# W23

W23 is a Corporate Venture Capital based in Sydney, Australia.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Corporate Venture Capital
- **Headquarters:** Sydney, Australia
- **Region:** Oceania
- **Address:** Sydney, Australia
- **Founded:** 2017
- **Assets under management:** Undisclosed
- **Website:** www.w23.vc
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/w23

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

W23 is a global venture capital fund founded in 2019 in Bella Vista, Australia. It invests in retail-tech, climate-tech, and digital health startups and scale-ups. W23 has made 24 investments, including a November 24, 2025, investment in Topsort.

## Sectors

- Retail Tech
- Enterprise Software
- Supply Chain Tech
- Sustainability
- AgriTech & FoodTech
- FinTech

## People

- Ingrid Maes — Managing Director

## Questions

### How is W23 capitalized, and does it raise external LP commitments?

W23 is fully capitalized by Woolworths Group, its sole limited partner. The fund does not solicit or accept external institutional commitments. This single-LP structure frees it from fundraising cycles and limited-partner redemption timelines, allowing for indefinite hold periods on equity positions where the strategic rationale remains intact.

### Does W23 typically lead rounds or participate alongside other VCs?

W23 usually invests as a co-investor alongside independent venture firms such as Blackbird Ventures, AirTree, and Square Peg Capital, taking minority equity positions. The fund can lead or co-lead follow-on rounds for existing portfolio companies when the commercial integration thesis has been validated, as it did in the Milkrun Series A extension in 2023.

### Which sectors does W23 explicitly avoid?

W23 avoids sectors with no plausible commercial overlap with a large food, grocery, and everyday-needs retailer. It does not invest in deep-tech fields like semiconductor fabrication, defense, pure-play enterprise SaaS with no consumer or supply-chain application, or therapeutics. The fund has a disclosed sustainability investment program but remains outside the energy-generation pure-play asset class.

### What is W23's posture on follow-on funding?

W23 holds follow-on reserves for portfolio companies that successfully execute a commercial pilot with Woolworths. Ingrid Maes has described the investment committee's stance as 'validated follow-on' — meaning the operating data from the partnership determines whether the fund doubles down, making the parent's commercial team a de facto underwriting partner in later rounds.

## Related profiles

- [W11 Capital](https://altss.com/profile/w11-capital)
- [W3Capital](https://altss.com/profile/w3capital)

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Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/w23

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