Open The Pod Bay Doors

E163 - Clément Aglietta, Co-Founder & CEO, Edda    Our guest this week is Clément Aglietta, Co-Founder & CEO of Edda, a collaborative tool for private equity investors. Edda is an all-in-one solution for deal flow, portfolio management, and LP’s relationship management. The tool is designed to be user-centric and integrates with external databases and other tools. Edda has recently launched into the ANZ market via a partnership with Innovation Bay’s VC community, Aurora.    Clément began his career at CERN, the biggest physics laboratory in Europe, where he learned about quantum physics. He then went on to study design. This gave him the opportunity to join the dots between physics and design and discover a new method of solving problems - a passion that led to the creation of Edda.    Clément’s desire to be an entrepreneur led him to attend conferences and meet investors. He worked at Rebag, a luxury handbag marketplace, and was later invited to join LG Labs as a VC. As a designer turned VC, he notic

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Our guest this week is Fintech expert Alan Tsen, Head of fmX, IAG’s corporate accelerator program.    Currently in the middle of its fifth season, fmX invites 8 startup companies per cohort to engage in a 12 week program giving participants a unique opportunity to learn how to infiltrate their product successfully into the insurtech ecosystem.    Across the entirely free program, participants gain hugely valuable knowledge through training and face to face workshops to learn how to structure and position their businesses while giving them access to internal technical and design outlets to explore insurance use cases. One unique element of fmX is the potential for startups to partner with IAG.    With an enviable resume which includes practicing international tax law, a tenure as the GM of Stone & Chalk Melbourne, Chair and board member of Fintech Australia and Director of Revenue for startup Chipper Cash, Alan is also a lover of fine wine, even studying to become a sommelier, and writes a hugely knowledge

Did you know that dogs get cancer at the highest rate of any mammal in the world? Or that 80% of dogs get dental disease? How about that 50% of cats and dogs are overweight or obese? Pretty startling statistics, right?    Well, Anna Podolsky, Founder & CEO of direct to customer pet wellness business, Lyka, is on a mission to make our furry friends healthier and live longer, more fulfilled lives. Named after Anna’s 14 year old border collie, the concept for the business was borne when Lyka showed signs of being unwell and, after not recognising any of the ingredients in her generic food, began cooking for her fur baby.    Lyka employs 160 staff - doubling almost every 6 months - each with a deep love and care for animals. The company has so far raised $40 million in funds and has created 15 million meals for their loyal and very sticky customer base of furry friends and pet parents.    Ian and Anna cover a range of topics including:  Building the foundations for business success as a management consultant

Our guest this week is Anuj Goel, Head of Technology Sector and Executive Director at Macquarie Capital.    Anuj joined Macquarie’s Technology, Media, Entertainment and Telecommunications (TMET) team in 2006 following a short period working as an actuarial consultant.​   Today, Anuj focuses on helping Technology companies with M&A, IPO, trade sales, capital raising and other strategic priorities. In addition, Anuj is actively involved in Macquarie’s principal investing activities having been involved with companies such as Seek, oOh!media, PEXA and Temple & Webster. ​Leading a team of 22 staff across advisory and investment, some days Anuj will be solving complex problems with a large ASX company - the next - helping a Series A company think about their growth and investments.    Anuj and his team have a broad technology coverage across online businesses, classifieds, FinTech and software, and are building capabilities in emerging sectors like AgTech.   Ian and Anuj discuss a number of topics includin

E158 - Adam Schwab, CEO and Co-Founder at Luxury Escapes   Adam Scwhab runs at a million miles an hour - literally, he runs barefoot marathons! The CEO and Co-Founder of Luxury Escapes, Adam Schwab is our guest this week.    Outside of running one of the country’s most successful, bespoke travel sites, and running really far without shoes, Adam is also a contributing journalist and writer, podcast host, father of two young children, is on the investment committee of Save The Children, and is an angel investor.    An ex-lawyer, Adam and Luxury Escapes co-founding partner Jeremy Same (an ex-banker), started their first business in 2004 - apartment accommodation for backpackers. Fast forward to 2023, Luxury Escape has 510 staff on its books across Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Brazil, Ukraine, and New Zealand and will turn over close to $1b this year.    Ian and Adam discuss a heap including: Taking asymmetric risks  How COVID affected the business and helped them pivot their product offering  That every great f

