Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders

Adam Schwab is our guest on Scaling Up, the CEO and co-founder of Luxury Escapes – a travel marketplace with almost $1b in bookings annually. Adam’s story is that of a quintessential and accomplished entrepreneur – one of trial and error, learning from mistakes and applying it to the next chapter as is always required. Luxury escapes and its coming to being is exactly this – the twist and turns of a variety of businesses, over almost a decade, that eventually spun out something that was scalable and incredibly capital efficient. While the scaling story is largely unknown but none the less incredible – it is a story born out of customer obsession, and providing consistent value to both sides of the market place What comes next for Luxury Escapes is been exciting enough to get Adam back from 18 month sabbatical, and we not only discuss the many iterations of the business and its future, but also how Adam has thought about his own journey as a leader. Buckle up, this is a fast paced and frenetic end to another great season of Scaling Up. We will be back in 2023 with another series, a new format and hopefully many more lessons for business builders, executives and investors alike. Chapters: (02:39): The Founding Story of Luxury Escapes (09:30): Business model: Part 1, The Flash model (16:20): Business model: Part 2, Building trust in the brand (23:09): Business model: Part 3, Scaling Product and TAM. (29:58): Business model: Part 4, Horizon 3 and the billion dollar question. (35:51): People and Culture: Journey and Philosophy (40:02): Retaining Talent and views on remuneration (42:05): The Roles of Coaching, Mentoring, and Managing Show notes:Adam with a longer version of the start up years and founding story Adam on work from home - Adam's podcast "From Zero" Adam's podcast "The Contrarians"

Reggie Aggarwal is the co-founder of Cvent, a $600m revenue Software company, that is listed on the Nasdaq (ticker CVT). Cvent is allows organizations to  more efficiently run, manage and host all formats of events from virtual to in-person and hybrid. If you have been to a large conference recently, chances are it hasa been powered by Cvent. Reggie is in a very unique position, having founded the company in 1999, he has seen 3 recessions, an IPO, A SPAC, a merger, competitors come and go and everything in between, and so it was a privilege to try and piece all the important moments in history together, and distill into lessons for current operators. To have been at the helm of a business that has scaled from 12 people to almost 5000 people has also required Reggie to be on his on scaling journey and to dig into the how he has thought about this, from someone who is consistently voted one of the best CEOS in the US, makes for a fascinating conversation. This is probably a great conversation to pair with a previous TDM blog, what makes a great CEO, as no doubt going through the conversation, you will be able to identify many of those traits shining through. As previously mentioned, all our podcasts now have transcripts available, and you can find them at our website tdmgrowthpartners.com. This is a great podcast to pair with our previous TDM blog  - What makes a great CEOShow notes:Cvent Founding Story (3:13) Cvent’s product evolution from a point solution to an integrated and highly scalable platform (8:40) How pivoting out of necessity created Cvent’s Triple Threat; in-person, virtual and hybrid virtual events (14:35) Cvent’s balanced and ‘frugally profitable’ approach enabling sustainable growth and longevity (18:10) Maintaining confidence and market share against rapidly scaling competitors (22:55) The differences and unique challenges of IPO and SPAC processes (25:50) Lessons and growth opportunities from being taken private by Vista (31:54) Managing an executive team with a long-term tenure (36:15) Continuous involvement and hiring tips to effectively scale across countries and cultures (40:03) Strategic and tactical advantage of the New Delhi office (43:13) What makes a great CEO and fostering an intrapreneurial culture (45:09) The three Proverbs Reggie lives by that enabled his and Cvent’s longevity (47:25) This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Ruslan Kogan, the CEO and co-founder of Kogan.com (ASX:KGN) is the guest on this episode of 'Scaling Up'. Kogan.com is Australia’s largest pure play online retailer with over $1b in sales. Many listeners over the years would have no doubt been introduced to Kogan.com via their incredibly successful own brand electronics business that catapulted the business to a size and scale that has allowed them to enact a phenomenal e-commerce playbook. Aside from expanding their direct to consumer product