The Sachin and Adam Show

Joining us, is a former guest, Malcom Turnbull. As most people know him, Malcolm Turnbull was the former Prime Minister of Australia and had an extensive career across law, journalism and has written a number of books. What not as many people know, is that he was one of the early investors of technology companies in Australia and had a large role to play with the development of the startup ecosystem in Australia, with his innovation policy during his time in politics. We chatted to him about his involvement in the tech industry and his current views on a number of issues in tech concerning social media, Australia’s attitude to risk and more.

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Sponsors

Kinde: https://kinde.com/

https://www.viridianlawyers.com/#

About us

We tell the raw stories of the world’s tech leaders, by asking the vulnerable questions that no one else does. Guests have included former Prime Ministers, unicorn tech founders and the world’s top investors.

Join us for these interviews and get a real behind the scenes look into 25 year old best friends building the company of their dreams.

This week we sat down with the founder of Hustle Fund, Elizabeth Yin.

Hustle Fund is one of the most well known pre-seed brands in the US and has over $100 million of assets under management.

In a former life, Elizabeth was an entrepreneur, worked at google and was a partner at 500 startups. We chatted to her about all her career learnings and how she has built such a strong VC brand. 

We talked with Nicole Quinn, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading VC firms in the US with over $20 billion of AUM.

She focuses on early stage consumer internet companies and has invested in breakout startups like Calm and Cameo. Before this she was the head of US consumer research sales at Morgan Stanley.

We chatted about her early life, the influence of her mentor Jeremy Liew (who lead Snapchat's first investment), how she wins in consumer investing and what to look for in great consumer companies.

This week we were delighted to be joined the legendary Abheek Anand partner at Peak XV (formerly Sequoia). We dived into how Abheek manufacturers luck, founding a company that was acquired by Facebook and becoming a great investor at Sequoia. We also spent some time talking about the future of VC in SEA. Peak XV: https://www.peakxv.com/ This episode is supported by our friends at Employment Hero. Make sure you search Global Teams by Employment Hero. You can get your first months management fee free! All you need to do is go onto the employment hero website and click on the “request a demo” button on the website, and mention Sachin & Adam. You can find more at https://employmenthero.com/products/e... This episode is also sponsored by Recess a great Aussie startup providing furniture for your home and office. They’ve fitted out thousands of Aussies including the offices of Eucalyptus, Lyka and Afterwork. Use the code SACHINANDADAM for 20% off your next order. Check them out: https://recess.com.au/

This week we talked with Ben Thompson, who is the founder of unicorn startup Employment Hero.

Ben is the first repeat guest on The Sachin and Adam Show and is said by many to be one of the great tech CEO's in Australia.

We chatted with Ben about how he has navigated growing his company during the difficult macro environment, some of the new products he's releasing and how he thinks about business strategy.

We are also very lucky to have Employment Hero support us as a sponsor of the podcast. Make sure you search Global Teams by Employment Hero. You can get your first months management fee free! All you need to do is go onto the Employment Hero website and click on the “request a demo” button on the website, and mention Sachin & Adam. You can find more at https://employmenthero.com/products/employer-of-record/

This episode is also sponsored by Recess a great Aussie startup providing furniture for your home and office. They’ve fitted out thousands of Aussies including the offices of Eucalyptus, Lyka and Afterwork. Use the code SACHINANDADAM for 20% off your next order. Check them out: https://recess.com.au/

This week on the podcast you won't be hearing from us and instead from the folks at The Startup Podcast. This is one of our favourite startup podcasts in Australia because of how tactical it is for founders. We decided to post it on our feed this week. Enjoy!

Episode Description

We’re all storytellers. It’s the way we first begin to learn and it's the way we have communicated important information for thousands of years. However, it is the skill we practice the least. As startup operators, if you were a better storyteller imagine what you could accomplish. You would be able to engross and inspire potential investors and employees in any situation and be able to explain features better to your teams and get more work done.  How, you ask?