E157 James Petrie, CEO & Co-Founder, Nourish    There’s a shift happening in the food that we eat. That is, we’re seeing a transition to plant based food. According to Bloomberg, the plant based food industry is projected to hit $162 billion in the next decade. With a projected population of 10 billion people on earth by 2080, it will be impossible to feed that many mouths with animal-based proteins. Enter Nourish.    Our guest this week is James Petrie, the CEO & Co-Founder of Nourish. Cutting his teeth as a research scientist at CSIRO, James was part of the lipid engineering team, and responsible for one product that mimicked fish oil - all from a canola crop. These learnings inspired the formation of Nourish.    Though not a trivial exercise to make plant-based proteins delicious, Nourish is responsible for the production of fats that have made a breakthrough in the taste and experience of alternative proteins. Nourish engineer yeasts and fungal streams that behave in the same way as animal fats -

Our first guest of 2023 is Adam Theobald, CoFounder & CEO of Ordermentum, a double sided marketplace and platform for hospitality suppliers and venues to make orders and payments.    Despite a potentially promising career in cricket and a desire to become a physio, Adam studied Computer Science at university going on to complete a Master degree in Commerce. Beginning his career as a stockbroker focusing on technology stocks, Adam moved into roles with voiceover IP company Freshtell (comparable to Skype) and web-based video conferencing company Parkslide (akin to Zoom). With a love of coffee, Adam founded order ahead app Beat The Queue (since rebranded to Hey You who have recently merged with delivery app Yello).    Ordermentum was born in 2014 with 10 customers signed up - the first being Lion Nathan. Despite the COVID curveball that threatened to all but completely wipe out the entire hospitality industry, the company became a savior to locked down dog walkers ordering coffees.    Ordermentum now boast a

On November 10 and 11, Sunrise, Australia’s leading ideas and innovation festival run by our friends at Blackbird, returned to Sydney for their most ambitious event since its inception in 2014. Taking over Sydney’s iconic Carriageworks, Sunrise opened its doors, inviting around 1,000 of its closest pals, all primed to explore the optimism and wonder of human achievement. Armed with a microphone, and less a wisdom tooth (which was removed around halfway through the festival - by a professional dentist), Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and familiar host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner, tapped 21 people on the shoulder for series of pow wows about business, innovation, a retrospective at what has got them to now, a fast forward of what’s to come for our industry and what’s exciting them, and of course…what they’re hearing, seeing and feeling at Sunrise. Part 3 features an admirable group of people including Flavia Tata Nardini (Fleet Space Technologies), Andy Tsao (Silicon Valley Bank), Matthew Pearson (Flee

On November 10 and 11, Sunrise, Australia’s leading ideas and innovation festival run by our friends at Blackbird, returned to Sydney for their most ambitious event since its inception in 2014. Taking over Sydney’s iconic Carriageworks, Sunrise opened its doors, inviting around 1,000 of its closest pals, all primed to explore the optimism and wonder of human achievement. Armed with a microphone, and less a wisdom tooth (which was removed around halfway through the festival - by a professional dentist), Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and familiar host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner, tapped 21 people on the shoulder for series of pow wows about business, innovation, a retrospective at what has got them to now, a fast forward of what’s to come for our industry and what’s exciting them, and of course…what they’re hearing, seeing and feeling at Sunrise. Part 2 features a bunch of incredible humans including Joel Connolly (Blackbird), Alex Apoifis (Blackbird), Jekaterina Viktorova (Syenta), Andrea Gardiner (J

