Defying Gravity with Helen Souness

In this episode, we sit down with Julian Elliott, infectious disease physician turned founder of the global evidence platform Covidence, to unpack how the world makes sense of science in an era overflowing with information - and misinformation. Julian explains how his years working in HIV care in Cambodia exposed a critical problem: clinicians often couldn’t access the research they needed to make...

Dr Angela Lim shares her journey from medicine to entrepreneurship, driven by a determination to fix a mental health system struggling with long wait times, rising youth need, and inefficiencies that left too many people without timely support. She reflects on building Clearhead, a platform designed to make personalised care accessible, and the realities of scaling a mission-led company without co...

Campbell Brown didn't just build a company - he build a whole new category. In this episode, he shares the journey behind PredictHQ, a company that's redefining how businesses anticipate demand. Originally from New Zealand, Campbell moved to San Francisco and within a decade, built a global data intelligence company trusted by brands like Uber.

Kai Van Lieshout, founder of Lyrebird, knows what it really takes to build one of Australia’s fastest growing health tech companies. In this episode, Kai shares the unexpected challenges of innovating in an industry where the stakes are high, the systems are complex, and new technology often lags years behind other sectors. He talks about the human side of adoption - why earning trust from doctors...

In this episode, I sit down with one of New Zealand’s favourite entrepreneurs, Claudia Batten - trailblazer, startup builder, and global champion for Kiwi businesses. With multiple successful US ventures behind her, she now works across a number of boards and brings her signature candour, humour, and hard-won wisdom to the conversation. A longtime friend (and one-time fellow law school tutee!), Cl...

When you’re building a company that blends maggots, robotics, and waste management… how do you explain that to investors? Olympia Yarger, founder of GOTERRA, shares what it takes to define a whole new category, and raise capital for it, with zero experience and infinite grit. From finding believers who backed her vision to learning that every team member brings a piece of themselves to the mission...

Every startup needs a garage, and for iiNet, that garage was Michael Malone’s mother’s. iiNet is one hell of a scale up story to 3,500 staff and $1bn in revenue. What began as a tiny internet provider in Perth, blossomed into one of Australia’s largest telecommunications companies. From a former maths teacher to the CEO and Founder of a company servicing over a million households and businesses, M...

In this episode of Defying Gravity, how scale up leaders overcome, Renece Brewster, founder of Visual Domain, touched on lessons like the power of networks, the importance of defining your values and aligning the business to them, and the acquisition process she underwent with News Corp – but she also spoke about some of the very real personal challenges female leaders face in the workplace that l...

Sam Riley, CEO and Co-Founder of Ansarada, with Helen Souness

Rob Newman, multi time entrepreneur and scale up CEO of Perth based deep tech SaaS company Nearmap when I met him, covers two topics in this interview that so many Aussie start ups struggle to achieve. This is a masterclass on how to hire the Executive team you need to scale globally and how to enter and win leadership in the US market. Recommended listening if you are thinking about either step i...

Natalie’s journey has been a whirlwind of experiences, starting at SEEK, where she left her mark on almost every facet of the company’s growth. Following SEEK’s ex-CMO Katie May, who founded Kidspot, Natalie played a pivotal role in the company’s acquisition by NewsCorp as CEO. Next, she was approached by a founder and investment team to join School Places - an online platform revolutionising priv...

The ability to build a resilient team and reimagine yourself is critical for sustained growth in any business – a sentiment felt wholeheartedly by a travel industry upended by pandemic disruption. During our conversation, Adam Schwab talks about the critical inflection points Luxury Escapes faced, building an internal culture that rejects ‘day two’ mentality, the importance of reinvention, and kno...

The full Defying Gravity interview with the wonderful Tessa Herd Court, founder and CEO of IntelligenceBank, global SaaS company founded in Melbourne. Her reflections on growing her company from some Powerpoint slide ideas she tested on her fellow CMO friends to more than 800k users across 55 countries. How did she do it? The magic of delegation, orchestrating the dream team and developing a stoma...

You can’t orchestrate a $1.6b acquisition with Oracle without learning a few lessons along the way. Leigh Jasper, Co-Founder of Aconex and Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Firmable is the absolute definition of defying gravity. I’ve picked his brains on how to build a sustainable cadence that lasts you over time, lessons learnt from rapid scaling, flipping your perspective on mistakes vs rallying points,...

SEEK is one of Australia's most valuable companies, with a valuation of around $9bn and operations and investments all over the world. But behind the numbers and accolades lies a narrative of personal growth and strategic leadership that propelled SEEK to the top - and at the centre of this is co-founder and ex CEO Andrew Bassat. I was interested in chatting to Andrew not just about the growth of...

Another Defying Gravity Gravity conversation, this time with the founder of Aussie unicorn Envato, Collis Ta'eed. Collis dialled in from Darwin so I could pick his brains about how you grow a company from 0 to 600 staff as a self-confessed introvert, why running a business often feels like a dumpster fire, advice for other founders and executives, and how to know when it’s time to walk away.

The full interview with Didier where he shares the Cultureamp story, and his own journey from start up founder to CEO of a 1000+ person global unicorn company. How he thinks about being the CEO the company needs each year, and changes to become that CEO.