Obama played her game. Now Sian Priest wants founders to tell better stories

That was actually one of the games that we were fortunate that present Obama played at the White House in Inspire, which was a pretty cool moment. And something that we're super proud of. Hello and welcome, Budrik Amawara from the Gadigal lands here in Sydney. It's time for start up 360. Yay. I'm Simon Thompson, editor of startup daddy.net. A little bit different this week, no majella. She unfortunately has been called away, but I am sending her my love and thinking of her and her family. And it's going to be just me and a fantastic guest. Sean Priest, many of you may know from secarta innovations, who's been central to tech 23, which just this week has announced its program for September. It's an astonishing group of people. You can read all about them on startup daddy.net. But she made a very surprised decision when I was talking to her a couple of weeks ago. And she decided to leave secarta after five and a half years. Not that she has a plan. She wants to see what's next and something in her heart. It's telling her it was time. So we're going to delve into that a little bit. And of course, we'll talk about deep tech. We'll talk about founder life. She's been a founder in the UK. She's working venture here in Australia. Of course, that time at secarta, helping build the deep tech ecosystem and the success of tech 23 by secarta. All part of her story, it's going to be a fantastic conversation. So we'll enter that before we go any further. I do want to say startup 360 is supported by deal, hire, manage and pay anyone anywhere. Thank you to deal for their support. I'm not going to do the deal. I'll spill this week. There has been a lot going on. Of course, I do want to remind you for those of you who have been concerned about the government policy and what was coming out of the budget, that the consultation paper is out at the moment. And you have until July 10 to get your submissions in. If you want to have something to say about what the government had to say around the capital gains carve out. Just Google it. Maybe you can stick it into your preferred AI and find out where it is. But go and have a look at the consultation paper. Have a think and have your say. I think that's a really important thing. And as you'll hear a little bit later today, think about the storytelling involved in this. Think about the government, its pressure points and the problems it needs to solve. Jim Cooper wrote a piece about that on startup daily last week. I do you go back and have a look at that. You understand a little bit more about the political process. I think that's really important to think like an MP and appeal to the problems that MPs have and figure out how as a founder you're going to solve them through tax policy. Interesting challenge to that one, isn't it? But without further ado, I do want to take a quick break and we'll be right back to what we've shown priest about life as a founder, as an investor and as a facilitator of great startups. Don't go away. Founders scale faster on deal. Set up payroll for any business in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere and get visas handled fast so you can stay focused on scaling. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits and compliance. So your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 37,000 fast growing companies trust deal to move fast. Visit deal.com/360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360. Welcome back to startup 360 and I'm joined by Sean Priest. I'm going to call her founder, innovator and now free agent. The artist formerly known as secada renovations. Great to have you in, Sean. Thanks so much for having me, Simon. Great to be here today. I'm going to dive into your next adventure a little later but let's hear the Sean Priest story because I came out here about a decade ago on the love trail. I'm the love trail. I'm the love trail. Anyway, I'm glad that Australia got sort of the best of England out here but tell us your quite storied history in tech. Yeah, sure. So born and raised proudly in Manchester. Red, not blue in case anybody asks. It seems to be the question everybody gets. I actually started my career straight after university in the creative industries. I worked for a TV production company in fact and I was a runner which first saw me running around so how literally delivering tapes to be digitized. But that whole experience was we started making a lot of content for Yahoo music, remember them? Oh gosh. And we started to get paid by a lot of early sort of tech brands to make content for their websites. And so we did a whole really cool series on for Yahoo music where we filmed up and coming artists. One of which was a small artist that you might know by the name of Rihanna. Oh. And so she's done all right. Yeah, she's done pretty good now. And so it was a really baptism of fire I got to learn so much about pace, about working to type deadlines, working with people you've never met before. Like you turn up on a shoot and it's like the sound guy you've never met, the camera man you've never met, but you just have to make it work. And so I had a wild two and a half years working in TV production. And then like many people in that sort of 2008 time, I lost my job. He had a small detail with three letters. Yes. GFC. GFC indeed. Bible fucking crisis. Exactly. And so I, the industry was on its knees a little bit. And so it forced me to look like where else work else can I go into. And I don't think I would say any of this was by some grand plan at the time. But I started to see a lot of jobs in mobile. Kind of mobile app development companies. You know, this was that we were just. Smart finder been going for a couple of years at that time. Just starting to come. We were in that sort of WAP into iPhone sort of smartphone transition. And I went and worked for company called Inc Mobile, INQ. And it was basically a startup within a large corporate, Hucheson One Power. So we owned three. So we got to play like a startup, but