#82 Michael Batko - CEO of Startmate

In this episode, I interview Michael Batko - CEO of Startmate. Startmate is one of Australia’s largest startup accelerator programs. Over the past decade, Michael has grown Startmate to have invested in and supported 250+ startups, with a collective portfolio value of over $3.5 billion.

Michael talks about the how Startmate has grown since 2011 when Niki Scevak founder of Blackbird Ventures and a several successful founders including Mike and Scott from Atlassian first set out to invest in the next generation of early stage founders and started building a community of successful founders to support them.

He also discussed what separates founders that make it into the program and why relentless ambition is one of the key traits they look for.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Highlight Clip
• 0:48 Introduction
• 2:20 Guest Introduction and Company Background
• 5:50 What are the Traits that the Top Founders Have?
• 9:36 How Have Founders and Startups Changed Over the Past 5 Years?zzzzzzzz
• 15:14 The Impact of Strong Mentors and the Startmate Alumni
• 19:23 What Makes a Great Mentor? Are Great Founders Always Great Mentors?
• 21:42 How Important is Domain Experience for a Founder to Have?
• 23:45 Michael Batko's Strengths and What He Brings to Startmate
• 26:32 Where is Startmate Going Into the Future?
• 36:04 Michael Batko's Weaknesses and How He Overcomes Them
• 38:27 The Best Advice Michael Batko has Been Given Along his Journey
• 42:30 Michael Batko's Business Inspirations
• 45:27 What's Next for Startmate?
• 46:20 Outtro

