Open the Pod Bay Doors

This week on Open The Pod Bay Doors, we turn our attention to the New Zealand startup ecosystem as Ian Gardiner speaks with kiwi native, serial entrepreneur and investor, Rowan Simpson.Rowan started his career as an IT consultant working on mainly Government projects in Sydney. A software engineer at heart, Rowan began tinkering with web tools and developed his first startup FlatHunt to help people finding flatmates. After burning through all his cash, Rowan returned to NZ where he was hired by TradeMe and became the third founding member of the team.Rowan talks about their David and goliath experience when TradeMe took on eBay and became the dominate the e-commerce platform in New Zealand (one of only a few markets eBay did not succeed in). TradeMe went on to become an iconic Kiwi brand and was acquired by Fairfax for $750m.After the sale of TradeMe, Rowan was involved in the early days of the great New Zealand unicorn, Xero. Shortly after the IPO Rowan moved on and led the investment in another great kiwi company, Vend, a retail management software that lets retailers run their business in-store, online, and via mobile.His current role is Chair at Hoku Group,  his family office where Rowan combines private investments into early-stage technology ventures and a non-profit foundation. He continues to work closely as both an investor, director and advisor with the next wave of technology businesses they have invested in, including Timely, Atomic, Melodics and Thematic.Rowan and Ian discuss Rowan’s investment thesis, what great founders look like, and exchange notes on difference between the Australia & NZ ecosystems.Rowan is a great thinker, backing some incredible startups and a huge ambassador for New Zealand. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed chatting to Rowan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the pod Phaedon Stough was lucky enough to talk with Steve Killelea; accomplished entrepreneur, business magnate, one of Australia’s most prolific philanthropists and founder of a global think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace.You may never have heard of Steve, he's one of those quiet over-achievers, who has spent most of his business life working under the radar, yet has successfully built two software companies which he founded and turned into highly successful global businesses, as well as being Australia's largest donor foreign aid.Steve founded Integrated Research Ltd (IR), an Australian publicly-listed company with a 25-year heritage of providing performance management and payments software for business-critical computing. Through Steve’s direction as CEO and now as Chairman, IR has built an impressive, world-class customer base to make it one of Australia’s leading software companies. IR listed on the ASX and it's current market cap is $664 million of which Steve retains about 40% of the company.Steve has always had a strong passion for sustainable development, and in 2000 established The Charitable Foundation (TCF), one of the largest private overseas aid organisations in Australia. It aims to provide life-changing interventions reaching as many people as possible with special emphasis on targeting the poorest of the poor. TCF has substantially impacted the lives of over 2.3 million people.In 2007 Steve founded the international think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), dedicated to building a greater understanding of the interconnection between business, peace and economics with particular emphasis on the economic benefits of peace. IEP’s ground-breaking research includes the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading measure of peacefulness. Steve’s founding of IEP was recognized as one of the 50 most impactful philanthropic gifts in Australia’s history.Steve currently serves on a number of influential Company Boards, Advisory Boards and President Councils. In 2010 he was honoured as Member of the Order of Australia for his service to the global peace movement.It really was a pleasure to speak with one Australia's great entrepreneurs and a man who's made it his life's work to make the world and better more peaceful place. We hope you're inspired by Steve's story as much as we were.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on pod, we talk everything blockchain and cryptocurrency with Australia’s leading thinkers on the subject, George Samman.A blockchain consultant/advisor, George Samman has co-founded and worked with numerous startups in the bitcoin and blockchain space since 2013. George strongly believes that blockchain and financial technologies are here to change how business is done across every industry.George co-founded Magnr in 2013, a bitcoin trading platform, and Sammantics where he blogs about blockchain technology and use cases. He’s constantly researching the technology in great depth in order to explain its potential to institutions of all shapes and sizes. He recently co-authored a seminal report on blockchain architecture with KPMG.George Samman is an entrepreneur in Residence for blockchain and cryptocurrency at Startupbootcamp, Tyro Fintech Hub, and has also advised startups such as Agridigital, Lightstreams, Investfeed, Gazecoin and Hedera Hashgraph.So turn up the volume and dive into the crypto world!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of the pod, we open the doors with the brilliant thinker, Jost Stollmann.German-Australian Jost has lived many lives as a Founder, Consultant, Corporate Executive, Politican, Adventurer, Investor, CEO and Student.Jost recently stepped down as the Chairman of Tyro Payments, one of Australia's most successful fintech institutions specialising in merchant credit , debit, and EFTPOS. From 2004 to 2016 Jost was Tyro's CEO where he lead them through multiple rounds of investment totally $103M, the process of gaining a banking license, and exponential growth that has seen Tyro serve over 20,000 customers and fascinated $42.2 billion in transactions.Previous roles include President of GE Capital Information Technology Europe, Fonder and Chairman of CompuNet, which he started at 29 and sold 12 years later to GE for over $1B, and consultant at BCG for 3 years.Jost's political career saw him as the Shadow Minster of Economy and Technology in Germany under Gerhard Schroder's, Social Democratic Party.A life long