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Stephen Wools has built creative agencies, toured Jordan Peterson and Theo Von, opened one of Melbourne's most talked-about bars, signed the biggest hospitality lease in the city's history four weeks before lockdown, and lost a house and millions of dollars along the way. His advice on how to survive all of it: be a cockroach.Stephen walks through how a floppy disk and a hungover all-nighter got him through his one and only year of uni, how a chance meeting at Big Brother auditions turned into a 20-year business partnership with Josh Lefers, and how "everything's for sale" became the concept behind Pawn & Co, right down to the grand piano someone bought off the DJ booth. Then comes the harder part: signing the lease on a 2,500 square metre venue in January 2020, watching the brewing business collapse under COVID, and rebuilding while banks called in their money.He gets honest about what he'd change, what resilience actually costs, and the three life lessons he's learned the hard way: being ruthless about who you surround yourself with, learning to respect risk instead of running on pure optimism, and knowing when more stops being more.Find StephenStephen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-j-wools-b5240811/Ballers Clubhouse: https://www.ballersclubhouse.com.au/Good Times Tech: https://www.goodtimestech.com.au/Pawn & Co: https://www.pawnandco.com.au/Join the Aussie Founders ClubThe Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.comWant to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usTime Stamps00:00 Cold open: the cockroach theory00:23 Welcome to Life After Launch, introducing Stephen Wools01:51 Growing up, uni, and the floppy disk story04:20 From Big Dog Creative to touring Jordan Peterson and Theo Von05:28 Meeting Josh Lefers and the TV shows that started it all09:44 Learning to love rejection13:42 Competitiveness, imposter syndrome, and outworking everyone20:26 Building Pawn & Co and the story of the $5,000 piano23:13 Launching East 9th Brewing24:30 COVID hits: losing the brewing business, a house, and millions30:28 Signing the Ballers Clubhouse lease weeks before lockdown, and building through it40:26 Scaling Ballers, launching Good Times Tech, and the plan to go global53:41 Building systems, working with AI, and staying frictionless for the customer56:29 Life lesson 1: be careful who you surround yourself with1:02:59 Life lesson 2: respecting risk instead of running on pure optimism1:09:01 Life lesson 3: more is more, and knowing when enough is enough1:22:24 Closing thoughts + outro

Episode Summary“It’s not a fit.” “You’re too early.” “Let’s have one more meeting.” “We’re still building conviction.” If you’ve ever walked out of an investor meeting wondering what the hell any of that actually meant, this episode is for you.In this episode of First Cheque, Cheryl and Maxine decode the language of venture capital — from fundraising and negotiations to what happens once an investor is on your cap table. They unpack what investors might really mean when they say you’re too early (or somehow too far along), why “one more meeting” can be a sign they’re sitting on the fence, and when “keep us in the loop” is actually just a polite no.They also get into the weird world of VC jargon — including “conviction”, “due dilly”, “foundies”, “bridgie” and the ever-popular “let the lawyers sort it out”.Once the cheque has landed, they unpack what it really means when investors ask for an update, start asking about runway and burn, want to see revenue hit a certain milestone, or suddenly ask, “How’s it going with X?” They also talk about why regular communication matters, even when things aren’t going well.The big lesson? Founders shouldn’t have to speak fluent VC — and investors could probably do a much better job of explaining themselves.Time Stamps00:00 – Intro: Welcome to VC Gibberish01:20 – “It’s not a fit for us”: what does that actually mean?03:05 – Is it the company, the stage… or the founder?05:00 – The value of asking for honest feedback06:03 – Investors could be clearer too07:09 – “You’re too early”: is it really a no?08:45 – What “too far along” actually means11:05 – “Let’s have one more meeting”11:59 – Why investors ghost13:23 – Sitting on the fence and waiting for FOMO15:00 – “We’re discussing internally” and what happens inside a VC16:41 – When a slow process means you’re not a priority17:08 – Why the “momentum raise” is dead18:35 – The dangers of a June 30 deadline20:16 – What investors mean by “conviction”23:17 – “Keep us in the loop”: the polite no24:59 – When investors want to stay close for the next round25:28 – “Let us know when you have a lead”26:16 – When investors simply don’t have the capital27:16 – Negotiating the deal: welcome to the jargon28:23 – “Val”, “do dilly” and other questionable VC vocabulary30:03 – Information rights vs. investor updates32:01 – Foundies, Cindy and Bridgie32:47 – ESIC, ESVCLP and other acronyms33:40 – “Let the lawyers sort it out”35:50 – The strange two-week period when founders and investors aren’t on the same side36:38 – Once they’re on the cap table36:45 – “Can we get an update?”38:09 – What investors really mean when they ask about runway39:05 – Why you should update investors when things aren’t going well41:26 – When investors don’t want to lead or follow your next round42:40 – “Get to this revenue number and then we’ll talk”43:37 – The moving goalposts of investor benchmarks44:21 – How to benchmark against the best companies instead45:15 – “How’s it going with X?”46:23 – Ask why before you answer47:03 – Please send us your VC gibberish47:50 – OutroSponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.___Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartreeFirst Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x FC_Script 01 - Sep 2026Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.Deel x FC_Script 02 - Sep 2026This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpSpotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

A personalised mRNA cancer vaccine has succeeded in a late-stage trial for the first time, and Moderna's shares ripped as much as 177% in a single day on the news. Cancer vaccines have been a graveyard for decades. Something changed.In the third What the Health Wrap, host Emily Casey is joined by two of her Tenmile colleagues — Dr Joey Man and Dr Michael Lamprecht, investors and scientists with roughly 30 years between them across molecular biology, therapeutics and biotech in the US, Singapore and Australia — for the lunchroom conversation, not the press release.They start with Moderna and Merck's Phase 3 result. Intismeran autogene, given alongside Keytruda after melanoma surgery, met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a key secondary endpoint in a trial of more than 1,100 patients. Michael explains what an individualised neoantigen therapy actually is: take a piece of the patient's tumour, work out which signals mark it out from healthy tissue, and turn those into a bespoke vaccine that teaches the immune system what to attack. Joey walks through the part she finds most elegant — an algorithm that reads the patient's normal tissue against their tumour, predicts the mutations a future metastasis would express, picks the top 36, and produces a single-patient batch on a six-to-eight-week timeline deliberately synchronised with the surgery and the standard Keytruda schedule.The more interesting question is why this one worked when so many didn't. Michael's answer has three parts: it is given in combination with a drug that releases the brake on the immune system, it uses antigens specific to that patient rather than the off-the-shelf antigens that failed before, and — critically — the sponsors got regulators to assess the process rather than each individual antigen. The COVID years, for all the reputational damage they did to mRNA, built the manufacturing infrastructure that makes a one-patient batch possible at all. Joey's read on the share price: a fair reward for patience and a pivot, and a sign that the market has not written off mRNA the way the politics suggested.From there the conversation turns to the thing Joey is genuinely worried about. From 1 February 2027, Australian reforms will let health technology providers — wearables and monitoring platforms included — collect, use and disclose individual healthcare identifiers with patient consent for permitted purposes. It is close to a world first, and it lands just as a roughly US$44 billion wearables market pushes from wellness towards diagnostics. Joey's objection is not the pipe, it is the water: "just because the pipe is there, it doesn't mean the water quality inside that pipe is good." Storing consumer-sensor data alongside blood work risks lending it a validity it has not earned. Michael pushes back — data is data, sensors improve, and a continuous monitor beats a patient's recollection in a consult. Emily makes the case that a single blood test at a single moment is not the gold standard people assume either, and that longitudinal data is exactly what has been missing.That tension runs straight into Oura, which is reportedly preparing a US IPO that could value it above US$16 billion while facing a proposed class action over its sleep-tracking claims. Joey is blunt: clinical sleep staging needs EEG, eye movement and muscle movement, and a ring cannot measure EEG. She contrasts the marketed accuracy figure with the 50–53% range she has seen in published work, and notes the awkwardness of defending a 95% claim with "we're not a medical device." Her own ring is a RingConn, bought with expectations set accordingly. Where she does see real progress is in the headband EEG work now being used to track sleep as a treatment-efficacy signal in depression trials.Then women's health, where the same problem shows up wearing better marketing. Whoop's expanded partnership with Natural Cycles lets overnight skin temperature feed an FDA-cleared contraceptive app — but, as Joey points out, the clearance and the algorithm belong to Natural Cycles, not to Whoop. Oura is building out cycle, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause features. Emily's UltraHuman sends her cycle predictions that are unnervingly accurate, and none of them make the wellness-versus-clinical line any clearer. All three agree the demand is real and long overdue: women have been asking for information about their own bodies that the research never generated.Joey came to the recording from the Women's Health Foundry investment roundtable, and gives a live read on why the money has been slow. The blockage is upstream — without the research, you cannot define the problem precisely enough to build or fund a solution. Australia produces strong women's health research; the work now is consolidating it into something commercially investable, because commercial dollars move faster than academic ones. Michael's counter is that pharma appetite follows market clarity, not the other way around, and that the market is unambiguously huge. Sun Pharma's roughly US$11.75 billion acquisition of Organon — the women's health business Merck spun out in 2021 — is the proof point.The last stretch is neuropsychiatry, and Michael's home turf. Eli Lilly has agreed to acquire atai Beckley for US$2.8 billion upfront and up to US$1 billion more in milestones, for a lead programme delivering a short in-clinic psychedelic experience in treatment-resistant depression. Psilocybin and MDMA are both up for approval decisions. Michael explains what a neuroplastogen is — a drug that reopens the brain's ability to rewire, on the theory that depression traps people in a loop they cannot think their way out of — and why he is most interested in the programmes chasing that effect without the trip. Xylo, formerly Psylo, is the Tenmile portfolio company working on exactly that; Michael sits on its board. His prediction: full-day psilocybin protocols will be a niche, because the personnel and infrastructure required cannot compete with a short-acting drug that produces a comparable result.You'll also hear why Michael thinks AI applied to small molecules is the most underhyped thing in the field, Joey's case for patient-relevant preclinical models replacing animal models in women's health, an unhedged "wearables" when Emily asks what's most overhyped, and a rapid fire that lands on the table-flip emoji, the side eye, the generosity of strangers on the other side of the world, Chopin's Étude No. 5, and two very tired investors who would both quite like some sleep.GuestsDr Joey Man Investment Associate, Tenmile Ventures (Melbourne). PhD in Molecular Biology from Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute (breast cancer cell signalling and metastasis); former CSIRO postdoc researching zero-gravity effects on stem cells, with an investing background from Main Sequence Ventures and CSIRO's ON Accelerator.Dr Michael Lamprecht Investment Manager, Tenmile Ventures (Sydney), specialising in biotech and early-stage investment. PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University; previously Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Xora Innovation and Director of Regulatory Affairs at EpiBone, with 15+ years building regulatory and clinical strategy for cell-based therapies.Chapters:00:00 Cold open01:03 Welcome and meet the guests02:59 This fortnight's headlines04:57 Merck and Moderna's personalised cancer vaccine, explained11:06 Why working with regulators made this vaccine possible19:18 Australia's 2027 healthcare identifier reform and the wearables boom26:38 Oura's sleep-tracking accuracy claims and the class action30:29 Wearables push into women's health36:21 Why women's health struggles to attract investment41:50 Big pharma's next-gen psychiatry bet51:43 Rapid fireLinks and resourcesMerck and Moderna — Phase 3 INTerpath-001 results: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-moderna-announce-phase-3-interpath-001-trial-of-intismeran-autogene-plus-keytruda-met-endpoints-of-recurrence-free-survival-rfs-and-distant-metastasis-free-survival-dmfs-in-patient/Australia's healthcare identifier reforms, effective 1 February 2027: https://www.minterellison.com/articles/digital-health-reforms-the-regulatory-reform-omnibus-actDepartment of Health — Healthcare Identifiers Service: https://www.health.gov.au/topics/health-technologies-and-digital-health/about/healthcare-identifiersOura's reported US IPO plans: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/24/oura-is-reportedly-eyeing-a-september-ipo-that-could-value-it-at-more-than-16b/Whoop's expanded Natural Cycles partnership: <a...

For the first time in 80 episodes, host Georgie Healy flips the format and answers your questions. Recorded to mark 50,000 Spotify plays, this Ask Me Anything covers the questions listeners have been sending in since the early days of the show: the imposter syndrome years when even friends and family weren't listening, the two lines she still repeats to herself every week, and how she prepares guests before they ever hit record.There's a rapid-fire round covering her most-used AI tools (Claude is the one she can't make a decision without), the AI products everyone can't stop talking about right now (Higgsfield and Grok Bot both get a mention), and the guest she's still chasing. Georgie also goes behind the scenes on the interview mistake that still makes her wince years later, told in full for the first time, along with the moment a live Sydney audience quietly revealed just how many of them had Claude running while they sat there.It closes on where the show goes next: Georgie's honest, ambitious answer to what success looks like, and why she wants In The Blink of AI to be your weekly AI Superbowl.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x BAI_Script 01 - Sep 2026Deel x BAI_Script 02 - Sep 2026

Luke Marshall, CEO at GradEngage runs growth marketing from a single Claude Code instance — hosted on a cloud VM so he can reach it from any device, tied to a running knowledge archive, and extended into everything from lead generation to his own workout tracker.GradEngage helps companies keep graduate hires warm and prepared in the months between accepting an offer and actually starting the job. Luke, who describes himself as the growth marketing automation lead among his co-founding team, opens his screen to show the system behind it: a landing page and product video rebuilt with Claude Code and shipped to WordPress, and a lead-generation workflow that scrapes public prospect data to auto-generate personalised landing pages and email previews for each target company.The setup starts with infrastructure. Luke hosts Claude Code on a cloud VM synced to Dropbox, so it's reachable from any device, and pairs it with a skill that finds his latest reference notes without him re-explaining context each time. From there, he walks through a standalone Convex database built to track GradEngage's roughly 6,500-company target market — kept deliberately separate from the CRM so early-stage prospects can be nurtured slowly, without cluttering the pipeline tools the sales team relies on day to day.Judgement still sits with Luke throughout. He explains why he switches between typing and voice dictation depending on the task, and why he pushed back on a cold pitch offering to run his marketing on full autopilot. That judgement call gets tested directly in the episode's most useful failure: an outreach automation tool re-messaged the same contacts with no response, burning leads before Luke caught it. The fix wasn't more automation — it was less. AI now runs read-only on outbound messaging, tracking open threads for a human to action rather than sending anything itself.The system extends past work, too. Luke shows a custom workout generator that pushes Claude Code output to his phone and watch, and a from-scratch AI assistant he built for his wife to handle weather, tasks, and a shopping list — settling on a cheaper model to keep it running affordably day to day.Luke Marshall works in growth and marketing automation at GradEngage.Chapters:0:00 Cold open: a look at Luke's AI stack0:55 Meet Luke Marshall and GradEngage2:34 Rebuilding a landing page and demo video with Claude Code7:29 Running Claude Code from a cloud VM for lead gen13:00 A standalone database for the entire target market17:25 Voice versus typing: planning out loud19:29 Planning mode and a clarifying-questions skill22:47 Personal builds: a workout generator and an AI assistant for his wife27:41 When automated outreach went wrong31:07 Rapid-fire round32:00 Where to find Luke and how he sources new ideasResources:Luke Marshall: https://lukemarshall.net/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshwah/Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-codeConvex: https://www.convex.dev/Apify: https://apify.com/Superwhisper: https://superwhisper.com/HeyReach: https://www.heyreach.io/Beeper: https://www.beeper.com/wger: https://wger.de/Grill Me: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/docs/productivity/grill-me.mdReadwise Reader: https://read.readwise.ioOpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/About the host: Zachary King is the founder of Works, where he installs AI into how Australian companies operate. He has worked at the commercial pointy end of AI for almost twenty years and runs his own company largely from the command line.About the show: Operator AI is the show where real operators open their screens and show exactly how they run the real parts of their business with AI. The real stack, not the hype.If you want AI installed into how your business actually operates, learn more at https://workshq.com.au/ or book a time with Zachary King at https://savvycal.com/Zachary-King/zac-at-works-30.Operator AI is part of Day One Network, the podcast and media network from W2D1 Media: https://dayone.fm/.

