David Zwier is the founder of Bonny, an eCommerce brand making comfortable, luxurious, yet affordable doonas. Before he founded Bonny, David was the global brand manager at Moose Toys, which was a 5-year masterclass in branding.  

In his time there, David got to work on massive projects involving licensing deals with Disney and Marvel and making Shopkins a $1b brand in its own right. He got incredible opportunities like flying to LA to shoot TV commercials, pitching to Walmart executives, attending toy fares in Hong Kong, and so much more.  

He then went out on his own, founding Bonny. After searching for a product idea, he found a niche but broad gap in the market. Niche as in no one was doing it, and broad as in it’s a product for everyone. He realised that there are so many doona types and brands out there, but no one is known as the #1 donna brand. Bonny makes doonas for summer, winter, and the months in-between. 

Part 1 of this interview (in previous episode) will be a branding masterclass, with a focus on the lessons and insights David accumulated while working at Moose Toys. Part 2 (this episode) will focus on the eCommerce side of things, and how to build a successful online business from nothing.

David is a very logical thinker, and this 2-part interview is absolutely packed with insight, advice, and wisdom. Let’s get into it. 

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Find Bonny on Instagram: @chillwithbonny and TikTok: @chillwithbonny

Find Bonny’s doonas: https://bonny.com.au/ 

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David Zwier is the founder of Bonny, an eCommerce brand making comfortable, luxurious, yet affordable doonas. Before he founded Bonny, David was the global brand manager at Moose Toys, which was a 5-year masterclass in branding.  

In his time there, David got to work on massive projects involving licensing deals with Disney and Marvel and making Shopkins a $1b brand in its own right. He got incredible opportunities like flying to LA to shoot TV commercials, pitching to Walmart executives, attending toy fares in Hong Kong, and so much more.  

He then went out on his own, founding Bonny. After searching for a product idea, he found a niche but broad gap in the market. Niche as in no one was doing it, and broad as in it’s a product for everyone. He realised that there are so many doona types and brands out there, but no one is known as the #1 donna brand. Bonny makes doonas for summer, winter, and the months in-between. 

Part 1 of this interview (which is this episode) will be a branding masterclass, with a focus on the lessons and insights David accumulated while working at Moose Toys. Part 2 will focus on the eCommerce side of things, and how to build a successful business from nothing.

David is a very logical thinker, and this 2-part interview is absolutely packed with insight, advice, and wisdom. Let’s get into it. 

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Follow The Founder Tapes on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Founder Tapes on YouTube! Full video episodes are coming soon. 

–

Find Bonny on Instagram: @chillwithbonny and TikTok: @chillwithbonny

Find Bonny’s doonas: https://bonny.com.au/ 

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Natassia Grace (otherwise known as Tass) is one of those founders that gets it DONE. She is the founder and CEO of Conserving Beauty - a skincare brand creating waterless skincare and dissolvable makeup wipes saving water, carbon and waste in the process. 

Natassia got Conserving Beauty into Mecca before even launching; she has used her superb networking skills to get entrepreneur and model Elle McPherson on her board of directors; she’s featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list; she has sat on incredible panels like Vogue Codes; she was chosen as the first Business of Beauty Awards Winner, and so much more. 

She has a decade of experience working in product development, supply chain, and ethical sourcing within the beauty & wellness industry. Having built her career on supply chain transparency, she made it her mission to unite the best of science, technology, and impact to launch skincare product solutions anchored in world-first innovation.

And Conserving Beauty is absolutely known for being at the forefront of innovation due to Tass’s waterless formulation approach and dissolving skincare technologies. By creating the world’s first dissolvable cleansing wipes, sheet masks and zit treatments, she has found a solution to replace plastic single-use products - and customers are obsessed. 

This episode is a treat, to say the least. Thank you for listening! 

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Find Natassia Grace on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok  

Find Conserving Beauty on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Website

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In this episode I’m chatting with Richard James - a private investigator, surveillance specialist, and founder of his company RIVICA Investigations & Covert Solutions. 

Richard works with anyone from anxious business owners who are concerned they could be the target of damaging bogus claims from employees, to worried spouses suspecting their partner’s infidelity. In fact, Richard said that one of the recurring queries he encounters involves accessing messages, emails, and social media chats on a partner's phone. 

Richard started off in the South Wales police force, working his way up to becoming Detective Sergeant. He has also been a Surveillance Manager within various states across Australia, and spent 5 years being contracted to the Qatar Ministry of Interior to provide specialist training to Qatar Police. 

Today, Richard is an expert private investigator and founder of RIVICA. Established in 2014, RIVICA aims to provide a complete range of investigative solutions. His team of experts works across Australia and even trains police and military teams in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. From investigations, to training, to products, they tailor their response to fully address each client’s requirement. 

