The CSIRO’s venture capital arm wants to reshape the influencer economy
A new initiative borne of the CSIRO’s venture capital fund, Main Sequence, hopes to reshape the celebrity endorsement deal by welcoming celebrity co-investment in renewable energy and deep-tech startups.
The fund says the entire project, dubbed “Voice Capital”, is underwritten with a promise of authenticity, playing matchmaker for celebrities and the causes they advocate for by welcoming them to quite literally put their money where their mouths are.
Gabrielle Munzer, principal at Main Sequence, said the kernel of Voice Capital was the idea that the next commercial giants are going to rise from planet Earth’s greatest challenges.
“Our whole investment capability is built around these big planetary challenges. So, like ‘decarbonise the planet’, ‘feed 10 billion people’. You know, really big ideas about how we need to improve humanity,” Munzer said.
Where the celebrities come in is to deliver on the fronts that startup founders — who may be worshipped in their relative fields; often academics or otherwise appeal to a limited industry cohort — often struggle to.
Jason Fielding, head of Voice Capital at Main Sequence, told Business Insider Australia that ordinarily the fund will approach a celebrity and work closely with them to figure out what they’re passionate about, then turn the findings into a material co-investment arrangement.
“Sometimes we’ll look at a certain individual and go, ‘Okay, we know that they are passionate about plastic in the oceans, because they campaigned about that,” Fielding said.
“You know, maybe they’ve been a vocal advocate for change. So we take a company like Samsara, for instance, which is in the portfolio, and is going to be infinitely recycling plastic, and go in and focus there,” he said.
The first of them to commit to co-investing via the initiative was celebrity chef and restaurateur, Neil Perry, who invested in plant-based protein company, v2food, where he was later appointed creative director of food.
Details of the investment haven’t been disclosed, but it is understood by Business Insider Australia that Perry made a sizeable contribution to the company’s $72 million Series B extension raise back in August.
As COP26 draws to a close, and the acceleration of climate change brings with it a renewed sense of urgency, Fielding said the fund’s move to celebrity partnerships really is just a sober effort to platform the fund’s environmental efforts.
“You know, for me personally, I really started to feel the need during the fires in the Summer of 2019-20, before COVID-19. And, like everybody, 2020 was a year of reflection [that prompted us to look] at what we were doing and how can we be part of making things better?,” Fielding said.
“And I think that’s happening across the board with lots of people, and high profile people and for most fields are also feeling the same. And when they reflect and go, ‘How can I be part of the change?’, well, [we’re saying] they can use their voice and their platform and channel to raise awareness among their fans.”
The initiative is, in essence, an incubator for ethical celebrity endorsement deals. Where once an actor or talking head might’ve been enlisted by Dior for a beauty or fragrance campaign, they now have an opportunity to mainstream verified commercial solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems.
Voice Capital arrives at a time when celebrity interest in global markets has become all the more potent, led by the new-found celebrity status of the billionaires that move them. Elon Musk has assimilated hoards of first-time crypto investors, while Jay-Z and Shaquille O’Neal have driven mainstream interest in SPACs.
Fielding said the initiative’s timing is no accident. He wants the fund to turn the traditional celebrity endorsement on its head.
“Celebrity endorsement deals have been around for 20, 30, even 40 years,” Fielding said.
“So this is us turning it on its head and going, ‘OK, rather than the company paying for you to be a voice, or their ambassador, invest in the company and really believe what they’re doing,” he said.
“Let’s figure out how we can really maximise that impact that you can have.”
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He has bylines in The Washington Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Saturday Paper, and VICE, among others. His reporting covers politics, finance, the economy, technology and the ways each of them intersect with culture.
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