The Australian startup ecosystem is about to be struck by a mammoth meteorite of awesomeness. And nobody is talking about it. Here’s what’s going down: Tech juggernaut @canva is in the process of closing a $1.5 BILLION secondary share offering. That means $1.5 billion of equity currently in the hands of early investors and employees is being turned into CASH. Why does this matter? 💰 Reason 1 💰 Dozens of early investors who believed in Australian tech enough to invest in it before it was sexy will each be getting payouts in the order of millions or tens of millions of dollars. What do you think these investors are going to do with these massive distributions? My guess: invest it straight back into tech. 💰 Reason 2 💰 Hundreds, maybe thousands of Canva employees are about to receive a life-changing lump sum—hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Many of these employees will combine their newfound financial freedom with their valuable experience to found the next wave of high-powered Australian startups. Others will stay at Canva and deploy some of their new wealth as canny angel investors in the Australian tech ecosystem. I’ve said before that one of the things that makes Silicon Valley so successful is the successive waves of “mafias” (PayPal Mafia, Google Mafia, Facebook Mafia) that are spawned during massive wealth-creation events, that then go on to spur the next wave of startup success. This was missing in Australia... until now. My belief is that Canva's mass liquidity event will do far more for tech startups in Australia than another $1B fund. This is a watershed moment in this country: prepare for a wave of smart money and patient, long-term founders.