Day One®

Welcome back to the FNDN Series, where we continue our deep dive into startup compensation with industry leaders from across the startup world. In our conversation with Rowan Savage, Former CTO & Co-Founder at Runn, we explore how unconventional compensation practices can drive zero turnover and 100% employee net promoter scores. Rowan shares how Runn implemented automatic pay rises, pay transparency with exact salaries (no bands), location-agnostic compensation, and the radical practice of paying every role the same at each level—from engineers to marketers. We dive deep into their four-day work week, recruiting philosophy that attracted top 1% talent, and performance management approach that separated pay from performance discussions. Keep watching to discover how these practices resulted in annual pay reviews taking less than five minutes instead of weeks or months.’

Rowan is a serial entrepreneur and tech founder with a strong belief that the way you win is by attracting the best talent, putting the right team together, retaining them over the long term, aligning them on the mission and then unleashing them to do their thing. Rowan was recently the chief technology officer, and one of 4 co-founders at Runn. A fast-growing startup that’s embedded many of these ideas at the core including transparent pay, aysnc remote, worldwide hiring, flexible working hours and let’s not forget a 4 day work week.

Chapters:

00:44 Guest Introduction: Rowan Savage

01:48 Philosophy: Building High-Performing Teams

03:13 Consulting Top Talent Before Starting

05:37 People Operations Without HR Experts

08:20 Creating an Employee-Centric Culture

10:04 Redesigning Employment Contracts

13:05 Beyond Compensation: Building Your EVP

16:47 The ESOP Reality in New Zealand

19:42 The Contract as a First Impression

22:15 Hiring Process: Identifying Top Performers

24:05 Recruiting Through Community, Not Job Boards

24:48 Writing Job Ads That Attract Attention

27:09 Long Interview Processes Done Right

30:01 Investing Equal Time as Candidates

31:17 Scaling the Hiring Process

32:56 Attraction Strategy: Making a Great Workplace

34:30 Achieving 100% Employee Net Promoter Score

41:25 Automatic Pay Rises Based on Experience

44:24 Location-Agnostic Global Compensation

46:07 Five-Minute Pay Reviews vs Months-Long Cycles

47:27 Why Performance Comparisons Never Came Up

50:57 Eight-Week Cycles and Performance Tracking

52:34 Sandbagging vs High Performance Culture

54:12 Lessons Learned: Leadership Alignment Challenges

57:46 100% Retention in Engineering Team

59:35 Advice: Focus on People from Day One

Connect with Rowan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/savagerowan/ 

Resources Mentioned

Runn - Resource management platform for B2B SaaS companies

Buffer - Known for pioneering pay transparency practices

Atlassian - Australian software company referenced for compensation benchmarks

Culture Amp - People and culture platform

GitHub - Platform for software development

Canva - Australian design platform

Company Mentioned:

Runn - Resource management platform for B2B SaaS companies

Buffer - Company known for pay transparency practices

Culture Amp - People and culture platform

Atlassian - Australian software company

Canva - Australian design platform

GitHub - Software development platform

Tools Mentioned:

DISC Assessment - Personality and behavior assessment tool used by leadership team

More FNDN Episodes:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4GeBIeZOKrFxG1oiiPxmiM

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fndn-series/id1794263484

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StartupCompensation, PayTransparency, CompensationStrategy, AutomaticPayRises, LocationAgnosticPay, FourDayWorkWeek, HighPerformanceTeams, ZeroTurnover, EmployeeNetPromoterScore, PayEquity, TalentRetention, StartupCulture, RecruitingStrategy, PerformanceManagement, EmployeeEngagement, CompensationFrameworks, StartupBestPractices, PeopleOperations, RemoteWork, GlobalCompensation

When Sam Fariborz moved to Australia from Iran, she had been working as an IT manager. While she had plenty of experience and strong technical skills, the move to Australia was challenging, and in this episode Sam discusses some of the barriers to entry she faced. By attending cybersecurity events and reaching out to people on LinkedIn, Sam found mentors and peers who helped progress her career, and today Sam is Cybersecurity Services & Program Manager for Kmart group which employs nearly 50,000 people across Australia and New Zealand. Sam chats with Cole Cornford about how to network effectively, the growth of cybersecurity as a profession in the last couple of decades, the need for greater diversity within the industry, and plenty more.

