Open the Pod Bay Doors

This week, we ‘Open The Pod Bay Doors’ with Craig Blair, cofounder and managing partner of AirTree Ventures – a startup venture fund on a mission to invest in ambitious founders who are looking to transform industry’s with software.AirTree like to be on the journey with founder from the beginning, often writing the first cheque. The first fund in 2014 was $60M which they deployed in 2 years, making 24 investments; this included early cheques in some of Australia’s startup darlings, like Prospa and Canva. The fund is tracking well with all 24 businesses still operating.The second fund increased five-times to an incredible $250M in 2016, with 15 investments made so far. The larger fund has given AirTree more operating capital to deploy into support services like a talent function to service their portfolio companies to help them build great teams for growth. This model is common in the US and UK, but in Australia it’s still a novel concept due to the limited number of funds and their size. 60% of fund two has been deployed, with new early seed investments a low as $250k and follow on investments as large as $20M in later stages.Craig believe it’s never been easier to raise Seed round ($250-500K) in Australia, raising a post-Seed and Series A is becoming more challenging Funding is drying up globally – it’s getting harder to raise Seed-Series A. Recent years saw valuation corrections for some of the global Unicorns, meaning a lot of money has left the VC space. Craig's advice for those looking to get into VC is to ideally have founder or product experience – you need the knowledge of how to build team, raise money, operate well, and ship product to be able empathise with founders. Plus you need to develop your own thesis – think deeply about what you think the world will look like in the future.Prior to AirTree Ventures, Craig managed a $40M fund, Netus, with AirTree cofounder Daniel Petre and Alison Deans. It was acquired by Fairfax in 2012.Craig is a founder at heart. He’s founded a number of businesses, raised venture financing and achieved several exits. Craig founded Travelselect (1998) a venture-backed online travel company based in the UK that successfully exited to lastminute.com in 2002, Beamly Australia (2012) a TV second screen business backed by Comcast/NBC, Sky and Network Ten, and was founding Chairman of PetCircle (2012) – Australia’s leading subscription e-commerce player for pet owners. He’s spent as long in the startup world as anyone in this space.Craig recently returned from a 5 month family trip to the South of France - where he still closed a deal in a San Francisco-based company – tres bien! During this time Craig visited Station F, an enormous startup hub in Paris which is home to over 1000 startups, with every major VC and angel having a presence. He thinks a major startup prescient in Australia is vital to the evolution and strengthening of the ecosystem. The tech trends that Craig and AirTree are excited about are niche applications of AI software – recent investments include FluroSat (agtech) Earth AI (geology) They’re also looking at new platforms like crypto, robotics, quantum computing that wills interesting businesses built on top of them over the coming years.This is a great and clarifying conversation about the economics of VC funds, advice on how to get into venture, and the future trends in technology with someone who is as passionate as ever about helping founders. Thanks to Craig for sharing his deep knowledge and insights with us.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last month, we visited the thriving ecosystem in Adelaide, and were lucky enough to sit down with two cofounders of one of the best local startups, Noelle and Ben Smit from Teamgage.A positive company culture is an undeniable asset for any successful business, but monitoring and tracking corporate culture is hard to do. Step in Teamgage, which offers actionable and elegant workplace analytics in real-time for companies that want to make evidence-based decisions.Husband and wife team Noelle and Ben Smit are passionate about solving this problem with technology and data analytics that helps energise and motivate teams to do their best work.Their solution uses a unique 20 second interface and machine learning to help organisations embed a culture of continuous improvement. It allows employees to make evidence-based decisions, and creates an environment in which everyone can do their best work.Teamgage was part of the Adelaide Techstars 2017 cohort and is already being used by some major organisations like Microsoft, BOQ, Santos, and CSIRO. Noelle and Ben are looking toward a global market – concentrating initially on the Asia Pacific and the USA.This isn't their first venture together first was Code360 and UniOne, a student activity software management tool for universities. UniOne is now used by 13 universities across Australia, and Ben and Noelle have both been working full time in the business since 2010.This was a great conversation about the importance of defining your company purpose, how culture helps create high performing businesses, and how to price your product. While Teamgage have global ambitions, Ben and Noelle want to continue to grow the business from Adelaide.