Day One®

Five years of health innovation coverage, millions of reads, and a community of 11,000+.

Now finally, What the Health has a podcast too — bringing the content to convos you can now listen to on the go and in video. Host Emily Casey brings the founders, clinicians, investors, operators, and policymakers shaping the future of health into the room for candid, useful, and occasionally unruly conversations.

This trailer offers a first taste of the questions the show will tackle. What happens when billions flow into biotech while policy struggles to keep up? How reliable are the latest AI health tools? What can at-home screening change for patients and the wider health system? And when everyone is talking about AI, where is the real advantage?

What The Health goes beyond the headlines to work out what is real, what is hype, what is worth paying attention to and why it matters.

Expect:

• candid conversations with leading minds in health innovation
• clear explanations without the health-speak
• sharp takes backed by facts
• practical context on the companies, ideas and policy shifts changing healthcare
• a smarter way to stay ahead without drowning in noise

What The Health is more than a podcast. It is a newsletter, events platform and private community built for people who want to stay switched on to health and health tech.

Subscribe to the newsletter and join the What The Health community: https://www.whatthehealth.io/

Follow the show: https://dayone.fm/show/what-the-health-with-emily-casey/

Brought to you by Tenmile.

Tenmile partners with teams tackling major unmet needs in human health, helping turn bold ideas and breakthrough science into companies that can improve lives.

Learn more: https://www.tenmile.com/

What The Health is part of the Day One Network and produced by W2D1 Media.

This podcast is for general information and commentary and is not medical advice.

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 Adam Weber, Executive Coach to CEOs, Chief People Officers, and other C-suite leaders, we unpack what it truly takes to thrive at the executive level. From the five signals of great executives to navigating dysfunction when the CEO is part of the problem, Adam shares the discipline and intentionality behind senior leadership — and what aspiring CPOs need to start building today.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to the FNDN Series
01:05 Guest Introduction: Adam Weber
01:27 The Current Landscape for CPOs on Executive Teams
03:58 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome as an Executive
05:09 Preparing for Pushback Before the Meeting
06:34 Tying People Initiatives to Business Priorities
07:14 The Transition from VP of People to CPO
08:03 The Risk of Over-Softening at the Executive Level
10:23 The Five Signals of Great Executives
13:42 Navigating Dysfunctional Executive Teams
15:08 When the CEO Is the Problem
17:38 Coming to the CEO with Solutions, Not Just Problems
22:54 How to Script Difficult Conversations with the CEO
24:00 Leadership Is a Discipline: Don't Bury the Lead
27:26 How to Prepare for the Path to Executive Leadership
30:46 Taking Bold Swings and Standing Behind Them
36:08 The Evolving Remit of the CPO and AI Transformation
41:31 Knowing When to Say No to Expanding Your Function
43:22 The Human Element That AI Can't Replace
49:17 Final Words for Aspiring People Leaders

Connect with Adam Weber

Visit: https://adamweber.co https://linkedin.com/in/meetadam/

Resources Mentioned

People Mentioned: Christine Song — cited as an example of a CPO who says the hard things out loud Sarika — People leader responsible for AI workforce transformation Benjamin Langner — Guest on a previous FNDN episode discussing what not to use AI for

Quote Referenced: Danny Meyer, CEO of Shake Shack — "Business is problems."

Events: Startup People Summit 2026 — Sign up to the waitlist at startupeoplesummit.com

More FNDN Episodes:

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

CPO, ChiefPeopleOfficer, ExecutiveLeadership, PeopleOperations, StartupLeadership, ExecutiveCoaching, LeadershipDevelopment, FiveSignals, CandorAtWork, ExecutivePresence, StartupCompensation, PeopleAndCulture, AITransformation, WorkplaceLeadership, CPORole, LeadershipDiscipline, HRLeadership, StartupPeople, CareerGrowth, StartupBestPractices

Five years of health innovation coverage, millions of reads, and a community of 11,000+.

Now finally, What the Health has a podcast too — bringing the content to convos you can now listen to on the go and in video. Host Emily Casey brings the founders, clinicians, investors, operators, and policymakers shaping the future of health into the room for candid, useful, and occasionally unruly conversations.

This trailer offers a first taste of the questions the show will tackle. What happens when billions flow into biotech while policy struggles to keep up? How reliable are the latest AI health tools? What can at-home screening change for patients and the wider health system? And when everyone is talking about AI, where is the real advantage?

What The Health goes beyond the headlines to work out what is real, what is hype, what is worth paying attention to and why it matters.

