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

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)

Episode 2 of our People and Culture mini series features the phenomenal Anna Binder, the CPO of Asana, the $15b NYSE and LTSE listed technology business that is changing the way businesses work, collaborate and thrive.  The genesis of Asana is important to frame this conversation; When co- founders of Asana Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein were both working at Facebook, of which Dustin also co-founded, they discovered amongst the hyper scale journey that that business was on, everyone was spending over half the day sitting in meetings, responding to email, and searching for infomation. Doing skilled work was taking a backseat to the 'work about work', the ultimate inefficiency for any high performing employee and business.  So Dustin and Justin built a tool to make it easier for teams to coordinate and collaborate on their work flow. It was such a game changer, they left to go fulltime and all in on this idea, and started Asana, building solutions to help more teams do the great work.  From day one, the company has been about letting employees around the world be empowered to do their best work by providing the software to enable this. Of course this is also self fulfilling to the Asana mission and this virtuous cycle has enabled Asana to be the exemplar of what scaling a great culture looks like – it is without fail voted one of the best places to work by every award and measure, and at the centre of this is Anna – who is considered in the industry to be the best.  This conversation covers some ground and importantly gives wonderful insights into what has enabled Asana to scale so effectively – from the mental model of “culture as a product”; that is one to be constantly designed, tested and iterated upon, to what Anna describes as corporate mindfulness, this was a treat to listen to one of the great business leaders in America talk passionately about the topics that are relevant to every fast growing business.  TDM is always publishing insights into how we think about scaling culture, including an investor lens on how to diagnose it. All our content is on our website and social channels, the links are in the show notes, and you can always get in touch with me on twitter - @ eddiecowan  Show notes;  How is culture defined (triangle analogy – mission, values and 10,000 decisions) (4:16)  Asana as a culture first business and its long-term focus (7:00)  Unique value proposition of Asana (10:01)  The key drivers of engagement and the Pyramid of Clarity, energizing the workforce (11:25)  Founders background and the beginning of Asana (13:43)  Epic empowerment enabling a united team (16:02)  Culture as a product at Asana – how it has changed from the initial vision (19:07)  Identifying and overcoming cultural bugs through engagement feedback (21:31)  The skills required for and role of the strategic CPO (23:42)  Mindfulness in the workplace – intentions, prioritisation, focus and flow (27:08)  Asana’s similarity to the culture of high performing athletes (30:44)  Recruitment – hiring for a cultural fit (32:01)  Tools for tracking performance and engagement – the growth and impact cycle (34:17)  Importance and implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion at Asana (36:40)  Wellness in the workplace and regular mental health check-ins (40:03)  The role of the board and the CPO’s interactions with them (44:15)  Changing dynamics of investors’ interest in culture (46:26)  Opportunities for Asana to continue to scale people and culture (48:14) 

This episode is the start of a Scaling Up mini series hoping to illuminate some amazing growth stories in regards to people and culture. We go deep on the scaling challenges that all companies face when it comes to people and culture and highlight what best in class can look like - from the role of a great, strategic CPO, to operationalising the values of the business, we are hoping this mini series really illuminates some amazing growth stories in regards to scaling a business' most important asset and competitive advantage, its people.  To kick things off Elias Torres, the co-founder of Drift with his CPO, Dena Upton. This was a bit of a treat. Drift, aside from being one of the fastest growing B2B SaaS companies in America, is the beacon of what corporate America could look like - the new American dream if you will, focused on diversity and equal opportunity. This has been deeply baked into the Drift mission from day one – Elias immigrated to the USA as a 17 year old from Nicarangua. From the humblest of beginnings, he has had an immense career, initially at IBM and Hubspot to now as the co-founder of Drift, where he has become a voice for latin and immigrant founders.  Dena has seen what scale looks like, having been on the LogMeIn journey for over 6 years and gives wonderful insight into her role and how it supports the visionary founders of drift.  We are committed here at TDM to helping founders, management teams and investors understand why people and culture is so critical to the enduring success of businesses. We have a few things in the works in this space, so keep across our website and social channels for more people and culture related content. You can follow TDM (linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) across social channels.  Show notes: Drift’s vision for a people-&-culture-first company (3:17)  Role of founders in driving the cultural vision (6:05)  Role of the CPO in enacting the cultural vision (7:55)  What makes a great CPO (12:35)  Hiring a great CPO (14:36)  Maintaining culture in a hyper-growth company (16:17)  Tools to measure engagement, performance and culture and acting on insights from these tools (18:42)  Hiring at scale and recognizing when you’ve made hiring mistakes (20:18)  Managing the tension between diversity and cultural fit (24:38)  Creating a positive exit process (26:02)  Enacting and scaling diversity and inclusion (27:33)  Measuring progress on DEI goals (32:33)  How being a digital first business advances DEI and equity goals (33:37)  Role of the board in achieving DEI goals (35:12)  What does cultural success look like for Drift (38:30)

