Build It. They'll Come.

Martin Hosking, co-founder of Redbubble, shares the challenging journey of building the global design market juggernaut. Despite initial struggles, Redbubble has grown rapidly with almost 7 million customers last year. The impact of COVID-19 led to a surprising boom in sales, showing resilience in uncertain times. The podcast highlights the importance of perseverance, artist support, and strategic efforts in startup success.

Law academic, linguist and theologian Dr Michael Spence AC has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney for a dozen years, & in that time he’s modernised and simplified the venerated sandstone institution, by essentially bringing together what he saw as a bunch of warring Faculty factions, to unite to make the university more community-facing, rather than inward-looking. Along the way he’s had his critics and some spectacular fails. But one of his enduring successes was the massive Inspired! fundraising initiative instigated by Michael Spence 10 years ago. With an initial target to raise $600million, Spence and his team built the campaign around some winning arguments to potential donors around the exciting future between the university and the community’s needs. And contrary to what many warned him about Australians not giving to higher education, Spence backed his own judgement that Australians would donate generously, if the ask was framed properly.  The Inspired! campaign ended up outdoing itself… the final amount raised was $1 Billion. In this interview Spence talks about how he and the team built and executed that winning campaign. Plus, how he and USyd are managing through the Covid19 crisis, not only with international border closures and absent foreign students, but also with the growing political backlash towards China and its influence affecting universities.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Melbourne-born corporate lawyer Adam Schwab was 24 years old when he and a schoolmate began their entrepreneurial journey. While Adam was still living at home with his parents, the two friends started out sub-letting apartments to backpackers, as a side gig.  Bit by bit, through much trial and error – including waging war on bed bugs! – the pair made enough money to dream bigger. They gave up their lucrative day jobs and they ventured into the digital online space. The co-founders created the successful e-commerce platform, deals.com, before eventually co-founding Luxury Escapes travel package deals website. In this Episode, Adam Schwab tells HOW, in just 7 years, they built Luxury Escapes into a trusted online brand that’s become one of Australia’s fastest-growing boutique consumer travel businesses, with now more than 1.3 million Facebook followers. And how they learnt to truly value and develop customer service, where they’ve made many of their customers “sticky”, becoming Luxury Escapes’ devotees for life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Co-founder of AirTree Ventures has been an Australian role model & trailblazer in the digital technology space for over 3 decades. But after early business career success working for Bill Gates at Microsoft, a seismic personal event made Daniel Petre decide there was more that he needed to do to become, in his view, a better person and a good dad to his daughters. So he set out on a slightly less travelled path. He kept up the business success – as one of Australia’s premier venture capital investors in promising startups -- but along the journey he also managed to become a strong philanthropist, and even a best-selling author on, of all subjects, fatherhood!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Co-founder of AirTree Ventures, Daniel Petre is a serial entrepreneur - not only did he build successful digital startups inside bigger companies for bosses like Bill Gates and Kerry and James Packer, but in the past 7 years he’s built up over $600million in Venture Capital funds to invest in many promising Aussie startups, creating one of Australia’s largest VC companies in AirTree Ventures.  In Part 1 of this interview, Daniel Petre talks about how he came to work for the brilliant Bill Gates in Microsoft’s heady heyday of the late 80’s; & what he learnt about rigorous thinking that informs the way he appraises tech startups to invest in today via his VC funds. But he also speaks candidly about personal issues that he continues to deal with; and why Australia must ride the current wave into a genuine digital future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Hempton, the Chief Investment Officer and Co-Founder of Bronte Capital, is a maverick investor known for unearthing corporate fraud. He shares insights into his unconventional investment strategies and the challenges of the 10-year bull market. Hempton emphasizes the value of mentorship and seeks quality businesses while discussing key indicators of fraud. He also offers unexpected investing tips for young investors, advocating for early career guidance from good bosses and the importance of thinking independently in a competitive landscape.

John Hempton, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Bronte Capital, is known for his unconventional approach to investing. In this discussion, he dives into the art of short selling and his fascination with tracking corporate fraudsters. Hempton shares insights on the infamous Wirecard scandal, revealing the shocking failures that allowed €1.9 billion to disappear. He also examines the risks of short selling, the moral dilemmas it presents, and the urgent need for regulatory reform to prevent corporate deceit.

Canva co-founder Cameron Adams reveals how the Canva teams pulled out all stops in the past 12 months to fuel massive growth, leaping from serving individuals’ design needs, to servicing much larger corporates’ needs, and how that’s paying off. While much of Canva’s product is still free, Canva Pro team has launched a new tool giving paying customers access to some 60 million different photos and illustrations, up from just 5 million available previously. Cameron also reveals how translating their online offering into more than 100 languages has fed strong growth in non-English speaking markets, like Brazil and Russia. He talks about the lessons he learned at Google working on a secretive project with the legendary Lars Rasmussen, that he brought to Canva; and how his net worth  is a “real opportunity” to help the world, going towards needy projects, rather than simply buying “more stuff”. The entrepreneurial journey of this home-grown emerging business leader  is both humble and inspiring, and well worth a listen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cameron Adams began mucking around with computer games as a kid, in the back room of his dad’s suburban Melbourne computer shop. After uni he parlayed that computer literacy, fuelled by a passion for graphic design, into a job at Google. But his entrepreneurial spirit serendipitously led him to meet 2 young people with a dream - Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht wanted to transform their small school year book production company into a global vision to democratise design online, allowing anyone & everyone to design anything online through the design tools platform - from lost dog flyers, to concert posters, small business brochures, websites, now even corporate online presentations. Cameron Adams shared that vision and the home-grown tech startup Canva was born. With funding from Silicon Valley and Australian venture capital investors, Canva has mushroomed. From just the 3 founders at the start, it now employs over 1,000 employees, across 5 offices around the world, with Cameron as Chief Product Officer. The Sydney-based Canva’s most recent funding round in June 2020, valued the company at over $8 billion, with Cameron Adams a billionaire. In recent years they’ve doubled both revenue and user growth. As Canva approaches it’s 8th anniversary, it celebrates over 30 million active users. How did they do it? Take a listen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Graham Skroo Turner was bitten hard by the travel bug. Twice. Creating and building not 1 but 2 business empires specialising in travel. There’s the massive, now publicly listed Flight Centre, which operates in 24 countries, and writes billions of dollars in travel sales each year. But then there is another empire he built, from scratch, with the help of a few mates back in the early 1970’s, at just 24 years of age while travelling in London: his 1st babythe cheap European bus tours group Topdeck Travel. This boy who grew up on a Queensland apple orchard, started Topdeck with just one converted double decker bus. But he transformed it into a thriving business, soon running a fleet of some 70 buses across Europe, North Africa and Asia., See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.