Open The Pod Bay Doors

February 2020 saw the launch of new venture-building entity X15 Ventures, part of the CBA group.Ian sat down with Toby Norton-Smith the new Managing Director of X15 Ventures to chat aboutlaunching the initiative and what this will look like in the future.Toby oversees the portfolio of ventures in development and in market. He’s been at CBA for 5years, pushing new innovations, partnerships and features in Digital, including the launch ofnew ventures like Beemit. Prior to this, Toby led a Fintech business in the wealth managementspace.X15 are looking for entrepreneurs, to present, receive funding and work in a derisk environment,to scale quicker; with support, guidance and access to the CBA customer base and distributionnetworks.Many of this new team have felt the pain of creating a company. Toby goes into what it was liketo be in the creation team for Beemit; spinning a technology team out of CBA core and how theywere set up off stack to get them away from everyday business and start building in a verydifferen

In this episode, Ian sits down with one of the leading figures in the Australia startup ecosystem. Sally-Ann Williams is the CEO of Australia's founding deep tech incubator, Cicada Innovations. Prior to taking over as CEO at Cicada in 2019, Sally-Ann spent 12 years working her way up to the exec level at Google Australia. As an Executive Program Manager at Google, she was responsible for leading Google’s efforts in entrepreneurship and startup engagement, research collaborations with universities and CS and STEM education & outreach. Alongside her work at Google Sally-Ann helped found StartupAUS, a non-for-profit organisation with a vision to make Australia one of the best places in the world to build a tech startup.Sally-Ann's north star is making innovation the driving force of Australia's economic future. That's why she left Google: to get people all around Australia to understand the importance of innovation. Her first step? Taking Cicada out of the shadows.Some of the highlights of the discussions in

Failure is a topic few entrepreneurs are willing to talk about but many need to hear about. You won't find anyone in the startup ecosystem who talks as openly and eloquently about failure as Jodie Fox. Jodie is an exceptional founder who built an incredible business in Shoes of Prey, the former cult-fashion startup which allowed women to customise their own shoes. A banking and finance lawyer by trade and a dedicated creative, Shoes of Prey was a perfect nexus of the corporate and creative worlds for Jodie.Shoes of Prey was considered a global leader and innovator in mass-customisation and on-demand manufacturing. A vertically integrated business that raised over US$27 million in funding, and with millions of shoes designed, Shoes of Prey changed the way the retail industry thought about product and manufacturing. This popular Aussie startup was founded in 2009 with the vision that personalisation and customisation were the future of retail. Unfortunately, after 10 years of being in business, Shoes of Prey we

This week, Ian is joined by Hannah Field from Tempus Partners. Tempus are “investing in the next generation of impossible,” with their long term approach to investment allowing them to delve into tech solutions that convention may say are impossible yet to them, are profoundly possible.Hannah’s road to becoming an investor with Tempus may not fall into the category of ‘conventional’. Hannah got her start as a semi-professional violinist and from there, took a really interesting journey throughout different industries across the globe. Ian and Hannah dive into each terrific position she has held from Boston to California to Dublin to Sydney.In her mid-20s with a “compelling drive to do something different, bigger...raise my ambition levels!” she quit her job at the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, drove cross-country and found herself in California with music provider Pandora. Being the early 2010s, music streaming was still in its initial stages. However, predicting a less than positive trajectory for Pandora

This week on #OPTPBD Ian is joined by Rick Baker, partner with Blackbird Ventures. Founded in 2012, Blackbird is a venture capital fund with a vision to accelerate and champion the most ambitious founders. Their portfolio includes an impressive line-up including; Canva, CultureAmp, Zoox and RedBubble. Prior to breaking new ground with Blackbird, Rick was busy running the venture portfolio at MLC where he invested half a billion dollars into venture capital. He also cofounded two software companies, spent some time in the UK and in Silicon Valley, but is now happily back in Sydney as Australia’s startup ecosystem truly gathers momentum.In this fascinating and open discussion with Ian, Rick takes us through Blackbird’s ‘Secondary Strip Sale’ and their hugely successful Fund One from 2013 which drew $30million from 97 investors. This was an enormous feat for the time which now sees them as Canva’s biggest investor. He also shares Blackbird’s philosophy of splitting their investments between classic software mark

