Maria Halasz has just been announced as the CEO of the recently launched Stride Equity.
Stride Equity is Australia’s first equity crowdfunding platform that is backed by a dedicated venture capital fund, Stride Lead. The fund will provide cornerstone investment to all companies successfully raising capital on the crowdfunding platform.
Stride Equity will assess each unique investment opportunity against their internal selection criteria. They will back pre-qualified companies with up to 20 per cent co-investment from Stride Lead, with the remaining amount raised on the Stride Equity crowdfunding platform. The unique model also goes further to provide mentoring and industry contacts to the early-stage founders, further enhancing their companies’ chances of success.
The founding team at Stride Equity is Jon Brett (Chairman), Alan Chonowitz (Director) and Maria Halasz (CEO), who together have several decades of collective experience across M&A and investing in emerging companies across sectors including IT, biotech, telecom, funds management, property and consumer products. The team, who previously all worked together at Investec, collectively have over 30 successful investments in scaleups and startups including Vocus, Airtasker, Goanna Ag, MediPay and MadeComfy.
Maria Halasz, CEO of Stride Equity, said, “Around $220 million has been raised by crowdfunding intermediaries since 2018 but only a few exits executed so far. Unlike our model, where we pre-qualify investee companies, crowdfunding is normally transactional and companies are not routinely vetted by professional investors.
“Our purpose is to close the funding gap for emerging businesses by combining our experience as successful venture investors with the power of equity crowdfunding. We back these companies with our money, expertise and connections.”
Maria Halasz graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in microbiology from the University of Western Australia in 1992 and later earned her MBA in Finance in 2000. She began her executive career in biotech managing drug development programs, which lead to work in VC funding technology-based businesses and, later, senior positions in corporate finance, specialising in life sciences.
To meet the team, learn more about the venture capital and crowdfunding platform and celebrate this industry first combined model, the Stride Equity team will be hosting a launch event on Tuesday 28 March commencing at 5pm at the Sydney Startup Hub, 11 York Street.
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