E78 - Toby Norton-Smith, X15 Ventures

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 about

launching 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 5

years, pushing new innovations, partnerships and features in Digital, including the launch of

new ventures like Beemit. Prior to this, Toby led a Fintech business in the wealth management

space.

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 distribution

networks.

Many of this new team have felt the pain of creating a company. Toby goes into what it was like

to be in the creation team for Beemit; spinning a technology team out of CBA core and how they

were set up off stack to get them away from everyday business and start building in a very

different way. They moved fast and broke things. Toby reveals that when you’ve been through

that pain a few times and you passionately believe that there is more value that you can unlock

for customers this is where an asset like X15 can help you, with their assets they wanted to find

a more repeatable and scalable solution.

Join us on 23 April for a breakfast event which will dive into X15 and answer questions as well

as introduce us to the first founders in X15 Ventures.

On this episode Toby tells us introduces X15, and tells us where this new CBA venture-building entity hopes to go. Settle in, get comfy and have a listen!