Open The Pod Bay Doors

This week, we ‘Open The Pod Bay Doors’ with Craig Blair, cofounder and managing partner of AirTree Ventures – a startup venture fund on a mission to invest in ambitious founders who are looking to transform industry’s with software.AirTree like to be on the journey with founder from the beginning, often writing the first cheque. The first fund in 2014 was $60M which they deployed in 2 years, making 24 investments; this included early cheques in some of Australia’s startup darlings, like Prospa and Canva. The fund is tracking well with all 24 businesses still operating.The second fund increased five-times to an incredible $250M in 2016, with 15 investments made so far. The larger fund has given AirTree more operating capital to deploy into support services like a talent function to service their portfolio companies to help them build great teams for growth. This model is common in the US and UK, but in Australia it’s still a novel concept due to the limited number of funds and their size. 60% of fund two has b

Last month, we visited the thriving ecosystem in Adelaide, and were lucky enough to sit down with two cofounders of one of the best local startups, Noelle and Ben Smit from Teamgage.A positive company culture is an undeniable asset for any successful business, but monitoring and tracking corporate culture is hard to do. Step in Teamgage, which offers actionable and elegant workplace analytics in real-time for companies that want to make evidence-based decisions.Husband and wife team Noelle and Ben Smit are passionate about solving this problem with technology and data analytics that helps energise and motivate teams to do their best work.Their solution uses a unique 20 second interface and machine learning to help organisations embed a culture of continuous improvement. It allows employees to make evidence-based decisions, and creates an environment in which everyone can do their best work.Teamgage was part of the Adelaide Techstars 2017 cohort and is already being used by some major organisations like Micros

This week on the pod we're turning our focus to the importance of founder health and wellbeing.We invited Aaron Birkby, CEO Startup Catalyst and Co-founder of Peak Persona, and welcomed back Amanda Price Head of High Growth Ventures to the pod discuss this topic.KPMG Australia’s High Growth Ventures just released the findings from their Startup Founder Survey, supported by Blackbird Ventures, AirTree Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Reinventure and Right Click Capital, which polled founders of 70 Australian venture-backed startups.The report validates a lot of assumptions about startup founders; they work longer hours than average workers, two-third are very or extremely stressed, and 57 percent said that their stress has a large impact on the ability of their startup to succeed. Amanda explains they commissioned the research to shine a spotlight on some of the “unspoken challenges” founders face and highlight the link between founder wellbeing and business performance.Read the full report: //home.kpmg.com/au/en

This week on the pod we're discussing the role of Government in helping to build sustained tech ecosystems with Dr Kate Cornick, CEO of LaunchVic.LaunchVic is an independent agency established by the Victorian Government with a $60M fund to support and grow the state's startup ecosystem, increase investment and create jobs.Rather than investing in startups directly, they've made over 50 investments through grand funding rounds to support accelerators, education programs, mentoring and startup events that directly help entrepreneurs.And it's working, there have been over 510 investment deals in Victoria across the last 10 years in tech startups, there are over 107 different coworking spaces across the region, and with 1 in 5 startups in the Health space, they want to make Victoria known as the global HeathTech hub.But there is still work to be done, Kate discusses fixing the 457 visa, the skills gap within Product, product management, product design, the need for more later stage investment (Series A +), and h

This week we open the pod bay doors with Jane Lu, founder & CEO of Showpo, an Australian online fashion retailer.Jane is a remarkable woman with a remarkable story. The only child of Chinese immigrants she moved to Australia when she was 8 years old. Like many immigrant families, her parents provided her with every encouragement and opportunity to be a success in her now native Australia. She aced her HSC's with a 99.5% ATAR and went on to what many would see as a dream career with KPMG and Ernst & Young. However this path was a little dull for intrepid entrepreneur Jane, so after returning from travel abroad, decided to sacrifice everything to venture into the fashion retail industry.Most entrepreneurs have their fair share of setbacks and challenges on their way to a successful outcome.Jane was no different with her Showpo story. The setbacks kept her motivated and she preserved to build a brilliant business that she owns 100% of, has never taken a dime of outside investment, that is well on track t

James Cuda is the CEO and Founder of Savage Interactive. Based in Hobart Tasmania, Savage Interactive, http://savage.si/ is the creator of the number one creativity app for ipad globally, Procreate.   James started life as an artist in Sydney, taught himself multimedia design, started a consulting firm, which he shut down to focus 100% on building Procreate.  His vision and passion was to build the best creativity tool in the world. He works as the CEO & Founder and also Head of Product.  Procreate has won an Apple Design Award (one of only a very few Aussie companies to have achieved this), which saw him being flown over to Apple in CA.  He is now a frequent visitor to the Apple campus in Cupertino. James started the company in Hobart and now has over 20 people based in the Hobart HQ.  He has resisted the pressure of hiring people outside of Hobart, as he believes that proximity is important to building a strong working culture.  The app is exclusive to the ipad, which is now being used by professional a

