#190 Rod Hamilton: Rare Interview ft. Culture Amp’s Co-Founder on Playfulness, Empathy, and Redefining Workplace Culture

Hi, I'm Vitt at the Founder and host of this podcast, The High Flies. G'day, I'm Rods. I'm co-founder at Cultrap and Bencher Partner at Reptent. And I think we're both recovering tennis tragic straight. We both had dreams to play tennis. And so it's great to have you on, Man, you're an awesome dude and all some story. Oh, thank you. Thank you, mate. My tennis dreams died a long time ago. So maybe yours, maybe there's still a little bit of a flame there for you. But no, I gave up on that dream quite a while ago. [LAUGHS] [MUSIC PLAYING] What if we could reimagine the traditional notion of a high flyer? [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, friends. Welcome back or welcome to The High Flies Podcast, where we do reimagine a high flyer, showcase the brightest and most relatable role models and companies and the journey from sunrise to today. As one of the premier products in our curiosity center, we'll line up providing on-demand intelligence to help you be one percent better every single day. Homey host, Vittitagol, and let's have some fun. Thanks to you, this podcast continues to rank in the Global Top 10 podcast by both Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the past two years running. And we hope you're enjoying our catalog of 180-plus episodes since we launched in 2020 featuring relatable role models from around the world, often appearing in their first ever in-depth public conversation. Our listeners have called this podcast as a meticulously researched audio biography unveiling the extraordinary lives and decisions of the most remarkable individuals and companies from around the world. My guest this week is Rod Hamilton in this episode 190. I hope you find this episode a bit different. Rod opens up about his personal and professional moments. He hasn't shared widely before. And I loved how honest he was. As you know, I never share questions in advance. Rod Hamilton is one of the four co-founders of Culture Amp where he spent over 12 years as Chief Product Officer leading the creation of its employee experience platform now used by over 6,500 companies around the world to improve millions of working lives. He's also a venture partner at the venture capital firm Rampant and helping Australia's most ambitious tech startups tackle product and people challenges. This conversation you're about to hear is special for a few reasons. One, it's a rare public appearance for Rod and two, I really love disabilities to go deep and reflect on his personal journey and the culture from journey. Some nuggets to give you a preview that Rod and I cover include Asshad loved for tennis, the influence of Rod's dad, a plumber and mum originally from Malta and then we worked in the Secretaryal of Jobs and Rod's two siblings. Rod talks about deciding between music or computer science as this career path and his real reflections on success and fulfillment. What he thought there were at age 18 and how he reflects on them today given the success he's had. And of course we go really deep into various parts of company building and culture app, including the initial products failing twice, securing world class customers like Adobe, Elion, particularly the differences between selling to a customer and selling to a user. The unknowns of people management and why Rod was considered an empathetic leader and how he had to evolve his leadership style as the company grew. How he used humour and important moments and I mean really important moments and his reflections on what led to his decision to leave the company and so much more. Often podcast episodes tend to slow down and become mundane the further into an episode he go. This one I think is a value add right to the end and I think you'll agree once you've listened. So with that it's time to explore your curiosity, please enjoy. Let's start with our fun facts to get a scouring. Where were you born and where do you live now? Yes I was born in the northeastern suburbs of Melbourne and I haven't flown far from the nest because I live about 15 minutes from where I was born in the northeastern suburbs of Melbourne. Nice and work what was your first job and what do you do now? First job I remember 14 and 9 months when I was legal from inner work I got a job at Maca's flipping burgers so that I could go and buy CDs in the city and now I work I think you call it like a genuine pork volley. I career now I was co-founder and chief front officer of culture app about 12-13 years and since stepping out of that role I'm on the board at Coltramp and on the board of Ivo no grammar. I'm a venture partner with Rampus and who's one of the best early stage VC funds investing in Australia and New Zealand tech. I do a bit of advising and I get a bit of time to volunteer as well and try to be a reasonable dad in the process. Yeah I do want to talk about that as we continue this conversation about the transition from full-time operating demanding role to yeah portfolio career as you call it and also how you chose some of these roles. I think that'd be interesting because I'm sure you've had a lot of opportunities that you've been like no not right now let's explore it in the future and Rodgers you know the purpose of this show is to reimagine a high-flyer. Is there a high-flyer you know who you feel hasn't got the recognition that it is worth. This I've heard you ask this question and I've always thought like how would I answer that because it's it feels like a hard question to answer because there's a lot of people. So I actually want to come at this from two angles. One is I think founders in you know successful startup to get a lot of credit but I think there's a lot of credit that actually goes to the early people who they hire and for me I had a bunch of people in my corner which was product management and product design and people science who these individuals had an outsize impact on not just our products but also our our culture and also me personally so like I'm thinking of people like Virginia Murdoch and David Ryder Dylan Holmes Daniel Billingham Chloe Hammond Dave Lim. Like these were all really early high highs like Dave Lim for example he's had a hand in designing everyone of our core culture and products which is now used by you know millions of people across the world so I think those early stage hives and then I do want to throw in just a quick shout out I volunteer in an all called iron sky who do amazing work connecting communities for disadvantaged individuals and homeless people suffering hardship and homelessness and there's a team that just turn up every week out at reservoir Ziggy Joe Galeano Greg Tania they're there just washing clothes for people giving back I think it's a really inspiring thing that they do that. Nice one I really appreciate that you've come prepared with names as you probably would have heard in the last many episodes people just mention their partner because that's an easy way out of this answer so I appreciate you kidding me. Are you trying to get me into trouble for that? Let's wind back the clock and go to your son rises I call it each child did you talk to that growing up in Melbourne what are your memories of the environment? I'm really positive. Yeah as I said grew up in Northeastern suburbs in Melbourne my parents my dad was a plumber but like I always say an old school real craftsman type plumber took a lot of pride in his work worked really hard you know I remember helping him out on weekends and he would always do an incredible job cleaning up after he finished his day's work so he was a true craftsman my mother she was from Malphur originally came out to Australia with her parents when she was very very young so very family oriented but you know she also worked in secretaryal jobs and retail jobs and things like that but I was the youngest of three so my sister and brother are eight and six years older than me so I think that makes me an accident which you know my parents tell me I was an accident never a mistake but an accident and yeah I just remember really positive upbringing spent a lot of time with my brother who I know you spoke with poor guys to following around every day in day out we had a bunch of kids in our street where we lived and you know they're all his age and he'd try to escape every now and again and I'd realize he wasn't in the house and ten minutes later I'm not on the door and it is made to us and it'd be me but they always looked after me and let me join in their games so yeah it was really positive like that one of the comments he said to me he's growing up you looked up to him but as you've gotten older he looks up to you now oh wow he'd never say that to me directly so that's nice to hear yeah I mean I did look up to he's both from well we had similar interests we both had a lot of a tennis as you mentioned earlier and I love for 40 and he's a tennis coach now professional tennis coach so he used to coach me as a youngster back when I was probably you know 10 12 14 years old that sort of thing and I'm not sure that he would know but he would I had like a really strong work ethic I'm gonna still do today that there's as a kid like that I studied really hard my trained hard and that sort of thing and Doug he would he would train me in tennis and he'd take we had a tennis course just out the back of our house so we literally open the back gate walk to the tennis courts and he used to ask me the same two quit he's gonna kill me for saying this but he used to ask the same two questions in me every time before we'd have a hit and I'd have to give the same two answers and he'd say he'd say Rod how hard are we training today and I'd have to say 110% and they'd say what are we striving for and I would have to say perfection and then we get on and have our game and now he tells me that's like the worst advice ever [BLANK_AUDIO] like he best regards that he wants it to try that way. But yeah, yeah, I really looked up to him and he invested a hell of a lot of time in me growing up. - You talking about work, I think the other comment that came up constantly in my research is you've got this sense of play and you have that even in your culture and peers. Where did that come from? 