Open the Pod Bay Doors

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 aboutlaunching 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 5years, pushing new innovations, partnerships and features in Digital, including the launch ofnew ventures like Beemit. Prior to this, Toby led a Fintech business in the wealth managementspace.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 distributionnetworks.Many of this new team have felt the pain of creating a company. Toby goes into what it was liketo be in the creation team for Beemit; spinning a technology team out of CBA core and how theywere set up off stack to get them away from everyday business and start building in a verydifferent way. They moved fast and broke things. Toby reveals that when you’ve been throughthat pain a few times and you passionately believe that there is more value that you can unlockfor customers this is where an asset like X15 can help you, with their assets they wanted to finda more repeatable and scalable solution.Join us on 23 April for a breakfast event which will dive into X15 and answer questions as wellas 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!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Ian sits down with one of the leading figures in the Australia startup ecosystem. Sally-Ann Williams is the CEO of Australia's founding deep tech incubator, Cicada Innovations. Prior to taking over as CEO at Cicada in 2019, Sally-Ann spent 12 years working her way up to the exec level at Google Australia. As an Executive Program Manager at Google, she was responsible for leading Google’s efforts in entrepreneurship and startup engagement, research collaborations with universities and CS and STEM education & outreach. Alongside her work at Google Sally-Ann helped found StartupAUS, a non-for-profit organisation with a vision to make Australia one of the best places in the world to build a tech startup.Sally-Ann's north star is making innovation the driving force of Australia's economic future. That's why she left Google: to get people all around Australia to understand the importance of innovation. Her first step? Taking Cicada out of the shadows.Some of the highlights of the discussions include:Some of the greatest success stories coming out of Cicada's incubatorHer plan for taking Cicada out of the shadowsWhat she learned from her time at Googleand how people working in innovation and technology need to bring the rest of Australia along on the journeyYou don't want to miss this conversation with one of the most important voices in the Aussie startup world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Failure is a topic few entrepreneurs are willing to talk about but many need to hear about. You won't find anyone in the startup ecosystem who talks as openly and eloquently about failure as Jodie Fox. Jodie is an exceptional founder who built an incredible business in Shoes of Prey, the former cult-fashion startup which allowed women to customise their own shoes. A banking and finance lawyer by trade and a dedicated creative, Shoes of Prey was a perfect nexus of the corporate and creative worlds for Jodie.Shoes of Prey was considered a global leader and innovator in mass-customisation and on-demand manufacturing. A vertically integrated business that raised over US$27 million in funding, and with millions of shoes designed, Shoes of Prey changed the way the retail industry thought about product and manufacturing. This popular Aussie startup was founded in 2009 with the vision that personalisation and customisation were the future of retail. Unfortunately, after 10 years of being in business, Shoes of Prey went into liquidation early 2019.In this episode, Jodie talks us through the highs and lows of her journey with poise and vulnerability, specifically shedding light on the importance of mental health for entrepreneurs. She also discusses her new book, "Reboot: Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Starting a Global Business", which was released in November. You don't want to miss this insightful, powerful pod episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Ian is joined by Hannah Field from Tempus Partners. Tempus are “investing in the next generation of impossible,” with their long term approach to investment allowing them to delve into tech solutions that convention may say are impossible yet to them, are profoundly possible.Hannah’s road to becoming an investor with Tempus may not fall into the category of ‘conventional’. Hannah got her start as a semi-professional violinist and from there, took a really interesting journey throughout different industries across the globe. Ian and Hannah dive into each terrific position she has held from Boston to California to Dublin to Sydney.In her mid-20s with a “compelling drive to do something different, bigger...raise my ambition levels!” she quit her job at the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, drove cross-country and found herself in California with music provider Pandora. Being the early 2010s, music streaming was still in its initial stages. However, predicting a less than positive trajectory for Pandora, she moved to a position in online revenue operations with file sharing platform, Dropbox. After only one year she was selected to help instigate the company’s international profile with a move to Dublin. In eleven months their initial team of seven grew to seventy - a huge feat! Hannah admits that in achieving this she was “probably working at 200%.”With Ian, Hannah speaks about her time at Canva and the importance of company values, her stint as a recruiter, the interesting hiring process at Tempus, some of the top companies in their portfolio, and ideas for tackling the extraordinarily limited female representation in the investment field. This 75th episode of Open The Pod Bay Doors truly burns through a lot of topics; grab a snack, get comfy and have a listen!