On November 10 and 11, Sunrise, Australia’s leading ideas and innovation festival run by our friends at Blackbird, returned to Sydney for their most ambitious event since its inception in 2014. Taking over Sydney’s iconic Carriageworks, Sunrise opened its doors, inviting around 1,000 of its closest pals, all primed to explore the optimism and wonder of human achievement.    Armed with a microphone, and less a wisdom tooth (which was removed around halfway through the festival - by a professional dentist), Innovation Bay’s Co-Founder and familiar host of Open The Pod Bay Doors, Ian Gardiner, tapped 21 people on the shoulder for series of pow wows about business, innovation, a retrospective at what has got them to now, a fast forward of what’s to come for our industry and what’s exciting them, and of course…what they’re hearing, seeing and feeling at Sunrise.    Part 1 features a bevy of incredible humans including:  - Matt Fairhurst (Skedulo)- Al Coleman (Folklore)- Kristen Durham (Zendesk)- Mary Minas (Sense

Our guest for episode 152 is Mina Radhakrishnan, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of Proptech startup :Different. Mina co-founded the company alongside her husband, with whom she shares CEO duties. :Different is property management as a service for real estate agents with their mission being to take care of homes and the people in them.    Born in Canada, Mina has spent a lot of time in the US, kick starting her career at Goldman Sachs in New York. She chose a role as Product Manager at Google over Business School and was one of the first employees of Uber, where she went on to become Head of Product and was part of the team that introduced surge prices during busy periods. While running her consultancy on the side to keep close to product and startups, Mina worked with a couple of venture firms (Cowboy Venture and Redpoint) as an advisor and entrepreneur in residence. Through all of this wealth of experience, she knew she wanted to be a founder.    During a round the world trip, Mina and her husband came up with the

Mark Tanner is the Co-Founder and COO of Qwilr - an online platform that allows the customer to easily create visually compelling sales and marketing collateral at speed. The aim is to deliver a better buyer experience by combining content, price quotes, e-sign, and sales transactions into a single, mobile-friendly webpage. It’s the ultimate productivity boost for sales and marketing teams, with automation, analytics, code-free design and collaboration capability, all in one platform.   In this episode we hear about Mark’s passion for politics and study of History, Government & International Relations at Sydney University. How Google poached him from a startup to help launch Google Play Books, Google Play Magazines & Google Newsstand. Returning from a couple of years in New York we learn how reconnecting with old school friend Dylan Baskind led to the creation of Qwirl.    Ian and Mark discuss Qwilr’s journey and deep dive into Mark's expertise in sales and go-to-market plan. Tune in to hear more on:

WinVC is a women VC investor-led initiative aiming to facilitate the success of women VC investors and women-led VC firms, and attract more women from diverse backgrounds into VC investment roles. WinVC’s aim is to bring together women in VC to learn from one another, develop new opportunities, facilitate collaboration and help foster female talent in the industry.  On this week’s episode, our guests are WinVC’s incredible founders, Andrea Gardiner, CEO & Founder of Jelix Ventures; Ingrid Maes, Founder & Managing Director of W23; and Michelle Deaker, Founding Partner & Managing Director of OneVentures.  According to a recent report by Deloitte and SBE titled Accelerating women founders: The untapped investment opportunity, only 0.7% of all private start-up funding in FY22 went to solely female founding teams, despite funding increasing tenfold between FY18 and FY22. A separate AIC report highlights that just 25% of VC investors are female, with VC female partners sitting at 15%. Andrea, Ingrid and

Paul Weingarth is the CEO and founder of Slyp - a fintech startup and platform sitting between retail/merchant services and banking. The vision of Slyp is to completely reimagine what a receipt could be used for. Rather than a receipt being the end of a transaction, Slyp are developing a network allowing a relationship between the merchant, bank and customer to begin at the end of the transaction.    We hear about Paul’s study of agri economics at uni (where his nickname was Urban Cowboy), his first full time role at Equigroup, how he helped to set up the team at Microsoft Financing in Australia before moving over to PayPal in 2010. Deeply passionate about the customer experience, and now with an enviable resume of experience, Paul co-founded Slyp in 2016 alongside Spiro Rokos and Mike Boyd.      With just a prototype, Paul and Slyp were able to engage all four major Australian banks as both investors and current and future customers - the only Australian fintech to have done so. Slyp’s merchant list extends

