Open the Pod Bay Doors

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Amanda Coombs Kevin Baum, Agriwebb Jared Kendler, Precincts and Innovation Ecosystems at NSW Treasury Topics we discuss: In this edition, our news panel dives deep into the showdown between Facebook and the Australian government an...

Colette Grgic is no stranger to startups. She is the Head of Startup Ecosystem in Australia & New Zealand for Amazon Web Services. In this role, Colette is responsible for the growth of the startup ecosystem at AWS and leads an excellent team who support startups with commercial and technical advice. She also serves as a Director of Heads Over Heels. Prior to her role at AWS, Colette was Chief...

Welcome to another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Colette Grgic, AWS Steve Fanale, DriveYellow Simon Cant, Reinventure Topics we discuss: In this edition, we discuss local startup funding news, including raises by Fast, DesignCrowd and Adatree and NAB's acquisition of Neobank 86 4...

Suse Reynolds is a pillar of the New Zealand startup ecosystem and a passionate believer in the power of angel investment. She is the Executive Chair of Angel Association New Zealand and sits on the board of Angel HQ, the Wellington region's angel network which she founded in 2006. Since its founding, AngelHQ has invested over $30m in 100+ New Zealand companies. In this chat with Phaedon, Suse sha...

About Dan Dan Krasnostein is an Investment Partner at Square Peg Capital . A Melbourne native, Dan spent the early days of his career working in strategy at Seek before joining Square Peg in 2012 as the first non-founder hire. He spent a few years working for Square Peg in Melbourne before relocating to Tel Aviv where he spent 6 years growing Square Peg's business in Israel. Square Peg has deploye...

After a brief holiday hiatus, we're back with another edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Marisa Warren , ALIAVIA Ventures Andy McKeon , SafetyCulture Francis Vierboom , Propeller Aero Topics we discuss: In this edition, we discuss local startup news such as the tech stocks set to list...

Angus Hervey is a political economist and a journalist specialising in the impact of disruptive technologies on society. Angus is a champion of "intelligent optimism" and co-founder of Future Crunch , a Melbourne-based think tank of sorts dedicated to informed, optimistic thinking about tech and the opportunities that it presents. Before co-founding Future Crunch, Angus was the founding community...

Tim Power is a talented, passionate, resilient founder who has co-founded and created some of the world's largest education communities including the World Education Games, World Maths Day, Mathletics and ClickView. He is currently the cofounder and CEO of Inquisitive, the Sydney-based education startup on a mission to simplify access to quality lessons for teachers. In this conversation with Ian,...

Today's episode features one of Australia's best and most prolific angel investors, Matt Allen. Matt's portfolio includes companies like BuildKite, Practice Ignition, Spaceship, Kasada, Donesafe, Pin and Goterra. At one point or another Matt has been a software developer, founder, technical recruiter, investor and now, a CEO. Most recently, Matt launched Tractor Ventures, a new vehicle for investi...

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Bex Eastwood, Ignition Lane Nick Gainsley, OneVentures Elliot Smith, Maxwell Plus Topics we discuss: In this news special, we discuss local fundraising news including the announcement of new funds from Square Peg, OneVentures, E...

This episode features Mike Kleine, the U.S. Consul General to Melbourne. Mike has spent over 20 years of his career working in the Foreign Service; he's been posted across the globe including in Laos, Vietnam, South Korea, and Kosovo. Mike has a deep-seated interest in entrepreneurship, a fascination with innovation, and a passion for the U.S.-Australia relationship. These passions converged and l...

In this episode, Phaedon is joined by Clare O'Neil MP, the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work and Federal Member for Hotham, Victoria. We don't often feature politicians on the podcast but we believe that it is important to understand the view of government and how government policies impact the startup ecosystem. Clare speaks with candor and openness on the changes...

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Yolanda Redrup, AFR James Alexander, Galileo Ventures Justin Webb, AgriWebb Topics we discuss: In this news special, we discuss recent raises by Marketplacer, Morse Micro, Flare, Hypr and Diffuse Energy. There was lots of big ne...

