Fund 4 and Opportunities Fund 2

We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised our fifth generation of venture capital funds with US$550m to empower exceptional tech founders across Australia, Southeast Asia and Israel.

Square Peg Investor Letter Half Report 30 June 2022

We are publishing our half year letter that we sent to our investors last week. The letter reflects our views on what is happening in markets right now, and how we are responding.

Letter to Founders and CEOs on COVID-19

This is a copy of the letter we sent to our founders and CEOs in early March 2020.

Lessons from COVID-19

A decade's worth of learning in a year

It's time to re-imagine the world

The world is going to need re-imagining on an unprecedented scale over the next few years.

Investment notes: Zeller AU$6.3m Seed

Earlier this year, we had the privilege of leading a AU$6.3m seed round in Zeller

Investment Notes: retrain.ai US$9m Series A

We are excited to have led the US$9 million Series A in retrain.ai

Investment notes: Athena AU$25m Series B

They know that when people buy a home, they don’t dream of owning a home loan, they dream of paying it off