we had all the infrastructure of a really large company that would look after finance. And when we got in trouble with legal and things like this. That's fine knowing you've got that sort of H. Shield aspires around what you're doing as a founder. Exactly. And so I joined as the CEOs, EA and quickly became chief of staff. Because I think he recognized in me that I just get stuff done. And through that I got to work with some really interesting like a full spectrum of what is a tech business. So product through to tech, through to sales, through to distribution, because it did hardware and software. And I got to sit in the room with the ELT very strong season leaders and watch them have very robust debates. And the Facebook phone was part of this. Organisation wasn't it? Yeah. Yes. So we were the first company in the world to be able to create a Facebook native phone, which was pretty cool at the time. You know, we went to mobile world congress and got to show that off. But you know, ultimately we were a challenger brand trying to at the time compete with the motor rollers and the knock years. But really what was coming down the pipeline, thick and fast was of course Apple and the iPhone. But it was an amazing couple of years. We I got to spend a lot of time in the US in San Francisco. I helped establish the entire kind of engineering team out there, learn a lot about that Silicon Valley mentality, which is wildly different to the UK and Australia in that people just back themselves at any level. So even if you are interviewing a quite junior entry level engineer, they want they know their worth and they will negotiate you to the Nth degree. They're not just I'm going to take this job and be satisfied with it. It's like, no, no, you should want me to and know my worth. And I learned a lot about that kind of, I don't like the word hustle culture, but really backing yourself culture. And so yeah. It's it's I suppose it's the difference between like everyone racing to get on the bus and the Brits and Australians forming an orderly queue and waiting their turn. It's that is a really fascinating mindset to sort of experience a witness. Exactly. And I feel like when Americans are taking a job, they are looking at it in the long term and they're going, what does this job title right now? What will it unlock for me in two or three, four years time? So we would get pushed really hard that everybody I used to joke, everybody wanted to be the VP of something. And you're sort of like, but you have like the office manager. What you're going to be VP of stationary. But that is their mentality of it's that entrepreneurial thinking about their long term career. And like you said, it's not waiting for permission, waiting for the pay rise, waiting for the promotion. They go in guns blazing and I think that was a really interesting culture shock as we were building that team. But definitely, you know, you see why that is the beating heart of the entrepreneurial light spirit in the world. Because there's that ambition from the outset, rather than thinking I've just got to get through three months' probation and then it's going to be hard for them to sack me. Well, I think of Dexter Custon's from Tewan. His story is the tension between the employer and employees. You need to do just enough work so that I don't sack you and the employees thinking I need to do just enough work so I don't get sacked. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas you're sort of going, I want to know how long until I get to run the company. Very much like that. The ambition is off the charts at every level. It's not just at that sort of founder level, which I think we sometimes think of only founders that have ambition. But there's a lot of great people, engineers, people like that. And I think that just you realize that there's just that gravitational pull of, I mean, Americans are entrepreneurial by any margin. But when you put them in Silicon Valley, it's like it's the 10X ambition type thing. So yeah, those are really amazing couple of years for me. I really felt like I got to learn how a tech business runs. And then the CEO at the time, his son spent a lot of time in our office. He was about two or three years old and he was playing on an iPad. And Frank turned to me one day and said, "God, I just feel like these games are absolute garbage." Like, it's fruit ninja, it's moving, walking a dog across a road. And he was like, I just wish that there was some nutrition in the games that he was playing. And it kind of sparked something in both of us. And we put down on a white board, how could we learn a five games? So we obviously often talk about how do we gamify things. But we were like, how could we learn a five games? So I like to think of it as how could we sneak vegetables into something that kids want to play. And that's where the company that we co-founded Quato Studios was born. Now, Fun Fact Quato is named after a total recall, the alien. So we were trying to come up with a name, God, they were lame. And one night I just happened to be watching total recall because I love Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. And he comes and says, "Free your mind." And I was text Frank and I was like, "It should be Quato." It's like the rebellion going against the system type thing. So that was the origin of Quato. And we built an incredible team. I'm so proud of the team that we built. We had the Guardians Teacher of the Year working as our learning director. We had games at designers that worked on Grand Theft Auto. We had natural language programmers out of Stanford Research Institute. And we had this real ambition that we were, you know, a bit, we were going to change the way kids learned. We were going to put better tools in the hands of teachers and of parents so that they could kids, particularly who were maybe disengaged from the classic school institution, which is quite frankly a factory. And I understand why we have education systems like that for scale, but for a lot of kids, especially if your, like my brother