Ep203 – Ben Pfisterer (Co-founder & CEO – Zeller) on becoming the fastest Australian company to achieve unicorn status

The Startup Playbook PodcastInsights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Ep203 – Ben Pfisterer (Co-founder & CEO – Zeller) on becoming the fastest Australian company to achieve unicorn status January 16, 2025 rohitbhargava Podcast My guest for Ep203 of The Startup Playbook Podcast is the Co-founder & CEO of Zeller, Ben Pfisterer. Ben is a returning guest on the show. Our last interview was in August 2020 when Ben had left his role as Country Manager for Square to launch his new company, Zeller, which had just come out of stealth mode to announce their $6.3M funding round. Since then Zeller has become the fastest Australian company to a $1B valuation, reaching that milestone in less than 2 years. Zeller has 85,000 customers, 260 staff and to date has raised $180M in funding from leading investors. In this interview we covered a range of topics including: The challenges that come with scale How raising capital changes from Seed to Series B stage How hiring and company culture evolves as you scale the company Why Ben doesn’t do any one-on-ones with any of his direct reports And much more! Timestamps: 2:06: Ben’s background 7:09: How to find your path in career 8:36: The background of Zeller 11:05: The storytelling aspect of raising capital 15:07: The unexpected challenges that came from taking on the big banks 21:05: How transparent should you be with your company and investors? 23:22: Hiring talents and maintaining culture as you scale 39:19: How he thinks about product at Zeller 47:41: How he’s worked with investors as Zeller grows 56:50: How he structures his time 1:01:21: The horizon theory 1:05:07: The mission and objective with Zeller 1:06:17: How he’s found his own balance with work and life Our partners: A big thank you to Josh McNichol for his 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: Ben’s links: Ben’s LinkedIn Zeller Zeller roles People mentioned: Mark Woodland Dominic Yap Josh McNicol Companies mentioned: Square NAB Siemens Hewlett-Packard Square Peg Capital Kismet Apex Capital Partners Headline Spark Capital 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/Ep203_-_Ben_Pfisterer.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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