My guest for Ep202 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder of Farmers Pick, Josh Ball.

Farmers Pick helps save food waste by rescuing wonky food that is often discarded by supermarkets and making it available to order by consumers.

Since launching in 2020, they have saved 7 million kilograms of produce and the company now has 120 employees and generated $16M in revenue last year. 

In this interview we covered a range of topics including:

A big thank you to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep202 – Josh Ball (Co-founder – Farmers Pick) on using tech to save 7 million kg of food waste appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep201 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Cheryl Mack.

Cheryl started her journey launching and growing Startcon, which was Australia’s largest startup conference at the time.

She’s now involved with a number of different projects including The Pillars, 361 Angel Club and the First Cheque Podcast but she is best known as the Co-founder & CEO of Aussie Angels.

Aussie Angels is a platform that manages the backend infrastructure of investments, allowing angel investors to invest in startups via syndicates. To date, over 1,700 angels have invested $23M through their platform.

In this interview we covered a range of topics including:

A big thank you to Tom Worden and Alexandra Lewis for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep201 – Cheryl Mack (Co-founder & CEO – Aussie Angels) on how to get started as an angel investor appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep200 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jason Wyatt, the Co-founder & CEO of Marketplacer.

Jason’s journey started with a bike marketplace called BikeExchange, the global success of this marketplace led to others wanting to create and launch their own versions of marketplaces. These opportunities led to him launching 8 Joint Ventures in different verticals.

Despite some success with this model, Jason saw a much bigger opportunity for this solution as a “platform” play that could scale and grow globally. As a result, he ended up wrapping up the JVs to go all in Marketplacer.

Marketplacer is a marketplace platform that allows enterprise companies to scale and grow their ecommerce operations, counting companies such as Qantas, Tesco and Optus as customers.

Marketplacer has quickly become a global leader in marketplace technology, powering over 100 marketplaces worldwide and facilitating billions of dollars in transactions. To date, they have raised over $85M from leading investors around the world.

In this episode we covered a range of topics including:

A big thank you to Bob Schwartz, Richard Hankin and Sam Salter for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep200 – Jason Wyatt (Co-founder & CEO – Marketplacer) on shutting down 8 companies to go all in on Marketplacer appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep199 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jaimie Fuller.

Jaimie’s journey has been full of highs and lows.

He is best known as the former CEO and Executive Chairman of compression apparel company SKINS.

SKINS was a global phenomenon with elite athletes and sporting teams all around the world using their products. The business had incredible global growth before ultimately filing for bankruptcy in 2019.

Outside of his work with SKINS, Jaimie was also an activist within sports, through #ChooseTheRightTrack tackling doping in sports and #NewFIFANow to call out corruption in football leading to a number of arrests in FIFA in 2015.

Jaimie is now back with his latest company, eo, which is helps accelerate human progress through innovative sports technology.

In this episode we covered a range of topics including:

A big thank you to Dean Hawkins and Anthony Gregorio for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep199 – Jaimie Fuller (Former CEO & Chairman – SKINS) on building SKINS and bouncing back from bankruptcy appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep198 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Rohan Workman.

Rohan is the Co-founder & CEO of Skalata, a seed stage venture capital firm that was established in 2018 and count a portfolio of over 80 companies across their 2 funds.

Prior to this, he was the Director of MAP, Melbourne Uni’s Accelerator program that he built to become the 8th ranked program in the world.

Rohan also previously founded RosterCloud, a cloud-based software management tool for events and catering businesses. RosterCloud was acquired by Rision in 2016.

In this interview we covered a range of topics including:

A big thank you to Maxine Lee, Laura Williams and Rosemary Workman for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep198 – Rohan Workman (Co-founder & CEO – Skalata) on taking risks & balancing speed with discipline appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep197 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Paul Stovell.

Paul is the Founder & CEO of Octopus Deploy, a company he started as a “nights and weekends” project for 2 years before going full time in 2012.

The company was bootstrapped for almost a decade until 2021 when they raised USD$172.5M (roughly AUD$222M) from New York based Insight Partners which is the second largest VC funding round by an Australian company ever.

Octopus Deploy is now over 300 people and just crossed $100M in ARR.