was not very engaged at school. Or you're a diverse or whatever it is. Or, you know, let's be honest, most of these are really boring. If you're lucky, you're like one or two subjects. And the rest of it is like, why do I want to be here? I'm ever going to use this again in my life. The critical thinking and the analysis part is really important. But the road she's boring. Exactly. And I was thinking about even what are some of the subjects that almost everybody inherently loves? And it's like pee and sports, it's drama. And I think about what is that? Why do we all kind of love them? It's because it's play. And the first way that we learn as humans, as babies, is through play. And so I do think that was sort of our mantra is like, how can we bring play back into learning and sneak the vegetables in? Vivid sneak the vegetables in. And so that was the journey of Quarto. And you know, the headlines are, we raised 10 million pounds and we grew the company to 50 people. And we launched a bunch of products, apps, which I'll be honest with you. Apple took 30%. So not the most, not the best business model. Well, we always, we all remember how that has played out in recent years. You must look back at that with a little bit of, I think we were too early. I think if we'd done the business in the COVID era, I think it would have been a very different story when people were truly looking for teachers, parents were looking to technology for, I mean, even just to keep kids entertained. I think we were at the time the system in the UK had only just started to introduce computer programming even as a, as a, as subject. And they gave teachers like four pages and expected them to be able to teach kids about coding. So we created a game. It was called Code Warriors. And it was about teaching kids that computer language is, computer coding is a language. It's about how you speak to a computer. And so that was actually one of the games that we were fortunate that President Obama played at the White House Students Fair, which was a pretty cool moment. And something that was super proud of, but we, what was a reaction? Is reaction. And yeah, I mean, look, there was loads of other cool things at the science fair as well. But I think he could see the early promise of what we were trying to do around making computer programming a literature around that more accessible to kids. So that was pretty cool. But yeah, we also made tons of mistakes. And ultimately, we, we didn't know when you who are end user was, but I don't think we quite figured out who the customer that would ultimately pay for it would be. And we omdenarred through. Is it through schools? No, it's not through schools. Is it risk averse? Yes, exactly. Is it direct from parents? Yes, it is, but having a consumer product like you need so much marketing and the amount. There was also that very early days where if you, if anyone can cast their mind back at that point, we weren't yet giving kids our phones. The kids didn't quite know what it was. We were a long way from that digital native generation thing. And if you did then going back to the idea of the vegetables, we felt very guilty about letting our children go anywhere near this. That was our original instinct. And that to be right. But you know, it wasn't the market wasn't there. Yeah, it definitely wasn't. And we were early. The fortunate thing is we were able to form some really interesting collaborations with Pearson education. And they bought us quite a significant chunk of the business and the studio that we effectively built a game studio that we built. And in 2015, I decided it was time for me to step away from the businesses, the founder and go and do something else. I had in mind that Australia was on the cards for me soon. Because of, yeah. Because of neighbours. When I was at uni, I used to watch it twice a day. Don't underestimate we, usbrets, we absolutely love neighbours. It's one of your best exports, by far. And look what we've got in return. Exactly. Interesting theme here. And let's jump into it at this point. We'll come back to this fantastic story. It's amazing. And I just think about that that coding era. Because how so code I thought was a quite fun, funny one as well in terms of just you were you were doing what everyone subsequently a decade later was saying, oh, we've got to teach kids how to code. It's like you were there back then was kind of absolutely epic. But walking away in that moment, you've just done that now. Tell us what Sean Priest is up to because this is a pretty epic moment. Yeah. So this is week one of my new chapter in all honesty. So far, it's just been filled with World Cup games and this excellent. You should come on England tomorrow. And of course, the soccer is. But I have had an incredible five and a half years working at an incredible I call it an institution, so Carter innovations. If you don't know who the Carter is, go and look it up. It is Australia's home for deep tech. I was really fortunate to be there at a time where it had 20 years in the making. So it was definitely we had 20 years of really figuring out what is the Carter's purpose mission and landed really on this kind of deep tech is the future of Australia's economy. And I met Sally Ann Williams, who was the then CEO, who we both love. And we had a coffee. We had a coffee and she started telling me about secada. It wasn't for an interview or anything, but she sort of the more she started talking about it and telling me what her vision was and she wanted to grow it. And she felt that there was an opportunity for it to be more than just one physical space in, in heavily, but it could be a national platform and really the voice for deep tech. The more she talked in the end of it, she was like, why don't you come and do this with me. And at the time I was starting to think about what my next thing was and I'd been working in tech in digital tech for a really long time. And a stint adventure as well. And stint adventure. And I'd started to become a little bit jaded by tech for no other reason than just