Nick Maxwell got cut by the same football club four years running. Cut at 14. Cut at 15. Cut at 16. Cut at 17, three minutes into a trial, with a snapped vertebra. He made the squad on his fifth attempt and still went undrafted.Four days before Christmas, a phone call changed everything. Nick walks through the voicemail that told him he'd been picked up by Collingwood, the 200-plus games that followed, and how being captain had nothing to do with being the most talented player on the field. It was about the 1%, the tackles, the sprints nobody saw, and showing up for a team that eventually made him captain and led them to a premiership after 20 years without one.Twenty years in sport later, Nick walked away from a stable, structured career to build something of his own. He's honest that the four years since have been harder than anything football put him through, learning IT infrastructure, managing staff, and figuring out leadership without a scoreboard to tell him if he's winning.Stick around for his three life lessons: why resilience is the whole story, why he now buys himself time before reacting to anything, and what two decades observing the Melbourne Storm's most successful leaders taught him about chasing the extra 1%.Find Nick Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-maxwell-060a2922/ Eclat: https://eclat.com/Want to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usLife After Launch is an Aussie Founders Club podcast.🦘 Aussie Founders Club is a community for founders, operators, and investors navigating the Australian startup ecosystem. What started as an events-first, in-person community has grown into a network of thousands, connecting people building startups with the people who've done it before. Join the conversation and the community at https://aussiefoundersclub.com/Connect with Megan Luttrell on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganluttrell/Connect with Geo George on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/contactgeo/🤝 Kairos Recruitment is a recruitment company supporting startups and scale-ups across Australia, helping founders find the right people to grow their teams. Led by Megan Luttrell. Learn more at https://www.kairosrecruitment.com.au/💵 Mayfly Ventures is a venture studio building industry-focused AI and software ventures. Mayfly is an Australian AI venture studio. We work with industry leaders to validate, build, and scale AI ventures, starting with the strategy and commercial foundations most teams skip. Learn more about Mayfly's approach at https://www.mayflyventures.com/Time Stamps00:00 Cold open: cut 4 times, then 4 voicemails01:31 Welcome to Life After Launch, introducing Nick Maxwell03:07 Manure at 12, KFC at 14, and getting cut from the Falcons 4 times15:15 The Collingwood voicemails, and playing 200+ games17:20 Not the most talented player: doing the 1%ers and becoming captain22:13 Leadership styles, the Melbourne Storm, and the "finished product" trap33:07 Media, an MBA in 18 months, and deciding to leave sport35:57 Why Eclat, and building a "life MBA" into a workspace44:04 Building the team, ownership, and trusting people to do their jobs54:24 The hardest 4 years of his life: building Eclat from scratch58:56 Life lesson 1: resilience is the whole story59:54 Life lesson 2: buy yourself time before you react1:02:41 Life lesson 3: chasing the extra 1%, with lessons from Craig Bellamy1:09:35 Closing thoughts + outro

Lazar Jovanovic didn't go to engineering school. He found a beta tool called GPT Engineer, set himself a challenge to build a new app every week, and filmed the whole thing. Two years later he's Lovable's in-house vibe coder, building load bearing internal tools that engineers tell him used to take a team of twenty.In this episode of In the Blink of AI, Georgie Healy hands him her own website and asks him to roast it live. He does, in about four minutes, and the fixes he gives are ones you can apply to your own site today.From there it gets sharper. Why "explain it like I'm five" is the worst thing you can say to an AI, and the exact script to use instead. Why opening four tabs costs you less than fixing one bad build. Why he thinks almost nobody writes their own code by hand anymore, and why that was never the valuable part of engineering anyway.And when Georgie asks why people blame the tools, he gives the line the whole episode hangs on: it's a vehicle, it's faster than you, and if you won't take the wheel, enjoy the cliff.Plus what's actually left for humans when building gets cheap, the three tools he can't work without, and who he thinks Georgie should book next.Hands on episode. Get a pen.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x BAI_Script 01 - Sep 2026Deel x BAI_Script 02 - Sep 2026

Jack Rudenko hasn't written a line of code himself in nine months. In that time, his team has shipped six or seven products used by millions of people, and he says that gap, between who writes the code and who's actually building, is the whole story of engineering right now.In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Jack Rudenko, Chief AI Officer at 10x Labs, where he has spent the past two years building an AI-native engineering practice from the ground up. They get into the project everyone called impossible before AI made it a three-month build, why working with AI agents is more exhausting than writing code ever was, and what actually separates an engineer from an artist or a scientist now that the code itself isn't the hard part.It's a hands-on, practitioner's take on what building with AI agents actually looks like day to day, not the conference-keynote version. They cover Jack's own workflow for briefing an AI agent, why he doesn't trust any project's security the moment an API key exists, the "non-engineering builders" quietly out-building agencies, and why he calls Claude Code some of the worst-engineered software he's ever used, and also the tool he loves most.CHAPTERS0:00 - Cold open: the line that explains why most AI engineering doesn't work0:31 - Who Jack Rudenko is, and what's ahead in this episode1:27 - Welcome, meet Jack Rudenko, Chief AI and Technical Strategist at 10x Labs1:48 - The real bottleneck in AI engineering is human, not technical3:36 - Why "AI native from scratch" beats bolting AI onto old processes8:53 - Inside Magus, treating AI skills like versioned software packages11:20 - 500 skills later, building a curated knowledge base for AI agents14:56 - The rise of the "non-engineering builder"17:06 - Why enterprise software is the real mess, not startups19:32 - The unexpected cost of working with AI, burnout, not laziness21:24 - Jack's actual workflow, plan mode, research, and acceptance criteria27:26 - Dark factories, evals, and "religion" versus "engineering" in AI29:49 - The skill nobody measured, loaded less than half the time32:52 - Why AST trees beat graph databases for AI code memory36:07 - From 10X to 50X, two projects AI made possible41:35 - What team size looks like when one person can do it all42:53 - Why no project is secure once a key exists46:44 - Artist, scientist, engineer, what actually makes you one51:04 - What junior engineers need to learn now54:45 - Cursor, YC founders, and the rise of the non-engineer builder59:35 - The addictive, exhausting superpower of building 10X more1:02:57 - Why "impossible" projects are worth the budget now1:04:55 - The future of software, giant platforms and a million small ones1:08:04 - Why consultancies are thriving, for now1:09:12 - "Claude Code is the worst software ever. I love it."1:11:22 - Open source, Jack's origin story, and why it built him1:15:23 - James's takeaway: religion vs engineering, and the challenge to measure your own AI rolloutABOUT THE GUESTJack Rudenko is Partner and Chief AI Officer at 10x Labs, where he has spent the past two years building the team’s AI-native engineering practice, Magus, from the ground up. He has deep expertise in cloud-native architecture, Go, Kubernetes and complex systems, and has delivered production platforms that would have been considered technically impossible before AI, including a three-system integration project used as a case study on this episode. Jack is also a longtime open-source contributor, including to the Linux kernel.at 10x Labs, where he has spent the past two years building the team’s AI-native engineering practice, Magus, from the ground up. He has deep expertise in cloud-native architecture, Go, Kubernetes and complex systems, and has delivered production platforms that would have been considered technically impossible before AI, including a three-system integration project used as a case study on this episode. Jack is also a longtime open-source contributor, including to the Linux kernel.LINKSJack Rudenko, 10x Labs · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erudenko/James MacDonald, NTP Talent · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jamesmacdonaldau · Site: ntptalent.com.auHosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.---Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team who helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Shane Chanel bet his entire life savings, $20,000, on a four-wheel drive racing app when he was 14. It wasn't his last high-conviction bet. He went on to leave a stockbroking career to build Yondr Money, a digital bank that never became a bank, survived a hostile takeover attempt from his own investor, and is now building Kobble, the infrastructure that lets almost any business launch a financial product in weeks instead of years.He's honest about where the drive comes from: a chip on his shoulder he can't fully explain, a family that worked hard for everything, and a day in 2012 he's never spoken about publicly before this episode, the day his uncle's family was found dead and he became next of kin for his baby niece. It's the reference point, he says, for everything since. Nothing has ever felt as hard.Shane walks through the pain points that pushed him from asset management into building a bank from scratch, why he pulled out of the banking licence process, how a chance conversation with former ANZ CEO Mike Smith became one of his best investors, and how a wall covered in Post-it notes from fellow fintech Founders became Kobble.Stick around for the hardest lesson of all: the hostile takeover attempt from an investor who'd only just come on board, and why Shane now tells every Founder to have the uncomfortable conversations early, before you need them.Find ShaneShane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanechanel/ Kobble AI: https://ai.kobble.net/ Kobble: https://kobble.net/ Yondr: https://www.yondr.money/Join the Aussie Founders ClubThe Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.comWant to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usTime Stamps00:00 Cold open + welcome to Life After Launch, introducing Shane Chanel02:54 From wanting to be an aeronautical engineer to financial planning and stockbroking08:35 Identity, the chip on the shoulder, and working twice as hard16:51 Betting his life savings on a racing app at 14, and the idea for a bank25:53 Building Yondr, pulling out of the banking licence, and landing Mike Smith as an investor38:48 The 2012 story: his uncle's family found dead, and the reminder that nothing will ever be this hard45:27 Acquiring Shouta and building Kobble from a wall of Post-it notes53:50 Kobble AI: prototyping a financial product in 15 minutes1:02:09 Life lesson: the hostile takeover attempt, and why you should always do the prenup1:05:12 Closing thoughts + outro

Episode SummaryCharles Hudson of Precursor Ventures has built one of the most ambitious solo GP models in venture capital: around 450 investments over the last decade, with a 14-person team supporting a single investment decision-maker.In this episode of First Cheque, Charles joins Maxine and Cheryl to unpack what it really takes to build and scale a solo GP fund, why he believes partnership dynamics can be one of the biggest risks in venture, and how he thinks about delivering value to hundreds of founders without trying to be everything to everyone.They dive deep into Charles’ philosophy on trust versus likability, why the best investors sometimes need to tell founders things they really don't want to hear, and how brutal honesty can become one of the most valuable forms of founder support. Charles also shares his approach to identifying “underappreciated” founders, why he looks for people who opt into chaos, and what he learned from backing founders who weren't necessarily great employees.Charles reflects on leaving a safe, highly compensated investing job to start Precursor, investing internationally before it was fashionable, why themes can kill returns, and the importance of being early to categories rather than piling into them once everyone else has arrived.Time Stamps00:00 – Intro03:05 – Charles’ first investment: buying ExxonMobil in high school06:15 – What exactly is a solo GP?07:37 – The surprising benefits of having one decision-maker10:28 – The problem with orphaned portfolio companies13:04 – Why solo GPs need to be intentional about founder relationships15:44 – How the “product” of Precursor evolved18:00 – Building trust, setting expectations, and knowing when to step back20:32 – Why honest feedback matters more than being liked23:40 – “It’s you”: giving founders brutally honest feedback25:52 – Trust is a bank account27:47 – Likability vs. trustability in venture capital30:58 – Why Charles backs founders who opt into chaos33:36 – What makes a great first-time CEO?36:39 – How Precursor started investing globally40:08 – Investing internationally and convincing LPs afterwards41:15 – Why themes can kill returns44:12 – Finding venture-scale opportunities outside traditional software45:16 – The challenge of managing 450 investments47:52 – Being a “surgeon” investor: showing up when it matters most52:04 – Charles’ biggest leap: leaving Uncork to start Precursor53:40 – “You pay money to go to work?”55:00 – Why Charles chose to make going back impossible56:31 – OutroResourcesPrecursor Ventures - https://precursorvc.com/Sponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.___Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartreeFirst Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our&nbsp;newsletter&nbsp;to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.Mentioned in this episode:Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.Deel x PX_Script 1Deel x PX_Script 2This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpSpotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

Australia hasn't built a new steel mill in more than 30 years. Greensteel Australia is about to — a $500 million all-electric plant on the old BHP site at Mayfield, producing 600,000 tonnes of rebar a year from the first quarter of 2028. Patrick Buchan, Greensteel's Head of Government Relations, joins James MacDonald on the Danieli technology being built in Italy right now, the policy shift that made onshore steel viable again, why Newcastle beat the rest of the country for the site, and what 200 jobs means for the Hunter.In this episode:The $500 million investment and what it buys — an all-electric mill on Industrial Drive at Mayfield North, the site BHP ran until 1999.Why the technology is the story: an electric arc furnace running at around 1,000 degrees, supplied by Danieli of Italy. "No gas, no flame, no chimneys."600,000 tonnes of rebar a year — the critical input to Australian construction and housing — with a growth path into other steel products.The policy shift: faster approvals, Future Made in Australia incentives, and why both the federal and NSW governments moved.Sovereignty as the argument — oil, steel and microprocessors as the three inputs a country of 28 million can't afford to import.How Greensteel started: owners Meena and Romana Ibrahim couldn't get rebar for their own construction businesses through COVID, so they built a steel company.Why Mayfield — buildings long enough for a 400-metre rolling line, rail, power and roads, and an intergenerational steel skill base.The jobs: 200 direct roles, recruitment opening early 2027, Danieli training included, and no formal-qualification barrier.What's next — a stage two in advanced discussions for another New South Wales site, and a ground-breaking with "a very notable political figure."Patrick Buchan is Head of Government Relations at Greensteel Australia, the company building a $500 million all-electric steel mill at Mayfield in Newcastle — Australia's first new steel plant in more than three decades. Before Greensteel he spent four years on the policy staff of the US Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, across the Obama and first Trump administrations.Greensteel opens recruitment for the Newcastle mill in early 2027. Patrick Buchan on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/patrick-buchan-56830b124Chapters0:00 Cold open1:03 Welcome to Engineering in the Hunter1:56 Patrick's path from Canberra to Greensteel3:24 Four years inside the Pentagon6:01 How Australian policy made this possible9:21 The 600,000-tonne rebar plan10:27 Inside the new steelmaking technology14:01 The politics behind the comeback18:43 How Greensteel Australia got started20:29 Greensteel signs the deal21:05 Why Mayfield, Newcastle won the site21:56 Balancing tradition and renewables23:34 The road to 202824:06 200 jobs and an open call for workers26:38 The $500 million investment, by the numbers27:19 How Newcastle is already talking about it28:22 Sovereign manufacturing and sustainability29:48 Australia's first steel plant in 30 years31:39 The trend back to trades32:40 What's next: stage two35:35 On founders and entrepreneurship36:57 On risk, reward, and having a crack38:16 A story about his dad and the cricket39:45 Wrapping upEngineering in the Hunter is hosted by Melinda Sietsma with NTP Talent founder James MacDonald. James hosts this episode. Learn more at ntptalent.com.au.Engineering in the Hunter is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

