Startmate is the epicentre for startup ambition across Australia and New Zealand. Over the last decade, they’ve built a community of the most ambitious founders, operators and investors.“We've got four or five businesses worth over a hundred million dollars with more than a hundred staff each. Four years ago, they were one person trying to solve a problem” says Michael Batko, CEO at Startmate.In today’s episode, we’ll get an insider’s look at Startmate, discuss what the best investors do to help founders, and learn about some of the biggest challenges and advice for start-ups going through Startmate.Episode interviewees: Michael Batko, CEO of Startmate, Saron Berhane, co-founder and COO of BioScout, and Lane Litz, co-founder and CEO of Chatterize.Key topics covered: The three core elements to Startmate’s community Why the best founders are customer-obsessed What the best operators and investors do to help startups The best of Michael Batko: “Your starting point is actually not the product. Your starting point is customers.”“Instead of going into a meeting expecting a million dollar cheque from a 30 minute conversation, you want to be building those investor relationships, ideally over six to 12 months.”“Rather than telling you what to do, the best mentors ask really good questions, to trigger thoughts and processes for you to then validate for your customers.”“The most beautiful thing we see at Startmate is that our founder alumni come back as mentors. They invest back into the fund and then, because our founders are successful, they get more money back into the ecosystem.”The best of Saron Berhane: “As a team of engineers, the goal setting process really pushed us from having huge product-centric goals to goals that actually focussed on our market and customers.”“With the push from Startmate, we went from thinking we’d be on the farm in six months to being on the farm in a month.”The best of Lane Litz: “You need to accelerate. Be brave, set a really high, very tough goal and kill it.”“What you don’t want to know will kill your company so, so fast.”

Up is a unique bank. As the first digital bank in Australia, they launched with a team of less than 30 people. They’ve since upended expectations of how banks can operate, using cloud hosting, continuous deployment and an ever-expanding list of unexpected, customer-first features. Their secret? A magical engineering culture.“The idea of the pitch was we want to build technology led banking, rather than banking led technology” says Up co-founder, Dom Pym.In today’s episode, we’ll dive into how Up is making us feel comfortable with our finances, what they’re doing differently in the engineering team, how to lead with authenticity within a product team and so much more.Episodes air every second Wednesday/Thursday at 5:30 am. Don't forget to subscribe.Episode interviewees: Up co-founder Dom Pym and Head of Product Anson Parker. Key topics covered: Up's origin story and working with Bendigo Bank Creating a superstar engineering team Product management at Up The best of Dom Pym: “We didn't want to be running a service business, but we also didn't want to just build technology and license it to the big banks" "Our idea was how can we use those technologies that exist in other industries and use them in banking?” "Up was the first bank where you could open a real bank account in less than three minutes, just by downloading the app from the app store and putting in your details.” "I still interview everybody. I do the last interview whenever we bring anybody on board” "We built a physics engine inside the actual app using the capabilities like the gyroscope and the gravity engine within your iPhone, so that you could feel your money sort of wobbling when you share your phone around. It seemed like it was almost a gimmick, but it's using technology to create an interaction and user experience that didn't exist with any other bank in the world.” "We want Up to be the number one bank in Australia for under 35s. That's going to take decades." The best of Anson Parker: “As much as we were frustrated or thought that it could be a lot better, I think a lot of our customers, especially those early adopters, had exactly the same view." "Some features we ship are almost nonfunctional - like celebrating people's yearly anniversary since the day they joined up, for example. It's not necessarily a piece of traditional functionality, but it really speaks to the relationship and valuing that.” "We didn't want to be a sign on top of a big building downtown, we wanted to be something p