making money. And that's absolutely fine. And I think it's great. Go and build SaaS businesses and digital products. But sometimes you read 2000 pictures and they've got this really bold mission statement about changing the world. But really it's like, no, it's just a business model innovation. And so I started to ask myself, how do you mix commercial viability with technology, but it then can have a positive impact in the world. And it turns out that's deep tech. And that's what's the carder's mission was to support those companies. And so I went to work there and I finished up last week after five and a half years. And in my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined the growth, the opportunities, the things that we got to do, the incredible founders that I've met. I mean, you know quite a lot of them. But through the incubators, through tech 23, I have got to meet like some of the most smartest, most talented, most driven and interesting people. And I got to do that every single day. And that was really, really great. But I also started to feel that there was something in me calling me and I sort of, and there's some things at the back of my mind that are starting to bubble up that I need to tune into. And I'm an all on nothing kind of person. And so I felt that being in a full time role immersed in secada, I couldn't sort of create the space to be able to think about those. So I've made the decision to leave and sort of back my own intuition, if you will, that there's something else out there that sort of needs me or is calling me. So I want to drill down into this for a minute, because it is very brave to step out the front door without having a destination in mind. Most of us, you know, we've got the job. And maybe someone comes along and poaches the soul, we, you know, get pissed off with the workplace we're in and start looking somewhere else and then hand in our resignation as we've nailed the next job. Tell me about the mindset, because I love the bravery of this. Are you saying, how to great run? Really good time. There is this sense that there's something else out there. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm just going to go and see what I can find. How do you do that? I don't think I would have done it 10 years ago. So I think some of that comes with age and experience. I honestly think losing my job a few times when I was younger, sort of trained me to be like, it does work itself out in the end. So I feel that not working is not, or having to search for something is not as scary as maybe it is for people who've never experienced that. So that having the rug ripped from underneath you and you're in your role, a lot of the time, you know, expecting it. So it builds up a sort of a resilience, if you will. But I'm also really cognizant now of where I spend my time. I really want to do work. That is very drawn to new when building things. You can probably tell a little bit in my career, when things are emerging is when I find it most exciting. We'll talk about being in mobile and then in the ed tech world and going into deep tech. I really like being in there when it's all a bit messy and the industry is emerging or that an organization is emerging and looking at a floor full of Lego bricks and figuring out what we're going to build. I love that. Yeah. Like that's what gets my rocks off. And then how to split the veggies in exactly and then how to split the veggies in. So for me, in a great way, so Carter is in just such a great position now. It's got incredible leadership. It's had so many phenomenal runs on the board. It's got a really great team and such a great track record that a little bit of me goes, it doesn't need me anymore. And I'm ready to sort of see what's the next thing, you know, what's the new deep tech for me. And this is, I don't know what that answer is yet, but that's why I'm giving myself the time to figure it out. It's one of those things that I say to people, the best thing you can do as a leader is to make yourself redundant. And you seem to have achieved that. Of course, as we sit here today, the news is out of the new tech 23 cohort. We had Liza Moon who is now CEO of Secarta on the show a couple of weeks ago. It's great to see the incredible companies that you've selected. This is very much your baby. You've helped strive this along with Rachel after Secarta decided to revive it, finally a couple years break. How's it going to be to sort of sit there in the audience rather than spend all day on stage making it happen? I mean, relaxing would be the starting point, but it will be weird, but I'm really excited to sit there and cheer on the team and the founders and they're incredible because I help review them all and they always are. And always what 2300 this year? 236 applications, I think it was, which is absolutely smashed the record. I think it's a 56% increase for deep tech. Yeah. And can confirm their deep tech. Yeah. And it was really, really challenging. We probably had three companies that could have taken every spot. Yeah. And to me, that and we were seeing companies. Text 230 has a nice, very long day. It would be a week long event. Yes. It will be strange to be there, but it'll be exciting. Like I said, to cheer on the team. I always think that Rachel Slattery is the founder of Tech 23. She always says that Tech 23 was her baby and we took it over and we made it sort of the teenager that left the home and helped it grow up and spread its wings. And I think that's such a lovely analogy. So, you know, I think these ecosystem events like Tech 23, ultimately, they're not really about the person that orchestrates it is to me. It was always a love letter to the deep tech ecosystem. It was always about celebrating the boldness of our sector, the ambition within it, the, yes, there's complex technology, but there's also really incredibly smart people who are in my opinion, sometimes world industry leaders in their field. And that's not going away. And the team will continue, it will evolve as the ecosystem does. And I'm really excited to