For a decade, Elon Musk was the face of the modern entrepreneur: a self-made billionaire who bet his fortune on impossible ideas and somehow made them work.SpaceX made reusable rockets a reality. Tesla helped turn electric cars into a global phenomenon. He became one of the most admired and influential figures in technology.So what happened?In this episode of In the Blink of AI, Georgie Healy traces Musk’s journey from bullied South African kid and PayPal millionaire to the man behind Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, X, xAI and more. Along the way, we explore the moments that transformed his public image: the Tesla “funding secured” controversy, his increasingly combative behavior online, his influence over Starlink during the war in Ukraine, his takeover of Twitter, his political rise alongside Donald Trump, and the controversies surrounding Grok.But this isn’t simply a takedown.Using the 4Gs framework, Georgie asks the harder question: Was Elon Musk actually a genius, or was he simply in the right place at the right time?The answer is more complicated than either side might want to admit.Because Musk may genuinely have helped solve some of the hardest engineering problems of our time. But does extraordinary capability excuse harmful behaviour?You be the judge.CHAPTERS00:00 Elon Musk: From the World’s Most Admired Entrepreneur to the Most Controversial02:08 Growing Up in South Africa: Bullying, Obsession, and Early Signs of Genius02:57 Leaving South Africa and Building His First Tech Ventures04:26 Zip2: Musk’s First Major Exit and the $307 Million Sale04:38 X.com, PayPal, and the Power Struggle That Ousted Musk05:26 The PayPal Mafia and the Fortune That Funded Musk’s Next Bets07:40 SpaceX and Tesla: Betting His Fortune on Impossible Ideas08:09 Falcon 1’s Historic Launch and SpaceX’s Near-Death Experience08:50 Tesla’s Rise and the Revolution of Electric Cars10:28 Peak Elon: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and the Golden Years11:06 How Much Did Elon Musk Actually Build? The Founder Debate12:27 The Iron Man Myth and the People Behind Musk’s Companies13:26 2018: The Year Elon Musk’s Public Image Changed13:50 The “Funding Secured” Tweet and Tesla’s SEC Battle15:10 The Thailand Cave Rescue and the “Pedo Guy” Controversy15:45 Joe Rogan, Marijuana, and Musk’s Growing Pattern of Controversy18:18 Starlink in Ukraine: When a Private Company Controls Wartime Infrastructure19:17 Musk, Crimea, and the Limits of Private Power20:47 Why Starlink May Be Musk’s Biggest Governance Problem21:07 Buying Twitter for $44 Billion and Taking Over the Platform22:00 Mass Layoffs, Free Speech Absolutism, and the Birth of X23:43 Hate Speech, the Great Replacement Theory, and the Advertiser Exodus25:13 The Case Against Musk’s Version of Free Speech27:11 Musk Enters Politics and Becomes Trump’s Biggest Donor28:02 DOGE, the Controversial Gesture, and Musk’s Growing Political Influence28:44 Tesla Protests, DOGE’s Promised Savings, and the Fallout30:58 Musk vs. Trump: From Political Alliance to Public Feud31:16 xAI and Grok: Musk’s Vision for an “Anti-Woke” AI32:08 Grok’s Hitler Controversy and the Rise of “Spicy Mode”33:46 AI Safety, Non-Consensual Images, and the Cost of Unrestricted AI35:00 The Expanding Musk Empire: SpaceX, Starlink, X, xAI, Tesla, and More36:28 The 4 Gs: Is Elon Musk a Grown-Up, Genius, or Something Else?36:49 Why Musk Fails the “Grown-Up” and “Gravitas” Tests39:00 Genius vs. Accountability: What Musk Actually Changed40:00 The Final Verdict: Genius Without a Hall Pass

One in three people will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime, PTSD went more than 20 years without a new approved treatment, and spending keeps rising while outcomes keep getting worse. Against that backdrop, Australia has become the first country in the world where psychiatrists can prescribe MDMA and psilocybin.In this episode, host Emily Casey sits down with Dr Michael Winlo, Chief Scientific Officer at Emyria, the company behind the Empax network of psychedelic-assisted therapy clinics. Michael trained as a doctor, spent four years in Palantir's healthcare team in Silicon Valley, then returned to Perth to run a clinical trial site — an experience that convinced him care delivery and evidence generation belong together, and led to Emyria.Michael explains how the two legal treatments actually work. MDMA floods the brain with serotonin and oxytocin, quietens an overactive amygdala and lets patients with post-traumatic stress disorder work through trauma in therapy without being overwhelmed by fear or shame. Psilocybin quietens the default mode network behind rumination and negative self-talk — Michael's metaphor is shaking up a snow globe and letting the snow settle into new patterns — and both drugs open a roughly seven-day window of heightened neuroplasticity that therapy can use.The pair trace the strange history that got us here: MDMA first synthesised by Merck in 1912, psychedelics on the cover of psychiatry journals in the 1960s, roughly 500,000 people given MDMA in therapeutic settings before the war on drugs shut the research down. Charitable funding through MAPS kept the science alive, and the resulting phase 2 and 3 trials left the TGA unable to maintain that these drugs had no therapeutic value — leading to the world-first rescheduling in 2023.Michael then walks through what treatment at an Empax clinic involves: careful screening, a two-therapist dyad that stays with the patient for the whole journey, six-to-eight-hour dosing days in a low-stimulus room, and integration sessions that turn insights into durable habits. Emyria has now treated more than 100 patients, with rapid improvement that appears durable for most — results that have brought funders like Medibank and the Department of Veterans' Affairs on board.The conversation closes on what it will take to make this mainstream: health-economic evidence for a treatment that costs around $10,000 a dosing cycle, the watershed of a first FDA approval, more sensible regulation of who can deliver therapy, and the infrastructure and training to meet demand. Michael argues psychedelics are still under-hyped — used today as a last resort when they may do the most good earlier in a patient's journey — and leaves clinicians with one message: learn with your patients.GuestDr Michael Winlo is Chief Scientific Officer at Emyria, the ASX-listed company behind the Empax network of psychedelic-assisted therapy clinics, treating post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant depression under the TGA's Authorised Prescriber Scheme. Trained as a medical doctor, he spent four years in Palantir's healthcare team in Silicon Valley and led Perth's Linear Clinical Research before joining Emyria to build a model of care that treats patients and generates evidence at the same time.Chapters00:00 Psychedelics return to healthcare00:57 What Emyria and the Empax clinics do02:08 From medicine to Palantir and back to Perth08:32 Why mental health care is falling behind12:37 What psychedelics actually are13:55 How MDMA-assisted therapy works17:44 Psilocybin and the default mode network21:05 A century of history: from Merck to the war on drugs24:18 The revival: MAPS, new trials and Australia's rescheduling27:17 Why psychiatry innovates slowly29:47 Inside treatment: screening, dosing days and integration33:33 The data so far: 100+ patients, Medibank and the DVA35:18 Ketamine and the coming wave of new treatments36:47 FDA approval and the funding shift43:30 Emyria's ten-year vision45:47 Bottlenecks: training, regulation and infrastructure47:31 Psychedelic therapy in 203549:09 Rapid fire: hype, books and one message for cliniciansLinks and resourcesEmyria: https://emyria.com/Empax Centre: https://empaxcentre.com/TGA — re-scheduling of psilocybin and MDMA, questions and answers: https://www.tga.gov.au/resources/publication/scheduling-decisions-final/notice-final-decision-amend-or-not-amend-current-poisons-standard-june-2022-acms-38-psilocybine-and-mdma/re-scheduling-psilocybin-and-mdma-poisons-standard-questions-and-answersMAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies): https://maps.org/COMPASS Pathways: https://compasspathway.com/The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_of_InfinityMoonshots with Peter Diamandis: https://www.diamandis.com/podcastAbout the hostEmily Casey is the founder of What the Health and host of the show, making major developments in health technology and innovation easier to understand.What the Health is brought to you in partnership with Tenmile Ventures.What the Health is part of Day One Network, the podcast and media network from W2D1 Media: https://dayone.fm/

When his co-founder announced she was going on maternity leave, Airguides co-founder Paul Rowsthorn realised he was about to lose the operational knowledge holding his tourism business together. So he set out to replace it — not with a hire, but with an AI agent.Paul Rowsthorn, co-founder of Airguides and co-founder of AI installation company HubMind, joins Zachary King to show how that agent, Amelia, ended up running far more than he expected: performance marketing, external agency management, staff training, and Airguides' entire product-launch process.Rowsthorn describes deciding early on to build one "super-agent" rather than a network of specialised bots, after reading advice warning that multiple agents lose context talking to each other. Amelia — who Rowsthorn treats and pitches as a co-founder in her own right — spawns sub-agents as needed but keeps one continuous memory of the business.On screen, Rowsthorn walks through Amelia researching Meta's Ad Library for top-performing ads from similarly priced tourism operators, pulling in Airguides' brand voice, and assembling a ready-to-run ad set in Airtable, then messaging the external agency directly without Rowsthorn writing a report or reviewing a deck first. A similar pipeline rebuilt Airguides' product-launch process: work that used to take two to four weeks and a $500-a-month SaaS subscription now moves from brief to a live, branded Shopify listing in about a day.Rowsthorn is careful to describe this as management by exception rather than removing humans from the loop — he and his staff still review Amelia's output, more so early on than now. He shares an early misstep where Amelia sent a client an email he hadn't approved, and the guardrail he built afterward: full autonomy inside his own company, far more caution with client work at HubMind.That gap between confident enough to hand off more and not confident enough to remove review is the same thing Rowsthorn now sells. He and co-founders Chad and Rich started HubMind to compress the roughly seven months it took him to get Amelia working into a matter of weeks for other CEOs — installing what he calls a "company brain," one operational problem at a time.Paul Rowsthorn is co-founder of Airguides, a tourism company that partners with wildlife and adventure photographers on trips around the world, and co-founder of HubMind, which installs AI systems for CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses.Chapters:00:00 Cold open: the moment Amelia earned her seat00:34 Welcome to Operator AI01:25 Airguides, and the problem Amelia was built to solve03:44 Meet Amelia: one super-agent, not a swarm07:15 Training Amelia into repeatable skills08:39 Handing external agencies straight to Amelia09:58 Cracking tourism's lead-attribution problem12:38 The first OpenClaw win: automated agency reporting14:53 The founder unlock: training staff instead of gatekeeping18:58 Ad creative at scale: from ad-library research to a ready ad set23:39 From three-week product launches to one day27:02 Under the hood: hardware, model switches, and near-quitting34:16 Founding HubMind to install this for other CEOs41:22 Rapid fire, alpha sources, and advice for getting startedLinks and resources:Paul Rowsthorn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/paul-rowsthornAirguides: https://airguides.comOpenClaw: https://openclaw.aiAbout the host: Zachary King is the founder of Works, where he installs AI into how Australian companies operate. He has worked at the commercial pointy end of AI for almost twenty years and runs his own company largely from the command line.About the show: Operator AI is the show where real operators open their screens and show exactly how they run the real parts of their business with AI. The real stack, not the hype.If you want AI installed into how your business actually operates, learn more at https://workshq.com.au/ or book a time with Zachary King at https://savvycal.com/Zachary-King/zac-at-works-30Operator AI is part of Day One Network, the podcast and media network from W2D1 Media: https://dayone.fm/

Eight guests into Building Tech Teams, one theme has shown up in every single episode: money. A principal software engineer who now manages a team of agents asks what he should be paid, and nobody in the room has a clean answer. AI has changed what one person can produce, and salaries have come off the rails behind it.In this best-of episode, James MacDonald pulls together the sharpest thinking on compensation from five of his first eight guests. Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS, on the question nobody can answer yet. Adam Witanowski with the real numbers from a live job hunt: nine companies, seven offers, US startups paying US$450–500k base against comparable local roles at $220k. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere on whether AI is making teams more productive or just faster. Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN, on token costs eating into the people budget. And Cloe Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree, on the moment a big cheque is actually worth it.It adds up to a state of play for the Australian market on AI-era pay: why the gap with the US is structural (no hyperscalers, startup funding a tenth the size, enterprises that still think engineers are too expensive), why almost nobody is measuring the productivity gains they are paying for, what happens when ten people run five thousand agents, and why the cheapest move in the whole budget discussion is the raise nobody asked for.CHAPTERS0:00 - Cold open: what should a 10x engineer be paid?0:19 - Nathan Hill: quantifying what AI is actually worth1:05 - Million-dollar salaries as a bet on future ROI1:28 - Adam Witanowski: nine companies, seven offers, real numbers2:35 - US$500k in the US vs $220k here: which one would you choose?3:50 - Why the gap is structural: funding, hyperscalers, enterprise mindset5:37 - Claudia Barriga-Larriviere: more productive, or just faster?6:15 - "What you don't measure, you can't change"7:26 - Matt McFarlane: the jump is too big, because you've been underpaying8:32 - Tokens are eating the people budget9:55 - Ten people plus 5,000 agents: whose budget line?11:00 - Where token costs land, and the on-cost of humans13:01 - Leaderboards reward consumption, not value13:31 - Cloe Stanbridge: when the big cheque is worth it, and when it isn't15:06 - Salary bands have to enable the business16:26 - Replacement value: getting ahead of the market16:58 - The raise nobody asked forABOUT THE GUESTSNathan Hill is Head of Telco at AWS (episode 3). Adam Witanowski is an AI Architect, previously at NIB (episode 7). Claudia Barriga-Larriviere is a People &amp; Culture leader at Startup Flamingo (episode 4). Cloe Stanbridge is Talent Lead at Airtree (episode 6). Matt McFarlane is the Founder and Director of FNDN, a compensation consultancy helping startups and scaling tech companies build pay practices that are clear, fair and competitive (episode 8). The full conversations with all five are in the feed.LINKSNathan Hill, AWSLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanrhillClaudia Barriga-Larriviere, Startup FlamingoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudiablSite: https://startupflamingo.comCloe Stanbridge, AirtreeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloestanbridge/Adam WitanowskilinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/witanowski/Matt McFarlane, FNDNLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewmcfarlane/Site: https://www.fndn.com.au/James MacDonald, NTP TalentLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmacdonaldau/Site: https://ntptalent.com.auJames's newsletter, Headcount and Code, lands every Wednesday on Substack.Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team who helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network

Pick My Brain is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders.It's why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast.Visit https://www.deel.com/dayoneGalah Cyber offers Application Security Assessment.Get a clear, ten-minute snapshot of your AppSec maturity across the five core principles. Fast, practical insights you can act on straight away at https://www.galahcyber.com.au/assessEpisode SummaryTravellers can spend 15 hours over two months planning a holiday, then arrive with a messy spreadsheet, a graveyard of email confirmations and a screen full of Google Maps pins. Billy Chan and his co-founder built Alfred Travel to turn that fragmented process into a personalised, mobile itinerary travellers can edit, validate and book.Alfred Travel had passed 1,300 users when Billy joined Pick My Brain. The company had closed a $250,000 pre-seed round and was preparing to raise $500,000 at a $5 million cap after reaching 15,000 users. Alan Jones puts on his investor hat to stress-test the story — and immediately finds the buzzword getting in its way.They explore why “AI-powered” no longer earns points in a pitch, how Billy can teach investors something they do not already know about travel, and why a low-margin travel business has to think globally from day one. They also tackle geopolitical uncertainty, capital planning, affiliate economics and why Alfred's proposed loyalty token belongs in horizon two, after the company has built meaningful scale.Time Stamps00:00 – The buzzwords investors are tired of hearing00:59 – Welcome to Pick My Brain01:51 – Meet Billy Chan and Alfred Travel02:18 – From curious kid to technology founder03:49 – The 15-hour holiday-planning problem05:13 – How Alfred Travel makes money05:40 – The founding team and a ten-year-old idea07:01 – Why Alfred is a native mobile app08:08 – Early traction and the ideal customer09:24 – Personalisation without hallucinations12:51 – Closing the booking loop14:12 – The affiliate revenue problem15:20 – The $500,000 seed-round plan16:37 – Why “AI-powered” weakens the pitch23:06 – Addressing global travel uncertainty27:18 – Building a global company from day one28:58 – Teach investors something they do not know32:32 – Why this business cannot be cautious about growth34:13 – Escaping the Australian launchpad mindset36:57 – Loyalty tokens and the horizon-two trap40:12 – Wrap-upResources- Alfred Travel – https://www.alfredtravel.io/- Billy Chan on LinkedIn – https://au.linkedin.com/in/billy-chan-4527818b- Ask Alan a Question – https://speakpipe.com/pickmybrain- More from Alan Jones – https://www.startupfoundercoach.comAbout Pick My BrainPick My Brain is a Day One show hosted by startup founder coach and investor Alan Jones.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 1Deel x PX_Script 2

Paloma Newton is the founder of Elita, a longevity platform for dogs that combines biological testing, clinical history, and the changes owners notice day to day into one picture of how a dog is ageing. She built it backwards by most startup standards, a stem cell bank before a product, years of science before a single marketing push, all under one rule: don't promise more than the platform can back up.On this episode, Paloma brings that same rigor to two of the week's biggest AI headlines. She explains why South Australia's $3 million Royal Commission into AI is aimed at the wrong problem, and makes the sharper case that most of our anxiety about AI isn't really about the technology at all, it's about trust in who controls it. She also gets into the Jevons Paradox and why AI was never going to hand us more free time, her own weekly system for separating real output from busywork, and why she thinks women stepping back from AI over ethical concerns is a bigger loss than it looks.Plus, the origin story behind Elita, starting with her dog Edgar's breed health scan, and a closing surprise guest who may or may not understand what a podcast is.Whether you're building, funding, or just trying to make sense of the AI news cycle, this one's worth the full listen.CHAPTERS00:00 Cold open01:10 Welcome &amp; episode preview02:14 Sponsor: Deel02:40 AI hack of the week: the self-updating Slack to-do list04:01 What is Elita04:51 Headline: South Australia's $3M AI Royal Commission11:31 Headline: Does AI actually give us more free time14:58 Sponsor: Deel18:29 The Elita origin story: Edgar, stem cells, and building backwards25:35 Pet longevity vs. human longevity32:18 Holding AI's promise and its doom and gloom at once40:52 The AI-designed cancer vaccine that started with one dog45:06 Why women opting out of AI should worry everyone50:01 Rapid fire53:23 What Australia does best in AI and deep tech55:46 A very special guest

