Cogent Conversations

The founder journey can be a lonely one. Sometimes you wonder if it's all worth it, but it it's also full of reward, joy and a profound sense of achievement. 

In this episode we talk with Judy Anderson, CEO of Startup Vic. Startup Vic is a not-for-profit organisation which nurtures the community of founders in Victoria so that their struggles and joys can be normalised and shared, helping give founders the best possible chance to succeed.

Judy gives as a insightful look into the life of a founder, the strengths of the startup community in Melbourne and highlights where the biggest opportunities for growth exist.

This is our last episode for this season of the podcast, which has focused on digital businesses that are having an impact. Fittingly this is area that Judy sees as being the focus of the founders and startups they support in 2020.

To keep up to date with what is happening with Cogent, including when new episodes of this podcast are released, you can subscribe to our blog at cogent.co/blog. Or follow us on Twitter: @cogent_co or Instagram: @cogent_co.

Corporate innovation is hard. Much has been written about it and there are countless ways to go about it, but the benefits are tantalising. For some organisations, it means that they continue to live; they can reinvent themselves before it's too late. For others, it is an opportunity to grow beyond what they are; to leverage the social, brand, intellectual, monetary capital they have built up to create something new.

In this episode, we get a first-hand look at a corporate innovation story that, while still in its early stages, is a growing success. Agent Reach was a new product idea for the team at REA Group, and something Cogent was able to help create. However, the co-creation in this particular instance of corporate innovation was certainly not without its own rocky road.

We spoke candidly about this project, and corporate innovation in general, with Andrew Rechtman, one of the Executive General Managers at REA Group, who oversees the customer experience across all of REA's product, both legacy and exploratory.

To keep up to date with what is happening with Cogent, including when new episodes of this podcast are released, you can subscribe to our blog at cogent.co/blog,  or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.

The stories that inspired the creation of many of the businesses that we work with are  pretty amazing, and we think the stories of Oculo and its founder and CEO, Dr Kate Taylor, are right up there with the best of them.

Kate trained as a surgeon but discovered she had an allergy to surgical gloves and went to work at McKinseys where she founded the Global Health Initiative through the World Economic Forum. She eventually found herself having a conversation with a Professor of Ophthalmology, wondering how their profession could do such a good job at using technology for diagnoses and management, but still rely upon letters and faxes for correspondence.

Today Oculo is a Melbourne-based startup that is having a positive impact on improving patient outcomes, both locally and internationally. 

We love the energy that Kate brings to her organisation and the vision she has for creating positive change.

To keep up to date with what is happening with Cogent, including when new episodes of this podcast are released, you can subscribe to our blog at cogent.co/blog. Or follow us on Twitter: @cogent_co or Instagram: @cogent_co.

'Enabling organisations to be great places for humans to work'

It's one of those aspirations that's easy to say and agree with, but yet seems to be a challenge for so many workplaces nowadays.

After a number of attempts experimenting with different product ideas to help move organisations in this direction, the co-founders of Culture Amp decided to try again, this time without writing a line of code. Armed with hi-fidelity designs they pitched their idea to HR leaders of large organisations to see if it had commercial viability.

Fast forward a few years, and they now have a significant positive impact on the workplaces many of us are part of, including here at Cogent.

We spoke with Doug English, co-founder and CTO of Culture Amp, about how they built the momentum they enjoy today, how they developed their own culture, and what's emerging in the domain of creating great places to work.

To keep up to date with what is happening with Cogent, including when new episodes of this podcast are released, you can subscribe to our blog at cogent.co/blog. Or follow us on Twitter: @cogent_co or Instagram: @cogent_co.

When .ID (Informed Decisions) was founded, the term startup didn't exist. The founder was Ivan Motley and after spending a period of time working within larger organisations, he thought that by starting his own business he could create the change in the world he wanted to see. It's a familiar story for many of us today, but one that was a little more unusual 20 years ago.

.ID are all about harnessing data that tells a story, enabling those who are shaping our communities to make better decisions. They are demographers, geographers, economists and technologists, and have created an organisation that contributes significantly to impacting our society for good.

Our guest for this episode is Lailani Burra, the CEO of .ID. Lailani originally came to the company to work within client services, and when Ivan decided to step back from the day-to-day of the business Lailani was appointed CEO. Now fifteen years into her time at .ID, Lailani is facilitating cultural change that's enabling this organisation to get even better at delivering products that improve our lives.

We find .ID inspiring, not only for its vision, but also for the way they're going about it. 'Humble' and 'bold' are two of the values that drive the way .ID does business. Those values describe Lailani, they describe the culture of the organisation and they describe the way .ID approaches its customers.

To keep up to date with what is happening with Cogent, including when new episodes of this podcast are released, you can subscribe to our blog at cogent.co/blog. Or follow us on Twitter: @cogent_co or Instagram: @cogent_co.

The construction industry has risk pretty much built in, from safety risks to budgetary risks and risks that appear years after the building has been finished. In an industry with such tight margins and such big upfront costs, even small improvements can have a large impact. 

Ynomia is an Internet of Things start-up that is working with construction companies to help them make one such improvement, specifically around gaining clarity on where their building materials are at any given moment of a construction project.

To enable this vision they are immersed in a highly complex environment, bringing together partnerships with industry and research organisations, developing their hardware and software, and working out how to enable the tracking of materials on an ever changing construction site.

We are impress by how they are going about it. They're understanding the key areas of learning to focus on, building a cohesive team and seeking to enable a better construction industry.

We spoke with Matthew Lickwar, one of the co-founders of Ynomia, who brings his experience in engineering, international business and startups.

To keep up to date with what is happening with Cogent, including when new episodes of this podcast are released, you can subscribe to our blog at cogent.co/blog. Or follow us on Twitter: @cogent_co or Instagram: @cogent_co.