Today we say “F*ck the Slides” with special guest, author of the upcoming book, storytelling expert and passionate salesperson - Nir Zavaro. In this episode Nir and Yaniv explore the importance of storytelling for founders. In doing so they delve into the “trailer” and “toilet” pitches, when to use them and how crucial they are for a founder to get right. Nir’s knowledge and experience is on show in this one, don’t miss it!

This week we interviewed Vinny Pujji, the founder of Left Lane Capital, a NY based venture fund that has over $2 billion USD of assets under management. What's remarkable about Vinny is his accelerated timeline: he left Insight Partners at only 27 years of age to start his firm. We chatted about his background, motivations, investing style and building a VC.

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Employment Hero. Make sure you search Global Teams by Employment Hero. You can get your first months management fee free! All you need to do is go onto the employment hero website and click on the “request a demo” button on the website, and mention Sachin & Adam. You can find more at https://employmenthero.com/products/employer-of-record/

This episode is also sponsored by Recess a great Aussie startup providing furniture for your home and office. They’ve fitted out thousands of Aussies including the offices of Eucalyptus, Lyka and Afterwork. Use the code SACHINANDADAM for 20% off your next order. Check them out: https://recess.com.au/

This week we talked with Maxine Minter who will become the first female solo GP in Australia after she started her $10 million pre-seed fund Co ventures! She has had a fascinating journey which saw her going from being a lawyer in Australia to moving to San Fransisco where she went to Stanford, becoming a founder, starting an executive coaching business and now being back in Australia.

We talked deeply about who she is as a person, her journey towards VC and how she is aiming to win the game of pre-seed investing. She still has some allocation left in her $10m fund so if you want to invest in an extraordinary person whose starting Australia's first pre-seed fund, then reach out to us.

This week we had the honour of interviewing the amazing Rex Woodbury, partner at Index Ventures and author of Digital Native. We dived deep into Rex’s drivers, family unit, sacrifices and journey into VC. We then explored consumer investing, trends amongst Gen Zs and how Rex identifies the best founders. This isn’t an episode you want to miss. Rex’s newsletter: https://digitalnative.substack.com/ This episode is sponsored by Recess a great Aussie startup providing furniture for your home and office. They’ve fitted out thousands of Aussies including the offices of Eucalyptus, Lyka and Afterwork. Use the code SACHINANDADAM for 20% off your next order. Check them out: https://recess.com.au/ This episode is also supported by our friends at Employment Hero. Make sure you search Global Teams by Employment Hero. You can get your first months management fee free! All you need to do is go onto the employment hero website and click on the “request a demo” button on the website, and mention Sachin & Adam. You can find more at https://employmenthero.com/products/employer-of-record/

We were privileged to podcast James Tynan from Square Peg and announce his recent addition to the Square Peg Partnership. James has had an incredible journey which has seen him traverse McKinsey, Khan Academy, Startmate as well as a number of health problems. We talked to James about ambition, how to balance energy, why Square Peg was the place for him, his passion for healthcare and many more topics. Enjoy the episode!

This episode is sponsored by Recess a great Aussie startup providing furniture for your home and office. They’ve fitted out thousands of Aussies including the offices of Eucalyptus, Lyka and Afterwork. Use the code SACHINANDADAM for 20% off your next order. Check them out: https://recess.com.au/

This episode is also supported by our friends at Employment Hero. Make sure you search Global Teams by Employment Hero. You can get your first months management fee free! All you need to do is go onto the employment hero website and click on the “request a demo” button on the website, and mention Sachin & Adam. You can find more at https://employmenthero.com/products/employer-of-record/.

This is a special episode dedicated to the South East Asia Region. We interviewed Peter Huynh of Qualgro and Tushar Roy of Square Peg Capital. They are both Australians who are living in Singapore, spending their time investing in early stage technology companies across South East Asia. We talked about the opportunity that South East Asia presents, how to think about the region and the differences of investing there. 