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Find Richard James on LinkedIn  

Find RIVICA: https://rivica.com.au/ 

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This week on the show I’m chatting with Paul Bassat - an Australian businessman who is as passionate about entrepreneurship today as he was 30 years ago. Paul co-founded the online job search marketplace SEEK in 1997 with his brother Andrew Bassat and friend Matt Rockman. The brothers were co-CEOs until Paul resigned in 2011. 

What started off as not even knowing what the internet was, Paul together with the other two raised a small amount of initial capital and took on the newspaper companies one listing at a time. Against all the odds, SEEK managed to completely transform the landscape of employment advertising from print-dominated to online

SEEK became one of Australia’s most successful online businesses, becoming an ASX top 100 listed company with a market capitalisation of $8 billion. It has expanded to China, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand and various markets through South East Asia.

Life post SEEK saw Paul co-founding his second company Square Peg Capital in 2012. Square Peg is a global private equity investment fund, and in particular, an active investor in early stage and growth stage technology companies. The VC firm is on a mission to empower exceptional founders, and to date has done exactly that - from being an early investor in Canva to backing companies like Airwallex, Fiverr and Stripe. Paul has always remained passionate about backing the next generation of founders, and is in awe of anyone who starts a business or goes out on their own. 

In this episode, we chat about:

• Who is Paul Bassat? 
• What kind of businessman Paul is 
• Paul’s studies and career before SEEK 
• The way the idea for SEEK came about, and how he co-built the platform
• Finding the right investors for SEEK in the early days 
• The biggest problems Paul faced when building the company 
• What indicated the idea was starting to work
• How long it took to get SEEK to profitability 
• Expanding to other geographies, and when the right time to do it was
• Taking SEEK public with an IPO in 2005, and what it meant to become a public company
• How SEEK was almost stolen from Paul and his co-founders
• Why Paul left SEEK in 2011 
• Co-founding Square Peg 
• How Square Peg picks who to invest in and who it might reject 
• The most important things about startups 
• Investing in AI companies 
• The startup success of Israel 
• The most existential problem entrepreneurs face 

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Find Paul Bassat on LinkedIn and X  

Find Square Peg Capital: https://www.squarepeg.vc/ 

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Storytelling is critical, especially when you want to succeed in business. Not only does it humanise you, but it allows for people to connect with your brand in ways slogans, marketing and logos can’t. Think about it: what is more interesting, a company’s ‘About Us’ page or the founder’s personal journey to founding it? In this episode, Joel Hines will help you craft your best communication and storytelling skills yet. 

Joel is a facilitator, TEDx speaker, author, trainer and storyteller. Throughout a career spanning over 25 years working in mental health, IT, training, educational leadership and group facilitation, there has been a common theme of guiding others to explore the shared experience of being human. 

In that time, he was also the school principal at a school based on Buddhist philosophies, and talks about how that manifested in the day-to-day of managing the school - both for teachers and for students.   

Exemplifying integrity and authenticity, Joel motivates and enables leaders to cultivate engagement, foster collaboration and empower others. His natural gift for storytelling, combined with his calm and approachable demeanour, fuels his passion for enriching workplace connections and fostering the growth of facilitation skills and confidence.

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Find Joel Hines on LinkedIn 

Find Being Human on LinkedIn or visit https://www.beinghuman.net.au/ 

Find Joel’s book here: Holding Space: Strategies To Cultivate Connection and Enable Potential 

Watch Joel’s TEDx speech here: https://youtu.be/-QpGJNtuYZo?si=rHYdEqgxD3Izg5l5 

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Alon Loeffler is a Postdoctoral Scientist at Cortical Labs in Melbourne. Cortical Labs are a biological computing startup putting live neurons into chips to revolutionise computing. 

This in part means the ability to teach real human brain cells to do things, outside the person’s body. The company works with real neurons, studying their electrical activity and even teaching them to play Pong (you read that right!). 

Entering the field of neuroscience came after a significant turning point in Alon’s life at the age of 16. He developed an autoimmune disease called Transverse Myelitis, which left him paralysed in his hands and legs. Despite the challenges of dealing with recovery and rehabilitation as a teenager, it shifted his priorities from parties to taking care of his health and understanding why this happened.

His first project in this field led him to pursue a PhD in nanotechnology at the University of Sydney. He worked on neuromorphic materials that mimic the behaviour of real neurons. This application can be used to process dynamic, noisy and real-time data that AI can't deal with currently. 

Alon’s work at the company involves data science, algorithm development and software development - a role he describes as his dream job: “It’s fascinating work with huge potential, like testing neurological diseases and possibly replacing animal testing.”  

In this episode, we chat about: 

What is a synthetic biological intelligence postdoctoral scientist? 

What are neurons?

