Perle Ventures

Perle Ventures is a Sydney-based growth-stage technology venture capital firm founded in 2013 by Co-Founder and Chairman Shayne Smyth, the entrepreneur who founded and later divested Cover-More, Australia's largest integrated travel insurance and medical assistance provider, and Co-Founder and Managing Director Michael An, who brings more than 20 years of experience as a founder, investor, board member, and adviser across technology, education, telecommunications, and financial services. The firm operates as a compact three-person platform and concentrates on seed and growth-stage investments in Australian technology companies, with selective exposure to Singapore and the United States. Sector focus spans enterprise applications, fintech, high tech, retail, marketplace, and vertical SaaS. Perle's portfolio numbers roughly 25 investments including one unicorn, Dapper Labs, and realized outcomes of seven IPOs and three acquisitions. Notable portfolio names include Coinbase, Dapper Labs, FiscalNote, TradeGecko, Simple, Spriggy, Academy Xi, and Wattwatchers. The most recent documented investment is Dapper Labs in March 2022, with no publicly disclosed new deployments since, suggesting the firm is operating in portfolio-management mode. Perle Ventures benefits from its founders' complementary backgrounds: Smyth's experience scaling and exiting a major Australian consumer business provides commercial pattern recognition, while An's multi-decade technology investment career provides deal-origination breadth. Together they offer founders access to corporate networks, capital market relationships, and cross-border connectivity spanning Australia, Singapore, and the United States, making Perle a value-added partner for technology companies scaling from the Asia-Pacific region into global markets.