Founder's Story
She Raised $650M by Fixing What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Investors | Ep 281 with Dannika Warburton Founder and Principal of Investability
18 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What unique experiences shaped Dannika Warburton's journey into investment?
So Danica Warburton, super excited to have you today. And you have a very interesting story. It might be one of the most unique stories, at least from somebody who's in the investment side, but came from working in a mine. I don't know if I even know anyone that's actually worked in a mine before, but I can only imagine the skills that mining teaches somebody.
So can you bring me back to that day when you used to work in a mine before you were investability, before you were the person you are today?
Sure thing. Thanks, Daniel. It's so exciting to be here speaking with you. So, yes, I guess being an Australian and in an economy that's driven by natural resources, when I was at university, during my breaks to get a bit of money, I would go and work on the mine sites, which was absolutely fascinating, to be honest.
You know, if you've never been underground in a large gold mine, which I'm assuming you haven't, It's just another world. It's like going to the moon or something. But it was an interesting sort of exercise that I did over those three or four years in the breaks whilst at uni.
And I guess by virtue of being a West Australian, my family was in the mining industry, so I was lucky enough to be able to do that. But it really set the foundation of what Investability is, the company that I lead.
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Chapter 2: How did toxic leadership influence Dannika's approach to building Investability?
because a lot of the companies that we support are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. They're small caps. And by virtue of the composition of the ASX, that means that a lot of them are actually mining companies. So I didn't actually work on the mine sort of full time. After uni, I got into investment banking and sort of did the rounds there. They got their pound of flesh for me.
I worked for a US bank, actually, and then after that moved into sales and trading for a Canadian bank. So sort of got the full spectrum of deal structuring and how these really transformational sort of corporate deals get done with an Australian focus. So, yeah, that set the foundation and I guess is a pretty unique mix for Investability to sort of have that origin story.
But I suppose a real aha moment for me before founding Investability was I consulted to a digital investor relations firm for just about three months. And while I was there, it was like upside down land, this agency. The culture was super toxic. And in the three months that I was there, I kind of leveraged my relationships that I had and bought in about 800 grand's worth of new business.
And I thought... I kind of had two realisations, I suppose.
Chapter 3: What common mistakes do founders make when pitching to investors?
The first was that I could do this and do it better and these people, but also secondly, that I really want to build a business that had a great culture. So that's what I did. I was living in Sydney at the time, founded Investability right as the COVID pandemic kicked off.
But that was actually the perfect time to have started an investor marketing agency because we just were entering a bull market. And so, you know, went from about one client to 45 clients in the space of about 12 months and did about 14 IPOs that year. So really built the plane as we went.
It's a very commonality. It's a lot of commonality, I'd say, between what you're saying and other successful founders as well, where you had experience in an industry. You're able to take that experience into the industry that you found the company within. At the same time, you work for somebody and then you realize, why am I working for someone when I can literally do this on my own?
And I love that. I think that's, you know, it's such a great start because you have experience. You're already working in it, which is why I always find it's super helpful for people to work a corporate job. Like you said, gain what you don't want to do. Like find leaders that you don't actually want to emulate.
Chapter 4: How can founders effectively craft a compelling narrative for investors?
And then you bring that to your own company and say, I'm never going to do that. But it helped you really craft this thing. So you've helped raise over a billion Australian dollars. What is one thing that you find that founders misunderstand about raising money?
I think... from our perspective of when we're assisting companies going through a capital raise or a funding round, that they're really quite focused on the technical details or the numbers, and they may miss the fact that it's not necessarily the numbers that moves the market, it's the narrative.
And so crafting a narrative that is an investable story and that is going to be compelling to an investor is really important and something that often gets missed.
I find. And I imagine within this, you're pitched by many founders, or I'm sure a lot of people want to talk to you about investing. I know everyone I know that's looking for money is always talking to hundreds of investors. And I can imagine being on the investor side, it can get quite overwhelming. But what would you say is a successful pitch?
So if somebody comes to you or if there's maybe one that stands out where you were like, wow, like that really got me compared to these other, you know, 50 that I've heard that I probably will pass on.
I think it's about a simple story. So kind of what I was just saying before about things getting over complicated, the best stories that I've heard are ones where the company, the CEO or the chairman or whoever's presenting comes with,
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Dannika face while scaling Investability during COVID?
three key points that they want you to walk away with. And I guess that's because the human brain loves the power of three. Three wise men, three blind mice. It's kind of how we've grown up. It's the best number of investment highlights to use for the brain retention or memory retention for investors. But there are multiple factors that I think make a compelling story. So
One would obviously be the context that the sector, the industry that the company's in. And then secondly, really honing down the story to make it super punchy. Like what is it that investors should sit up and take notice about? So that's what we do at Investability to help these companies get noticed by investors, both on the institutional side and the retail side.