🐙 Secured is grateful to be sponsored and supported by Chainguard.

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. Get hardened, secure, production-ready builds so your team can ship faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk. Download your free CVE Reduction Assessment at https://dayone.fm/chainguard

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Mentioned in this episode:

Download your free CVE Reduction Assessment

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. Get hardened, secure, production-ready builds so your team can ship faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk.

December 2025 - Chainguard

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In this episode, Ben joins Alan to talk about what it actually looks like to build and scale a technical consulting business in Australia, from the talent shortage that forces most serious engineering firms offshore, to the practical realities of using AI in production versus just prototyping. Ben is refreshingly direct about what works and what doesn't, including why he thinks signing a three-year deal with any AI provider right now is a mistake, why AI cold email campaigns do more damage than good, and why a physical piece of mail will outperform ten thousand automated messages every time.

Alan challenges Ben on the right tech stack for founders heading into 2026, how to get the most out of free cloud credits before you raise, and what product managers still do better than any AI tool on the market.

If you're a founder making decisions about how to build, who to hire, or which AI tools to trust with your business, this episode is worth your time.

🎙 Ask Alan a Question – https://speakpipe.com/pickmybrain

🎧 More from Alan Jones – https://www.startupfoundercoach.com

Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.

Ready to expand your business?

Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.

___

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Mentioned in this episode:

Deel x PX_Script 1

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Josh Clemm, VP of Engineering at Dropbox, joins Georgie Healy to cut through the noise and get to what is actually happening with AI agents right now. Josh has scaled engineering teams at LinkedIn and Uber Eats, founded his own AI venture, and is now building Dash, Dropbox's context layer designed to make agents dramatically more reliable. This is someone who has been on the coalface of this technology longer than most.

In this episode Josh introduces two ideas that will change how you think about AI at work. Context rot, the reason your large language models quietly get dumber the more information you give them. And work slop, the plausible sounding but completely hollow output that gets generated when AI tools are used without intention. He also delivers the most reassuring reality check of the year for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the idea that everyone already has a fully functioning team of AI agents working for them.

They also get into how the index approach behind Dash solves what real time fetching cannot, why the next AI breakthrough might actually come from old fashioned software engineering principles, and the two engineers Josh considers the greatest builders of their generation and why neither of them was asked to build what they built.

Weekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginahealy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georginahealytech/

In The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors.

Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter

Marc Hermann's dad died of a heart attack in his mid-forties. Fit, healthy, no warning signs. Then a doctor told him 99% of heart disease is preventable. We just don't catch it in time.

That conversation became Everlab.

Twelve months ago, Everlab had one doctor. Today they have 66. They've built their own patient management system from scratch, landed Bain, BHP and the AFL as corporate clients, and closed one of Australia's biggest seed rounds, $10M USD led by a New York investor who flew to Sydney on Easter Sunday and didn't leave without a term sheet.

This week Brendan sits down with Marc Hermann, Australia's leading COO Gillian Findlay, and investor Rohen Sood, all angel investors in Everlab, to get into the real story. How do you hire obsessives, not just smart people? Why did a US fund get it before Australian investors did? And is B2B SaaS actually cooked?

Gillian just launched Third Room, a community for the operators who actually scale these companies. Rohen breaks down why the gradient beats the y-intercept every time. And Marc is brutally honest about what it actually looks like inside a fast-growing startup. It's a shitshow. That's the point.

