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

Luke Anear, CEO and Founder of SafetyCulture, is undoubtedly one of Australia's finest modern entrepreneurs. A boy from Townsville in Northern Queensland starts a software company from his garage with no technical expertise. SafetyCulture is now a pin up of the Australian technology scene – a billion dollar valuation, revenue growth at break neck speed, tens of thousands of customers across 85 countries, and some of the world's largest companies relying on SafetyCulture software to provide their safety and inspection. It is a story that is boundless in Luke’s ambition and desire to do something significant. It is a story engrained in a mission to build an enduring company that shapes the world. The lessons Luke has gained from this journey is both inspiring but also deeply important for any entrepreneur to hear first hand. Luke has a wonderful disposition, a knock about fella, who is just warming up when it comes to fulfilling what he set out to do. Brief show notes/ links mentioned in the episode The New Hustle - an anthem to entrepreneurship -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN0NlchcUS8 Steve Jobs story of the 'rock tumbler' as a metaphor for great teams https://vimeo.com/195796089 SafetyCulture customer conference  -https://safetyculture.com/summit-2020/ "From thriving to surviving" --- For those interested in further insights and commentary, TDM Growth Partners has been posting to their new medium publication – TDM Tidbits – including a written series on what frameworks we use to assess great CEOs, CFO and non executive directors. Easiest to it follow @tdm_growth on Twitter and get all the news and views there. You can always find me on Twitter @eddiecowan.

Rick Stollmeyer co-founded Mindbody in 2001 and is still the CEO 20 years later. This is his story as much it is Mindbody’s story; from his learnings as a nuclear submarine engineer, to selling CD ROM software from his garage with his co-founder Blake Beltram, to now scaling a multinational software company.  Rick is one of the most passionate and deeply mission-driven CEOs you could ever have the pleasure of meeting. A high performer in every sense, motivated by solving complex problems through the power of collaboration - I think this could be my favourite interview of the entire podcast project. We talk about the Mindbody journey and its bootstrapped founding story, its growth to a venture capital-backed start-up and then a public company, right through to being taken private in 2018 by Vista Partners for Us$1.9 billion. This journey has had its ups and downs, triumphs, and challenges, all met with the same hunger he possesses today. Sit back and enjoy the reflections of one of the world's finest entrepreneurs  This episode was recorded in the first week of March, well before the full impacts of Covid-19 in the US could have been imagined. The messages though are timeless.  For those interested in further insights and commentary, follow @tdm_growth on twitter and get all the news and views there. You can always find me on twitter @eddiecowan.

I am thrilled that Anneka Gupta has joined as the guest of this episode. Anneka is one of the rising stars in the US technology scene. She is currently the co-president of LiveRamp, a New York Stock Exchange Listed $2b business with offices around the world. Her own corporate journey is as fascinating as the company itself – a journey that highlights the potential of ‘generalists’ with ambition and passion, who when a new door opens, have the courage to explore it with their full attention and heart. She started as an engineer at Liveramp straight out of college when the business had just 20 employees, and while it was a division of Axiom, she worked her way up to become the Co-CEO and lead over 1,200 people. She gives some great insights as to why, when LiveRamp was acquired by Axiom, she insisted the business ring-fence its highly agile and mission driven culture, and operate as a stand alone business, rather than be subsumed by its owner. As a young leader, she gives invaluable views on the challenges of leading a hyper-growth business in an ever changing world - how she has managed both cultural transformation and innovation, and the lessons she has learned along the way. As a ‘culture carrier’, she is the epitome of a modern-day leader, whose voice will only become more well known around the world in the coming years. For those interested in further insights and commentary, TDM Growth Partners has been posting to their new medium publication – TDM tidbits – which can be found at medium.com/tdmtidbits. If easier, we always post all our content to twitter, so if interested, follow @tdm_growth to and get all the news and views there. You can always find me on twitter @eddiecowan. If you are enjoying what you hear, there are more episodes of 'Scaling Up' coming down the pipe, so make sure you subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and don’t forget reviews and shares always help other find the podcast as well, so please share the love on your own social channels.

