Day One®

Building a Company of AI Super Workers with Tracy St. Dic, Chief People & Talent Officer at Zapier

Description:

Welcome back to the FNDN Series, where we continue our deep dive into startup people and reward practices, with industry leaders from across the startup world.

In our conversation with Tracy St. Dic, Head of Talent at Zapier, we explore how one of the world's most AI-forward companies transformed its culture, hiring process, and compensation philosophy around AI fluency. We take a deep dive into Zapier's AI Fluency Framework, how it has reshaped hiring, onboarding, and performance management, and how leadership balances rewarding AI-driven impact without chasing a "flash-in-the-pan" trend.”

Join Startup People Summit, a one-day virtual conference designed for startup People leaders who want practical insight, honest conversations and proven approaches to scaling their People function — get your ticket here: www.startuppeoplesummit.com 

Chapters:

00:46 Guest Introduction: Tracy St. Dic, Head of Talent at Zapier
01:56 Day One: Zapier's "Code Red" Moment with AI
04:39 Change Management 101: Getting Buy-In Across the Company
07:16 Why AI Transformation Landed with the People Team
10:27 Retraining Your Brain: Trigger-Action Thinking
10:46 Building the AI Fluency Framework (V1 to V2)
14:39 Measuring ROI: Efficiency, Quality, and Employee Experience
18:11 Token Maxing vs. Value Maxing
19:57 Hiring and Onboarding Overhaul for AI Fluency
25:23 Sticking Points: Candidate Pools and Hiring Manager Buy-In
26:39 Onboarding in an AI-Fluent Workspace
32:09 Should AI-Fluent Talent Be Paid More?
37:28 Interpreting Industry Layoffs Framed Around AI
40:15 Durable Skills vs. Technical Skills in Hiring
42:49 The Future of Manager Roles: Player-Coaches vs. Flatter Orgs
45:23 Advice for Early-Career Professionals
48:09 Closing Advice: Get Hands-On-Keyboard

Connect with Tracy

Visit:
https://zapier.com/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-stdic/?isSelfProfile=false 

Company Mentioned:

Zapier - Automation and AI company where Tracy leads talent strategy and built the AI Fluency Framework

More FNDN Episodes:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4GeBIeZOKrFxG1oiiPxmiM
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fndn-series/id1794263484

Dan Westgarth has spent 7 years helping build Deel from a contractor invoicing tool into one of the most valuable HR and payroll platforms in the world, and he did it after cutting his teeth as an early operator at Revolut. As COO, he sits across nearly every function the AI conversation touches: finance, sales, engineering, and the sheer operational load of running a company at global scale.

In this conversation, Dan gets specific on AI and Ops. He walks through the internal tool that takes a bug ticket, writes the fix, and opens its own pull request for an engineer to review. He talks through what he actually looks for when hiring, and the future of SaaS isn't dead, but there is about to be a lot more competition.

We traverse through a funny detour into Dan's own weekend coding habit (his laptop did not enjoy….), a rundown of which AI tool he reaches for and when, and an answer to "what would you build this weekend”

Listen for a leading operator's view of AI adoption at scale

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open, the AI agent that writes its own code

00:46 Show intro, Deel's sponsorship, and what's ahead

02:03 Sponsor break, Deel

02:30 What Deel actually does

03:14 Rapid AI hot takes, finance roles, human oversight, hardware, sports, and the World Cup

09:29 Why Deel keeps winning after seven years

10:00 How the product evolved from contractor invoicing to a full HR platform

11:28 What Dan looks for when hiring

13:06 Leaving Revolut for Deel

14:17 Sponsor break, Deel

14:57 The YC Winter 2019 connection

15:49 Setting targets and building momentum

16:43 Where AI helps the sales team, and where it can't

19:20 Should AI handle your email

21:03 AI meeting assistants, pros and cons

22:53 What makes an A+ engineer in 2026

23:37 Inside DCA, Deel's self-writing code agent

25:55 Breaking into new international markets

28:34 B2C versus B2B expansion

30:16 The cost of not using a platform like Deel

33:01 What keeps Dan up at night about AI agents

33:29 Akai, and scaling operations without growing headcount

36:15 Dan's own weekend coding experiment

37:26 Rapid fire, is the SaaS apocalypse real

39:48 The physical Deel Card and crypto payroll

42:23 What is a stablecoin

43:02 Which AI tools Dan actually reaches for

44:51 If Dan built one AI project this weekend

46:45 Closing thoughts and where to find Dan

47:08 Deel's new Arsenal FC sponsorship

48:41 Georgie's weekly AI newsletter

The junior engineer used to be the safe first hire. Cloë Stanbridge says AI just made that job disappear, and that's only the start of what's rewriting tech hiring right now.