Time Stamps

00:00 Trailer, Intro & Guests

02:53 What Even Is Autonomous Healthcare

05:30 Jill & Rowan's Everlab Experience

07:36 Why Marc Built Everlab, The Personal Story

10:27 Sponsor: Vanta

12:05 Inside the Platform: 100 Biomarkers & Minus 8 Years Biological Age

13:14 Why They Built Their Own Patient Management System

17:05 Everything Is Breaking, How Do You Even Start

19:11 Hiring Obsessives, Not Just Smart People

22:54 Referral Hiring & Why Pedigree Is a Trap

24:34 Sponsor: Ten13 Ventures

25:50 Why Marc Quit His Post-Exit Life & Moved to Australia

29:53 Is B2B SaaS Cooked

37:57 How Leftlane Flew to Sydney on Easter Sunday & Left With a Deal

42:42 US vs Australia, Why Local Investors Didn't Get It First

49:27 Safety Culture's US Expansion & The Kansas City Lesson

51:51 Jill Launches Third Room, Community for Operators

55:24 Everlab Corporate: Bain, BHP, AFL & the B2B2C Flywheel

1:03:40 What Does Marc Actually Think of Bryan Johnson

1:05:23 Is AI Killing Junior Hiring

1:07:13 Why Every Founder Needs a Chief of Staff

1:10:54 What a Chief of Staff Actually Does vs a Glorified EA

1:13:35 Why You Should Work at Everlab

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The Day One Network

Oversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors.

Guest Founders:

Everlab: https://www.everlab.com.au/

Connect with Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-hermann-3132ab5b/

Third Room: https://thirdroom.au/

Connect with Gillian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillian-findlay-7a792429/

Enduring Investment Partners: https://www.enduringinvestments.com.au/

Connect with Rohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohen-s-b747a429/

Stay Updated:

Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rZ9SajGVXkO8oxuvEHAsk?si=I2yR92GgRZa-Fdqbp8T4bw

Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oversubscribed/id1848789610

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or financial product. Brendan Hill is an investor in Everlab, Relevance AI and A1Base.

About the Host:

Brendan Hill is a Venture Partner at TEN13 and an angel investor in Australia’s fastest-growing startups, including Everlab, Heidi Health, Relevance AI and Instant. If you are interested in finding out more about angel investing, connect with Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbrendanhill/

Welcome back to the FNDN Series. In this episode, we sit down with Arif Ender, Director of Compensation at Palo Alto Networks and former compensation leader at Meta. We unpack the strategic differentiators tech giants use to scale from 5,000 to 50,000+ employees.

We explore why job architecture is the non-negotiable foundation for growth, the looming challenges of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and how AI tools like Claude Code are democratizing the competitive advantages once reserved for Silicon Valley titans. Arif shares practical strategies for building custom HR tools, managing global expansion, and maintaining pay equity at scale.

About the Guest

Arif Ender is a Total Rewards expert with nearly two decades of experience at Palo Alto Networks, Meta, Mars, and Nestlé. Currently the Director of Compensation for EMEA & LATAM at Palo Alto Networks, he oversees strategy across 65+ countries. Arif is also a faculty member at WorldatWork and holds CCP, GRP, and CSCP certifications. He specializes in navigating market volatility, sales incentives, and regulatory compliance on a global scale.

Chapters

00:44 Guest Introduction: Arif Ender

01:08 EU Pay Transparency Directive: The Year Ahead

02:59 Beyond Data Modeling: Change Management Challenges

04:39 Correcting Past Practices & Preventing Future Issues

06:02 Making the Business Case: Fines, Tenders, and Reputation

09:36 Scaling Compensation: From 500 to 5,000+ Employees

12:55 Job Architecture: The Non-Negotiable Foundation

16:22 The Meta Advantage: Custom-Built HR Tools

18:02 Scaling Crisis: Approving 800 Offers Solo

20:01 Why Most Companies Lack Meta's Tooling Strategy

24:06 AI's Democratization of Competitive Advantages

28:06 Learning Claude Code: The Practical Roadmap

32:08 Building Custom Tools: Family Finance to Market Pricing

36:01 Why People Teams Should Build Their Own Tools

38:00 The "Rest of World" Problem for US-Headquartered Companies

41:09 First Moves: Hiring Global Expertise Early

42:18 The Painful Transition: Structuring for Scale

43:14 "Hire at All Cost" vs. Pay Equity Reality

48:02 Meta's Philosophy: No Counter-Offers Ever

52:28 2026 and Beyond: EU Pay Transparency Predictions

56:04 Cultural Nuances: The Nigeria Allowances Story

Connect with Arif

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/arifender

Resources Mentioned

Companies & Organizations:

Palo Alto Networks – Global cybersecurity leader.