see, maybe Tech 23 does become Tech 2236. I think it's possible. It's month long Tech 23. Yeah, let's do it. But yeah, I'm excited for to see that event continue to evolve. I think again, it's important to know that you don't own, I don't think anything when I think about running events, it's about not about ownership, but it's about creating the, creating the atmosphere for the community that you're trying to serve to come together. I almost think of it as like, I think a great event producer is like a DJ. So you are there. So you're just putting the bangers together one after the other? Well, you can just play bangers, but you might, you know, you have to, you have to build the dance floor, right? Yeah. So you have to set the vibe, you have to play the music, but ultimately, you're creating a space for people to decide how they want to engage with it. So you might have people at the front who are absolutely dancing their hearts out, but there might be people at the bar that are just having a DNM. I think the way we gather and events is changing a bit. I think, gone are the days of the, or I think we're going to see less of panels and one fireside chat where there's basically a couple of voices in the room that are the perceived experts. I think people want to gather now and participate in a more of a collective conversation. And so that's what I've always tried to do with things like tech 23 is, yes, there might be some onstage moments, but let's make sure there's plenty of time for people to talk afterwards and connect with one another because, you know, we're spending more and more time online. The answers to most of our questions are promped away now. So I think events that are just pure knowledge sharing have less relevance. And I think, it's also the classroom thing versus the collaboration aspect and so what you're talking about because I saw that a great summit. Yes, we spend the morning with panels and discussions and presentations, but in the afternoon, we have a session called the round tables, which was 90 minutes of, you know, a dozen people sitting around the table around a specific theme having these conversations. And everyone said that's where they got the most value because it was founded, a founder employed, a employee, remember, in the room together at a table, sharing what they, how they saw problems and how to look at problems and tackle them, which, you know, again, blew me away that that was the bit that everyone came away invigorated. They formed WhatsApp groups off the back of those conversations and stay in touch with with each other. It's fantastic. And that's great because I think as well, events and being that producer of the event is creating that setting and that permission for things like, you know, it's okay to, it's good to collaborate. It's great to ask questions of one another because that is what will ultimately, if you'd set up that WhatsApp group afterwards, no one's going to engage in it. But the fact that they set it up, that's true community in my mind. And that's that piece around, how do you give people, breakdown barriers really quickly, have people feel like a really easy way to participate. And it's probably, you don't realise it, but you've probably created a whole bunch of conditions that helped people to be able to participate. I think it's like, it's why we always have a better time at a fancy dress party, right? Because everyone's got permission to be silly and a little bit kind of in character and things. I think a lot about when you're creating an event is around what are the permission structures that you're giving people so that they know the rules of engagement and they can then play into those roles. And I think sometimes we don't, we're not explicit around those things. And I think that's another thing that if you're doing good eventing, you need to tell people what's my role in this event, rather than just sitting back and consuming, you know, just being an audience member. I think of it in terms of gardening, I suppose, rather than sort of planting a specific seed in a big monoculture and harvesting that at the end, it's more about the weeding and the composting and then seeing what grows as a result and finds its way naturally through that world. I love that. There you go. You can use that one. I would. I want to say because I remember early conversations when you and Sally Ann were just putting tech 23 together, you were slipping the veggies in then because the thing was you built it around thematics, you wanted meaning and purpose and a bigger picture in terms of how it all came together. Talk a little bit about that aspect of finding purpose and meaning and what you are building. Well, I think when we took over tech 23, it's the original format was the 23 companies on stage, the five minute pitch. I think we all kind of know that and the companies were generally segmented into, you know, ag tech robotics, the obvious sort of either technology or industry streams. And quite honestly, the first way I always approach an event is do I want to be at that event and no offense to that old format, but I think it didn't serve the ecosystem as much anymore. And I have a real big passion around I think you need to take the audience on an intellectual and emotional journey. And I don't think a five minute pitch rarely does that. That's a bag of chips. Yeah. So we wanted to think around how could we organize the companies and the founders in more sort of what we called systems not silos was the original concept. Because I think also deep tech by its nature is often a platform technology. It's often it could cut a crate. Yes, you might have the first use case here in infrastructure, but it's actually usable over here in energy transition. And so I sort of wanted to show also that breadth of deep tech that it's applicable in multiple areas, but also that one technology doesn't have the answer to everything and to fix if we were to think about the systems of the future, whether that's the way we build cities, whether that's how we care for an aging