Open The Pod Bay Doors - Matt Loop, Rippling

In this episode of Open the Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner sits down with long-time friend and tech leader Matt Loop, now Head of Asia Pacific at Rippling.

Matt has been at the heart of SaaS for two decades. From opening Salesforce’s first Australian office out of his Bondi apartment, to helping LinkedIn scale across Asia and the US, guiding Slack through the chaos of COVID, and now leading Rippling’s rapid expansion across APAC — Matt has lived through (and helped build) some of the most iconic software companies of our time.

They cover:

• Opening Salesforce AU with nothing but a laptop and a dream

• Lessons from LinkedIn’s hypergrowth and $26B acquisition by Microsoft

• Scaling Slack globally during the pandemic and its $27B acquisition by Salesforce

• Building Rippling’s Australian business from scratch to 100+ people in two years

• The hard realities of scaling from 10 → 100 people (and why it’s “really bloody hard”)

• How to hire and evaluate top sales talent (including Matt’s playbook)

• Product-led growth vs sales-led growth, and why the best companies do all three (PLG, SLG, and community-led)

• How Rippling is using AI today — and where it’s headed

• Scaling culture across regions and why “toxic hires” can kill momentum

• Liquidity, secondaries, and the trade-offs of staying private at $16B+ valuation

Matt is a natural storyteller with practical lessons for founders, operators, and investors — and plenty of laughs along the way.

Quick Fire Round
📚 Book recommendation – Going Infinite by Michael Lewis (Sam Bankman-Fried story)
🎧 Podcast recommendation – SmartLess (Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes)
🗞️ News source – AFR, LinkedIn Newsfeed, and a mix of global outlets
👨‍💼 Favourite CEO – Satya Nadella (plus reflections on Benioff, Jeff Weiner, Stewart Butterfield, and Parker Conrad)
🛠️ Productivity tool – Slack (still his #1)
📱 Favourite app – Slack (for staying connected to work + investor/advisory communities)
📺 TV / movie recommendation – Mob Land (Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Tom Hardy), plus Yellowstone and the Taylor Sheridan spin-offs
🎤 TED Talk topic – The evolution of US sports: from blue-collar pastime to corporate billion-dollar industry

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.