What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them. By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive ..read more

Adam Schwab is our guest on Scaling Up, the CEO and co-founder of Luxury Escapes – a travel marketplace with almost $1b in bookings annually. Adam’s story is that of a quintessential and accomplished entrepreneur – one of trial and error, learning from mistakes and applying it to the next chapter as is always required. Luxury escapes and its coming to being is exactly this – the twist and turns of a variety of businesses, over almost a decade, that eventually spun out something that was scalable and incredibly capital efficient. While the scaling story is largely unknown but none the less incr ..read more

Ruslan Kogan, the CEO and co-founder of Kogan.com (ASX:KGN) is the guest on this episode of 'Scaling Up'. Kogan.com is Australia’s largest pure play online retailer with over $1b in sales. Many listeners over the years would have no doubt been introduced to Kogan.com via their incredibly successful own brand electronics business that catapulted the business to a size and scale that has allowed them to enact a phenomenal e-commerce playbook. Aside from expanding their direct to consumer product offering, Kogan.com has also been able to drive greater efficiencies and value to customers across a ..read more

After a mini hiatus, 'Scaling Up' is back, and we have some incredible guests lined up in the coming months, none more so than this episode. Alex Vynokur came to Australia as a 16 year old from Soviet Ukraine, not speaking a work of English, but with a steely determination to make something of himself. And that is an understatement as to what he has achieved since – in the midst of the GFC, he co-founded BetaShares, a passive Exchange Traded Fund (or ETF) fund manager, with roughly $23b under management, making them the second largest in Australia and New Zealand. An ETF mimics an index but ..read more

Joel Montaniel is the Co-founder, and CEO of SevenRooms, a private software company devoted to improving the way hospitality operators leverage their data to enhance business operations, build better direct relationships with customers and deliver an unforgettable customer experience. In their own words, SevenRooms allows ‘the big to feel small and the small to feel big’ when it comes to customer relationships. The conversation traverses a wide range of topics; from scaling a global business from day one, leading with empathy and its power on customers and employees, and the great frameworks ..read more

Hugh Williams probably isn't a name that pops to the front of mind when talking Australia's greatest technology exports - but it should. His career leading huge teams on cutting edge projects at global tech giants Google, Microsoft and eBay have fundamentally changed the way we live our lives. Globally, few possess the depth of domain expertise as Hugh.  This episode dives into 'what great looks like' when it comes to individual engineers, small product teams and larger organisations, and his insights into hiring and fostering high performance teams and innovation, and describing how the ..read more

Mike Serbinis is the CEO and co-founder of League – a healthcare platform on a mission to empower people to live the lives that they want to lead; happier, healthier and longer.  League started on the premise that the future of healthcare and its delivery was going to be less bureaucratic, less institutional, and consumer first. This simple insight came about both from personal interactions with the health ecosystem in the United States, but also more importantly from Mike’s previous experiences of solving problems through a consumer lens – first at Zip 2, working alongside the Musk broth ..read more

Series 6 of Scaling Up kicks off with Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger, the co-founders and co-CEOs of AllBirds. From a Kickstarter campaign, to listing on the NASDAQ (NASDAQ:BIRD) in a little over six years, this is an insane scaling story of one of the fastest growing brands in history.  Originally born out of hustle and grit and then of thoughtful growth and innovation, Allbirds’ brand has always centered on a promise that great products have to be sustainable. Allbirds is the leading brand when it comes to sustainability in amongst a global industry that emits 2.1billion tonnes of carb ..read more

Phil McKenzie, the CEO of Pacific Smiles Group, the ASX listed (PSQ:ASX) dental services business is our final guest of Season 5. Phil joined Pacific Smiles in 2018, taking over the previously founder led business and completely reshaping the corporate culture. Many listeners may be familiar with Pacific Smiles given its listed nature, or as a customer of one of its 115 dental clinics around Australia.  Phil is a wonderful leader – someone who intertwines himself deeply within the business, understanding his own strengths and weaknesses and ensuring he is playing to the former and allowin ..read more

Episode 2 of our People and Culture mini series features the phenomenal Anna Binder, the CPO of Asana, the $15b NYSE and LTSE listed technology business that is changing the way businesses work, collaborate and thrive.  The genesis of Asana is important to frame this conversation; When co- founders of Asana Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein were both working at Facebook, of which Dustin also co-founded, they discovered amongst the hyper scale journey that that business was on, everyone was spending over half the day sitting in meetings, responding to email, and searching for infomati ..read more