In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree, one of Australia's most active venture capital firms. Cloë spends her days helping early-stage founders make their first engineering hires and helping later-stage companies scale their teams, work she's done from both sides, having previously led talent through a hypergrowth stretch at SafetyCulture and embedded inside scaling companies at The Lab17. They get into what actually makes a founder an "outlier" worth backing, why some founders eventually have to admit they've become the bottleneck in their own company, why the traditional junior engineer role is disappearing, and how Airtree's new Frontiers program is drawing hundreds of applications from engineers ready to go out on their own.

It's a hiring-trenches conversation full of specific, hard-won detail: the real numbers behind scaling a team from 60 to 350 people, why some recruiters place better talent because they simply know the team better, the AI tools on both sides of the hiring desk, and the line that sums up what's actually scarce in tech right now: everyone can build, not everyone can sell.

0:00 Cold open: why the junior engineer is disappearing

0:40 What this episode covers

1:40 Welcome: Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree

1:56 A day in the life of a VC talent lead

2:10 Investing from pre-seed to growth stage

2:57 How talent gets involved at each stage

4:15 What makes a founder an "outlier"

5:02 Hiring the first few engineers

5:48 Case study: scaling a young founder's team

7:39 When a technical founder gets pulled in every direction

9:01 Hiring junior engineers in the age of AI

11:03 Why "junior" now means doing mid-level work

12:05 The fear of hiring someone more senior than you

13:02 When founders step back into R&D

13:32 Zero-to-one vs. scaling personalities

14:08 Inside Airtree's Frontiers program

15:24 Why engineers are leaving big companies to found startups

15:57 Retention, ESOP, and leaner teams

16:45 Why managers now need to be hands-on architects

17:25 Why no job is safe from redundancy anymore

18:39 The squeeze on middle management

19:34 Hiring people leaders too late

21:34 What actually keeps people "sticky"

21:58 Leadership lessons from Brené Brown and Kim Scott

22:41 Embedding inside scale-ups at The Lab17

25:15 Setting a new hire up to succeed, or fail

27:49 How the market flipped after COVID

28:21 When a huge engineer salary is worth it

31:08 Competing with Silicon Valley salaries

31:37 How Linktree built culture as a differentiator

32:52 Cash versus flexibility in a cost-of-living crisis

33:40 Being upfront about the grind before they sign

35:20 Remote work and the culture question

36:55 Why go-to-market matters more than ever

37:46 Expanding into the US market

40:10 Do founders have to relocate for funding?

41:34 Bringing Australian talent back home

42:36 From 60 to 350: scaling at SafetyCulture

47:04 Why recruiters need to know "their dog's name"

47:46 Being a thought partner, not a salesperson

48:47 Hiring for potential over a checklist

50:39 Why problem-solving beats a technical checklist

51:47 How AI is changing technical interviews

53:38 Trial days: hiring by actually working together

55:25 Screening out "AI slop" in applications

56:21 Spotting an AI-written cover letter

57:34 Using AI without losing the human element

57:52 Where voice agents fit and where they don't

58:39 The AI tools Cloë uses to research candidates

59:25 Cloë's top 3 AI skills for recruiting

1:00:45 James's AI-powered morning brief

1:01:58 Wrap-up and thanks

1:02:11 James's takeaways from the episode

Cloë Stanbridge is Talent Lead at Airtree, where she partners with the firm's portfolio to connect founders with top talent, build scalable hiring processes, and develop playbooks that support sustainable growth. Before Airtree, she spent over four years at The Lab17, embedding inside scaling companies including Linktree and Immutable to build out their hiring practices, and led talent through a hypergrowth stretch at SafetyCulture, taking the engineering team from around 60 people to 350 in two years.

