Just two months after coming out of stealth mode, the Sydney-headquartered company is valued at $30 million. Alumni from Atlassian and Canva founded Index in 2023 and are the first Sydney entrepreneurs to go through the US Y Combinator program.
When the ‘mafia’ of Australia’s two largest tech firms join forces, they are bound to come up with something interesting. That something, in the case of Index, is a set of real-time collaboration tools to help tech companies strategise big-picture goals.
“Companies have large initiatives that they’re working on – goals and things that span across teams. Index is the home for all of those things, and helps everyone get on the same page about the work that’s being done for more of a big picture lens,” explains Simon Kubica in an exclusive interview with Forbes Australia.
The entrepreneur founded Index with Christian Iacullo in 2023 and went through the prestigious US Y Combinator program. The resulting platform is a sophisticated set of tools aimed at large technology firms.
“Index provides planning tools for technology companies that help everyone in the company or the team understand what’s going on with the business,” says Kubica.
Not having the tools to communicate and consolidate information for big goals is a problem that Kubica, now the CEO of Index, understands all too well.
“When I was at Atlassian I worked across and managed four or five teams. What I really struggled with is that I didn’t have one place to tell everyone in the business that the goal for my business group was to get to 10,000 developers and deliver six or seven projects over the next few months,” says Kubica.
Wanting to see if other technologists face the same problems, Kubica reached out to a friend who worked at Canva.
“I gave Christian a call to see if I was the only one feeling the pain. I said, ‘what’s it like at Canva?’, and he took a deep breath and said… ‘let me tell you all about it’,” says Kubica with a laugh.
“We had this lightbulb moment that if this is happening at both of these companies, there’s a good chance it’s happening at a lot of other companies as well, and that gave us the conviction to go take a swing.”
Blackbird and Bain Capital back Index with $3.5m seed round
Three years later, that swing is attracting capital and attention from some of the biggest names in the business.
Blackbird co-founder Niki Scevak, who is also an investor in Canva, tells Forbes Australia that he sees great promise in the solution Index has come up with.
“We are excited to be in partnership with Simon and Christian in pursuit of their dream to bring the same rigour that is applied in the building phase of software projects, to the planning of them,” says Scevak.
Positioned as ‘the first tool for B2B Product Management,’ Index’s seed round has also drawn interest from the US.
“Bain Capital Ventures joins to deepen our roots in San Francisco, with experience helping launch tools like Docker, Clari, and Docusign. We can’t wait to work with Aaref Hilaly and Rak Garg,” Index says in a statement.
Northern California-based Bond is also contributing to the raise, as are Australian angel investors Alex Zaccaria, Thomas Paul Mann, and Max Marchionne.
Stealth mode to a $30m valuation in two years
While Index came out of stealth mode only two months ago, big-name companies are already using the tool.
“Product leaders at Deputy, Immutable, Woolworths, and Serko are all using Index in early access. We also have thousands of companies on the waitlist and growing rapidly,” says Kubica.
Cliff Obrecht, co-founder of Canva has also weighed in on the tool, writing on the LinkedIn launch post that the tool “looks incredibly powerful and flexible.”
The company has a presence in Silicon Valley, because of its roots in Y Combinator and raising from large US VC firms. Though, the heart of the company remains in Australia, Kubica says.
“We flew over to the US and started the company in the US spent about a year in Silicon Valley. And then we decided, to really grow the team we have a real advantage doing it in Sydney. There’s so much talent coming out of Canva and Atlassian looking to join the next big thing,” says Kubica.
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