This week on #OTPBD Ian talks with Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Chrome, Comms and Photos at Google. Of the 9 Google products that have reached over 1 billion users, Anil is in charge of 2 of them, Photos and Chrome.Anil shares his incredible journey, beginning with founding D2L, a successful online education startup in Canada, through his struggles with a string of other less successful ventures, to a big move from North America to Australia that ultimately led to a spot at Google.While he initially saw Google as a temporary pit stop on his entrepreneurial journey, Anil found that his attempts to get fired actually led to a series of promotions that led him to becoming one of the most senior and successful product leaders in Australia...and the world. Uncover the lessons Anil has learned from his failures, the importance of alignment at Google, and how he manages a global team while being based in Australia.Anil’s story is one of perseverance and product excellence that you won’t want to miss.See omnystu

This week on Ep72 of #OTPBD, we’re diving deep into seed investing with the founding team of Tidal Ventures. Founded by Grant McCarthy, Andrea Kowalski, and Wendell Keuneman, Tidal Ventures is a new institutional seed-focused VC firm hitting the Australian market, aiming to fill the void between Angel and Series A funding. The team has incredible collective experience working and investing in tech, with resume highlights of the founders including Yahoo, Bailador Capital, and Atlassian. Grant, Andrea, and Wendell use their respective commercial, investment, and product expertise to take the companies they invest in on the journey from seed to Series A funding.This impressive trio share key insights about seed phase investments, as well as how they evaluate investment opportunities, and what they look for in a founder. Furthermore, the co-founders divulged their own team dynamics, preparing businesses for international expansion, differences between the Australian and American VC markets, and the venture platfo

Airwallex is building global financial infrastructure to help modern internet companies grow, by offering end-to-end solutions for businesses to move money programmatically at a large scale. Lucy is an incredibly successful and inspiring founder who was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Asia, in 2017. Airwallex was founded to solve the problems surrounding global payments. Lucy shares Airwallex's founding story - from a coffee shop to Australia’s fastest growing billion dollar startup. Airwallex also recently achieved unicorn status in March and is the third Australian company to do so (after Atlassian and Canva).This week we are releasing #Ep71 of #OTPBD with Lucy Liu, President and Co-founder of Airwallex. In this pod, Lucy discusses Airwallex’s commendable competitive strategy. It is quite impressive how they worked around partnering and competing with banks at the same time by liasioning with different departments within the banks. Having already launched Airwallex globally, Lucy shares great insight

On this week’s OTPBD - EP70, we’re happy to have Dylan Lawrence, General Manager (Investment) at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) as our guest. After partnering together for our annual VC conference in New Zealand, Venture Downunder, it was great to catch up with Dylan and spend some time learning more about New Zealand’s tech startup ecosystem.NZTE is a government agency designed to support companies to grow bigger, better, and faster—which in turn benefits the New Zealand economy and its citizens. As a result, they play a crucial role in the support of founders and the startup ecosystem in New Zealand. One of New Zealand’s biggest challenges is their geographic positioning. To quote Dylan, “A lot of countries are small, and a lot of countries are distant, but we’re the only country in the world that’s small and distant”.The New Zealand startup scene is flourishing with ingenious and innovative startups rising every day; however, these startups need to expand to international markets in order to scale

This week on #OTPBD EP69, we’re delighted to host Paul Bassat, Co-founder at Square Peg Capital. His previous founder experience at Seek and current VC journey makes this episode’s discussion very captivating! Square Peg Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in high-potential businesses in Australia, Israel & South East Asia with a specific focus on series A & series B. Square Peg has made around 35 investments to date and their portfolio includes some groundbreaking startups including Canva, Athena Home Loans, Deputy & more.In this pod, we explore the dynamics between VCs & portfolio companies. Paul states, “Founders are like the captain of a sports team and a VC is like a coach.” Having walked the path of a startup founder himself, Paul shares great insights on how VCs need to support founders and act in the best interests of their portfolio companies. As a VC, one gets to be a part of plenty of groundbreaking ventures, but as a startup, the founder has just one venture that they ar

