Build It. They'll Come.

Despite dropping out of university, having no publishing experience and not even being a book lover, Tony Nash decided he could take a punt on the commercial possibilities he saw in online book-selling, in the internet’s infancy. Shrugging off the risks of going up against the already dominant player in that same market – Amazon – Tony convinced a few family members to support his vision, and started Booktopia, an entirely Aussie home-grown online book seller. What began as a small hustle on the side – Tony’s brother gave him a budget of $10 a day to create Booktopia, & he had to continue doing his day job at the same time – was built over the next 15 years into an e-commerce success story. Booktopia is set to achieve almost $220 million in revenue this financial year, employing 250 people, with a healthy chunk of all online book sales. But along that journey to success for Booktopia, exactly what impact did Jessica Seinfeld’s best-selling memoir have? And was there ever a single lightbulb moment for Tony Nash? Well, listen and you’ll find out. Hope you enjoy Part 1 of Tony Nash’s unorthodox entrepreneurial storySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After 17 years building up their Aconex software platform into a globally renowned game-changer for construction & infrastructure process & document management, founders Leigh Jasper & Rob Phillpot knew they needed access to more capital to continue growing worldwide. But when they took Aconex public in 2014, life as a publicly-listed company dealt them plenty of downside, along with the advantages! So how did they deal with short sellers, share price roller-coaster rides and more? And what really drove the decision to sell out completely, to US giant Oracle – was it just the massive pile of money offered?  Well in Part 2 of my chat with co-founder leigh Jasper he reveals some home truths on the entrepreneur’s journey in public company land, and why he is now trying to support & guide other startups based on amazing ideas through the maze of potential pitfalls. Enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Leigh Jasper was helping out in his dad’s car business, as a kid in north-eastern Victoria, he of course couldn’t foresee that he would create and build one of Australia’s great innovation success stories of recent years. But that’s exactly what Jasper, with co-founder and long-time mate Rob Phillpot, did when the pair came up with the idea that the project management part of what they saw as the messy, uncoordinated and document-heavy construction sector needed streamlining, to help the industry itself become more efficient. They created Aconex in 2001 as a web-based platform where all documents relating to a project build could be stored and accessed on one digital platform, by every participant in the project, from the owner and builder right through to all sub-contractors. Aconex suddenly offered better transparency, improved cost controls for all participants in a building project, thereby reducing risks of cost overruns and delays or disagreements. Within 2 decades Aconex grew to become an ASX 200 listed public company, offering their SaaS (software as a service) product to massive engineering, construction and infrastructure projects across global markets. Projects like the large 3rd lock expansion to the Panama Canal, and the Marina Bay Sands complex of buildings dominating the Singapore skyline. Before selling out eventually in 2018 to US giant Oracle, which valued Aconex at over $1billion, company revenue hit almost $200million. So how did they do it? Well like many great success stories, it started with a lightbulb moment. Enjoy Part 1 of my chat with Leigh Jasper.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When medically trained Dr Lisa O’Brien took over The Smith Family as CEO, some 10 years ago, the venerable charity was on a fairly solid footing – it had a long history with a recognisable, highly respected brand name. But to make it in the crowded welfare charity sector, genuinely addressing the real & underlying needs of disadvantaged children at risk of falling through the cracks, The Smith Family needed transforming into a more streamlined & focused organisation. But perhaps even more importantly, Lisa O’Brien set her considerable entrepreneurial mindset & honed management skills on making it far more accountable, with laser-like focus on measurable outcomes. After all, she and a group of her women friends had already started up a decade before, a homeless women’s drop-in centre, called Lou’s Place, in the heart of Sydney’s Kings Cross. So at The Smith Family Lisa wanted to ensure the entire organisation with its several thousand volunteers as well as leadership team were all fighting for the same mission – to ensure they could deliver and then measure the outcomes of services to help alleviate disadvantage for children in our community. And while The Smith Family prior to Lisa’s time was already on track providing education support, it was under Lisa O’Brien’s guidance as Chief Executive that the organisation expanded its reach into disadvantaged families, concentrating wholly on kids’ education. The charity now provides its Learning for Life education program to 56,000 children, while a total 170,000 disadvantaged children and young people across the country now participate in Smith Family programs, an increase of 30% over the past 5 years. As Lisa O’Brien now moves on from running The Smith Family, she built and leaves behind a sustainable legacy at one of Australia’s most loved and important charitiesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Olivia Humphrey decided to take on the giant and tough US market, to grow her Kanopy film streaming business into the educational and public library sectors there, she didn’t count on the often unscrupulous actions of some competitors. But armed with some private equity investment from billionaire & Phoenix Suns NBA team owner Jahm Najafi, Olivia fought to win over the large Public Library market to her film streaming service. She eventually built Kanopy into an impressive global streaming empire offering 30,000 film titles into some 5,000 University & Public Library branches in the US and Australia, with over 100 staff globally, and more than 8 million active monthly users, who can access the service at no cost to them, with simply a swipe of their library card! So why did she eventually sell Kanopy, & how has massive wealth changed her life? And how is she now helping next gen entrepreneurs? Find out, in Part 2 of my chat with Olivia Humphrey.