“How can we have the biggest impact globally?”Vascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Currently symptoms do not appear until the late stages, often when it is too late. Two PhD students, John Carroll & Eamonn Colley made a breakthrough discovery that enables a radically earlier diagnosis.They founded Vexev to create an affordable health service that maps the vascular systems of customers, observes how it changes over time, and alerts doctors if something is about to go wrong. This technology has the potential to impact millions of people, transcending humanity beyond vascular disease. In this episode, you’ll learn about the initial research that led to Vexev, the size of the problem John and Eamonn are solving, and why Tip Piumsomboon was convinced to invest in their idea.Episodes air every second Wednesday/Thursday at 5:30 am. Don't forget to subscribe.Episode interviewees: Vexev co-founders John Carroll, Eamonn Colley and Blackbird Principal Tip Piumsomboon.Key topics covered: How John and Eamonn went from academics to entrepreneurs The changing healthcare landscape Proactive, not reactive, medical treatment The best of John and Eamonn: “We were PHD students: running a company and even working out how to email was new to us.” "“If we're tracking the coronary arteries over time, things like heart attacks are no longer these sudden events, it's actually a long, slow development over time.” "This is happening and we're completely blind to it. We just wait until it's so bad of a problem that the patient is taken into the emergency room.” "If our system can work in those remote communities in the middle of outback Australia, we're very confident that they're going to be able to work a

SunDrive is a solar technology company aiming to create low cost, energy efficient and more material abundant solar cells.“We are in a very fragile period in time. Everything that we are doing is to try and accelerate the day in which we can continue to progress as a civilisation without the expense of destroying the environment” says SunDrive co-founder Vince Allen.In today’s episode, SunDrive’s co-founders will discuss their first steps to building a category defining business. We’ll also hear from Blackbird co-founder and Partner Niki Scevak on the importance of milestones and the backlash from the cleantech graveyard.As promised, head to https://www.sundrivesolar.com/ to learn more about SunDrive.Episode interviewees: SunDrive co-founders Vince Allen, David Hu and Blackbird Partner Niki Scevak.Key topics covered: Australia can lead the world in solar energy SunDrive’s vision, product and business model Vince and David’s founding story The best of Vince & David: “We have everything that's needed for Australia to be the first solid power developed country.”“Today only 3% of the world's electricity comes from solar. There is still a long road ahead of us. And the technology today is not well suited for the longer term.”“Although the current solar cell structures have suited us well to get to this point, more advanced solar cells are going to be needed and we need to get around this silver problem. Copper is a thousand times more abundant than silver and a hundred times cheaper than silver.”“We’re not in the business of trying to manufacture the entire value chain. We’re focusing on our copper step - the last, most critical step in the solar cell manufacturing process.”“We are in a very fragile period in time. Everything that we are doing is to try and accelerate the day in which we can continue to progress as a civilisation without the expense of destroying the environment.”“You have to find somebody you trust and who shares the same values, vision and moral standards - everything.”“As soon as you bring up working on Cleantech, they’re already running for the hills.”Niki Scevak on SunDrive: “When we make an investment at Blackbird, we think very deeply about what are the three most important things that need to happen to show the unit of progress in the first seed round. SunDrive smashed all of those milestones.”“The road we’re on, using silver in solar panels, is a dead end road. Overall we’re just going to run out of silver to build the solar panels.”“I think everyone at Blackbird believes that a world powered by the sun is a world we want to be in, and that SunDrive can produce a high margin, great product or process that fits into that world.”“You can make so much progress with so little capital and so little time, and Vince, Dave and the team have done everything that they hoped to do in the seed round, and they’re very down to earth.”“A lot of hardware startups can prove something in the lab, in a small way, but they fall over when they try to make a lot of money from it or they try to go mainstream.”“We’re open to investing and not ruining the environment. What are the activities we’re doing that are not sustainable and let’s fix those activities. We’d love to invest in those new solutions and new ways of going about things.”