This episode is sponsored by Recess a great Aussie startup providing furniture for your home and office. They’ve fitted out thousands of Aussies including the offices of Eucalyptus, Lyka and Afterwork. Use the code SACHINANDADAM for 20% off your next order.

Check them out: https://recess.com.au/

We chatted to Australian venture capitalist Nick Crocker, of Blackbird

Nick has been a partner at Blackbird since 2016 and previously was CEO at Startmate and a serial entrepreneur.

He’s one of the most well known VCs in the country and has played a significant role in the Aus startup ecosystem.

We chatted deeply about his career as an entrepreneur and investor but we also got personal on this episode, allowing Nick to reflect on significant life moments, his qualities and why he is the way he is.

If you like this episode, we’d love for you to let us know. We’re always open for feedback or suggestions.

Timestamps: 

0:00 start

1:16 why the love for Fred Again?

3:46 where does Nick’s curiosity come from?

6:48 what are Nick’s top 3 qualities?

12:14 what were you like at 23?

17:15 becoming an entrepreneur

22:10 Starting We are Hunted

23:12 was he bold growing up?

29:58 navigating family with living overseas

34:05 how he got involved in Blackbird

43:59 what makes Nick a great assessor of talent?

46:24 can young people be good venture investors?

48:16 judging an investment track record

49:30 reflections on the Australian ecosystem

This week we had the pleasure of chatting to David Shein. David is the founder of Australia’s first unicorn Com Tech, Author of The Dumbest Guy at The Table and the co-founder of the VC fund OIF. We dived into Daves lucky breaks, identifying talent, living a fulfilling life and OIFs mission. This isn’t an episode you want to miss.

Show Notes

Book: Ride of a Lifetime- Bob Iger

Podcast: Master of Scale

Dinner Guest: Mikel Arteta

Favourite Investor: Instaclustr

If he could share something with the audience : Imagine- John Lennon

Todays episode was with Vow co-founder George Peppou.

Vow is a cellular based meat company that has taken Australia by storm in the past few years.   

They’re trying to reinvent the food system by creating meat that is grown in labs.  

Recently they raised one of Australia’s largest Series A investment rounds at $73.5 million.   In todays episode we talk about George’s story, how he started vow and lessons from the whole process.

This week we interviewed Ross Chaldecott, the co-founder of Kinde. 

They're one of the most hyped startups in the Australian ecosystem, having raised $10m from Blackbird and Felicis Ventures at the pre-product stage. 

They’re building developer acceleration tools to help software startups get up and running easier.

We chatted about his journey, design and starting Kinde.

One to keep your eyes out for in the ecosystem. 

P.S. Apologies for the dodgy audio, our microphone failed 😞

This week we interviewed the NSW Minister for Digital Victor Dominello. 

Sadly on the day of releasing this podcast, Victor announced he is leaving State Politics. 

He was known as one of the truely tech savvy politicians in Australia and had a massive following on social media because of it.  

Under his leadership the NSW Government released initiatives like The Service NSW app, QR code check-ins, the Digital drivers license and the Dine and Discover vouchers.  

We talked to him about his journey into politics, his learnings and his passion for technology.

Enjoy!

This week we interviewed the brilliant and passionate entrepreneur Ronni Kahn. Through her food waste charity Ozharvest, she has provided over 200 million meals to people in need, all from food that would have otherwise have been thrown out.   

She has a remarkable story that took her South Africa to Israel to starting a global organisation.  

We chatted to her about her upbringing, the inspiration behind Ozharvest and how she grew it into what it is today.

This week we interviewed Duncan Anderson, the founder of edtech startup Edrolo. Edrolo is out to change the way that students learn in the classroom.

Duncan is an inspirational figure and an incredibly brilliant figure. He's constantly learning about himself, the world and provides so much wisdom to young people about how they can think more deliberately about their career and impact. 

