Startup 360

Black Pearl Group founder Nick Lissette had an idea for a AI-driven sales agent for small business about five months ago.

It took 90 days to develop and launch Bebop, the latest product from his New Zealand listed tech company, and within 45 days, it hit $1.2 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Black Pearl's previous innovation, Pearl Diver, took 45 days and within two years hit NZ$10 million.

Nick, the company's CEO (and briefly CTO), is Startup 360's first international guest, joining cohosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell from Aotearoa to talk about everything from AI to investing, rugby, music and his belief in teamwork. He describes Bebop as like ChatGPT, but built for sales and revenue growth.

The Black Pearl boss, who could have been a professional musician had he not blown his audition in the UK studios of Sir George Martin (of The Beatles fame), is funny, fast-paced, a wild card, focused, stubborn, and jack of all trades. It's a cracking conversation filled with plenty of great insights on what it takes to run a listed company from Wellington
He also revealed their currently exploring a dual listing in Australia, for the 13-year-old tech business, and how hard it was to find the funding to back Black Pearl Group (NZX:BPG), heading to the US and refusing to come home until he had the cash.

Black Pearl shares jumped 30% on the NZ exchange this week after he announced the success of Bebop and the potential the company sees in artificial intelligence products.

In other news, Simon and Majella talked about philanthropy by tech founders, and how Australian founders are among the world's best when it comes to turning small amounts of VC funding into valuable companies.
Also joining them for 10x, the rapid fire questions (but they lost count so it could be more) is Spanish-born design guru Miguel Anton from Xeito Studios, who explained how hard it is to make things look simple, why great design matters, and how to think about luxury in a conversation that spans his time working for billionaire Bernard Arnault at LVMH, to the genius of Apple and Labubus.

Startup 360 is more founder fund than founder mode. It’s all about finding out what makes people tick and staying human.

Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and don't forget to read ⁠StartupDaily.net⁠ for all the ANZ tech news for free!

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Ammonia is the second most-produced chemical on the planet and without it, we wouldn't be able to feed the world.

But making it has been energy intense - until an accidental scientific discovery at the University of Newcastle created the potential for a more environmentally friendly way to produce it.

That discovery is a new startup, Facet Amtech, and cofounder James Bradley joined Startup 360 this week to explain how it works and talk about life as a second-time deep tech founder

Ammonia is normally produced a high temperatures under high pressures, but when a materials science was sawing samples in half to examine them, he noticed a smell. It was ammonia, created at room temperature just with water and ambient air.

Scaling up that discovery is the goal of Facet Amtech, which recently completed CSIRO's annual ON accelerator program, which helps scientists turn research into commercial ideas.

Facet Amtech is also one of 23 startups chosen for Tech 23, the annul deep tech showcase by Cicada Innovations.

Bradley, who's been entrepreneur-in-residence at Newcastle Uni's startup hub, I2N, previously founded a climate tech hub he was forced to close because of Covid-induced supply chain problems and talked about the lessons from that and getting back in the saddle with a new idea, as well as a family with three kids.

Cohosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell also talked about Kiwi accomodation startup Kiki's move to London after being forced to shut down in New York, and fellow Aotearoa agtech scaleup Halter's $155 million Series D, and the NSW budget for startups, with Simon arguing the $80 million worth of announcements isn't nearly enough.

Also joining us for 10x, the rapid fire questions, is Tennille Eyre, head of CSIRO’s ON Innovation Program, to talk about the importance of science and what hanging out with super smart people as they develop ideas that can transform the world is really like.

Startup 360 is more founder fund than founder mode. It's all about finding out what makes people tick and staying human.

Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and don't forget to read StartupDaily.net for all the ANZ tech news for free!

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Listen to your gut and trust it, says Bree Kirkham from F5 Collective, a venture firm backing women-led startups.

Kirkham, who worked for pioneering tech brands including ClassPass, Uber and Airbnb, had plenty to say about women in tech on episode 18 of Startup 360 this week.

Cohost Simon Thomsen asked the mother of two what advice she'd give to classroom of young girls.

"I think a lot of girls and a lot of women question themselves all day, every day and question their path and question their role in society and question what they should do based on the mark they got or their parents expectations or just what society is throwing at them," she said.

"And I think my biggest thing is trust your gut, because I do think if you follow your passion and you follow what you're good at, then a success will naturally flow your way. I genuinely think that. The second thing I would say is that there's no wrong turn... I encourage girls and women to not put that pressure on themselves that they have to get every step right and to know that there isn't a wrong turn and you can always pivot and move into something else and actually take value from what you learned in a previous step."