offering, Kogan.com has also been able to drive greater efficiencies and value to customers across a range of service verticals. Ruslan’s story in many respects mirrors Kogan.com’s story – bootstrapped and always thinking entrepreneurially as to what is required to succeed in any given moment. This episode also dives into all the big ticket decisions that any e-tailer has to face - from how to acquire customers cheaply, as well as the importance of best in class logistics and what that looks like,  be it warehousing, fulfillment or freight. Ruslan is character, a true entrepreneur in every sense, and someone who has changed the retailing landscape in Australia for the better. We are also now releasing transcripts of each episode, to find them, you can click through the show notes, or find all episodes on our website. https://www.tdmgrowthpartners.com/insight/ Show Notes: Ruslan’s upbringing in Belarus and the formative nature of immigration guiding his entrepreneurial spirit (3:10) Kogan founding story (7:08) The early years of Kogan with a bootstrapped and presale funded business model (8:43) Ruslan’s unique strategy to create customer attention by engaging with the enemy (12:32) Kogan’s diversification across new verticals through partnership with service adjacencies (18:11) Success of the Marketplace and Kogan First program, transforming Kogan into a platform business (22:10) Maintaining best in class in bound logistics in the e-commerce industry (26:51) Proliferation and efficiency of robotics and automation in warehousing (30:21) Launching a last mile logistic service in the pandemic and the transition back to external courier services (33:14) Understanding and optimising for your unique core position and competitive advantage (36:16) Initial hiring tactics e.g., only accepting CVs from Gmail accounts to filter for logical and analytical competencies (38:30) Expectation to ‘reply all’ in work email chains, building a culture of transparency and accountability (44:11) How Kogan’s cultural values have scaled from the company’s inception (45:48) This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

After a mini hiatus, 'Scaling Up' is back, and we have some incredible guests lined up in the coming months, none more so than this episode. Alex Vynokur came to Australia as a 16 year old from Soviet Ukraine, not speaking a work of English, but with a steely determination to make something of himself. And that is an understatement as to what he has achieved since – in the midst of the GFC, he co-founded BetaShares, a passive Exchange Traded Fund (or ETF) fund manager, with roughly $23b under management, making them the second largest in Australia and New Zealand. An ETF mimics an index but allows it to be investible and bought and sold on an exchange. The industry has moved swiftly from fairly vanilla – think tracking the ASX 200 or S&P 500, to more thematic or exotic type indexes - be it ESG based,  or even more niche such as tracking a basket of companies involved in the creation of the metaverse. BetaShares has been at the forefront of this innovation – continually pushing the boundaries in its mission to democratise the ability for anyone to invest, given the ease, diversified and low cost nature of investing ETFs. BetaShares, despite having over 800k retail customer, will no doubt be an an under the radar success story to many listeners, but one I have been wanting to tell for a while now. You are about to hear why – it is a story of grit, and passion – and a little peek into what has driven the success of a massive business, with a huge opportunity still ahead of it. To learn more or donate to the United Ukraine Appeal visit theukraineappeal.org You can stay across all of TDM news and views via our socials, be it LinkedIn or Twitter, our handle is - @tdm_growth Show notes Alex’s background immigrating to Australia and lessons from growing up in the Soviet Union (3:14)  Influence of the Soviet Union on BetaShare’s mission to democratise investing and encourage equal access (6:42)  BetaShares Founding Story and the opportunity in the ETF industry (9:20)  Turning a great idea into a great business and disrupting incumbents in the ETF industry (12:13)  Nuances in the Australian retail ETF market that allowed for BetaShares growth (14:06)  The movement of the ETF industry to thematic and ESG investing (17:44)  Diversification and innovation in the index industry led by new index providers such as Solactive (21:41)  The future of BetaShares (Horizon Two) – leveraging technology to improve financial literacy in Australia (23:24)  People as BetaShare’s competitive advantage and secret sauce (26:06)  Fostering innovation by fostering a culture that breaks down the stigma around failure as detrimental to performance (28:56)  Lessons on empowering leaders, managers, and the team at large to see the benefit of failure and mistakes (30:39)  Hiring and testing for innovation and curiosity (31:36)  Diagnostic tools to measure innovation within BetaShares culture (32:45)  How to balance giving customers what they want and innovating to provide something they haven’t even thought of (34:03)  The United Ukraine Appeal –delivering non-military aid to the victims of war in Ukraine (37:30)