'Cause I think I'm the, in a way, opposite of you, like when I'm serious, I'm almost too serious and when I'm very full, I'm just a clown. I've always struggled to balance that out. Like my friends will say, he's a bit, it's a complete smother. But when I'm serious, he'll be like, wow, he's very serious. You seem to have that balance. Did you have that as a kid as well? - That's an interesting question. I mean, I think I did get a lot of that from my brother as well. Like a bit of a clown and he's very funny. He's always telling terrible jokes and that sort of thing. And I do think probably his influence comes out in me when he's not in the room as much, like when I'm with others and that sort of thing. So that playful side, I think I was there, but it's probably come out a little bit more as I've gotten older. - Yeah. - And what about influences or heroes outside the family and did you have any posters in the wall or any people you followed? - I mean, I did have like, I was into, I mean, I was into a lot of sports and that sort of thing. So I'd have the on tennis player up there and mad, Fitzroy, Lions, now Brisbane Lions supporter. So there was definitely plenty of those. - Oh, interesting. So you didn't choose a Melbourne team. You went Brisbane. Well, there was Fitzroy originally, right? So Fitzroy and they merged and went to Brisbane. I tried to boycott footy for the season after they merged and ended up as the Brisbane Lions, but I think I lasted to round six and then I got on board the next season. I think we got the wooden spoon that year again. But yeah, I definitely had those influences like the sports heroes and that sort of thing. Yeah, but I'm not really, I can't think of other influences right now other than just the, I want to grow out to be a footy star. I want to grow out to be a tennis star. That sort of thing. I always love stepping in a big kick. So you'd remember that. - Talk about tennis because I know you're very understated but I have been told a many people that you are really good and you wanted to play tennis. And you're almost starting to comment ahead, which I resonate with is you were very good, but not good enough for the professional tour. And I think I totally got it. - I was a close-vidit. I wasn't close. No, I mean, I played with a few guys who were very talented tennis players and they went close to making it, but now I was never that good. I was very competitive and I trained very hard and I took a lot of pride in that work but honestly, I was never that serious enough. My shoulder blew out way too early. - Same, my two shoulder dislocations, which I wanted my career from going anywhere. So. - Okay, there you go. See now you're making me look bad again. I just had a sore shoulder, but I never had dislocations. And I believe you met someone special in primary school. You met your wife in primary school? - Ah, wow, high school. - High school, sorry. - Yeah, now that's okay. So yeah, I did, so we were 15, Shari, Shari and I were only met. So family came down from Sydney. I mean, I was incredibly fortunate at school. I just had such a good cohort of friends. Actually, my best friends today, kids that I went to primary school with, right? And yeah, and then in high school, Met Shari had the same set of mates, and they were great mates because they really pushed me. Like they were quite, like there was a healthy competitiveness to them. And I think I really thrived in that environment and studied really hard, but also, our school was fairly sports, math science, our annotated school. And we merged with, we merged with another school that was very artsy. And I was a little bit of a slashy because I love my sport and I played a lot of sport, but I also loved the creative side and I ended up starting bands with a bunch of the kids who came from the other school. And they're still some of my best mates today. But yeah, high school was very good to me because I met my wife there, I met my lifelong friends, I did reasonably well. And yeah, it set me up to the future. - Back to the episode in a moment. All right, let's talk about some of the most intimidating acronyms in business. ISO 27001. Sock 2, essential 8. They sound like an alphabet soup, don't they? Trust me, I've been there. 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It's about proving to your customers that your business is rock solid. And trust me, when you've got those certifications with those terms like SOC2 and ISO, you unlock doors to clients, to investors and partnerships that might have been out of reach before. So stop letting those acronyms indemninate you, let Vanta handle the heavy lifting and internationally renowned companies, including Atlassian, Joseph, use Vanta. So go check them out. You might just find that compliance isn't as scary or boring as you think. And all of you, as listeners of this podcast, get a special offer. All you have to do is go to Vanta.com/high. That's V-A-N-T-A.com/high. H-I-G-H. Or reach out to me via my email in the show notes. And that link, Vanta.com/high is also in the show notes. Now back to the episode. And when you think of 18, I feel like 18s and age, where you've got some understanding of yourself and the world, what was fulfillment of that age? Fulfillment of 18. So I don't know. I want to unpack the fulfillment ones an interesting one because I think I was very driven and I was right into music then. So I actually very nearly ended up studying music at La Trobe as my chosen course. And I mean, I was playing in like death metal bands and that sort of thing. So people might laugh at studying a music degree and that sort of genre of music. But the fulfillment for me was getting results, I think, and getting to outcomes. So getting a really good tea, getting, I know, we're trying to record demos and that sort of thing, getting demos out and getting them released and getting then distributed that meant a lot for me. So I would say fulfillment was like working hard but getting an outcome, which is not necessarily how I think about this, think about things today, but maybe that's something we'll talk about down the track. But yeah, I very nearly ended up studying music. And it was one thing my parents did, which was great for me was they said, okay, that's cool. If you want to study music, that's fine. You can do whatever you want. But let's have a look at some other options and they took me along to a career counselor. And I remember he had this big book that just had like every course you could possibly do. And he asked me a bunch of questions and said, "What are you like spending your time doing?" And all this sort of thing. And I ended up just picking the course that had the highest tea that was just under the tea score that I got and it was computer science and computer systems engineering, which was a five year double degree. And yeah, that's sort of how I ended up studying at university. - It's interesting 'cause what I've heard so far is your dad was in trades, your mum was as he said, secretary slash retail. Brother in sport, you in sport, I don't know what his sister's passion's early on. There wasn't a whole lot of business influence from what I'm hearing, right? I guess your dad ran his own business, right? He was a money. - He did run a business, yeah, but honestly, like it was more of the craft when the business side. There wasn't a huge business influence. And I don't think that was, I mean, that wasn't my drive. I never actually considered starting a business or anything like that. I mean, across my family, I think I was like the first one to actually go to university across my family or my cousins and extended family and that sort of thing. So in some ways, it was a little bit uncharted territory for us. But I don't think, back then, I did not have, I think I had ambition to make money. I didn't have ambition to start a business. Like it was probably more of a creative passion. - Like that. Am I hearing correctly? Didn't go down the music path? - No, I did. I studied computer science and computer science. - How did that happen? Music and computer science is chalk and cheese. - I know. I mean, I think at the time it was, I enjoyed a little bit of, you know, goofing around with computers and that sort of thing. But it was really that conversation. that I had with a career counselor that said, okay, I'll give something else to try that's got some better future prospects. I think the thing that I discovered though is like programming is actually quite a creative process and building a startup that sure is quite a creative process. So that creative, I've been able to scratch it through the work that I've done. But yeah, there's a bit of dissonance there right between being a guitarist in a death metal band and studying computer science. I was a fish out of water in my course though. Like I remember moments when I would be in there. I remember my first computer science lab and I was sitting around with these guys who were wonderful people. But the first programming tasks came out and they were just shredding it 'cause they'd all been coding and tinkering with computers and circuit boards and all sorts of stuff. And I had no idea what I was doing. And I was like, this could have been a terrible mistake, but it turned out, it all turned out fine. And then what was it jumping off point post university? In jumping off point. In terms of work, where did you start your career? - So it's interesting. I started the double degree, five years, 40 contact hours a week and about six months in when I was just wanting to get gigs. I'd just cut it back to computer science degree three years and then I think it was the first back then employees would come and sort of run campaigns at universities for graduates. And the first one was Accenture. And I applied for that and I had my job within a couple of months into my third year of study. I had my job set up for the next year. And that was essentially as a management consultant at Accenture and I ended up working there for, I was about five or six years. And it was great when I walked in there because I was the tech guy, right? Like the first thing you do when you join Accenture or back then at least was you would spend like a month learning how to program in C and C plus and I'd done that as part of my unicorn. So I was almost like a celebrity walking in there because I could help everyone get their coding assignments done. And then I spent the better part of the next five or six years in enterprise technology, which was really useful for me. - Could you find an understanding correctly when consulting for much 10 years, is that right? - Oh, it's probably past the 15, yeah, it was quite a good thing. - 15 years, yeah, it was a lot. - And these were just full time jobs and give us an insight into your, I guess mental psyche. How did you feel through these roles? Did you feel like this was the career path you were set on and you were doing well, you earning money and life was going the way you wanted to go? - It's a really interesting one in that, and I think the answer is no, right? Like I never felt, I was doing well. I was doing well, but I never felt like it was along my long-term path. Like I always questioned that. I'm not sure anything's actually changed