Transcript

0:00

We get 1,200 applications every year and we invest in 30 of them. So the top 2% essentially. it's super hard, but the traits that we always look for is essentially the founder obsess. Because so often people think like it's the idea that will count. When you invest so early on in a company, the idea will change like that company will be around for 10, 15 years. And the idea and the way you solve the problem will change every year, pretty much. But what doesn't change is the customer obsession of the founder. And that's what we look for If a founder absolutely is obsessed with a problem that the customer has, they will stop at nothing to make that happen. And as I mentioned, like a solution, will keep changing it. That's actually a necessary part. But they will run through walls to make the problem go away for their customers. Welcome to the Dion Guagliardo Podcast, where I interview business people who run or have sold businesses worth a few million dollars all the way through to billions of dollars. While most of my time is spent to managing investment portfolios for people after they've had a successful exit. I've always been fascinated by the entire process and hearing the insights that successful entrepreneurs and business people have learned along their. At Fortress Family Office, we're an investment portfolio manager and we manage portfolios for high net worth families. If you'd like to know more about not only the way we approach investment markets by our philosophy on life and business, feel free to subscribe to my weekly insights note. Go to www.fortressfamilyoffice.com and hit subscribe. In this episode, I interview Michael Batko, CEO of Startmate. Startmate is one of Australia's largest startup accelerator programs. Over the past decade, Michael has grown Startmate to have invested in and supported over 250 startups with a collective portfolio value of over 3. 5 billion. Michael talks about how StartMate has grown since 2011 when Nikki and several successful founders including Mike and Scott from Atlassian first set out to invest in the next generation of early stage founders and started building a community of successful founders to support them. He also discusses what separates the founders that make it into the program and why relentless ambition is one of the key traits they look for. If you enjoy this episode, feel free to leave a five star review and share with family and friends. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. Just tell us a little bit about Startmate first and how you came to be part of this, organization. Yeah, sure. I, had just worked with, in two startups and quit my job and wanted to work with 50 companies instead of one company. I pulled up a list of every single accelerator in the world. I emailed around 200 organizations in Singapore, San Francisco, Tel Aviv. and didn't get any replies, from like 150 emails. I think I got only 20 replies maybe like 10 interviews out of those. And, actually the little known story was that, back then I interviewed for the head of operations role at Blackbird. And then Nicky and I had an interview, and, after the interview, I told Nicky, Hey, this role is not for me. And then he was like, Oh, but we actually have a head of operations role coming up at Startmate. And, um, this is how I got my, job at Startmate. Okay. And what was it when you go back a step further in terms of your businesses and what you were doing? Most interesting. What was your entrepreneurial background? Yeah. And I come from, probably a basic business background. So I started my career at American Express, so I did PwC, I did KPMG, actually. And then 11 years ago, I moved to Australia and I really wanted to work in a bar and I posted on the Facebook group, Hey, who's got a job for me? I like anything works part time, full time, like I'm on a work and travel visa. And as serendipity had it, I joined my first ever startup. And this was kind of my entrepreneurial journey. Like essentially I was filling in for somebody in parental leave. And it was called Madpaws, a marketplace for pencillers. And that's kind of like where my first love for startups kind of like, just ignited. Because it was one of those jobs where like, your brain just doesn't shut off. Like you literally come home, you're still thinking about it. You're under the shower, you're still thinking about business problems. And that was when I was like, I was hooked on startups. Because you always, you know, solving your customers problems. Yeah, okay. And then, fast forward, you're with Startmate. Now just tell us a little bit about what Startmate does for the listeners. Yeah, sure. So we call ourselves the absent of startup ambition. And we essentially, invest in 30 new companies every single year. We back people with ideas, who are very ambitious, very, very early on, often pre revenue pre product. but outside of that, we also help about a thousand people get into startups every single year. So if anybody's looking for a startup job, we, we help you transition. on the third spectrum, we also help new angel investors break into the investing space and startups as well. And as far as the sort of scale of Startmate, what does that look like? Yeah. we've now existed since 2010. So 13, 14 years now we've invested in over 250 companies worth over three and a half billion dollars. and we've helped a couple of thousand people join startups now. And, outside of that, maybe like we raised roughly 6 million in funds every year that we invest in startups as well. So we write roughly 50 checks into startups every year, which makes us the most active seed stage investor in the country as well. Sort of some examples of the companies that people might know of that have come through that program. Yeah, sure. so, our two largest, alumni are actually in the cyber security space. They're called UpGuard and BackGround. And we invested in those companies, um, and it was literally just one person, um, at a half a million dollar valuation. And those companies are now worth almost 500 million. Yeah, right. and you must get hundreds of applications every year, if not more, what are the key traits you're looking for in founders or that make a successful founder? Yeah. so we do get 1,200 applications every year and we invest in, in 30 of them. So it's like, like the top 2% essentially. it's super hard, but the traits that we always look for is essentially founders, the founder obsess. Because so often people think like it's the idea that will count. When you invest so early on in a company, the idea will change like that company will be around for 10, 15 years. And the idea will, and that's the way you solve the problem will change every year, pretty much. but what doesn't change is the customer obsession of the founder. And that's what we look for the customer obsession. If a founder absolutely is obsessed with a problem that the customer has, they will stop at nothing to make that happen. And as I mentioned, like a solution, will keep changing it. That's actually a necessary part. But But they will run through walls to make the problem go away for their customers. Are there any founders that, You've met over the years that you've realized straight away that they had those traits that you're looking for, that they were going to be successful. Yeah, sure. honestly, like, it's funny cause in hindsight, it's like, it's easy to say that, but at the time it's so much harder when you meet the founder for the first time and you, and you're trying to, to tease that out of them. two founders who you had actually on this podcast before, and that just popped into my mind, uh, Alex and Chris from Mindset Health Mindset Health. Um, those are awesome. They