Nick Gonios is leading a venture, Circulist to build a tomorrow where products are made to be used rather than thrown away.

For this episode, he joins Alan and Megan on how to reduce your business's carbon footprint.

He is a seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur with 30 years’ experience across software technology ventures & early-stage tech investments.

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How do you find a community either online or in real life when you are starting something new or have moved to a new city?

Sabrina Zeng is the Head of Ecosystems Fishburners, Australia's largest technology startup co-working space and she gives you some excellent tips on how to find like minded people.

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Why are they so slow? Who is best to contact? Is it worth the time?  The pitfalls and benefits of dealing with large companies with Richard Savoie of low carbon delivery compnay, Adiona.

I’m the founder of a marketing startup – we help organisations make sense of their data. We have some B2C customers, but our business model only really makes sense if we get into bigger companies and work with their data sets. We’ve had a lot of initial interest, but 6 months on, the sales cycle and procurement is KILLING us, and we’ve just had to let go of a few staff – and from a team of 9, we’re really feeling it. How the hell do startups manage to work with bigger companies? And what do I need to do to speed up this process?

From: Show Me The Data

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The big question how do you get customers to pay for your service? Phil Hayes St Clair is serial entrepreneur who focuses on the science and art of selling.

Dear Advisory Board,
We’re a team of 3 with an education platform and we’ve been pretty good with our growth in our first year. I now think that maybe we just got lucky with our early sales, because while we are all making twice as many calls and doing loads of demos, we are just not converting sales. Add to that we are struggling to service the customers we have because we are so desperately chasing new business.How do we build and maintain a sales pipeline, and probably most importantly, how the eff do we convert people to paying customers? We’ve abolished our free offerings but even if all our current customers re-sign with us, we’re going to be in trouble by the end of the year unless we start signing deals. Help?!
FROM: Always Be Closing 

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How do you part ways with a business partner and how old is too old to begin a start-up?

'My co-founder and I have built several companies together, but in the past year, it has become apparent we aren’t working well together on our latest venture. We’re short with each other, we’re frustrated and not seeing eye to eye. The worst part is we’re fighting often in front of the staff, and tensions in the office are high. We’ve floated the idea of working separately, but I think it’s better for us to go our own ways, at least for this project.
How do I have this conversation with my co-founder? Right now he just feels like a massive asshole, but I know deep down he’s a good guy. How can we break up well?

FROM: Breaking up is hard to do

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How can you get your start-up onto an accelerator program? That and some advice on how to turn your digtial interests into a job.

'Dear Advisory Board, My founders and I have been applying for accelerator programs all over Australia and we have never gotten in – and we’ve applied to all of them! We have continued growth, we are a solid team, and we’ve been going for a couple of years! We’ve finally been asked to join a bootcamp, and we desperately want to perform well so we can take our business to the next level and get into the main accelerator – How can we put our best foot forward and make sure we don’t miss out again? FROM: Always the Bridesmaids'

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How do you best pitch your idea? It's something that everyone has to do at some point and Alan and Megan have some excellent tips for this:

'Dear Advisory Board,
I’ve founded a startup and we’re building an app – and we’re getting some good attention in the space with our platform. We have a very pretty deck and it has great information about how our product works and the market – but we keep getting feedback that it’s confusing and that we don’t tell a good story. I pitched at a competition last week and the biggest feedback was “we don’t get it”
How do we stop bombing out in our pitches and how do we get good at it?'
FROM: Lifes a Pitch 

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If you are building something online, then surely coding is essential?

That's not necessarily true, according to Lana Weal, founder of Market Mindfully 

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Start-ups skew male. It's a problem that's long plagued the space. Alan and Megan spell out how to hire and champion women in the start-up world. This week's letter is from Faulty Feminist: 'My startup has been growing pretty well over the last couple of years, but we are still a completely male team. I think diversity is important and I’ve tried so many things to get women on our team -- we’ve done shout outs on all female job boards, asked friends to refer, got rid of the foosball table and pizza beer nights. I keep hearing that great female engineers are out there but we can’t find them! Help?'

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Tim Brewer is Co-Founder and CEO of Functionly and for the opening episode of the podcast, he helps answer the following letter. 'Dear Advisory Board, We just finished our first accelerator program! We’re still pretty early stage but we got some great feedback from our Demo Day pitch and several new customers from that launch alone. The product people are asking for is still a year or so away: we are just two founders, and we are going to need to build like crazy to grab our market. We have some money to support us, and Im still working on the side to pay rent, but we need to fundraise and fast to make this dream a reality. How fast can we raise capital?' FROM: Feel The Need For Speed.

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