on that bit, and I think I still ask myself these questions. I'll probably overthink it, to be honest. But I mean, I do remember I took, at one stage, I took six months off when I was sort of questioning, what am I doing? I'm not sure this is actually the path for me, management consultancy. I mean, I started our engineering and I was coding, but very quickly I ended up sort of leading teams and managing engineers. And I was probably better as a leader of engineers than an engineer itself. I always feel like average engineer. I had that six month break, I went back, I spent another couple of years working at Accenture, and I remember being at a point when I was sort of feeling quite sort of burnt out again, and not because of anything they did, but it was just, it was definitely hard work, but I learned a hell of a lot there. But yeah, when I made the switch from working at Accenture, I went to a much smaller sort of tech consultancy, and that was me saying, okay, I'm gonna go back to being an engineer, I'll just get on the tools again, and then, long behold, a couple of months in, I was leading teams again, and I was sort of running big projects, and I just kept on getting myself back into this place where I was leading big teams. I totally resonated with that, 'cause I spent almost 10 years in FMCG in retail, right, so you're coming into the tech world, and I very much fell into it, thrown internships in order you, and I think humans are funny creatures where when we get used to something, we just stay in that, 'cause we understand the language, and we come as identity, and I also similarly you moved up the ranks pretty quickly, so financially, I was, the golden handcuffs got put on pretty quickly, and now when people ask me, they go, "Oh, that's a big switch from FMCG in retail to tech," and I go, "You have never enjoyed FMCG in retail, I just did it 'cause that's what I knew, and I fell into that." - Yeah, well, inertia's a big thing, right, and then also, I think, expectations, and doing, I think, what other people think you ought to, or should do, I think that weighs on people quite heavily, so you might just keep doing something, 'cause it seems like it's the right thing, it seems what other people would expect you to do. - I mean, that certainly played out, and when I sort of stepped out of my rollercoaster, which I'm sure we'll get to, but I think that there's definitely a thread there. - And yeah, I think you just should have some point there that I do wanna unpack, 'cause again, I resonate with that as well, as being hard on yourself, and questioning, "Are you on the right path?" I think most of us go through that, and I definitely go through that, and as I've got an older, I've realized that the vanity stuff doesn't make a difference. It's for me, it's coming home and telling Joe, that you know what, I spoke to Rod today, and she's like, "Oh, that's great, well done." It's not the downloads of the listenership. How have you, maybe in the early career, it will come to culture, I'm sure, but how did you manage that in that early career, 'cause consulting, it's a very unique industry, right? You're going from one project to another, continuity is different, you're traveling quite a bit. The world thinks you're to your point earlier, the world thinks you're on this successful path. How have you gotten better at, yeah, talking to yourself and reflecting on yourself, and almost creating the culture of Rod, right? What is that culture in your mind? - Wow. This could probably be podcasting inside. - It's a tricky one to unpack. I mean, this is. - Like did you have mentors, or did you reach out to people in your career? - I did have mentors, but I do remember back in the consulting days that there was, there were people who I really looked up to back at Accenture and then in other gigs, but they did get to a point where I realized, actually their experience of work and their experience of life is probably not what I'm trying to get to. Like, 'cause it just looked too damn hard, it was just, that was so stressed all the time, and it was incredibly hard work. So, like your question earlier about like, what did for film, what looked like? It's taken me a really long time to get to this place, that like, success in fulfillment earlier in my career was a big ambitious goal, and it was about like reaching that goal and succeeding. And now, I guess my view of success in fulfillment is, it's far less about the success or the failures. It's far more about the journey and the experience you have getting there. Like, success in failure, are just part of a part of the journey, and you can take good from both sides of that. So, my perspective on that has really changed over the years, and I didn't have that perspective back then when I was in consulting, but it's something that's sort of evolved over time, and it's now something that I really hang onto, and I think about when I decide to take on any type of work. - Yeah, it reminds me of the Will Smith quote in his autobiography that maybe you've come across as, when he was young, hope is what kept him going, hope that when he becomes rich and successful, life will be good. But he got to the top of the mountain, and there was no hope, and that's when life, and we saw that publicly, that's when life came up for him, 'cause he had all the money, all the success, all the achievement, but there was no hope left. He said, "I'm still the same person. I don't have that hope that money will fix my issues." - Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's, I mean, I'm No Will Smith, but I do understand like that whole, where do you get your purpose? Where do you get your fulfillment from? Like, it's never from the money, and it's never from just the outcomes. It's actually about, it's actually about who you are, and who you become on those journeys. So that makes a lot of sense. - So let's talk about as much as this journey was interesting, it led to culture ramp in every possible way, right? And I think you've spoken about this a lot of times that you met, I think, Doug and John, two or three other co-founders on some of these projects. Can you talk about now that you reflect on that, what is it, 13, 14 years later? - Yeah. What about that human connection worked? 'Cause I'm sure a lot of people get along, but they don't start a business, and they don't start a business that works out. They just become friends and they got for beer, and they just talk about life. - Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, so I met, I met Doug and John, we were working, it was on one of these large enterprise projects. - And also this was like late 2000s, right? 2008, 2009. Yeah, it was about 2008, 2009. And actually, I mean, I'd been working at a company called Unico for quite a few years, prior to that point. And actually I should share with you, there was actually a moment when I was at Unico before I met Doug and John, that I felt was quite a pivotal moment for me, and you asked about mentors, and I didn't think of this guy at the time, but I actually should share a little bit about what he taught me because it was really meaningful. But the CEO at Unicode was a guy by the name of John Rolland and he made a few decisions or did a few things that were really pivotal visceral moments for me as a leader. And I do remember that he actually was working on a proposal for a big new piece of work for the company and it would have diversified our portfolio quite a bit. It was a big piece of work that we were never really expected to be able to win it, but I worked on it with Ada Haas who was someone that you, I think you spoke to previously. We worked all through Christmas, we worked all through New Year's to get this proposal in and we made it to the final round. And we got a call from this particular prospective client and they said to us on the Friday, get your presentation together coming on Monday, you're going to present to our group and it's down to you and one other and if you get through this you win the work. And Peter and I have been working all afternoon and all weekend on this presentation and John Roll on the CEO came in on the Sunday afternoon and he says, "Hey boys, come into the boardroom, take us through your presentation for tomorrow." And mine was in pieces, it was only half done. I looked at Peter and I said, "Made, I'm not ready." And he's like, "Me, that am I, it's fine, let's go." He said, "John, we're not ready." He said, "Just take us through it, we'll give you feedback." And we walked into the boardroom and it wasn't just John, it was John, the whole exact team, the business owners were there to see what we were presenting for the next day. And so Pete starts his part of the presentation and he was just crushing it. It was like he'd done this presentation a hundred times, he was just nailing it. I could see the exact team are getting excited. The owners, you could see a glint in their eye, they're all fine. Up, we've got a chance at winning this thing and then Pete says, "Okay, that's just all of the promises. You know, I'm going to hand over the guy that will make this dream a reality over the you run." And my slides come up on the screen and it was a train wreck. I was just fumbling over my words. I was, my points on each slide didn't make any sense and then it all kind of culminated on this one slide which was supposed to be my solution blueprint. And I just blanked entirely. I couldn't get words together. And then someone in the exact team broke the silence because they said one word, they said death. And I was like, "Okay, let's the end of it." And John said, "Okay, we've sent enough ride. Let's just call it their mate. Come and see me in my office in five minutes." So I packed up, went and waited in his office and I was just expecting him to take me off the train. Come in and say, "I'm sorry, Rod, but we can't take the risk." And he walked into the room and he said to me, "Okay, Rod, your presentation wasn't good, but I know you. Go home. You've got 12 hours. Right, you know, it's finish off your presentation. Come back tomorrow and let's win this thing." And that's kind of what happened. Like I remember he in a moment where he really did not need to show sort of trust in me. He decided, "Yeah, I'll back this guy." And he told me exactly what I needed to hear. I remember I didn't feel nervous after that point. I felt like this sense of relief and the sense of confidence to go home and to go home and pull this thing together. And that little sort of magic moment for me, it actually, like that stuck with me for a very long time and replicating that sort of trust in people who you know are capable of doing things has been really powerful and meaningful moment for me. Thank you for sharing that out. And