David Tudehope left the finance world in the early 1990’s with a dream to service small to medium business who complained of poor service and overcharging by the monopolist at the time, Telstra.  Tudehope wasn’t a digital expert nor a highly trained computer engineer. But he understood numbers, and that customers wanted good service, not delays and obfuscation. So he had his brother Aidan started a small business they called Macquarie Telecom, back in 1992, with only the savings the pair could scrounge up, and forged headlong into the ultimately capital-intensive telco space. This is long before the internet and smart mobile phones. But they took on the slow-to-change Telstra and stuck to their mission of offering better customer service and cheaper prices to the business customer.  In just over 3 decades they’ve built (now named) Macquarie Technology Group into one of the Top 300 listed companies in Australia, with a market capitalisation of over $1.5 billon, offering major clients like the ATO, Officeworks and PayPal still telecom, but now cloud-based, cyber security services as well as massive investments in data centres to support the boom in AI.  David appeared on the Australian Financial Review’s Rich List 2024 alongside brother Aidan with an estimated net worth of over $900 million.

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Since Dr Sarah Crowe had her lightbulb idea, and invented her completely mobile, vision testing and glasses kit, then ran a trial in remote Papua New Guinea and started to show  the impact her OOXii Vision Kit could have, to medical professionals in India and Vanuatu, she was inundated with positive reaction. Here was a complete system not only offering mobile eye testing, but also durable glasses frames, with prescription lenses in them, were then dispensed on the spot to people in remote or under-served communities, thereby improving their vision right there and then, in their home communities. It was life-changing.  A fantastic entrepreneurial idea to fix a massive global problem.

But Sarah’s journey with OOXii Global and her mission to help fix the world’s vision has not been without its challenges and significant hurdles along the way.

Listen to Dr Sarah Crowe take up the story.

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While navigating Australia’s mental health system to deal with his personal assessment and ongoing care, entrepreneur Zac Altman felt frustrated and thought, quite simply, there must be a better way to help the huge number of adults with ADHD get the proper care and support they need. To help solve what he saw as a very large unmet demand problem, Zac created and built the start-up Kantoko, a telehealth service offering online assessments and ongoing care for adults with ADHD, but using an unusual business model – subscription services. Kantoko has been operational since early 2024, with patients accessing Kantoko’s team of experienced ADHD psychiatrists and GPs focusing on mental health.

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When we last spoke to Luxury Escapes co-founder Adam Schwab, back in 2020, the online business had hit almost $500 million in sales. Today the luxury deals and discounts travel brand is ringing up over $1 billion in sales revenue, a doubling in 5 years. And it’s founder says it’s growing profitably, adding not only retail outlets, but Loyalty programs as well, to its online offering for travellers. Adam says he’s learned a heck of a lot in that time… hope you enjoy Adam Schwab.

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When Jesse Todd did grunt work on the IT “Help” desk in an investment bank many moons ago, he developed a passion for managing corporate data and information better. Over recent decades, as companies have got bigger, needing to hold ever more mountains of data and documents for compliance -- one of business’ biggest headaches -- Jesse saw a huge opportunity witnessing the way companies struggled to deal with those massive mountains of information, and turned his passion into reality by working away on a superior and elegant solution.

He and a small clever team he pulled together created and developed EncompaaS, a software platform that helps large companies and govt departments, mostly in highly regulated industries, manage and organise their massive amounts of data -  be it files, documents, emails, legal contracts, photos, videos - into a compliant  and efficient library of information. This not only allows the organisation to know what’s IN their data, and how to locate it quickly, but it can then leverage that for the company’s good use.

Jesse Todd has raised $30 million so far from investors, as he continues to develop EncompaaS to help solve the massive headache for corporates, that is data compliance and risk.

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You could say Les Schirato had a key advantage in his early business journey… he married the boss’s daughter! The western Sydney born and bred son of Italian and Maltese migrants, Les started work at Vittoria Coffee before he’d even left school, loved it, and was asked back into the business while waiting for his HSC results. Les did indeed marry Luisa Cantarella, but he’d already earned his business stripes in the eyes of her father Orazio Cantarella, who’d started Vittoria in 1947 with his brother, importing Italian foods like cheese, pasta and mineral water. Les also had a successful stint outside the family business, having climbed executive ranks at Fiat.

But since those early days, once Les and Luisa Schirato gained control of Vittoria,  with other family members and more recently their son and daughter, they’ve built Vittoria into one of the largest and most successful family owned and run food and coffee groups in Australia. Along the way they turned Australia into a nation of coffee snobs and espresso lovers.

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Sydney-based Tamar Krebs started as a Registered Nurse, but her decades of experience as a senior manager operating Retirement Villages, Nursing Homes and Dementia Units,  led this visionary thinker to believe we needed to deliver much better care for our aged and demented loved ones; that the existing model of 100 people living under the one roof, in an institution, is not giving people who need assistance the best outcomes. Tamar decided the entire sector needed upending – to go from the merely task-focused Transactional,  to Transformational care  that allows older and demented people to live in a small household, a home of roughly 6- 10 residents,  with a staff to client ratio of 1 “homemaker” to 3 or 4 residents, and where everyone is involved in running the household, just as had happened in disability care.   But back in 2011 this maverick was not well-received. Tamar knocked on 62 potential investors’ doors, mostly pitching to nay-sayers who dismissed her idea of people with dementia living in a small assisted household on a regular suburban street. But she persevered and won over a couple of high net worth individuals, who understood her vision, and backed her with seed money to buy her first house.

How she started with $5000 in her pocket just 13 years ago  and grew her empire to now 22 homes all over Sydney, with 350 employees is an inspiring startup story, with lots of bumps and self-doubt along the way.

Take a listen to Tamar Krebs, a true thinker out of the box.

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Adelaide-born and raised Sophie Lovejoy jumped from being a well-paid TV producer into the precarious, fickle world of fashion, when she started out creating and then manufacturing cute boxer shorts to sell in her mum’s homewares store in Norwood, Adelaide. Fast forward a few years and Sophie took the plunge to move herself and her business to Los Angeles. Along the way she had transformed her brand Sant and Abel, into a luxury sleepwear and leisurewear fashion range that caught the eye of celebrities like the Kardashians and TV host Jimmy Fallon, who gave her brand the tick of approval by wearing her PJs, thereby helping catapult Sant and Abel to brand awareness and sales stardom in the biggest, juiciest clothing market in the world, the USA.

Hope you enjoy Sophie Lovejoy’s inspiring entrepreneurial story.

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Sydney-raised and educated Benjamin Plummer transformed himself from a business adviser and analyst into a startup entrepreneur and a guru in Artificial Intelligence. Ben’s San Francisco-based company Invisible Technologies is quietly powering the AI revolution in the epicentre of AI development, the west coast of the United States. Now, Ben did not start Invisible Technologies, but as CEO he built it big and it is transforming how companies are built and run, by helping them utilise cutting-edge AI technology coupled with the very best human know-how. In a nutshell,  Ben and his team have been training the AI used by  the world’s leading generative AI providers such as Chat GPT, Google and Microsoft. He also helped build a commercial spin off company alongside the inventor of IBM’s Watson. Along the way Ben worked closely with US billionaire and hedge fund investing guru Ray Dalio at Bridgewater Associates. In this episode, Ben shares invaluable insights, experiences and lessons learned about his journey, and the rapidly-changing landscape of AI. Enjoy!

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New episodes coming soon.

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