Open the Pod Bay Doors

Darren Miller is the CEO of Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) - whose purpose it is to support the transition to net zero emissions by accelerating the pace of pre-commercial innovation.Darren is deeply committed to net zero and improving our chances on planet earth. He believes we have all the technologies we need between now and 2030 - from solar, wind, lithium batteries, electric vehicles, rooftop solar, and household energy management - and if we can deploy these things at scale quickly in the economy, we’ll overshoot what we need to do by 2030 in order to reach net zero.ARENA does this by utilising federal funding to invest and support renewable energy startups and projects for the Australian economy. ARENA and Innovation Bay have teamed up for the third year running for the ARENA Renewable Energy Founder Forum on 28 July. The event showcases Australia's most exciting early stage renewable technology startups and pairs them with Australia's leading venture capitalists and angel investors - to supercharge their growth through funding, connections, and advice.Founders in the renewable space are encouraged to pitch to apply (closing 31 May). Applicants will be considered from a broad scope including technology, software digitisation, and consumer behaviour - essentially anyone working on the transition. He states that trillions of dollars needs to be invested in this space and that we need the best people working on the problem. If this sounds like you, jump on and apply to pitch here https://bit.ly/ARENAapps.Mini Quickfire RoundBook: The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley RobinsonPodcast: Rewired (ARENA podcast)App: Snap Send SolveFounder: Michael LiebreichTV Show: InsidersConnect with Darren Miller:https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenhmillerhttps://twitter.com/darrenhmillerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anthony Zaccaria is the Co-Founder of Linktree which is essentially a category creator for link in bio tools and a one-stop place to house entire online link ecosystems. In just 6 years, Linktree has gathered a massive global following with a user base of 24 million people - or the population of Australia (!!) - generating 1.2 billion Linktree visits per month. Earlier this year, Linktree reached unicorn status, with a $1.3 billion USD valuation following a $110 million USD raise.Anthony co-founded Linktree with his brother Alex Zacarria and mutual mate Nick Humphries in 2016. The company now employs 265 people across 12 countries and is growing rapidly. The model for Linktree is simple - in fact the prototype was built in 6 hours - the idea originating from their marketing business Bolster. While running marketing campaigns they thought there had to be a better way to consolidate all client links (think website, social media, Spotify etc) in one place. Linktree has since become a website replacement for many people, its simplicity solving the one link in bio issue of Instagram. It has been adopted by over 200 user groups including creators, influencers, musicians, small businesses, global brands, charities and everything in between.With a rebrand imminent, Linktree’s growth across the next 12 months will see the launch of3 new product rollouts that will amplify integrations and partnerships and make the relationships between user and visitor closer. Anthony, who is also the father of 2 year old twins hasn’t stopped there. Alongside 6 others, he has recently launched investment syndicate Side Stage Ventures. The syndicate focuses on the early stage backing of companies at the intersection of tech, creativity and culture - companies that can have an impact on behaviour, a paradigm shift or step change in something. Their initial investments have seen them back Heaps Normal, Mr Yum, Delegate Connect, Tixel, QSIC and Alts.Anthony’s Quickfire Round:Book: What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben HorowitzPodcast: Song ExploderNews Source: News app on phoneTech CEO: Stewart Butterfield (Slack)App: Sonos, beta version of Linktree, baby monitoring appProductivity Tool: Notion, SlackTV Show: EuphoriaTed Talk Topic: How managing artists translates into building a businessGet in touch with Anthonyhttps://linktr.ee/anzacSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dale Brett is the Co-Founder & CEO at Fl0 - a low code platform for software engineers. Founded just a year ago (in 2021), Fl0 raised $11.5 million in its seed round with funding from the likes of Blackbird, Skip Capital and Jelix. Fl0’s vision is to empower software developers and engineers to be 20 times faster and more efficient.Prior to Fl0, Dale founded payment startup, Tapify, which, after only 12 months, received acquisition offers too good to refuse. As a part of Tapify’s acquisition, they were able to found Willow, a digital twin company that integrates real assets like stadiums and rail networks, analysing their data to help them optimise and run more efficiently. Dale has exited in the running of the business but continues to sit on the board for Willow.Fl0 is a remote first company, employing 22 staff across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Colorado, Vancouver