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While Netflix, Stan and Disney streaming services are the dominant juggernauts in the on demand, online entertainment world, a young Australian entrepreneur, Olivia Humphrey has quietly built a smaller, but no less significant player that has managed to match the big guys at their own game. What she started from the front room of her house in Perth 13 years ago, as a small, arthouse film DVD service, selling to university libraries to help improve their film collections, Olivia proceeded to build into an online streaming service that now includes 30,000 independent, foreign and arthouse film & documentary titles, available through university and local public libraries across the United States and Australia. It took years of hard slog -- Olivia even moved her young family to America to better manage the rapid scale-up of her business -- struggling to survive the cut-throat competitors in the tough US market who wanted to crush her out of business. But Olivia Humphrey succeeded in building a multi-national empire.   And the beauty of Olivia’s Kanopy product? These thousands of films cost nothing for the end customer, and are accessible with just the swipe of a library card.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After years of hard slog trying to build sales on his online services marketplace Airtasker, Tim Fung then found rapid scale-up of the business challenging once growth started to kick in ... including managing his own role as CEO, which he says completely changed every year as the company grew. But even though Airtasker is yet to make a profit, Tim Fung says he’s motivated by the jobs Airtasker has created in its 9 years of operation, which translated into $143million in total sales through the Airtasker marketplace last year, empowering the 150,000 “taskers” who’ve earned money on the site, supported by almost 1 million paying customers.In Part 2 of our chat, Tim reveals why he chose to list on the ASX while keeping all his shares, and staying on as CEO; how they navigated through the COVID pandemic and why listening to others and being open to taking advice is sometimes crucial.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a stint working in finance at Macquarie Bank, and then working pro bono at one of Sydney’s biggest modelling agencies, young Tim Fung got noticed by one of the agency’s owners, who gave Tim opportunities to help a small team start up a sim-only mobile virtual phone network operator, which turned into Australia’s 4th-largest mobile service provider Amaysim. Living through that successful start-up helped give Tim Fung the confidence needed when he and a friend came upon their simple idea, whilst moving house, to try and match those many people with skills and talents to those customers who needed jobs done—anything from gardening and fixing leaks to drafting up contracts and assembling IKEA furniture —and to do that via a digital marketplace, where customer and “tasker” decide on the price. While Airtasker was born less than a decade ago, it still took a number of years of struggle to get traction in the marketplace, and demonstrate credibility in order to win the trust of end users, who after all had to feel confident about letting strangers into their homes to perform the tasks. But 9 years on, Tim has built an e-commerce platform in Airtasker that boasts 950,000 paying customers, and hundreds of thousands of genuine and rave reviews from customers. Last week, when Tim Fung IPO’d Airtasker, publicly listing it on the ASX, the share price skyrocketed in its first trading days, buoyed according to The Australian Financial Review by Millennial traders giving Airtasker a definite thumbs up. How exactly did Tim Fung turn his humble idea into the Airtasker phenomenon? In Part 1 of our chat, we’ll find out how and where it all began.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Once Epic Pharmacy Group’s co-founders Cathie Reid & Stuart Giles had carefully worked through their GFC-inspired near-death business experience, they pulled back on their own risk-taking, but persevered with their bold expansion vision. But this time, with their pharmacy business profitability and growth on track, they did it with the benefit of partnerships and then later with Quadrant private equity to help guide their expansion into cancer care oncology clinics, the Icon Cancer Care group, not only in regional Queensland and NSW, but across Australia and also into Asia. Then came another life-changing deal to bring in other partners, in the form of Queensland Investment Corp & Goldman Sachs consortium in 2017, which led to a valuation on the group, widely reported as more than $1billion. By 2020, Cathie – who’s also been a huge supporter of Brisbane Lions’AFLW team, and on the board --  and Stuart debuted on the AFR Rich List, with an estimated wealth of $550million. So how does Cathie Reid, the girl who grew up in the La Trobe Valley, view that massive wealth and the responsibility of philanthropy? And how the heck does space tourism, and international cricket through an Australian Premier League new startup now fit into her life’s picture? Find out in Part 2 of my chat with Cathie Reid.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Growing up in country Victoria, Cathie Reid worked part-time, as a schoolgirl, in the local pharmacy re-stocking shelves & vacuuming floors, thinking her life trajectory would likely involve marrying her teenage sweetheart and life would be sweet and uncomplicated. Well, that plan fell apart when the sweetheart marriage fell apart!  But armed with a solid work ethic from her mum and dad, and her pharmacy degree,  what Cathie did next, is an inspirational tale of how uncertainty in life can be seized and turned into genuine possibility and reality! Cathie decided then and there she would lead an epic life! Over the 2 decades since Cathie Reid and her 2nd husband Stuart Giles slowly but strategically built up one of Australia’s largest private pharmacy groups – Epic Pharmacy, for aged care facilities and private hospitals -- and integrated cancer care services group, Icon Cancer Care. They did it without a well-known brand name; they worked with competitors, not against them; and they had to put their tears and fears when the Global Financial crisis swamped them in 2008, to one side to work their way out of a deep mire of debt. Along that journey to build their impressive business, and create serious wealth, she’s managed to indulge her AFL passion (once a Victorian, always a Victorian!), as a Brisbane Lions board member and become a philanthropist, through their Epic Good foundation.  In Part 1 of my chat, Cathie Reid reveals how they bootstrapped & built their business, how failure is never far away, and what she’s learned as a startup queen and a leader of people.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.