• Cloë Stanbridge · Airtree · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloestanbridge/
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au/
• NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au/
• Day One: https://dayone.fm/

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

If you've ever felt like you're not a "real" Founder because you're not chasing unicorn status, this episode is your permission slip to build differently.

Jodie Imam has done almost everything you can do in the Australian startup ecosystem. She co-founded Occasional Butler and went head to head with Airtasker (who eventually acquired her), opened depo8, one of Melbourne's first coworking spaces, and now runs Tractor Ventures, the revenue-based funding company backing the Founders who don't want to ride the VC rocket. And it all started at age 12 with a business called The Ironing Lady.

You'll hear the moment at Ericsson that convinced Jodie she could never trust a corporation with her future, and the trade she made to escape it: her car space for a job with fashion designer Leona Edmiston, working weeks for free to prove herself. She's honest about what that costs, and why she tells anyone changing direction that you can't expect a corporate wage while you do it.

Then there's the Occasional Butler story, including the very first job posted on the platform (a $5 gig to eat a packet of Doritos, planted by a rival you might have heard of), the Gumtree hack that finally unlocked their flywheel, and the raise-or-sell decision she faced while pregnant with her third child.

Jodie also opens up about the journaling moment that led to Tractor Ventures (she wrote "I want to work with Matt Allen one day" and he messaged her that same day), the EOS framework and visionary-integrator split that transformed how she and Matt run the company, and the spiritual awakening after her divorce that has her exploring goddess rituals and witchcraft alongside running a venture funding business.

Stay to the end to hear why Founders are whole humans, and why you can absolutely manage millions and pull tarot cards in the same week.

Find Jodie

Jodie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodieimam/

Tractor Ventures: https://www.tractorventures.com/

Mentioned in this episode

Rocket Fuel - the book behind the visionary and integrator split Jodie describes

Join the Aussie Founders Club

The Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.com

Want to partner with Life After Launch?

Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-us

00:00 Cold open and welcome to Life After Launch

01:05 Megan's disclaimers: buying the gear, timing references, and learning to stop saying "yes"

02:18 Introducing Jodie Imam

03:11 The Ironing Lady at 12: where the independence drive began

04:00 Watching Ericsson make 30-year veterans redundant, and the seed it planted

05:13 Trading a car space for a job: nine years growing Leona Edmiston from 3 people to 100

09:17 The owner's mentality: why Jodie told her bosses "I have to feel like it's my business"

10:26 Babies as the catalyst: leaving to start Occasional Butler with her husband

12:39 Selling the house, moving to Melbourne, and going all in on two businesses with two babies

14:47 The first job ever posted: a $5 Doritos prank from a familiar rival

16:00 The Gumtree hack that finally kicked the flywheel

18:23 Building too much before testing, and why launching feels like standing on stage naked

20:09 The exit story: the capital-raising mistake that cost months, and the board move that worked

23:16 Selling to Airtasker while pregnant with baby number three

24:51 Setting up Innovation Bay in Melbourne

27:02 COVID kills depo8 overnight, and Tractor Ventures is born from a lockdown living room

33:06 The journal entry and the WhatsApp message: how Jodie and Matt Allen teamed up

34:23 How Tractor actually works: the first $2 million, revenue-based finance, and the funding stack

37:26 Why Tractor only hires senior people

39:54 Rocket Fuel, EOS, and the visionary vs integrator dynamic (plus seagull management)

44:01 Life after exit and divorce: spiritual awakening, goddess rituals, and witchcraft

47:41 Quickfire: what's inspiring Jodie and the ecosystem shoutout

49:16 Outro

Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way, and the founder of IMVU and the Long-Term Stock Exchange. His new book, Incorruptible, examines why companies drift from their mission once investors and boards take over, and what founders and early investors can do to prevent it.

In this episode, Cheryl and Maxine unpack what Eric calls "financial gravity," the force that pulls companies toward extractive, value-destroying behavior even when everyone believes they're pursuing profit. Eric explains why many widely taught governance best practices are actually shareholder-value destroying, and why the earliest stage of a company is the easiest time to build in protections against this drift.