Five founders. Building with atoms and bits. Right at the heart of Australia. From robots that scan the human body to robots watching over satellites in space, one goal unites them: making Australia a better place to start a business.Season 2 of Oversubscribed opens at BrewDog Everleigh in Sydney with Will Crowe of HEO, Joe Harris of Alloy, John Carroll of Vexev, Cibby Pulikkaseril of Zabidou, and Lachlan Bramble of Antares. Between them they're building satellites, robotic ultrasound machines, factory vision systems, launch infrastructure, and the data platform underneath all of it.The conversation covers what's actually happening in robotics and space in 2026: why humanoid robots are further off than the headlines suggest, how HEO bought a satellite that was already in orbit instead of building one from scratch, why capital efficiency has become a competitive edge against better-funded US rivals, and how Australia's mineral wealth could make it a manufacturing base for the rest of the world. They also get into hiring, the talent war in US aerospace, and why none of them think being based in Sydney is a disadvantage.Time Stamps00:00 Trailer01:08 Welcome to Season 2 at BrewDog Everleigh, Sydney02:21 Founder Intros: HEO, Alloy, Vexev, Zabidou &amp; Antares05:53 Why Humanoid Robots Are Still 5+ Years Away07:17 Sponsor: Mighty Partners07:50 HEO's Natural Language Satellite Tasking &amp; "Vibe Tasking" Robots12:35 Hiring in Deep Tech: Why PhDs Aren't a Requirement Anymore14:27 Finding &amp; Training Young Talent in Robotics20:52 US vs Australia: Aerospace Talent, Poaching &amp; the Golden Dome Effect27:50 Why US Investors Now Believe in Australian Hard Tech30:54 "Competition Is for Losers": Building What No One Else Has31:25 Sponsor: Vanta32:43 How Fundraising for Hard Tech Has Changed in 5 Years41:05 Zabidoo's Brutal Pre-Seed Deadline &amp; Capital Efficiency42:25 Lachlan's Antares Raise &amp; Finding the Right Investors45:00 Micro-Factories &amp; Reindustrialising Regional Australia50:14 Sponsor: TEN1351:38 Robots That Don't Look Like Robots: Reindustrialising Australia54:56 The Future of Health: Automating Diagnosis in Remote Australia1:02:46 Breaking the SpaceX Monopoly: Satellites, Asteroids &amp; In-Space Manufacturing1:08:02 How HEO Buys Satellites Already in Orbit1:10:11 Bringing the Future Together: The Full Supply Chain1:14:23 The Robotics Boom: 10x More Companies &amp; the Ethics of Robot Safety1:19:12 Why You Should Work at HEO, Alloy, Vexev, Zabidou &amp; Antares1:21:58 Closing Thoughts &amp; a Live Deal on the PodcastOversubscribed is proudly supported by our sponsor Vanta 🦙 and Mighty Partners 💪Vanta is the all-in-one solution for startups to become compliant quickly and build a security foundation with ease. Startup customers get $1000 off Vanta at https://www.vanta.com/oversubscribed___Mighty Partners is Australia's leading venture debt provider for high-growth software companies.Venture debt gives founders access to growth capital while preserving equity, extending runway and creating greater flexibility between funding rounds. It's designed for ambitious technology businesses that want to keep building without giving away more ownership than necessary.Trusted by companies including BuildPass, Deckard Technologies and Pearler, Mighty helps founders scale on their own terms.Learn more about venture debt and how it can support your next stage of growth at https://www.mightypartners.com.au/oversubscribedThe Day One NetworkOversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators &amp; investors.Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or financial product. Brendan Hill and Steve Baxter are investors in HEO.About the Host:Brendan Hill is a Venture Partner at TEN13 and an angel investor in Australia’s fastest-growing startups, including Everlab, Heidi Health, Relevance AI and Instant. If you are interested in finding out more about angel investing, connect with Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbrendanhill/

Most companies treat compensation as a math problem: get the number right and the rest takes care of itself. Matt McFarlane says that’s backwards, and it’s the reason so many pay conversations go sideways even when the number itself is fair.In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN, the compensation consultancy he built after years running People Operations inside fast scaling startups. They get into why counteroffers rarely work, the exact headcount where pay problems start to bite, why equity has stopped doing its job as a retention lever in Australia, and how the AI hiring market has quietly made token costs a bigger line item than payroll.CHAPTERS0:00 - Cold open: the number is only half the story0:44 - Who Matt McFarlane is, and why James wanted him on1:30 - Welcome, and the trust problem behind every pay number3:08 - Pay compression, and getting ahead of the market before you're asked5:54 - Rebalancing cadence, and when a counteroffer is worth it9:37 - Bringing in outside help, and titles as currency11:35 - Building a real pay philosophy, and hiring your first people leader13:52 - The 50 to 100 headcount inflection point15:32 - Why the people function is bigger than most founders think17:31 - Onboarding, ways of work, and staying focused in the age of AI20:50 - What Zapier gets right about AI adoption23:29 - The AI engineer bidding wars, and the "jump is too big" excuse26:29 - Token costs vs headcount costs, and mission over salary29:20 - Is equity still worth offering32:50 - The naivety of chasing the next Canva34:08 - Building a team with a blank cheque37:52 - Rock stars, superstars, and hiring past 100 people40:38 - How AI agents are reshaping org structure42:47 - The Ralph Wiggum loop, and why AI leaderboards backfire47:13 - Attraction and retention beyond salary48:50 - The ComBank toilet tracker49:39 - Advice for individuals chasing a pay rise53:41 - Why "prove it first" is dying: Gen Z's pushback56:31 - Staying technical, and why people teams need to get technical too1:01:27 - Building a personal brand from scratch1:02:22 - How the podcast happened by accident1:05:37 - What personal brand does for individual engineers1:08:17 - The Startup People Summit1:10:50 - One trend to watch1:11:50 - James's takeaway, and the gap you need to closeABOUT THE GUESTMatt McFarlane is the Founder and Director of FNDN, a compensation consultancy helping startups and scaling tech companies build pay practices that are clear, fair and competitive. He previously led People Operations functions at companies including Oyster, a global employment platform, where he was Senior Director of People Experience. Matt also publishes the FNDN Series newsletter and podcast, co-founded the Startup People Summit, and was named to the 2026 HR Influence Awards Top 12 for ANZ and LinkedIn’s Top Voices Australia.LINKSMatt McFarlane, FNDN · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewmcfarlane/ · Site: https://www.fndn.com.au/James MacDonald, NTP Talent · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmacdonaldau/ · Site: https://ntptalent.com.auHosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.---Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Darius Monsef has built a colour-palette website that grew to millions of users, sold two companies, raised over $40 million for a paediatric healthcare startup, and shut it all down. Twice. He's brutally honest about why.Darius walks through how a joke website for rating colour squares became a design resource used by Adobe, how wearing his own branded t-shirt got him into Y Combinator, and how Creative Market sold to Autodesk just 11 months after launch. But the real story is what happened after the money landed: the quiet depression of an exit that wasn't life-changing enough, the $40 million healthcare business that scaled before it had product-market fit, and the moment on a plane, mid-fundraise, when he realised he might be lying to himself and everyone else.He's honest about what it cost to walk away from Brave Care, why he now tells Founders to be quitters, and why the businesses that fail teach you more than the ones that limp along for nine years pretending to work.Stick around for his three life lessons: why your health is the input that decides your output, why quitting well matters as much as starting well, and why Founders should set goals they can't reach and still call it a win.Find DariusDarius on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariusmonsef/ What he's building now: https://ozbrain.comJoin the Aussie Founders ClubThe Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.comWant to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usTime Stamps00:00 Cold open + welcome to Life After Launch, introducing Darius Monsef02:16 Growing up in Hawaii, entrepreneurial parents, and the chip on his shoulder06:48 Building COLOURlovers, the shirt that got him into Y Combinator, and 11 years to "overnight success"15:27 Creative Market's fast exit to Autodesk, and why the money wasn't enough21:29 Sightbox, moving to Hawaii, and the depression after doing "nothing"29:32 Raising $40M for Brave Care, scaling before product-market fit, and the collapse mid-fundraise40:53 Shutting down Brave Care, then Genie and Rides, and building Pre50:03 Life lesson 1: treat your health like an athlete's, not an afterthought55:16 Life lesson 2: be a quitter59:55 Life lesson 3: push harder than reasonable, then give yourself grace1:04:33 Closing thoughts + outro

Episode SummarySidecars have gone mainstream. Once something mostly associated with larger venture funds, they’re now increasingly common in Australia, with emerging managers using them alongside their first funds and sophisticated LPs increasingly expecting access to them.But what exactly is a sidecar, and why would you use one instead of simply investing directly?In this episode of First Track, Cheryl and Maxine break down sidecars from the ground up: how they differ from co-investments, why LPs use them to double down on companies they’re excited about, and how lower fees and carry can make them attractive to larger investors.They also unpack the less obvious reasons fund managers use sidecars—from getting more capital into high-conviction companies and giving venture-curious investors a way to get reps, to preserving pro rata in follow-on rounds without changing the core strategy of the fund.The conversation gets into opportunity funds, the history of sidecars, and why a vehicle that was once niche is now a standard part of the venture fund playbook. They also dive into the surprisingly complicated world of Australian SPVs, the four main structures available, and the regulatory challenges facing super funds investing in venture.Finally, Cheryl and Maxine look at how the venture ecosystem is evolving, why sidecars are becoming part of the progression from syndicate to fund manager, and what the growing expectations of institutional LPs could mean for the next generation of Australian funds.Time Stamps00:00 – From venture outsider to “everyone is building companies”01:12 – Why sidecars have suddenly gone mainstream02:23 – What exactly is a sidecar?03:14 – Sidecars vs. co-investments04:12 – The Uber for Cats problem 🐈05:12 – Why LPs and fund managers use sidecars05:40 – Doubling down on the companies you love07:27 – How sidecars can lower fees and carry08:40 – The paradox of picking winners to average down fees09:29 – Why sidecars make more sense at growth stage10:30 – Drafting off someone else’s diligence11:30 – Follow-on sidecars and pro rata13:31 – Why competitive rounds make sidecars valuable14:50 – The admin headache of investing directly15:05 – Why sidecars can make investing easier16:02 – The surprising history of opportunity funds17:25 – When should emerging managers start using sidecars?19:10 – Why fund managers run sidecars21:00 – Sidecars, carry and staying disciplined22:00 – Why sophisticated LPs increasingly expect sidecars23:10 – SPVs aren’t actually a legal structure24:10 – The four main Australian SPV structures25:23 – Why Australia is different from the US26:00 – The evolution from angel to syndicate to fund27:08 – The super fund fee problem28:17 – Should venture be treated differently?29:11 – The regulatory challenge for Australian venture30:24 – What happens as Australian funds mature?31:23 – Why building a fund is still building a company32:01 – Sidecars 101: did we cover it all?32:49 – Send us your sidecar questionsSponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.___Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartreeFirst Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our&nbsp;newsletter&nbsp;to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 2Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.Deel x PX_Script 1This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpSpotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

Benjamin Plummer has one of the stranger CVs in Australian tech: nine years inside Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, building an AI lab alongside IBM Watson's inventor, scaling a startup he says went from $10M to $160M in revenue in eighteen months as CEO, and now running Dragonfly Intelligence, a firm that buys ordinary services businesses and rebuilds them as AI-native companies from the ground up.This conversation starts with the week ChatGPT tried to cheat its way out of its own safety harness, and what that says about accountability as models get more capable. From there, Ben and Georgie get into why coding has gotten fast while everything around it, deciding what to build, checking it got built right, has become the real bottleneck, why software has spent a decade getting bloated and what an Apple-style, purpose-built alternative could look like, and why locking your business to one model provider is a losing bet.Ben also makes the case for Australia's shot at this moment: not frontier models, but data centers, the application layer, and physical AI, backed by what he estimates is a two trillion dollar services economy that's largely untouched.It closes with Ben's read on who wins and loses as AI reshapes work, and a blunt warning for the services companies still sitting on the sidelines.CHAPTERS0:00 Cold open0:51 Welcome to the show2:16 Sponsor: Deel (pre-roll)2:36 Hack of the week: the "rambling session"5:13 Georgie's hack: the NFC nail chip6:12 When ChatGPT tried to break its own harness13:14 AI makes coding fast, everything else the bottleneck15:39 Sponsor: Deel (mid-roll)18:19 Nine years inside Bridgewater21:37 Building Elemental Cognition with Watson's inventor24:26 Scaling Invisible from $10M to $160M26:06 Why Dragonfly Intelligence27:59 Spotting "zombie companies" in the AI gold rush32:10 Why software moats are dying35:01 Open source, closed source, and not marrying a model44:26 "Easier to do hard things": Dragonfly's ambition47:12 The real debate on AI data centers in Australia52:15 Three bets for Australia beyond frontier models55:05 Rapid fire: what keeps Ben up, who wins and loses from AI1:01:30 Outro

A survey of more than 1,800 clinicians across 25 countries found 83% had already adopted AI before their workplace had any governance in place. Healthcare, it turns out, is not just adopting AI. It is being redesigned around it.In the second What the Health Wrap, host Emily Casey is joined by Dr Simon Kos, Global Chief Medical Officer at Heidi, and Dr Janice Tan, GP and General Manager of Clinical Innovation at Bupa, to work through what the fortnight's biggest healthcare stories actually mean.Simon uses Heidi's Pressure Points report to bust some long-held myths. Clinicians are not Luddites; get product-market fit right and they will adopt ahead of their own organisations. Product-led growth is not impossible in healthcare. And the idea that everything must run through a single electronic medical record screen does not survive contact with the reality of shadow AI. Janice agrees, arguing that GPs are among the most innovative professionals there are, and that what matters is not clicks or screens but the value exchange.The conversation turns to where this leaves general practice. Both guests expect voice to become the default way information is entered within two years, freeing clinicians for deeper, more present consultations rather than merely shorter ones. Janice makes the point that scribes save time not to compress the visit but to enrich it. Simon argues that scribes should be commoditised, because they are the entry point to something bigger: infusing evidence and decision support into the flow of care.They also examine what happens when patients bring their own AI into the room. OpenAI's launch of Health in ChatGPT, and the broader move by frontier labs into consumer health, could be the single biggest driver of health equity, filling the gap for people who previously had no care at all. But Simon draws a firm line between consumer-grade and clinical-grade health, pointing to the liability caps some providers attach to their advice and the accountability the medical profession is held to. The regulatory framework for quality and safety is not yet in place, but it is coming fast.Janice explains Bupa's own metamorphosis from health insurer to health organisation, investing heavily in primary and preventive care across medical, dental, optical and psychology clinics, and rolling out AI scribes to its clinicians under strong governance. Simon zooms out to a health system whose old boundaries between payer, provider, acute, primary and consumer care are blurring, driven by digital capability, policy reform and a wave of consolidation.The panel closes on the future of care. They discuss how to equip the next generation of doctors without letting AI become a crutch that erodes clinical judgement, what digital health's US$7.4 billion funding rebound says about capital concentrating into a handful of mega rounds, and why the companies winning big are the ones co-designing with clinicians from day one. Then they imagine the patient journey in 2035, from wellness chairs in autonomous vehicles to consultations that feel, as Janice puts it, more human.GuestsDr Simon Kos is Global Chief Medical Officer at Heidi, the AI clinical documentation company. A physician who practised critical care medicine before moving into digital health, he was previously Global Chief Medical Officer at Microsoft and CEO of Next Practice, and is a long-standing figure in Australian digital health.Dr Janice Tan is a GP and the General Manager of Clinical Innovation at Bupa, where she leads the rollout and piloting of AI solutions across the group's health services. She also advises the RACGP and works to uplift the digital health capability of the GP profession.Chapters00:00 Introducing the What the Health Wrap00:07 Guest updates: Heidi's global expansion and life in general practice03:03 The fortnight's five biggest headlines05:11 Heidi's Pressure Points report: adopting AI ahead of governance06:16 Busting the myths about clinicians and technology10:11 Where general practice is heading: voice by default and deeper consults13:00 Patients are bringing their own AI to the consult14:21 Health in ChatGPT and big tech's move into consumer health18:33 Consumer-grade versus clinical-grade care and the regulation gap23:41 Bupa's shift from health insurer to health company30:29 Training the next generation without de-skilling33:43 Digital health's US$7.4 billion funding landscape35:31 Finding the wedge: co-designing with clinicians38:46 The 2035 patient journey42:46 Rapid fire: emojis, surprises and companies to watchLinks and resourcesHeidiHeidi's Pressure Points 2026 reportBupa AustraliaBupa's Connected Care strategyBupa to acquire Partnered Health GroupHealth in ChatGPTRock Health H1 2026 funding and market overviewAustralia's ban on genetic discrimination in life insuranceClaude for HealthcareAbout the hostEmily Casey is the founder of What the Health and host of the What the Health Wrap, making major developments in health technology and innovation easier to understand.The What the Health Wrap is brought to you by What the Health in partnership with Tenmile Ventures.What the Health is part of Day One Network, the podcast and media network from W2D1 Media.

