Open the Pod Bay Doors

Just last month (June) Innovation Bay spent 3 days and 3 nights in Noosa, Queensland with over 100 of the country’s leading VCs for our VC community Aurora’s annual cornerstone event, Venture Downunder (VDU). After a learning day full to the brim with panels, discussions, keynotes and serendipitous conversations, we took the opportunity to sit down with three of the most illustrious and active VCs...

Dr Julio Ribeiro is the Co-Founder and CEO of Inventia Life Science, a deeptech, biotechnology company. Inventia build instruments for the 3D printing of biomaterials (literal living human cells) to print 3D structures or models of tumors with an ultimate aim to accelerate the drug discovery process and speed up medical research. The impact Julio and Inventia are looking to have is life-changing....

IT’S OUR BIRTHDAY! Today, Innovation Bay’s Open The Pod Bay Doors turns 5! To celebrate, we’ve taken it way back to our very first guest. Daniel Petre is the Godfather of the ecosystem and has arguably been around longer and had more success than anyone else in the sector. In 2014, Daniel founded Airtree alongside Craig Blair but a year ago, made the move out of VC and into the philanthropy space....

Darren Miller is the CEO of Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) - whose purpose it is to support the transition to net zero emissions by accelerating the pace of pre-commercial innovation. Darren is deeply committed to net zero and improving our chances on planet earth. He believes we have all the technologies we need between now and 2030 - from solar, wind, lithium batteries, electric vehi...

Anthony Zaccaria is the Co-Founder of Linktree which is essentially a category creator for link in bio tools and a one-stop place to house entire online link ecosystems. In just 6 years, Linktree has gathered a massive global following with a user base of 24 million people - or the population of Australia (!!) - generating 1.2 billion Linktree visits per month. Earlier this year, Linktree reached...

Dale Brett is the Co-Founder & CEO at Fl0 - a low code platform for software engineers. Founded just a year ago (in 2021), Fl0 raised $11.5 million in its seed round with funding from the likes of Blackbird, Skip Capital and Jelix. Fl0’s vision is to empower software developers and engineers to be 20 times faster and more efficient. Prior to Fl0, Dale founded payment startup, Tapify, which, af...

Laura is the CEO and Founder of SafeStack Academy, a community-centric online education platform on a mission to give software developers, analysts and architects all of the skills they need to build secure internet software. Laura entered the workforce at 16 after telling quite a few lies to become an apprentice software developer for EDS. She put herself through her qualifications to get to univ...

Allegra Spender, currently running as an independent candidate for the Senate seat of Wentworth in Sydney’s east, is daughter to Italian immigrant parents - her father a barrister, politician and diplomat, her mother a renowned Australian fashion designer, the late Carla Zampatti. Allegra was Head Girl at Ascham School graduating with a HR score of 99.95 and went on to study Economics at the Unive...

For the past 14 years, Tech23 has showcased and amplified the emerging deeptech talent coming out of Australia that have the potential to create new industries and smarter solutions. Tech23 is a national forum whereby 23 early stage companies are chosen to tell their story and speak about their innovation on stage to an audience of industry leaders, investors, potential enterprise customers and ot...

Duncan Anderson, along with his two friends Jeremy Cox and Ben Sze, is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of EdTech company Edrolo. After some time working at Google, Duncan and his two business partners met while working at Goulburn and Sacs some 10 years ago. The original idea for Edrolo was as a two-sided marketplace - tutors on one side and students on the other - but quickly evolved into it’s earliest...

Ben Thompson is the Founder and CEO of Employment Hero. The company is Australia’s newest unicorn, recently announcing a funding round of $181 million, valuing the firm at $1.25 billion. Ben grew up in Frenchs Forrest in Sydney and finished his schooling in Armidale, rural NSW. After finishing law and economics at uni, Ben took up a number of tenures in Australia including with Sydney Futures Exch...

Rebecca Schot-Guppy is the Director of Investment Leverage and Portfolio Management at IAG Firemark Ventures. Previously, Rebecca was the CEO of FinTech Australia, where she made a significant impact on the ecosystem. Prior to Fintech Australia, she worked as a Community Manager at Stone & Chalk. Rebecca found her way into the world of venture through her background in law and biomed. She is a...