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on #OPTPBD Ian is joined by Rick Baker, partner with Blackbird Ventures. Founded in 2012, Blackbird is a venture capital fund with a vision to accelerate and champion the most ambitious founders. Their portfolio includes an impressive line-up including; Canva, CultureAmp, Zoox and RedBubble. Prior to breaking new ground with Blackbird, Rick was busy running the venture portfolio at MLC where he invested half a billion dollars into venture capital. He also cofounded two software companies, spent some time in the UK and in Silicon Valley, but is now happily back in Sydney as Australia’s startup ecosystem truly gathers momentum.In this fascinating and open discussion with Ian, Rick takes us through Blackbird’s ‘Secondary Strip Sale’ and their hugely successful Fund One from 2013 which drew $30million from 97 investors. This was an enormous feat for the time which now sees them as Canva’s biggest investor. He also shares Blackbird’s philosophy of splitting their investments between classic software marketplaces and “weird stuff,” like autonomous vehicles and lab-grown meats. As Ian puts it, they’ve “done some weird shit,” but it works! Their lack of fear of truly grassroots ideas distinguishes Blackbird from others in the Australian VC field. Rick discloses that his team are passionate about investing in the “science non-fiction,” ideas that seem improbable but when looked at closely, are imminently doable.Blackbird is now entering its 8th year of a 10-year fund. Rick talks with Ian about their hopes to expand Blackbird’s footprint in the future, having just opened an office in Auckland and building on their team of 19.Tune into this captivating conversation to hear more of the Blackbird story and listen to the advice Rick offers to those seeking investments. We thoroughly enjoyed this talk and we know you will too, listen today!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on #OTPBD Ian talks with Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Chrome, Comms and Photos at Google. Of the 9 Google products that have reached over 1 billion users, Anil is in charge of 2 of them, Photos and Chrome.Anil shares his incredible journey, beginning with founding D2L, a successful online education startup in Canada, through his struggles with a string of other less successful ventures, to a big move from North America to Australia that ultimately led to a spot at Google.While he initially saw Google as a temporary pit stop on his entrepreneurial journey, Anil found that his attempts to get fired actually led to a series of promotions that led him to becoming one of the most senior and successful product leaders in Australia...and the world. Uncover the lessons Anil has learned from his failures, the importance of alignment at Google, and how he manages a global team while being based in Australia.Anil’s story is one of perseverance and product excellence that you won’t want to miss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Ep72 of #OTPBD, we’re diving deep into seed investing with the founding team of Tidal Ventures. Founded by Grant McCarthy, Andrea Kowalski, and Wendell Keuneman, Tidal Ventures is a new institutional seed-focused VC firm hitting the Australian market, aiming to fill the void between Angel and Series A funding. The team has incredible collective experience working and investing in tech, with resume highlights of the founders including Yahoo, Bailador Capital, and Atlassian. Grant, Andrea, and Wendell use their respective commercial, investment, and product expertise to take the companies they invest in on the journey from seed to Series A funding.This impressive trio share key insights about seed phase investments, as well as how they evaluate investment opportunities, and what they look for in a founder. Furthermore, the co-founders divulged their own team dynamics, preparing businesses for international expansion, differences between the Australian and American VC markets, and the venture platform they’re building to deliver value-adding services to founders.The success of the venture industry has allowed VC firms to invest larger amounts of capital at later stages of companies. While we're seeing an increase in the number of tech startups, with roughly 5,000 early-stage companies operating in Australia, we're also seeing a decrease in the volume of capital being deployed at the seed stage. Tidal Ventures is filling this gap in the ecosystem, developing the companies they invest in to become investable by large VC firms at the next stage.Tune in for an enriching talk with the Tidal team to learn a lot about seed phase investment and how VCs can deliver value to their founders.