Open the Pod Bay Doors

This week on Ep 68 of #OTPBD, we have the Co-founder & CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. Slack was founded by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson & Serguei Mourachov. The purpose of Slack is simply helping everyone get their work done. Slack is a one stop communication platform for organisations to work collaboratively and with high efficiency. Cal’s founder journey is definitely one of the adventurous ones. Slack was born out of personal experiences and need felt by the founders themselves. ThTo summarise the making of Slack, the founders were working towards building an online gaming startup and created Flickr along the way. The founders needed to collaborate effectively & communicate from different cities. After realizing that there was no specific platform to do so, they built one themselves. They wanted to make the platform available to public and turned the product into ‘Slack’, as we now know it. Cal is extremely humble and potentially very relatable for other founders. In this podcast, he shares the difficult lessons he learned when his gaming startup failed. They had to lay off 40-50 employees in the process, which is one of the toughest struggles of being a startup founder. He says: It was our own fault; we were unable to turn our vision into reality. He stresses on how crucial it is for organisations to adapt to change and be agile. He shares his take on IPOs, organisational transparency, future challenges for Slack, Australian startups ecosystem, strategic alignment and much more.This is an incredible startup journey and we are so grateful to have Cal on #OTPBD. Tune in now to dive deep into the insider story of a multi-billion-dollar tech giant!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we are releasing #Ep67 of #OTPBD with Damien Mahoney, Co-founder & CEO of Stackla. Stackla is a content-marketing platform founded in 2012. It is a classic example of how an Aussie startup successfully ventured into the great US market. It is a revolutionary platform enabling all types of B2C businesses to generate authentic, trusted and dynamic user-generated content. Stackla covers a diverse spectrum of sectors including travel, retail, media & entertainment, etc. They pride in possessing a prestigious customer base which includes big brand names like McDonalds, Lenovo and Visa.Damien shares plenty of worthwhile advice for founders looking to take their startups to the next level. Damien’s approach with Stackla was always taking things one step at a time. He says, “It was always about building upon the foundations that we built the building upon and the progress that we just made and trying to take the business to the next level.”His perspective is quite refreshing which portrays that one can still succeed with a mindset different from typical entrepreneurial ideologies.In this pod, we also discuss how Aussie startups vary from Silicon Valley startups. We dig into the reasons why it is a struggle for local startups to raise capital in the US. Stackla went through 40-50 venture capital meetings for funding and didn’t find much success in the American market. The Silicon Valley investors generally look for something extremely disruptive and Aussie startups have more of humbler visions and pitches compared to their American counterparts. Damien talks about one of the key challenges’ startups face- hiring. He emphasizes on how strategic hires can bring structure and immense growth to businesses. He sheds some light on day-to-day of startups and shares his own share of experiences.As per usual, we conclude this pod with a fire-round and get to know this talented founder a bit more. We hope you enjoy this pod. Tune in below!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In line with our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner, we were thrilled to host Darren Miller, CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Established in 2012, ARENA’s purpose is to accelerate Australia’s shift to affordable and reliable renewable energy.Being in an influential organisation such as ARENA, Darren has a very interesting perspective on the future of energy. His knowledge and his passion for renewable energy truly reflects in his words. In this ep, Darren shares some striking data and insights into the renewable energy sector and where Australia stands in the whole picture. He emphasizes especially on the severity and impact of climate change and explains how in this day and age, renewable energy can make us more adaptable to the current havoc and challenge the status quo.Previous to ARENA, Darren was also an entrepreneur and founded two businesses. In 2007, he co-founded the startup ‘Sumwise’ which is an advanced online spreadsheet platform (and had even pitched at one of our past Founder Dinners!). Following sumwise, he was also the co-founder and CEO of Mojo Power, which provides competitive solar feed-in tariffs for households in NSW and QLD.ARENA has invested over $1.3 billion in grant funding to 469 innovative projects, leveraging over $3.8 billion in private investment across a range of renewable energy technologies. It is an organisation making an honest impact in empowering upcoming startups in this industry. This year in March, ARENA funded a renewable energy sensor startup ‘Fulcrum3D’. The startup secured just shy of $1 million for two of its projects, focused on forecasting for wind and solar farms. Darren takes us through ARENA’s ‘A-Lab-incubate’ which is their outstanding accelerator program. This exhibits the organisation’s role in improving the Australian startup ecosystem.We hope you enjoy this thought-provoking episode with Darren!https://www.coventured.com/programs/view/254If you’re a founder building a startup in the renewable energy space, make sure you apply to pitch to sector-interested investors at our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner on October 8th. Applications close on August 25th! Apply here: https://innovationbay.com/event/renewable-energy-founder-dinner/If you’re an