The History of the Australian Startup Ecosystem: Interview Series

Peta Ellis is the founder of EverydayEntrepreneur365.com.au , and an entrepreneur who’d founded 4 companies before 30, and has gone on to spend much of her career in a community building and mentor role. She has supporting hundreds of startup founders and teams in a variety of roles, including as CEO of River City Labs, an Innovation Strategist at The Unconventional Group, Entrepreneur In Residenc...

Alfred Lo is co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Harvest B, a tech startup developing a plant-based meat ingredient system. Previously Chief Investment Officer at Cicada Innovations, an incubator for Australian tech startups, Alfred has more than a decade experience acting as an advisor, mentor and board member for many early-stage technology businesses. In his conversation with Adam, Alfre...

Dr Sarah Pearson has a wealth of experience from a wide variety of roles within the science, technology and startup sector. Previously Global Head of Open Innovation at Cadbury, founding CEO of the Canberra Innovation Network, Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Scientist at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Sarah is currently on the investment committee for Main Sequence Vent...

Michael Batko is the CEO of Startmate, an accelerator that has invested in 170+ startups across Australia and New Zealand with a collective portfolio value of two billion dollars. Originally from Austria, Michael had his first exposure to the startup world when he moved to Australia and became the first employee at Mad Paws, a marketplace for pet sitters. In his conversation with guest host Will T...

Julie Trell is an American woman who moved to Australia in 2017 to pursue two opportunities in the Australian startup ecosystem: working as head of the now defunct accelerator Muru-D, and to bring SheEO to Australia. SheEO is a global organisation founded by Vicki Saunders with a unique model: women and non-binary “Activators” contribute a monthly payment which is pooled together and given as a 0%...

With no experience but a lot of guts and vision, Peter Davison moved to Silicon Valley and started a Venture Capital firm with a friend in 1998. They had several early successes, most famously as early investors in PayPal, in which Peter was a key advisor to Peter Thiel on business and product strategy. Since returning to Australia Peter has founded, built and sold several internet businesses, and...

Maxine Sherrin is the Program Director of Spark Festival, a not-for-profit festival that aims to grow entrepreneurship in Australia by bringing together people from all corners of the startup world: founders, investors, small/medium enterprises, big corporates and policy makers. Before taking her current role, Maxine co-founded Web Directions in 2004, Australia’s first event for web designers and...

Cameron Adams is a co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, an online design platform with over 20 million users. After starting his own design agency and then working for Google, Cameron founded Fluent with two other Google alumni. While Fluent, which endeavoured to reimagine email, was ultimately unsuccessful, while working on the project he met his Canva co-founders and ultimately came on...

Lauren Capelin is a community strategist and disruptive innovation specialist passionate about the development and application of new business models, corporate social innovation, impact investment and fostering entrepreneurial capacity, particularly in women. She is currently Principal at Startmate, an accelerator that aims to support tech startups in Australia and New Zealand. In her conversatio...

Bruce Tulloch is the co-founder and managing director of BitScope Designs, which creates IOT (Internet of Things) and cloud computing tools for industrial and educational use. Bruce is also chair of The Studio Limited, Australia’s first media tech incubator based at the Sydney Startup Hub. And as if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Bruce is also Director of New Technologies at JetPack Aviation...

Niki Scevak has a long and diverse background in the Australian startup ecosystem. From his entrepreneurial beginnings co-founding two software companies, Niki would go on to co-found Blackbird, a venture capital firm which manages over a billion dollars, and found Startmate, an accelerator that has helped 170+ startups since its inception in 2011. In his conversation with Adam he discusses what h...

Cheryl Mack is passionate about supporting founders and has done so in a variety of roles over the years: as a mentor for programs including Startmate and Founder Institute, as CEO of StartCon, as an angel investor with over 10 investments and counting, and most recently as the CEO and founder of Aussie Angels. In her conversation with Adam, she discusses the importance of building communities, an...

Andrea Gardiner is the founder of Jelix, an investment firm which focuses on early stage technology startups in Australia and New Zealand. In her conversation with Adam, she shares her conviction that disruptive, scalable technology startups are critical for the future economic prosperity of Australia, and highlights the supportive and collaborative of Australia’s startup ecosystem as a key advant...

Kate Cornick is the CEO of LaunchVic, the Victorian Government’s initiative to accelerate startups and create new jobs in Victoria. Before taking this position, Kate worked in a variety of roles in startup land, including leading the development of a human resources technology startup through a listing on the Australian Stock Exchange, as well as acting as General Manager at NBN Co. In her convers...

3 interviews will be released each week starting in January. The audio documentary that will tell the story of the Australian startup ecosystem will be released in June 2022. Sign up to the newsletter https://dayone.fm/newsletter and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gd...