Ben Thompson is the Founder and CEO of Employment Hero. The company is Australia's newest unicorn, recently announcing a funding round of $181 million, valuing the firm at $1.25 billion. Ben grew up in Frenchs Forrest in Sydney and finished his schooling in Armidale, rural NSW. After finishing law and economics at uni, Ben took up a number of tenures in Australia including with Sydney Futures Exchange and Perpetual before jumping on a flight to London where he was employed by Interactive Investor International and ran theirs and lastminute.com's IPO and then by UK's largest property portal, Right Move. After a number of years in London working and playing hard in the excitement of the dot-com boom, Ben and his (now) wife married and moved back to Sydney to raise their family. Simultaneously, Ben decided he never wanted to work for anyone again and so started his own business. Employment Hero currently services 80,000 SME customers, managing 750,000 thousand employees. With 52% of the world's GDP spent on wages within SME's, Employment Hero's audience is huge and growing as they work on big plans to expand.

Ian & Ben discuss:

* How Ben's father introduced him to a new world of HR clients and how Ben could help them

* Launching 3 start ups at once

* Being a remote first business

* Living, working and playing in London in the heat of the dot-com boom

* Expanding internationally and the operational, technical and jurisdictional constraints involved

* What's next for Employment Hero - spoiler alert - they're working on 4 pillars including Talent, HR, Payroll and Benefits

* Geeking out on space and TESLAs

* How the pandemic removed the constraint of geography to employment and how the entire earth is the talent pool

Quickfire Recommendations:

* Book: Long Walk To Freedom, Nelson Mandela + Ghandi Biography

* Podcast: All-In Podcast

* News Source: Reddit, AFR, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald

* App

* Productivity Tool: Slack, Employment Hero

* Favourite TV Show: YouTube - ie Marcus House, SpaceX, Tesla

* Favourite App: Spotify

* Favourite Tech CEO: Mike and Scott (Mike Cannon-Brookes & Scott Farquhar)

* Ted Talk topic: The benefits of remote employment - the remote work revolution.

Employment Hero are currently advertising for various jobs globally. Check our jobs board for details: https://bit.ly/EHIBjobsboard