This week on Open The Pod Bay Doors we chat to Sam Wong, Partner at Blackbird Ventures, an Australian venture fund who back exceptional founders with big ambitions to build global businesses. They provide equity capital for Seed, Series A and later stage - no cheque is too early. With a portfolio of over 40 companies, Blackbird has backed some of Australia’s startup powerhouses like Canva, Safety Culture, BugCrowd, Culture Amp.Sam and her parents emigrated to Perth from the UK in the 1980s, shortly after her mum started a computer sales business, and it wasn’t long until Sam and her dad were helping to run the business. Growing up with entrepreneurial parents instilled a drive and ambition in Sam from an early age.Sam went on to study law, this led to a summer clerkship and a graduate offer at top law firm. Sam loved the learning and analytical framework, however wanted to work on side projects (including learning French), and lawyer hours allowed no time to focus on these.One of these side projects was SurfS

Episode 41 of the pod we’re happy to be joined by Dean Dorrell, Principal at boutique venture fund, Carthona Capital.Carthona is an Australian venture fund focused on early stage investments (pre-Seed, Seed, Series A), with a mandate to invest globally. Established in 2013, when the founding team who were already making separate angel investments came together to pool money, networks to create a syndicated group.Carthona’s investment strategy is thematic - meaning they do a lot of thinking internally about where the world is heading and how technology will affect it, identify trends and themes and then go out to look for those opportunities. The current fund is $100 million to be deployed over 3 years.Dean started his career in investment banking, combining his computer skills along with finance and quant strategies (complex mathematical models to detect investment opportunities). After 11 years Dean left the investment banking world, worked briefly for a hedge fund, then invested in his previous colleague, S

This podcast is all about sharing the stories of the people making a difference to the Australian ecosystem. Few do more to champion and impact #startupaus then this week’s guest, Annie Parker.A coach, mentor and leader in the Australian startup community, Annie is passionate about helping founders achieve their full potential. She believes in the importance diversity, inclusion, and of paying everything forward!Annie has been delivering great results for 15 years in roles spanning digital, startup, technology & consulting. Having started her career as a management consultant back in the UK, she was quickly drawn to the world of startups and helped to set up one of world's first corporate accelerators with Telefonica's Wayra program.5 years ago she was seduced by Australia and decided to focus her energies on the local startup ecosystem, where she came to cofound Telstra’s accelerator program, Muru-D. Known for its investment and support of early stage startups, Annie and the team designed a program to gi

On this week’s episode, we're delighted to welcome Emma Lo Russo, founder & CEO of Digivizer, one of Australia’s leading social web analytics technology company.Emma has been working in leadership positions since the age of 19 when she left an advertising agency to start in the marketing team at Macquarie Bank. She was soon labelled the ‘next big thing’. Numerous leadership roles led Emma to become President & Chief Operating Officer of Altium, an ASX-listed software company where she oversaw it's greatest period of organic sales growth. It was here Emma began to see the potential and power of data.In 2010, Emma founded Digivizer, a technology platform where big data, social media and CRM converge to help organisations generate value from real-time data and actionable insights. For the first 5 years, Emma bootstrapped Digivizer building it's enterprise client list, before going on to raise $2 million in a very unusual way off the back of her MBA strategy document. The Digivizer team is now up to 63 em

This week on Open The Pod Bay Doors, we turn our attention to the New Zealand startup ecosystem as Ian Gardiner speaks with kiwi native, serial entrepreneur and investor, Rowan Simpson.Rowan started his career as an IT consultant working on mainly Government projects in Sydney. A software engineer at heart, Rowan began tinkering with web tools and developed his first startup FlatHunt to help people finding flatmates. After burning through all his cash, Rowan returned to NZ where he was hired by TradeMe and became the third founding member of the team.Rowan talks about their David and goliath experience when TradeMe took on eBay and became the dominate the e-commerce platform in New Zealand (one of only a few markets eBay did not succeed in). TradeMe went on to become an iconic Kiwi brand and was acquired by Fairfax for $750m.After the sale of TradeMe, Rowan was involved in the early days of the great New Zealand unicorn, Xero. Shortly after the IPO Rowan moved on and led the investment in another great kiwi c

This week on the pod Phaedon Stough was lucky enough to talk with Steve Killelea; accomplished entrepreneur, business magnate, one of Australia’s most prolific philanthropists and founder of a global think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace.You may never have heard of Steve, he's one of those quiet over-achievers, who has spent most of his business life working under the radar, yet has successfully built two software companies which he founded and turned into highly successful global businesses, as well as being Australia's largest donor foreign aid.Steve founded Integrated Research Ltd (IR), an Australian publicly-listed company with a 25-year heritage of providing performance management and payments software for business-critical computing. Through Steve’s direction as CEO and now as Chairman, IR has built an impressive, world-class customer base to make it one of Australia’s leading software companies. IR listed on the ASX and it's current market cap is $664 million of which Steve retains about 40

