Mat Ellis is the CTO and co-founder of Kismet. Mark called him with an idea. Mat said yes. That is still, he says, essentially how their relationship works.

In this episode, Mat talks about his dream job at Lockheed Martin, riding motorbikes through Vietnam, a year in Shanghai where his favourite meal was Japanese, and how a niche coding language called Elixir ended up connecting him to Xplor.

He also has a lot to say about how to build a team, why constraints make better products, what it means to be responsible for an outcome not just a piece of code, and why everything in life is luck - and that's a really good thing.

In this episode they cover:

•  Granddad's computer and the game Flight Simulator 

•  The only subject he ever aced: the high school software course that changed his path

•  Bad at maths, great at software: working backwards from the outcome

•  Building a Mat-shaped engineering team

•  Dream job at Lockheed Martin

•  Small teams do more: the thesis Mat tested at Kismet

•  Responsible for the outcome not just the code

•  Constraints make better products: Steve Jobs and the independent theatre analogy

•  Goals as identity: standards not finish lines

•  CTO by accident: doing what you're good at until it stops working

•  Remove the ceiling: Whiplash, Dr. Robbie and how leaders accidentally limit people

•  Luck: everything is luck and that's why you can't be anything but humble

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Lachlan Smale is the Strategy and Investments Manager at Kismet. He is also, according to his colleagues, a mythical creature. 

Lachie has been quietly one of the most interesting people in the building since he arrived, and this episode finally gets him in the room. 

He talks about almost (my take, not his) making it as a professional soccer player, investment banking in London and the app idea that became The Brick before The Brick existed.

He also shares three quotes he thinks about all the time.

Plus: the vest incident in full, critical vitamin D levels, pickleball, padel courts he tried to invest in (the capex killed it), and a shout-out to Dr Lionel Lubitz of the Royal Children's Hospital. 

In this episode they cover:

•  Commerce, master's degree, consulting, Canberra and investment banking: the generalist path

•  Soccer scouts

•  Is finance complexity by design? 

•  How to stand out when every resume looks the same

•  Helping founders sell the businesses they spent their whole lives building

•  Why five is his favourite number 

•  The vest incident: how Lachie became a Kismet mythical creature

•  Pickleball, padel courts and why the investment did not happen

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Sam Armstrong is the co-founder and Chief Ecosystems Officer at Kismet. 

He met Mark for the first time helping carry a very large tree up a lift in South Melbourne. He was the first person hired at Xplor. He was an electrician for 10 years before that, a personal trainer before that, and a removalist in London who moved Madonna, Jude Law and Ozzy Osbourne before that.

This episode is warm, funny and full of stories.

Sammy talks about going all in on LEDs in 2012 (too early, ended up in Macau getting crazy suits made), walking on hot coals at age five, pencilling arguments with his wife into the calendar, and investing in crypto purely based on how cool the logo looked - Stefan has not forgiven him.

He also talks about what it means to build genuine relationships, how to hold someone's hand through one of the biggest decisions of their life, and why his still considers himself the shy kid.

🎧 Listen on YouTube and Apple Podcasts too.

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Adam Dicker has been at Kismet for three years - one of the OG's. He's the principal engineer and has the least internet presence of anyone who has sat in this studio. And he would like to keep it that way thank you very much.

This episode is a delight. Adam is honest, funny and completely himself.

He talks about being a first-time parent and an early stage startup employee simultaneously, moving six times in three years, why he describes himself as horrible with goals but has somehow achieved everything he set his mind to, and why he considers himself objectively lucky despite occasionally being, in his own words, a little bleak.

There's also a very long conversation about The Pitt, a Dick Wolf net worth revelation, a Winston Churchill chat, and a hot take about Elsa from Frozen that we don't think you're ready for.

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Meet Dylan Verrier: Kismet's acquisitions specialist, serial community builder, and the person who sat outside his Bondi apartment with a handmade sign that said 'Here to Listen' the day after one of Australia's most devastating events.

Dylan talks about the card game he built called Beyond theWeather, the overnight kayak race and the sand marathon he ran for Mensline, how an ex taught him the most important lesson he knows about friendship, and how DJ decks borrowed from a Kismet investor led to a very unexpected career.

Better questions create better conversations. This episode isthe proof.

Article mentioned at the 24ish minute mark: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/68983/1/so-excited-to-catch-up-culture-friendship-recaps-friends 

CHAPTERS

00:00  Introduction and fashion as a survival strategy with three sisters

01:30  Dylan's role at Kismet

02:00  Exercise physiology, WorkCover and moving into sales

03:30  Taking the leap: joining a mate's startup and what that taught him

05:00  Plus Communities: from university LMS to music festivals to retirement villages

08:00  Advocating for young people in aged care and seniors loving technology

09:30  Happy hour at 3:00 PM and learning you cannot drive to training

10:30  Community as a through line: the best all-rounder, the musical, the saxophone

12:30  Moving to Sydney, saying yes to everything and building from scratch

14:00  Othello the Musical: three males auditioned and the singing got reassigned

