What’s it like to be employee number one at two of the most iconic tech companies of the past two decades?
In this episode of Wild Hearts, guest host and investor at Blackbird, Maddy Guest sits down with Kate Vale; Google and Spotify’s first hire in Australia.
From launching Google out of her lounge room to scaling Spotify into a household name, Kate shares behind-the-scenes stories of tech history in the making, the leadership lessons that stuck, and why her latest career act is all about investing in women.
In this conversation, we cover:
📞 The cold call from Google that changed her life and brought her to the global tech world—and tech in APAC
🚀 What it was like to launch Google Australia from her lounge room
🌍 Why Spotify was a harder sell than Google—and how she got artists on board
💡 The cultural rituals that helped Kate build high-performance teams across two giants
🔥 The one mistake most startups make when scaling their teams globally
📈 Why she co-founded a VC fund to back female tech founders during the pandemic
🎯 What Kate looks for in a founder, and the red flags that kill the deal
This episode is a fascinating look behind the scenes at some of the earliest experiences of bringing global tech companies to Australia, and how these experiences have shaped Steph’s career and investing approach.