Meta (Facebook) – Where Arif scaled comp during hyper-growth.

WorldatWork – The leading association for Total Rewards professionals.

WGEA – Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

Tools & Technologies:

Claude Code – AI tool for building custom applications.

Lovable – AI-driven rapid app development.

Gemini & ChatGPT – Large Language Models for productivity.

Next.js – Framework used for building HR tool frontends.

Concepts & Frameworks:

EU Pay Transparency Directive – New legislation regarding pay equity.

Job Architecture – The framework for organizing roles and levels.

Statistical Regression Modeling – Used for deep pay equity analysis.

More FNDN Episodes

Spotify: Listen Here

Apple Podcast: Listen Here

Tags:

#EUPayTransparency #CompensationAtScale #PayEquity #JobArchitecture #MetaCompensation #StartupCompensation #GlobalCompensation #AITools #ClaudeCode #HRTech #PeopleOps #TalentStrategy #CompFrameworks #GenderPayGap #ScalingStartups

Win $2,000 in credits with the Day One Network — take our 2-minute audience survey before 30 June: dayone.fm/survey

Frank Greeff, the founder behind a $180M exit and the viral Founders Table series, is back, this time building Kinso, an AI messaging aggregation tool set to change how businesses communicate. Instead of retiring after one of Australia’s biggest tech acquisitions, Frank is diving back into the grind, sharing why momentum and purpose keep him building.

In this episode, Frank reveals the AI hacks that surprised even his engineers, why scrappy MVPs may not survive in today’s fast-moving AI wave, and how personal branding gives founders a hidden moat. Georgie and Frank also dig into what it takes to self-fund after top VCs said no, attracting A+ engineering talent in a competitive market, and why “taste” will define which AI products win.

Plus, Frank unpacks Meta’s $100M AI hires, the rise of deepfakes and how he protects his family, and answers listener questions on planning exits, building AI startups, and navigating AGI, UBI, and the future of work, all while playing a spicy rapid-fire round.

Time Stamps

03:20 – What is Kinso and why aggregate business messaging

06:15 – Why Frank couldn’t retire after a $180M exit

10:45 – Hack of the Week: how non-technical founders can challenge engineers with AI

14:30 – Why Frank thinks MVPs can’t be scrappy anymore

18:00 – Building a founding team: attracting top AI engineering talent

23:30 – Meta’s $100M AI hires and how Kinso competes

26:40 – Why VCs rejected Kinso and why Frank’s self-funding

30:50 – Taste as a moat: what makes great AI products stand out

33:00 – How building an AI startup differs from RealBase

36:00 – Planning for exits: documentation and timing

40:30 – Deepfakes and Frank’s “secret password” strategy

43:20 – Rapid Fire: AGI, UBI, future of work, and more

Resources Mentioned

🌐 Kinso – https://www.kinso.ai/

🔗 Frank Greeff on LinkedIn – / frankgreeff

Weekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginahealy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georginahealytech/

In The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors.

Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter

The ISM has been updated again, and this time AI is front and centre. In this episode of Secured, Cole Cornford is joined by returning guest Toby Amodio, Practice Lead at Fujitsu Cybersecurity Services, for another instalment of Policy Wonks and Gronks, cutting through the vendor noise to talk about what the March 2026 update actually means in practice.

They explore where AI is genuinely delivering value for cyber professionals, from automating compliance mapping and vendor assessments to streamlining pen test reporting and SOC triage. But they are equally candid about the risks: the erosion of foundational skills as junior roles get outsourced to AI, the creeping fatigue of reviewing outputs at scale, and the danger of skipping straight to full automation without the expertise to validate what the machine is doing.

The conversation also tackles bigger picture concerns unique to Australia, sovereign AI capability, the risk of a brain drain to the US, and whether a small country can afford to decentralise its AI infrastructure. Toby closes with a sharp reminder for government CISOs: AI is just another system, and how people use it matters far more than the certifications attached to it.