15:30  Goals: where he is amazing and where he has been too loose

17:00  Putting a date to it: the shift that changed everything

18:30  Exercise as a mental health toolkit since age 14

19:00  The 10K Bondi to Watsons Bay ocean swim in winter

19:30  111 kilometres overnight in a ski paddle on the Hawkesbury River

20:30  A full marathon on soft sand at Bondi for Mensline

22:00  Why the challenges are always different and what comes next: the dance challenge

24:30  Beyond the Weather: the card game that started as a Christmas experiment

26:00  The Mankind Project and why better questions create better conversations

28:00  The lesson an ex taught him about sitting in discomfort

37:00  How that lesson became a superpower

40:00  Sydney as a community: why Bondi is the exception

42:00  Bondi: what happened 30 metres from his apartment

44:00  Setting up a table out front with a sign that said Here to Listen

47:00  The career break, South America and solo hiking

48:30  The DJ decks, the Kismet investor and how he ended up here

51:00  Luck: if you think you're lucky you look for luck and you find it

52:30  Big goals: the Beyond the Weather movement and events at scale

55:00  The 80th birthday: the connector, the Lego piece, the spark

56:30  What would you tell little Dylan? Keep playing. Remain curious.

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Meet Anna Latussek: software engineer at Kismet, freshly minted Australian citizen, and the person who accidentally ended up catering for orcs and hobbits on a mountain in New Zealand at 5:00 AM.

Anna left Germany at 19 and hasn't really stopped moving since. She talks about building a life in a country that is not your own, the years it takes to find home, and the moments that finally made it feel real.

She also solves the Great Doona Debate once and for all. Yes, separate blankets are a thing in Germany. No, she does not understand the top sheet.

Plus the dog accessories business that got to prototype stage, almost moving to Zurich, and a mum who always finds a four-leaf clover when you need one.

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Seventeen episodes in, it's finally time for the CEO tosit down.

Mark Woodland is the CEO and founder of Kismet, and thisconversation goes places most founder interviews don't.

He talks about losing his brother Ben and about losing hisson five years ago during COVID and going to work the next day.

About the three problems he needs to solve before he's done: healthcare, education and housing.

And the one after that. Politics.

Plus vision boards, a taxidermy Bigfoot head stuck in customs,why Xplor should have failed 100 times and didn't, and the challenge he is about to issue to the entire Kismet team.

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The tables have turned. This week, our host Carina Waye takes the guest chair, and Kismet CEO Mark Woodland takes the mic.

It turns out Carina has quite the story. Musical theatre degree, rejection from WAAPA at 18, Channel 10, New York, Jim Henson's carriage house, catering for billionaires in the Hamptons, and then coming home during COVID to start fresh in tech with zero experience and a very aggressive LinkedIn strategy.

They also get into goals, luck, gratitude, other people's fear and the five-year plan she was nervous to say out loud.

Plus conspiracy theories, obviously.

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Meet Simone Weston, Chief Performance Officer at Kismet,obsessed with the Navy SEALs, powered by a 5am ritual, and one of the most extraordinary people to sit down in the studio yet.

Mon's episode covers a lot of ground. Her lived experiencewith domestic violence and the healing journey that followed. The power spectrum she created to diagnose where we all sit at any given moment. What we are not teaching men or women about power, and why that gap is costing us. How she was meditating one day and received a very clear message about a job that did not yet exist, and then manifested it into being.

Plus: why people-pleasing is actually a form of disempowerment, soul-aligned goals vs ego-driven goals, and how to regulate yourself and a dysregulated room using only your body.

This one is direct, honest and deeply generous. Mon holdsnothing back.

In this episode we cover:

• The Navy SEALs metaphor and what Kismet is actually trying to build

• Power literacy: the gap in corporate Australia no one is talking about

• The power spectrum from disempowered to overpowered and how to stay in conscious power

• Domestic violence, PTSD and defying the odds on a healing timeline

• Healing is a choice: going head on and finding the root cause

• You have to feel it to heal it

• Regulating yourself and a dysregulated room

• Ego and ego: why dropping your energy wins every time

• Raising boys with power literacy: critical thinking, boundaries,leadership

• Soul-aligned goals vs ego-driven goals and how aligned ones feel like a pull not a force

• Manifesting: Mon has a gift and she is the first to admit she cannot explain it

• Luck: it is not what happens to you, it is what you make of it

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In this episode of The Kismet Podcast, Carina sits down with Shanti Dhanaraj, who looks after Compliance and Systems at Kismet, for one of the most joyful, wide-ranging conversations the pod has had yet.

Shanti is a theatre kid turned data nerd turned book obsessive turned flower person, and somehow all of it makes complete sense.

They talk about growing up painfully shy and how drama class changed everything, the unexpected connection between theatre ensemble and social justice, what it actually means to make choices for yourself for the first time, and the power of a library card.

Plus: a Schitt's Creek rewatch, why Fleabag is always the answer, a strong case for going to shows alone, and the philosophy of flowers.

This one is warm, funny and easy to love, just like Shanti.

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