Ep175 – Ed Hooper (Co-founder & CEO – GXE) on frameworks, exits and investing

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights 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. Omny was later acquired by Triton Digital. Ed then went on to launch Cardinia Ventures, a Venture Capital fund that invests in hardware and software startups from pre-seed to Series A stage and counts companies such as Chornosphere, Edrolo and SpiceAi in its porfolio. He is now the Co-founder & CEO of GXE, which is an all-in-one platform for Investment Funds, Family Offices and Syndicates. It’s also the platform we use to manage my syndicate, Playbook Ventures. In this episode, Ed shares the key lessons as an investor and founder including: Building & selling Omny Studio (acquired by Triton Digital) The frameworks Ed uses to make product feature decisions and assess trade offs How Ed approaches building professional relationships His approach to investing into startups & much more! Ps stick around till the end of the interview for an announcement! Timestamps 4:08 – Ed’s background 5:16 – SOAK (Ed’s first company) 8:57 – Learnings from Silicon Valley, advice to early stage founders 12:22 – Time at ANZ, Rome2Rio, Groupon 15:06 – Omny Studio origin story 19:02 – Launching SoundGecko 21:54 – How to think about product feature trade offs 25:27 – Things to consider when raising using SAFE notes 29:47 – Frameworks for solving business problems 32:09 – Raising from corporate VCs 35:03 – Omny Studio acquisition 39:07 – Building relationships and networks 42:27 – Strategically building relationships with investors 46:17 – How Cardinia Ventures started and what they invest in 50:05 – How to structure a fundraising round 53:27 – GXE journey 58:37 – How to prioritise product feature requests 1:00:48 – Playbook Ventures rolling fund Our partners A big thank you to Andrew Armstrong for his help with research for this interview! Also a big thank you to our partners for the show: Scendar  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 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.Get started with a Sydney-based Vanta team member today, or watch a 3-minute demo to learn more, at vanta.com/playbook. Links mentioned Ed’s links Ed’s LinkedIn Playbook Ventures Rolling Fund Website https://www.playbookventures.com.au/ Email: [email protected] People mentioned Dan Lewin Bill Gates Book: Steve Jobs – Walter Isaccson Long Zheng Bernhard Tschirren Michael Cameron Clive Dickens Andrew Armstrong Rory McNeice Leigh Jasper Rachael Neumann James Harrisson Hamish & Andy Companies mentioned GXE Cardinia Ventures Omny Studio SOAK Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) Triton Microsoft York Butter Factory StageLabel Rome2Rio Groupon ANZ TechCrunch Slack Flickr Atlassian Pandora Shazam Apple Twitter/X Spotify Mamamia iHeartMedia Playbook Ventures Scale Investors Flying Fox Ventures Feedback/connect/say hello: [email protected]@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)My Youtube Channel Credits: Music: Paycheck Other channels: Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/startupplaybook/Ep175_-_Ed_Hooper.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download | EmbedSubscribe: RSS admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat admin January 1, 2014 Reply Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=text]::-moz-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=url]::-moz-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=email]::-moz-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form textarea::-moz-placeholder { color: #4d4d4d; } .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=text]::-webkit-input-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=url]::-webkit-input-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=email]::-webkit-input-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form textarea::-webkit-input-placeholder { color: #4d4d4d; } .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=text]:-ms-input-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=url]:-ms-input-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form input[type=email]:-ms-input-placeholder, .dslc-tp-comment-form textarea:-ms-input-placeholder { color: #4d4d4d; } Copyright © 2015 - Live Composer The post Ep175 – Ed Hooper (Co-founder & CEO – GXE) on frameworks, exits and investing appeared first on Startup Playbook.