00:00 Episode Trailer

01:01 Chainguard ad

01:28 Intro and the March 2026 ISM update

03:00 AI hype vs real world utility

05:00 Governance and compliance use cases

08:00 Vendor assessments and knowledge base automation

11:00 Skill erosion and the junior roles question

14:00 AI in pen testing: reporting, scoping and customer experience

17:30 The maturity model for AI adoption

21:00 Vibe coding, slop assurance and fatigue at scale

25:00 Agents watching agents and the bot vs bot future

28:30 Australian AI sovereignty and the brain drain risk

32:00 Top tip for government CISOs on AI risk

35:00 Shadow AI and DNS log visibility

37:00 Closing remarks

🐙 Secured is grateful to be sponsored and supported by Chainguard.

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. Get hardened, secure, production-ready builds so your team can ship faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk. Download your free CVE Reduction Assessment at https://dayone.fm/chainguard

To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.

Tara Whitehead is Security Engagement Manager at MYOB. Prior to becoming a cybersecurity specialist, Tara had an eclectic career, including working in advertising and international relations. In this episode Tara chats with Cole about how her non-technical background has in many ways been an asset working in security, leading change management in large enterprises, the importance of great communication skills, and plenty more.

7:15 - Tara's first days in AppSec

10:00 - How to influence people

12:30 - Why we should dial back on the doomsday conversation

14:10 - Find your change champions

21:30 - Is a non-technical background help or hindrance?

23:30 - Communication and influencing key skills

26:00 - Communicating with execs

28:20 - Rapid fire questions

🐙 Secured is grateful to be sponsored and supported by Chainguard.

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. Get hardened, secure, production-ready builds so your team can ship faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk. Download your free CVE Reduction Assessment at https://dayone.fm/chainguard

To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.

Mentioned in this episode:

Download your free CVE Reduction Assessment

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. Get hardened, secure, production-ready builds so your team can ship faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk.

December 2025 - Chainguard

Welcome back to the FNDN Series, where we continue our deep dive into startup compensation with industry leaders from across the startup world. In our conversation with James Seechurn, author of What Pay Costs and Nothing Left to Take Away, we challenge everything you thought you knew about compensation. James dismantles the myths behind pay for performance models, merit cycles, and competency frameworks while exploring why companies fail to pay people fairly. We dive into the tension between chaos and control in startups, examine the future of work in an AI-driven economy, and discuss how participative workforces and employee ownership can transform company culture. Stick around for one of the most eye-opening conversations about compensation you'll ever hear.

James Alexander Seechurn is an author and advisor specializing in sales compensation, incentives, and the design of reward systems. He advises companies on how pay, job architecture, and performance systems shape behavior, culture, and long-term outcomes. James is the author of Nothing Left to Take Away and What Pay Costs, where he challenges conventional pay-for-performance thinking and draws on research, history, and real-world examples to rethink how organizations motivate people.

Chapters:

00:44 Guest Introduction: James Seechurn

02:26 The Balance of Chaos and Control in Startups

07:04 Pay Transparency and the Failure of Fair Compensation

11:35 Why Companies Haven't Paid People Fairly

16:23 Making the Economic Case for Fair Pay

20:43 Innovation Failures: BlackBerry, Google, and Kodak

26:45 Employee Ownership vs VC-Backed Models

31:35 The Problems with Merit Cycles and Pay for Performance

37:11 Why Competency Frameworks Infantilize Employees

43:22 Career Progression as the True Reward

48:37 Pay Tiers and Living Wages: A Better Approach

56:21 Peer-to-Peer Rewards and Participative Workforces

1:03:57 Advice for Startup Leaders: Trust Your People

1:12:39 The Future of Work in a Stagnant Wage Environment

1:21:02 Fractional Work and the Possible Return of Unions

1:27:21 The Executive Pay Problem

1:33:35 The Role of a Great CEO

Connect with James

Visit: LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-seechurn/ 

Guest: James Seechurn

Resources Mentioned

Books:

Companies Mentioned:

Concepts:

More FNDN Episodes:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4GeBIeZOKrFxG1oiiPxmiM 

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fndn-series/id1794263484