I got to sit down with Paul at the Something Tech 2024 conference to do a live podcast interview and in this conversation we covered a range of topics including: 

A big thank you to Michael Noonan, Bob Walker and Simon Galbraith for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep197 – Paul Stovell (Founder & CEO – Octopus Deploy) on turning a weekend project to a $100M ARR business appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep196 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Cam Falloon.

Every great story starts with overcoming adversity and Cam is no different.

Cam picked up a serious back injury which made it difficult for him to walk…to the point where it would take him 15mins to walk a 12m hallway and being told by doctors that he wouldn’t be able to workout again.

That life-altering injury sparked his passion for strength, conditioning, and training, not only to rehabilitate his own back but also to help others achieve peak physical health.

Cam’s expertise took him to the highest levels of personal training, including working with none other than Princess Diana and high-performance roles in the English Premier League with Derby County, as well as several AFL teams.

In 2015 he launched BFT, a group strength training studio that started with just four studios in Melbourne. Today, BFT has exploded into a global phenomenon with over 700 studios across 11 countries.

The growth and success of BFT hasn’t always been obvious with Cam having to navigate through the lockdown period during COVID and overcoming an aggressive $50M lawsuit from the largest competitor in the industry

In this episode, Cam shares lessons from his career so far and we cover topics such as:

A big thank you to John Glancy, Dave Aitchison, Sarah Nehme and Steve Latham for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep196 – Cam Falloon (Founder & CEO – BFT) on overcoming adversity and scaling to 700+ studios globally appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep195 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Leigh Jasper.

This is a special edition of the podcast.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated hitting 8 years of the podcast. To celebrate the milestone, we hosted an in-person event with our community which included a “live” podcast recording with returning guest Leigh Jasper.

I first interviewed Leigh for the show in November 2016. Back then he was the Co-founder & CEO of Aconex, a construction tech company that had publicly listed 2 years prior and had a market cap of $1B.

Since that interview, Aconex was acquired by Oracle for $1.6B and Leigh has and continues to hold several positions such as Chair of LaunchVic, Victorian governments startup agency, Co-founder and Chair of SecondQuarter Ventures, the first secondaries fund in Australia and NZ among several other board roles.

If that isn’t enough, Leigh decided to jump back into the founder seat as the Co-founder & Co-CEO of Firmable, which helps companies drive smarter decisions and outperform by allowing them to know more about their leads, customers and candidates. Firmable recently raised a $9M funding round led by AirTree.

We covered a lot of ground in this live interview including:

A big thank you to Paul Perrett and Andrew Sypkes for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep195 – Leigh Jasper (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Firmable) on jumping back in the founder seat after a $1.6B exit appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep194 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jon Gregory.

Jon is the Founder & CEO of Vitruvian.

Vitruvian is an all-in-one digital home gym that uses AI to adjust resistance in real time to help users get the most out of their workout.

Since launching in 2018, they have gone on to raise USD$27M, with customers all around the world and working with a number of athletes such as Olympian and world champion sprinter, Justin Gatlin and the worlds strongest man, Thor Bjornsson.

We covered a wide range of topics in this interview including:

A big thank you to Weibke Hensen for her help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep194 – Jon Gregory (Founder & CEO – Vitruvian) on product led growth and relentless positivity appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep193 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Llew Jury.

Llew is the General Partner and Executive Chairman of Sprint Ventures, a Queensland based VC with two funds and 18 portfolio companies that is investing in companies that build a better future. He has just helped Sprint secure funding from QIC’s VCDF for his third early stage Seed fund.

Prior to launching Sprint Ventures, Llew founded a number of successful businesses.

Between 2006 and 2016, Llew was the Founder and Managing Director of The Reload Group, one of Australia’s largest digital & eCommerce marketing agencies. Llew built the Reload business to 90 staff and 300 clients before Reload was acquired by Hardie Grant Media in 2022.

From 1999 to 2006 Llew was co-Founder of leading Queensland web, eCommerce and digital agency Alfresco, that was sold to a consortium led by the ASX listed STW Group.

In this episode we covered a range of topics including:

A big thank you to Kylie Merritt, Ian Campbell and Craig Sommerville for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Music: Paycheck

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

The post Ep193 – Llew Jury (General Partner & Exec Chairman – Sprint Ventures) on nurturing talent and building generational companies appeared first on Startup Playbook.