Significant Capital Ventures

Fiona Hindmarsh manages the firm's venture capital portfolio, transitioning from managing the Hindmarsh family office's private investment portfolio and property trusts. She co-founded Significant Ventures with the Australian National University in 2016 and works alongside investment principals Michele Trivett, David Brazil, and Nina Shevchenko, who collectively manage deal sourcing, evaluation, and portfolio support.

The firm sources investments directly from the innovation ecosystem, specifically through a network of universities, incubators, and accelerators — primarily the Australian National University and CSIRO. Deals are then negatively screened against the firm's investment mandate before moving to a full assessment stage that includes quantitative and qualitative evaluation by the investment team and domain-specialist advisory partners.

It operates as a fund committed to investing in early-stage innovation, co-founded by the Hindmarsh family and the Australian National University in 2016. While its roots are in the Hindmarsh family office's two-decade history of science-based investing, the firm is structured as an active venture fund that co-invests with institutions, governments, and peer funds rather than serving solely as a private investment vehicle for family capital.

The firm focuses on early-stage, seed, and start-up investments, with initial check sizes ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. Its mandate is to be the enabling capital at the concept stage, helping founders build investible business models that can access larger funding rounds later.

The firm explicitly states it works alongside peer funds, universities, and government sources to co-operate and co-invest. It takes an active, guiding role — directly mentoring founders, building advisory boards, and sourcing subsequent funding — but its small fund size means it frequently participates as part of broader syndicates rather than leading large rounds alone.

The firm describes itself as sector-agnostic and does not publicly exclude any specific sector. Its primary screen is technology that demonstrates a unique and sustainable market advantage that is hard to replicate, with an emphasis on deep tech, applied technology, and innovations originating from Australia's knowledge-led economy.

Notable exits from the broader Hindmarsh ecosystem include Instaclustr (acquired by NetApp in 2022), Lithicon/DigitalCore (acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2017), and Seeing Machines (listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2010). Current portfolio companies like Liquid Instruments and H3D continue to secure follow-on funding and scale internationally.