When H2Ocean Limited hits the bourse in October, it will become the ASX's first listed venture capital company.
H2Ocean has lodged a prospectus with ASIC for an initial public offering to raise between $27.5 million and $55 million.
It is a structure similar to a listed investment company, but rather than holding listed equities, H2Ocean will invest in early-stage fintech start-ups, based in Australia and abroad.
It plans to invest along side other VC funds to build up a portfolio of between 15 and 50 fintech ventures.
The offer is being jointly managed by Ord Minnett and Shaw and Partners, while Investec is on board as adviser.
Back in March, Investec invested in the manager of H2Ocean, H2 Ventures, founded by Ben and Toby Heap.
The brothers will be directors of H2Ocean, and will be joined on the board by non-executive directors Wyatt Roy, the former federal innovation minister, media personality David Koch and Anne O'Donnell, a director of Equity Trustees and chair of Beyond Bank.
The publicly-listed venture capital fund will publish monthly net tangible asset valuations of the start-ups under a valuation policy approved by KPMG.
H2Ocean will seek to invest in fintechs doing early stage, Series A funding rounds of around $1 million to $3 million. This is the "valley of death" in venture capital investing, too big for families and friends but too small for institutional investors.
With disruption to incumbent financial services players being a big theme in the market, H2Ocean will give retail investors their first opportunity to hedge their holdings in banks through a diversified portfolio of the start-ups looking to attack big bank revenue over the coming decade.
It is understood some of Australia's technology elite are preparing to invest in the company, which is slated to start trading on the ASX on October 19.