and Europe. The company has been named “Canva for software engineers”. Its low code platform offers building blocks and tools to empower engineers and developers to do their best word. Even with a small team, a startup or tech can go from an idea to live in no time with scalable infrastructure to support. With the LA superbowl stadium as one of their customers, Fl0’s market is vast with a key objective for the platform to engage a global stage. They want every team who are thinking about building a product to think about building it on Fl0.A jiu jitsu novice, gaming tragic and ambitious chess master, Dale and Ian cover a range of topics in this great episode.Quickfire RoundBook: Turn The Ship AroundPodcast: Flow StateNews Source: curated RSS feed - TechCrunch, blogs etcTech CEO: Elon MuskApp: Safari - because of Li ChessProductivity Tool: MotionTV Show: WeCrashed (the story of WeWork)Ted Talk Topic: Alternative teas to coffee for the mind - ie Lions Mane, Cacao Tea, ReishiGet in touch with Dale:www.fl0.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalebrett/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Laura is the CEO and Founder of SafeStack Academy, a community-centric online education platform on a mission to give software developers, analysts and architects all of the skills they need to build secure internet software.Laura entered the workforce at 16 after telling quite a few lies to become an apprentice software developer for EDS. She put herself through her qualifications to get to university and night school and then went back to do her degree in her early 20s. During 2005/2006 she took a year out to work for Cern in Geneva before taking up a post for British Intelligence. After a number of years working in counterterrorism and counter online harm, Laura took a trip to NZ for 6 weeks and never left - 11 years later, she holds a passport and has 2 small kiwi children.Fascinated with how fast software was being built, Laura found a niche seeing that security wasn't adapting to this speed. With a newborn in tow, she took a leap and after winning a couple of high growth NZ clients, began her startup at the same time co-authoring a book - .Agile Application SecuritySafeStack began as a consultancy, embedded with software development teams but quickly moved towards being a training company. When COVID hit they lost 94% of revenue overnight. The pandemic was the catalyst to take SafeStack from a service business to a software business. The company breeds diversity; its superpower as Laura admits. 70% of SafeStack Academy’s team and 100% of the board identify as female. They see diversity as a strength, hiring from different backgrounds, countries of origin, languages, religions, sexuality and gender. Its youngest employee is 23 and oldest is 59. Laura lives by the philosophy that every day is a school day and that you should share your failures.Quickfire Round:Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear / How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men's FeelingsPodcast: Risky BizNews Source: more international news than local - takes a little bit from here and thereTech CEO: HashiCorp - Aaron BadgerApp: New York Times Puzzle App, Freeflow - things that can turn off brainProductivity Tool: Miro, AsanaTV Show: fantasy with a good story that takes you on an adventure and outside your worldTed Talk: Restoring vintage sewing machines / Teach everyone to be a little less well behaved - breaking the rules helps you defend.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Allegra Spender, currently running as an independent candidate for the Senate seat of Wentworth in Sydney’s east, is daughter to Italian immigrant parents - her father a barrister, politician and diplomat, her mother a renowned Australian fashion designer, the late Carla Zampatti.Allegra was Head Girl at Ascham School graduating with a HR score of 99.95 and went on to study Economics at the University of Cambridge in England. Her first job out of uni was as a consultant with McKinsey which she reflects was a great place to learn the trade of consulting and to think about business strategically, but Allegra wanted to use these tools for good and apply them to the social sector. Her ambition saw her work for the UK Treasury, in Kenya for a not-for-profit and as part of a huge teaching hospital.Upon returning to Australia in 2007, “the time was right” and Allegra was named Managing Director of Carla Zampatti, where she was able to apply her learned skills to this point back into the family business. Allegra successfully ran the business for 8 years, through the GFC and through it’s transformation to online. While Allegra stepped down as MD 5 years ago, she remains on the board of Carla Zampatti - one of Australia’s most successful fashion brands and the only Australian, family-led business that is transforming from one generation to another.Before her move into politics, Allegra was Chair of Sydney Renewable Power Company - an impact investment company that put 500kW of solar power on the roof of the Sydney Convention Centre - and the CEO of Australian Business Community Network which works with 47 leading