Startup 360

This week's Startup 360 sees Simon Thomsen return with a new cohost - Fishburners CEO Majella Campbell. And to celebrate our guests this week are two "Fishies" founders - Barb Woodruff Swanson from Done Life, and Mossy Taheri from proptech Rising Returns. There's a bit of a travel theme to this week's show, and with Majella's parents currently cruising off the coast of Italy, Simon wants to know w...

Fresh off a wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, Cheryl Mack is in the building to join AJ in guest hosting duties.  And what better way to ease back into reality with a deep dive in to the Government’s proposed superannuation tax with startup legend Alan Jones of M8 Ventures.  As two people at the coalface of angel investing, Cheryl and Alan have a LOT of thoughts about the potential for this new tax...

Guest hosts AJ Koch and Claire Bull step in and put the microscope on medtech.  While the action this week was in Melbourne for Digital Health Fest, we went under the hood of the medtech rollercoaster with two guests right at the coal face. From a funding point of view, you would be hard pressed to find a more in-tune resource than Emerald Scofield of Main Sequence Ventures. Starting out with a ch...

Founding cohost Kayla Medica is stepping away from the show because of work commitments and Simon Thomsen is devastated. But edge-of-millennial Kayla's not sure if she's heard Mental As Anything's song, If you leave me, can I come too? So he's leaving too - for two weeks to recover - and AJ Koch will step as guest host of Startup 360. For Kayla's final show, their guest is someone she's long admir...

Happy democracy sausage weekend. As Australians head to schools and halls on Saturday (although around 20% of the population has already voted) to cast their verdict on the last three years of the Albanese government, Startup 360 cohosts Simon Thomsen and Kayla Medica took a look at the policies and election promises for the tech sector from both Labor and the Coalition. It was a short conversatio...

It’s something ACS, the voice of Australia’s technology sector, is hoping to change. ACS CEO Josh Griggs joined us on the couch for Startup 360 to talk about what matters: backing Australian R&D all the way to commercial success. The 50,000 members-strong IT body has released an election position paper with 9 recommendations for the next government across 2 major pillars: skills and commercialisat...

To understand a little bit of what women founders deal with in the hunt for investment, consider the comments from a VC that got back to Camille Goldstone-Henry, cofounder of biodiversity startup Xylo Systems. Xylo helps companies address environmental protection alongside development, and landed a major international client. The VC described it as “a fluke”. Startup 360 cohost Simon Thomsen was g...

Teenage entrepreneur Liam Fuller thought it would be funny to take a photo of him taking a client call and working on his laptop sitting in a toilet cubicle at school. The world did too, with more than 1.5 million viewed his posts on LinkedIn. The school principal was less impressed and the 17-year-old was suspended for two days. Now he’s wagging school in Ireland and currently visiting Australia,...

Julie Trell believes play makes you a better founder. American-born Julie has been helping startup teams around the world build their imaginations and sense of adventure for decades as the founder of Playful Purpose. One way she does it is with “Yes…. and…” She gives Startup 360 host Simon Thomsen and Kayla Medica a simple and powerful explanation of its impact. “Being heard is so close to being l...

Is the title “founder” this decade’s version of wanting to be a Masterchef or influencer? Startup 360 cohost Kayla Medica has a theory. “So many people now have glamourised being a founder, being an entrepreneur, that there's a whole host of people who just start businesses with that in mind, and they're not actually starting a business because they've encountered a serious problem that they're dr...

When do you know you’re CEO material? It’s the question Startup 360 host Simon Thomsen put to Majella Campbell, the newly appointed CEO of Fishburners, Australia’s pioneering startup coworking space. Majella talked about her mentor, Myles Baron-Hay, the former Sydney Swans CEO, saying “why not?” when she had her doubts. "When I was unsure about taking on this role, he simply asked, ‘Why not?’,” sh...

Welcome to the Startup 360 with Kayla Medica and guest cohost Cat Long from climate tech startup Trace. Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women’s Day, and this year's theme is “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment. This week’s episode explores the challenges women face as founders, from funding to parenting and the self-doubt you can feel as a female founder (and even if you wa...

Welcome to the Startup 360 with Kayla Medica and Simon Thomsen. It’s all about founder fun, finding out what makes people tick and staying human. This week, Kayla and Simon celebrate Mardi Gras in Sydney this weekend talking about their favourite works by musicians and writers. Kayla recommends a Japanese all-women band, f5ve, loved by the queer community around the world. Simon sounds a bit in lo...

Welcome to the Startup 360 with Kayla Medica and Simon Thomsen. It’s all about founder fun, finding out what makes people tick and staying human. For our second show, Kayla and Simon discuss exit strategies in the wake of KKR buying a $95 million slice of Employment Hero in a secondary market sale by OG investor Seek. With IPOs on the go slow, how do employees cash in on the success they helped bu...

Welcome to the Startup 360 product launch! We hope you like our MVP with cohosts Kayla Medica and Simon Thomsen. We want to have founder fun and find out what makes people tick - it’s not about GTM strategies and the next raise, it’s all about staying human. In our first show, Kayla and Simon talk about the extraordinary success of Harrison.ai, the medical diagnostics analysis platform that raised...

Every Friday, Startup 360 hosts Simon Thomsen and Kayla Medica, dissect the news of the week in ANZ startups, before they’re joined by two guests to explore what makes them tick. Think of it as your startup guide to staying human. It’s all about lifting the bonnet on people to understand how they see the world and what inspires and drives them, and what they’ve learnt from both success and failure...