investor that would like to attend, register your spot here: See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week on #OTPBD is the CEO, CTO and Co-Founder of Deputy, Ashik Ahmed. His success story is one of the most inspiring ones in the Australian startup ecosystem. Ashik has built a striving business which sustains on its excellent product. In this pod, he shares his entrepreneurial journey and valuable life lessons that he learnt along the way.Deputy was founded to solve a problem affecting over two thirds of the world’s working population who are hourly workers or shift workers. To put it straightforwardly, it is a workforce management tool which aims to simplify staff management. It is this concept, that the product was created to make an impact and an actual difference in the lives of businesses and the common people, sets it apart from the rest. Ashik has been driven by passion solely, having no previous entrepreneurial experience or family history of the same. His long-term vision of Deputy is that ‘every shift worker which is 2/3rds of the world’s working population uses Deputy in the long run.’Ashik talks about the challenges and struggles he faced while building Deputy alongside Steve Shelley, his former employer and Co-Founder at Deputy. Ashik shares his take on organisational culture, which is one of the several essentialities for businesses to be successful. To quote him, “Culture isn’t free food or yoga or dogs at work”.His learning journey is phenomenal and it is exciting for us to get to know him personally through the pod. We truly hope you enjoy listening to this enthusiastic and rising entrepreneur!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AFR’s tech editor, Paul Smith knows the in’s and out’s of Australia’s startup & tech sector. He’s not our usual founder or investor-type guest on the pod. However, as a regular reporter on the ecosystem, and a genuinely knowledgeable and well-versed guest, we were delighted to host him this week on #OTPBD and discuss media exposure for startups, the digital shift in journalism, the implications of new technologies and more!Having previously worked for Fairfax in London, Paul moved to Australia and has been working for the AFR since 2002. As an experienced journalist, we quickly deep-dived into one of the biggest ‘needs’ listed by startups in the 2018 Startup Muster Report – Media Exposure. From here, Paul discussed the importance and power of storytelling particularly with regards to pitching your story to journalists.The landscape of journalism has changed immensely throughout Paul’s career which led to the discussion of Paul’s perspectives on journalism in the digital age. Paul mentioned, ‘the industry trained people in the early days of the internet to expect content/news to be free, where everyone put all content up online.’ Whilst a number of individuals still pay subscriptions to read valid news sources (AFR, Guardian etc.), people are looking up free content on social media and online publications.We continued the discussion onto the implications of the new technologies particularly the rise of automation, and its impact on future jobs. ‘Any tech company you talk about automation will say, it’s not replacing work, it’s improving work – but it’s definitely not going to be true in every instance. We can’t deny that it’s not going to happen. But we need to look at what does re-training look like, or a universal wage?’Finally, we ventured into tech in the political landscape – the recent passing of the AA and encryption Bill, Ed Husic’s role in the tech sector and the potential for a new government ().as this was ep was recorded pre-electionOnce again, we were thrilled to speak with Paul this week and hope you enjoyed this episode!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All the way from Sweden, our guest this week on #OTPBD is the first employee and former CTO of Spotify, Andreas Ehn! Whilst Andreas’ early education and career path started off in tech and engineering, he had always had an interest in business and entrepreneurship, which has made for an exciting and impressive career so far.Spotify has become one of the most popular music-streaming platforms of all time with over 200 million users to date. In Spotify’s formative years, Andreas brought together a world class technical team that designed and built the music-service product, however, the original genesis of this widely used app is an interesting startup story (and has much respect to timing). In a large part, illegal file-sharing company Pirate Bay (also Swedish born) helped paved a path for Spotify’s success in the music industry. Record labels were facing a time where piracy was at large more than ever, and at the time, Spotify’s music solution was the most promising to labels, and cheap and easily accessible to consumers.Post-Spotify, Andreas then co-founded and was CTO of his own business in 2011, Wrapp, a purchases and customer loyalty app which early this year was acquired by Meniga. Later on, he then became an active investor, with 15 investments typically early-stage. Andreas is currently a global Venture Partner with Antler, a global startup generator and early-stage VC that works by selecting talented individuals looking to start a business, connecting them with the right co-founder as well as a network of advisors worldwide.We’re thrilled to have Andreas on #OTPBD and hope you enjoy listening to this Ep!