Joining us for Episode 148 is the fascinating George Peppou, Founder and CEO of Vow Food, a cultivated meat company, founded and operated in Sydney. Vow is made up of a multidisciplinary team of scientists, technologists and designers, working together in the relentless pursuit of better food.By making meat with animal cells, and not the animals themselves, Vow is creating the world's most tantalising and unique culinary experiences without compromising on ethics or our planet along the way. Ian and George dive into George's career path so far, from studying Biochemistry and Immunobiology at Sydney University to Founder and CEO of Vow Food. Tune in to hear more on: The effects of the meat industry and food production on the Global greenhouse gas emissions  How Vow as a product is produced and when it will first go to market The investment and growth stages of Vow  Georges business and personal challenges Quick fire round: Book: Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbel

Joining us for E147 is Angela Clark, Co Founder of Wallet Nation. Angela is a specialist in business transformation, customer experience, innovation and digital platforms. Angela’s experience spans multiple industries, customer segments and services, across education, media, payments and financial services. Angela has previously led companies as a CEO and Managing Director, founded her own start-ups and led transformation of divisions and customer strategy within larger companies.Tune in to hear Ian deep dive into Angela's fascinating career journey plus so much more as the pair cover off topics such as: The transition from corporate to start up Wallet Nation - How was it founded, where is it at currently and what is the vision Crypto Winter and the evolution of blockchain and web3 The benefits of being apart of a community Quickfire Round Book - Cloudstreet by Tim Winton News source - NY Times Tech CEO - Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Best productivity tool -  Weeding tools for the garden TV show - ESP News Tedx t

Our guest for episode 146 is Australian politician Hon Ed Husic MP. Elected to the House of Representatives as the Federal Member for Chifley in 2010, Ed is currently serving as Minister for Industry and Science.  Passionate about the digital economy creating the jobs of the future, Ed has a long-standing interest in the impact of tech on our economy and community and his portfolio appointments and parliamentary interests have focused on this. For a number of years, he has been part of the Federal Opposition’s team developing policies to promote early stage and digital innovation.In this episode, we dive into Ed's top priorities for policies within the startup ecosystem. Ian and Ed also touch on the Research and Development tax incentive, the positive impact migration and visas can have on growing the economy, as well as discuss politics in general plus the impact inflation and rising interest rates may have on small startups.  Tune in to hear more from Ed! Quickfire RoundBook - System Error by Rob Reich and

After a two year hiatus, Innovation Bay and ARENA teamed up once more for the ARENA Renewable Energy Founder Forum.    Across the course of the evening, four promising founders from a pool of 40 applications in the renewables space were invited to pitched their business to a room of experts and enthusiasts in the industry.    We heard from ARENA's Darren Miller, past alumni 5B’s Dr Nicole Kuepper-Russell and an expert panel, recorded the night, featured Renate Egan from the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, Kate Vidgen of Macquarie Group and Kristin Vaughan from Virescent Ventures.   Today we’re thrilled to share the panel discussion with you for this week’s episode. Across this educational and eye-opening conversation, Innovation Bay’s own Ian Gardiner alongside renewables experts Renate Egan, Kate Vidgen and Kristin Vaughan cover a range of topics.    We investigate the renewable energy industry shifts across the last 12-18 months, Australia’s evolution relative to other international markets in

Louise Nobes is the founder of the Australian arm of 42 - a globally innovative software engineering and coding trade school. 42 is free to attend with entry criteria being that you must be 16 to attend and either undergo a strenuous 2 hour logic test (and pass) or a 4 week intensive bootcamp (and pass).    An ex-social worker, Louise is incredibly passionate about supporting underprivileged and underrepresented people. While teaching at Flinders NVI, Louise became fixated on wanting to push into work of the future and how it would look to bring in the best educational model that focused on coding and jobs - and one that was open to everyone. After looking up 42 on the advice of a colleague, Louise contacted the French headquarters to ask if she could become the Australia license holder. Within 24 hours they agreed.    Louise looks at everything with a lens focused on diversity and equality. She is driven by a desire to solve some of the really complex problems in society - one problem in particular being you