FreightFish is a New Zealand-based autonomous hydrofoil shipping company that aims to create a third option beyond the long wait of traditional ocean freight and the expensive extravagance of shipping by air.“We should have a hundred boats on the water. We should have a swarm of ships. Way more service focused and way less engineering focused than we are now,” says Max Olsen, co-founder and CEO of FreightFish.The FreightFish vision is to deliver goods anywhere in the world in 5-6 days and for half the cost of air. Advances in hydrofoil ships and cheaper carbon fibre manufacturing are making this vision imminently possible.“Eight week lead times kill hardware companies.”Title: Above Water with FreightFishEpisode interviews: FreightFish co-founder and CEO Max Olsen and Blackbird Partner Samantha Wong.Key topics covered: FreightFish’s vision to build a swarm of ships. What exceptional engineering talent looks like Team Building in New Zealand Robots as a Service The best of Max: “We promised to build a prototype at 1/10th of the scale and then, everything we thought that was going to be hard about building turned out to be easy - and everything that we thought was easy turned out to be hard.”“When you've backed yourself into the worst engineering corner, you’ve just got to bust your way out of it.”“The ocean is super unforgiving.”“How ready is our team at any given moment to completely rebuild a system? The structure of testing is the most important engineering principle.”“Eight week lead times kill hardware companies.”“Determination and resilience are the one and two most important traits.”“In the face of almost certain defeat, can you turn yourself around?”“The moral of the story is don't commit fraud.”“Success is such a fleeting feeling and you only get it for a moment.Pause for a moment. Let's go take two hours to walk up a hill, spend some time learning a new skill, doing like a search and rescue mission out in one of the chase boatsSamantha Wong on FreightFish: “ I love the sheer originality of the idea. Why not create a third way for freight to move, between slow, cheap, sea freight and fast, but super expensive and environmentally unfriendly, air freight.”“One benefit of FreightFish is that you can actually get started with one boat. With one vehicle, you can start a freight service because it just plugs into existing supply chains. Therefore the capital requirements for a company doing that, much less than say an autonomous vehicle company.”“America's Cup history in Auckland is really important to note when it comes to why you would build a company like FreightFish in Auckland. Team New Zealand snuck a win through innovative hydrofoils, so there are actually a very deep pockets of hydro-foiling talent here in New Zealand.”“In my experience, attracting the best talent involves inspiring them and getting the image in their minds in such a way that they just can't forget it. They just can't shake it from their imagination.”“I think attitude is such a big part of a good hire. That and humility around trying things and bringing a lot of energy to do their job.”

Benjamin Humphrey and Brad Ayers, founders of Dovetail, discuss their collaborative platform for research professionals. They emphasize the importance of deeply understanding customers for creating great products. Dovetail's platform offers easy-to-use collaborative tools, data analysis, and video transcription tools. The company has grown to support hundreds of customers without a sales team, remaining product-led. The podcast covers lessons learned at Atlassian, de-risking the business, prioritizing features, building a product-led company, measuring intuition in user research, and the decision-making process between bootstrapping and venture capital.

See-Mode, a company focused on predicting strokes through ultrasound scans, discusses the future of healthcare, the public availability of healthcare data, and their software's ability to produce health reports in minutes. They also talk about improving clinicians' work life, milestones in their product journey, and their plans with their Series A funding.

The founding story of Blackbird is discussed by Niki, Rick, Mike Cannon-Brookes & Hunter. They cover Blackbird’s origin story, investment philosophy, and the impact of COVID-19 on the tech industry. They also explore the importance of ambition, team building, and the growth of the Australian BC community. Partnership between Greenspring and Blackbird is also discussed.

