My guest for Ep205 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Damir Cuca.

From tinkering with toys and electronics and immigrating to Australia as a child without knowing the language to building and exiting two successful businesses, Damir’s career has been a masterclass in determination, resilience and growth.

He’s best known as the Founder & CEO of Basiq, an Open Banking platform that offers secure access to consumer financial data.

Basiq went on to raise several funding rounds from top-tier strategic investors in the space including Salesforce Ventures, NAB Ventures and Westpac’s Reinventure fund before being acquired by payments giant, Cuscal, in 2023.

•  How to design a company culture that thrives on competitiveness and performance
• What the process of acquisition looks like and what it meant for him personally
• How he balances having an ambitious career with being a husband and a father to six children
• And much more!

Timestamps:

• 1:28 Damir’s background
• 10:14 Pivoting from a blue collar path to software engineering
• 17:49 Building a technical and commercial skill set
• 25:18 Tips on defining problems to focus on in business
• 29:34 Moving to Serbia to set up Basiq
• 37:15 Building the culture at Basiq
• 41:41 Instilling continuous learning mindset
• 44:17 When to fight and when to let go
• 48:56 How he approached fundraising and the acquisition process
• 54:32 The experience of going through the exit
• 58:45 How he thinks about raising his 6 kids

Our partners:

A big thank you to Rohen Sood, Jake Osborne, Victor Leung and Elizabeth Cuca for their help with this interview!

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

Links mentioned:

Damir’s links:

• Damir’s LinkedIn

People mentioned:

• Rohen Sood
•  Victor Leung
• Jake Osborne
• Steve Jobs

Companies mentioned:

• Basiq 
• Salesforce Ventures
• NAB Ventures
• Reinventure
• Cuscal

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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