Steven Steve Maarbani

Steven Maarbani is a corporate lawyer and former PwC partner who has spent more than two decades in venture capital, private equity, and the commercialisation of technology companies. He began his career in 2003 as a corporate lawyer at Freehills, then served as in-house legal counsel at The Oliver Blue Group from 2004. In 2007 he became a Partner at PwC Australia, where he spent roughly nine years specialising in venture capital and private equity, M&A, alternative finance, and tech commercialisation. He led PwC's annual "The Future of Venture Capital" thought-leadership briefing and advised on the establishment of many of Australia's leading VC vehicles — including NAB Ventures, Australia Post Ventures, the BlueChilli Venture Fund, the Tank Stream Venture Fund, the Sydney Angels Sidecar Fund, and Artesian's Fund of Funds. He holds a Master of Laws from the University of Sydney.

Maarbani co-founded VentureCrowd, which launched in 2013 (originally out of Artesian) as a venture-capital-focused tool and grew into a multi-asset investment platform spanning equity crowdfunding, property development funds, and debt/alternative credit. As Director and CEO he has built VentureCrowd into one of Australia's largest crowdfunding platforms — tens of thousands of registered members and, by his own 2025 accounts, more than A$310 million crowdfunded across 150-plus deals. He was earlier a Management Committee Member of Sydney Angels (from 2009) and in 2016 founded Maarbani Consulting, a boutique advisory firm serving VC/PE fund managers and tech companies on fund structuring (ESVCLPs/VCLPs), capital raising, and IPO readiness.

More recently, Maarbani joined Taronga Ventures — the venture arm of the Taronga Group — as fund manager for the Real Tech Ventures I Fund, a vehicle targeting A$50 million from institutional and corporate investors to back real-estate/property-technology innovation across the property lifecycle. He also sits on advisory boards of high-growth startups and funds, including Nexba and Zega.

• Invests primarily in early-stage, high-growth private companies, using equity crowdfunding to open access that was historically limited to institutional and wholesale investors — his consistent public theme is "democratising" venture and property investing.
• Runs a multi-asset approach: startup equity, property development funds/projects, and alternative credit — rather than a single-sector thesis.
• Through Taronga Ventures' Real Tech Ventures I Fund, focused on real estate / proptech ("real tech") innovation across the property sector's entire lifecycle.
• Known professionally "to challenge conventional fund structures and to help fund-manager clients embrace new ways of raising funds" — a bias toward novel capital-formation and alternative-finance models.
• Portfolio construction favours a diversified book of many deals with a small number expected to reach liquidity events; in March 2025 he publicly expected 3–4 of the 150+ portfolio companies to hit a liquidity event that year.