Pick My Brain is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders.It's why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast.Visit https://www.deel.com/dayoneGalah Cyber offers Application Security Assessment.Get a clear, ten-minute snapshot of your AppSec maturity across the five core principles. Fast, practical insights you can act on straight away at https://www.galahcyber.com.au/assessEpisode SummaryAlternative investments can give investors exposure beyond shares and bonds, but most clean-energy projects still come with high minimums, expensive structuring and long, relationship-driven sales cycles. Ishan Dan founded RegenX to help developers make those projects investment-ready and give wholesale investors access at a more practical scale.In this episode of Pick My Brain, Alan Jones helps Ishan confront the hardest part of the model: RegenX is a two-sided marketplace, and neither side moves quickly. Project developers need capital, while wealth managers and family offices need trust, evidence and a reason to pay attention.They unpack how to stop treating both sides as equal growth problems, why one-to-many relationship building can outperform another round of cold outreach, and how a founder becomes the credible industry expert the market needs. Ishan also shares RegenX's fee model, early project pipeline and the regulatory constraints behind raising capital for clean-energy assets.Time Stamps00:00 – Why RegenX is changing access to alternative investments01:25 – Welcome to Pick My Brain02:14 – Ishan's question for Alan02:54 – From aspiring stockbroker to startup founder04:40 – What counts as an alternative investment?05:33 – Making clean-energy projects investment-ready11:36 – RegenX's first projects and $60 million pipeline13:13 – The hardest part of raising capital17:43 – Why two-sided marketplaces are so difficult24:25 – Trust, relationships and wealth managers29:06 – Becoming the industry expert29:43 – Making one side someone else's growth problem31:34 – Wrap-upResources- RegenX – https://www.regenx.io/- Ishan Dan on LinkedIn – https://au.linkedin.com/in/ishandan- Ask Alan a Question – https://speakpipe.com/pickmybrain- More from Alan Jones – https://www.startupfoundercoach.comPick My Brain is a Day One show hosted by startup founder coach and investor Alan Jones.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 2Deel x PX_Script 1

Most technical interviews still ask a candidate to write a function on a whiteboard. Adam Witanowski says that question is already obsolete, and what should replace it says everything about how AI is changing who gets hired.In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Adam Witanowski, AI Architect at nib, where he has spent the past several years building the insurer's AI engineering practice from the ground up. They get into why most enterprise AI projects underperform (nobody is measuring the right things), what "back pressure" means for AI-generated code, why Australian salaries can't compete with the US for senior AI talent, and why the technical interview needs a full rebuild.It's a hands-on, practitioner's take on what's actually happening inside enterprise AI teams, not the conference-keynote version. They cover the real dollar gap between hiring an AI engineer in Australia versus the US, why "the whiteboard should come back" as an interview tool, how Adam built his own AI agent to interview for jobs on his behalf, and the testing harness his team uses to check whether AI-generated work is actually any good.CHAPTERS0:00 - Cold open: the line that explains why most AI investments don't work0:44 - Who Adam Witanowski is, and why James wanted him on2:06 - Welcome, and building an AI SDLC from scratch inside a regulated insurer5:12 - What "back pressure" actually means, and why solo AI coding doesn't scale10:52 - Startups vs enterprises: re-engineer whole processes, not thin slices13:24 - Why most companies can't even measure the problem they're trying to solve17:10 - Software eats the world, and why that makes engineers apex predators19:44 - Build in-house or buy: the blind spots consulting companies won't tell you23:57 - Forward deployed engineers, and the rise of the hybrid product-engineer26:38 - Tangent: his 13-year-old builds an AI auto-aimbot30:43 - Build, upskill or outsource: the renters, owners and caretakers test34:18 - What AI talent actually wants beyond a bigger title38:30 - The real dollar gap: $220K in Australia versus $500K in the US46:37 - What to actually pay your first AI hire49:01 - "What you don't measure, you can't change"51:01 - Redesigning the interview: show me your harness56:45 - Why the whiteboard should come back58:38 - Building a harness to test his harness1:03:46 - He built his own AI agent to interview for him1:07:28 - Why motivation and taste still beat any technical test1:12:19 - Apex predator, Jedi, stallion, unicorn: Adam's closing line1:13:00 - James's takeaway: it's a measurement problem, not a technology problemABOUT THE GUESTAdam Witanowski is an AI Architect at nib in Sydney, where he has built Prometheus, an integrated suite of agentic AI tools now running in production across the business. He works at the intersection of senior engineering and AI leadership, and has spoken publicly on enterprise AI engineering discipline, including harness design, testing and evals, and AI governance.LINKSAdam Witanowski, NIB · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/witanowski/James MacDonald, NTP Talent · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmacdonaldau/ · Site: https://ntptalent.com.auHosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.---Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Kirstin Hunter has co-founded a super fund, run a startup accelerator, and now leads Australia's biggest crowdfunding platform. None of it was the plan.She grew up in Tweed Heads folding junk mail for two cents a letterbox, trained to be a doctor, then pivoted through law and consulting before a friend told her the pro bono work she loved was just "the trinkets" propping up a job that made corporations richer. That conversation pushed her into Future Super, where a pitch her co-founders called "absurd" turned into one of Australia's first fossil-fuel-free super funds.She's honest about what came next too: the moment she and her co-founders stopped wanting the same thing, and why leaving felt like leaving a marriage. From there she takes you through Techstars Australia, the funding data project that exposed how badly VCs back women and diverse Founders, and how she landed the CEO seat at Birchal, almost by accident.Stick around for the one Revolut stat that makes the case for democratised funding better than any pitch deck could.Find KirstinKirstin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstinhunter/ Birchal: https://www.birchal.com/ Future Super: https://www.futuresuper.com.au/Join the Aussie Founders ClubThe Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.comWant to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usTime Stamps00:00 Cold open + welcome to Life After Launch01:14 Introducing Kirstin Hunter02:16 From junk mail in Tweed Heads to running a $20M student union at 2309:16 Consulting, "the trinkets," and the leap to Future Super15:48 Becoming a co-founder and building Australia's fossil-fuel-free super fund20:39 The co-founder breakdown, and why she walked away24:54 Techstars, the funding gap for diverse founders, and Funding the Balance42:27 Landing at Birchal, and the case for crowdfunding48:06 Closing thoughts + outro

Dan Westgarth has spent 7 years helping build Deel from a contractor invoicing tool into one of the most valuable HR and payroll platforms in the world, and he did it after cutting his teeth as an early operator at Revolut. As COO, he sits across nearly every function the AI conversation touches: finance, sales, engineering, and the sheer operational load of running a company at global scale.In this conversation, Dan gets specific on AI and Ops. He walks through the internal tool that takes a bug ticket, writes the fix, and opens its own pull request for an engineer to review. He talks through what he actually looks for when hiring, and the future of SaaS isn't dead, but there is about to be a lot more competition.We traverse through a funny detour into Dan's own weekend coding habit (his laptop did not enjoy….), a rundown of which AI tool he reaches for and when, and an answer to "what would you build this weekend”Listen for a leading operator's view of AI adoption at scaleCHAPTERS00:00 Cold open, the AI agent that writes its own code00:46 Show intro, Deel's sponsorship, and what's ahead02:03 Sponsor break, Deel02:30 What Deel actually does03:14 Rapid AI hot takes, finance roles, human oversight, hardware, sports, and the World Cup09:29 Why Deel keeps winning after seven years10:00 How the product evolved from contractor invoicing to a full HR platform11:28 What Dan looks for when hiring13:06 Leaving Revolut for Deel14:17 Sponsor break, Deel14:57 The YC Winter 2019 connection15:49 Setting targets and building momentum16:43 Where AI helps the sales team, and where it can't19:20 Should AI handle your email21:03 AI meeting assistants, pros and cons22:53 What makes an A+ engineer in 202623:37 Inside DCA, Deel's self-writing code agent25:55 Breaking into new international markets28:34 B2C versus B2B expansion30:16 The cost of not using a platform like Deel33:01 What keeps Dan up at night about AI agents33:29 Akai, and scaling operations without growing headcount36:15 Dan's own weekend coding experiment37:26 Rapid fire, is the SaaS apocalypse real39:48 The physical Deel Card and crypto payroll42:23 What is a stablecoin43:02 Which AI tools Dan actually reaches for44:51 If Dan built one AI project this weekend46:45 Closing thoughts and where to find Dan47:08 Deel's new Arsenal FC sponsorship48:41 Georgie's weekly AI newsletter

The junior engineer used to be the safe first hire. Cloë Stanbridge says AI just made that job disappear, and that's only the start of what's rewriting tech hiring right now.In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree, one of Australia's most active venture capital firms. Cloë spends her days helping early-stage founders make their first engineering hires and helping later-stage companies scale their teams, work she's done from both sides, having previously led talent through a hypergrowth stretch at SafetyCulture and embedded inside scaling companies at The Lab17. They get into what actually makes a founder an "outlier" worth backing, why some founders eventually have to admit they've become the bottleneck in their own company, why the traditional junior engineer role is disappearing, and how Airtree's new Frontiers program is drawing hundreds of applications from engineers ready to go out on their own.It's a hiring-trenches conversation full of specific, hard-won detail: the real numbers behind scaling a team from 60 to 350 people, why some recruiters place better talent because they simply know the team better, the AI tools on both sides of the hiring desk, and the line that sums up what's actually scarce in tech right now: everyone can build, not everyone can sell.Chapters0:00 Cold open: why the junior engineer is disappearing0:40 What this episode covers1:40 Welcome: Cloë Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree1:56 A day in the life of a VC talent lead2:10 Investing from pre-seed to growth stage2:57 How talent gets involved at each stage4:15 What makes a founder an "outlier"5:02 Hiring the first few engineers5:48 Case study: scaling a young founder's team7:39 When a technical founder gets pulled in every direction9:01 Hiring junior engineers in the age of AI11:03 Why "junior" now means doing mid-level work12:05 The fear of hiring someone more senior than you13:02 When founders step back into R&amp;D13:32 Zero-to-one vs. scaling personalities14:08 Inside Airtree's Frontiers program15:24 Why engineers are leaving big companies to found startups15:57 Retention, ESOP, and leaner teams16:45 Why managers now need to be hands-on architects17:25 Why no job is safe from redundancy anymore18:39 The squeeze on middle management19:34 Hiring people leaders too late21:34 What actually keeps people "sticky"21:58 Leadership lessons from Brené Brown and Kim Scott22:41 Embedding inside scale-ups at The Lab1725:15 Setting a new hire up to succeed, or fail27:49 How the market flipped after COVID28:21 When a huge engineer salary is worth it31:08 Competing with Silicon Valley salaries31:37 How Linktree built culture as a differentiator32:52 Cash versus flexibility in a cost-of-living crisis33:40 Being upfront about the grind before they sign35:20 Remote work and the culture question36:55 Why go-to-market matters more than ever37:46 Expanding into the US market40:10 Do founders have to relocate for funding?41:34 Bringing Australian talent back home42:36 From 60 to 350: scaling at SafetyCulture47:04 Why recruiters need to know "their dog's name"47:46 Being a thought partner, not a salesperson48:47 Hiring for potential over a checklist50:39 Why problem-solving beats a technical checklist51:47 How AI is changing technical interviews53:38 Trial days: hiring by actually working together55:25 Screening out "AI slop" in applications56:21 Spotting an AI-written cover letter57:34 Using AI without losing the human element57:52 Where voice agents fit and where they don't58:39 The AI tools Cloë uses to research candidates59:25 Cloë's top 3 AI skills for recruiting1:00:45 James's AI-powered morning brief1:01:58 Wrap-up and thanks1:02:11 James's takeaways from the episodeAbout the GuestCloë Stanbridge is Talent Lead at Airtree, where she partners with the firm's portfolio to connect founders with top talent, build scalable hiring processes, and develop playbooks that support sustainable growth. Before Airtree, she spent over four years at The Lab17, embedding inside scaling companies including Linktree and Immutable to build out their hiring practices, and led talent through a hypergrowth stretch at SafetyCulture, taking the engineering team from around 60 people to 350 in two years.LinksCloë Stanbridge · Airtree · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloestanbridge/James MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au/NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au/Day One: https://dayone.fm/Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

If you've ever felt like you're not a "real" Founder because you're not chasing unicorn status, this episode is your permission slip to build differently.Jodie Imam has done almost everything you can do in the Australian startup ecosystem. She co-founded Occasional Butler and went head to head with Airtasker (who eventually acquired her), opened depo8, one of Melbourne's first coworking spaces, and now runs Tractor Ventures, the revenue-based funding company backing the Founders who don't want to ride the VC rocket. And it all started at age 12 with a business called The Ironing Lady.You'll hear the moment at Ericsson that convinced Jodie she could never trust a corporation with her future, and the trade she made to escape it: her car space for a job with fashion designer Leona Edmiston, working weeks for free to prove herself. She's honest about what that costs, and why she tells anyone changing direction that you can't expect a corporate wage while you do it.Then there's the Occasional Butler story, including the very first job posted on the platform (a $5 gig to eat a packet of Doritos, planted by a rival you might have heard of), the Gumtree hack that finally unlocked their flywheel, and the raise-or-sell decision she faced while pregnant with her third child.Jodie also opens up about the journaling moment that led to Tractor Ventures (she wrote "I want to work with Matt Allen one day" and he messaged her that same day), the EOS framework and visionary-integrator split that transformed how she and Matt run the company, and the spiritual awakening after her divorce that has her exploring goddess rituals and witchcraft alongside running a venture funding business.Stay to the end to hear why Founders are whole humans, and why you can absolutely manage millions and pull tarot cards in the same week.Find JodieJodie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodieimam/ Tractor Ventures: https://www.tractorventures.com/Mentioned in this episodeRocket Fuel - the book behind the visionary and integrator split Jodie describesJoin the Aussie Founders ClubThe Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.comWant to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usTime Stamps00:00 Cold open and welcome to Life After Launch01:05 Megan's disclaimers: buying the gear, timing references, and learning to stop saying "yes"02:18 Introducing Jodie Imam03:11 The Ironing Lady at 12: where the independence drive began04:00 Watching Ericsson make 30-year veterans redundant, and the seed it planted05:13 Trading a car space for a job: nine years growing Leona Edmiston from 3 people to 10009:17 The owner's mentality: why Jodie told her bosses "I have to feel like it's my business"10:26 Babies as the catalyst: leaving to start Occasional Butler with her husband12:39 Selling the house, moving to Melbourne, and going all in on two businesses with two babies14:47 The first job ever posted: a $5 Doritos prank from a familiar rival16:00 The Gumtree hack that finally kicked the flywheel18:23 Building too much before testing, and why launching feels like standing on stage naked20:09 The exit story: the capital-raising mistake that cost months, and the board move that worked23:16 Selling to Airtasker while pregnant with baby number three24:51 Setting up Innovation Bay in Melbourne27:02 COVID kills depo8 overnight, and Tractor Ventures is born from a lockdown living room33:06 The journal entry and the WhatsApp message: how Jodie and Matt Allen teamed up34:23 How Tractor actually works: the first $2 million, revenue-based finance, and the funding stack37:26 Why Tractor only hires senior people39:54 Rocket Fuel, EOS, and the visionary vs integrator dynamic (plus seagull management)44:01 Life after exit and divorce: spiritual awakening, goddess rituals, and witchcraft47:41 Quickfire: what's inspiring Jodie and the ecosystem shoutout49:16 Outro