You'll also hear Eric break down the "spiritual holding company" structure, using Novo Nordisk's century-old nonprofit foundation as an example of why mission-guardian structures make companies far more likely to survive long term. The conversation covers why founders get talked out of protective provisions until it's suddenly too late, and Eric shares the real story of a startup that took a million dollars from Purdue Pharma to push opioids to doctors, and why it destroyed the company.

He closes with his Big Cojones moment: a board meeting early in his career where he expected to be fired for refusing to abandon his unconventional methods, and the lesson that "harder is easier" when you stand for something you believe in.

00:00 – Intro

04:10 – Eric's first investment: putting his own money into IMVU's friends and family round

09:15 – From Lean Startup to Incorruptible: why it's always felt like one continuous project to Eric

17:40 – The tortilla company, private equity, and why "pricing power" explains so much bad behavior

21:30 – Why so-called governance best practices are often value destroying

25:50 – Naming the problem: financial gravity and why our grandparents would have called it corruption

30:20 – What founders and early investors can actually do at the earliest stage

36:45 – The Olympic athlete analogy: why protective structures only work if built in early

41:10 – The spiritual holding company explained through Novo Nordisk's origin story

48:30 – Why companies rated for "good governance" have underperformed since 2008

52:15 – The Purdue Pharma story and how a million dollars destroyed a company

58:40 – Big Cojones moment: the board meeting Eric thought would get him fired

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.

___

Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.

As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.

The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.

As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartree

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

Mentioned in this episode:

Pear Tree

If you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost.

Deel x PX_Script 1

Pear Tree

If you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost.

Lucas Cantor has an unusual claim on the AI conversation. In 2019, Huawei asked him to finish Schubert's Unfinished Symphony using artificial intelligence, and he did it. He's an Emmy-winning composer who has worked on every Olympics since 2002, produced a cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World with Lorde, and now invests in music technology. His new book is Unfinished: The Role of the Artist in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

In this episode Georgie Healy gets Lucas to take apart the story we're all being told about AI. Why he thinks nobody actually knows what the term even means. Why every single person he asks assumes AI can do the job they're not an expert in, and can't do the job they are. Why the claim that AI democratizes creativity is a fallacy sold by AI companies, and what it actually democratizes instead. Why B2B SaaS isn't dead, and who benefits from you believing it is. And why the music industry, supposedly murdered by Napster, is bigger now than it was before.

If you build, market, or operate anything, this is a useful hour of pressure testing. Lucas isn't a doomer and he isn't an evangelist. He's someone who has been inside the technology long enough to tell the difference between what it does and what it's sold as.

Recorded ahead of his first trip to Australia for BIGSOUND - which is September 1st - 4th in Brisbane!

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open

00:54 Welcome, and who Lucas Cantor is

02:49 The AI hack: stem separation

04:14 Taylor Swift's wedding

04:55 BIGSOUND, and the fear around AI in music

06:23 Why the purist argument falls apart

07:25 Tuning has drifted since the Renaissance

10:02 Composer, producer, author, investor

11:16 What Suno is, and the ethics problem

12:20 Why all music sounds better now

15:33 What it actually means to have your music stolen

16:56 Covering Everybody Wants to Rule the World with Lorde

19:19 Source Connect, Audio Movers, and remote studios

20:22 The fallacy that AI democratizes creativity

22:38 Black Swan, conductors, and the war on expertise

24:26 The doctor who said AI could write a pop song

27:38 Why he called himself a Luddite

30:18 Hans Zimmer's studio, and saying yes to Huawei

32:34 Finishing Schubert's Unfinished Symphony

37:00 "I don't think anybody knows what AI is"

38:49 Every AI agent ad shows something nobody needs

42:14 Hot take: is B2B SaaS dead?

45:13 AI is a story, and that's the problem

46:25 What actually wins in music tech

49:28 Amusing, but not amazing

50:20 Ben Affleck, Scorsese, and AI in the creative process

53:30 Two Emmys and a coach of the year award

55:36 The one takeaway from Unfinished

57:33 Georgie's Substack, Attention Is All I Need

$320 billion flows through Australia's commercial construction industry every year — and far too much of it still moves on spreadsheets and re-keyed purchase orders. Mitchell Baker spent 12 years inside that machine as a contract administrator — on John Holland's $250M shopping-centre rebuild, and on Facebook's £150M London HQ with Kier — watching well-paid people burn their days copying data that already existed.

