Sydney-based tech infrastructure startup Kinde has secured $10.6 Mn in seed funding. The round was led by Blackbird Ventures, with participation from Felicis Ventures.

Founded in 2021, Kinde’s co-founders David Berner, Evgeny Komarevtsev and Ross Chaldecott are keen to tackle redundant software architecture often adopted across SaaS startups, limiting their growth and losing out on valuable time. 

Co-founder and CEO Ross Chaldecott describes Kinde as providing an infrastructure service to a SaaS business, freeing startups to concentrate on the more unique areas of their business.

“We identified that's a total waste of time; these companies are building what is fundamentally a commodity every single time they start a company. We don't want to see that waste happening, especially early-stage founders that have very limited capital and very limited time, and they shouldn't be wasting it on building something that's not the actual product but is instead just infrastructure,” Chaldecott said.

“The plan was always to be a hyper-growth company and accelerate really quickly. We identified pretty early on that to grow in the space; we couldn't do it slowly and organically - we had to grow it very rapidly,” he added.  

“I'm a big believer in hyper-growth companies and, although I'd say that we accelerated faster than anticipated after bringing Blackbird on board as an investor, it allowed us to speed everything up.”

The startup is planning to leverage the capital raised to enhance the engineering effort needed to build out the product.

“The rest is going to be going into building the company and the infrastructure to support that product, take it to market, support it in the market, acquire great customers, and just become a great company that has a long-term growth path and legacies, and can make a big impact in the world.”

Kinde is looking to grow its employee base, with a values-first approach to hiring. Chaldecott believes the ‘great resignation’ is more about people leaving more traditional roles, where they don’t feel challenged, to join more exciting companies looking to solve problems. Instituting a 50/50 hiring policy around gender diversity, Chaldecott is determined to not lose out on skilled talent while also looking to boost women representation in the tech sector.

Commenting on Kinde’s capabilities and vision, Nick Crocker, Partner at Blackbird, said, “It is exceedingly rare to meet a founder like Ross who has had a hand in shaping three iconic technology companies in Atlassian, Campaign Monitor, and Shopify.”

“When he shared his vision to reinvent the way software companies get started with us, we were compelled, and as we got to know the team, we built incredible confidence in their ability to create elegant, intuitive products for customers. Blackbird is proud to be a day one investor and to support Ross and the team to accelerate millions of founders on their journey to build SaaS startups,” Crocker added.

Echoing the optimistic outlook, a General Partner at Felicis Victoria Treyger said, “We are excited to continue our legacy of backing incredible Australian founders with today’s investment in Kinde. I can’t imagine a better focus for our fourth Felicis investment in Australia’s tech ecosystem than the Kinde platform, which empowers founders everywhere with the infrastructure components needed to start any SaaS company.”

How Kinde empowers Australia’s startup ecosystem is to look forward to.