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the pod we're turning our focus to the importance of founder health and wellbeing.We invited Aaron Birkby, CEO Startup Catalyst and Co-founder of Peak Persona, and welcomed back Amanda Price Head of High Growth Ventures to the pod discuss this topic.KPMG Australia’s High Growth Ventures just released the findings from their Startup Founder Survey, supported by Blackbird Ventures, AirTree Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Reinventure and Right Click Capital, which polled founders of 70 Australian venture-backed startups.The report validates a lot of assumptions about startup founders; they work longer hours than average workers, two-third are very or extremely stressed, and 57 percent said that their stress has a large impact on the ability of their startup to succeed. Amanda explains they commissioned the research to shine a spotlight on some of the “unspoken challenges” founders face and highlight the link between founder wellbeing and business performance.Read the full report: //home.kpmg.com/au/en/home/insights/2018/08/startup-founder-research-2018.htmlOur main guest this week isAaron Birkby. His CV and list of accomplishments is extensive; founder entrepreneur, management consultant, television presenter, spy, restaurateur, mentor, advisor, board member, as well as being a leading voice on founder performance.As CEO of Startup Catalyst, Aaron leads missions to Silicon Valley, Europe, Israel and Asia for youths, founders, investors and innovation leaders. To date they’ve completed 14 missions, with over 200 alumni, and each mission is tailored for participates to meet tech giants, high-growth startups, local investors, corporate innovators, accelerators, incubators, and co-working spaces.Last year Aaron launched Peak Persona which delivers programs and content to assist founders to optimise their lives for peak personal performance. The program introduces participants to routines and tools to achieve peak mental performance, manage stress and emotions, find work/life balance, and generally perform at your best in all aspects of your life.This episode explores the importance of founder health, why we should all be talking about it, along with advice on how founders can maintain high performance and avoid burnout. Enjoy and let’s keep the conversation going.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the pod we're discussing the role of Government in helping to build sustained tech ecosystems with Dr Kate Cornick, CEO of LaunchVic.LaunchVic is an independent agency established by the Victorian Government with a $60M fund to support and grow the state's startup ecosystem, increase investment and create jobs.Rather than investing in startups directly, they've made over 50 investments through grand funding rounds to support accelerators, education programs, mentoring and startup events that directly help entrepreneurs.And it's working, there have been over 510 investment deals in Victoria across the last 10 years in tech startups, there are over 107 different coworking spaces across the region, and with 1 in 5 startups in the Health space, they want to make Victoria known as the global HeathTech hub.But there is still work to be done, Kate discusses fixing the 457 visa, the skills gap within Product, product management, product design, the need for more later stage investment (Series A +), and how we need to see more founders investing in foundersIt was great to sit down with Kate who is deeply passionate about the role of innovation in our economy and society more broadly, and her considerable experience in technology innovation across startups, academia, corporates and government is helping LaunchVic to have such a profound impact on the thriving Victorian ecosystem.Be sure to check out LaunchVic's Yeah/Nah festival o n 24th August http://yeahnah.melbourne/Applications are open for our own LaunchVic backed education program, Pathways to Investment: http://bit.ly/IBpathways2And for more information about the great work LaunchVic visit https://launchvic.org/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we open the pod bay doors with Jane Lu, founder & CEO of Showpo, an Australian online fashion retailer.Jane is a remarkable woman with a remarkable story. The only child of Chinese immigrants she moved to Australia when she was 8 years old. Like many immigrant families, her parents provided her with every encouragement and opportunity to be a success in her now native Australia. She aced her HSC's with a 99.5% ATAR and went on to what many would see as a dream career with KPMG and Ernst & Young. However this path was a little dull for intrepid entrepreneur Jane, so after returning from travel abroad, decided to sacrifice everything to venture into the fashion retail industry.Most entrepreneurs have their fair share of setbacks and challenges on their way to a successful outcome.Jane was no different with her Showpo story. The setbacks kept her motivated and she preserved to build a brilliant business that she owns 100% of, has never taken a dime of outside investment, that is well on track to $100 million in revenue by 2020! Incredible!As if she wasn't busy enough running Showpo, Jane started Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine with Gen George, a business group bringing women together to share their challenges and celebrate the wins. They have over 78,000 members and have run events in over 25 cities. Jane is extremely passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and women in business.Jane really is a shining example of a great entrepreneur - an honest hustler with a big heart. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