Jonathan Corr is my guest on this episode of Scaling Up.  Jonathan is the current CEO of Ellie Mae. This episode is a wonderful deep dive into the world of a highly experienced CEO who has had the benefit of seeing the full spectrum of the growth curve. Ellie listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011, relatively early in its journey. Jonathan oversaw and came through all the common scaling challenges – re-platforming of their technology stack, changes in their business model, and by far the biggest challenge, scaling the people and culture of the business. All the while being a listed public company and facing the volatility that that brings. Jonathan gives great insight into all these challenges and  was incredibly transparent in relation to the take over of Ellie by Thoma Bravo, a leading Private Equity technology company, for US$3.7b.  Ellie Mae sells software to the mortgage industry, streamlining and automating the process of originating and funding new mortgage loans as well as facilitating regulatory compliance. As you can imagine, mortgage brokers and banks love this software, and this is reflected in Ellie’s 35% market share This is an episode for the business purists – a phenomenal growth story, unsurprisingly wrapped up in the importance of great people, all working under a common mission.

Welcome to Season 2 of Scaling Up!  My guest on this episode is Spencer Rascoff.  Spencer looms as a large figure in the US tech scene – twice he has co-founded billion dollar businesses. His first, the travel website HotWire was sold to Expedia, and it was there, he met Rich Barton – the Expedia and Glassdoor founder. Together, with several others, they then set off and co-founded Zillow. Zillow is now all things real estate in the US – for anyone looking to buy, rent, value a house, or obtain a mortgage, you have significant interaction with Zillow. It is now a US$2.7 b revenue, US$11b market capitalisation business (at the time of recording). Spencer was CEO for 9 years, and is now on the board. I often find guests who are no longer in the day to day grind makes for a great interviewees, as they have had time to reflect without bias. There was a temptation to go wide in our conversation, but I felt it could have spread Spencer’s wisdom too thinly. Instead I decided to really focus in on a topic that I know is close to his heart as well as mine – the importance and power of people and culture when scaling businesses.  Spencer is a culture evangelist – he has seen first hand how and why culture is a leading indicator of business performance. Importantly to note,  this was not always his belief and it was great to hear how his views have evolved. I also loved his views on managing cultural merges – Zillow did 16 acquisitions in his time  - as well as why employees who he describes as ‘culture carriers’ can adapt to any job inside an organisation. If you love what you hear – Spencer hosts his own podcasts, among them Office Hours is in my opinion just a mandatory listen. Plenty of people have got in contact with regards to previous episodes, and the TDM team loves getting feedback. It makes this project worthwhile You can always find me on twitter - @eddiecowan, and TDM is constantly keeping the world up to date with great insights and views as well -  @tdm_growth This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Welcome to a bonus episode of Scaling Up season one – I recorded this while on the road recording season 2, but it feels like it has a natural home, with the other amazing Australian growth stories told in the previous season. Nick Stone is the CEO and founder of BlueStone Lane. This story starts in an underground coffee shop in New York City, where an ex AFL player, turned investment banker decides he was missing the authentic Australian coffee experience and sets up a side hustle to his main banking gig. Fast forward just 8 years, and Blue Stone lane is at the pointy end of the American premium coffee scene, with over 50 stores in 8 markets across the country. What is evident is Nick’s passion for the mission, his intelligence in how he thinks about the world and applying it to how he is trying to overcoming major scaling challenges in the US. Interestingly,  Nick beautifully articulately what he learned from his time as an elite athlete, his vision for building Starbucks of the next generation, and how he thinks about building teams and culture in the tough American hospitality industry. I felt so connected to Nick and his journey, and I think this shines throughout the podcast. This is a story that is ever changing,  and at the moment, changing by the day. There is a fuller footnote and timestamp at the end of the episode that you must listen to to give context to Nick's comments, but even in the two week turn around time between recording and releasing this episode, the world has changed. Even the best laid plans can come undone by the extraordinary. Everyday of strict government protocols around containing the spread of Covid-19 in the US, is another page in the Blue Stone book. That though is not going to stop me telling you the inspirational  story of Nick Stone and Bluestone Lane. Season two is only weeks away, so stay posted....!

