About Me

Richard Moore

Angel Investor
Member of Brisbane Angels deal screening committee
Early Stage Capital Raising Advisory – Convergence Capital Australia (AFSL: 503221)
UniQuest Non-Executive Director (UQ Commercialisation)
Previously CEO of Dark Blue Sea, an ASX-listed internet company
Previously Citi Equity Capital Markets
Previously Australian equities at BT Funds Management
30+ years of investing experience

Blog Updates

My Work as an Angel Investor

I am an angel investor and an active member of Brisbane Angels.

As an angel investor, I leverage 30+ years of investing and operational experience. My framework (or mental model) for angel investing is financial. I need to believe I can make at least ten times on the investment if things go to plan and see why I could also make 30-100x if the planets align.

I like to invest in capital-light companies with high trend margins and operational and financial leverage. Companies in the technology, software, internet, mobile, SaaS, cloud and blockchain spaces are natural fits. These companies have the best chance to meet the financial hurdle.

I look at companies through an investor lens of capital markets and investment banking. I need to believe that the company can raise subsequent funding (capital markets) and eventually be sold for a high price (investment banking). I like angel investments which are a “bridge to venture capital”, as they tick both these boxes.

My investments need to meet ten criteria consistently to satisfy the investor lens. These criteria include the founders, problem space, solution, go-to-market, business model, competition, the deal and others.

Standard early-stage pitch decks (e.g. Pollenizer Universal Pitch Deck) are the best way for founders to communicate these criteria to me. I discuss (or will discuss) these criteria in my blog.

I have been on the Brisbane Angels screening committee since 2015. This committee selects the companies to pitch to the broader group. I have seen lots of early-stage pitches! Standard pitches generally work best as Brisbane Angels has similar investing criteria.

Rather than a few large cheques, I write many small ones – a “spray and pray” approach. I discuss the rationale for this approach in my blog.

I provide ongoing mentoring to all my investee companies if they want it. Most of the mentoring requests are funding/pitch related, but I can also help with strategy and operations.

I am also happy to mentor and provide pitch feedback to early-stage founders as they start their fundraising journey.

In 2021, I was awarded the Most Active Angel Investor in Australia in 2020/21. I was also the Brisbane Angels deal lead for Arkose Labs, the Best Angel Investment Exit in 2020/21.

Three Decades of Investing Experience

1990s

I am a mathematician who was drawn into the finance industry in Sydney in the late 1980s to price and trade derivatives. I worked at BT Funds Management for seven years, where I managed all the trading of Australian equities and derivatives when BT was the largest trader in the Australian market. I also worked on quant, macro, buy-side research and the asset allocation group.

In the mid-1990s, I joined County NatWest, the leading institutional broker in Australia, initially working on structured products. When County was acquired as part of the Citi roll-up in 1998, I set up and ran their Equity Capital Markets business in Australia. 1999 was a massive year in ECM (the height of the dot com boom) and my last in the financial markets before I moved to Brisbane with my wife and young family.

2000s

In Brisbane, I started helping early-stage companies raise capital. I soon became the CEO of one of them. Dark Blue Sea (DBS) was a global business that specialised in domain names and online advertising. DBS was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2002and acquired in 2010 by another ASX listed company, Photon Group (now Enero). I was the CEO for nine years.

At DBS, we created and managed several commercially successful products. These products included a domain name registrar, a pay per click search engine, a domain name parking platform, an affiliate network, a domain name sales platform and a website building platform. We were one of Google’s main partners in the domain name channel and GoDaddy’s two secondary market domain API partners. DBS was also the second-largest professional domain name owner globally, with 600,000 domains.

2010s

I have been an active angel investor since 2013 as a member of Brisbane Angels.

I have been on the Brisbane Angels deal screening committee since 2015. This committee selects the companies to pitch to the broader group. I am also part of the Brisbane Angels management group, focusing on deal sourcing and execution.

I am also an advisor to and director of early-stage companies and a founder of Convergence Capital Australia, a licenced Australian financial services provider (AFSL: 503221) which helps early-stage companies raise capital.

I am a non-executive director of UniQuest, the commercialisation arm of the University of Queensland.