It was a spirited conversation about women founders and what F5 Collective has learnt from studying their success and how it falls outside traditional VC models. Looking at the data around why women aren't receiving funding led them to write A Theory of Change, their thesis on backing women.

Simon and Majella discussed the big news of the week, including Canva's acquisition of Magic Brief, Sally-Ann Williams stepping away from Cicada Innovations after six years at the helm, and the latest twists in turns in Blackbird-backed short-term rental startup Kiki, which is shuttering in New York for a second time.

Their 10x guest this week is Sam Garven from Hello Canopy, a workplace reporting app that allows employees to raise issues in a way they can trust, as well as giving employers the ability to see issues and trends and respond.

The former environmental scientist was also a cofounder of Grapevine, the workplace harassment advice site launched last year.

The conversation spanned everything from office romances to red flags in the workplace and setting culture in startups, as what gives Sam the shits about dealing with HR.

Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

ETF - exchange traded funds - have become a popular investment since OG fintech entrepreneur Graham Tuckwell pioneered the sector in Australia more than 20 years ago.

The local market grew by nearly 40% last year to around $250 billion, but a decade has passed since a new player appeared on the seen bearing a familiar name.

David Tuckwell is following in his father's footsteps with ETF Shares, which launched this month after taking part in the Macquarie University Incubator program.

The fintech is offering lower fees and access to US markets. Tuckwell says the sector will be worth more than $20 trillion within 20 years.

He sat down with Startup 360 cohosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell to explain ETFs - Simon compared them to buying a box of groceries - and what he learnt from his philanthropist dad as he follows his father's trade.

They discussed parenting, journalism - David worked in the sector before getting a real job - life lessons, the transformative opportunity of going to university, philanthropy and the bank of Mum and Dad backing your startup.

"There's those old three Fs about when you start a business, friends, family and fools being the ones that first back you," David said.

"We're no different in that regard. We've got a major family member, hopefully he's not a fool in my dad."

Simon quipped that Graham Tuckwell's financial success - he runs a VC firm out of London and donated $100 million to his alma mater, ANU in Canberra, for student scholarships - suggests not.
David also talked about how he wants his kids to grow up.
"I also want them to be strong and able to face the world because family is obviously loving and nurturing," he said.
"But when you're out there facing the market - I think startup founders understand this almost better than anyone - in fact, the real world can be a bit of a cold, hard place."

Their second guest for 10x, the rapid-fire questions is 2nd time founder Peter Cole, from legal tech startup CourtAid.ai.

He was inspired to launch the law research platform because of a legal dispute involving his first startup, Gathera, which ended up wasting four months of his time.

It launched 12 months ago and now has 14,000 users in Australia, New Zealand and UK markets.

Peter talked about the potential of AI and how it gives startups the ability to compete with the biggest tech companies in the world.

"When you're talking about these AI businesses, everyone, including the big boys, are using the same models like they're all using OpenAI," he said.

"No one has access to 300,000 GPUs to train a whole new model, except for the big end of town, which means it ends up becoming an even playing field in that sense, where suddenly a small company like myself have access to the same resources these big enterprise players have, which means we can build products just as good as the big enterprise players. So I think there's going to be a huge shift in startups coming through and competing with the enterprise players."

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by ⁠Vanta⁠, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Just as Techstars Sydney MD Christie Jenkins was about to go hiking in Patagonia, taking her offline for 10 days, she got a call from Sir Richard Branson's Caribbean retreat, Necker Island.

They wanted the acclaimed athlete to speak there.

It was "a pinch me moment to be on stage talking about investing in women's sport" and Branson is in the front row taking notes while she was speaking.

She hung out with the entrepreneur for the rest of the week and found out just how competitive he is, as Christie recounts on Startup 360 this week.
Having risen to the top of three sports - trampolining, CrossFit, and beach volleyball - Jenkins went to cut her chops on investing at Blackbird, before going on to help build Athletic Ventures.

She remains passionate about sport and the lessons it can bring to being a successful founder, which is one of the reasons why she returned from the US to run Techstars, which closes applications for its next cohort of 12 early-stage startups on June 11.

Christie explained to cohosts Majella Campbell and Simon Thomsen that standards are more important than the goals you set yourself.

