My guest for Episode 176 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Luke Anear, the Founder & CEO of SafetyCulture.

Luke is one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs.

He started SafetyCulture in 2004 out of a garage in Townsville, initially as a lifestyle business, before conversations with Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes the co-founders of Atlassian, convinced him to take on Venture Capital funding.

What started off as a checklist app for the construction industry has evolved into a fully fledged operations platform for businesses all around the world.

In 2023, SafetyCulture raised $34M at a $2.7B valuation.

In this episode Luke shares a lot of lessons and insights from his journey so far including:

• Luke’s entrepreneurial journey from a glass recycling business in Townsville at 16 to building SafetyCulture
• The decision to become a technology company and take on VC funding
• Personal growth and learnings from Mike & Scott at Atlassian
• How his role has evolved from the founder of a scrappy startup to the CEO of a global multi-billion dollar company
• & much more!

Timestamps:

• 3:44 Luke’s background and early business ventures
• 6:02 First business challenges and lessons from Bill Smith
• 9:42 Founding SafetyCulture
• 14:45 SafetyCulture’s evolution and growth
• 18:08 Validating a new product
• 19:12 Taking on VC funding
• 23:40 Personal growth and learnings from Mike & Scott at Atlassian
• 26:33 Leadership and Scaling Challenges
• 31:47 How founders can share the vision of their company
• 35:32 Leadership and incentivising teams
• 40:35 How founders can work out what to focus on in the early stages
• 44:52 Advice to founders on dealing with stress 
• 46:41 Helping your team grow

Our partners

A big thank you to Rick Baker for his help with research for this interview!

Also a big thank you to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business.. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Get started with a Sydney-based Vanta team member today, or watch a 3-minute demo to learn more, at vanta.com/playbook.

Links mentioned

Luke’s links

• Luke’s LinkedIn

People mentioned

• Rick Baker
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Mike Cannon-Brookes
• Scott Farquhar
• Alex Zatarain
• Cliff Obrecht
• Melanie Perkins
• Bill Bartee
• Bill Smith
• Craig Tiley
• Tony Robbins
• Dare Jennings
• Reg Mombassa
• Caleb Holloway

Companies mentioned

• SafetyCulture
• Telstra
• Blackbird Ventures
• Eight Sleep
• Canva
• Atlassian
• Insight Partners

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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