Tom Humphrey
Partner at Blackbird Ventures
Tom Humphrey is a partner on Blackbird Ventures' investment team, which he joined in 2021 after two years at Access Ventures. He spent eight years operating before moving into investing: as co-founder of Kanopy, a B2B video streaming company he launched in San Francisco that exited to private equity at a 13x return, and as chief operating officer of OurDeal, a Sydney direct-to-consumer ecommerce company that returned 4x to investors on its sale to News Corp. On First Cheque with Cheryl Mack and Maxine Minter, he discussed why Australia's AI opportunity is bigger than most people think.
Career
- Now Partner · Blackbird Ventures
- 2019–2020 Partner · Access Ventures
- Until 2018 · Scale-up COO · Kanopy
- Earlier · Startup COO · OurDeal
Sources: blackbird.vc
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of Why Australia Has More AI PhDs Than Anywhere | First Cheque you want.
- 1:12 Hey, I'm Cheryl. I'm Maxine. This is First Cheque
- 3:45 What was the first thing you ever invested in? BHP and the Canva vs BHP math
- 5:51 Invest early and hold: learning compounding from his parents
- 6:52 Invest America: what happens when every kid gets $1,000 to compound until 18
- 8:14 Robinhood, retail, and the new CEO playbook
- 11:02 Why aren't we more excited about Australia? The AFR talent piece
- 12:29 8 percent of Asia-Pac AI experts are in Australia and we have 6 of the top 100 AI universities
- 13:59 The output story: 6 foundational models trained in Australia, Leonardo at number 5 globally
- 16:52 Why Australia builds global-first: Heidi and Leonardo are 90 percent offshore revenue
- 18:20 The cost of not celebrating: US pre-seed up 70 percent, Australia going backwards
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
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