We discussed his career development at Goldman Sachs and Google, how he came to found a company, building Edrolo, the edtech ecosystem and more.

Paul is one of our favourite guests we’ve ever interviewed. Apart from saying we were his favourite podcast he was humble and shared so much knowledge. We discussed his drivers, building Seek, Square Pegs story and how he finds balance.

Favourite Book: Sapiens- Yuval Noah Harari

Podcast: Masters of Scale- Reid Hoffman

Influential figure you’ve never met: Nelson Mandela

Investment that got away: Linktree

Favourite hobby outside of work: Golf and tennis

What’s a great business that no-one is building: App where users control their data and choose where it gets shared

This week Adam and I sat down in our new studio to have a one on one conversation about life. We got into career updates, goals for the future, balancing our chaotic lives and we played the empathy game live. Enjoy!

Ben Thompson is the business mastermind between many amazing companies including the unicorn Employment Hero. We got into his origin story, the birth of Employment Hero, key business learnings, the future of work, downturn in tech markets and advice for young people. This isn’t an episode you want to miss.

Employment Hero Website: https://employmenthero.com/

We talked to master content creator and investor Sahil Bloom. Sahil had a meteoric rise over 2020-2021, accumulating more than 550k twitter followers and 70k followers on his Substack, as he became extremely well known in the business world for his profound insights. 

Whilst we talked with him about content creation and investing, we also dived into a bunch of different topics such as vulnerabilities, relationships, mediating your ego and prioritising in your 20s. 

If you like the episode, please send it to a friend! Enjoy

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with Blackbird Partner Niki Scevak. Niki is a thinker that absolutely blew us away. In this episode we discussed how the study of history and psychology can improve your investing, his wisdom to his 23 year old self, career frameworks and how he plans to build Blackbird into one of the best firms in the world.  

Shownotes:

Book: Poor Charlies Almanack

Podcast: Invest like the best

Inspirational leader you’d love to have dinner with: Elon Musk

Number one skill of a great venture investor: Imagination and belief

If you were 25 right now what problem would you be working on: Biology and Biotech

Habit that’s made you great: Reading

More on Blackbird: https://blackbird.vc/

More of our podcast: https://linktr.ee/TheSachinandAdamShow

Disclaimer: Airtree is one of Australia's biggest VC funds, not crypto funds, as was mistakenly said in the introduction.

This week we talked with John Henderson, a partner at Airtree Ventures which is a leading Australian venture capital firm. John acts as the lead in Airtree's crypto and web3 investments and he's previously been an entrepreneur, operator, consultant and lawyer. Just recently Airtree raised $700 million worth of funds, with $50 million of that dedicated to crypto and web3 investments. 

This episode we dived deep into understanding the crypto and web3 movement. This entailed talking about the movement from web1 to web3, what web3 really means, decentralisation, web3 use cases,  NFT's, other thematics John is passionate about and how he makes investment decisions.

Sir Ronald Cohen is known as 'the father of British venture capital' and the 'father of impact investment'.

He brought venture capital to the UK through his firm Apax Partners, which went on to control over $50 billion of assets and was one of the earliest investors in Apple. Then at the age of 60 he wanted to focus more on social issues so he pioneered impact investing throughout the world by partnering with governments and creating the firms Bridges Funds Management and Social Finance. He’s also recently written the brilliant book ‘Impact: reshaping capitalism to drive real change’.

He talked to him about how leaving Egypt during the Suez crisis influenced him, how he founded Apax Partners at 26, his thesis for impact investing and his reflections on life.

Ronald’s work in impact investing have been a terrific service to humanity and his life is a testament to his hard work and passion.

This week our good friend Max Marchione interviewed us in a new podcast format called 'Sidetracked with Max'. This series of conversations is to present a more personal side of us, whilst having fun and engaging chats about topics we're passionate about. 

This episode we chatted about self-awareness, confidence, digital identities, how to predict the future, exponential technologies and crypto. 