Expect:

• candid conversations with leading minds in health innovation
• clear explanations without the health-speak
• sharp takes backed by facts
• practical context on the companies, ideas and policy shifts changing healthcare
• a smarter way to stay ahead without drowning in noise

What The Health is more than a podcast. It is a newsletter, events platform and private community built for people who want to stay switched on to health and health tech.

Subscribe to the newsletter and join the What The Health community: https://www.whatthehealth.io/

Follow the show: https://dayone.fm/show/what-the-health-with-emily-casey/

Brought to you by Tenmile.

Tenmile partners with teams tackling major unmet needs in human health, helping turn bold ideas and breakthrough science into companies that can improve lives.

Learn more: https://www.tenmile.com/

What The Health is part of the Day One Network and produced by W2D1 Media.

This podcast is for general information and commentary and is not medical advice.

Robin O'Connell spends his days inside LinkedIn's marketing and advertising team in Australia, working with founders and brands on content strategy - which makes him a rare voice on where AI genuinely helps marketers, and where it still falls flat. In this episode, Robin makes the case that the smartest move for any marketer right now is trying to replace parts of your own job with AI, just to find out fast what it can't do. His answer: strategy. AI can automate tactics at scale, but it still can't replace the judgement that comes from genuinely understanding a customer.

Georgie and Robin get into how brands actually stand out on LinkedIn (hint: it's not by looking like Apple), why comments and DMs are a better growth signal than impressions, and how to tell when AI-written content is quietly killing your credibility.

The standout story, though, is personal: Robin's dad Dennis, a serial entrepreneur in Dublin who lost his retail business during COVID, now runs a landscaping venture - and uses AI image generation on an iPad to show clients exactly what their garden will look like before a single spade hits the ground. It's one of the clearest, most human examples of AI actually changing how someone runs a small business.

Find Robin on LinkedIn for more on marketing, AI, and content strategy.

Watch this space.

Every great team she has ever seen shares one trait: they are comfortable with discomfort. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere has spent nearly 20 years building people and culture inside startups and global enterprises — and she thinks most of the AI conversation is quietly dodging the hard, human questions. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — people-and-culture leader and founder of Startup Flamingo — for a practitioner-to-practitioner conversation on how capable people actually build teams. They get into self-awareness as a muscle rather than a gift, why Australia's love of harmony quietly kills direct feedback, and the difference between a team that is genuinely high-performing and one that is just stressed and running fast off a cliff together. Then it turns to AI — not as weather to brace for, but as a tool you have to point somewhere. Are your people more productive, or just faster? What do you lose when you automate the uncomfortable parts of the job — the feedback loop, the one-on-one, the human connection — and who is a flattened, agent-run org actually built for? Claudia makes the case that AI should augment an already good team, that you have to build that team first, and that the leaders winning this moment are the ones asking better questions instead of racing to be first. It's a conversation about discomfort, storytelling, balanced teams, and keeping the human in a human organisation.

• 0:35 — The one trait every great team shares: comfortable with discomfort (plus self-awareness)
• 1:46 — Is self-awareness born or built? Temperament, empathy and psychological safety
• 3:28 — Why leaders dodge the hard conversation
• 3:59 — Cutting her teeth on GFC redundancies: directness and an American education
• 6:04 — Australia's harmony problem vs direct feedback
• 6:43 — What "high performance" actually means (and what it doesn't)
• 7:42 — The feedback loops we outsource because they're uncomfortable
• 9:17 — Protect the plan, or chase the Nazis? An Indiana Jones lesson for leaders
• 11:18 — Read fiction: storytelling, empathy and depersonalising feedback
• 14:35 — Praise the person, critique the work — and when to call it out
• 16:55 — Overconfident founders and the case for yin-and-yang teams
• 18:39 — Powers of Two: debunking the lone genius (Lincoln, Lennon & McCartney, Jobs & Woz)
• 23:13 — Hire for change, not to fit in
• 24:20 — The maths of a founding team: builder, organiser, learner
• 26:41 — Glue vs grease: does your team need cohesion or speed?
• 28:53 — Project or person? The metabolism of a team
• 29:47 — AI is a tool, not the weather
• 33:16 — The narrative vs the technology — and the Tickle Me Elmo problem
• 41:14 — Slow down to speed up: when the market rewards layoffs
• 42:32 — The CPO's dilemma: more productive, or just faster?
• 45:04 — When is the risk no longer worth it? (You're paying by the token)
• 48:21 — Longevity isn't impact: off-ramps and the retention vanity metric
• 49:52 — Is AI making the manager redundant?
• 52:54 — The automatic ball thrower: what you lose when you automate connection
• 58:31 — AI augments a great team — but you have to build that team first
• 59:18 — Departing advice: play the tape to the end, and be in the business you're in
• 1:03:32 — Purpose over "who gets there first" — go touch some grass

Claudia Barriga-Larriviere is a people-and-culture leader with nearly 20 years building teams across startups and global enterprises, and the founder of Startup Flamingo.

• Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — Startup Flamingo: startupflamingo.com
• James MacDonald — LinkedIn · NTP Talent (NewyTechPeople): ntptalent.com.au

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.

Ilana Elbaz was employee number five and the first go-to-market hire at Deel, helping scale the company from its early pivots through blockchain and payments to a business she helped grow from zero to hundreds of millions in ARR in just a few years. She's now an active angel investor and runs Deel's global pitch competition, which received tens of thousands of applications this year.

In this episode, Cheryl and Maxine unpack how operating inside one of the fastest-scaling companies in the world shapes the way Ilana evaluates founders as an investor. She breaks down her "3-star model" for backing companies (right infrastructure, right team, right timing, read from right to left), why she looks for founders with velocity and speed over founders who claim to have it all figured out, and why the biggest red flag at pre-seed is a founder who narrows their market too early.

You'll also hear why she pushes back on founders who insist on enterprise-only or single-market strategies before they even know their ICP, why treating international hiring as a growth problem rather than an HR problem is critical for founders building outside the US, and why Australian founders' instinct to think global from day one is a genuine advantage. Ilana shares what she learned scaling Deel's own go-to-market using the company's own product across dozens of countries, and why staying close to your first hundred customers matters more than shipping a polished product.

She closes with her Big Cojones moment: repeatedly landing alone in unfamiliar countries, from opening entities in Thailand to sourcing product in China at 19, with no support system and straight into meetings with lawyers she'd never met.

00:00 - Intro

04:15 – Ilana's first investment: buying Amazon stock at age 10 and the lesson she learned selling too early

09:30 – Why Ilana joined Deel as employee five, drawn in by the labor law and compliance nightmare of scaling internationally

14:05 – The 3-star model: right infrastructure, right team, right timing, and why it should be read backwards

17:50 – Why founders who claim to have it all figured out should be a pass

21:40 – The danger of narrowing your market too early at pre-seed

28:10 – Why treating global hiring as a growth problem, not an HR problem, changes everything

33:00 – What makes Australian founders well suited to thinking global from day one

36:45 – How to answer "what's your expansion plan" as a green flag for investors

40:20 – Inside Deel's global pitch competition: 35,000 applications and five investments

46:10 – Big Cojones moment: landing alone in unfamiliar countries to open new markets

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

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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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

Brought to you by 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: 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 https://dayone.fm/peartree

Brought to you by Deel. Founders scale faster on Deel — set up payroll in any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Learn more at https://deel.com/dayone

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 2

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.

Freddie McKenzie is the co-founder and CEO of Manifest, an AI platform that helps creative and marketing agencies capture the real value of their work without timesheets. Before Manifest, he built and exited VIVID Creative, an Auckland-based production agency behind campaigns for Jetstar and other major brands, and in this conversation with Georgie Healy he traces that journey and where he thinks AI agents, and the AI hype cycle, are actually heading.

Freddie shares his AI hack of stacking meeting transcripts to actually see progress over time, and explains why he refuses to automate the one interface he thinks matters most: his inbox. He unpacks why Manifest's CTO built a proprietary AI model instead of wrapping an off-the-shelf one, the real story behind Manifest's $2 million pre-seed raise in a tough funding market, and his take on why most companies experimenting with AI agents still can't get past their first prompt. He also makes the case that the so-called SaaS apocalypse is a myth, and shares his simple rule for founders chasing product-market fit: find the ugly problem, not the sexy one.

Mentioned in this episode:

Deel x PX_Post Intro

Australia is about to build guided missiles for the first time — and Kongsberg is doing it at Williamtown, in the Hunter. John Fry, Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia, joins James MacDonald for the first episode of Engineering in the Hunter to explain what's being built, why a 210-year-old Norwegian company chose Newcastle over 40 other sites, and what it means for the region: roughly 100 factory jobs, a supply chain that reaches far wider, and a genuine pathway from the University of Newcastle and TAFE into work being done on a world stage.