Joel Montaniel is the Co-founder, and CEO of SevenRooms, a private software company devoted to improving the way hospitality operators leverage their data to enhance business operations, build better direct relationships with customers and deliver an unforgettable customer experience. In their own words, SevenRooms allows ‘the big to feel small and the small to feel big’ when it comes to customer relationships. The conversation traverses a wide range of topics; from scaling a global business from day one, leading with empathy and its power on customers and employees, and the great frameworks for how SevenRooms prioritises product innovation, given the breadth of their customer base. Named among the ‘Best Places to Work’ in New York, it’s clear that SevenRooms culture-first mentality is deeply embedded in the company’s DNA. With this in mind, Joel talks to how SevenRooms is investing in its employees and the programs they have put in place to enable them to do their best work. Show Notes; Founding story and inspiration behind SevenRooms (3:15)  Empathising with customers to better understand the problem and re-think the solution (5:27)  SevenRooms Value Proposition for restaurant operators (7:04)  Transitioning the hospitality industry from systems of record to systems of intelligence that drives outcomes for businesses (11:31)  SevenRooms competitive advantage to streamline operations, personalize service and maximise revenue profitability for customers (13:41)  Pain points when scaling a global business – how your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength (16:50)  Implementing a prioritization framework to inspire product innovation and identify where SevenRooms can uniquely serve their customers (18:57)  Fostering innovation to drive the hospitality industry forward as the company scales (23:00)  Supporting customers and managing interactions during the pandemic (27:27)  Inspiration to build a culture first company (30:00)  SevenRooms core values (33:54)  Career planning with employees to resolve cultural tensions and find an intersection between company and employee needs (37:46)  The importance of investing in employees and providing recharge periods – Fresh Start Program and 7 R&R (41:13)  How the leadership team catches cultural bugs and detractors in the company (45:35) 

Hugh Williams probably isn't a name that pops to the front of mind when talking Australia's greatest technology exports - but it should. His career leading huge teams on cutting edge projects at global tech giants Google, Microsoft and eBay have fundamentally changed the way we live our lives. Globally, few possess the depth of domain expertise as Hugh.  This episode dives into 'what great looks like' when it comes to individual engineers, small product teams and larger organisations, and his insights into hiring and fostering high performance teams and innovation, and describing how the best tech companies are built and scaled, are articulated simply and actionable for leaders of all teams.  We also discuss Hugh’s most recent passion project as the co-founder of CS in Schools, which is empowering the next generation of DigiTech professionals.  Growing up at the frontier of technology and working alongside some of the greatest minds of the era, Hugh’s experiences transcend his industry and will provide key lessons for all listeners, of all interests. Show Notes;  Hugh’s upbringing and introduction to computer science (4:00)  Initial career steps manoeuvring through a technology boom and the rise of search technology (6:20)  Lessons from working in Silicon Valley (11:28)  Current labour climate shifting the power back to the employer (14:10)  What makes a great engineer? (18:05)  How to foster the best performance and innovation within teams of all sizes? (21:45)  The two-pizza team (the optimal structure of a technology team) (27:34)  How do the engineers integrate with the wider organisation? (31:09)  Minimizing the number of company goals to unify and improve business functionality (34:09)  Key lessons as a leader to build a sustainable and scalable company culture (38:40)  CS in Schools mission and the key steps for Australia to be a driving force of technology progression (41:20)