Ian sits down with Hugo Bieber, Partner at Think & Grow, and Jacqui Tucker, Head of Employment, Taxes & Reward, Enterprise, KPMG, to discuss the 2021-2022 Australian Startup Salary Guide by Think & Grow and KPMG High Growth Ventures. Supported by Tech Council of Australia, the guide was produced with 20 leading VCs, surveying over 3,000 positions across 140 companies and is designed fo...

Manuri Gunawardena is the Founder and CEO of HealthMatch. HealthMatch was founded in 2017, after Manuri won TechnCrunch’s Startup Battlefield. It is a Medtech platform built to help patients connect with clinical trials. It operates as a marketplace, allowing patients to have access to the latest treatments and trials. Manuri is an ambitious founder with an extensive medical background. She is the...

Max Cunningham is currently the Group Executive of Listings at ASX. Previously, he was the Head of Equity Capital Markets at Goldman Sachs in New York and the Director of the Macquarie Group in London. Max has a wide array of global experience and provides unique insight into the state of the Australian market. Max and Ian discuss many topics, including… The emergence and growth of the tech sector...

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. This week, we’re focusing on news stories centred around climate tech and renewable energy. Meet this week's panel… Mick Liubinskas, Climate Salad Ali Cluines-Ross, Artesian Topics we discuss: Australia's goal of net zero emissions by 2050, The 2021 United Nations...

Steve Fanale is the CEO and Founder of DriveYello, a company that helps businesses provide last mile delivery service to their customers. DriveYello’s mission is becoming the smartest gig economy management platform. Steve has been an active member of the startup ecosystem since the early 2000s, before it was fully established in Australia. Steve’s story of founding and building DriveYello is one...

Nicky Jackson is the founder and CEO of RangeMe, a product discovery and sourcing platform that allows retailers and suppliers to connect. RangeMe owns and dominates within the United States market, where they currently have 200,000 active suppliers and 10,000 retail buyers in their network. RangeMe works with over 75% of leading US-based retailers. Nicky has spent several years working for large...

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Matt Allen, Tractor Ventures Andrea Kowalski, Tidal Ventures Topics we discuss: The Global Startup Genome Report, Clearco tapping into the Australian e-commerce boom, early stage venture capital fund Tidal Ventures launching T...

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... John Henderson, AirTree Ventures Stew Glynn, TEN13 Topics we discuss: Christian Porter resigning as Industry Minister, Immutable securing $82 million in funding, Canva raising $200 million at a $40 billion valuation, Microsoft...

Alex McCauley is the Founder and Executive Director of Tech Council of Australia. Previously, he was the Founding CEO of StartupAUS, which recently morphed into Tech Council of Australia. Prior to joining StartupAUS, Alex worked as a Diplomat for the Australian government in Israel. Alex is an intelligent and dynamic founder who is passionate about technology and the startup ecosystem. He has a wi...

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series which analyses the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Lauren Capelin, Startmate Michael Batko, Startmate Alex Scandurra, ex-Stone & Chalk Topics we discuss: Alex Scandurra stepping down as CEO at Stone & Chalk, Startmate's plan to build an "Innovation City," we get the in...

Ben Pfisterer is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zeller, an alternative to business banking. Prior to founding Zeller, Ben was the country manager for Square in Australia. Zeller was founded in early 2020 and has seen massive growth since then, with several rounds of capital raises and a team of 100. Zeller is just getting started, with sights on becoming a multigenerational business that changes the la...

Sam Kroonenburg is the CEO and Founder of A Cloud Guru, a disruptive online learning platform for cloud certification and training. A Cloud Guru has recently been acquired by Pluralsight, a US company, in the largest-ever acquisition of an Australian software company. The story of A Cloud Guru is an amazing example of product-market fit and successfully getting the product into the hands of the cu...

Joined by Paul Naphtali (Rampersand), Sarah Nolet (Tenacious Ventures), and Rachel Yang (Giant Leap), Ian sits down for a deep dive into family offices. The panel discusses a variety of topics related to family offices and provides a wealth of information for potential VC investors as well as those looking to learn more about who is behind VC funds. Ian & the panel discuss… The role family off...