Cameron McIntyre is one of Australia's most respected executives, having played a major part in the Carsales.com (CAR:ASX) journey over the last 15 years, initially as the CFO in the late 2000s where he was charged with seeing the business' transition to the ASX boards, and most recently as the CEO, where he has been guided the business tremendously well through their next stage of growth. Carsales is now a beast of the business, with a market capitalisation of over $7b and a top line revenue of c$450m, making it one of Australia's greatest ever technology companies.  Carsales.com was started in a garage in the late 1990s by Greg Roebuck, and this episode explores the growth journey from these humble beginnings, but more importantly zooms in on the strategic pillars that has enabled the business to flourish.  This episode is a great exploration into the variety of skills required to succeed as a modern day executive, and serves as a great case study on what it takes to build and lead great teams over long periods of time. To hear Cam speak on how he thinks about fostering innovation, retaining great talent and what is on the next horizon for Carsales as it strengthens it global footprint was both enlightening and inspiring.   You can follow TDM (linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) across social channels. Show notes; Carsales’ origin story (2:36)  Cam’s first impression of the CarSales business (3:49)  Disrupting the secondhand car market (5:31)  Key strategic pillars in growing the business and winning the consumer (7:05)  Managing important investors (8:44)  Finding the right investment partner in the early stages of a business (10:38)  Key learnings from the public listing process (11:54)  Skill development from a CFO to a CEO role (14:45)  The growth quotient and its importance at an organisational level (16:06)  An entrepreneurial board as growth partners (17:33)  Transitioning away from a founder-led business (19:01)  Expanding margins in a high growth business (21:24)  Growing the business into new, emerging markets (24:22)  Fostering a culture of innovation (26:19)  The next big horizon for CarSales (28:55)  Attracting and retaining talent throughout the growth journey (31:34)  Prioritising diversity and inclusion in a large tech company (34:59)  Obtaining board support for diversity and inclusion initiatives (36:53)  Growing from mistakes as a leader (38:45) This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Pro Medicus may well be one of the most under the radar growth stories of the world. Many listeners would not have heard of Pro Medicus (ASX:PME), nor its low profile and humble CEO and founder, Dr Sam Hupert. Which is funny, given that the business started in 1983 and has a current market capitalisation c$6.5 billion. This is a story of patience, persistence, and perseverance. An inspirational story that needs to be told.  There is some ground to cover for sure - in 1983, the IBM personal computer had not even made its way to Australia, there was no venture capital community and yet, here we are almost 40 years later lauding what many assume is an overnight success story. We walk through the timeline to pull out the themes that emerge over such a long and succcessful career.   Pro Medicus has become a leading software solution for radiologists to help manage their practice - from scheduling patients or billing patients to ensuring great clinicals outcomes, be it viewing scans on location or on mobile. Think of it almost as the clinician’s operating system – a cross between a CRM, practice management software and data visualisation bespoke for the needs of radiologists and surgeons. Sam is a gentleman, full of sage advice and views, all the while delivering them with an egoless charm that is just so genuine. Settle in, this is a story not to be missed.  You can follow TDM (linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) across social channels. Show notes; History of Pro Medicus; the IT and healthcare ecosystem in 1983 (3:46)  Initial product and demographic for version 1.0 (6:22)  Challenges of listing Pro Medicus in 2000 during a tech crash (7:40)  Benefit of Pro Medicus’ balance sheet strength during the GFC (11:07)  Impact and advantages of visage technology (12:57)  Visage acquisition and its influence on Pro Medicus’ product and cultural synergies (15:25)  Pivotal Sutter Health deal in 2014 (18:10)  Selling into a tier one hospital (20:03)  Competitive advantage of partnering with universities (22:03)  Scope of Pro Medicus’ sales representatives (23:45)  Navigating technological changes (25:32)  Plan for the personalization and consumerization of healthcare (26:57)  Basic principles for talking with investors (31:28)  Should Australia change their system around founder sell-downs (35:26)  Role of the board to support business growth (37:38)  Biggest changes after transition to publicly listed (39:54)  Vision for Pro Medicus’ legacy (40:53) This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Katherine McConnell, the founder and CEO of Brigte is revolutionising how Australians are financing and decentralising sustainable energy solutions in their homes. A former Macquarie banker, and mother of two, Katherine initially mortgaged the family home to go after the opportunity of becoming the leading consumer finance business in the space. And that she has – Brighte has financed ten percent of the solar installations in Australia and processed over a billion dollar of applications across 90k homes. Recently having secured a $100m funding round, Brighte have driven deeper into the value chain becoming an energy retailer. This is a far reaching conversation, from the business itself being at the forefront of sustainable investing in Australia, to the scaling challenges of remote onboarding at scale, Brighte is a beacon as to what is possible as one of Australia’s fastest private companies.   You can follow TDM (linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) across social channels.  Show notes Brighte founding journey and Katherine’s background (2:56)  Evolution of the Brighte business model over time (8:27)  Building a revolutionary consumer brand and a consumer value proposition (11:45)  Energy marketplace network effects and the impacts for Brighte (13:25)  Understanding Brighte’s financing (15:43)  The impact of green investing and financing tailwinds on Brighte (18:44)  Scaling challenges in automation and digital capabilities (20:55)  The origin of Brighte’s values (23:05)  Evolution of Katherine’s role as a founder, CEO and leader (25:25)  Challenges of hiring in a purpose-driven company (28:16)  Hiring in a remote / hybrid work environment (30:00)  Maintaining culture and enabling productivity in a hybrid environment (31:28)  Juggling fast growth and business sustainability at Brighte (33:45)  Female founders in the start-up world and how we can empower more as a society (35:45)  Maintaining work life balance when scaling a high growth business (39:38)

