Introducing Jayden Basha: Investible’s new Investment Analyst

It's been no secret this year, that our team at Investible is growing. Alongside a newly announced pool of capital available for early-stage tech companies in Australia in the form of our Early Stage Fund 2, we have been building out our capability to invest in and support our portfolio.Jayden will be a core part of our investment team, helping to source, screen and secure opportunities from across the burgeoning ecosystem.

Tell us about your professional background

Prior to joining Investible, I was an Associate Director in EY’s Strategy & Transactions team, performing due diligence services for mainly private equity backed companies. I am a passionate investor, so my spare time was largely devoted to the establishment and operation of an investment centric trust fund, as well as personal investing activities. I started investing in equities in my first year out of school and moved onto investing in private markets once I left university.

Over this time, I have fostered a belief that through investing in technologically disruptive companies, the livelihoods of people worldwide can be transformed for the better. Joining the Investible team has enabled me to live out both my passion and belief.

What excites you about joining Investible?

The thing that excites me most about joining Investible is being exposed to founders in the formative years of their journey, as they seek to obtain seed or pre-seed capital to assist them in validating their product market fit. Investible’s seed-stage focus means that they have their finger on the pulse of the startup community, enabling them to be early backers of founders who are solving real world problems through innovative technological solutions.

What do you love most about the startup ecosystem?

The thing I love most about the startup community is the shared vision to challenge the status quo through innovation. The shared vision provides a sense of commonality, which transcends individual self-interest, unifying founders to act harmoniously to advance their collective interests. This is articulated through the willingness of participants in the community to support each other and to provide assistance with no strings attached.

The concept that “two heads are better than one” typifies the startup ecosystem and is what I consider to be the ‘secret sauce’ behind why we are seeing a greater number of amazingly successful Australian startups.

What's your personal philosophy?

My philosophy for life and work is “if it was easy, everyone would do it”.

This philosophy was instilled in me from a young age playing competitive water polo which involved getting up at 4.30am for training numerous times a week. I often find myself reciting this saying in my head when I encounter a challenging situation. The reason why this philosophy resonates so strongly with me is because it is strikingly simple, yet profoundly accurate, whereby perseverance is the largest catalyst for success.

What's something new you've learned recently?

All this talk of a crypto bubble led me to do some reading into some of the most infamous ‘asset bubbles’ in history. Putting aside the South Sea Bubble in the early 18th century, the Japanese Bubble in the late 1980’s or the infamous Dotcom Bubble, I was most fascinated by what is dubbed by many as the first recorded ‘asset bubble’ in history – Tulipmania.In 17th century Holland, the prices of tulips increased twenty-fold with some of the rarest tulips trading for as much as six times the average person’s annual salary, before prices crashed by 99%. Whilst how widespread the Tulip Bubble actually was remains a point of contention, there is little doubt that Valentine’s Day would have been an expensive time in Holland during this period. For all those novice crypto investors out there like me, keep HODLing.

Something about you that might surprise people?

I cofounded a B2B SaaS platform which sought to eliminate phone fraud after getting fed up with receiving an increasing number of scam calls. Whilst we never landed a paying customer, the process was greatly rewarding and enabled me to experience the trials and tribulations of a founder’s journey. After being told by more than one prospective customer that our vision and platform resonated so much that they would build the technology in-house, I learnt an important lesson regarding the need for defensible proprietary technology.

Connect with Jayden on LinkedIn.