Ep176 – Luke Anear (Founder & CEO – SafetyCulture) on lessons from building a $2.7B company

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights 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 Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes the co-founders of Atlassian, convinced him to take on Venture Capital funding. What started off as a checklist app for the construction industry has evolved into a fully fledged operations platform for businesses all around the world. In 2023, SafetyCulture raised $34M at a $2.7B valuation. In this episode Luke shares a lot of lessons and insights from his journey so far including: Luke’s entrepreneurial journey from a glass recycling business in Townsville at 16 to building SafetyCulture The decision to become a technology company and take on VC funding Personal growth and learnings from Mike & Scott at Atlassian How his role has evolved from the founder of a scrappy startup to the CEO of a global multi-billion dollar company & much more! Timestamps: 3:44 Luke’s background and early business ventures 6:02 First business challenges and lessons from Bill Smith 9:42 Founding SafetyCulture 14:45 SafetyCulture’s evolution and growth 18:08 Validating a new product 19:12 Taking on VC funding 23:40 Personal growth and learnings from Mike & Scott at Atlassian 26:33 Leadership and Scaling Challenges 31:47 How founders can share the vision of their company 35:32 Leadership and incentivising teams 40:35 How founders can work out what to focus on in the early stages 44:52 Advice to founders on dealing with stress  46:41 Helping your team grow Our partners A big thank you to Rick Baker 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 Luke’s links Luke’s LinkedIn People mentioned Rick Baker Gary Vaynerchuk Mike Cannon-Brookes Scott Farquhar Alex Zatarain Cliff Obrecht Melanie Perkins Bill Bartee Bill Smith Craig Tiley Tony Robbins Dare Jennings Reg Mombassa Caleb Holloway Companies mentioned SafetyCulture Telstra Blackbird Ventures Eight Sleep Canva Atlassian Insight Partners 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/Ep176_-_Luke_Anear.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. 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