SafteyCulture, a Townsville-based startup aiming to simply workplace safety auditing and documentation, has just secured $6.1 million in Series A funding to grow its engineering teams and start sales and marketing.

The money came mostly existing investors, such as Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, who doubled his contribution.

Last year Farquhar led a $2 million investment round in the business, chipping in $750,000, which is valued it at $17 million.

The startup attracted high interest from investors but founder and CEO, Luke Anear said he was selective about who he acceptd funding from.

“Each of SafetyCulture’s previous rounds have been oversubscribed,” he said. “Investors are like an employee that you can’t fire, so it has been important that we find people that we enjoy working with and provide value that will help us overcome the challenges ahead.

“I’ve also had friends and people who know me personally wanting to invest, so this was an opportunity for them to become involved. I warned them in the past that tech investing is risky by nature, there are many uncertainties and I thought it was best that only professional investors participate in the earlier rounds. We are now at a stage where we have a good foundation and I believe we will continue to grow the business.”

Now approaching one million users, SafetyCulture needs the funding to invest in talent to help move through its next stage of growth.

“We desperately need mobile and back-end engineers… there is an Australia wide shortage of software engineers, particularly for mobile app development,” Anear said.

“Hopefully with [prime minister] Malcolm Turnbull in office, we will start to see some investment in the future of computer sciences and maybe even fibre to the premises!”

Now read: SafetyCulture, the startup Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar has taken under his wing, is opening a US office.

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