A decade or so ago, when nimble fintechs and startups were threatening to see off the incumbent dinosaurs of telecoms and banking, big companies around the world started setting up venture capital funds to tap into the innovation and energy of these upstarts. The Big Four Australian banks did too, as did other large tech-exposed companies like Telstra.
It hasn’t turned out as planned.
Last week Telstra announced it would sell off its fund, Telstra Ventures, renaming it Titanium. Of the banks, Westpac has gone quiet, Commonwealth Bank’s x15 ventures has more the attributes of an accelerator, ANZ’s 1835i seems to be still settling into new management. However, National Australia Bank’s NAB Ventures remains true to its original label and strategy.
The NAB fund recently took a stake in an established partner, the digital asset custody business Zodia Custody, which is run by a NAB executive on secondment. It also launched a partnership with another investment, Banked, to grow the merchant base for account-to-account payments.
Amanda Angelini has been managing director for just over three years, a role she previously shared with NAB Ventures founder Todd Forest, who is now strategic advisor. She spoke to Capital Brief for our Past Performance series and explained NAB saw the fund as both commercial and part of its research and development investment. A full transcript of the interview, lightly edited for brevity and clarity, is available below.
Central to the fund’s philosophy is that while the parent bank wants a commercial return, that’s not the same as a liquidity event a non-corporate VC would target.