population, it's not going to be one thing. It's going to be a whole collection of technologies that we're going to have to work through. And so that was how that was the sort of ideas of thinking in systems and also forcing the founders on stage to not turn up with their, you know, dust off the pitch deck and give us the usual for tech specs, forcing them to be storytellers. And forcing them to connect their what they were doing into something that might be even larger than their mission or vision. Because I think that's how we actually get everybody excited about technology. And then the other big thing for me was it was really important to bring in voices that are not tech voices. Because I think we have a danger of thinking that we're the only ones with the answers, but I always am so inspired by people working in the arts or the cultural space or advertising or I'm trying to think who else we had architecture. I'm your always remember. Wonderful Indigenous man from WA and a great storyteller. A great storyteller. I remember we had Angelie Couchison who is the curator for Innovation for the Powerhouse Museum. And it was just so great for her to talk about what does it take for innovation and tech to end up in a museum. And I just really love that concept of imagining a founder right now and you might be making something that could be in an Australian museum in 50, 60 years time because it was so culturally relevant. I think that stuff is really cool. So that's how I like to think about it as well as getting out of our own tech bubble sometimes and recognising that there are inspiration and voices in other pockets of our economy and our society that we can pull from and I'd really love to see events that try and marry that intersection more where we are getting a little bit more of that kind of colliding of worlds more. In that context, what's your advice to founders about the story that they tell because I often say that everyone talks about the engine in the Ferrari rather than the fact that it's a Ferrari. And not everyone's into engines. They like the idea of Ferrari's and they like the idea of how it makes them feel but the tech specs are not the bit that turns them on. Some people yeah absolutely. A few things. One, I agree with you 100% the tech is rather the thing that's interesting. It's usually how does this benefit me. But I think with deep tech in particular, get really good at explaining the problem and explaining the problem in multi-dimensions. A lot of the time deep tech founders explain a technical problem and there's my technical answer. But the truth is if you're looking at a problem in healthcare for instance, that problem is going to be patient problem, health system problem, clinician problem potentially, government cost problem. So sometimes being able to step out the problem in multiple dimensions because I think a lot of the time, you're diagnosing something that people don't even know is a problem in the first place. And so I see founders assumption that everybody knows that this is a problem and this happens even if you're speaking to someone in an industry that you're trying to sell into. This assumed knowledge that it's a problem for them. And I think founders need to spend much more time on problem definition and then real storytelling around that problem space because that's where people start to care. And I think that's the big thing is if people don't care, it's that classic thing of eyes glaze over, you know, I always say if you're at a networking event and you know when someone hasn't nailed it because people's eyes glaze over and they be aligned for the bathroom or the bar. Yeah, all looking at the shoulder to see if there's someone already testing. Exactly. So I think that one. And then I think as well, the great founder story tellers tell a story that has some jeopardy in it, you know, it's a classic trope of, you know, the time I see the yard exactly. But also at the end of them talking, there is this feeling of momentum in the story. It's not just that they've got to the end and now we're looking for this amount of money. I was like, this is feeling the great founders feel like the train is leaving the station. Like they're going to do this with or without you is how I like to think of it. And so how do you create that sense of like you're really going somewhere momentum? A lot of it can even be as simple as it's actually in delivery. I wish more people would practice public speaking. I always tell founders write your script out before you even put your slides together and then record yourself and practice in the mirror. It's a real art form and you don't learn it unless you practice it. But those are probably two of my big ones, I would say. Absolutely fantastic and bang on because it is that sense of come and join me on this boat. This adventure, there will be dragons, there will be storms. But when we get to the promised land, you're going to have an experience like no other is and that's storytelling. As I go back and I've spoken to deep tech founders and talked about the Epic of Gilgamesh and say you have to find your Epic of Gilgamesh, which was the original adventure story that framed everything from the Bible onwards. Yeah. And also don't be afraid to say what you're learning along the way. I actually always love that in a founders, you know, when I talk to a founder, that my sequence building out loud. Yeah. Don't be afraid to sort of say we were we went down this path and we learned through that process that that wasn't it. And there we are now like don't skirt over the journey as well because to me that's a that's a signal that you are adaptable. and you're learning along the way, I don't think anyone is expecting you to know the perfect, have the fully fledged answer, that's not why you become a founder. Your job is to be able to answer the millions of questions that come up along the way and, you know, change course when it's the right thing to do. So don't be afraid to sort of, yeah, build out loud, share what you've learned. I think that shows a level