James Cuda is the CEO and Founder of Savage Interactive. Based in Hobart Tasmania, Savage Interactive, http://savage.si/ is the creator of the number one creativity app for ipad globally, Procreate.   James started life as an artist in Sydney, taught himself multimedia design, started a consulting firm, which he shut down to focus 100% on building Procreate.  His vision and passion was to build the best creativity tool in the world. He works as the CEO & Founder and also Head of Product.  Procreate has won an Apple Design Award (one of only a very few Aussie companies to have achieved this), which saw him being flown over to Apple in CA.  He is now a frequent visitor to the Apple campus in Cupertino. James started the company in Hobart and now has over 20 people based in the Hobart HQ.  He has resisted the pressure of hiring people outside of Hobart, as he believes that proximity is important to building a strong working culture.  The app is exclusive to the ipad, which is now being used by professional artists around the world. Customers include companies like Pixar and Netflix. He has never raised external funding, and has grown the whole company organically. The company is run by James and his wife and his first engineering hire. James believes strongly in a a results orientated working culture, he provides the team with the autonomy and a very collaborative working environment.  Understanding the pressures of growing a small business, he also is a strong believer in rewards and takes the entire company and their families once a year to a retreat on Richard Branson's island in the Caribbean.  Which is a long way from Hobart!James has a vision for the business that is driven by a passion for art and a desire to build something better than anything else.  This comes across clearly in the podcast, James is driven by a very strong desire to build something truly exceptional.The company is now looking at a range of product enhancements, as it continually finds ways in which to better the app. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Open The Pod Bay Doors we chat to Sam Wong, Partner at Blackbird Ventures, an Australian venture fund who back exceptional founders with big ambitions to build global businesses. They provide equity capital for Seed, Series A and later stage - no cheque is too early. With a portfolio of over 40 companies, Blackbird has backed some of Australia’s startup powerhouses like Canva, Safety Culture, BugCrowd, Culture Amp.Sam and her parents emigrated to Perth from the UK in the 1980s, shortly after her mum started a computer sales business, and it wasn’t long until Sam and her dad were helping to run the business. Growing up with entrepreneurial parents instilled a drive and ambition in Sam from an early age.Sam went on to study law, this led to a summer clerkship and a graduate offer at top law firm. Sam loved the learning and analytical framework, however wanted to work on side projects (including learning French), and lawyer hours allowed no time to focus on these.One of these side projects was SurfStitch, a surf e-commerce company, so Sam left corporate world to help with their SEO and email marketing. A year later, she was in France hiring the team to run SurfStitch’s European operations - putting the French she’d learned to good use.After SurfStitch Sam knew she wanted to start her own thing, so she thought about a problem she faced working as a lawyer, working fewer hours, and CapacityHQ, an on-demand marketplace for legal talent was born. They were part of the Startmate cohort in 2015, the program accelerated their learning, and about halfway through realised they could build a small business but it wouldn’t meet their ambition.At the end of Startmate and after selling CapacityHQ, Sam became the first employee of the Blackbird team as Head of Operations, two years later Sam became a Partner.Blackbird is on its third fund of $250 million ($100M for new investments and $150M for follow on). They are focused on investing earlier and writing smaller cheques to back founders all along their journey. Outside the portfolio, Blackbird has been leading the charge adding value to the wider ecosystem with community initiatives like the Sunrise event, robotics clubs in universities and schools, and the partners regularly writing blog posts.     Sam has seen all sides of business, raised by entrepreneurs, working as a lawyer, a startup employee, founding her own business, and now an investor. In this episode she shares lots of her experiences and lesson learned along the way.  Enjoy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 41 of the pod we’re happy to be joined by Dean Dorrell, Principal at boutique venture fund, Carthona Capital.Carthona is an Australian venture fund focused on early stage investments (pre-Seed, Seed, Series A), with a mandate to invest globally. Established in 2013, when the founding team who were already making separate angel investments came together to pool money, networks to create a syndicated group.Carthona’s investment strategy is thematic - meaning they do a lot of thinking internally about where the world is heading and how technology will affect it, identify trends and themes and then go out to look for those opportunities. The current fund is $100 million to be deployed over 3 years.Dean started his career in investment banking, combining his computer skills along with finance and quant strategies (complex mathematical models to detect investment opportunities). After 11 years Dean left the investment banking world, worked briefly for a hedge fund, then invested in his previous colleague, Simon Franks, new digital rights business, Red Bus. They both understood the film business having invested in a number of British films, including