This week on pod, we talk everything blockchain and cryptocurrency with Australia’s leading thinkers on the subject, George Samman.A blockchain consultant/advisor, George Samman has co-founded and worked with numerous startups in the bitcoin and blockchain space since 2013. George strongly believes that blockchain and financial technologies are here to change how business is done across every industry.George co-founded Magnr in 2013, a bitcoin trading platform, and Sammantics where he blogs about blockchain technology and use cases. He’s constantly researching the technology in great depth in order to explain its potential to institutions of all shapes and sizes. He recently co-authored a seminal report on blockchain architecture with KPMG.George Samman is an entrepreneur in Residence for blockchain and cryptocurrency at Startupbootcamp, Tyro Fintech Hub, and has also advised startups such as Agridigital, Lightstreams, Investfeed, Gazecoin and Hedera Hashgraph.So turn up the volume and dive into the crypto wo

On this episode of the pod, we open the doors with the brilliant thinker, Jost Stollmann.German-Australian Jost has lived many lives as a Founder, Consultant, Corporate Executive, Politican, Adventurer, Investor, CEO and Student.Jost recently stepped down as the Chairman of Tyro Payments, one of Australia's most successful fintech institutions specialising in merchant credit , debit, and EFTPOS. From 2004 to 2016 Jost was Tyro's CEO where he lead them through multiple rounds of investment totally $103M, the process of gaining a banking license, and exponential growth that has seen Tyro serve over 20,000 customers and fascinated $42.2 billion in transactions.Previous roles include President of GE Capital Information Technology Europe, Fonder and Chairman of CompuNet, which he started at 29 and sold 12 years later to GE for over $1B, and consultant at BCG for 3 years.Jost's political career saw him as the Shadow Minster of Economy and Technology in Germany under Gerhard Schroder's, Social Democratic Party.A lif

This week on the pod, we have one of Australia’s most creative and well respected research commercialisation specialists. Dr. Steve Brodie talking everything innovation.Steve is passionate about all things science. Steve brings more than 20 years’ experience in research and development, commercialisation and open innovation with stints at major universities and now working with CSIRO.In his current role as Executive Manager for Innovation with CSIRO, Steve leads a fantastic team who design and delivery of innovation programs, including the ON program, Australia's innovation accelerator open to all Australian universities,  publicly funded research agencies and CSIRO. The program is designed to support and guide academia and research teams into viable, commercial businesses.On 9th April 2018 Innovation Bay will host the Deep Tech Founder Dinner that will feature teams from ON accelerator program.A curious inventor by trade, Steve co-founded ‘Thinking Thingamabob’, designed to solely help people be more creativ

We welcome to the pod entrepreneur, investor, mentor and startup evangelist, Alan Jones.With a career spanning over 50 roles; from working for some of largest tech companies in the world, to mentoring with Australia’s leading tech incubators and accelerators, to investing in an amazing portfolio of early stage tech startups. Few people have impacted the local tech ecosystem like Alan.Alan's career started in PR and content, before founding his first business in 1995, and going on to help tech giants like Microsoft and Yahoo! in Australia. With a wealth of experience founding and co-founding web and mobile startups, Alan went on to advise and invest in Australian startups through BlueChilli, Blackbird Ventures, Startmate, Catalysr, and Pollenizer Ventures. He recently became entrepreneur-in-residence for our sponsor KPMG High Growth Ventures, working with growth-stage tech startups as they scale.He's also in the process of raising a new fund, M8 Ventures, which will focus on backing great product teams buildin

Larry Lopez has been driving innovation for over 25 years. He has worked with start-ups, venture capital funds, institutional investors and government agencies, with a long track record of developing outstanding teams that deliver successful outcomes.Larry spent 17 years in technology finance with Silicon Valley Bank, before moving to Australia in 2006. His current role as Director of Accelerating Commercialisation for the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science sees him offering support and opportunities to help Australian entrepreneurs, researchers and SME businesses to address the challenges associated with commercialising intellectual property.We caught up with Larry at last year's West Tech festival in Perth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a little break we're back and ready to open the pod bay doors again.To kick off the year we thought we'd let our co-founders, Ian Gardiner and Phaedon Stough interview one another. This year Innovation Bay celebrates 15 years of supporting Australian founders and the startup ecosystem. It's been quite a ride from those initial gatherings of a few people in a dingy bar to a national community of over 3000 members spread across Australia.In case you don't know much about them, Ian Gardiner has a day job with Amazon Web Services, helping startups across Australia and New Zealand. Previously Ian was the CEO and founder of Viocorp, a software company supplying a video publishing platform for corporates and government. In 2009 Ian won the NSW Pearcey award for Technology Entrepreneur of the Year.Phaedon Stough, has worked with entrepreneurs and high growth tech start-up across APAC, EMEA and NA. Founding Mitchellake in 2001 to help entrepreneurs scale their companies via human capital solutions. Phaedon was t

Vanessa is the founder and CEO of Storreduce, an Australian deep-tech startup playing in the storage area. She moved the business to Silicon Valley a couple of years ago to be closer to her market. I caught up with her on a pretty noisy exhibition floor at AWS's re:Invent customer event in Vegas. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I caught up with Peter Nichol, the CEO of Instaclustr in Las Vegas during AWS's re:Invent conference. Instaclustr is a Canberra-based software business offering managed solutions for Cassandra and other products. Might sound complicated and niche, but it's an amazing business on an amazing fast-growth trajectory. Peter is a terrific guy with a clear vision for how he wants to scale Instaclustr.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.