Episode SummaryEric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way, and the founder of IMVU and the Long-Term Stock Exchange. His new book, Incorruptible, examines why companies drift from their mission once investors and boards take over, and what founders and early investors can do to prevent it.In this episode, Cheryl and Maxine unpack what Eric calls "financial gravity," the force that pulls companies toward extractive, value-destroying behavior even when everyone believes they're pursuing profit. Eric explains why many widely taught governance best practices are actually shareholder-value destroying, and why the earliest stage of a company is the easiest time to build in protections against this drift.You'll also hear Eric break down the "spiritual holding company" structure, using Novo Nordisk's century-old nonprofit foundation as an example of why mission-guardian structures make companies far more likely to survive long term. The conversation covers why founders get talked out of protective provisions until it's suddenly too late, and Eric shares the real story of a startup that took a million dollars from Purdue Pharma to push opioids to doctors, and why it destroyed the company.He closes with his Big Cojones moment: a board meeting early in his career where he expected to be fired for refusing to abandon his unconventional methods, and the lesson that "harder is easier" when you stand for something you believe in.Time Stamps00:00 – Intro04:10 – Eric's first investment: putting his own money into IMVU's friends and family round09:15 – From Lean Startup to Incorruptible: why it's always felt like one continuous project to Eric17:40 – The tortilla company, private equity, and why "pricing power" explains so much bad behavior21:30 – Why so-called governance best practices are often value destroying25:50 – Naming the problem: financial gravity and why our grandparents would have called it corruption30:20 – What founders and early investors can actually do at the earliest stage36:45 – The Olympic athlete analogy: why protective structures only work if built in early41:10 – The spiritual holding company explained through Novo Nordisk's origin story48:30 – Why companies rated for "good governance" have underperformed since 200852:15 – The Purdue Pharma story and how a million dollars destroyed a company58:40 – Big Cojones moment: the board meeting Eric thought would get him firedSponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.___Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartreeFirst Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our&nbsp;newsletter&nbsp;to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.Mentioned in this episode:Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.Deel x PX_Script 1Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpSpotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

Lucas Cantor has an unusual claim on the AI conversation. In 2019, Huawei asked him to finish Schubert's Unfinished Symphony using artificial intelligence, and he did it. He's an Emmy-winning composer who has worked on every Olympics since 2002, produced a cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World with Lorde, and now invests in music technology. His new book is Unfinished: The Role of the Artist in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.In this episode Georgie Healy gets Lucas to take apart the story we're all being told about AI. Why he thinks nobody actually knows what the term even means. Why every single person he asks assumes AI can do the job they're not an expert in, and can't do the job they are. Why the claim that AI democratizes creativity is a fallacy sold by AI companies, and what it actually democratizes instead. Why B2B SaaS isn't dead, and who benefits from you believing it is. And why the music industry, supposedly murdered by Napster, is bigger now than it was before.If you build, market, or operate anything, this is a useful hour of pressure testing. Lucas isn't a doomer and he isn't an evangelist. He's someone who has been inside the technology long enough to tell the difference between what it does and what it's sold as.Recorded ahead of his first trip to Australia for BIGSOUND - which is September 1st - 4th in Brisbane!Chapters:00:00 Cold open00:54 Welcome, and who Lucas Cantor is02:49 The AI hack: stem separation04:14 Taylor Swift's wedding04:55 BIGSOUND, and the fear around AI in music06:23 Why the purist argument falls apart07:25 Tuning has drifted since the Renaissance10:02 Composer, producer, author, investor11:16 What Suno is, and the ethics problem12:20 Why all music sounds better now15:33 What it actually means to have your music stolen16:56 Covering Everybody Wants to Rule the World with Lorde19:19 Source Connect, Audio Movers, and remote studios20:22 The fallacy that AI democratizes creativity22:38 Black Swan, conductors, and the war on expertise24:26 The doctor who said AI could write a pop song27:38 Why he called himself a Luddite30:18 Hans Zimmer's studio, and saying yes to Huawei32:34 Finishing Schubert's Unfinished Symphony37:00 "I don't think anybody knows what AI is"38:49 Every AI agent ad shows something nobody needs42:14 Hot take: is B2B SaaS dead?45:13 AI is a story, and that's the problem46:25 What actually wins in music tech49:28 Amusing, but not amazing50:20 Ben Affleck, Scorsese, and AI in the creative process53:30 Two Emmys and a coach of the year award55:36 The one takeaway from Unfinished57:33 Georgie's Substack, Attention Is All I Need

$320 billion flows through Australia's commercial construction industry every year — and far too much of it still moves on spreadsheets and re-keyed purchase orders. Mitchell Baker spent 12 years inside that machine as a contract administrator — on John Holland's $250M shopping-centre rebuild, and on Facebook's £150M London HQ with Kier — watching well-paid people burn their days copying data that already existed.So he built Claimstack, a workflow platform that follows the money from tender to final account across the whole contractor chain. In this special Melbourne edition of Pick My Brain, recorded at Cremorne Digital Hub, Alan Jones digs into the genuinely hard part: selling new software into an industry famous for resisting it, and coaching a solo, self-taught founder on when — and how — to stop wearing every hat.You'll also hear the vibe-coding origin story (DataButton, then Cursor, then Claude Code in VS Code), how Mitch is funding the dream by selling off possessions while his partner foots the bills, the milestone-based "startup leave" deal that kept the relationship healthy, and the 15% ESOP he carved out of his friends-and-family round to lure senior talent.Time Stamps00:00 – Intro: $320B a year, still moving on spreadsheets02:07 – What Claimstack does: one platform for the whole contractor chain02:36 – The $320 billion inefficiency it targets03:35 – 12 years in the trenches: John Holland and Facebook's London HQ05:32 – Live in market: onboarding the first pilot customers05:55 – Vibe-coding it solo: DataButton, Cursor, then Claude Code06:45 – Why he didn't wait for a co-founder07:43 – Funding the dream, and the deal with his partner11:08 – Selling into an industry that resists new software14:26 – Building a sales team without losing credibility15:37 – Marketing yourself with a LinkedIn feature series17:48 – A solo founder's leadership gaps, and the 15% ESOP19:26 – Wrap-upResources🔗 Claimstack – https://claimstack.com.au🎙 Ask Alan a Question – https://speakpipe.com/pickmybrain🎧 More from Alan Jones – https://www.startupfoundercoach.comFounders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders.It's why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast.Visit https://www.deel.com/dayoneEpisode Summary$320 billion a year flows through Australian commercial construction, and much of it still moves on spreadsheets and re-keyed data. Mitchell Baker spent 12 years as a contract administrator — including on Facebook's London HQ — before building Claimstack to follow the money from tender to final account across the whole contractor chain. In this Melbourne edition of Pick My Brain, Alan Jones coaches Mitch on selling software into an industry that resists change, and on when a solo, self-taught founder should start building a team.Time Stamps00:00 – Intro: $320B a year, still moving on spreadsheets02:07 – What Claimstack does: one platform for the whole contractor chain02:36 – The $320 billion inefficiency it targets03:35 – 12 years in the trenches: John Holland and Facebook's London HQ05:32 – Live in market: onboarding the first pilot customers05:55 – Vibe-coding it solo: DataButton, Cursor, then Claude Code06:45 – Why he didn't wait for a co-founder07:43 – Funding the dream, and the deal with his partner11:08 – Selling into an industry that resists new software14:26 – Building a sales team without losing credibility15:37 – Marketing yourself with a LinkedIn feature series17:48 – A solo founder's leadership gaps, and the 15% ESOP19:26 – Wrap-upResources🔗 Claimstack – https://claimstack.com.au🎙 Ask Alan a Question – https://speakpipe.com/pickmybrain🎧 More from Alan Jones – https://www.startupfoundercoach.comMentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 1Deel x PX_Script 2Deel x PX_Script 1

Most organisations are asking which AI model they should use. Patrick McQuaid thinks that is the wrong conversation.Patrick is Group Head of Data, Analytics &amp; AI at NGM Group. He joins James MacDonald to explain how leaders can build practical AI capability without getting trapped by hype, vendor lock-in or an endless cycle of new tools.They discuss how NGM approaches AI inside a regulated banking environment, where privacy, risk and customer trust make it impossible to turn a weekend prototype straight into production. Patrick explains why teams need both strong foundations and useful short-term wins, why the people closest to the work should own their technology costs, and where generative AI should not be used for decision-making.The conversation also explores what AI means for technical careers. Patrick shares why he hires for attitude, curiosity and problem-solving ability, rather than waiting for candidates with years of experience in technology that has only just emerged. He and James discuss the continuing value of junior engineers, the rise of AI enablement and orchestration roles, and the human skills that remain difficult to automate.If you are responsible for introducing AI into an established organisation, hiring a technical team or preparing your own career for the next wave of change, this episode offers a grounded alternative to the fear and hype.Chapters0:00 — Stop arguing about AI models0:46 — What this episode covers1:15 — Meet Patrick McQuaid1:38 — Leading experts without being the deepest technical expert4:37 — Deployment, flexibility and avoiding model lock-in6:45 — Vibe coding versus production inside a regulated bank8:30 — Shadow AI and choosing enterprise tools10:10 — Junior engineers and hiring for attitude16:15 — Who should own AI and token costs?19:34 — Building, buying or partnering for AI capability21:21 — Where generative AI does not belong25:41 — Joining NGM during a major data transformation30:17 — Building foundations and delivering quick wins34:20 — Planning in a fast-moving AI market35:45 — Agentic tools and the value of staying flexible37:04 — Can specialist software companies defend their advantage?39:18 — What organisations should and should not build themselves41:33 — Technology's role in a human business49:44 — The human skills AI cannot replace52:33 — What AI could mean for the next generation54:33 — Remote work, relationships and learning together58:35 — Cutting through AI FOMO and LinkedIn hype1:00:27 — The AI advantage for smaller organisations1:01:24 — Managing legal, financial and reputational risk1:06:43 — AI sycophancy and why chatbots agree with you1:07:57 — The skills technology professionals should build now1:09:26 — AI enablement and orchestration roles1:12:46 — James's key takeawayAbout the GuestPatrick McQuaid GAICD is Group Head of Data, Analytics &amp; AI at NGM Group, one of Australia's largest customer-owned banking groups. NGM Group operates the Greater Bank and Newcastle Permanent brands.LinksPatrick McQuaid — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcquaid/NGM Group: https://www.ngmgroup.com.au/National AI Centre: https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-innovation/technology/artificial-intelligence/national-ai-centreJames MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au/ · NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.au/Day One: https://dayone.fm/Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

If you've ever talked yourself out of reaching out to someone because they're "too successful to reply", this episode will change how you send your next message.Dom Pym co-founded Up, one of Australia's fastest growing digital banks, and has personally invested $85 million into the Australian startup ecosystem. But he started with nothing. Dom tells Megan and Geo about growing up in a family that lost everything, and the "golden purse" his mum kept that somehow always had just enough in it, a lesson in abundance he's carried into every company since.You'll hear the full story of how Dom and his co-founder walked into Bendigo Bank asking for money and walked out bidding to rebuild their entire banking system, with a team of two and zero banking experience. You'll learn why he treats confidence and honesty as two separate skills you need at the same time, the exact cold outreach tactics that have actually worked on him (including one that involves sticky-taping a $1 coin to a letter), and why he believes chasing busy, successful people a hundred times is a feature, not a flaw.Dom also shares the two policy ideas he's pushing right now, free universal childcare and a dollar-for-dollar rebuild of the R&amp;D tax incentive, that he reckons could make Australia a world superpower.Stay to the end for the quickfire round, where Dom reveals the plane crash he survived in 1999 and the one interview question that lets him see straight into a Founder's soul.Find DomDom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dompym/Up: https://up.com.au/Euphemia: https://euphemia.com/Join the Aussie Founders ClubThe Slack community, the newsletter and everything else live here: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.comWant to partner with Life After Launch?Explore sponsorship and partnership opportunities at https://lifeafterlaunchpod.com/partner-with-usTime Stamps00:00 Cold open and welcome to Life After Launch01:17 Introducing Dom Pym02:33 The childhood moments that shaped Dom: footy, family, and sliding doors06:09 The golden purse: building an abundance mindset from nothing08:20 The three people who taught Dom how money really works11:03 Why you should chase successful people a hundred times (the Marty Howell story)14:15 The most creative cold outreach Dom has ever received16:07 The $1 coin letter and why positive affirmation actually works19:19 The Bendigo Bank story: two people, supreme confidence, and a live demo that broke the rules26:26 Confidence vs honesty: crossing ThoughtWorks off the whiteboard29:13 Up's world firsts: Afterpay, Apple Pay instant issuance, and Google Cloud31:05 Comparing your bank to Instagram: the activity feed that banks worldwide copied32:48 Fixing Australia: free universal childcare and rebuilding the R&amp;D tax incentive37:38 1.4 million customers and the countdown to overtaking the big banks40:30 Quickfire: the 1999 Qantas crash, the ecosystem stars you should know, and the question that reveals a Founder's soul46:56 Outro

Novartis has agreed to acquire Myricx Bio for up to US$1.5 billion, approximately A$2.2 billion, in a major outcome for a UK biotech company with deep Australian venture backing.In the inaugural What the Health Wrap, host Emily Casey is joined by Dr Jackie Rabec, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at ThinkMD.ai, and Dr Prashanth Rajan, Associate at Brandon Capital, to work through what the fortnight's biggest healthcare stories actually mean.Prashanth explains how Myricx Bio evolved from small-molecule science into a new class of antibody-drug conjugate payloads. He discusses why the proposed acquisition matters for cancer therapeutics, investors and Australia's biotech ecosystem, while cautioning that the ultimate test will still come through clinical development.The conversation then turns to artificial intelligence. Jackie argues that healthcare companies need more than a powerful model. They need a genuine problem, sustainable economics, clinical workflow integration and the change management required for adoption. Prashanth applies the same test to AI drug discovery, where molecular designs must still survive laboratory testing and clinical trials.The panel also examines proposed changes to Australia's R&amp;D Tax Incentive. Under the current proposal, the offset would be refundable for eligible businesses younger than ten years and non-refundable for older businesses. Prashanth explains why that distinction could affect biotech companies just as expensive clinical programs begin to scale, potentially pushing investment, clinical activity and company growth offshore.AdvanCell's US$315 million Series D offers a timely example of what sustained local support can produce. The company is advancing a Lead-212 targeted alpha therapy for metastatic prostate cancer while expanding its isotope supply and manufacturing infrastructure.Finally, the panel asks whether preventive health and longevity represent the future of care or another layer available mainly to people who can afford it. Everlab's A$65 million Series A and Neko Health's US$700 million Series C demonstrate growing demand, but questions remain about equity and whether earlier intervention can reduce pressure on public healthcare systems.GuestsDr Jackie Rabec is co-founder and Chief Product Officer at ThinkMD.ai, which builds offline-capable clinical decision-support tools for frontline health workers. She previously worked at Google and was Head of Product at Heidi Health.Dr Prashanth Rajan is an Associate at Brandon Capital and leads its activities in New South Wales. He has a background in bioinformatics, biochemistry and molecular biology.Chapters00:00 Introducing the What the Health Wrap08:07 Myricx Bio's proposed US$1.5 billion acquisition11:13 Antibody-drug conjugates and Australian biotech15:35 AI in healthcare beyond administration24:50 The promise and limits of AI drug discovery28:46 Proposed changes to Australia's R&amp;D Tax Incentive35:22 AdvanCell's US$315 million Series D42:25 Preventive health, longevity and primary care53:28 Rapid fire: platform risk, companies to watch and useful resourcesLinks and resourcesThinkMD.ai: https://www.thinkmd.ai/Dr Prashanth Rajan at Brandon Capital: https://brandoncapital.vc/team_member/prashanth-rajan/Myricx Bio acquisition announcement: https://brandoncapital.vc/2026/07/06/brandon-capital-announces-agreement-for-novartis-to-acquire-portfolio-company-myricx-bio-to-advance-new-class-of-cancer-therapeutics/Australian Treasury's R&amp;D Tax Incentive proposal: https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-06/p2026-781365_0.pdfClaude for Healthcare: https://www.anthropic.com/news/healthcare-life-sciencesChai Discovery's US$400 million Series C: https://www.chaidiscovery.com/news/series-cAdvanCell's US$315 million Series D: https://svhealthinvestors.com/news/advancell-closes-us-315-million-oversubscribed-series-d-financing-to-advance-targeted-alpha-therapies-and-expand-clinical-and-commercial-manufacturing-infrastructureEverlab: https://www.everlab.com.au/Neko Health's US$700 million Series C: https://www.nekohealth.com/se/en/press/neko-health-raises-usd700m-series-c-ahead-of-us-launchAbout the hostEmily Casey is the founder of What the Health and host of the What the Health Wrap, making major developments in health technology and innovation easier to understand.The What the Health Wrap is brought to you by What the Health in partnership with Tenmile Ventures.What the Health is part of Day One Network, the podcast and media network from W2D1 Media: https://dayone.fm/