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, we’re excited to share a very special episode featuring our first ever ‘trio’ on the pod who discussed the impact, role, and necessity of Australian startup boards. Ian sat down with Amanda Price, Head of KPMG High Growth Ventures, Anthony Sochan, Partner at Think & Grow and Martin Dalgleish, Partner at Morpheus Ventures, for an in-depth exploration about company boards - discussing everything from how to create successful boards, to tackling board diversity, to when to start creating boards? Recently, KPMG High Growth Ventures and Think & Grow teamed together recently to produce a brilliant and comprehensive report titled The Startup Board Report, interviewing 26 startup board directors globally and surveying over 70 Australian startups. Some key stats they found include:40% of late-stage startups don’t have an independent board member50% of startups compensate board members with cash or equity76% of startups don't have a diversity target in place65% of startups don’t recruit board members through a formal processWe’re very passionate about the importance of startup boards. Our GM, Sian Priest, co-founded Get on Board with the aim of connecting more women with board opportunities, so this is definitely a topic we resonate well with. For founders that are yet to put together a board, or aren’t sure where to start, this is a fantastic Ep that’ll help get you started. We hope you enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recognised as somewhat of a startup celebrity, Steve Baxter is an entrepreneur, investor, and best known as one of the (more sharkier) sharks on Australia’s Shark Tank. We were excited to have Steve this week on #OTPBD to look back on his early telco & internet startup successes, deep dive into his considerable career, and listen to his strong opinions on government & politics, climate change and more.** As you may know, Steve is very direct and can be sometimes outspoken on topics, which was no special case for this episode. As a climate change skeptic, Steve definitely put up a thought-provoking debate with Ian on the topic of clean energy - definitely worth the listen! A short spoiler about this Ep.Steve’s career started at the young age of when he joined the army and was recruited as a solider with contract for 9 years. At 23, he and his partner took out a home loan for $11,000, which became used to launch his first startup, an internet service provider, SE Net from one of the spare rooms from his rented Adelaide home. The business became subsequently acquired by Ozemail under the stewardship of its founding Director and previous Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.Steve co-founded his next startup in 2001, PIPE networks, an ASX-listed provider of wholesale telecoms infrastructure, which exited to TPG Group for $373M. Later on in 2012, having co-founded River City Labs and advocating on behalf of entrepreneurs, a few meetings opened him up to the opportunity to be on Shark Tank which he took for more publicity, and shared with us his interesting experiences on show. As Queensland’s second ever Chief Entrepreneur between Oct 2017-2018, Steve focused on broadening the startup ecosystem outside of Brisbane to more rural/regional areas but flying angels and investors to meet founders at events outside of the city. Currently, Steve’s also an investor at VC, Transition Level Investments, which has had 29 direct investments with 22 in the fund over 6 years. Steve is definitely a smart, opinionated, and valuable member of the startup ecosystem. We hope you enjoy this ep!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On first thought, a Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of a superannuation fund seems an unlikely guest for Open The Pod Bay Doors. However, you'll soon hear how Sam Sicilia, Hostplus’ CIO of 10 years, has become a driver for investment into VC, and is overall passionate about tech innovation for the future prosperity of the Australian economy.We were excited to have Sam on the pod who gave us some great insights into Hostplus’ investments. Last year, Hostplus invested over $1 billion into venture capital, making the fund Australia’s largest VC investor, with capital into Blackbird Ventures ($160M), The IP Group ($100M), Artesian ($135M) & Main Sequence Ventures ($70M) to name a few. As one of Australia’s largest superfunds with almost $40B under management, Hostplus has become one of the most influential figures in the Australian tech venture capital sceneSam also discussed how their first dedicated VC investment (into Blackbird Ventures) came about, and delved into the importance of relationships with fund managers, private equity managers & venture capital managers. He also talked about why other superfunds should start investing more into VC, and gave some valuable advice for anyone looking to raise funds from superannuation companies.We were delighted to have had Sam on the pod, and hope you enjoy this episode!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today’s pod, we feature an exceptional female entrepreneur, who’s also an investor, advisor, board member, and mum of 3. We’re excited to celebrate International Women’s Day this year with a brilliant guest, Jane Martino.Melbourne local, Jane Martino has had an impressive career so far, and she’s only just getting started. Recently appointed as Executive Director - Ventures for VC firm, Light Warrior, Jane has a passion for investing and advising early stage ventures and businesses particularly in the areas of health/wellness, consumer, retail & FMCG and those with a social impact.Previous to this, Jane was CEO of Unlockd, which raised $40M, and also built a number of dynamic businesses, two of which had successful exits: Undertow Media, acquired by Bastion Collective, and Shout, acquired by ANZ Bank. Her third business, the non-for-profit, Smiling Mind, a program centred around delivering free online mindfulness meditation programs, has now over 3 million users globally.In this ep, Jane shares some excellent advice on getting things done all whilst juggling being an investor and spending time with her family. She highlights the importance of meditation and mindfulness, a daily practice for her which became not only the inspiration for Smiling Mind, but something Jane championed for school curriculums.Jane also shared some of the key things she looks for as an investor, investing with Light Warrior, plus discussed some of the attributes she believes is important for founders to have. If you're in need of a little inspiration and advice, Jane is a delightful guest and a great leader to learn from.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.