So he built Claimstack, a workflow platform that follows the money from tender to final account across the whole contractor chain. In this special Melbourne edition of Pick My Brain, recorded at Cremorne Digital Hub, Alan Jones digs into the genuinely hard part: selling new software into an industry famous for resisting it, and coaching a solo, self-taught founder on when — and how — to stop wearing every hat.

You'll also hear the vibe-coding origin story (DataButton, then Cursor, then Claude Code in VS Code), how Mitch is funding the dream by selling off possessions while his partner foots the bills, the milestone-based "startup leave" deal that kept the relationship healthy, and the 15% ESOP he carved out of his friends-and-family round to lure senior talent.

Time Stamps

00:00 – Intro: $320B a year, still moving on spreadsheets

02:07 – What Claimstack does: one platform for the whole contractor chain

02:36 – The $320 billion inefficiency it targets

03:35 – 12 years in the trenches: John Holland and Facebook's London HQ

05:32 – Live in market: onboarding the first pilot customers

05:55 – Vibe-coding it solo: DataButton, Cursor, then Claude Code

06:45 – Why he didn't wait for a co-founder

07:43 – Funding the dream, and the deal with his partner

11:08 – Selling into an industry that resists new software

14:26 – Building a sales team without losing credibility

15:37 – Marketing yourself with a LinkedIn feature series

17:48 – A solo founder's leadership gaps, and the 15% ESOP

19:26 – Wrap-up

Resources

🔗 Claimstack – https://claimstack.com.au

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

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

Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders.

It's why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast.

Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone

Episode Summary

$320 billion a year flows through Australian commercial construction, and much of it still moves on spreadsheets and re-keyed data. Mitchell Baker spent 12 years as a contract administrator — including on Facebook's London HQ — before building Claimstack to follow the money from tender to final account across the whole contractor chain. In this Melbourne edition of Pick My Brain, Alan Jones coaches Mitch on selling software into an industry that resists change, and on when a solo, self-taught founder should start building a team.

Time Stamps

00:00 – Intro: $320B a year, still moving on spreadsheets

02:07 – What Claimstack does: one platform for the whole contractor chain

02:36 – The $320 billion inefficiency it targets

03:35 – 12 years in the trenches: John Holland and Facebook's London HQ

05:32 – Live in market: onboarding the first pilot customers

05:55 – Vibe-coding it solo: DataButton, Cursor, then Claude Code

06:45 – Why he didn't wait for a co-founder

07:43 – Funding the dream, and the deal with his partner

11:08 – Selling into an industry that resists new software

14:26 – Building a sales team without losing credibility

15:37 – Marketing yourself with a LinkedIn feature series

17:48 – A solo founder's leadership gaps, and the 15% ESOP

19:26 – Wrap-up

Resources

🔗 Claimstack – https://claimstack.com.au

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:

Deel x PX_Script 1

Deel x PX_Script 2

Deel x PX_Script 1

Most organisations are asking which AI model they should use. Patrick McQuaid thinks that is the wrong conversation.

Patrick is Group Head of Data, Analytics & AI at NGM Group. He joins James MacDonald to explain how leaders can build practical AI capability without getting trapped by hype, vendor lock-in or an endless cycle of new tools.

They discuss how NGM approaches AI inside a regulated banking environment, where privacy, risk and customer trust make it impossible to turn a weekend prototype straight into production. Patrick explains why teams need both strong foundations and useful short-term wins, why the people closest to the work should own their technology costs, and where generative AI should not be used for decision-making.

The conversation also explores what AI means for technical careers. Patrick shares why he hires for attitude, curiosity and problem-solving ability, rather than waiting for candidates with years of experience in technology that has only just emerged. He and James discuss the continuing value of junior engineers, the rise of AI enablement and orchestration roles, and the human skills that remain difficult to automate.

If you are responsible for introducing AI into an established organisation, hiring a technical team or preparing your own career for the next wave of change, this episode offers a grounded alternative to the fear and hype.