I have been told that you were very empathetic as a manager, culture amp and also I think you used to time your presentations when you were prepping. I think Didier would just get on the stage and present and you'd be there timing and scrambling to assure you were doing it well. Yeah, I think that moment might have been the point at which I started. I started being a bit of a perfectionist about presentations. But yeah, so John was a bit of a mentor and he had an impact on me. And then I think your question that I pivoted away from was about like meeting Doug and John. I think I met them on one of these big enterprise projects at a bank. And I think, I mean, I think the thing that I learned connecting with them and it was one of these things that you kind of learn as unlike that story with John that was like a really sort of potent moment. This was more of a slow burn and it was probably my experience of enterprise tech overall. Was you know, the typical enterprise tech project was hundreds of employees, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, three years, you get a year in and you realize actually we're not making progress and this thing is going to take another five years. And they were tech transformation projects, but success was never about the technology. Success was about the people and the culture and creating great teams and having them aligned and motivated. And I was on a team working for Doug. He was my boss and he did a great job of creating a phenomenal team and motivating that team. And John was the enterprise architect. He was always the scarily intelligent one who sort of set the plan. But we just really enjoyed working together and they actually started their own startup for a little while and they took a couple of years to wear me down and to get me on board. But you know, I had that lesson of the power of culture and the impact that it can have on business success. And they were trying to get me involved in starting something with them and we met Didier at about the same time. And he also had this waking up moment of like hey the secret to success in business is culture. So he'd been working on this idea already for a little while from a conceptual perspective. So I was all in once it was myself, Doug, John and Didier, like I just felt like we had an incredible balance of co-founders and that's sort of how culture came about. I'm sure you've heard this where there's two trains of thought with starting a startup. One is do a straight out of uni, be in your 20s, be in a garage. The other is the four of you where you were a bit older, you said you had 12, 15 years experience. And you had seen the world and you knew a bit about yourself. And I think the other day, launch week actually released this report that the average founder in Victoria is 42 years old. There's not in their 20s. The 42 years old based on their data. How do you reflect on that now that culture and did work out and we'll talk about that shortly about the relevance of those 12, 15 years of experience and just life prior to starting a business. Is that something that you think played a role or if you could do it again and you would do a straight out of uni? I think it really helped us. I'm not sure I would, maybe this was, I wasn't the personality to do it straight out of uni, but I think we were all early 30s when we started culture and I think it helped us for a few reasons. I mean, one was financially, we were probably a little more stable as individuals. We were at a point where we could put a bit of money into the business and invest in that way. I think secondarily, we'd had to work with customers, like enterprise customers before. We understood a bit about how to sell to the enterprise. We understood a bit about how to look after your customers. We understood, you know, I mean, culture out was running engagement surveys, right? Our very first version of today's culture out platform. It's not, you wouldn't say it's mission-critical work, but if it stuffs up, it really hurts the reputation of the head of HR and the HR team and their brand, right? I think because we'd spent time working out an industry for 15 years, we really understood those sorts of things. So I think it gave us a bit of runway, it gave us an appreciation for the impact of what our products and services did for our customers. I think also just a maturity around what it takes to build and grow a team. So yeah, I mean, I made so many mistakes, leading teams prior to culture and I'd had a few goes at it. So it served me well once we actually started growing our own business. I want to come to customer and go to market in a second because I know you were really involved in that. But before that, something that I came across recently is, if my research is correct, the four of you, I think, switched roles quite a bit pre-funding because you could get experience in different parts of the business and I don't think you're speeding out that, which I think is really contrary and in some ways where I'd say in today's world, when I speak to most founders, they spent so much time on who should do what and whose skills are what. And can you talk about that to where you, all four of you switched roles and what was the benefit of that? It probably wasn't as specific as that, but I mean, when you start for co-foundage, you're all wearing all hats, right? Definitely some of the skillsets like Doug and John are just incredible engineers, right? Like they used to, I was coding, they were coding. I probably took me just as long to review their code as I took them to write it, right? So they were real machines, DDA, incredible visionary, such an incredible storyteller, wonderful at sales. I was, we probably had our own biases around things like Doug and John were always biased towards engineering and DDA and I were probably always biased a little more to the customer and go to market side. But I think the thing that we did quite well was whenever we had a decision to be made, the first thing that we focused on was whose decision is it? So who's accountable for this? And then they would have the authority to make the decision and everyone else would give their input. But we would decide who got to make this specific call and it wasn't always the same individual for the same domains. So it might be a go-to-market thing, but sometimes like John was actually a a bit of a weapon when it came to marketing as well, right? So he might drive the marketing side of it. He was heavily involved in the engineering early on. I actually ran customer success and product for the early stage of culture app. But I think the secret to why it worked for us was that little bit of effort upfront to say, okay, who gets to make the call on this one? And then let's give them all the input but let's let them make the call. - A comment that came up a lot, my research is in the early days and all you can find is that this is customer's loved working with you because you just, to your point, understood what they wanted and I think you spent a lot of time listening to them and I've heard you talk about even differentiating between the buyer and the user which is a big part of this journey and I'm sure you spend a lot of time now in your advisory roles. Can you unpack that to its bare bones? Is what did you do that made customers appreciate your approach? 'Cause I know having worked in sales for many years in the earlier days of my career, I was in full sales mode. I'd go, "This is what you should buy, it's the best product for you but I would not spend time listening to what they wanted." And I wouldn't take that category approach and understand where I fitted into their business. Can you talk or just riff on that? - Sure, sure, yeah, gotcha. I mean, I think our first, I'm able to kind of skip over this but our first experience of building product at culture app, our first two experiences built, our first experience of building product were actually epic failures. The first product that we built was, it was still in the HR domain, and it was actually not that unlike our performance product today in many ways, but we started out building a performance based an alternative for performance reviews if you like. Our idea was performance reviews are broken, they shouldn't be this once a year thing, it should be a continuous coaching conversation. And we built a product in probably three months, and a dozen or so customers or teams within companies. And they were using the product, like we had a lot of success getting users onto the platform and trying it, but any time we would ask them to pay for it, we kind of hit lockets, right? And it was, you know, HR, often what would happen is a manager of a team would be using our product, they'd be using it quite successful with their team. And then they'd say, all right, of us, they'd be able to get involved and the buyer has gone, no, hang on, that's actually a big change management exercise for us. I'm not prepared to take on that cost, regardless how good the product is, I don't want to take on that cost of having to train all our managers and train all my employees in how to use this new software, like the software's cheap, the change management cost is really expensive. So that experience for us, like we got, I think we ended up with two paying customers on a product that we'd been working on for six months. John's dad was one of your early customers, right? That was our second product. I can get to that. But yeah, our first product, I did make our first culture amp sale. It was to a not-for-profit. It was for a measly $400 a year, and your subscription, they never signed into the products. And not even their users enjoyed that. But we had another customer that was using the product quite successfully, but they turned out to be quite enlightened, quite an enlightened business at that time. And probably, I mean, I know it's a little bit cliché, but they were quite progressive, and we just, our product wasn't well-timed. But that experience did show me, like just because you've got a product that users love, if you can't get the buyer on board, then it's incredibly hard to make progress. After that product died, our second product was the one that you referred to that was John's dad. We, fortunately, it only took us six weeks to build and kill this product, that our top user ended up being John's dad, and he was not prepared to spend any money on the product. So we knew pretty quickly that that was not going to work. But I guess, so, I mean, back to your original question. The beauty of the first, well, the engagement product, which was our third product, but it was the kernel and the platform we had today, was our hero user and our sponsor were actually the same person in the businesses that we originally