learner, Jost has a Law Degree, Dipolma in Political Science, MBA from Harvard, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is currently a studying the Greek language.This is a fascinating, thought provoking conversation, as we look back at Jost's career, his journey to Australia and discuss how he believes we're all born entrepreneurs. Enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the pod, we have one of Australia’s most creative and well respected research commercialisation specialists. Dr. Steve Brodie talking everything innovation.Steve is passionate about all things science. Steve brings more than 20 years’ experience in research and development, commercialisation and open innovation with stints at major universities and now working with CSIRO.In his current role as Executive Manager for Innovation with CSIRO, Steve leads a fantastic team who design and delivery of innovation programs, including the ON program, Australia's innovation accelerator open to all Australian universities,  publicly funded research agencies and CSIRO. The program is designed to support and guide academia and research teams into viable, commercial businesses.On 9th April 2018 Innovation Bay will host the Deep Tech Founder Dinner that will feature teams from ON accelerator program.A curious inventor by trade, Steve co-founded ‘Thinking Thingamabob’, designed to solely help people be more creative. Prior to relocating to Australia Steve worked in space-tech and development of sensors for rockets and jets with Ferroperm Piezoceramics in Denmark.It’s a really fun conversation we hope you enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We welcome to the pod entrepreneur, investor, mentor and startup evangelist, Alan Jones.With a career spanning over 50 roles; from working for some of largest tech companies in the world, to mentoring with Australia’s leading tech incubators and accelerators, to investing in an amazing portfolio of early stage tech startups. Few people have impacted the local tech ecosystem like Alan.Alan's career started in PR and content, before founding his first business in 1995, and going on to help tech giants like Microsoft and Yahoo! in Australia. With a wealth of experience founding and co-founding web and mobile startups, Alan went on to advise and invest in Australian startups through BlueChilli, Blackbird Ventures, Startmate, Catalysr, and Pollenizer Ventures. He recently became entrepreneur-in-residence for our sponsor KPMG High Growth Ventures, working with growth-stage tech startups as they scale.He's also in the process of raising a new fund, M8 Ventures, which will focus on backing great product teams building the next generation of global tech companies from Australia and New Zealand.Phaedon sat down with Alan to discuss his career, what's changed in the startup industry, lessons learned along the way, what makes a good mentor, how he's advocating for a culture of entrepreneurship, the challenges the industry still faces, and his approach to investing and backing great companies.This episode is jam-packed with honest reflection, advice and insights. Enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Larry Lopez has been driving innovation for over 25 years. He has worked with start-ups, venture capital funds, institutional investors and government agencies, with a long track record of developing outstanding teams that deliver successful outcomes.Larry spent 17 years in technology finance with Silicon Valley Bank, before moving to Australia in 2006. His current role as Director of Accelerating Commercialisation for the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science sees him offering support and opportunities to help Australian entrepreneurs, researchers and SME businesses to address the challenges associated with commercialising intellectual property.We caught up with Larry at last year's West Tech festival in Perth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a little break we're back and ready to open the pod bay doors again.To kick off the year we thought we'd let our co-founders, Ian Gardiner and Phaedon Stough interview one another. This year Innovation Bay celebrates 15 years of supporting Australian founders and the startup ecosystem. It's been quite a ride from those initial gatherings of a few people in a dingy bar to a national community of over 3000 members spread across Australia.In case you don't know much about them, Ian Gardiner has a day job with Amazon Web Services, helping startups across Australia and New Zealand. Previously Ian was the CEO and founder of Viocorp, a software company supplying a video publishing platform for corporates and government. In 2009 Ian won the NSW Pearcey award for Technology Entrepreneur of the Year.Phaedon Stough, has worked with entrepreneurs and high growth tech start-up across APAC, EMEA and NA. Founding Mitchellake in 2001 to help entrepreneurs scale their companies via human capital solutions. Phaedon was the on board of Australia's first incubator, Pollenizer and later co-founded The Australian Founders Network in San Francisco to help Aussie entrepreneurs living overseas collaborate and support each other.Quite a dynamic duo we think you'll agree. Buckle up as these two 'veterans' cover everything from Innovation Bay's humble beginnings, their own personal journey's as startup founders, reflect on the changes in the Australian ecosystem over the past 15 years, share thoughts on the work that still needs to be done, and announce lots of new initiatives coming 2018.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Vanessa is the founder and CEO of Storreduce, an Australian deep-tech startup playing in the storage area. She moved the business to Silicon Valley a couple of years ago to be closer to her market. I caught up with her on a pretty noisy exhibition floor at AWS's re:Invent customer event in Vegas. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I caught up with Peter Nichol, the CEO of Instaclustr in Las Vegas during AWS's re:Invent conference. Instaclustr is a Canberra-based software business offering managed solutions for Cassandra and other products. Might sound complicated and niche, but it's an amazing business on an amazing fast-growth trajectory. Peter is a terrific guy with a clear vision for how he wants to scale Instaclustr.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.