Ep212 – Matt Loop (Head of Asia – Rippling) on Leadership, Hiring & Growing Iconic Tech Companies

Jun 19, 2025

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My guest for Ep212 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Matt Loop.

There are few people who’ve had as much influence in shaping the tech landscape in this region as Matt.

He began his career at Salesforce, where he was one of their earliest hires in Australia, before going on to lead sales at LinkedIn, first in ANZ, then later as Head of Enterprise in North America.

After that, he returned to Australia to take on the role of Head of Asia Pacific at Slack, helping the company scale its presence across the region.

Today, Matt is the VP and Head of Asia at Rippling, a workforce management platform that’s transforming how businesses manage their people, IT, and operations. Just last month, Rippling announced a $450 million Series G round, valuing the company at $16.8 billion.

In this episode, we dive into a range of topics, including:

How to build and lead high-performance teams
Matt’s approach to hiring and what he looks for in candidates
The frameworks he uses to choose which companies to join
Balancing a high-impact career with family life
And so much more.

Timestamps:

00:02:07 Matt’s career arc: Salesforce, LinkedIn, Slack, Rippling
00:08:45 Building Salesforce APAC
00:12:29 GTM Advice to founders
00:16:48 Leaving Salesforce: spotting comfort creep & moving to LinkedIn
00:24:27 Leadership frameworks from all his previous experiences
00:30:15 Cultivating Rippling’s high performance culture
00:35:09 Frameworks for evaluating potential career opportunities
00:46:13 Hiring “good humans” with a growth mindset
00:50:02 Networking and personal branding
00:55:13 Stepping back from the day-to-day and seeing the bigger picture
01:00:10 Finding your own version of balance

Our partners:

A big thank you to Katrina Loop, James Demetrios and Andrew McCarthy for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our long-term 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.
The Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/podcast to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

The Komo Club – Details here

Matt’s Links:

People mentioned:

Companies mentioned:

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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