Rule of 40

The day after this conversation was recorded, the government blinked: on 18 June it announced targeted CGT carve-outs for innovative startups, following more than 1,000 submissions to a Senate inquiry, one of the largest responses to a budget measure on record. About the guests Sam Maher is the founder and CEO of GovTech and the driving force behind the Coalition for Australia's Innovation & Inves...

Australia has passed a regulated framework for tokenised assets before the United States has, and the Reserve Bank's Project Acacia has already tested it on live use cases with the major banks. About the guest Alan Burt is Executive Chairman of Redbelly Network, the public blockchain infrastructure named in the Reserve Bank of Australia's Project Acacia, and Co-Founder and General Partner of Beach...

Growth can  feel like  momentum. But momentum without financial control is not steering — it is a crash waiting to happen. Ryan Barnes, Managing Partner of TWIYO Capital & Advisory, has worked at CFO level with more than 100 businesses across sectors. He knows what the warning signs look like before most founders do.   Ryan Barnes is Managing Partner of TWIYO Capital & Advisory, a Sydney-based CFO...

Australian enterprise deals over $1 million in total contract value now involve upwards of 10 buyers and a sales cycle approaching 300 days. If your sales motion still depends on the founder being in every room, you are building a ceiling, not a company. About the guest Jonathan 'Jono' Staff is Chief Revenue Officer at ASE Tech and Executive Director at WinDC. He has spent more than 20 years build...

In this first episode of  Rule of  40,  Jason  Serda and Josh Ayscough introduce the podcast and unpack the "misunderstood middle" ,  the critical stage where startups must evolve into real, scalable businesses. They explore how today's tougher funding environment demands discipline, resilience, and a focus on building sustainable companies ,  not just raising capital. This episode also introduces...

In this episode of Rule of 40, Jason Serda and Josh Ayscough get practical on one of the most important questions for scale-up founders: how do you know if your business is  actually heading  in the right direction?   They make the case that undisciplined growth is dead. The era of raising capital to paper over execution problems is over, and founders now have one crack at getting it right. Key to...