This week on Ep 68 of #OTPBD, we have the Co-founder & CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. Slack was founded by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson & Serguei Mourachov. The purpose of Slack is simply helping everyone get their work done. Slack is a one stop communication platform for organisations to work collaboratively and with high efficiency. Cal’s founder journey is definitely one of the adventurous ones. Slack was born out of personal experiences and need felt by the founders themselves. ThTo summarise the making of Slack, the founders were working towards building an online gaming startup and created Flickr along the way. The founders needed to collaborate effectively & communicate from different cities. After realizing that there was no specific platform to do so, they built one themselves. They wanted to make the platform available to public and turned the product into ‘Slack’, as we now know it. Cal is extremely humble and potentially very relatable for other founders. In this pod

This week we are releasing #Ep67 of #OTPBD with Damien Mahoney, Co-founder & CEO of Stackla. Stackla is a content-marketing platform founded in 2012. It is a classic example of how an Aussie startup successfully ventured into the great US market. It is a revolutionary platform enabling all types of B2C businesses to generate authentic, trusted and dynamic user-generated content. Stackla covers a diverse spectrum of sectors including travel, retail, media & entertainment, etc. They pride in possessing a prestigious customer base which includes big brand names like McDonalds, Lenovo and Visa.Damien shares plenty of worthwhile advice for founders looking to take their startups to the next level. Damien’s approach with Stackla was always taking things one step at a time. He says, “It was always about building upon the foundations that we built the building upon and the progress that we just made and trying to take the business to the next level.”His perspective is quite refreshing which portrays that one

In line with our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner, we were thrilled to host Darren Miller, CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Established in 2012, ARENA’s purpose is to accelerate Australia’s shift to affordable and reliable renewable energy.Being in an influential organisation such as ARENA, Darren has a very interesting perspective on the future of energy. His knowledge and his passion for renewable energy truly reflects in his words. In this ep, Darren shares some striking data and insights into the renewable energy sector and where Australia stands in the whole picture. He emphasizes especially on the severity and impact of climate change and explains how in this day and age, renewable energy can make us more adaptable to the current havoc and challenge the status quo.Previous to ARENA, Darren was also an entrepreneur and founded two businesses. In 2007, he co-founded the startup ‘Sumwise’ which is an advanced online spreadsheet platform (and had even pitched at one of our past

Our guest this week on #OTPBD is the CEO, CTO and Co-Founder of Deputy, Ashik Ahmed. His success story is one of the most inspiring ones in the Australian startup ecosystem. Ashik has built a striving business which sustains on its excellent product. In this pod, he shares his entrepreneurial journey and valuable life lessons that he learnt along the way.Deputy was founded to solve a problem affecting over two thirds of the world’s working population who are hourly workers or shift workers. To put it straightforwardly, it is a workforce management tool which aims to simplify staff management. It is this concept, that the product was created to make an impact and an actual difference in the lives of businesses and the common people, sets it apart from the rest. Ashik has been driven by passion solely, having no previous entrepreneurial experience or family history of the same. His long-term vision of Deputy is that ‘every shift worker which is 2/3rds of the world’s working population uses Deputy in the long ru

AFR’s tech editor, Paul Smith knows the in’s and out’s of Australia’s startup & tech sector. He’s not our usual founder or investor-type guest on the pod. However, as a regular reporter on the ecosystem, and a genuinely knowledgeable and well-versed guest, we were delighted to host him this week on #OTPBD and discuss media exposure for startups, the digital shift in journalism, the implications of new technologies and more!Having previously worked for Fairfax in London, Paul moved to Australia and has been working for the AFR since 2002. As an experienced journalist, we quickly deep-dived into one of the biggest ‘needs’ listed by startups in the 2018 Startup Muster Report – Media Exposure. From here, Paul discussed the importance and power of storytelling particularly with regards to pitching your story to journalists.The landscape of journalism has changed immensely throughout Paul’s career which led to the discussion of Paul’s perspectives on journalism in the digital age. Paul mentioned, ‘the industry