• 0:00 — Stop arguing about AI models
• 0:46 — What this episode covers
• 1:15 — Meet Patrick McQuaid
• 1:38 — Leading experts without being the deepest technical expert
• 4:37 — Deployment, flexibility and avoiding model lock-in
• 6:45 — Vibe coding versus production inside a regulated bank
• 8:30 — Shadow AI and choosing enterprise tools
• 10:10 — Junior engineers and hiring for attitude
• 16:15 — Who should own AI and token costs?
• 19:34 — Building, buying or partnering for AI capability
• 21:21 — Where generative AI does not belong
• 25:41 — Joining NGM during a major data transformation
• 30:17 — Building foundations and delivering quick wins
• 34:20 — Planning in a fast-moving AI market
• 35:45 — Agentic tools and the value of staying flexible
• 37:04 — Can specialist software companies defend their advantage?
• 39:18 — What organisations should and should not build themselves
• 41:33 — Technology's role in a human business
• 49:44 — The human skills AI cannot replace
• 52:33 — What AI could mean for the next generation
• 54:33 — Remote work, relationships and learning together
• 58:35 — Cutting through AI FOMO and LinkedIn hype
• 1:00:27 — The AI advantage for smaller organisations
• 1:01:24 — Managing legal, financial and reputational risk
• 1:06:43 — AI sycophancy and why chatbots agree with you
• 1:07:57 — The skills technology professionals should build now
• 1:09:26 — AI enablement and orchestration roles
• 1:12:46 — James's key takeaway

Patrick McQuaid GAICD is Group Head of Data, Analytics & AI at NGM Group, one of Australia's largest customer-owned banking groups. NGM Group operates the Greater Bank and Newcastle Permanent brands.

• Patrick McQuaid — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcquaid/
• NGM Group: https://www.ngmgroup.com.au/
• National AI Centre: https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-innovation/technology/artificial-intelligence/national-ai-centre
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au/ · NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au/
• Day One: https://dayone.fm/

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

If you've ever talked yourself out of reaching out to someone because they're "too successful to reply", this episode will change how you send your next message.

Dom Pym co-founded Up, one of Australia's fastest growing digital banks, and has personally invested $85 million into the Australian startup ecosystem. But he started with nothing. Dom tells Megan and Geo about growing up in a family that lost everything, and the "golden purse" his mum kept that somehow always had just enough in it, a lesson in abundance he's carried into every company since.

You'll hear the full story of how Dom and his co-founder walked into Bendigo Bank asking for money and walked out bidding to rebuild their entire banking system, with a team of two and zero banking experience. You'll learn why he treats confidence and honesty as two separate skills you need at the same time, the exact cold outreach tactics that have actually worked on him (including one that involves sticky-taping a $1 coin to a letter), and why he believes chasing busy, successful people a hundred times is a feature, not a flaw.

Dom also shares the two policy ideas he's pushing right now, free universal childcare and a dollar-for-dollar rebuild of the R&D tax incentive, that he reckons could make Australia a world superpower.

Stay to the end for the quickfire round, where Dom reveals the plane crash he survived in 1999 and the one interview question that lets him see straight into a Founder's soul.

Find Dom

Dom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dompym/

Up: https://up.com.au/

Euphemia: https://euphemia.com/

Join the Aussie Founders Club

The Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.com

Want to partner with Life After Launch?

Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-us

Time Stamps

00:00 Cold open and welcome to Life After Launch

01:17 Introducing Dom Pym

02:33 The childhood moments that shaped Dom: footy, family, and sliding doors

06:09 The golden purse: building an abundance mindset from nothing

08:20 The three people who taught Dom how money really works

11:03 Why you should chase successful people a hundred times (the Marty Howell story)

14:15 The most creative cold outreach Dom has ever received

16:07 The $1 coin letter and why positive affirmation actually works

19:19 The Bendigo Bank story: two people, supreme confidence, and a live demo that broke the rules

26:26 Confidence vs honesty: crossing ThoughtWorks off the whiteboard

29:13 Up's world firsts: Afterpay, Apple Pay instant issuance, and Google Cloud

31:05 Comparing your bank to Instagram: the activity feed that banks worldwide copied

32:48 Fixing Australia: free universal childcare and rebuilding the R&D tax incentive

37:38 1.4 million customers and the countdown to overtaking the big banks

40:30 Quickfire: the 1999 Qantas crash, the ecosystem stars you should know, and the question that reveals a Founder's soul

46:56 Outro

Novartis has agreed to acquire Myricx Bio for up to US$1.5 billion, approximately A$2.2 billion, in a major outcome for a UK biotech company with deep Australian venture backing.