This week we had the absolute honour of chatting to the CEO of Deloitte, Adam Powick. We spoke about Adams working class background, how he made career decisions and his lessons in leadership. What’s remarkable about Adam is his ability to balance authenticity and character with the more serious nature of leadership and we dived into how this developed. This episode is loaded with gems on career and life for everyone. You are in for a treat!

Show notes 

Currently reading: Dark Emu- Bruce Pascoe 

Podcasts: Sporting Podcasts 

Favourite sporting legends include: Mark Taylor and Greg Norman 

Inspirational Leaders: Nelson Mandela and Angela Merkel 

Hobbies include: Cricket 

Favourite Dumpling: Truffle Dumping Din Tai Fung

This week we talked to Sam Wong who is a partner at Blackbird Ventures, one of Australia’s most successful venture capital firms.

In today’s episode we talked about investing ethically, how she makes investment decisions, the trends in startups she finds most exciting and advice for young people who are interested in technology.

Before entering VC, Sam was a lawyer for Minter Ellison, worked in product and strategy at SurfStitch and co-founded a company called CapacityHQ.

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with the visionary that is Fred Schebesta. Fred is the founder of Finder, a crypto titan and the author of ‘Go Live! 10 Principles to Launch a Global Empire’. We went deep with Fred discussing human behaviour, space, how to find great ideas, the Metaverse and living a better life. Get ready for some conversations that will blow your mind!

Show notes

Freds book: https://www.fredschebesta.com/go-live

Book: The 7 habits of highly effective people

Podcast: Invest Like the Best, Acquired, Masters of Scale

Inspirational figure: Ben Horowitz and Bill Campbell

Hobbies: Minecraft

This week we interviewed African entrepreneur Kaivan Sattar. Kaivan started the digital bank, Asaak, which lends to people in Uganda who previously could not access credit. They have grown dramatically over the past year and are now doing over $1 million US in revenue per year. 

We dived deep into the development prospects of Africa, Kaivan's founding story and the vision he has for Asaak. 

Before founding Asaak, Kaivan worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, Grameen Bank and studied at Colombia and NY University. 

For transparency, both of us made an angel investment into Asaak earlier this year.  

This week we had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Mark Carnegie, one of Australia’s top business titans. Mark was trained on Wall Street by James Wolfensohn and started the investment bank Carnegie, Wylie & Co. Mark then became the CEO of Lazard Australia and later on started M.H.Carnegie & Co, where he works today. We spoke to Mark about his career, what young people should be working on and the world of Crypto/DEFI. Mark is a massive advocate of crypto completely changing the world and we were fascinated to hear his thoughts. We honestly think this podcast was as informative as a business degree.

Show notes: More on Mark: https://www.mhcarnegie.com/our-people

Recommendations by Mark: Poor Charlies Almanack Tim Ferriss and Balaji Podcast: https://tim.blog/2021/03/24/balaji-srinivasan/

Quick fire: Book: Remembrance of Times Past, LBJ biographies. Podcast: Tim Ferriss and Balaji. Inspirational figure you’ve never met: Charlie Munger. Hobby: Trout fishing and sailing

This week we had a 1 on 1 together and chatted about what we've been doing recently, the direction the Sachin and Adam Show is taking, our recent Angel Investment into a Fintech company, and our life in lockdown. Enjoy!

0:26 Introduction

2:50 What we’ve been doing

8:05 Why we’re passionate about technology and venture capital & what we’re building

24:46 Our angel investment into Ugandan Fintech company Asaak

35:15 Learning from online communities

40:40 Life in Lockdown

We had the pleasure of sitting down with James Alexander, one of the youngest people to launch a venture capital fund in Australia. James is a technologist at heart and after studying computer science co-founded one of the first University startup accelerators, Incubate, where he has helped 100+ startups launch their ideas.

What you will learn from this episode

• How James developed his love of technology
• The process of starting Incubate
• The characteristics of a great startup founder and Jame’s favourite companies
• The journey of starting a VC fund at a young age
• The trends in business and innovation across the next 10 years.