of humility and that kind of culture will learn it, found a mentality. In that context, what would your advice be on vulnerability as a founder? Because going back to the UK, Australia, the US, there is an invincibility in most presentations in the US that is nothing like our cultures. So how do you balance that sense of yeah, I don't have all the answers, but I'm working on it and, and, and bringing that humility and vulnerability to it rather than I'm going to knock this out of the park and you better get out of my way, otherwise the ball's going to go straight through your head. I think that's a really tough one and I do think it comes down to bit of personality as well. And what you don't want to be is just all vulnerability and no sort of conviction and ambition. I think having a really clear ambitious north star and being confident around that really helps because it just focuses everybody, including yourself. And even if, but then being vulnerable about no, recognizing that you might not know the answers along the way, that to me is how I would look at it. But I recognize that being vulnerable, I think there's an element of it depends on what your personality is as well. And so yeah, I don't love giving founders a ton of advice because I genuinely believe founders are the most instinctively know themselves and what their business need. So I would say like what ultimately your story should be the story that you feel comfortable enough to tell, not too comfortable. You should push yourself a little bit. But yeah, I would say it's a little bit down to personality, but be bold and confident around the mission, but maybe be more open and flexible and vulnerable about knowing that you might not have all the answers figured out of how to get there. I think that is excellent advice. Tell me in your experience, having going back to your time working venture when you first came to Australia a decade ago, and of course the last five years at secarta, what have you learnt from founders? What's the thing that they've taught you that surprised you that you thought you kind of had figured out when you were a founder back in the 2000s and reshaped your thinking and approach? I mean, I think most of them are way more sophisticated and better than I was founded, if I'm really honest. Well, we all grow and develop. I think founders now are a lot better at clearer around where they spend their time. I think it's very easy, especially when you have that first little bits of traction and things are starting to go your way that you can get pulled in many, many, many directions very quickly. I've noticed now I think founders are a lot more execution focused, and that's something I've seen change in the last few years. I know for me, I got excited, you know, that oh, there's this thing, this partner wants to talk about this over here and this over here. I found a lot of that quite, like people competing with your time and that sort of stuff. I think founders are a lot more strict around where they spend their time, which I think is a good thing because ultimately it's their most precious resource that they have. What else? I think the really great founders figure out a way to do it anyway. We can talk about the government pulling away funding, whether there's enough venture capital that's been the pervasive discussion that we're constantly having, but the really great founders just by hook or crook kind of make it happen. That's not everybody. Maybe the other one, which I think is a really promising sign, is probably more, I think there are more ways to be a startup founder now, and they're not necessarily the, you know, super high growth unicorn status business. I think there's a lot of great businesses in Australia startups that will become more like enduring medium-sized businesses. Maybe they'll bootstrap, maybe they'll be revenue generating from the bat, but I think it's great for to have more options of what it is to be a founder because truth is not probably being a high growth global company isn't for everybody, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be part of the culture and celebrated as being a startup founder. I think that's something I'd love just to celebrate. More of is the different shapes and sizes of being a startup founder as well. 100%. It's like everyone talks about moonshots, but low earth orbit has its place in this game of things as well. A slow moving tanker is also super valuable as a rocket ship. So I think there is, and the truth is Australia has a predominantly small business economy anyway. Like we are by very nature an entrepreneurial economy because it's mostly people with small businesses. Now of course we want to see those big hit it out the park, global tech businesses and that we've got plenty to show for that, but I think that's that Olympics mindset we want to be with the Guard Medal against the world. Exactly, but I also think being able to celebrate, and I hope we find more ways to fund and support those types of businesses because that's where perhaps traditional venture will pass them over, but how else can we find ways to support people who want to build a business like I said that maybe isn't going to be that 100x return, but guess what? It's going to make great products, make customers really happy, hopefully have a positive impact on the world in some way. That to me I think is something that we should celebrate more often as celebrate more of those types of founders as well. I'm going to ask you this because I was talking to a friend in the UK system last night and they've just gone over to America and to the UK thinking that they were going to leave Australia and have come back with a big year now of that experience. So what's your message to founders here who right now in the wake of the budget seem a little bit unsettled thinking, okay, I can do anything anywhere I want. What would you say to them about Australia and the opportunity? Yeah. So I think the reality is it's hard harder to build a tech business, a global tech business from Australia and it always