Ep195 – Leigh Jasper (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Firmable) on jumping back in the founder seat after a $1.6B exit

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep195 – Leigh Jasper (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Firmable) on jumping back in the founder seat after a $1.6B exit August 15, 2024 rohitbhargava Podcast My guest for Ep195 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Leigh Jasper. This is a special edition of the podcast. A few weeks ago, we celebrated hitting 8 years of the podcast. To celebrate the milestone, we hosted an in-person event with our community which included a “live” podcast recording with returning guest Leigh Jasper. I first interviewed Leigh for the show in November 2016. Back then he was the Co-founder & CEO of Aconex, a construction tech company that had publicly listed 2 years prior and had a market cap of $1B. Since that interview, Aconex was acquired by Oracle for $1.6B and Leigh has and continues to hold several positions such as Chair of LaunchVic, Victorian governments startup agency, Co-founder and Chair of SecondQuarter Ventures, the first secondaries fund in Australia and NZ among several other board roles. If that isn’t enough, Leigh decided to jump back into the founder seat as the Co-founder & Co-CEO of Firmable, which helps companies drive smarter decisions and outperform by allowing them to know more about their leads, customers and candidates. Firmable recently raised a $9M funding round led by AirTree. We covered a lot of ground in this live interview including: Lessons from launching, growing and eventually exiting a $1B+ startup Leigh’s journey post Aconex (given he didn’t want to sell the company) Why founders should take chips off the table via secondaries What’s changed for Leigh as a second time founder & much more! Timestamps: 3:12 What Leigh has been working on since the last interview in 2016 4:43 What it was like going from CEO of a private company to a public company 7:21 The decision to sell Aconex to Oracle for $1.6B 10:25 Navigating significant changes in a company as the founder/CEO 12:34 What Leigh did after the Aconex acquisition, losing that identity 18:40 Getting involved with LaunchVic 20:53 Founding SecondQuarter Ventures 22:15 When founders should take money off the table via secondaries 25:49 Effective boards for startups 32:56 The decision to start a new company (Firmable) 34:41 Lessons from Aconex he’s applying to Firmable 38:59 Finding the right investment partners for Firmable 42:21 What drives Leigh today? 44:26 How he stays calm under intense pressure 47:27 How to balance being open/transparent with the team on everything happening in the business 49:48 Thoughts on the current state of technology and the Australian startup ecosystem 51:44 Audience Q&A Our partners: A big thank you to Paul Perrett and Andrew Sypkes for their help with this interview! Also a big shout out 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.Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount. Links mentioned: Leigh’s links: Leigh’s LinkedIn Firmable SecondQuarter Ventures People mentioned: Paul Perrett Craig Winkler Kate Cornick Rob Phillpot Howard Leibman John Henderson Paul Bassat Andrew Bassat Karthik Venkatasubramanian Audience questions: Scott Phillips Louis J Sisk Sajjad Kamal Companies mentioned: Aconex Oracle MYOB LaunchVic Playbook Ventures Canva EVP McKinsey & Company IBM Stripe Airtree Fidelity Investments Blackbird Square Peg SEEK Growth Fund Xero Slack 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/Ep195_-_Leigh_Jasper.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 Ep195 – Leigh Jasper (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Firmable) on jumping back in the founder seat after a $1.6B exit appeared first on Startup Playbook.