Elizabeth Henderson

Partner, Co-Head of Venture Capital (Australia)

Sydney

Elizabeth co-heads the firm’s Venture Capital practice in Australia. She advises on transactions over the full life cycle of business creation and expansion, including early stage and expansion capital raising, acquisitions for growth, M&A and other liquidity transactions.

Elizabeth provides strategic advice and assistance to founders and their companies who are raising early stage or expansion capital and to investors in venture, growth and other private capital raisings. Elizabeth also leads strategy development and implementation in HSF’s Venture Capital practice nationally. She is regarded as one of the leading Venture Capital and start-up lawyers in Australia.

Over her career she has had extensive experience in public and private M&A, equity and debt capital transactions, commercial agreements and joint ventures across a wide range of industries, including technology, financial services, media and infrastructure.

She has also held senior management roles in the corporate and private sector, including at a leading Australian bank, and non-executive director roles.

Background

Elizabeth holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Science (Physics major) both with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney and a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance.

She is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Elizabeth is admitted to practise in New South Wales.

Experience & expertise

Selected matters

Advising founders and companies on early stage and expansion capital raisings including:
- Linktree on its US10.7M capital raise in 2020, its US$45M capital raise in 2021 and its US$110M capital raise in 2022 at a valuation of US$1.3B.
- Mr Yum on its A$89M Series A & A$11M post-Seed capital raises
- Who Gives A Crap on its A$41.5M Series A capital raise.
- Carma on its US$52 million Series A capital raise
- :Different on its $25M Series B capital raising
- OwnHome Technologies on its A$31M Series A capital raise
- Sonder on its A$16 Million Series A capital raising and $35 million Series B capital raising
- Gamurs on its US$12 million Series A capital raise
- Joyn on its A$10 million Series Seed capital raise led by AirTree Ventures.
- Great Wrap on its A$11 million equity raise, which in conjunction with A$13 million of asset backed finance culminated in a Series A funding round of A$24 million
- Persuit on its $20 million Series A capital raise
- early stage and expansion capital raises for Pearler, Constantinople, Fingerprint for Success, Bardee, Kasada, CarExpert, 6clicks, Style Arcade, Instant, Reejig, OpenSolar, Greener, Vexev, HEO Robotics, Bardee, Roborigger and Karst Stone Paper
Advising companies, founders and investors on public and private liquidity transactions including:
- the $125 million merger of thedocyard and Ansarada and capital raising & re-listing of the merged entity on the ASX
- the sale of FoodStorm by its founders to Instacart
- Michael Cassel Group on the investment in its business by Amplify FinCo
- GreenCollar on its investment from KKR, the first in Australia for KKR’s US$1.3 billion Global Impact Fund
- business “spin out” transactions for Fortiro and Smart Badge in conjunction with their Seed capital raisings
Advising VC funds, family offices and corporate venture on venture, growth and private capital investments including OIF Ventures, Investible, Colinton Capital, Skip Capital, Grok Ventures, Artesian, Ridgeback Capital, King River Capital, GenesisCare Venture, Tiger and Jungle Ventures
Advising on acquisitions for growth including by Atlassian of Code Barrel, Good Software Co and ThinkTilt, SafetyCulture’s strategic acquisitions of EdApp and Sheqys and Mr Yum’s acquisition of MyGuestList and Sprout