sold to in SMB, the head of HR or the head of people. And what prior to using sort of culture as engagement product, the only alternatives they had were really to work with consultants, consultancies, which were very expensive, and it was a very slow process. Like, you'd sign on the consultants, and it might be three months or so before you get any data back, and you can do anything with it. I mean, you could do your own thing with SurveyMonkey, but typically, typically these individuals weren't trained as IO-psych or anything like that, so they didn't really know how to interpret the data. But the beauty with our product was, if you were ahead of people, you could launch a survey, you could get your results, and you could get value, like within two weeks of signing up, you could be sitting in the executive room, talking about your employee engagement results. And so the time to value was actually quite short for that particular user. And that was the user and the buyer in this case. So we managed to hit a real sweet spot. And a big part of that was, a big part of learning about that was the approach that we took to doing customer development and discovery early on, which in the previous two products, we built the product up front, and then we put it in the hands of users. With this one, I think John created like a six-page PDF document that we went around and interviewed a bunch of prospective buyers. And I think the goal was to interview 20, to get 10 of them to sign a mock contract saying, "Well, buy this thing if we built it." And in reality, I think we interviewed 10, and we got about four of them to sign. But this was the first time we actually had customers we just didn't have a product. So that was the trigger for us to start building and to start getting traction with this thing. - Maybe a sub layer of this is pricing. So I'll give you a simple example. The other day I was talking to a founder who my, of course my angels, and they can just invest it in. And they've, they've, they're selling this SaaS product. And I was talking to their lead VC. He did a lot of diligence on their customers. And the VC said the constant feedback was customers was surprised and how cheap their offering was. And I went back to the founder and I said, "Hey, how are you thinking about this?" And she said, "Vit it, I don't know how to price this. We're just trying different methods." And great, if you think we're too cheap, we'll probably price them up next time. But I know firsthand trying to price up and existing customers is so hard when your product hasn't changed that much. So I guess two bad question is, yet I don't know if you were involved in pricing if you weren't then, speaking skip this. But if you were, how did you price? And as the company grew, what did you learn about pricing and the relevance of that? - Yeah, I mean, I will say I'm not a pricing expert at all, but I definitely have, we've had experience with that, right? Where I think we priced the product quite cheap early on. And we used to have these debates and founders as to whether we were leaving money on the table and we should be pricing it up and that sort of thing. But I remember we had a great conversation where we just said, look, we've set this price, it probably used to cheat. But the most important thing for us right now is to make sure we've got a product that customers love and they want to use. So we're not going to talk about pricing until we get another hundred, until we get a hundred customers, then we'll review the pricing, right? So it just became all about like the single most important thing was making a product that customers loved and we'll keep coming back to. And yeah, we did increase prices at some point and yeah, it was painful. Right going through that process, but there's things you can do like grandfather pricing for several years, you need to make sure that your customers are seeing the new value that's coming through and they're making the most of it. So it can be painful to do it, but there are ways to modify the pricing as you go. But I think, yeah, they're probably my key learnings around it is like, you know, pricing is a lever that you've got, but sometimes it's actually not the most important thing for you to learn. It's about, you know, is the product resonating. And once once you've got a product that customers would love and the value exchanges really clear, I think the pricing can take care of itself a little bit. Back to the episode in a moment. ISO 27001, SOC2, essential 8, they sound like an alphabet soup. Don't they trust me, I've been there. 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So stop letting those acronyms eliminate you, let Vanta handle the heavy lifting and internationally renowned companies including Atlassian, Joseph, use Vanta. So go check them out, you might just find that compliance isn't as scary or boring as you think. In all of you as listeners of this podcast get a special offer. That's vant.ta.com/high. H-I-G-H. Or reach out to me via my email in the show notes and that link vanta.com/high is also in the show notes. And if we zoom out and more macro what was the biggest highlight in the first five years? I know I'm testing your memory here but this first five years was there a highlight where back to your point earlier about being hard in yourself and questioning whether this is the right part for you personally. Is there a personal or a company highlight in this first five years of culture? No, there were hopes. I mean the things that come to mind winning particular customers was huge. We had, we won Adobe as a customer inside our first hundred customers and yeah I remember Adobe at the time that we won them as a customer. In some ways like it didn't make a lot of sense because our platform at the time we, I think the biggest company we had on the software was about a thousand employees and Adobe was about 15,000 employees. So purely from a scalability perspective like it was a much bigger challenge to take them on. Then from an organisational perspective as well like their project team was three times the size of our entire company. Like their team just looking after running their engagement survey was three times the number of people that we had in our business. So it was a super big challenge but we, we platformed, we launched, they were wildly successful, they loved it and we did it all inside sort of three or four months and that highlight that meant it gave us so much sort of social cred because any other business that was looking to take a punt on this early stage start up from Australia having the Adobe logo there just gave us a lot of credibility so it was like we started to make this work for Adobe that could probably make it work for us. It's kind of how they thought of it. So that was a huge highlight. Another highlight inside those first five years is we launched like community was a really big part of our growth and in particular on the west coast of the US. That's what we got a lot of our early traction actually. Moat like actually can I ask before you expand on that? So how quickly into the journey did you expand to the US? It was almost straight away. Like it was. Is that because of personal networks? No, it's hard right? I'm sure you see this now with founders expanding and it's really hard because the US has broken up to many countries on it. Yeah, I mean I think so at first half a dozen customers were based here in Australia and then I can't, I honestly can't recall who it was but we did get into a business on the west coast of the US and I think it was I think we were introduced through a connection but the real power in our growth there came from the community part right? Which was I think what happened was so many of the heads of people in these fast growth tech startups. These are businesses that have made 200 people. They're growing like crazy. They're hiring a lot and they've got one ahead of HR or one person who's looking after the people on culture side of things and I don't think they got a lot of support in their organization because the organizations were mostly engineers and marketers right? So that would look outside their own company for support and help in how to do things and there was a community there called startup HR or something like that and they all just got talking about us because all of these heads of people were part of that community and just through word of mouth we got really fast growth there on the west coast and I don't know that it was like we I don't think we said hey we're going after the US and we're going after the west coast but this word of mouth and this community growth vector took off for us and it turned into something that we would that we would really foster right? So we would do trips as founders we pick two of the founders will go over for a two week period we'd find people who are heads of HR in these businesses we'd sort of stalk them on LinkedIn and send them cold emails and say we're an Aussie company we're in town for two weeks we'd love to learn from you can we have a chat we go in they'd give us time they'd end up buying and they'd tell a few of their friends from their community about us and they became a real a really positive growth vector for us and I want to underline what you said is you want to learn from them and I've heard you talk about this is back to my learning personally was full sales mode is not often the right approach but making the other person feel bigger and learning and even that line that this is often all say is if you want money ask for advice and if you want advice ask for money. It's so true it's so true I mean like I think I tell a lot of founders this is like don't go and ask to sell like go like set your expectation of like a really good meeting here is that I learned something I can use and it's incredible when you say I just would like some help how often the answer is yes so that worked incredibly well for us and we were quite genuine in those conversations you know they would often lead to a demo and lead to a sale but if all we got from that conversation was a learning or an insight and hopefully a couple of other introductions that was well worth the conversation right now I've got a whole page of notes but I'm going to throw out a few topics and you tell me which one you want to uncover so one option is we can talk about people management and leadership and hiring the other topic I've got here is how did you go from bootstrapping to raising money and how you look at that today and three is talking about how you step away and the decision to move on and what you're doing now any of those three that appeal to you or you can pick one of your choice but no it appears to me like what one I'll let you pick one or three okay I think