Startup 360

If you've ever looked at a successful founder and wondered how they always seem to know exactly what they're doing, this week's Startup 360 might come as a relief. Our guest is engineer, entrepreneur and Tech Ready Women program director Renate Crollini, who admits she once assumed all the smart people in the corner office had the answers. It wasn't until she became a founder herself that she real...

Before Sian Priest was helping deep tech founders tell better stories at Cicada Innovations, one of the games she created as a 2000s gaming founder ended up being played by President Obama at the White House science fair. This week on episode 64 of Startup 360, Majella’s away, so Simon sits down with Sian to talk about startups, deep tech, Silicon Valley self-belief, and why Australia needs to get...

Startup 360 hit the road for episode 63, recording in front of a studio audience for the first time from Growth Summit Sydney. Simon and Majella’s guest was Ben Grabiner from Side Stage Ventures, taking them through the findings of the Australia Venture & Startup Report 2026 , which looked at the past decade of the local VC-backed ecosystem. It’s now grown 13.7 times faster than any other major gl...

Vision gets a lot of attention in startups. It's the thing founders pitch to investors, talk about with customers and use to inspire teams. But as Dane Hudson argues, vision alone isn't enough. After more than 25 years leading businesses across five industries and mentoring more than 150 founders and CEOs, Dane learnt that scaling a company requires something less glamorous but ultimately more imp...

R&D investment and commercialisation can't be treated as separate issues, says Liza Noonan, CEO of Sydney deep-tech hub Cicada Innovations, on episode 61 of Startup 360. Liza unpacks deep tech — think quantum computing, medical devices and advanced manufacturing — and the unique challenges the sector faces with Simon and Majella on this week's show. Unlike software startups, where founders identif...

Fishburners has a new owner. And episode 60’s guest is Carolyn Breeze, CEO of the buyer, ASX-listed Scalare Partners. Scalare bought Fishburners from the voluntary administrators this week and the startup community and its members will leave the Tech Central Innovation Hub to become part of Tank Stream Labs. The move also brings change for cohost Majella Campbell, who’ll wrap up as Fishburners CEO...

After 3 non-event federal budgets for the startup sector, all hell broke loose on May 12 when treasurer Jim Chalmers announced capital gain tax changes that will reduce the size of the cheque startup shareholders receive in a liquidity event. The backlash has been enormous and the sector is hoping Treasury will hear their pleas and create carveouts for startups and their investors, as well as smal...

Startup founders are told to hustle harder, push through and never let the cracks show. But what happens when the pressure becomes too much? This week on Startup 360, host Simon Thomsen sits down with workplace mental health advocate Graeme Cowan for a candid conversation about burnout, psychological safety and the hidden emotional cost of building a business. Graeme, a founding board director of...

OpenAI’s APAC startups lead Thomas Jeng has a warning for founders worried AI is about to replace them: calm down. The tools are getting smarter at breakneck speed, but the people building the future are still very much in the driver’s seat. Speaking with Startup 360 co-hosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell, Thomas - a former founder, VC operator and now OpenAI’s first startup hire across Asia...

A decade ago, Joshua Ross and his good mate Adam McCurdie went looking for an idea that would have maximum impact in doing the most good. So they decided to take on the global ticketing industry and launch Humanitix. Their second crazy big idea was to give away all the company’s profit. They’ve succeeded on both fronts. Since Humanitix was founded in Sydney in 2016, it’s given away $21 million to...

The global business travel market is worth more than $2 trillion annually, but when most employees seek to get from A to B, how it works is not something many think about. Altitude AI founder Aimee Armstrong has, transforming the industry to help smaller businesses save time and money thanks to AI. She's Simon and Majella's guest on episode 55 of Startup 360 this week. Her story is as fascinating...

The term Sandwich Generation was coined in the early 80s to describe people, aged in their 30s to 60s, who found themselves not only raising a family, but also caring for their parents - "carenting" - at the same time. In the middle of all those competing demands, they're also trying to build their careers and the pressures can make it all feel overwhelming. The numbers are stark - caregiving is a...

School and Malachy Doyle were never the best of mates. Our guest for episode 53 is now 17 and left school for entrepreneurship, founding his first startup Venty. Never mind the education, even being told when to have lunch got on his goat. And Malachy likes to have control of his destiny."I like building cool things," he explained to Majella and Simon, having launched his first business - making a...