Five years of health innovation coverage, millions of reads, and a community of 11,000+.Now finally, What the Health has a podcast too — bringing the content to convos you can now listen to on the go and in video. Host Emily Casey brings the founders, clinicians, investors, operators, and policymakers shaping the future of health into the room for candid, useful, and occasionally unruly conversations.This trailer offers a first taste of the questions the show will tackle. What happens when billions flow into biotech while policy struggles to keep up? How reliable are the latest AI health tools? What can at-home screening change for patients and the wider health system? And when everyone is talking about AI, where is the real advantage?What The Health goes beyond the headlines to work out what is real, what is hype, what is worth paying attention to and why it matters.Expect:candid conversations with leading minds in health innovationclear explanations without the health-speaksharp takes backed by factspractical context on the companies, ideas and policy shifts changing healthcarea smarter way to stay ahead without drowning in noiseWhat The Health is more than a podcast. It is a newsletter, events platform and private community built for people who want to stay switched on to health and health tech.Subscribe to the newsletter and join the What The Health community: https://www.whatthehealth.io/Follow the show: https://dayone.fm/show/what-the-health-with-emily-casey/Brought to you by Tenmile.Tenmile partners with teams tackling major unmet needs in human health, helping turn bold ideas and breakthrough science into companies that can improve lives.Learn more: https://www.tenmile.com/What The Health is part of the Day One Network and produced by W2D1 Media.This podcast is for general information and commentary and is not medical advice.

Five years of health innovation coverage, millions of reads, and a community of 11,000+.Now finally, What the Health has a podcast too — bringing the content to convos you can now listen to on the go and in video. Host Emily Casey brings the founders, clinicians, investors, operators, and policymakers shaping the future of health into the room for candid, useful, and occasionally unruly conversations.This trailer offers a first taste of the questions the show will tackle. What happens when billions flow into biotech while policy struggles to keep up? How reliable are the latest AI health tools? What can at-home screening change for patients and the wider health system? And when everyone is talking about AI, where is the real advantage?What The Health goes beyond the headlines to work out what is real, what is hype, what is worth paying attention to and why it matters.Expect:candid conversations with leading minds in health innovationclear explanations without the health-speaksharp takes backed by factspractical context on the companies, ideas and policy shifts changing healthcarea smarter way to stay ahead without drowning in noiseWhat The Health is more than a podcast. It is a newsletter, events platform and private community built for people who want to stay switched on to health and health tech.Subscribe to the newsletter and join the What The Health community: https://www.whatthehealth.io/Follow the show: https://dayone.fm/show/what-the-health-with-emily-casey/Brought to you by Tenmile.Tenmile partners with teams tackling major unmet needs in human health, helping turn bold ideas and breakthrough science into companies that can improve lives.Learn more: https://www.tenmile.com/What The Health is part of the Day One Network and produced by W2D1 Media.This podcast is for general information and commentary and is not medical advice.

Robin O'Connell spends his days inside LinkedIn's marketing and advertising team in Australia, working with founders and brands on content strategy - which makes him a rare voice on where AI genuinely helps marketers, and where it still falls flat. In this episode, Robin makes the case that the smartest move for any marketer right now is trying to replace parts of your own job with AI, just to find out fast what it can't do. His answer: strategy. AI can automate tactics at scale, but it still can't replace the judgement that comes from genuinely understanding a customer.Georgie and Robin get into how brands actually stand out on LinkedIn (hint: it's not by looking like Apple), why comments and DMs are a better growth signal than impressions, and how to tell when AI-written content is quietly killing your credibility.The standout story, though, is personal: Robin's dad Dennis, a serial entrepreneur in Dublin who lost his retail business during COVID, now runs a landscaping venture - and uses AI image generation on an iPad to show clients exactly what their garden will look like before a single spade hits the ground. It's one of the clearest, most human examples of AI actually changing how someone runs a small business.Find Robin on LinkedIn for more on marketing, AI, and content strategy.

Watch this space.

Every great team she has ever seen shares one trait: they are comfortable with discomfort. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere has spent nearly 20 years building people and culture inside startups and global enterprises — and she thinks most of the AI conversation is quietly dodging the hard, human questions. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — people-and-culture leader and founder of Startup Flamingo — for a practitioner-to-practitioner conversation on how capable people actually build teams. They get into self-awareness as a muscle rather than a gift, why Australia's love of harmony quietly kills direct feedback, and the difference between a team that is genuinely high-performing and one that is just stressed and running fast off a cliff together. Then it turns to AI — not as weather to brace for, but as a tool you have to point somewhere. Are your people more productive, or just faster? What do you lose when you automate the uncomfortable parts of the job — the feedback loop, the one-on-one, the human connection — and who is a flattened, agent-run org actually built for? Claudia makes the case that AI should augment an already good team, that you have to build that team first, and that the leaders winning this moment are the ones asking better questions instead of racing to be first. It's a conversation about discomfort, storytelling, balanced teams, and keeping the human in a human organisation.Chapters0:35 — The one trait every great team shares: comfortable with discomfort (plus self-awareness)1:46 — Is self-awareness born or built? Temperament, empathy and psychological safety3:28 — Why leaders dodge the hard conversation3:59 — Cutting her teeth on GFC redundancies: directness and an American education6:04 — Australia's harmony problem vs direct feedback6:43 — What "high performance" actually means (and what it doesn't)7:42 — The feedback loops we outsource because they're uncomfortable9:17 — Protect the plan, or chase the Nazis? An Indiana Jones lesson for leaders11:18 — Read fiction: storytelling, empathy and depersonalising feedback14:35 — Praise the person, critique the work — and when to call it out16:55 — Overconfident founders and the case for yin-and-yang teams18:39 — Powers of Two: debunking the lone genius (Lincoln, Lennon &amp; McCartney, Jobs &amp; Woz)23:13 — Hire for change, not to fit in24:20 — The maths of a founding team: builder, organiser, learner26:41 — Glue vs grease: does your team need cohesion or speed?28:53 — Project or person? The metabolism of a team29:47 — AI is a tool, not the weather33:16 — The narrative vs the technology — and the Tickle Me Elmo problem41:14 — Slow down to speed up: when the market rewards layoffs42:32 — The CPO's dilemma: more productive, or just faster?45:04 — When is the risk no longer worth it? (You're paying by the token)48:21 — Longevity isn't impact: off-ramps and the retention vanity metric49:52 — Is AI making the manager redundant?52:54 — The automatic ball thrower: what you lose when you automate connection58:31 — AI augments a great team — but you have to build that team first59:18 — Departing advice: play the tape to the end, and be in the business you're in1:03:32 — Purpose over "who gets there first" — go touch some grassAbout the GuestClaudia Barriga-Larriviere is a people-and-culture leader with nearly 20 years building teams across startups and global enterprises, and the founder of Startup Flamingo.LinksClaudia Barriga-Larriviere — Startup Flamingo: startupflamingo.comJames MacDonald — LinkedIn · NTP Talent (NewyTechPeople): ntptalent.com.auHosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Episode SummaryIlana Elbaz was employee number five and the first go-to-market hire at Deel, helping scale the company from its early pivots through blockchain and payments to a business she helped grow from zero to hundreds of millions in ARR in just a few years. She's now an active angel investor and runs Deel's global pitch competition, which received tens of thousands of applications this year.In this episode, Cheryl and Maxine unpack how operating inside one of the fastest-scaling companies in the world shapes the way Ilana evaluates founders as an investor. She breaks down her "3-star model" for backing companies (right infrastructure, right team, right timing, read from right to left), why she looks for founders with velocity and speed over founders who claim to have it all figured out, and why the biggest red flag at pre-seed is a founder who narrows their market too early.You'll also hear why she pushes back on founders who insist on enterprise-only or single-market strategies before they even know their ICP, why treating international hiring as a growth problem rather than an HR problem is critical for founders building outside the US, and why Australian founders' instinct to think global from day one is a genuine advantage. Ilana shares what she learned scaling Deel's own go-to-market using the company's own product across dozens of countries, and why staying close to your first hundred customers matters more than shipping a polished product.She closes with her Big Cojones moment: repeatedly landing alone in unfamiliar countries, from opening entities in Thailand to sourcing product in China at 19, with no support system and straight into meetings with lawyers she'd never met.Time Stamps00:00 - Intro04:15 – Ilana's first investment: buying Amazon stock at age 10 and the lesson she learned selling too early09:30 – Why Ilana joined Deel as employee five, drawn in by the labor law and compliance nightmare of scaling internationally14:05 – The 3-star model: right infrastructure, right team, right timing, and why it should be read backwards17:50 – Why founders who claim to have it all figured out should be a pass21:40 – The danger of narrowing your market too early at pre-seed28:10 – Why treating global hiring as a growth problem, not an HR problem, changes everything33:00 – What makes Australian founders well suited to thinking global from day one36:45 – How to answer "what's your expansion plan" as a green flag for investors40:20 – Inside Deel's global pitch competition: 35,000 applications and five investments46:10 – Big Cojones moment: landing alone in unfamiliar countries to open new marketsFirst Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our&nbsp;newsletter&nbsp;to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.Sponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.___Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartreeBrought to you by Pear Tree. Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman. As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs. The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren't a talent problem — they're the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach: a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business. As part of the Day One community, you'll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at https://dayone.fm/peartreeBrought to you by Deel. Founders scale faster on Deel — set up payroll in any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Learn more at https://deel.com/dayoneMentioned in this episode:Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.Deel x PX_Script 2Deel x PX_Script 1Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpSpotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

Australia is about to build guided missiles for the first time — and Kongsberg is doing it at Williamtown, in the Hunter. John Fry, Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia, joins James MacDonald for the first episode of Engineering in the Hunter to explain what's being built, why a 210-year-old Norwegian company chose Newcastle over 40 other sites, and what it means for the region: roughly 100 factory jobs, a supply chain that reaches far wider, and a genuine pathway from the University of Newcastle and TAFE into work being done on a world stage.In this episode:What Kongsberg is building at Williamtown: the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile — two 5th-generation cruise missiles — in the company's first missile factory outside Norway, ever.The $850m the Commonwealth committed in August 2024 to manufacture and maintain those missiles in Australia, and why sovereign weapons production suddenly mattered after COVID and Ukraine.Why the Hunter beat 40 other sites — proximity to Orchard Hills, a port and an airbase, livability, and a good university and TAFE next door.How you stand up a missile factory on the other side of the world through a pandemic — a P&amp;L from day one, defence-security accreditation, and building a supply chain from scratch.What NSM and JSM actually do — a stealthy imaging-infrared seeker, deck- or truck-launched, and a missile small enough to fit inside an F-35's internal weapons bay.The jobs: not just engineers — planning, supply chain, quality, IT, security, technicians — "the whole gamut," about 100 at the factory, with ~85% of the build spend flowing to Hunter businesses.Growing local talent: a first Newcastle-uni intern converting to a grad role, sponsoring the university's rocketry team, and how TAFE fits as technician demand ramps.Partnerships as the way into the Hunter — HunterNet, Multiplex, and the Thales tie-up behind StrikeMaster.What's next: Army's Long Range Fires down-select, counter-UAS and air-and-missile defence.John Fry is Managing Director of Kongsberg Defence Australia. A former Australian Army air-defence officer with a chemistry background and a Master of Science in Guided Weapon Systems, he spent nine years at Raytheon — where he was capture lead on the NASAMS program — before joining Kongsberg in 2019 as its inaugural general manager in Australia.Register your interest via the Kongsberg careers page (kongsberg.com).Chapters0:00 "A company since 1814" — the cold open1:00 Welcome to Engineering in the Hunter — and why Kongsberg1:58 From Army air-defence officer to missile-maker6:05 Kongsberg since 18147:11 Why Australia — the NASAMS win8:47 Standing up in-country through COVID10:55 Running a P&amp;L from day one12:25 What we're building: the NSM and JSM15:31 The $850m sovereign-manufacturing commitment18:20 The JSM — a strike missile that fits inside the F-3520:20 Why the Hunter: 40 sites, Orchard Hills, Williamtown23:23 The factory: Norway's blueprint, self-contained26:38 The jobs — "the whole gamut," about 100 roles28:31 Finding talent locally30:05 Pathways: the Newcastle-uni intern and TAFE32:15 Partnerships — HunterNet, Multiplex, StrikeMaster35:24 What's next: Long Range Fires, counter-UAS37:43 How to get in — Kongsberg careers and the grad programEngineering in the Hunter is hosted by Melinda Sietsma with NTP Talent founder James MacDonald. James hosts this episode. Learn more at ntptalent.com.au.Engineering in the Hunter is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Mark Samlal grew up as one of the only Indian families in a small Perth township, went on to co-found a payroll company from a secondhand desk in Singapore with his wife Samantha, and eventually listed it on the ASX as PayGroup. In 2022 Deel acquired the business in an all-cash deal worth $120M at a 143% premium to market. In this conversation Mark talks about the racism he faced growing up, the "4 or out the door" sales mentality that shaped his early career, what it actually feels like to run a public company, and why he's stayed on at Deel almost four years after the acquisition. He also opens up about the guilt of building a business while raising three daughters, and the pull he's feeling to reconnect with his roots in Fiji and India.Timestamps00:00 – Cold open: race, accountability, and the "4 or out the door" origin story01:55 – Younger Mark: born in Fiji, his father's journey from teacher to social worker09:23 – University, meeting Samantha, and the early grind in real estate15:56 – Into telecom, then payroll software — learning on the job21:43 – Meeting mentor Phil Cave and turning around Lendlease Employer Services32:40 – Racism growing up and being "the only brown person in the room"37:59 – The move to Singapore and building the Sharks Basketball community43:13 – Running multiple businesses at once and bootstrapping PayAsia with Samantha51:25 – Skipping VC/PE, and what it's really like leading a public company1:05:36 – COVID, 3 acquisitions, and the road to the Deel deal1:09:52 – The Deel acquisition: $120M all-cash, 143% premium1:13:34 – Culture shock joining Deel, AI's impact on HR/payroll, and why he's stayed1:27:03 – Raising 3 daughters, fatherhood, and business regrets1:38:34 – The Pingyao story, undervaluing Asian entrepreneurs, and where he's headed nextSponsors:Perspective X is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel:Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.Perspective X is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our&nbsp;newsletter&nbsp;to be notified of new Perspective X episodes and upcoming shows.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 1Deel x PX_Script 2