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... James Riley, Innovation Aus Amanda Price, KPMG High Growth Ventures Vuki Vujasinovic, Sling and Stone Topics we discuss: In this news special, we discuss the recent and upcoming IPOs of several Aussie companies including Hipages...

Patrick Llewellyn is the CEO and President of 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together. Patrick is Open the Pod Bay Door's second ever two-time guest. Since we've last chatted with Patrick, a lot has happened for 99designs. 99designs now employs over 100 people, has a community of over 25,000 active freelance designers, and in October, w...

Welcome to the latest edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Rebecca Wilson, Starts at 60 Justin Lipman, EVP Jodie Imam, SBE Australia Topics we discuss: In this news special we cover Adore Beauty's ASX debut, lots of recent local raises from the likes of Linktree, Sundrive, Zero Co, v2fo...

Welcome to a very special milestone for Open the Pod Bay Doors -- our 100th episode! To mark the occasion we brought back some of our favorite guests from the past 3 years of the podcast and asked them what they're most looking forward to in the next 3 years. A rockstar lineup of investors and founders shared their insights: Daniel Petre ( E1 ), Luke Anear ( E20 & E79 ), Niki Scevak ( E14 ), L...

Welcome to a fresh edition of the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Sam Wong, Blackbird Bronwen Clune, Inkl Mick Liubinskas, Director of Product and Growth for BCG Digital Ventures and Author of She's Building A Robot! Topics we discuss: As always, we cover recent local and global deals like 99desi...

Chris Hitchen is the Germany-based, Australian-born Founder and Managing Partner of Inventures. Inventures invests €100k - €500k globally in early stage tech companies and actively helps founders reach their first institutional VC Round. Chris started out as an entrepreneur; he built and sold price comparison business Getprice to News Corp, eCommerce marketplace Next Commerce to Future PLC and pro...

Welcome to the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Tim Burrowes, Mumbrella Jackie Vullinghs, Airtree Steve Fanale, Drive Yello Topics we discuss: Our panel discussed the explosion of e-commerce in Australia, changes to the JobKeeper program, and recent revelations about the Cambridge Analytica scanda...

Daniel Darling is the founder and managing partner of Darling Ventures, an early stage VC firm based in San Francisco. Daniel is an Aussie that's been working in the California tech scene for over a decade. He started his journey on the founding team of Mobile Interactive Group, an advertising tech startup that was acquired by NASDAQ-listed Velti for $60M. Back in 2014 he identified a unique oppor...

Welcome to Innovation Bay's OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet this week's panel... Founder: Olympia Yarger, GOTERRA Investor: Andrea Gardiner, Jelix Ventures Ecosystem Leader: Alex McCauly, StartupAus Topics we discuss: Some of the biggest headlines our panel discussed are the continuing war over media bargaining betwe...

Large buildings are both economically and environmentally costly to operate. David Walsh saw lots of data flowing in and around these inefficient buildings but there was no focus on using this data to find or fix the root causes of wastage. That's why he founded CIM in 2013. CIM's platform analyses building data to detect faults and inefficiencies that are wasting energy, saving their customers mo...

Olivia Humphrey is the founder, former CEO, and current executive chairman of Kanopy, the award-winning video streaming service for universities and libraries. She worked in media rights management at the BBC and Village Roadshow for 10 years before founding Kanopy in Perth back in 2008. After growing the business for a few years, Olivia and her young family packed up and moved to San Francisco in...

Welcome to the OTPBD News Special, our fortnightly series analysing the news that matters for Australian and Kiwi startups. Meet the panel... Founder: Emma Weston, AgriDigital Investor: Craig Blair, AirTree Ventures Ecosystem Leader: Michael Bakto, Startmate Topics we discuss: Some of the biggest headlines our panel discussed include the federal government's news battle vs. Facebook and Google, re...