Sachin and Adam

This week we had a 1 on 1 together and chatted about what we've been doing recently, the direction the Sachin and Adam Show is taking, our recent Angel Investment into a Fintech company, and our life in lockdown. Enjoy!

0:26 Introduction

2:50 What we’ve been doing

8:05 Why we’re passionate about technology and venture capital & what we’re building

24:46 Our angel investment into Ugandan Fintech company Asaak

35:15 Learning from online communities

40:40 Life in Lockdown

We had the pleasure of sitting down with James Alexander, one of the youngest people to launch a venture capital fund in Australia. James is a technologist at heart and after studying computer science co-founded one of the first University startup accelerators, Incubate, where he has helped 100+ startups launch their ideas.

What you will learn from this episode

Enjoy!

Show notes

Favourite book: The Black Swan- Nassim Taleb & The Beginning of Infinity- David Deutsch

Podcast: A16Z Technology Podcast

Person: Galileo

Hobbies: Collecting music and Djing

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with the amazing Moses Lo. Moses studied at UNSW and begun his career as a management consultant at BCG before moving to Silicon Valley to pursue entrepreneurship. After completing an MBA from Berkeley, Moses was selected for Y Combinator (YC) where he started his  FinTech company, Xendit. We dived deep into Moses’s upbringing, why he chose management consulting, the experience of YC, scaling Xendit in Indonesia and the differences in culture between Australia and the US. Enjoy!

Show notes:

Moses’s Company: https://www.xendit.co/en/

Moses’s Blog: https://www.moseslo.com/

Book: High Growth Handbook- Elad Gill

Podcast: Masters of Scale- Reid Hoffman

Famous Figure: Martin Luther King

Hobby: Manual Labour

2 years ago when we accidentally started this podcast we joked that if there was one person in the world we could talk to, it would be the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull.

Through a lot of persistence and luck, 60 episodes later we got to meet our hero.

We spoke to Malcolm about the key experiences that defined him as a person, how he was able to build relationships with the most powerful people in Australia in his early 20s and how he reached the highest level of success across industries such as Journalism, Law, Investment Banking and Politics. We then dived into his time as PM and how he was able to maintain his individuality and sense of self. We then moved to a discussion of Malcolm's vision for Australia and how future leaders can step up to address the challenges that lay ahead. We finished off the episode with a round of quick fire questions and asked Malcolm that if he could write a letter to his 22 year old self, what would he say?

Thank you for everyone that’s been on the journey so far and we hope you enjoy the episode.

This week we interviewed Robbie Robertson, who is Sydney Leader of Deloitte Digital, Deloitte's digital consultancy arm. Coming from a design background, Robbie is fascinated about the interaction of design principles, sensory experiences and creating new products.   

We talked to him about how he perceives design, what design consulting looks like and the principles for building the future.

Rowan Kunz is the founder of education business Art of Smart, which does tutoring and mentoring for high-school students. Art of Smart has helped over 6,000 students with their high-school education, their transition to university and with career advice. Rowan was Australia's Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019. Previously, he also founded and sold two other educational businesses. Rowan studied Arts/Law at The University of Sydney.

We talked to him about how he made the decision to start Art of Smart whilst at uni instead of applying for Law clerkships, how uni students should think about optionality when making career decisions and the realities of youth unemployment.

This week we had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with the most energetic man we’ve ever met, Muhan Zhang. Muhan was the first employee on Andrew Yangs presidential campaign, started a business out of college and currently runs the angel investing community, ’Startup Investing for All’. We went deep into the journey of a presidential campaign, Andrew Yangs values, the relationship with technology and inequality, universal basic income and feeling connected with your work.

Show Notes

Muhan’s Website: https://muhanzhang.com/

Quick Fire Round

Favourite book: Ultralearning- Scott Young

Podcast: Brene Brown (Unlocking Us & Dare to Lead)

Inspirational figure: Mr Money Moustache

Hobbies: Cooking

Matt Allen is the founder of Tractor Ventures, a revenue based financing company that provides an alternative to traditional venture capital for technology startups. He is also a prolific angel investor, having invested in over a dozen startups and has achieved an IRR of over 50%. He previously worked at Amazon Web Services, co-founded a number of companies and spent his early days working in software development.

Our conversation with him ranged from talking about what he gained in his early career in technology, his method of angel investing, why he felt it was important to start Tractor Ventures and the trends in software companies he is currently witnessing.

Book: Turn the ship around

Podcast: The Startup Playbook

Kirstin Hunter is a co-founder of the super company Future Super, which manages over $900m of assets. Future Super focuses on creating a world without climate change and inequality, so they invest their assets into sustainable companies and ignore fossil fuels and harmful companies.

Before Future Super she worked in management consulting at Bain & Co for six years and was also a solicitor at Freehills for two years. Kirstin studied arts/medicine/law at UNSW.

Our conversation ranged on the topics of Kirstins years at university, what she learnt working in the corporate world, how her passions developed towards social justice and sustainability and her journey of co-founding Future Super.

Book: The Great Gatsby. 

Podcast: Masters of Scale. 

Inspirational Figure: Jacinda Ardern. 

This week we sat down with each other to reflect on our lives and discuss some of the topics we are currently interested in. We spoke about our favourite  guests on the podcasts, how we’ve both developed over the last few years, NFTs, decentralisation and new technologies. We then turned to discussing our future goals, learnings from university and how we want to be living in our 20s.

This episode also marks the launch of our website: https://www.sachin-and-adam-show.com/