The business wants AI, and it wants it yesterday. But once the proof of concept works and the partner goes home, someone inside the company has to keep the thing running. Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS and a 20-year veteran of the telco industry, joins James to talk about what actually happens when enterprises push AI into production — and why the scarcest asset in the room is still deep domain knowledge.In this episode:- Why "we need to do AI, the board's pushing for it" so often collides with the buy-versus-build question no one has answered internally.- Where AI rollouts go wrong: over-engineering a basic problem, or buying an off-the-shelf tool and expecting it to be bespoke.- The proof-of-concept trap — projects that "prove AI works" but were never built with a path to production.- Why "AI native" doesn't translate cleanly to banks and telcos carrying 20–30 years of legacy and technical debt, and why the outcome should drive the tech strategy, not the reverse.- The handover problem in one line: "If your chatbot starts spitting out Gordon Ramsay recipes instead of the answer, who in your organisation can fix it?"- Centralise-then-seed: standing up an AI centre of excellence without creating an isolated team of "cool kids" cut off from the business (with a NASA analogy on risk).- Why you can't take 20 years of experience, grab a dev and say "now you know telco" — and how the tooling finally lets domain experts build.- Human-in-the-loop for critical infrastructure, digital twins of telco networks, and ICs becoming managers of agents.- The question James keeps asking: if I'm managing a team of agents at 10x productivity, what should I actually be paid?- Deep versus broad careers, how go-to-market has changed, and whether it's easier to teach a salesperson the tech or an engineer to sell.Nathan Hill is Head of Telco at AWS, leading the company's engagement across Australian telcos. Before AWS he spent more than 20 years inside the telco industry — operations, engineering, pre-sales and sales — and ran sales and marketing for a challenger telco. He has a rare view across both the technical build and the go-to-market that sells it.Building the team that has to make AI stick in production? This one's for you.Connect with Nathan Hill on LinkedIn. Learn more about AWS in telco at aws.amazon.com.---Episode SummaryThe business wants AI now — but who keeps it running once it's live? Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS and a 20-year telco veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises move AI from proof of concept to production. They dig into the buy-versus-build decision most organisations skip, why so many AI projects stall with no path to production, and the operating-model questions — who maintains it, who fixes it when it breaks — that companies leave until it's too late. Nathan makes the case that deep domain expertise is the asset AI can't replace: you can't grab a dev and say "now you know telco," but you can finally give 20-year network engineers the tools to build. They also get into human-in-the-loop for critical infrastructure, ICs becoming managers of agents and what that's worth, deep-versus-broad careers, and how the go-to-market function is changing now that the salesperson has to understand the tech. Practical, grounded, no hype.Time Stamps0:00 "I'm managing a team of agents now — what should I be paid?"1:30 Meet Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS2:58 "The board wants AI": the buy-versus-build question4:30 Where AI rollouts go wrong6:35 Start with a use case — but build a path to production8:09 Is "AI native" realistic for banks and telcos?9:36 Speed versus security in regulated industries11:56 The handover problem: who maintains it?15:21 AI centres of excellence and the NASA analogy18:26 "You can't grab a dev and say now you know telco"21:30 Why agents won't replace engineers23:41 Managing a team of agents — what's that worth?25:03 Deep versus broad: staying in one vertical27:08 How go-to-market has changed29:59 Teach a salesperson the tech, or an engineer to sell?32:58 Building a go-to-market function from scratch38:03 Why the "SaaS apocalypse" is wrong39:56 Upskilling into modern go-to-market41:21 Career advice: back yourself42:42 James's takeaway: domain experts who learn to buildAbout the hostJames MacDonald is the founder and Managing Director of NTP Talent (Newy Tech People), an Australian tech and engineering recruitment firm headquartered in Newcastle with teams in Sydney and Melbourne. He hosts Building Tech Teams, helping companies up the East Coast of Australia find and recruit the best technology talent. Connect with James on LinkedIn (/JamesMacDonaldAU) or at ntp-talent.com.au.About Day One NetworkDay One is a podcast production company and trusted partner in the technology space, producing shows for founders, investors and operators across Australia and beyond. Building Tech Teams is part of the Day One Network, which cross-promotes episodes across a slate of technology and venture shows.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Welcome to the first ever episode of AI Icons, a new thing I'm launching on the show. Here's the idea: the people reshaping tech have stories more entertaining than anything Hollywood is putting out, so in under 30 minutes I'm going to tell you the whole story, the good, the bad, and the ugly, but only the facts. No spin. And at the end, I'll give you my two cents on what actually made them an icon, and whether it's something you and I could ever replicate.First up is Mira Murati, and I'll admit it, I'm a fan. I take you all the way back to her childhood in isolated post-communist Albania, where maths was the one subject the party couldn't rewrite, through a scholarship in Canada, degrees in maths and mechanical engineering, and a Goldman Sachs floor in Tokyo at 21. Then it's Tesla and those ridiculous Falcon Wing doors, a risky bet on a startup called Leap Motion, and the move that made her famous: OpenAI, where she rose to CTO and helped bring DALL-E and ChatGPT into your life.And then there's the part that genuinely reads like a thriller. The 72 hours in November 2023 when Sam Altman was fired, Mira was named CEO, and a 52-page memo and a string of 2:30am texts sat right at the center of it. I walk you through what we know, what we still don't, and what came out under oath. I finish on her next act, Thinking Machines Lab, the record-breaking raise, the talent exodus, and why, out of my four Gs, I think one of them explains her better than the rest. Come find out which one.In the Blink of AI is made possible by our wonderful partnersDeelGlobal hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.✨ Connect with Georgie HealyWeekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginahealy/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georginahealytech/The Day One NetworkIn The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators &amp; investors.Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter

The business wants AI now. The people who have to secure it are being told to move faster while their budgets shrink. Kevin Akermanis, Solutions Architect at Okta and a 15-year Salesforce veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises rush AI into production: security funding flatlining, breaches becoming the cost of doing business, and a collapsed architecture that pushes security down to the data layer. They dig into why AI agents are a new class of non-human identity that can roam anywhere, why guardrails are only suggestions for something non-deterministic, and the scoped, time-limited, valet-key approach that actually contains the risk. They also tackle the harder people problem: if juniors get automated out, who backfills the seniors, and why knowing what good looks like still beats anything you can vibe-code. Practical, sceptical, no hype.Time Stamps0:00 The business says "we need to AI now"2:53 The real tension: speed vs protecting company IP7:22 Security budgets shrink while AI gets the money11:28 When breaches become the cost of doing business13:42 New attack surfaces and the hiring-bot breach18:14 Experience still matters: who backfills the seniors?46:39 Agents as non-human identities: scope and guardrails55:03 Where to start with AI safely57:37 Why the Australian market cares about MCPAbout the hostJames MacDonald is the founder and Managing Director of NTP Talent (Newy Tech People), an Australian tech and engineering recruitment firm headquartered in Newcastle with teams in Sydney and Melbourne. He hosts Building Tech Teams, helping companies up the East Coast of Australia find and recruit the best technology talent. Connect with James on LinkedIn (/JamesMacDonaldAU) or at ntp-talent.com.au.About Day One NetworkDay One is a podcast production company and trusted partner in the technology space, producing shows for founders, investors and operators across Australia and beyond. Building Tech Teams is part of the Day One Network, which cross-promotes episodes across a slate of technology and venture shows.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.

Side Stage Ventures and Dealroom have just released the 2026 edition of their landmark report on Australian venture. Grab your copy of the Australia Venture &amp; Startup Report 2026 here: https://www.sidestage.vc/outliers-report-2026Australia has created more unicorns per dollar of VC invested than anywhere else in the world — and Ben Grabiner has the data to prove it. In this replay, Cheryl and Maxine sit down with the Side Stage Ventures co-founder to unpack why the ecosystem punches so far above its weight, and why the next decade could belong to Aussie tech.Deel: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders.It's why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast.Visit https://www.deel.com/dayoneEpisode SummaryBen Grabiner is the co-founder and General Partner of Side Stage Ventures and the author of a landmark report, produced with Dealroom and AWS, on Australia's venture ecosystem. Cheryl and Maxine sit down with Ben to unpack the data behind Australia's rise as one of the most efficient and exciting venture ecosystems in the world.They dig into why Australia produces more unicorns per dollar of VC invested than anywhere on earth, how the country quietly matches Israel and India on decacorn creation, and why roughly 40% of local seed capital now comes from overseas, a sign global funds see the opportunity more clearly than we do. Ben explains why capital constraints have bred a culture of doing more with less, why fewer than 30 Australian seed funds made more than five investments last year, and what has to change to close the early-stage funding gap.You'll also hear why the next wave of second- and third-time founders could be the ecosystem's secret weapon, what global LPs still need to understand about Australian venture, and Ben's own Big Cojones moment: throwing it all in mid-COVID to move from London to Australia.Time Stamps00:00 - Cold open: more unicorns per dollar than anywhere00:52 - Intro04:48 - Ben's first investment: 250 pounds in Tottenham Hotspur07:01 - The headline stat and what drives Australia's capital efficiency09:24 - Why constraints breed efficiency, and why it's good for VCs12:31 - Decacorn creation: Australia on par with Israel and India14:35 - 40% of seed capital comes from overseas16:24 - What needs to happen to close the capital gap20:41 - Can startups scale globally from Australia?26:14 - What global LPs need to understand about Australian venture28:28 - The rise of second- and third-time founders30:37 - Why pre-seed funds and angel investors matter more than ever34:41 - Ben's Big Cojones moment: moving to Australia mid-COVIDResourcesBen Grabiner on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengrabiner/Side Stage Ventures - https://www.sidestage.vc/Australia Venture &amp; Startup Report 2026 - https://www.sidestage.vc/outliers-report-2026Aussie Angels - https://www.aussieangels.com/First Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our&nbsp;newsletter&nbsp;to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows.Sponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Deel brings HR, IT and payroll together in one platform, helping companies including Shopify, Revolut and ElevenLabs scale internationally.Ready to expand your business?Build your global team with Deel at deel.com/dayone.___Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman.As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs.The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business.As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartreeBrought to you by Pear Tree. Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman. As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs. The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren't a talent problem — they're the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach: a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business. As part of the Day One community, you'll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at https://dayone.fm/peartreeMentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 1Pear TreeIf you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire.Deel x PX_Script 2This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrpSpotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

Peter Gostev is head of AI capabilities at Arena (LMArena), the community-based platform where millions of real people vote in blind tests to rank AI models, born out of research at UC Berkeley. Before Arena, Peter was Head of AI at Moonpig and built a large following sharing hands-on explorations of what the latest models can actually do. He joins Georgie Healy from London for a genuinely nerdy, insider look at how models are judged and where the frontier is heading.In this episode, Peter explains the difference between static benchmarks and human judgment, and why a model can pass every test you write and still produce something that looks completely awful. He breaks down the current state of the leaderboards, why Anthropic's models are dominating and how that tracks with real world adoption, and gives a sharp comparison of the top Western models, including why Anthropic's non-reasoning models are exceptional while OpenAI's strength lies in deep reasoning. Georgie and Peter get into why people aren't using Chinese models more despite their quality, the economics behind AI pricing and how enterprise usage is priced very differently from consumer subscriptions, why release cadence matters as much as capability, and what the wave of data centre investment means for the models arriving next. Along the way there's a fond detour on Opus 3 as the model you could talk to for hours, and why better models can sometimes feel worse.Tune in for a clear-eyed, hype-free guide to how AI models are really evaluated, straight from someone who watches the charts move in real time.Mentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Post Intro

Taryn Williams started her first company, Wink Models, at 21 with $30,000 and no roadmap. She didn't stop there. Over the next two decades she built and ran a string of ventures, the talent marketplace The Right Fit (backed by Airtree, scaled to 17,000 talent and 11,000 clients across APAC), The Influencers Agency, the contra-gifting platform #Gifted, the B2B talent business Notable, and Online Model Academy, exiting two of them to international acquirers in 2023. Today she sits across boards, invests as an angel, and advises organisations on AI transformation with Think &amp; Grow.In this episode Pauline sits down with Taryn for an honest conversation about what it actually costs to build like this: why and how she runs multiple companies at once, why she loves the 0-to-2-year stage and does not want to be the CEO, and the quieter things founders rarely say out loud, the toll on her relationships and health, freezing her eggs at 35 and what she wishes she'd known about fertility, and the mentor question she still works through every day: when is enough, enough? Plus sharp takes on AI, the creator economy, "AI slop", and whether AI will replace human models.Time Stamps00:00 - Cold open: "I was 21 when I started Wink"01:20 - Welcome — meeting Taryn at South Start, and the snapshot of a serial founder04:08 - Scouted at 15: modelling as an accidental business education06:21 - Starting Wink Models at 21 — fixing a broken, fragmented industry09:04 - Building the first tech product (and the trap of gold-plating instead of an MVP)12:21 - Launching The Right Fit and raising capital from Airtree17:56 - How big Wink and The Right Fit actually grew19:34 - Running multiple companies at once — and stepping fully out of Wink22:13 - #Gifted, Notable and Online Model Academy: "every year, birth a new child"28:27 - Why it isn't "the Taryn Williams show"31:37 - The 2023 exits: running a formal process and the transition38:56 - The real cost: relationships, health and never being fully switched off43:27 - Fertility, freezing eggs at 35, and what no one tells you early enough50:15 - From operator to board chair — breaking the habit of being all-in54:17 - Why every founder should understand governance (the AICD course)56:28 - In the investor seat: what Taryn backs and the founders she looks for59:33 - Advising on AI transformation with Think &amp; Grow64:56 - AI, creators and the "AI slop" problem69:07 - Will AI models replace human talent in advertising?73:32 - Dating, connection and AI: why we've lost the resilience for friction80:45 - Tying self-worth to success — the question she still works through85:16 - One thing she knows to be true that the world hasn't caught up on yet87:36 - CloseLinksWink Models — https://www.winkmodels.com.auAirtree Ventures — https://www.airtree.vcThink &amp; Grow — https://www.thinkandgrow.comAustralian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) — https://www.aicd.com.auPerspective X is produced by Day One — the podcast network for founders, operators and investors — https://www.dayone.fmMentioned in this episode:Deel x PX_Script 2Deel x PX_Script 1Day One sting

The first hire used to be an engineer. Michael Batko thinks that's now backwards — and that's just the start of how AI is rewiring the way you build a tech team.In the first episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Michael Batko — who spent eight years as CEO of Startmate backing 240+ startups, and now runs the AI-native venture batko.ai. They get into what actually changes when the cost of building drops to near zero: why go-to-market now comes before engineering, why the 10x engineer is finally real, what "AI-native" means for a person and for a company, and how to lead a team through it without torching your culture.It's a practitioner-to-practitioner conversation with real opinions and real scar tissue — hiring for attitude over skill, the rise of the AI chief of staff, the squeeze on middle management, and why your hard-won experience is the one moat AI can't copy.Chapters0:46 — Why James launched the show, and why Batko is guest #12:00 — The first hire has flipped: go-to-market before engineers3:49 — Where real software engineers still matter (and the "vibe-coding" ceiling)9:01 — What "AI-native" actually means — building your personal, then company, "brain"12:06 — Agent hierarchies: one agent / one job, and the AI chief of staff14:50 — Getting AI into a traditional business: permission to play + an AI policy (and the IP-leak risk)17:25 — Quick wins: process-mapping by voice, and the dictation tool that changes the game20:54 — Your first 5–10 hires: attitude over skill, hungry over proven, junior over senior25:58 — Team size, layoffs, "AI-washing", and the shrinking PM-to-engineer ratio34:55 — The one skill AI can't replace: people management48:07 — Why you still want humans in the room: inspiration, fresh eyes, first-principles51:40 — Facing the fear: lean in, automate yourself out, take the skills with you58:33 — Taste, authenticity, and experience as your real moat63:54 — Batko's playbook for any company starting nowAbout the GuestMichael Batko spent eight years as CEO of Startmate, where he backed 240+ early-stage companies, and now builds AI-native tools for founders and businesses at batko.ai.LinksMichael Batko — batko.ai · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/batkomichaelJames MacDonald — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-macdonald-au · NTP Talent: https://ntptalent.com.auHosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the team that helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.