Bend It Like Beckham. This led to the creation of hugely popular DVD delivery service,LoveFilm (UK version of Netflix). They raised $20 million, grew the business which was eventually bought by Amazon in 2011.Dean, a Brit, born in Essex (the outskirts of London) has played team sports all his life and believes many attributes help when running a business; organisation, structure and resilience, the ability to open your mind to doing more than you thought you were capable of. At Carthona Dean encourages the founders they work with to get coached, to be open to new ways of thinking and organisation.Dean has had a fascinating career and this is a great conversation covering the deployment of super funds into venture, how to manage a portfolio as you make more investments, the role of risk for investors and entrepreneurs, and the parallels between sports and startups. Another fantastic VC doing great work to support ecosystem.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This podcast is all about sharing the stories of the people making a difference to the Australian ecosystem. Few do more to champion and impact #startupaus then this week’s guest, Annie Parker.A coach, mentor and leader in the Australian startup community, Annie is passionate about helping founders achieve their full potential. She believes in the importance diversity, inclusion, and of paying everything forward!Annie has been delivering great results for 15 years in roles spanning digital, startup, technology & consulting. Having started her career as a management consultant back in the UK, she was quickly drawn to the world of startups and helped to set up one of world's first corporate accelerators with Telefonica's Wayra program.5 years ago she was seduced by Australia and decided to focus her energies on the local startup ecosystem, where she came to cofound Telstra’s accelerator program, Muru-D. Known for its investment and support of early stage startups, Annie and the team designed a program to give startups dedicated office space, fantastic acceleration services, and access to the experience and networking capability that Telstra can offer. The program has helped over a 115 startups and operates programs across Australia and Singapore. One of Annie’s biggest passions is Code Club Australia. In 2014, Annie realised that there was dirth of coders in the country and almost every founder had to outsource one of the most important role in the company. She took upon herself to solve this problem and founded Code Club Australia, a nationwide network of free volunteer-led after-school coding clubs for children aged 9-11. They have over 2000 clubs across Australia and over 175,000 children have learned the basics of coding, problem solving, collaboration, creativity and think like entrepreneurs.Last year Annie took over the helm as Interim CEO of Fishburners, Australia's first tech startup co-working space, helping thousands of companies start up their businesses since launching in 2011. Her devotion towards Australian Startup ecosystem caught the eye of Microsoft and Annie has just been appointed as the Global Head of Startups for Microsoft. The Microsoft Accelerator works with 647 companies globally which have raised $US3 billion in funding, and will soon be bringing their Scale Up program to Sydney, to help companies scale and  make a global impact.This is a wonderful conversation between Ian and Annie where they look back at some of the amazing work Annie has done for #startupaus and peek into the next big problems she’ll be taking on. Go Annie!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s episode, we're delighted to welcome Emma Lo Russo, founder & CEO of Digivizer, one of Australia’s leading social web analytics technology company.Emma has been working in leadership positions since the age of 19 when she left an advertising agency to start in the marketing team at Macquarie Bank. She was soon labelled the ‘next big thing’. Numerous leadership roles led Emma to become President & Chief Operating Officer of Altium, an ASX-listed software company where she oversaw it's greatest period of organic sales growth. It was here Emma began to see the potential and power of data.In 2010, Emma founded Digivizer, a technology platform where big data, social media and CRM converge to help organisations generate value from real-time data and actionable insights. For the first 5 years, Emma bootstrapped Digivizer building it's enterprise client list, before going on to raise $2 million in a very unusual way off the back of her MBA strategy document. The Digivizer team is now up to 63 employees with an impressive list of enterprise and startup clients and a continue evolve the platform and create more products to add value to their customers.Emma believes that data drives everything, so recently founded GoTo Game after seeing the huge growth and stickiness of gaming and eSports. GoTo Gaming is a media hub, run by gamers for gamers, designed to connect great content, events, activations, competitions and influencers within the one ecosystem.Ian and Emma cover a range of topics from the recent controversy around online privacy and use of customer data, to the risk of starting your own business, the perception versus reality of being a founder, and the many challenges of scaling a business.If you’re a founder you can learn a lot from this episode. Emma is incredibly smart, driven, and an outstanding Australian entrepreneur who is committed to helping others unlock their full potential. We hope you enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.