So it can be quite complex making the story punchy. weighty and technical enough to, I guess, facilitate the institutional investors and what they're looking for. But then also simple enough to understand for just, you know, a mom and dad investor.
Do you find when you give feedback to these founders, because I know you're helping them raise the money, right?
Chapter 6: How does neuroscience play a role in overcoming limiting beliefs for founders?
And if you give them feedback, are they open to it or are they like, hey, I'm the founder, I know everything?
I think with us, we find that they really treat us like a trusted advisor. So they take on the feedback. They know that we're aligned with them. We're trying to help them and it's our specialty. So a lot of the MDs or the founders that we work with come from a technical background and
So, for instance, if we're working with, say, a mining company that's developing a, I don't know, a big copper mine or something like that, their expertise is probably going to be in mining engineering or geology, not necessarily in marketing and communications. So... or the media side.
So I think they do come to us and if we're giving feedback, we always do it in a, you know, really warm and supportive way, of course, but they know that we're trying to help. So I think they're always receptive to hearing positive feedback that's going to help them get their investment so they can go and make a difference by bringing their company to life. Yeah.
It's always good to have you need that trusted partner, that trusted advisor. I remember a moment in my business where I had this like a deal was handed to me and it was going to be like life changing, business changing.
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Chapter 7: What strategies can founders use to improve communication with investors?
And I messed it up and I lost the deal. And it really was my own fault. And it was, you know, insecurities. It was early on. And I it was just so. It felt so overwhelming to me, like, OK, I don't know if I can handle this or what if I mess up? And and I look back like, wow, you know, I learned a lot, even though I missed out on, you know, a substantial amount of money. I really learned a lot.
Did you ever have any of these aha moments for you where it didn't go as smooth as you wanted, but it was one of those hard lessons that you needed to learn?
Well, I totally agree with you that the most painful things that happen are obviously the best or usually the best teachers. I've had many challenges, like I think most founders would, things to overcome.
And to your point around limiting beliefs, I think one of the things, if I was going to go back to sort of six years ago and tell my younger self, you know, dealing with stress and the limiting beliefs of... that you get wrapped up in that you can't do something or that, you know, something's going to fail. I wish I had have learned more about neurocides back then.
I mean, I just read this fantastic book about the alter ego effect by Todd Herman.
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Chapter 8: Why is media creation becoming essential for companies in the investment space?
And that's actually been game changing, probably a little bit off topic. But I think if you can... Create a character, give it superpowers and then press play. You know, it's just, it's amazing. Embody this. If you're a procrastinator, for instance, embody, build a character around someone who just gets stuff done. If you're a real stress head that can't, you know,
that sort of gets really overwhelmed and frazzled, build a character that is super cool, you know, relaxed, nothing phases them and just executes with, you know, with good humour. So I think that's sort of something interesting that... helps me to overcome challenges or times when I'm feeling that it's all too hard and it's, you know, what am I doing? You know, those sort of moments.
One particular time where things were going really, really well and I guess I didn't... read the signs or, you know, you always have this intuitive sense. And I think if you're guided by your intuition, then everything's going to go okay. It's when you don't listen to your gut feelings that things go awry.
So this is a time when basically there was, I think we had 10 employees sort of all resigned within a month and we had to drop clients and it was You know, one of those times we kind of feel like giving up. But, you know, everything has a silver lining.
And if you have that growth mindset that you can see the benefits of something bad that happens to you, I think that's a really positive trait and something you need to have as a founder to be resilient. But it allowed us to restructure the business, really scale back the operations to make them lean.
It was sort of the time when, well, it was a little bit before AI became sort of as commonplace as it is now, but just we built better systems, like the investability was so much better for it. So I think, yeah, I think when you go through a hard time, just always know that there will be something good coming from it and what can I learn and how can I do better next time.
That's really all you can do, I think.
You have to build that superhero. I like that. You have to build that superhero in that moment to tell yourself things are going to get better because they always do. But it's so hard. When you're standing in the mud, it's really, really hard not to envision your feet falling deeper into it. If you could change something about the small cap world, and I don't really know a huge amount about it.
So thank you, though, for filling me in more today. But if you could change something about it, maybe make something better, what would that be?
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