Neurodegenerative diseases

Electrophysiological reward and punishment 

What is Cortical Labs?

What is synthetic biological intelligence? 

Why are humans so much smarter than AI with less data points?

The function of neurons

Consciousness

Neuromorphics

Autoimmune diseases

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Find Alon Loeffler on LinkedIn 

Find Cortical Labs on LinkedIn or visit their website

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Claire Walczak is an accredited family law specialist and a partner in Lander & Rogers' Melbourne family and relationship law office.

Having practised exclusively in family law since her admission to practice, she takes pride in providing specialist legal advice to her clients and empowering them with the financial independence and emotional security to plan for the next chapter of their lives.

In recent years, she has expanded her practice to work with family offices and high net worth individuals, drafting financial agreements for the protection of inter-generational wealth. This advice often involves working alongside her clients' network of trusted financial advisors and is particularly important for families seeking to successfully preserve, grow and transfer their legacy across future generations. 

In addition to attaining her specialist accreditation in family law, Claire is currently studying a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Melbourne Business School. She has been recognised by the legal profession in several industry awards, including as a finalist for "Senior Associate of the Year - BigLaw" at the Women In Law Awards (2021), the Lawyers Weekly 30 Under 30 "Wellness Advocate" award (2019) and the Law Institute of Victoria 15th Victorian Legal Awards "Wellbeing Award" (2019). 

In this episode, we chat about: 

- How to navigate work-life balance

- What is family law

- Divorce cases 

- How the courts approach the division of property 

- Complex financial situations

- Special interest cases

- What women can do to build their financial literacy and freedom

- Financial agreements / prenups 

- What happens to an engagement ring in a separation

- De facto relationships 

- When a couple doesn’t want to get married

- What if a client is obviously lying to their lawyer 

- When there is a death between the partners

- Relocation matters

- AI in family law

- Why become a family lawyer

- Factors that contributed to Claire’s success in making Partner

- What criteria do law firms look for when selecting a Partner

- Why do an MBA

- Advice for junior lawyers 

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Find Claire Walczak on LinkedIn, and more about Claire here.

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Find Lander & Rogers:

Website: https://www.landers.com.au/ 

Instagram: @landerrogers

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lander-rogers/ 

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Gabriella is the CEO and Founding Director of GRP Speech Pathology and a certified practising Speech Pathologist. 

She’s committed to assisting people on their journey of restoring their ability to communicate, capacity to eat and swallow safely and ultimately to enhance their quality of life through the highest quality and most evidence-based approaches.

Gaby comes with a wealth of experience both locally in Australia and at internationally acclaimed teaching hospitals throughout the UK. This includes working as a speech pathologist at Monash, Austin and St Vincent’s health’s neurological department as well as time spent working in the UK at the Royal Free and Wellington hospitals and St Bart’s Health.

She established the Melbourne based mobile speech pathology practice in 2017 in order to provide a functional approach to therapy which facilitates the implementation of intervention within the comfort of client’s own homes. Gaby believes in therapy that makes a tangible difference to each client’s communication function and overall quality of life.

In this episode, we chat about:

- What are Allied Health professionals?

- What is speech pathology

- Examples of people who might engage a speech pathologist

- Why is there more demand for speech pathologists in Australia 

- Stephen Hawking and how he communicated through his glasses 

- Family resistance to care 

- Why GRP is a mobile service 

- How many people are on the NDIS 

- How to improve your work-life balance 

- How to manage 35 employees day-to-day

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Find GRP Speech Pathology: 

Website: https://www.grpspeechpathology.com.au/ 

Instagram: @grp.speechpathology

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellaptasznik/ 

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Richard Zinn is a Cosmetic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgeon with a special expertise in breast reconstruction as well as augmentation. Richard is well trained both locally and internationally, and is highly experienced with 2 postgraduate fellowships in breast surgery, microsurgery and general plastic surgery. He maintains involvement in both public and private centres, and is actively involved in training junior surgeons at the Northern Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. 

In this episode, we chat about:

- What plastic surgery is, and the procedures involved 

- Biggest misconceptions about plastic surgery 

- Cosmetic vs reconstructive plastic surgery explained 

- The effects of Ozempic on liposuction demand 

- Most common and in-demand procedures for different age groups 

- Cosmetic tourism 

- Fat grafting for breast implants / breast reconstruction & augmentation 

- Plastic surgery post pandemic 

- Richard Zinn Plastic Surgery practice & business 

- Why Richard became a plastic surgeon + study & career path 

- How to find a balance between a busy career and your life 

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Find Richard Zinn Plastic Surgery: 

Website: https://richardzinnplasticsurgery.com.au/ 

Instagram: @richardzinnplasticsurgery

LinkedIn: /in/richard-zinn-85994280/ 

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