"We set goals and they're aspirational and that's lovely and they're exciting and they give us that juice of motivation at the beginning. But when it's 4am and your alarm goes off and 2 degrees outside, you don't feel like going to the gym, standards are much more powerful," she said. "Standards are the minimum level that we would tolerate."

Christie talked about her passion for supporting early stage founders to succeed, and shared her tips on everything presenting successfully to taking on new challenges.

Simon and Majella also talked about a Kiwi report on how much founders are paid, gathered from anonymous responses, for the New Zealand Founder Pay Report 2025.

Their guest for 10x, the rapid-fire questions, this week is Justin Wastnage, founder of Vloggi, although they spent several minutes talking about his remarkable career, including trans fats in Silicon Valley, being a aviation reporter accidentally breaking things on the private jets of famous people and coining the term vlogger 20 years ago.

This week's Startup 360 sees Simon Thomsen return with a new cohost - Fishburners CEO Majella Campbell.

And to celebrate our guests this week are two "Fishies" founders - Barb Woodruff Swanson from Done Life, and Mossy Taheri from proptech Rising Returns.

There's a bit of a travel theme to this week's show, and with Majella's parents currently cruising off the coast of Italy, Simon wants to know why they're not recording on the boat.

Barb's a veteran founder and single mother of three kids who's  led high-growth SaaS sales teams across the US and APAC, and had her first startup - a precursor to Uber Eats in the pre-smartphone era - more than 25 years ago. Having effectively managed global teams of hundreds of people across 9 countries, she was struck by the fact that she couldn't find a CRM-like product to deal with family life in a similarly efficient way (so you don't forget it's your turn to bring the oranges for sport on the weekend).

And so she's built Done Life.

Startup 360's talk with Barb involved tears, laughter and the practicalities of life in the startup lane while raising teens.

Mossy's also well travelled, having visited more than 40 countries.

While running his buyer's agency, he joined Fishies began spending more time around tech founders and recognised an opportunity to innovate. Mossy's now developing a proptech startup that leverages AI to help Australians make smarter, faster property decisions.

Given property is our national obsession, Majella couldn't resist asking him where to spend $2 million, the surprising answer is he suggested buying 3 houses in 3 different capital cities.

A mechanical engineer and data nerd, Mossy explained how it analytics reveal deeper truths when investing in property.

He also shared his adventures in Russia during the world cup and the famous name he'd employ if he could.

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Fresh off a wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii, Cheryl Mack is in the building to join AJ in guest hosting duties. 

And what better way to ease back into reality with a deep dive in to the Government’s proposed superannuation tax with startup legend Alan Jones of M8 Ventures. 

As two people at the coalface of angel investing, Cheryl and Alan have a LOT of thoughts about the potential for this new tax policy to wreak havoc on the fundraising landscape in Australia. Cheryl says that just the possibility of it coming in has already put off a lot of the investors on her Aussie Angels platform from joining raises, while they wait as see what happens. Alan’s surgical breakdown of the key problems with the proposed tax reform highlights just how misguided it is, and how the impact of it will be felt not only by the startup community, but my many more Australians for years into the future.

But it’s not all tax talk this week. We also welcomed the effervescent Jill Berry into the studio to hear about how the acquisition of her startup Adatree by payment giant Fat Zebra has panned out. After building a burgeoning business and signing on some major Government and enterprise clients, the courting began from multiple suitors across the finance sector. Jill talks us through some of the lesser-discussed realities of acquisition, from what happens to your giant cheques and memorabilia, to how a founder can finally focus on the things they love rather than managing payroll. 

As two powerhouses of the tech sector, both with young children, Cheryl and Jill also chat about the tough reality of pregnancy while juggling the demands of a business baby, right down to issuing share certificates will at the hospital being induced!

This week’s episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Guest hosts AJ Koch and Claire Bull step in and put the microscope on medtech. 

While the action this week was in Melbourne for Digital Health Fest, we went under the hood of the medtech rollercoaster with two guests right at the coal face.

From a funding point of view, you would be hard pressed to find a more in-tune resource than Emerald Scofield of Main Sequence Ventures. Starting out with a childhood passion to “take down the pharmaceutical industry from the inside”, and a biotech degree under her belt, she now lives and breathes all things medtech and happily gave us a warts and all assessment of Australia’s issues and opportunities. 

Flipping it to the founder experience, our 10x guest is the founder of Xylo Bio, Josh Ismin, who took us through the radical world of psychedelic-inspired neurotherapeutics. Describing himself as someone who’s pretty “granola”, Josh is a fascinating character balancing a global startup at the forefront of healthcare along with a purpose-driven and conscious livelihood. 

