Paul Bassat shares insights on his journey building Seek, transitioning from law to tech startups, and his investments in major companies. He discusses balancing planning and serendipity, navigating uncertainty in crypto markets, and SquarePeg's high-conviction investment approach.

Hosts discuss career updates, goals, balancing chaotic lives, playing the empathy game live, prioritizing real-life connections, transitioning to busy schedules, embracing change, exploring new ventures, seeking fulfillment through curiosity and impact, planning future guests, embracing bold actions and authenticity, contemplation on life's big questions, finding happiness in simple pleasures, and reflecting on aspirations and values.

Ben Thompson shares his journey of building a billion-dollar company, navigating economic challenges, and discussing the future of work. Insights on remote work post-COVID, startup funding struggles, and the importance of understanding SaaS unit economics. The podcast also explores favorite books, leadership qualities, space exploration, and fostering collaboration among innovators.

We talked to master content creator and investor Sahil Bloom. Sahil had a meteoric rise over 2020-2021, accumulating more than 550k twitter followers and 70k followers on his Substack, as he became extremely well known in the business world for his profound insights.  Whilst we talked with him about content creation and investing, we also dived into a bunch of different topics such as vulnerabilities, relationships, mediating your ego and prioritising in your 20s.  If you like the episode, please send it to a friend! Enjoy

This week we have Blackbird Partner Niki Scevak. Topics include the significance of studying history and psychology in investing, career frameworks, and Blackbird's plan to become a top-tier investment firm. It also explores the importance of education, psychology, and history in investing, maximizing learning in startups and investing, the rise of Eucalyptus and Blackbird's vision, and the skills of a venture investor.

Disclaimer: Airtree is one of Australia's biggest VC funds, not crypto funds, as was mistakenly said in the introduction. This week we talked with John Henderson, a partner at Airtree Ventures which is a leading Australian venture capital firm. John acts as the lead in Airtree's crypto and web3 investments and he's previously been an entrepreneur, operator, consultant and lawyer. Just recently Airtree raised $700 million worth of funds, with $50 million of that dedicated to crypto and web3 investments.  This episode we dived deep into understanding the crypto and web3 movement. This entailed talking about the movement from web1 to web3, what web3 really means, decentralisation, web3 use cases,  NFT's, other thematics John is passionate about and how he makes investment decisions.

Sir Ronald Cohen is known as 'the father of British venture capital' and the 'father of impact investment'. He brought venture capital to the UK through his firm Apax Partners, which went on to control over $50 billion of assets and was one of the earliest investors in Apple. Then at the age of 60 he wanted to focus more on social issues so he pioneered impact investing throughout the world by partnering with governments and creating the firms Bridges Funds Management and Social Finance. He’s also recently written the brilliant book ‘Impact: reshaping capitalism to drive real change’. He talked to him about how leaving Egypt during the Suez crisis influenced him, how he founded Apax Partners at 26, his thesis for impact investing and his reflections on life. Ronald’s work in impact investing have been a terrific service to humanity and his life is a testament to his hard work and passion.

This week we had the pleasure of talking to one of Australia’s top artists Danielle Weber, whose painted portraits of famous people around the world and has accumulated over 200k instagram followers. We wish we were cool enough to be artists and her perspective to life blew us away. We dived into Danielle’s experience working with people like Dwayne Johnson, Danielle’s creative process and what it feels like to create art. We discussed how NFTs are transforming the artistic landscape and why Danielle is now selling digital art. Show notes Danielle’s Website: https://daniellesartwork.com/ Favourite book: Happiest Man on Earth - Eddie Jaku Favourite podcasts: Joe Rogan Inspirational figure you’ve never met: Oprah Favourite hobbies: Food and wine Our book: https://www.rising-tide-startups.com/

Max interviews Satya and Adam in a fun conversation about self-awareness, confidence, digital identities, predicting the future, exponential technologies, and crypto. They discuss the value of learning outside of traditional education, the appeal of polarizing figures, analyzing long-term games and incentives, vulnerability in podcasting, the uneven distribution of the future, and finding a balance between learning and other aspects of life.

This week we had the absolute honour of chatting to the CEO of Deloitte, Adam Powick. We spoke about Adams working class background, how he made career decisions and his lessons in leadership. What’s remarkable about Adam is his ability to balance authenticity and character with the more serious nature of leadership and we dived into how this developed. This episode is loaded with gems on career and life for everyone. You are in for a treat! Show notes  Currently reading: Dark Emu- Bruce Pascoe  Podcasts: Sporting Podcasts  Favourite sporting legends include: Mark Taylor and Greg Norman  Inspirational Leaders: Nelson Mandela and Angela Merkel  Hobbies include: Cricket  Favourite Dumpling: Truffle Dumping Din Tai Fung