businesses including Microsoft, Lend Lease and Optus, partnering them with approximately 200 low socio-economic schools matching student to real world mentors educating them on what’s possible and within their grasp.Allegra is deeply passionate about business, education, community and the environment - “a better climate for Wentworth” is her key policy. She’s an advocate for the tech and startup ecosystem, is a member of YPO and sees a strong tie and limitless opportunities between climate and tech - hoping to see Australia standing at the forefront of technology around climate.She is open, honest and transparent. Tune in to hear more!Quickfire RoundBook: Prepared: What Kids Need For A Fulfilled Life by Dianne TavennerPodcast: Harvard Business Review Podcast (HBR), Gund Institute, The Brookings Cafeteria, Education BookcastNews Source: Need to read things whether you agree with them or not, all online papers, The EconomistApp: Smiling MindsTech CEO: Scott Farquhar, AtlassianProductivity Tool: Trello, TeamsTV Show: The GameTed Talk: How business could be used in education to help kids to be ready for the world of work - make learning real.Connect with Allegra SpenderWebsite - https://www.allegraspender.com.au/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/allegra-spenderTwitter - https://twitter.com/spenderallegraSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the past 14 years, Tech23 has showcased and amplified the emerging deeptech talent coming out of Australia that have the potential to create new industries and smarter solutions. Tech23 is a national forum whereby 23 early stage companies are chosen to tell their story and speak about their innovation on stage to an audience of industry leaders, investors, potential enterprise customers and other up and coming founders.At the 2021 badge in November last year, Innovation Bay attended and flagged five of our favourites. In episode 133 of Open The Pod Bay Doors, we have invited these five companies to come onto the podcasts to tell us a bit about their business, their technology and what their future plans look like.The episode begins with Rachel Slattery, the mastermind behind Tech23, who explains a little about the forum’s history and purpose. We then go on to meet the incredible humans behind our chosen five companies from last year’s event.Josh Ismin is Co-Founder & CEO of Psylo - a psychedelic biotech business focusing on Psychedelic-inspired medicine to treat mental illness.Paula Burton is Co-Founder of Mass Dynamics - a company that has been helping global life scientists transform mass spectrometry data to knowledge since 2019 by integrating modern practices in business, software engineering, computational biology, machine intelligence, biostatics, product design and analytical chemistry.Warren McKenzie is the Managing Director and Ellen Gorissen is GM Commercial of HB11 - a company that aims to create a new source of clean, safe and reliable energy using laser technology to fuse Hydrogen and Boron-11.Steven Vassiloudis is the CEO and Founder of Novalith - a company that uses carbon dioxide to simply lithium chemicals refining for an electric era.Nancy Schellhorn is CEO and Founder of RapidAIM - a precision pest management tool for farmers to accurately pinpoint the location of pests in real time.Learn more & connect with our guests:Rachel Slattery - Tech23https://tech23.com.au/2021/https://au.linkedin.com/in/rachel-slattery-11209017?trk=public_post_share-update_actor-textJoshua Ismin - Psylohttps://psylo.bio/https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-ismin/Paula Burton - Mass Dynamicshttps://www.massdynamics.com/https://au.linkedin.com/in/paulaburtonngovWarren McKenzie & Ellen Gorissen - HB11https://hb11.energy/https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-mckenzie-03b84614/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellengorissen/Steven Vassiloudis - Novalithhttps://www.novalith.com.au/https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenvassiloudis/?originalSubdomain=auNancy Schellhorn - RapidAIMhttps://rapidaim.io/https://au.linkedin.com/in/nancy-schelSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Duncan Anderson, along with his two friends Jeremy Cox and Ben Sze, is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of EdTech company Edrolo. After some time working at Google, Duncan and his two business partners met while working at Goulburn and Sacs some 10 years ago. The original idea for Edrolo was as a two-sided marketplace - tutors on one side and students on the other - but quickly evolved into it’s earliest incarnation as somewhat of a YouTube for learning for VCE students.Fast forward to now, Edrolo employs approximately 200 staff, is in 1200 schools and services around 30,000 students across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland and is backed by some of Australia’s biggest VC’s such as Airtree and Blackbird. It is a fully vertically integrated company - meaning they create all their own content, do all tech stack, sales and customer support in house.Duncan is driven by trying to make the world a better place through education. A self-confessed learning machine, Duncan’s mind ticks at a million miles an hour, soaking up everything in his path and seeing every challenge as an opportunity to learn. He subscribes to 300 podcasts and listens to them at 6 x speed, hasn’t missed a gym session in he can’t remember how long and is utterly obsessed with writing, without fail penning a blog every single Sunday over here at Cloud Streaks.Duncan and Ian cover a tonne including:- If you have a good product and can explain it well you’re setting yourself up for success.