As a startup who has split their team between Australia and the US, Josh was an ideal person to quiz about the impact of this year’s political and social turmoil. Interestingly, while he would think twice about doing it again, ultimately the opportunity for access to capital and customers is simply too great to turn away. For now at least. 

And of course we couldn’t leave out a conversation about the renewed Government’s ministerial dramas, which see a much loved and respected Ed Husic exiting stage left, leaving Tim Ayres with some big shoes to fill in the eyes of the innovation community. There were some strong comments made throughout the week criticising the decision, summed up by M8 Ventures’ Alan Jones bluntly stating, “We obviously care more about short term interparty factionalism than we do the innovation industries”. 

This week’s episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Founding cohost Kayla Medica is stepping away from the show because of work commitments and Simon Thomsen is devastated.

But edge-of-millennial Kayla's not sure if she's heard Mental As Anything's song, If you leave me, can I come too? So he's leaving too - for two weeks to recover - and AJ Koch will step as guest host of Startup 360.

For Kayla's final show, their guest is someone she's long admired but never met, Doone Roisin from Female Startup Club.

Then Simon turned the tables and had Kayla as out 10x guest to answer 10 questions.

Kayla went out with a bang - and Bollinger. They talked about Blackbird's Sunrise, the 10th anniversary of philanthropic movement Pledge 1% and marketing alcohol, before Doone joined them to discuss the challenges women in tech face, and how her ADHD, shapes her approach to life as a startup founder.

Last year Doone was part of the Techstars Sydney accelerator program and reveals it was much harder and more challenging than expected. She also talked about what women need to do to take the first step in becoming an entrepreneur.

Doone then swapped chairs for 10x and the chance to quiz Kayla about her life and experiences.

Simon asked Kayla how she'd changed the startup ecosystem if she could wave a wand of Medica magic.

Less men, she said, in a show where they talked about how women still aren't funded despite data that says they're a better investment.

"I work with quite a wide variety of clients and startups, and most of the people who hire me are men. And when I get, like, a woman client, it's just so nice," Kayla said.

"Like, there's a sense of camaraderie and, like, it's different, but it's so rare. I just want more of that."

And Simon revealed that Startup 360 is the show founders VCs tune into, with recent guest, 17-year-old Liam Fuller, becoming the hottest investment potential in town after being spotted on the show.

Thanks Kayla, for making podcasting great again. We'll miss your wisdom, no fear views and laughter.

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Happy democracy sausage weekend.

As Australians head to schools and halls on Saturday (although around 20% of the population has already voted) to cast their verdict on the last three years of the Albanese government, Startup 360 cohosts Simon Thomsen and Kayla Medica took a look at the policies and election promises for the tech sector from both Labor and the Coalition.

It was a short conversation.

There's a sense of disappointment and frustration across the industry that both major parties have shown so little interest in innovation and tech, and organisations such as FinTech Australia are saying it out loud too.

It's mostly bad news from both the government and opposition, with Labor's plan to tax unrealised gains on personal super funds worth more than $3 million at 15% a potential disaster for early-stage startup investing.

The Peter Dutton's Coalition wants to kill off Labor's $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, but at least aspiring treasurer Angus Taylor is offering tax breaks to early-stage startup investors via Early‑Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships (ESVCLP) scheme.

The Liberals want to double the current threshold for startups involved to $100 million, and do a similar thing for thee Venture Capital Limited Partnership threshold, increasing it from $250m to $500m.

But there's not much else on the table on this front.

Simon, a Gen Xer, also wanted to talk about Mick McConnell's LinkedIn post about life as a Gen Xer at the end of the analogue era.

Luckily, we had two amazing guests this week, investor Danielle Haj-Moussa, from deep tech fund Main Sequence Ventures, talking AI, and Angentian-born, soon-to-be-Australian Ramiro Roman Loureyro, the cofounder of Yakka Labour, for 10x, our 10 rapid-fire questions.

Danielle talks about using AI as a copilot in her daily life, her love of DJing and how she thinks about investor in ideas to change the world.

Ramiro talks about the scourge of modern slavery, Yakka's global plans and answers one of life's most important questions: who's Argentina's greater player, Maradona or Messi?

Startup 360 is all about staying human. It’s a weekly show, talking startups and tech.

This episode of Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.