In the inaugural What the Health Wrap, host Emily Casey is joined by Dr Jackie Rabec, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at ThinkMD.ai, and Dr Prashanth Rajan, Associate at Brandon Capital, to work through what the fortnight's biggest healthcare stories actually mean.

Prashanth explains how Myricx Bio evolved from small-molecule science into a new class of antibody-drug conjugate payloads. He discusses why the proposed acquisition matters for cancer therapeutics, investors and Australia's biotech ecosystem, while cautioning that the ultimate test will still come through clinical development.

The conversation then turns to artificial intelligence. Jackie argues that healthcare companies need more than a powerful model. They need a genuine problem, sustainable economics, clinical workflow integration and the change management required for adoption. Prashanth applies the same test to AI drug discovery, where molecular designs must still survive laboratory testing and clinical trials.

The panel also examines proposed changes to Australia's R&D Tax Incentive. Under the current proposal, the offset would be refundable for eligible businesses younger than ten years and non-refundable for older businesses. Prashanth explains why that distinction could affect biotech companies just as expensive clinical programs begin to scale, potentially pushing investment, clinical activity and company growth offshore.

AdvanCell's US$315 million Series D offers a timely example of what sustained local support can produce. The company is advancing a Lead-212 targeted alpha therapy for metastatic prostate cancer while expanding its isotope supply and manufacturing infrastructure.

Finally, the panel asks whether preventive health and longevity represent the future of care or another layer available mainly to people who can afford it. Everlab's A$65 million Series A and Neko Health's US$700 million Series C demonstrate growing demand, but questions remain about equity and whether earlier intervention can reduce pressure on public healthcare systems.

Dr Jackie Rabec is co-founder and Chief Product Officer at ThinkMD.ai, which builds offline-capable clinical decision-support tools for frontline health workers. She previously worked at Google and was Head of Product at Heidi Health.

Dr Prashanth Rajan is an Associate at Brandon Capital and leads its activities in New South Wales. He has a background in bioinformatics, biochemistry and molecular biology.

00:00 Introducing the What the Health Wrap

08:07 Myricx Bio's proposed US$1.5 billion acquisition

11:13 Antibody-drug conjugates and Australian biotech

15:35 AI in healthcare beyond administration

24:50 The promise and limits of AI drug discovery

28:46 Proposed changes to Australia's R&D Tax Incentive

35:22 AdvanCell's US$315 million Series D

42:25 Preventive health, longevity and primary care

53:28 Rapid fire: platform risk, companies to watch and useful resources

ThinkMD.ai: https://www.thinkmd.ai/

Dr Prashanth Rajan at Brandon Capital: https://brandoncapital.vc/team_member/prashanth-rajan/

Myricx Bio acquisition announcement: https://brandoncapital.vc/2026/07/06/brandon-capital-announces-agreement-for-novartis-to-acquire-portfolio-company-myricx-bio-to-advance-new-class-of-cancer-therapeutics/

Australian Treasury's R&D Tax Incentive proposal: https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-06/p2026-781365_0.pdf

Claude for Healthcare: https://www.anthropic.com/news/healthcare-life-sciences

Chai Discovery's US$400 million Series C: https://www.chaidiscovery.com/news/series-c

AdvanCell's US$315 million Series D: https://svhealthinvestors.com/news/advancell-closes-us-315-million-oversubscribed-series-d-financing-to-advance-targeted-alpha-therapies-and-expand-clinical-and-commercial-manufacturing-infrastructure

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

Neko Health's US$700 million Series C: https://www.nekohealth.com/se/en/press/neko-health-raises-usd700m-series-c-ahead-of-us-launch

Emily Casey is the founder of What the Health and host of the What the Health Wrap, making major developments in health technology and innovation easier to understand.

The What the Health Wrap is brought to you by What the Health in partnership with Tenmile Ventures.

What the Health is part of Day One Network, the podcast and media network from W2D1 Media: https://dayone.fm/