Our guest today on scaling up is Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway (Nasdaq:RENT). From a thought bubble to ringing the bell on the Nasdaq and being the first business to do so with a female CEO, CFO and COO, Jenn has been at the helm of a business that is a classic two-sided network case study. We dive into this, and the scaling challenges of growing both sides of the network in creating a closet in the cloud for over 2.5 million American women. The network playbook has been rolled out perfectly by Jenn and her team, and the lessons on the power of the network effects that come at scale and how hard it is to compete against are clear as Jenn adeptly walks us through how Rent the runway has layered in platform utility over time.  We also discuss the leadership growth she has had to undergo to scale with the business and the importance of a feedback culture in doing so.  There are so many lessons that hopefully will get the juices flowing for business builders of all sizes.  If you want to learn more about how we think about Networks, and how to assess them at TDM, we have some useful videos linked below. Also below are other links to deeper discussions on the founding story of Rent the runway, as we do move through this fairly quickly in the episode. Show notes;  TDM Network Effects Youtube video: https://youtu.be/ed292C36CvA  TDM Network Effects Blog post: https://medium.com/tdm-tidbits/network-effects-tdm-style-ff0828165a5  How I Built this episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ufSODSepCl5PPVuNAjUw6?si=6d286431430546f7  Founding story (2:47)  Business model evolution – leveraging the power of a 2-sided network (Inventory/designers and consumer facing) (6:50)  Scaling the supply network from a minimum viable supply to the present-day aggregation of designers (8:23)  Integrating and innovating with designers – share by RTR (consignment business) and exclusive design collections manufactured by RTR (13:28)  Scaling the demand network – diversifying the inventory to increase customer engagement (15:56)  Challenges in scaling logistics and technology to create a vertically integrated end-to-end logistics experience (20:15)  Utilising data at scale to improve the customer lifetime value and inventory ROI (23:47)  The impact of covid on RTR and avenues used to overcome these challenges/leverage opportunities post pandemic (27:59)  Jenn’s growth and evolution as a leader and advice for scaling leadership (30:09)  Operationalizing a feedback culture into Rent the Runway (33:12)  This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Mike Serbinis is the CEO and co-founder of League – a healthcare platform on a mission to empower people to live the lives that they want to lead; happier, healthier and longer.  League started on the premise that the future of healthcare and its delivery was going to be less bureaucratic, less institutional, and consumer first. This simple insight came about both from personal interactions with the health ecosystem in the United States, but also more importantly from Mike’s previous experiences of solving problems through a consumer lens – first at Zip 2, working alongside the Musk brothers, and later as the founder and CEO of Kobo, the largest Amazon Kindle competitor.  Being at the forefront of the consumerization of healthcare and driving outcomes by making the convoluted simple, League is currently the infrastructure platform that allows large US insurers, providers and employers a consumer-centric one stop shop, digital front door in a world currently employing multiple single point solutions.  This conversation traverses a variety of topics including an interesting discussion on the emergence of cloud marketplaces and their impact on enterprise technology deals, as well as the deliberate and thoughtful nature that League has scaled multiple aspects to it culture, particularly on its journey in become a best in class diverse workplace.  You can’t buy experience, and Mike has had that in spades – the lessons for business builders of all sizes are weaved right throughout this episode. Show Notes;  League founding story (3:40)  US health ecosystem snapshot (7:44)  How League fits into the ecosystem and the problem being solved today by League (11:26)  League customer proposition (14:30)  Customer engagement in the consumerisation of the health space (16:33)  Lessons about shaping the strategy of League throughout its scaling evolution (consistent mission, relentless adaptability) (18:39)  Effectively allocating resources to grow a business aligned with its core (23:10)  Emergence of cloud marketplaces and Leagues interactions with them (Go-to-market models) (26:24)  Enterprise growth phase at League (29:15)  Reinforcing culture and values in scaling a business (31:46)  Journey of hiring generalists to specialists (35:53)  Advice for building a diverse workforce (39:49)  Leagues ‘Work Your Way’ policy (43:20)