the people one is probably interesting for I mean they're all interesting for sure I'm just trying to make this not be a three-hour interview maybe we could do a part two in the future found to spend a lot of time on people people are such an important part of the business and I ask you earlier about the four of you exploring different areas to understand your skill sets I've heard on good account that you spend a lot of time exploring whether you should lead up customer success or product management and I think you chose product management and that's why you'll see the achieve product offers several many years and the second coin that which I refer to earlier is everyone that I spoke to said that you are a very empathetic manager you were very good at listening you made the other person feel appreciated which I do want to outline is really hard in a fast-caring environment because it can be very easy to say ahead go do this make it work if it doesn't work you've done a bad job and just have a very challenging environment and I think a lot of startups are going through that at the moment yeah so probably two bad questions can you talk about how did you settle on the function that you were going to lead and were there any stories related to that and then two what to you is a world-class manager in a startup context sure thing I don't think the decision between product and customer success was I don't think it was anything particularly scientific about it I think it was just I had a passion for building products I love the creative process of it and that probably slightly appeared to me a little more so I put the head down on on products I think the how many years into the company journey was that by the way I'm struggling with my memory but really I know I was probably four years in or something like that and that also coincided with your first venture round isn't it it was pretty simple yeah actually you know what it you know what it was on the customer success versus product side I think part of it was there was a really great customer success leader a goblet named Steve Hopkins who was someone who we could bring into the business and I think I just had great confidence in him as a human and I think at the time I was like this guy's going to do a way better job of leading the customer success all the way so I think that possibly played into the decision as well but yeah it was around that time and I think I mean perhaps to your second question about a what's a world class leader look like I think I mean there's been plenty out there that's been written about it but for me like the foundation of any team let alone you know a manager employer relationship actually starts with trust and I think trust is one of those things that it's you know it's a percent given and it's a percent earned but my style as a leader was very much about knowing the whole human so I and it's actually it was probably longer term as well it's probably an overplayed strength as well of mine but like I loved getting to know everything about people in my team and I loved understanding what motivated them more than anything I loved understanding their working style those sorts of things. So I still to this day do silly little things like, you know, when a new member joins a team, we do like, we get every new member to do a, it's called a four by four, which is like four slides, four photos from your life, come in and tell the story to the whole team. And it's just a little hack to get to know the individual. I think, you know, we do other things like I ask every team member to create a user manual, which describes their working style, how they like to communicate, how they like to take their meetings, you know, all those sorts of things. And then I'll tell a little funny story about their cap to something like that, right? But I think world class leaders, they know the whole human is probably the first part of it. The second part of it for me is it's actually about expectations. And, you know, I think the more a leader can be clear about what they need from an employee. And also their level of involvement in what the employee needs to get done, I think can be a really powerful thing. Like often, if an employee doesn't deliver on an ask, I think it actually comes down to a misalignment of expectations. So like one of the little models I use or have used in the past is when you're asking someone to do something, you know, is this a, there's a trunk, a branch, and a leaf model. If it's a leaf type task, it's like, hey, can you go and do this thing? I don't want to hear about it, you know, go and do whatever. A branch is like, hey, can you go and do this thing? But I'm lucky to consult me on this. A trunk task is like, we need to do this thing. I want to be heavily involved. And if you have those expectations clear, I think that makes a world of difference in the experience for both the manager and the employee and getting the thing done. Did it get harder over time where there was a layer of management between you. So let's say you hired me and I'm a junior product manager. I'm assuming as culture and grew, I wasn't reporting into you directly. There was a person in between me and you. So you don't know on the ground. I think we've seen this recently with a lot of these tech companies where they've got so many layers and the senior folks like you just don't know what's happening on the ground. I'm not saying you did that by this. How did you manage that? We had another layer in between you and that junior person who often is doing the heavy lifting. Did you create any tactical processes like catching up with that junior person and bypassing the your direct report? That's really tricky that one. Like the whole skip level thing. Like, yeah, I would do skip level conversations. But it's always, I mean, I talked about trust earlier. And someone's manager catching up with their direct report to have a chance of them. That can create all sorts of challenges as well. So I think you have to be careful with that. I mean, I think the looking back on it, Doug and I in particular, so Doug and I would, we led the product and engineering org. And we used to talk a lot about the three days being alignment autonomy and accountability. And you know, those things hang together because you've got to have them in balance because if you have great alignment, you can allow people to be far more autonomous. And as a result, they can be more accountable. And I think at times like when we added all of those extra layers in like you're saying, just as part of growth, like we were at highly autonomous org for many years. And I think we probably let that go a little bit too far at times. Like there was just so much autonomy that we were a little too far away from the work and the whole system wasn't connected. So, you know, we'd have to push a lot harder on the alignment piece. And we'd have to push a bit harder on the accountability piece as well. So I mean, I think those, the extra layers make the system more complex. But I think once again, like as long as you've got the rituals in place like for us, which was like plenty of one-on-ones between managers and employees, clear goals and performance expectations, clear development plans, those sort of things. If you have those sorts of things in place, you can scale the system as the org grows you know. Interesting comment that came up my research and I'm just going to paraphrase it right this join. I think you'd laugh and I hope you can answer it is. A comment that a few people mentioned that worked really closely with you is and they were actually frustrated by this is sometimes you would get away from your own ideas to let someone else get their way and both Doug and even Peter were like they actually wanted to see how your approach might play out but because you were so emotionally good at giving the other person the benefit of it out, you let them have their way. I don't know there's something you've thought about. It's actually a really interesting one. I think it's probably like I mentioned before like an overplayed strength right. Like there were definitely at times where I mean I had a reputation of being a little too nice at times I think is what I've heard. Hey, you're just a bit too nice like this is what I'm here and you know I spend a lot of time thinking about what's the difference between being nice and being kind right and being nice is you don't want to hurt someone's feelings being kind is you tell people what they need to hear but you do it in a caring way and I do think that's played out a little bit for me in that you know I've wanted to not upset people at certain times so that might be I let them get their way in a particular situation. It might be that you know the times when it's not working out with people in the org you try to move them around or you try to persist for a little bit too long and it's taken me quite a while to get to that realization that hey is it managing your job not to be nice it's to be kind. Does that make sense? Yeah no it's hard I think it's easy for me to ask this question but it's really hard when you're dealing with people's lives and yeah absolutely and so absolutely the other one that came up a lot is a standout quality everyone said is your sense of humor and your ability just cut tension and I think you were known for having catch phrases and jokes like San Diego Zoo and Milo carrying in and I don't know if you've got time to pack with jokes but I think that's a really interesting one right back to my comment earlier that sometimes I can get too caught up in myself and become too serious and particularly junior employees notice that right can you talk about how you kept that sense of humor intact particularly because I'm sure there were days and weeks and months where life was stressful either at home or at work. I definitely I don't know how I kept it intact I say but like it's maybe it's your way of dealing with stressful moments right? I think it is I think it is and I actually have that I mentioned user manual before I like one of the things in my user manual is sometimes I will make a silly joke in a very stressful moment right? And I know some of the environments I operate in I think people think I'm a little bit weird like I'm in a board meeting and runs cracking silly jokes about something and sometimes people laugh and sometimes I think what is this guy doing but it probably is a little bit about my way of dealing with stress but I think the other thing is to my earlier point of like you know my waking up moment is if you don't enjoy the journey if you don't enjoy the experience on the journey well why are we doing this work right? So I definitely try to make work an enjoyable experience and I enjoy it if the