If, like Startup 360 cohost Simon and Majella, you have a pile of non-fiction books beside the bed that you're trying to get around to reading, you'll love episode 52's guest. Shruta Satam left nearly 20 years as a corporate consultant for the likes of Deloitte and PwC to become a startup cofounder last year. Pustakh (the Sanskrit word for books), launched in Sydney in late 2025.The idea came from...

The wild thing about building a marketplace for jobs is that you never know what your customers will need. Airtasker cofounder and CEO admits on episode 51 of Startup 360 that when a man wanted someone to fly from Australia to the US to pick up an engagement ring and bring it back, they deleted, thinking it was a hoax. A slightly indignant, but also very anxious and hopeful future fiancé set the r...

⁠Finder.com⁠, one of the first generation of Australian tech startups, has just turned 20. So for the 50th episode of Startup 360, we have a very special guest - co-founder Jeremy Cabral.  It was so long ago that two new inventions, Twitter and the iPhone, played a central role in Jeremy's next two decades after his co-founder-to-be, Fred Schebesta, asked on the social media site whether to buy th...

This week on Startup 360, we talk to veteran startup recruiter Dexter Cousins about work in the AI era. With WiseTech Global cutting 2,000 jobs, nearly a third of its global workforce, the Commonwealth Bank shedding 300 tech roles, Block reducing its workforce by 40% - 4,000 more jobs gone, the employment landscape is changing faster than ever before as artificial intelligence transforms how peopl...

It's a special episode of Startup 360 this week with Earthletica cofounder Bronte Campbell. The triple Olympic gold medallist and a former World Champion's had a bit of a career pivot since Paris. She's now CEO of the sustainable activewear brand after competing in four Olympics - her first as a teenager in 2012. Bronte and cofounder Libby Babbett are now raising capital for Earthletica on the cro...

Startup 360 takes a deep dive into leadership this week with Chris Kirk, one of the OGs with Stone and Chalk . Chris recently announced he was stepping down as CEO after three years, and 11 with the organisation since it began in Sydney. It's not so much an exit interview as a rumination on what he's learnt about what it takes to be a great founder and also leader. Chris took the top job at a time...

It's a slightly different Startup 360 this week with no special guest, so cohosts Simon and Majella take the time to kick around the big news of the last few weeks, from Canva buying two more startups, to WiseTech slashing 2000 coding jobs in favour of AI, UpGuard's $105 million raise and SafetyCulture founder Luke Anear returning as CEO ahead of an AI rebuild of the workplace safety platform. Sim...

It’s all about artificial intelligence this week with In the Blink of AI host Georgie Healy joining the show  to talk about what many see as the 4th industrial revolution. Majella’s away this week, so Simon enlisted Georgie to talk about this week’s news, including the loss of Techstars Sydney, before they got into the weeds on AI. Georgie’s podcast, In the Blink of AI, is out every Friday and rec...

This week Startup 360 discusses leadership - and how to do it without being a jerk, with Karlie Cremin, CEO of Dynamic Leadership Programs Australia. Karlie wrote a book about it - Don’t Lead like a Jerk - and Simon and Majella talk to her about the ups and downs of being the boss, confessing the jerk bit can happen to anyone - what you do next is what matters. Karlie reminds us that first and for...

Startup 360 looks south this week, for a conversation with fintech investor Brian Collins about his new role as CEO of Enterprize Tasmania. Brian, deputy chair of Fintech Australia, and cofounder of fintech VC Triple Bubble with Dom Pym and Judy Anderson-Firth, spent more than a decade in Silicon Valley before calling Melbourne home in recent years. Brian shares the stories of some remarkable Tass...

Welcome back to Startup 360 for 2026. For the first episode of the year, Majella and Simon talk about the big news of Summer: ·       The sudden collapse of parcel delivery platform Sendle ·       The end of SXSW Sydney ·       Airwallex calling in lawyers to ask media to take down critical stories Our guest for episode 42 is Maddi Ingham, cofounder of GreenPay, a social enterprise payment process...

When Jim Cooper, CEO of Blue-X, a California-based innovation services company for startups, moved to the US three decades ago, he had some trepidations. Now he loves it, but the former Sydneysider is back "home" for Christmas and in his shorts, to share his experiences on the final Startup 360 episode for 2025. Jim, who coaches an AFL team in Orange County, not far from Disneyland, has some stron...