Sachin and Adam

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with Blackbird Partner Niki Scevak. Niki is a thinker that absolutely blew us away. In this episode we discussed how the study of history and psychology can improve your investing, his wisdom to his 23 year old self, career frameworks and how he plans to build Blackbird into one of the best firms in the world.  

Shownotes:

Book: Poor Charlies Almanack

Podcast: Invest like the best

Inspirational leader you’d love to have dinner with: Elon Musk

Number one skill of a great venture investor: Imagination and belief

If you were 25 right now what problem would you be working on: Biology and Biotech

Habit that’s made you great: Reading

More on Blackbird: https://blackbird.vc/

More of our podcast: https://linktr.ee/TheSachinandAdamShow

Disclaimer: Airtree is one of Australia's biggest VC funds, not crypto funds, as was mistakenly said in the introduction.

This week we talked with John Henderson, a partner at Airtree Ventures which is a leading Australian venture capital firm. John acts as the lead in Airtree's crypto and web3 investments and he's previously been an entrepreneur, operator, consultant and lawyer. Just recently Airtree raised $700 million worth of funds, with $50 million of that dedicated to crypto and web3 investments. 

This episode we dived deep into understanding the crypto and web3 movement. This entailed talking about the movement from web1 to web3, what web3 really means, decentralisation, web3 use cases,  NFT's, other thematics John is passionate about and how he makes investment decisions.

Sir Ronald Cohen is known as 'the father of British venture capital' and the 'father of impact investment'.

He brought venture capital to the UK through his firm Apax Partners, which went on to control over $50 billion of assets and was one of the earliest investors in Apple. Then at the age of 60 he wanted to focus more on social issues so he pioneered impact investing throughout the world by partnering with governments and creating the firms Bridges Funds Management and Social Finance. He’s also recently written the brilliant book ‘Impact: reshaping capitalism to drive real change’.

He talked to him about how leaving Egypt during the Suez crisis influenced him, how he founded Apax Partners at 26, his thesis for impact investing and his reflections on life.

Ronald’s work in impact investing have been a terrific service to humanity and his life is a testament to his hard work and passion.

This week we had the pleasure of talking to one of Australia’s top artists Danielle Weber, whose painted portraits of famous people around the world and has accumulated over 200k instagram followers. We wish we were cool enough to be artists and her perspective to life blew us away. We dived into Danielle’s experience working with people like Dwayne Johnson, Danielle’s creative process and what it feels like to create art. We discussed how NFTs are transforming the artistic landscape and why Danielle is now selling digital art.

Show notes

Danielle’s Website: https://daniellesartwork.com/

Favourite book: Happiest Man on Earth - Eddie Jaku

Favourite podcasts: Joe Rogan

Inspirational figure you’ve never met: Oprah

Favourite hobbies: Food and wine

Our book: https://www.rising-tide-startups.com/

This week our good friend Max Marchione interviewed us in a new podcast format called 'Sidetracked with Max'. This series of conversations is to present a more personal side of us, whilst having fun and engaging chats about topics we're passionate about. 

This episode we chatted about self-awareness, confidence, digital identities, how to predict the future, exponential technologies and crypto. 

This week we had the absolute honour of chatting to the CEO of Deloitte, Adam Powick. We spoke about Adams working class background, how he made career decisions and his lessons in leadership. What’s remarkable about Adam is his ability to balance authenticity and character with the more serious nature of leadership and we dived into how this developed. This episode is loaded with gems on career and life for everyone. You are in for a treat!

Show notes 

Currently reading: Dark Emu- Bruce Pascoe 

Podcasts: Sporting Podcasts 

Favourite sporting legends include: Mark Taylor and Greg Norman 

Inspirational Leaders: Nelson Mandela and Angela Merkel 

Hobbies include: Cricket 

Favourite Dumpling: Truffle Dumping Din Tai Fung

This week we talked to Sam Wong who is a partner at Blackbird Ventures, one of Australia’s most successful venture capital firms.

In today’s episode we talked about investing ethically, how she makes investment decisions, the trends in startups she finds most exciting and advice for young people who are interested in technology.

Before entering VC, Sam was a lawyer for Minter Ellison, worked in product and strategy at SurfStitch and co-founded a company called CapacityHQ.

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with the visionary that is Fred Schebesta. Fred is the founder of Finder, a crypto titan and the author of ‘Go Live! 10 Principles to Launch a Global Empire’. We went deep with Fred discussing human behaviour, space, how to find great ideas, the Metaverse and living a better life. Get ready for some conversations that will blow your mind!

Show notes

Freds book: https://www.fredschebesta.com/go-live

Book: The 7 habits of highly effective people

Podcast: Invest Like the Best, Acquired, Masters of Scale

Inspirational figure: Ben Horowitz and Bill Campbell

Hobbies: Minecraft

This week we interviewed African entrepreneur Kaivan Sattar. Kaivan started the digital bank, Asaak, which lends to people in Uganda who previously could not access credit. They have grown dramatically over the past year and are now doing over $1 million US in revenue per year. 

We dived deep into the development prospects of Africa, Kaivan's founding story and the vision he has for Asaak. 

Before founding Asaak, Kaivan worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, Grameen Bank and studied at Colombia and NY University. 

For transparency, both of us made an angel investment into Asaak earlier this year.  

This week we had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Mark Carnegie, one of Australia’s top business titans. Mark was trained on Wall Street by James Wolfensohn and started the investment bank Carnegie, Wylie & Co. Mark then became the CEO of Lazard Australia and later on started M.H.Carnegie & Co, where he works today. We spoke to Mark about his career, what young people should be working on and the world of Crypto/DEFI. Mark is a massive advocate of crypto completely changing the world and we were fascinated to hear his thoughts. We honestly think this podcast was as informative as a business degree.

Show notes: More on Mark: https://www.mhcarnegie.com/our-people

Recommendations by Mark: Poor Charlies Almanack Tim Ferriss and Balaji Podcast: https://tim.blog/2021/03/24/balaji-srinivasan/

Quick fire: Book: Remembrance of Times Past, LBJ biographies. Podcast: Tim Ferriss and Balaji. Inspirational figure you’ve never met: Charlie Munger. Hobby: Trout fishing and sailing