- How Duncan came to imbibe that the biggest risk is taking no risk.- If you want to help a mind grow you need time with that mind.- Somewhere between 70-90% of class time is influenced heavily by the textbook.- Habits are accumulated momentum.- Everything you do should be the best thing you’ve ever done.- You don’t learn anything from anyone you agree with.Quickfire Recommendations:- Book: Principles by Ray Delio- Podcast: New York Times The Daily- News Source: A diverse diet is the most important thing - not any single one news source. TechMe for tech, Ben Shapiro for politics, New - York Times, The Guardian, Sky News in Australia- Productivity Tool: Google Sheets for tracking time or timesheeting.- Favourite TV Show: The West Wing (all time), Brooklyn 99- Favourite App: Gmail, Owltail- Favourite Tech CEO: Elon Musk- Ted Talk topic: The power of writing as a way to improve metacognition and problem solving skillsFollow Duncan's blog: https://www.cloudstreaks.comContact: duncan@cloudstreaks.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/duncan-anderson-252b2b20/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ben Thompson is the Founder and CEO of Employment Hero. The company is Australia’s newest unicorn, recently announcing a funding round of $181 million, valuing the firm at $1.25 billion. Ben grew up in Frenchs Forrest in Sydney and finished his schooling in Armidale, rural NSW. After finishing law and economics at uni, Ben took up a number of tenures in Australia including with Sydney Futures Exchange and Perpetual before jumping on a flight to London where he was employed by Interactive Investor International and ran theirs and lastminute.com’s IPO and then by UK’s largest property portal, Right Move. After a number of years in London working and playing hard in the excitement of the dot-com boom, Ben and his (now) wife married and moved back to Sydney to raise their family. Simultaneously, Ben decided he never wanted to work for anyone again and so started his own business. Employment Hero currently services 80,000 SME customers, managing 750,000 thousand employees. With 52% of the world’s GDP spent on wages within SME’s, Employment Hero’s audience is huge and growing as they work on big plans to expand..See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rebecca Schot-Guppy is the Director of Investment Leverage and Portfolio Management at IAG Firemark Ventures. Previously, Rebecca was the CEO of FinTech Australia, where she made a significant impact on the ecosystem. Prior to Fintech Australia, she worked as a Community Manager at Stone & Chalk. Rebecca found her way into the world of venture through her background in law and biomed. She is a passionate and knowledgeable member of the startup ecosystem with many insights to share.Ian & Rebecca discuss…- Rebecca’s path into the startup world- Why Rebecca chose to work on the venture side of the startup ecosystem- Rebecca’s role and impact at FinTech Australia- Australia as a Fintech powerhouse- IAG Firemark Venture’s thematic investments- The growth of the the VC sector in Australia- The Firemark Collective and its teams..and more!Quickfire Recommendations- Book: Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi- Podcast: 7am Podcast- News Source: AFR & The Guardian- App: Superhero- Productivity Tool: Asana- Favourite Tech CEO: Katherine McConnell - Brighte- Favourite TV show: Sports- Ted Talk Topic: Female leadership.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ian sits down with Hugo Bieber, Partner at Think & Grow, and Jacqui Tucker, Head of Employment, Taxes & Reward, Enterprise, KPMG, to discuss the 2021-2022 Australian Startup Salary Guide by Think & Grow and KPMG High Growth Ventures. Supported by Tech Council of Australia, the guide was produced with 20 leading VCs, surveying over 3,000 positions across 140 companies and is designed for startups looking to recruit and retain the best talent in the ecosystem. The panel discusses a variety of topics around recruiting, attracting, paying, rewarding, and motivating talent.Ian and panel discuss the guide in detail, including…The need for the salary benchmarking guide within the startup ecosystemDifference in salary ranges between early stage startups and later stage startupsThe importance of transparency within the marketHow ESOPs can be used for attraction and retentionThe great resignation and what it means for Australian companiesThe trend toward flexible work arrangements...and more!Download the 2021-2022 Australian Startup Salary Guide here: Salary Guide (thinkandgrowinc.com)For more information on KPMG High Growth Ventures, check out their website: https://www.highgrowthventures.com.au/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.