people around me are enjoying it and having fun so it's a little bit it's a little bit my you know my barometer is like how much fun we have in while we're getting this good work done? And a good example of that is I think you're probably the only person who was able to have a slide of pigeons in your company presentation which I think is incredible and speaks to your ability to just break up tension. That was yeah the pigeon story for some reason this story goes down in folklore I was actually using a story about homing pigeons to try to explain quite a technical and intellectual concept to a room of about 1500 HR leaders and ever since that presentation you know I saw it in a little highlights clips after the presentation people just referred to me as the pigeon guy so unfortunately I'm stuck with that now. I want to bring in some of the personal side because I realized we've gotten caught up in the culture I'm sorry and life is almost important if not more important is and and one of the comments that your brother said to me a lot than I completely resonate with this is he said it was hard when you were building the company like your energy levels or even your I think he said to me he can catch you on the phone now more than he did in your culture and journey because you just have more to do it but your love is the same of course I'm curious I think that's an under appreciated part of the founder journey and the business building journey in any sense right whether it's a cafe or a tech company is the amount of your own soul that you've got to give to the company and the real importance of family and friends you talk about your wife and two kids and your family can you just touch on that again back to like giving credit to people who are not who are not in the public eye or some of those even your coach and you've had an executive coach for many years yeah again I don't know it's a broad question you can choose to answer it specifically or generally but talk about some of that your life aspects of building a company that has become successful company but it took a lot out of you yeah broad broad question but maybe you can talk about your wife tell us about your wife's PhD thesis what did she do her PhD thesis on did that influence any of your style of work I don't know where you're going with this now but I look it's so my partner sure yeah she did a PhD on like work intensity and the impact it has on people over the life course and the running joke between all of our friends and those who knew what she was starting was like it was a PhD on me as an individual but I mean I think to your early question about like like the early part of that question about a startup will take a lot from you for sure. Like if you're a founder of a startup knows that it's like they're super hungry, it's all day one and it can become, I think I definitely got to that point at Coltramp where I felt like I was very one dimensional because I was always on with Coltramp, it was on my mind every waking minute, even when I was sleeping I would dream about, I would dream about Coltramp stuff, but you know you got to lean on those people who are incredibly important to you, to give you perspective and that was, you know, for me that was my partner, Jury, and who was just incredibly supported through the whole journey and in many ways, you know, she and my kids, they were on the journey with me even though they weren't sort of in the business. But I think they give you little bits of perspective, you know, I leaned on my brother a lot, they would go to him for advice very often, I got my dad for advice, he always used to say, "You know what, you don't have to make things so hard for yourself," by doing this. I think founders who are on the journey and who sort of get some traction and are scaling up and growing the business, I think like the thing that I would say to them is, just remember you're taking your family and those who are close with you on the same journey with you. So you really need to consider them and what works for them is part of that process and I coach a bunch of founders now. And it's amazing how much, like, how much everything outside of the business is actually part of their founder journey. So it's something you definitely have to keep in front of mind. - I want to read out something you wrote in your Goodbye article on the Culture Amp website and then I'd love for you to unpack it. For a long time, I feared the idea of stepping out of the Chief Product Officer role. Culture Amp has been the thing I point to when I want to tell myself that I'm ambitious, growing, and I'm capable of great things. I worried that stepping out of the CPU role could represent me deciding that I no longer want to be part of this growth-minded person. I think firstly, thank you. That is incredible reflection and you put it out on your website. Unpacked that, can you just share this what we go into how you made the decision to leave the company? - Yeah, that was very true. That's exactly how I felt. And I think that was, I think that was the thing that made the decision particularly hard for me to step out of the role. Because it was hard not to, even though I had this beautiful story that I would keep telling myself, it was like, well, if I step out, does that mean I'll give it up? It's like, am I stepping away from something versus stepping towards something? And I mean, I think like my coach, Ben Hudson, who, incredible guy, worked with him for a long time. He was the person who helped me come to the realization that like, culture out wasn't who I was, culture out was something that I had done. And I was gonna get to do many more other things and I didn't need to hang on to the culture out product guide badge as a representation of who Roddy was. Like, Roddy's more than that. A brother, a son, a dad, a mate, all those sorts of things. And I think, honestly for me, the growth journey as the chief product officer at culture out was fairly clear over the next years. What I would have to do, it's gonna be hard, but I could scrap my way there. The growth journey for me, if I wasn't at culture out, was very much unknown. I didn't know when I was gonna step into it next. And in some ways, that became the growth journey that excited me the most. And that's how I, let's sort of how I stepped into it. And I had this long process I went through to decide, but yeah, it's been able to step out of that role. I'm still very involved. And I get to do a bunch of other amazing things as well now. So it's played out nicely. I'll give you a funny story. So the business I run now started that almost five years ago. And I'd always say that work is not my identity and then work became my complete identity. And similarly, you, my close mates, I made two different industries and I've known them since the uni days. And whenever we'd catch up, even now, they don't ask me about my work. They don't, to me it means so much. So every time they'd leave or we'd got to meal or something, I'd say to Joe, and say, "Hey, he didn't ask me about my work." Like, does he care about me? And similarly, with your saying, she made me realize she said, "Vit it, "their friends with you for who you are, not what you do." And I was like, "Wow, that is such an unlock." 'Cause I, my work and my personas, totally my identity and my friend say to me, they're like, "Oh, you're the CEO type, you just need to settle down a bit." And then my closest friend, he's a nurse. And I realized why he's my closest friend is, 'cause he just disarms me when we chat. We chat about absolute rubbish. And we just love each other. And he doesn't know what I do. I don't know what he does. I mean, we do know what we don't understand it. That's why the friendship is so wonderful. - Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think we get so caught up in our own heads about what other people think about our jobs and what we do. And it's that classic thing. I think about it a whole lot less than what we think they think about it. Like if they're thinking about you, like they're too busy thinking about what you think about, what they know. - Correct. - No, correct. - Correct. - So worry about what you actually do. So I think, yeah, the sooner we can all realize that we can get over ourselves the better. - So let's talk about, you moved on from culture amp or you moved on in an operating role. You involved in a non-executive role. I know for a fact, you're very liked by the VC community. All the VC's like you and your good friends with naked culture amp at Blackpets, sorry, you can go for them and others. Can you talk about how you settled on rampant sand? I mean, there's so many firms you could have chosen to help with you then or help none of them. What about Paul and Rampant attracted you? - Yeah, I mean, I think the short answer to that one is like great people, great businesses that they invested. Paul's a very engaging guy. I know you've met him, but I think like his motivations are really pure, he's just really into what they're trying to achieve at Rampant sand. They've got a great set of portfolio companies like I'm absolutely loving working with the bunch of their founders and vicious people. But that thing I said before, like you get to know them as humans and they're just exciting to work with. So I think, you know, I've been spending a bit of time coaching founders just directly of different businesses. And it was actually Helen Sumas, who is one of the venture partners at Rampant sand who I worked across the whole way from a year ago. I was chained to her and I talked about the fact that I just loved early stage. I loved coaching founders. And Rampant sand had a bit of a platform and a model for doing that. So had some conversations with Paul. And here we are working with Rampant sand and some really exciting businesses and some super exciting tech. - And that's probably my next question is, what are you seeing in the tech ecosystem today? Not the general stuff that you see in the press, but with all these founders that you're helping and I saw one of the founders you're helping is Traxuit. I conoract you as a podcast last year and he's a wonderful human. I think he's a very pathetic and an older guy as well, which probably can expect to your point that he's seen a bit of life. What are you seeing with some of these founders? You don't have to name them or the companies. With some of the, are there any patterns in terms of the areas that they're seeing as blockers or areas that they're coming to you for advice on? - Yeah, well, I'll just let you know, with Traxuit, I'm working with Harry, the legendary - Okay, yeah, I've met Harry yesterday. - Yeah, I've met a lot of founders. - Yeah, but any patterns that I'm seeing with the founders and the sorts of