Building Ventures That Actually Work
We've spent twelve years helping founders turn early-stage ideas into businesses that sustain themselves.
Based in Orange since 2014, we work with entrepreneurs across regional Australia who need more than just capital. Our approach combines patient funding with hands-on support through the messy middle stages that most investors avoid.
Started With a Different Question
Most venture firms optimize for exits. We started by asking what entrepreneurs actually need when they're six months into building something new and nothing's going according to plan.
Back in 2014, the regional business scene felt disconnected from mainstream investment networks. Promising founders were relocating to Sydney or Melbourne not because they wanted to, but because that's where the support systems existed.
We built calinovare to change that pattern. Our first three ventures taught us more about what doesn't work than any business school could. One pivoted four times before finding traction. Another needed eighteen months longer than anyone predicted. The third worked faster than expected but required completely different resources than we'd planned for.
Those experiences shaped how we operate now. We don't follow standard investment timelines because reality rarely cooperates with spreadsheets.
How We Actually Work
Our method evolved from watching what trips up early-stage companies. It's less about following a playbook and more about responding to what each venture actually needs at specific moments.
Realistic Timeframes
We plan in quarters but commit in years. Most ventures need eighteen to thirty months to find their footing, and rushing that process creates more problems than it solves.
Active Participation
We're not board observers. Our team works alongside founders on operational challenges, from hiring decisions to customer development conversations to financial modeling.
Regional Networks
Strong businesses can emerge anywhere, but they need connections. We've built relationships across regional Australia that help ventures access expertise, customers, and talent.
Beyond Capital Deployment
Money matters, but it's rarely the primary constraint after initial funding. Most ventures struggle with market fit, team dynamics, or operational complexity. We spend more time on those problems than on financial engineering.
Our involvement looks different at each stage. Early on, we're helping validate assumptions and test ideas quickly. In the growth phase, we're focused on systems and scalability. When challenges arise, we help founders work through them rather than imposing solutions from outside.
This takes longer and requires more patience than traditional models. But we've found it produces more sustainable outcomes. Ventures that develop strong foundations tend to handle future challenges better, even after our direct involvement ends.
Who We Are
Our team combines backgrounds in finance, operations, and entrepreneurship. Everyone here has built something from scratch or helped others do it. That experience informs how we evaluate opportunities and support founders through the inevitable rough patches.
Freya Lindström
Lead Investment Strategist
Freya joined calinovare in 2017 after spending five years in Sydney's fintech sector. She was employee number eight at a payments startup that eventually exited, which gave her perspective on both the exciting moments and the tedious operational work that nobody talks about.
She focuses on financial modeling and due diligence, but spends just as much time helping founders think through hiring decisions and team structure. Before finance, she studied cognitive science, which turns out to be surprisingly useful when working with early-stage ventures making decisions under uncertainty.
Outside work, she's been teaching herself carpentry and volunteers with a youth mentorship program in Orange. She believes the best business advice often comes from contexts that have nothing to do with business.
Areas of Focus