Ep178 – Tobi Skovron (Co-founder & CEO – Creative Cubes) on the curse of ambition

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep178 – Tobi Skovron (Co-founder & CEO – Creative Cubes) on the curse of ambition April 11, 2024 rohitbhargava Podcast 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 account and how overnight he lost almost half of the $300,000 he took with him to the US because of the global market and Australian dollar collapsing. But Tobi is no stranger to resilience and perseverance – something that has shown through his experience across several businesses including that as the Co-founder & CEO of Creative Cubes, a coworking space and community that not only survived during the COVID period, but opened up new locations! Timestamps 03:50 Tobi’s background 14:52 Losing his father 22:32 Building Pet Loo 31:22 Challenges expanding Pet Loo to the US 34:36 Perspective shifts from being in a co-working space, surrounded by Uber, Snapchat etc 39:22 Covid challenges for CreativeCubes 46:47 Frameworks for getting through challenging periods 50:20 Leadership principles 55:53 Finding balance and prioritising health 1:01:22 Mindset shifts required to take the business to the next level 1:04:43 Finding non obvious opportunities Our partners A big thank you to Sim Skovron, Louie Gallina and Steve for their 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 Tobi’s links LinkedIn CreativeCubes People mentioned Sim Skovron Shaquille O’Neal Travis Kalanick Evan Spiegel Mark Cuban Nathan Buckley Mark Stern Gabby Leibovich George Garth Gav Fernando Geoff Harris Rachael Neumann Louie Gallina Randy Boyd Kamaru Usman Matt Allen Companies mentioned Pet Loo PetSafe Google Snapchat UPG (United Pet Group) AWS BYOG LA Lakers Everlab Lululemon Porsche Side Stage Ventures Playbook 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/Ep178_-_Tobi_Skovron.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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