In this episode:

• What Kongsberg is building at Williamtown: the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile — two 5th-generation cruise missiles — in the company's first missile factory outside Norway, ever.
• The $850m the Commonwealth committed in August 2024 to manufacture and maintain those missiles in Australia, and why sovereign weapons production suddenly mattered after COVID and Ukraine.
• Why the Hunter beat 40 other sites — proximity to Orchard Hills, a port and an airbase, livability, and a good university and TAFE next door.
• How you stand up a missile factory on the other side of the world through a pandemic — a P&L from day one, defence-security accreditation, and building a supply chain from scratch.
• What NSM and JSM actually do — a stealthy imaging-infrared seeker, deck- or truck-launched, and a missile small enough to fit inside an F-35's internal weapons bay.
• The jobs: not just engineers — planning, supply chain, quality, IT, security, technicians — "the whole gamut," about 100 at the factory, with ~85% of the build spend flowing to Hunter businesses.
• Growing local talent: a first Newcastle-uni intern converting to a grad role, sponsoring the university's rocketry team, and how TAFE fits as technician demand ramps.
• Partnerships as the way into the Hunter — HunterNet, Multiplex, and the Thales tie-up behind StrikeMaster.
• What's next: Army's Long Range Fires down-select, counter-UAS and air-and-missile defence.

John Fry is Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia. A former Australian Army air-defence officer with a chemistry background and a Master of Science in Guided Weapon Systems, he spent nine years at Raytheon — where he was capture lead on the NASAMS program — before joining Kongsberg in 2019 as its inaugural general manager in Australia.

Register your interest via the Kongsberg careers page (kongsberg.com).

Chapters

0:00 "A company since 1814" — the cold open

1:00 Welcome to Engineering in the Hunter — and why Kongsberg

1:58 From Army air-defence officer to missile-maker

6:05 Kongsberg since 1814

7:11 Why Australia — the NASAMS win

8:47 Standing up in-country through COVID

10:55 Running a P&L from day one

12:25 What we're building: the NSM and JSM

15:31 The $850m sovereign-manufacturing commitment

18:20 The JSM — a strike missile that fits inside the F-35

20:20 Why the Hunter: 40 sites, Orchard Hills, Williamtown

23:23 The factory: Norway's blueprint, self-contained

26:38 The jobs — "the whole gamut," about 100 roles

28:31 Finding talent locally

30:05 Pathways: the Newcastle-uni intern and TAFE

32:15 Partnerships — HunterNet, Multiplex, StrikeMaster

35:24 What's next: Long Range Fires, counter-UAS

37:43 How to get in — Kongsberg careers and the grad program

Engineering in the Hunter is hosted by Melinda Sietsma with NTP Talent founder James MacDonald. James hosts this episode. Learn more at ntptalent.com.au.

Engineering in the Hunter 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.

Mark Samlal grew up as one of the only Indian families in a small Perth township, went on to co-found a payroll company from a secondhand desk in Singapore with his wife Samantha, and eventually listed it on the ASX as PayGroup. In 2022 Deel acquired the business in an all-cash deal worth $120M at a 143% premium to market. In this conversation Mark talks about the racism he faced growing up, the "4 or out the door" sales mentality that shaped his early career, what it actually feels like to run a public company, and why he's stayed on at Deel almost four years after the acquisition. He also opens up about the guilt of building a business while raising three daughters, and the pull he's feeling to reconnect with his roots in Fiji and India.

00:00 – Cold open: race, accountability, and the "4 or out the door" origin story

01:55 – Younger Mark: born in Fiji, his father's journey from teacher to social worker

09:23 – University, meeting Samantha, and the early grind in real estate

15:56 – Into telecom, then payroll software — learning on the job

21:43 – Meeting mentor Phil Cave and turning around Lendlease Employer Services

32:40 – Racism growing up and being "the only brown person in the room"

37:59 – The move to Singapore and building the Sharks Basketball community

43:13 – Running multiple businesses at once and bootstrapping PayAsia with Samantha

51:25 – Skipping VC/PE, and what it's really like leading a public company

1:05:36 – COVID, 3 acquisitions, and the road to the Deel deal

1:09:52 – The Deel acquisition: $120M all-cash, 143% premium

1:13:34 – Culture shock joining Deel, AI's impact on HR/payroll, and why he's stayed

1:27:03 – Raising 3 daughters, fatherhood, and business regrets

1:38:34 – The Pingyao story, undervaluing Asian entrepreneurs, and where he's headed next

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.

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

Mentioned in this episode:

Deel x PX_Script 1

Deel x PX_Script 2