ETF - exchange traded funds - have become a popular investment since OG fintech entrepreneur Graham Tuckwell pioneered the sector in Australia more than 20 years ago.

The local market grew by nearly 40% last year to around $250 billion, but a decade has passed since a new player appeared on the seen bearing a familiar name.

David Tuckwell is following in his father's footsteps with ETF Shares, which launched this month after taking part in the Macquarie University Incubator program.

The fintech is offering lower fees and access to US markets. Tuckwell says the sector will be worth more than $20 trillion within 20 years.

He sat down with Startup 360 cohosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell to explain ETFs - Simon compared them to buying a box of groceries - and what he learnt from his philanthropist dad as he follows his father's trade.

They discussed parenting, journalism - David worked in the sector before getting a real job - life lessons, the transformative opportunity of going to university, philanthropy and the bank of Mum and Dad backing your startup.

"There's those old three Fs about when you start a business, friends, family and fools being the ones that first back you," David said.

"We're no different in that regard. We've got a major family member, hopefully he's not a fool in my dad."

Simon quipped that Graham Tuckwell's financial success - he runs a VC firm out of London and donated $100 million to his alma mater, ANU in Canberra, for student scholarships - suggests not.
David also talked about how he wants his kids to grow up.
"I also want them to be strong and able to face the world because family is obviously loving and nurturing," he said.
"But when you're out there facing the market - I think startup founders understand this almost better than anyone - in fact, the real world can be a bit of a cold, hard place."

Their second guest for 10x, the rapid-fire questions is 2nd time founder Peter Cole, from legal tech startup CourtAid.ai.

He was inspired to launch the law research platform because of a legal dispute involving his first startup, Gathera, which ended up wasting four months of his time.

It launched 12 months ago and now has 14,000 users in Australia, New Zealand and UK markets.

Peter talked about the potential of AI and how it gives startups the ability to compete with the biggest tech companies in the world.

"When you're talking about these AI businesses, everyone, including the big boys, are using the same models like they're all using OpenAI," he said.

"No one has access to 300,000 GPUs to train a whole new model, except for the big end of town, which means it ends up becoming an even playing field in that sense, where suddenly a small company like myself have access to the same resources these big enterprise players have, which means we can build products just as good as the big enterprise players. So I think there's going to be a huge shift in startups coming through and competing with the enterprise players."

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by ⁠Vanta⁠, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.