has been. I think if you truly, if that's all you want to do, then go and be in the biggest market in the world. That is the US or in Europe. But I think the truth is is that people want to build a business here because they love the culture and the lifestyle as well. And we now have enough sort of proof points to show that it is possible to do it here. Look, the UK and the US are in strange like political environments and yes bigger markets, but might come at the cost of a lower quality of life. I think in the next decade Australia will continue to be a great place to build a business. I think given what I've seen in the last few years of particularly interest from Asia, looking to Australia for technology and for products, they know that we can build great teams. Guess what? We can do it usually at a fraction of the price of other places, maybe not all of Asia for manufacturing, but compared to the US. You can build a pretty phenomenal company on quite a shoestring budget. Which is what the side stage ventures report out a couple of weeks ago pointed out. We deliver massive value for money for investors. And I do think that is something that as a team Australian sort of message to the world, I think we do need to be starting to say that, you know, not that we're the bargain basement, but we can do a lot with very little resources. Imagine what we could do with just a bit more. I think you will see that. So I think Australia is still a great place to build a business. I think we have a founder class that is there's a lot of places to look for inspiration now. And I think you will see, I mean, I'm starting to see a lot of people who have had successful careers in tech businesses and in other startups who are either starting their own or going back into, you know, other businesses we've seen. I've seen a lot of people that maybe have been in a more of like a SaaS business. I want to do something with a bit more. kind of meaning and purpose. So I think that fly we all affect is happening. So I still, I'm still very positive on building a business in Australia. Yeah. - I'm gonna finish with this. Free agent, you know, the Michael Jordan of Deep Tech. All right, who should I say? - Lebron. - Alissa Healey. - I'm actually a big MBA fan. So we'll go with Lebron because he's a free agent. So you're the Lebron of startups. What's your, where's your heart thinking at this point in time? If I was watching this and I'm thinking, China's pretty impressive. What would the conversation look like? Your perfect conversation in terms of, I want you to come and work with me. - Woo, you're putting me on the spot there. - Yeah, I'm doing the job interview without a job. I'd want you to come to me with a bit of a gnarly problem, I reckon, where we could have a really good robust conversation around how you might fix that and how you might fix it in a maybe non-obvious, conventional way. Some of the things I'm thinking about is what does creativity at work look like when everyone is just using AI and everything feels a bit flat and boring and lots of hot takes written through the GPT. - Now, how does your hot takes right, Vera? - And I-- - Ticket takes, I would say. - I always think about creativity is such a trial and error process. And so a big thing I'm thinking about is how do people feel creative in their jobs when there is this really powerful tool that can kind of almost suck a lot of that out from you? So that's one thing I'm thinking about. So, and I want to learn how to, we've got to be using AI better than we are. And I'm not talking about the people who are at the cutting edge of the technology, but it's for the average worker, people that want to still do good work. So work doesn't just become, I don't know, very boring for people 'cause I'm hearing that a lot of people saying like my job is now quite boring because I'm basically like a prompt master. And then I'm also thinking about what does the next decade look like for us on a PCO system? We are what probably entering into the, what's really, it's sort of 2010s, was that when it sort of really the, what we now refer to it as, what does it look like for the next decade? There is a lot, there isn't as much obvious infrastructure around as there was a few years ago. Right now, government has signaled that it's not a priority area. - I counted the field completely. - So what can we learn from other places? I'm thinking about the arts community. I mean, I think about this, if you think it's hard being a startup founder in Australia, imagine being an independent artist. However, as an industry, they've managed to sort of create a funding matrix for it. So government funds the big important cultural work. - Less and less, I have to say. - Less and less, I agree. But audience pays for the experiences, the philanthropy. And I wonder, you know, is there a model that we could look at as startup infrastructure of like people who've benefited from that infrastructure and that ecosystem over the years? Is there a model there? But these are just some of my early musings. So I'd love someone to come and talk to me about that 'cause these are some of the things that I'm new to link at the moment. - Well, Sean, I can't wait to see and hear what you're doing next. Thank you so much for joining us on Startup360 today. If you do want to talk with her, get in touch with me, or you can find her on LinkedIn and slide into her DMs. Not to get confused with the DMs that our fabulous Matt Jackson producer of Startup360 wears our G-looks, Matt, doesn't he? - He looks great, those are great shoes. - Yeah, his DMs. But that is the show for today. This, of course, is a SmartCode Media production produced and edited by the man N-D-M's Matt Jackson. Thanks to L.R. to James and to Deal for their support. Subscribe to the show on Apple Spotify and of course you can watch it on YouTube and don't forget to have a look at Startup Daily.net for all the latest news, including everyone in the tech 23 K-Hort coming up in a month or so. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye for now.