The Beginning
Jeremy Atkin co-founded Bandera Capital with Gabe Reyna, now US-based and pursuing a separate strategy. Bandera was a deal-by-deal syndicate investing in Australian hard-tech startups at the pre-seed and seed stage. The first investments were made in May 2020, Sea Forest and 5B, both of which have since gone on to achieve significant commercial milestones.
The thesis was simple: Australia has world-class hard-tech talent across energy, industrials and agriculture. But capital at the earliest stage was, and remains, almost non-existent. The opportunity was structural, not cyclical.
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2025
Six Years. Seventeen Companies.
Over six years, the Bandera Capital syndicate backed seventeen companies across energy, industrials and agriculture: from silicon-graphite battery materials in Wollongong to hull-cleaning robots in Sydney Harbour to rare earth refining in Boston.
The portfolio was built without a fixed pool of capital, relying instead on a network of sophisticated co-investors assembled deal by deal. While effective in building a track record, the syndicate model is not scalable. A new purpose-designed structure was required to go to the next level.
Kapunda Ventures Fund I
KV Fund I is the natural evolution of Jeremy’s investing track record: a dedicated seed fund with a fixed pool of capital, a clear investment mandate, and a structure designed to enable the speed and conviction that early-stage hard-tech investing demands.
The fund targets A$20m (hard cap A$30m), deploying into 20–25 companies over four years at pre-seed and seed stage. The name change from Bandera Capital to Kapunda Ventures reflects the transition from a syndicate to a fund and embodies our purpose: backing Australian ingenuity in the sectors that matter most.
Jeremy is supported by Foxglove Capital, whose six-person investment team chairs both the investment committee and advisory board and is an on-demand resource for investment sourcing and research. Fund administration is outsourced to GXE.