things that they're biting up against, you know what, I don't think they're necessarily new problems, right? I mean, everyone's interested in what other businesses are doing with AI and are they harnessing it and using it and like they're actually getting some return on the investment they're making there. So there's definitely that thing, but I actually think the sorts of things that founders are wrestling with and not that dissimilar to the things that I wrestle with, which is like, you know, when to hire, when to put your first product hire in place and you know, let someone else play with your Lego and how to work with them when you're the founder and you've got a big vision that they actually know more about product management than what you ever have known. Growing a team, setting the values up, setting the culture, you talked about pricing before, it's incredible how every single founder I'm speaking to at the moment, they've all got questions about pricing and how to produce their products. Like you would think some of these things are solved problems now, but they're not necessarily. So the thing that the bigger advantage that I've got is I've got so much of sort of, you know, the history of understanding culture and data across people and culture that's something that's very useful to have in the back pocket when talking about these sorts of challenges. But it's interesting from my line of business, you know, our theory when we started culture out was you create successful businesses by focusing on people. That's where most of the challenges are coming from when it comes to, you know, talking about others and advising them. - I really think it's an underrated area of securing help. So last year in 2024, I was a EAR entrepreneur residence to three startups and I helped them for two hours every week. And I was very apprehensive when I went into that 'cause I felt like two hours every week I'm gonna be detached from the company, but it was the perfect level of involvement 'cause I was not emotionally connected to them as in the company day to day, but there's two hours we could go very specific on a specific problem and then they could just run with it and they would just come back to me as they wanted. And we're gonna probably continue that going into this year and it took me back to my operating days where I was like, this is just so cool to talk about the expansion or fundraising or even just being a psychologist and I'm sure you see this right where they all say to me they're like, "Vitage, it's so nice to talk to someone who's not on our board or is not an investor and I think that's something that is probably also underrated is someone who's not on our board or is not an investor." Sometimes you want someone who's actually completely detached from you financially? Yeah, I think that I think the motives can be really pure, right? When and the incentives are really pure when you had that sort of relationship where I mean I remember early days, I mean I'm on the culture app board now, but it was like you know when you were talking in the early days when I was in experience with this sort of stuff and chatting to our board members and that sort of thing, you always felt a little bit like I'm not sure how I should say this, a riff I should share this because I don't want it to reflect badly. We've had such a wonderful run at Coltrant, our boards always been very aligned with what we've been trying to achieve, but so it would have been fine. But I think I see that's a bit of a struggle for founders for sure, it's like how much should I share to different individuals and I think independent advisers have a unique superpower there? It's interesting that you talked about only being in there for two hours a week, like one of the things that I struggle within these sort of advisory roles is not having the same sense of team that you have when you've got the same team that you're turning up with every day in day out. So I sort of wondered if that's something that you wrestle with whether you know not having a sense of continuity with the team was a problem or? I did in the early days, I think now that I've yeah, I had a portfolio career, I guess for this is going to year five, so I think I'm now comfortable with it, but yeah, the first couple of years absolutely and I was also trying to build my own startup, I didn't want to raise money, but build my own startup in every way. Yeah, it's been hard, I think the hardest is actually being the Mondays, because you know when you go into the team huddle and you talk about the weekend and I remember I saw this complain about that going, "Oh, this is just a small talk about the weekend and stuff." And now I miss that, so I find my Mondays even now, my Monday mornings are the most unproductive, because I am trying to like fill that gap through just scrolling on social media or going for random research and my marista, because I work from home quite a bit and that's been hard, but for me finally enough, it's been the podcast actually, that's been because it's been a weekly thing I've done for yeah, five years now, it's been the best feedback loop because I've met people and just this sense of continuity. And I think I've also learned, I don't know, maybe you've had this reflection that I similar to you actually really enjoy the coaching aspect and I do a lot of it, but I don't want to have a big team. I think a lot of that is vanity where like you often will go to barbecue, I find this is the first question people say, "How big's your company? How big's your team?" And that's what they give you respect based on, as in matter, like even with maybe they'll always ask me, they're like, "Why haven't you grown your business and your team?" And I go, "Why should I do that?" Then I'm just going to get caught up in the people's other things and I need to do a good service by giving them a career. I can't just be using their resource and paying them, but they're not looking out for their career. So I don't know, it's a fluid answer and I'd be curious how you find it as you do more of it, but I think you did at a much different level to me, right? You had a big company, a lot of it was your own identity, was my team's pride to this when jobs, they weren't my company. So I think that probably makes a difference too. Yeah, yeah. I want to move into rapid-fire final sprint, but before I do, is there anything that I have an ask that you want to touch on? Oh God, there's a bit of a long this podcast ever made. I don't think so. I don't think so. All right, cool. Is there one non-work investment of ideally time and energy that you consider the best in your life? Health and friendships. So, investing in your health and keeping in touch with you? Yeah, staying healthy as much as possible and I think also investing in friendships, social fitness, that sort of thing. It's a thing. There's a lot of sides out there that says, you want to be happy, be healthy, have great connections and friends. Yeah, yeah. You're co-founded, Doug actually mentioned that you would sometimes have late days and he would want to get sleep and you'd say, "No, I'm going to go to the gym." And I said, "I have a resident with that. Just for me, the gym is my reset. It's for him, it's for something sleep or go get a coffee or something like that." Is there one interview question you love asking perspective candidates? Oh, yes. My three promises question, which I stole from the internet somewhere, but a lot of my hiring is like final founder interview stuff. So, it's very late in the process. But my favourite question was the last question and it's a bit of a complex ones. I'll see if I can get it right. But basically say to the candidate, if I could make and keep three promises, which if I keep these promises, hiring you will be the best decision I could have made. What are those three promises that I need to make and keep? And it would always throw the candidate a little bit because it's a bit to unpack. But then basically it's a question about motivation and commitment. It's about what are the things that they really want in their job. And if someone talked about salary, it was often a bad sign. If someone talked about growth and development, if someone talked about having permission to take risks, if they talked about honesty and trust and stuff like that, then I would know this is a candidate that we should be considering an hiring. Nice one. I actually recently interviewed a guy called John Michelle. He was the CTO at Atlassian that he may have come across. And he would ask his question, "Was teach me something?" He was in the year, so he'd teach me something and that would be a great way because he would disarm the person and they would talk about cooking or coding or whatever, but he would talk about this mental process. Is there one thing you want to learn in the next six months? Could be life or work. There's so many things. There's too many things. That's actually the problem. I need to learn how to pick one. I would love to, I would love to learn to serve and I would love to get better. This is a parenting one, but like being able to strike the balance between like urgency and patience when it comes to my kids and helping them with things. Nice to know. Is there one pet peeve that you have that really annoys you? How about other people? Is there something that other people do that really annoys you? In a work context, I remember one thing that used to annoy me is working with people who would overemphasize the reason something would not work rather than focusing on the reasons that something could work. Also, mate, this brings us to a finish line. Thank you so much. I think you're just your candor and being open-minded. Yeah, we've gone to know each other through this process and yeah, really glad that we met and thank you so much. Likewise, we do. It's been a little fun, right? Thanks for listening through. That's the end of my conversation with Rod Hamilton in this episode 190. This was special, particularly as there's a rare public appearance for Rod. I love the willingness to go deep, under-reflecting on both his personal journey and the culture of journey. Whether it's the initial products failing, securing world-class customers like Adobe, people management, the decision to leave the company, and of course his early childhood, the emphasis of his parents, his brother, and the desire to play sport professionally. I hope you find this conversation as insightful as I did and as always, if you'd like to recommend future guests or explore opportunities to partner with us as a sponsor brand and join the likes of KPMG, remote, the waiting shoot-in-on-autro-ponorship, Vanta, and more. My details are in the show nights. I'd love to hear from you and catch you soon.