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Airwallex is building global financial infrastructure to help modern internet companies grow, by offering end-to-end solutions for businesses to move money programmatically at a large scale. Lucy is an incredibly successful and inspiring founder who was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Asia, in 2017. Airwallex was founded to solve the problems surrounding global payments. Lucy shares Airwallex's founding story - from a coffee shop to Australia’s fastest growing billion dollar startup. Airwallex also recently achieved unicorn status in March and is the third Australian company to do so (after Atlassian and Canva).This week we are releasing #Ep71 of #OTPBD with Lucy Liu, President and Co-founder of Airwallex. In this pod, Lucy discusses Airwallex’s commendable competitive strategy. It is quite impressive how they worked around partnering and competing with banks at the same time by liasioning with different departments within the banks. Having already launched Airwallex globally, Lucy shares great insight and parallels within different markets. Lucy states, “In general, South East Asia is quite protective because they’re promoting innovation domestically.” Lucy also thinks that the UK and US markets are highly standardized and mature in comparison. Among other things, the conversation also ventures into startup culture and contrasts amongst the passion of Co-founders and employees. We found Lucy’s perspective on startup - investor dynamics refreshing and agreeable - they don’t tend to perceive that VCs are obligated to volunteer to help.We absolutely enjoyed this talk with this brilliant founder and we hope you do too! Tune in now to discover an exciting founder journey and get inspired.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s OTPBD - EP70, we’re happy to have Dylan Lawrence, General Manager (Investment) at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) as our guest. After partnering together for our annual VC conference in New Zealand, Venture Downunder, it was great to catch up with Dylan and spend some time learning more about New Zealand’s tech startup ecosystem.NZTE is a government agency designed to support companies to grow bigger, better, and faster—which in turn benefits the New Zealand economy and its citizens. As a result, they play a crucial role in the support of founders and the startup ecosystem in New Zealand. One of New Zealand’s biggest challenges is their geographic positioning. To quote Dylan, “A lot of countries are small, and a lot of countries are distant, but we’re the only country in the world that’s small and distant”.The New Zealand startup scene is flourishing with ingenious and innovative startups rising every day; however, these startups need to expand to international markets in order to scale and compete with global giants, which is where NZTE can play an important role. Dylan observes that it’s important for founders to understand the four Cs: Culture, connectedness, capabilities, and capital. Many NZ startups struggle with the second C, connectedness, because tapping into offshore markets, and growing and selling products offshore is tricky as a result of New Zealand’s geography.We wrapped up with Dylan’s career journey into government, and his take on the Maori economy. We learned a lot in this pod, and we hope you will too! Tune in now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on #OTPBD EP69, we’re delighted to host Paul Bassat, Co-founder at Square Peg Capital. His previous founder experience at Seek and current VC journey makes this episode’s discussion very captivating! Square Peg Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in high-potential businesses in Australia, Israel & South East Asia with a specific focus on series A & series B. Square Peg has made around 35 investments to date and their portfolio includes some groundbreaking startups including Canva, Athena Home Loans, Deputy & more.In this pod, we explore the dynamics between VCs & portfolio companies. Paul states, “Founders are like the captain of a sports team and a VC is like a coach.” Having walked the path of a startup founder himself, Paul shares great insights on how VCs need to support founders and act in the best interests of their portfolio companies. As a VC, one gets to be a part of plenty of groundbreaking ventures, but as a startup, the founder has just one venture that they are (normally) extremely passionate about. We further explore Paul’s experience at Seek and him stepping down in 2011, and then founding Square Peg Capital. Paul has a deep understanding of the Australian tech startups ecosystem and he believes that there is a lot more that has to be improved in this space. He shares his views around the prevalent diversity issue in tech startups and VCs.We conclude the pod with a fire round and get to know Paul’s informal side! Tune in for a unique episode featuring first-hand experience of founding a startup and a remarkable VC. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.