My guest for Ep179 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Ben Thompson, the Co-founder & CEO of Employment Hero. Employment hero is one of Australia’s great startup success stories. The business launched in November 2014 and fast forward almost a decade later, they have 2.5M users and 300,000 SME customers globally and in 2023 they raised a $263M Series F funding round, taking their total funding to $650M at a valuation just shy of $2B. In this episode we get into many of the insights and lessons from his journey in building a $2B business, but as you may have seen, Ben and Employment Hero h ..read more

My guest for Ep178 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & CEO of Creative Cubes, Tobi Skovron. Tobi has had a fascinating career journey to date He started his first business, Pet Loo with Sim, who is now his wife, and a $20,000 investment from his father-in law. They grew that business to $10M in ARR before eventually being acquired by PetSafe in 2012. It wasn’t always a straightforward journey however with many bumps along the way and in this episode, Tobi opens up on some of these stories including how we owed a manufacturer $1M in payments and only had $15K in the bank a ..read more

My guest for Episode 177 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Sam Kothari, the Co-founder & COO of Everlab. Sam is an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word having previously run everything from tuition businesses and ice cream shops to starting a popular Poke bowl chain across Sydney and Mebourne called, Poked. He is now the Co-founder & COO of Everlab, a first of its kind preventative health protocol that gives you access to cutting-edge diagnostics, a personal doctor and tailored programs – designed to improve wellbeing and longevity.  Everlab recently raised a $3M pre-se ..read more

The Startup Playbook Podcast Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep176 – Luke Anear (Founder & CEO – SafetyCulture) on lessons from building a $2.7B company March 21, 2024 rohitbhargava Podcast My guest for Episode 176 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Luke Anear, the Founder & CEO of SafetyCulture. Luke is one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs. He started SafetyCulture in 2004 out of a garage in Townsville, initially as a lifestyle business, before conversations with Scott Farqu ..read more

The Startup Playbook Podcast Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep175 – Ed Hooper (Co-founder & CEO – GXE) on frameworks, exits and investing March 14, 2024 rohitbhargava Uncategorized My guest for Ep175 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Ed Hooper, the Co-founder & CEO of GXE. Ed was previously the Co-founder & CEO of Omny Studio, which was an audio management platform used by media companies and podcasters to grow their audience, reduce production costs and monetize their platform. Om ..read more

The Startup Playbook Podcast Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep174 – Alexandra Zatarain (Co-founder – 8 Sleep) on branding, company DNA and category creation February 22, 2024 rohitbhargava Podcast My guest for Ep174 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & VP of Brand & Marketing of 8 Sleep, Alexandra Zatarain. Back in 2014, Alex moved from NYC to Silicon valley to launch a smart mattress company as 4 “outsiders” to the silicon valley startup scene. They wanted to build and c ..read more

The Startup Playbook Podcast Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep173 – Mark Woodland (Co-founder & CEO – Kismet) on timing, leadership & high performance February 15, 2024 rohitbhargava Uncategorized My guest for Episode 173 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & CEO of Kismet, Mark Woodland. Mark has had a fascinating journey to date. He joined the military to fulfil his brothers dreams before leaving to do “admin” for his mums childcare business. That experience led him ..read more

My guest for Episode 172 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & General Partner of Side Stage Ventures, Ben Grabiner. There are few people in the Australian startup ecosystem with the background on both sides of the table as Ben! He was an investor at Local Globe, one of the leading VC funds in the UK and Europe before jumping into starting Platoon, A platform to discover and develop the very best emerging creative talent, including the likes of Billie Eilish who they helped to discover and release her first song. In 2018, Platoon was acquired by Apple. After spending some t ..read more

My guest for Ep170 of The Startup Playbook Podcast, was the Co-founder & CEO of One Future Football, Pete Davis. Pete Davis, my co-founder in a new startup called One Future Football, we just came out of stealth a few weeks ago to announce our $3M pre-seed funding round led by Blackbird and for the first time on a podcast we are sharing more details about 1FF and our journey so far. So what exactly is One Future Football? 1FF is a new global football league with 12 teams located all over the world that compete head to head but instead of “real people” kicking around a football inside a st ..read more

My guest for Ep169 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jax Vullinghs, Partner at AirTree Ventures. Jax has had a fascinating career to date. She studied History at University before making the non-obvious leap into the world of investment banking at Merrill Lynch. After 2.5 years she decided to join an early stage startup called Listable (before rebranding to Kalo). Kalo went on to raise significant funding rounds by some of the world’s biggest VC funds. In 2018 she moved to Australia and joined AirTree Ventures, one of the leading VCs in Australia, as a Partner of the fund. In this jam packe ..read more