Welcome to the fifth season of "Scaling Up"! Expect an ecclectic mix of incredible Australian growth stories, told by their founders and CEOs. Some of the episodes are with businesses at the earlier stages of their scaling up journey, as well as a few of Australia’s largest listed businesses. Regardless of scale, or business model, there are some common scaling pain points, and we try again to uncover how these leaders have overcome them. Like our last series, we also have a little mini series, this time lasering in on the role of Chief People Officer and what scaling great cultures looks like.  To kick off though, we have two episodes featuring two of Australis’s brightest venture backed consumer finance companies. By releasing them side by side, it should be easier for listeners to compare and contrast the lessons in similar business models.  The first, is Athena Home loans, and our interview with the founders Nathan Walsh and Michael Starkey.  Founded in 2017 and launched two years later, Athena has already funded over $3.5b of home loans in Australia on the simple premise of allowing for fast, simple, transparent and cost effective digital loans. The home loan market in Australia is massive as you can imagine, and crucially controlled by the four legacy banks. The banks though are having some of their lunch eaten by the non-bank lenders, of which Athena is at the top of the list.  To enable Athena to scale rapidly in a highly regulated environment, Nathan and Michael from day one realised that talent was the most important element to their, and built a crack team of leaders who could scale from start up, right through the scale up journey. The conversation covers a heap of ground – from scaling a consumer brand, to finding competitive advantages in their cost of capital on the lending side of the business, as well as some hot topics around remote versus in-office work as we come out of covid-19 restrictions.  These two are high functioning and thoughtful in everything they do, and this translates into some wonderful insights for founders, management teams and casual listeners alike.  You can follow TDM (linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) across social channels. Show notes;  Founding story (4:00)  The original vision for Athena (4:30)  Why the 'talent first' strategy (8:45)  Overview of the Australian homeloans market (10:40)  Building bands and scaling acquisition costs (14:00)  Biggest difficulty on consumer side of the bussiness in terms of scaling business (16:33)  Processing power and scaling a range of products for consumers - what is Act 2? (19:12)  Funding model and value proposition for funders (23:25)  Trying to scale the funding side of the business (26:30)  Being a culture first business (28:10)  Concept of a cultural balance sheet (32:50)  Heading back into the office and working remotely (36:13)  The importance of the role of the Chief People Officer (40:10)  Biggest scaling challenge when it comes to culture (43:05)  What does success look like over the next 5 years and what are the hurdles to overcome to achieve this (45:10)