Enjoy!

Show notes

Favourite book: The Black Swan- Nassim Taleb & The Beginning of Infinity- David Deutsch

Podcast: A16Z Technology Podcast

Person: Galileo

Hobbies: Collecting music and Djing

This week we had the pleasure of sitting down with the amazing Moses Lo. Moses studied at UNSW and begun his career as a management consultant at BCG before moving to Silicon Valley to pursue entrepreneurship. After completing an MBA from Berkeley, Moses was selected for Y Combinator (YC) where he started his  FinTech company, Xendit. We dived deep into Moses’s upbringing, why he chose management consulting, the experience of YC, scaling Xendit in Indonesia and the differences in culture between Australia and the US. Enjoy!

Show notes:

Moses’s Company: https://www.xendit.co/en/

Moses’s Blog: https://www.moseslo.com/

Book: High Growth Handbook- Elad Gill

Podcast: Masters of Scale- Reid Hoffman

Famous Figure: Martin Luther King

Hobby: Manual Labour

2 years ago when we accidentally started this podcast we joked that if there was one person in the world we could talk to, it would be the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull.

Through a lot of persistence and luck, 60 episodes later we got to meet our hero.

We spoke to Malcolm about the key experiences that defined him as a person, how he was able to build relationships with the most powerful people in Australia in his early 20s and how he reached the highest level of success across industries such as Journalism, Law, Investment Banking and Politics. We then dived into his time as PM and how he was able to maintain his individuality and sense of self. We then moved to a discussion of Malcolm's vision for Australia and how future leaders can step up to address the challenges that lay ahead. We finished off the episode with a round of quick fire questions and asked Malcolm that if he could write a letter to his 22 year old self, what would he say?

Thank you for everyone that’s been on the journey so far and we hope you enjoy the episode.

This week we interviewed Robbie Robertson, who is Sydney Leader of Deloitte Digital, Deloitte's digital consultancy arm. Coming from a design background, Robbie is fascinated about the interaction of design principles, sensory experiences and creating new products.   

We talked to him about how he perceives design, what design consulting looks like and the principles for building the future.

Rowan Kunz is the founder of education business Art of Smart, which does tutoring and mentoring for high-school students. Art of Smart has helped over 6,000 students with their high-school education, their transition to university and with career advice. Rowan was Australia's Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019. Previously, he also founded and sold two other educational businesses. Rowan studied Arts/Law at The University of Sydney.

We talked to him about how he made the decision to start Art of Smart whilst at uni instead of applying for Law clerkships, how uni students should think about optionality when making career decisions and the realities of youth unemployment.

Matt Allen is the founder of Tractor Ventures, a revenue based financing company that provides an alternative to traditional venture capital for technology startups. He is also a prolific angel investor, having invested in over a dozen startups and has achieved an IRR of over 50%. He previously worked at Amazon Web Services, co-founded a number of companies and spent his early days working in software development.

Our conversation with him ranged from talking about what he gained in his early career in technology, his method of angel investing, why he felt it was important to start Tractor Ventures and the trends in software companies he is currently witnessing.

Book: Turn the ship around

Podcast: The Startup Playbook

Kirstin Hunter is a co-founder of the super company Future Super, which manages over $900m of assets. Future Super focuses on creating a world without climate change and inequality, so they invest their assets into sustainable companies and ignore fossil fuels and harmful companies.

Before Future Super she worked in management consulting at Bain & Co for six years and was also a solicitor at Freehills for two years. Kirstin studied arts/medicine/law at UNSW.

Our conversation ranged on the topics of Kirstins years at university, what she learnt working in the corporate world, how her passions developed towards social justice and sustainability and her journey of co-founding Future Super.

Book: The Great Gatsby. 

Podcast: Masters of Scale. 

Inspirational Figure: Jacinda Ardern.