Future-Proof Workplaces with Alex & Luke from XY SenseIn 2016, Melbourne-based entrepreneurs, Alex Birch, and Luke Murray decided to start a company to solve the problem of office space utilisation."We came to this realisation that large-enterprise organisations spend so much money on their space and it's very challenging for them to understand exactly how well this space is being used," says Alex.This realisation led to the founding of XY Sense, a sensor and an artificial intelligence platform to monitor companies and their employees' workspace usage.For these software engineer co-founders, building a hardware solution was a new experience and so was working with cutting-edge technologies, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)."We didn't build an algorithm and then choose how to apply it," says Alex."We said, here's the problem we need to solve. What's the best technology to do that and it just so happened that the best technology for this was deep learning and artificial intelligence."Episodes air every second Wednesday at 5:30 am. Don't forget to subscribe.Episode interviews: XY co-founder and CEO Alex Birch, XY Sense co-founder and CTO Luke Murray, and Blackbird Partner Nick Crocker.Future-Proof Workspaces with Alex & LukeKey topics covered: Why a laser-focused mission wins How accurate data can unlock employee productivity and effectiveness XY Sense’s use of ML, AI and real-time data Alex and Luke's team-focused approach to company culture How XY Sense-enabled workspaces operate in a COVID-19 world The best of Alex:"Offices are used only about 60% of the time. So for a bank that could equate to around about a hundred million dollars spent on empty office space every year.""We felt that there was a unique opportunity to build what we saw to be the Holy Grail for office space utilisation.""Because XY Sense was in a very similar domain as the previous one, we were entrenched in the problem, and we understood it deeply, so that gave us a lot of credibility that we knew how to grow a company.""Luke and I spent ten months building a prototype and bootstrapped it together. It was a Raspberry Pi prototype, but it was able to detect and understand where people were in the space anonymously.""If you don't trust the data, then what good is analytics? For us to have trustworthy data, it has to be in real-time, so that if you walk around the room, you'll see the heat signature change in the floor plan.""Our real-time data leads to all of our analytics. We have a 10,000-foot view of our analytics showing across the globe, how well different buildings are going.""We can drill down to a country, to a building, to a floor, to a desk and see from a thousand-foot view or a 10,000-foot view right down into the detail.""We can set an alarm for social distancing, so when there's someone who's in too close to another person, we can send a text message."Luke, my co-founder and I pride ourselves on our integrity. We want to be as honest and transparent as possible with

Hiring is the most important decision a company makes.Any company is only as great as the people building it. But, bias in hiring decisions can often mean the best candidate doesn’t land the job.Applied solves these problems.Six years ago, Kate Glazebrook, a behavioural economist and Harvard graduate, was living in the UK and working in part of the government's Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the "nudge unit."It was here that Kate and her co-founder, Richard Marr, came up with the idea for Applied, a platform that removes information that can lead to bias in hiring – such as names, CVs and education background.Through blind application processes, ordering effects, and keeping scores anonymous across the team marking the candidates, Applied helps organisations hire the best person for the job regardless of their background.Late last year, Kate made the tough decision to step down as CEO of Applied."On account of my privileged existence I've had in life, it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever taken."Her replacement, Khyati Sundaram, Applied's Head of Product, went through the platform's application process and was appointed Acting-CEO in December 2019, and as CEO in March this year."If you look at the timeline, it goes; Q4 CEO transition, Q1 Series A fundraise as a new CEO, Q2 COVID-19. It's been about the hardest first three quarters of being a CEO as you could imagine."Episodes air every second Wednesday at 6 am. Don't forget to subscribe.Episode interviews: Kate Glazebrook, Co-Founder of Applied, Khyati Sundaram, CEO of Applied and Nick Crocker, Partner at Blackbird.Key topics covered: Uncovering biases in hiring Strategies for averaging 9/10 ratings with over 200,000 candidates How you can retain 96% of your employees after one year Why you should look for mission alignment over culture Kate's decision to step down as CEO Khyati’s decision to step up The best of Kate:"Applied's mission statement is deadly simple; we want to help you to hire the best person for the job regardless of their background.”"There have been studies over the last 50 years and have shown that the rate of unconscious bias discrimination against people from minority backgrounds is essentially not changed since the 1970s.""We tend to hire the same type of person over and over again, and often that person will look and feel a lot like us because we tend to get along with those people better."The best of Khyati:“Every product decision goes back to the mission and the vision of the company, building that from the ground up.”“The first 70 days were very much a baptism by fire. There's a certain element of risk when you go knocking on doors saying, “you don't know me, but please trust me. I am the right person for the next phase of his incredible business, a different person than you had imagined, but nonetheless, the right person.”Nick on Applied:"Helping people to find jobs where they can be the best is just a fundamentally great thing to be in the business of doing.""The way that most companies hire is insane and wrong and broken, and it's the reason why companies have such high empl