Unlike the other interviews in this series, this is a retrospective tale, recounting one of Australia’s greatest turnaround storiesGuy Russo is one of Australia’s business masterminds. As CEO of McDonald's Australia and China for over a decade, both businesses excelled. His toughest assignment though was to salvage Kmart from the scrapheap. Under his guidance, he guided Kmart to retail supremacy in Australia.The inclusion of a story like this in this podcast is an important one, as businesses never move in a straight line. This is a powerful and inspirational story of simplicity and optimism. A story of the power of long term thinking, honesty and how to get the best out of people. Guy was incredibly generous with his time and the resulting nuggets of gold that are littered throughout this podcast, will no doubt help clarify the thinking of all business owners, not just those going through a little rough patch.This is the last episode of Series 1 of Scaling Up. We will be back in early 2020 with Series 2.

This is the quintessential heroic founding tale. In 2001, with online retail in its infancy, Kate with just $12,000 of borrowed money in her back pocket, set out with a mission of empowering women to make better beauty decisions. At this point, everything was against her. No experience, no money, no brands wanting to join her platform. Fast forward 20 years and Adore Beauty will this year have over $100 million in revenue, 14,000 products across 200 of the world’s biggest beauty brands and over 160 employees. That is not to say that it was always smooth sailing. As you’ll hear, this story is one of pure resilience, belief, grit and hustle. Its a real founder’s story warts and all. Not much glitz, not much glamour. Until perhaps recently, 19 years after starting, Kate and her business partner finally realised some kind of financial rewards, selling 60% of the business to a private equity fund. Kate is incredibly passionate about empowering more female founders and makes some pertinent points in regard to how and why the investment community needs to lift its game in supporting them.  Above all else, this interview reminds us all,  that in the world of entrepreneurship, anything is possible. Sound quality disclaimer: This episode was recorded on the road and the sound quality is perhaps not up to the standard that we had hoped for. The good news - there are so many nuggets of gold, it is worth putting up with.

Didier Elzinga is the co-founder and CEO of Culture Amp – a people and culture platform, with a mission of powering culture focused companies right around the world.  Culture Amp is a pin-up of the growing Australian technology scene, having recently  reached unicorn status – the coveted billion-dollar valuation. While on the periphery, this founding story could be seen to be that of a quintessential fast-growing technology business; venture capital-funded, global focus from day one and the variety of scaling issues that emerge from this. However what separates this story, was the belief required to build a business and go after an opportunity in a category that at the time did not even exist. That is pure entrepreneurship. What is inspiring about Culture Amp, is the fact that while attempting to help every other business in the world, focus their attention on culture, Didier and his co-founders have had the added pressure of building a business that itself has needed to be a beacon of light of what is possible by placing people and culture at the heart of their own workplace. Didier is thoughtful on a whole range of topics and is no doubt one of Australia’s great next-gen founders.

Baby Bunting is Australia’s largest baby goods retailer, and this episode tracks the strategy & execution of what was a small, state-based, family-owned and operated business into the emergence of the leading national retailer in the category. Matt gives amazing insight into the playbook of how this all unfolded over the 10 years (and counting) of his time as CEO, driving revenue from $40m to over $350m. Matt dives into the importance of an incremental strategic approach, understanding how each building block could add to the next, and the prioritisation of these.  Above all else though, there is a continual theme that shines right throughout this interview, and its the importance of a great team in supporting a CEO or founder in all aspects of their role. Matt also gives great perspectives on his experiences as a CEO, not only in transitioning Baby Bunting from a private to a public company, but also the life of an executive and the lessons he’s learned along the way.