My guest for Ep135 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Gabby Leibovich, Co-founder of The Catch Group.

Gabby and his brother Hezi are two of Australia’s leading e-commerce entrepreneurs.

In October 2006, they launched Catch of the Day, a website that provided an exclusive deal on it’s platform everyday. By 2010 it had become Australia’s most visited online shopping site. In August 2019, Catch was sold to Wesfarmers for $230M.

Alongside Catch, they also launched Scoopon in 2010 which was acquired by the Lux Group in 2017 and after launching EatNow in 2012 and merging with Menulog in early 2015, they were then acquired by Uk based Just Eat for a whopping $855M just a few short months later.

Many of the stories and lessons behind these businesses was documented in Gabby and Hezi’s new book Catch of the decade…This book been one of my favourite reads this year!

In this interview we discussed some of the themes mentioned in the book including :

• Building culture that attracts and retains talent
• The story behind Scoopon’s decision to offer $1M in refunds after an airline went bankrupt
• Balancing trade-offs when making key decisions as a leader
• How 1+1=3 with the right partners
• (and my personal favourite) chatting about all things Liverpool FC and how you can stop “kissing frogs” by having great leadership
• & much more!

Full interview below!

Show notes:

• Catch of the decade (book)
• Hezi Leibovich (Co-founder of The Catch Group)
• catch.com.au
• Wesfarmers acquisition of Catch
• Scoopon
• Grocery Run
• Mumgo
• Luxury Escapes
• EatNow and Menulog merger
• Just Eat acquisition of Menulog
• Youtube video of Gabby’s wedding
• Adir Shiffman
• Adir Shiffman Podcast ( Startup Playbook Ep012)
• Vijay Bala (First hire at Catch)
• Ferry Satio (First programmer at Catch)
• AirAustralia collapse
• David Shein Podcast (Startup Playboo Ep133)
• Nick Molnar (Co-founder & Co-CEO at Afterpay)
• Anthony Eisen (Co-founder & Co-CEO at Afterpay)
• Vinomofo
• Justin Dry Podcast (Startup Playbook Ep003)
• Pumpkin Patch acquisition by Catch Group
• Adam Schwab (Co-founder of Luxury Escapes)
• Jeremy Same (Co-founder of Luxury Escapes)
• Paul Greenberg (Co-founder of Deals Direct)
• Ruslan Kogan (Founder & CEO of Kogan)

Special Thanks:

Special thanks to Adir Shiffman and Guy Polak for their help with research for this interview ? .

Next interview:

Join our next live podcast interview with Manuri Gunawardena, the Founder & CEO of HealthMatch.
Date: 8th December 2020
Time: 8-9am (AEDT)
Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/Ep136Manuri

Feedback/connect/say hello:

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

Credits:

Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams

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