What you need to know:

• BeingIconic has raised $1m in pre-seed funding from a group of Australian and Asian media, marketing and creative agency execs.
• The firm, which has 14 employees, grows scale-ups by advising them on strategic marketing and network expansion, as well as in commercial and operations areas. It then hooks them into venture capital funds for capital raises. 
• VCs are “less likely to take a punt at the moment” and are looking more for scale-ups with proven revenue and profits, BeingIconic co-founder Peter Brocklebank said.
• BeingIconic is looking to use the funding to expand into Southeast Asia, the UK and the US.  

Pre-seed funding

A group of senior Australian and Asian marketing, media and creative leaders have put their own money on the table to fund BeingIconic, a venture that advises scale-ups in marketing, experience, commercial and operations.

Founded by Peter Brocklebank, chair of UK creative agency bbp, former Red Bull and Samsung marketing exec Ian Bell, Iconika Venture Brands founder Steven Arnold, and Kay Trippner, CFO and CCO at biotech firm Headsafe, BeingIconic has worked with more than 50 scale-ups over the past two years and has just raised $1 million in a “friends and family” pre-seed capital raise to expand into Asia and the UK.

The first round of shareholders includes former Havas Media Australia CEO Mike Wilson, former Clemenger Group director James Neale, Hatched founder and MD Jack Byrne, Hatched’s head of retail Simon Porter, and Jason P Ross, the former head of creative at JWT. Vishnu Mohan, the former group chair and CEO of Havas in South East Asia, India, Japan and Korea, has also invested through Singapore-based Avyan Holdings.

“The mission for BeingIconic is to help scale ups, and obviously, based in Australia, it is to help Australian scale ups,” Brocklebank said. “We're now taking that proposition global. So we'll be helping other companies from other countries.”

BeingIconic has a team of 14 and operates as a fee for service firm – initially. It does a three-month report on each business, broken down into first month to audit, second month looking at foundations, and final month building a forward plan. “Once those first three months are finished, we will have a plan for the following twelve months. That plan for the following twelve months, we can do a blend of fee for service and equity for that. But we don't do equity before the first three months,” Brocklebank said.

The firm, which Brocklebank describes as a ‘magnituder’ rather than an accelerator, has grown espresso Displays and UK-based CrowdProperty and has doubled its revenue this year and is looking to double every year for the next three.

Local marketing execs interested

Wilson, who signed on as a non-executive director in April this year, said the pre-seed capital raise meant bringing in local execs who were interested in sharing their expertise with new businesses.

“Many people have expressed interest in participating in the business’s growth and this round afforded us the opportunity to present that chance to people who've been keen to come aboard,” Wilson said.

It is an increasing trend in the media and marketing space that senior execs build businesses to grow early and mid-term start-ups and scale-ups while taking an equity stake. Sayers Brand Momentum, for example, was created by former PwC CMO Advisory trio Justin Papps, Genevieve Reynolds and Nicky Bryson and pulls together a leaner creative, media and consultancy model. It's "killing legacy structures that have held things back", per Bryson. Likewise, Shadowboxer, founded by former Isobar boss Konrad Spilva, does project work for brands and start-ups and takes fees or equity.

The next step for BeingIconic is to build out offices in Southeast Asia and the UK, with possible expansion into the US. “These are businesses that have already got proven products, they're already posting revenue, they've already got established customer bases, but want to go to the next level. Almost by definition, they're either looking to diversify with new products and services or, increasingly, they're looking to go into other markets,” Wilson said. “So it makes complete logical sense for us to have access to networks in the markets that they're most likely to want to scale in. And those tend to be either Southeast Asia or the UK or possibly the US. And those are all three markets that we're looking at imminently.”

‘There’s still money there’

When scale-ups look to do Series A capital raises and beyond, BeingIconic connects them with venture capital funds – that money is still there, but wallets have tightened in recent months. “The financiers are far more interested in companies that are profitable. And people are less likely to take a punt at the moment,” Brocklebank said. “Which is why the world we're in of scale ups is an interesting one… If an Australian business is a good business with a good track record and it's got runs in the board and it's trading profitably, the world wants to know about it.”