All the way from Sweden, our guest this week on #OTPBD is the first employee and former CTO of Spotify, Andreas Ehn! Whilst Andreas’ early education and career path started off in tech and engineering, he had always had an interest in business and entrepreneurship, which has made for an exciting and impressive career so far.Spotify has become one of the most popular music-streaming platforms of all time with over 200 million users to date. In Spotify’s formative years, Andreas brought together a world class technical team that designed and built the music-service product, however, the original genesis of this widely used app is an interesting startup story (and has much respect to timing). In a large part, illegal file-sharing company Pirate Bay (also Swedish born) helped paved a path for Spotify’s success in the music industry. Record labels were facing a time where piracy was at large more than ever, and at the time, Spotify’s music solution was the most promising to labels, and cheap and easily accessible

This week, we’re excited to share a very special episode featuring our first ever ‘trio’ on the pod who discussed the impact, role, and necessity of Australian startup boards. Ian sat down with Amanda Price, Head of KPMG High Growth Ventures, Anthony Sochan, Partner at Think & Grow and Martin Dalgleish, Partner at Morpheus Ventures, for an in-depth exploration about company boards - discussing everything from how to create successful boards, to tackling board diversity, to when to start creating boards? Recently, KPMG High Growth Ventures and Think & Grow teamed together recently to produce a brilliant and comprehensive report titled The Startup Board Report, interviewing 26 startup board directors globally and surveying over 70 Australian startups. Some key stats they found include:40% of late-stage startups don’t have an independent board member50% of startups compensate board members with cash or equity76% of startups don't have a diversity target in place65% of startups don’t recruit board members

Recognised as somewhat of a startup celebrity, Steve Baxter is an entrepreneur, investor, and best known as one of the (more sharkier) sharks on Australia’s Shark Tank. We were excited to have Steve this week on #OTPBD to look back on his early telco & internet startup successes, deep dive into his considerable career, and listen to his strong opinions on government & politics, climate change and more.** As you may know, Steve is very direct and can be sometimes outspoken on topics, which was no special case for this episode. As a climate change skeptic, Steve definitely put up a thought-provoking debate with Ian on the topic of clean energy - definitely worth the listen! A short spoiler about this Ep.Steve’s career started at the young age of when he joined the army and was recruited as a solider with contract for 9 years. At 23, he and his partner took out a home loan for $11,000, which became used to launch his first startup, an internet service provider, SE Net from one of the spare rooms from his

On first thought, a Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of a superannuation fund seems an unlikely guest for Open The Pod Bay Doors. However, you'll soon hear how Sam Sicilia, Hostplus’ CIO of 10 years, has become a driver for investment into VC, and is overall passionate about tech innovation for the future prosperity of the Australian economy.We were excited to have Sam on the pod who gave us some great insights into Hostplus’ investments. Last year, Hostplus invested over $1 billion into venture capital, making the fund Australia’s largest VC investor, with capital into Blackbird Ventures ($160M), The IP Group ($100M), Artesian ($135M) & Main Sequence Ventures ($70M) to name a few. As one of Australia’s largest superfunds with almost $40B under management, Hostplus has become one of the most influential figures in the Australian tech venture capital sceneSam also discussed how their first dedicated VC investment (into Blackbird Ventures) came about, and delved into the importance of relationships with fund

On today’s pod, we feature an exceptional female entrepreneur, who’s also an investor, advisor, board member, and mum of 3. We’re excited to celebrate International Women’s Day this year with a brilliant guest, Jane Martino.Melbourne local, Jane Martino has had an impressive career so far, and she’s only just getting started. Recently appointed as Executive Director - Ventures for VC firm, Light Warrior, Jane has a passion for investing and advising early stage ventures and businesses particularly in the areas of health/wellness, consumer, retail & FMCG and those with a social impact.Previous to this, Jane was CEO of Unlockd, which raised $40M, and also built a number of dynamic businesses, two of which had successful exits: Undertow Media, acquired by Bastion Collective, and Shout, acquired by ANZ Bank. Her third business, the non-for-profit, Smiling Mind, a program centred around delivering free online mindfulness meditation programs, has now over 3 million users globally.In this ep, Jane shares some ex