Series 6 of Scaling Up kicks off with Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger, the co-founders and co-CEOs of AllBirds. From a Kickstarter campaign, to listing on the NASDAQ (NASDAQ:BIRD) in a little over six years, this is an insane scaling story of one of the fastest growing brands in history.  Originally born out of hustle and grit and then of thoughtful growth and innovation, Allbirds’ brand has always centered on a promise that great products have to be sustainable. Allbirds is the leading brand when it comes to sustainability in amongst a global industry that emits 2.1billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – more than the total contributions of cars in the USA!  “How I built this” podcast episode – Allbirds for a deeper dive on the founding story Tech Crunch, Ed Cowan – As Allbirds goes public, sustainability is the mantra of the future: Show notes:  Allbirds founding story (3:20)  Brand philosophy and maintaining mission integrity in a fast growing-business (6:25)  Material innovation and design trade-offs (12:27)  First principles thinking and its potential conflict in scaling a consumer forward business (15:38)  Advice for founders scaling an e-commerce business (19:50)  Product strategy evolution (25:00)  Impact of sport on leadership and building a high performing team (30:34)  Creating talent density and evaluating talent in hiring (36:47)  Employee compensation in falling capital markets (39:57)  What does the brand look like in 10-20 years (42:26)  This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Phil McKenzie, the CEO of Pacific Smiles Group, the ASX listed (PSQ:ASX) dental services business is our final guest of Season 5. Phil joined Pacific Smiles in 2018, taking over the previously founder led business and completely reshaping the corporate culture. Many listeners may be familiar with Pacific Smiles given its listed nature, or as a customer of one of its 115 dental clinics around Australia.  Phil is a wonderful leader – someone who intertwines himself deeply within the business, understanding his own strengths and weaknesses and ensuring he is playing to the former and allowing other great leaders cover the latter. His previous experience running a 200 audiology clinics in the US, as well as leading Apple’s retail rollout in Australia, have given him wonderful lessons to apply to Pacific Smile. It has not been all smooth sailing though, a global pandemic tested his leadership, as it did to every leader around the world, and he gives great insights into how he and his team approached the various challenges as they were thrown up. Phil’s real strength is around galvanising teams, and this theme plays out over and over again through the episode.  Here at TDM we are trying to create content relevant for both founders, leadership team and investor. Since our last series, you may have missed some of this, including Jess Bell Allens superb deep dive into what makes a great medical device business. This is sadly the last episode in this series, but we will be back in 2022.  In the meantime, the best place to find all of TDM content is on our website or across our social channels - you can follow TDM (linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) via the links. Show notes;  Dental ecosystem in Australia and the scope of Pacific Smile’s (3:25)  Pacific Smile’s greenfield organic growth strategy (4:48)  Role of insurers in the dental ecosystem (6:30)  How to develop a great brand and Pacific Smile’s competitive advantage (9:45)  Pacific Smile’s journey to further capture the dental market (11:18)  The key successes of a leader and improving by recognizing previous mistakes (13:53)  Phil’s leadership style and the importance of visibility in leadership (17:00)  Importance of communication and chair-side manner (19:00)  Pacific Smile’s people and culture, values and employee synergy (20:11)  Phil’s personal growth as CEO and advice to his younger self (26:46)  Impact of the pandemic on Pacific Smile’s as a consumer-facing business (29:02)  Process of decommissioning and recommissioning dental centers during the pandemic (30:59)  Lessons learnt from the first lockdown (Mar-Jun 2020) and applying these to 2021 (32:40)  The fear of the unknown and investing in times of darkness for future gains (35:04)  Experience as a public company CEO (36:35)  Establishing the consistency of Pacific Smile’s message and story (38:37)  Optimizing for long-term growth (39:11)  Role of the board in a public growth company and CEO interactions (40:22)  What makes a great chair to the board (43:01)  10-year vision for personal and professional growth at Pacific Smile’s (43:42)