actually joined Startmate, I still remember this was actually my first year at Startbit as well in 2018. They had just built an app for their girlfriends to swap dresses. That was actually the first app that they've built. Yep. they just cancelled that app though and said, essentially rocked up to Startbit and said, we're going to build an app, for, hypnosis. they were just so obsessed with the problem. They would come to all the Startbit events, they would stand and they would even get into our Startbit events without a ticket. And I still remember us as a start up team referring to them as the hypnosis brothers and like, they're here again. it was like their obsession with like, just making the problem go away for the customers, which was in that case, um, Durant and IBS. And it was just absolutely incredible because you knew that they're just not going to stop at anything to make that happen. Now you guys talk about, ambition as being a big part of what founders, need to have as part of their makeup. And what you're looking for presumably personal ambition, but also ambition for the company and their goals are aspiring to why is that specifically such a big part of. What you guys value, Yeah, sure. because, types of outcomes that we look for, in venture capital need to be massive outcomes. there is nothing wrong with having a bootstrap business or a lifestyle business. There can be incredible million dollar revenue businesses every single year, but the types of outcomes that we look for in venture capital is we essentially invest 120, 000 in a one and a half million dollar valuation. but in order to make out the fund returns that we look for, like you, you need to have a hundred or 500 million company or a billion dollar company. And the only way to do that is if you have really grand ambitions, like, which is also often your driver, by the way, to make that even happen, because otherwise you will be running through like against so many obstacles. And if you don't have that kind of drive. You will give up. one of the best quotes that I've heard is being a founder is like chewing glass with a smile on your face because you still like love the challenge and the problem. But other people would just give up and be like, it's not a pleasant thing to just chew and on glass. Right. you know, and that's kind of like the, what the ambition kind of like gives you. what about the founders that you see now compared to, going back five years ago or more, what's changed, anything, in terms of the types of businesses, the types of founders. Yeah. probably like two things. one is kind of the areas that we see, like, for example, back in the day, 2010 to 2016, 17, it was predominantly software businesses in Australia, 2016, 17 onwards, like way more hardware businesses came online. And then you had the whole kind of crypto, or like emergence in 2020, 2021, now kind of, stop pretty much. And now you've got the whole emergence of AI startups and it's just, so you definitely see those things throughout the market and we've seen them over the last 13, 14 years as well, but actually way more exciting and change over the last five years, 10 years actually has been how much cheaper and easier it is To start a company that has ever been before. you can, this, no, we take this as granted, but they can just spin up a website in 10 minutes. You can just, get it online. You can have beautiful, effects in there. You can have built an entire infrastructure without ever. a single line of code yourself. Like those are types of things which just like never existed before. Even in the hardware space, you can freely print your prototype. You can iterate your hardware product way faster than you ever could. and that is actually really exciting to me because it's cheaper to get started and you can iterate way, way faster. Get feedback from customers and come to a better outcome. And what does that mean in terms of iteration and working out whether this works or doesn't work? You're getting to find out quicker. You don't spend a year or two years trying to sort of get something to market. You can know within a month or a week or whatever it might be, depending on sort of how you test it. Is that the idea? Yeah, totally. I mean, the thing is, like, everybody gets it wrong. Like, this is what I meant with, like, the solution is never the right solution when people pitch them to us. Like, there is no such thing as somebody releases a product and then they just, like, it's, there's a classic quote here, like, build it and they will come. And that just never happens. You just don't build something and then that all your customers come It's very much the other way, which is like you build something small You get it out there and you get the feedback and you make that small thing into something bigger and better And you just keep it treading and those feedback cycles are absolutely crucial to actually get into a product that your customers love Has there ever been anybody that's sort of come in and they've got an idea of what they want to do and they have just stuck to that and it's worked out how they saw it, or it's just every single time, there's iteration change, obviously, there's iteration change, whereas there someone that's coming with a vision or, mindset and they've, they've been right on the money. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of like the interesting one here, like, what you said there is actually right, which is the vision and the mindset, or like the vision itself doesn't actually change. And that's a beautiful thing. If you meet a founder, they have this grand vision, the grand ambition. Which is a huge, huge goal that actually often doesn't change because they're striving for something and that often is essentially like solving the customer's problem, but the way they get there, that's the part which changes. So like absolutely like our founders who actually they almost like have a window into the future, but the way they get to that, that actually changes along the way. Yeah. Any examples of of companies or founders that you, that come to mind when you, when you. Yeah. The first one which comes to mind is, a swoop arrow. Swoop arrow is, is a company which delivers life saving medication via drones. they essentially have this vision of like, everybody should be able to get, um, life saving medication anywhere in the world, it does as remote as it can be. And without essentially human and pilot, and there's been so many hiccups along the way, cause it's like such a hard thing of Yeah. autonomous drones, like building them yourself could be new technology, getting them into the most remote areas in the entire world into countries, which are often, developing countries themselves with like no money and so on. So like you can imagine the pathway to commercialize that is so hard the pathway to Yeah. hard But then vision just never changed. Yeah. Okay. and in terms of founders, I mean, you see the founders when they're sort of at that point where they're ready to start a company, what do you find or have you looked into the backgrounds of founders and where do they come from? I mean, I, I imagine that's very different, but I'd be interested to know what you guys have found from that perspective. Yeah, There's actually not much in common and there's one thing in common and not much in common Is the part of like they come from all walks of life. There is no such stereotype Where it's like they are all kind of university dropouts or they there's often the other actually side of the picture where like the average age of a founder is 40 or 42 I think some people say Right. had a career and you actually have so much knowledge that you then build a company on that but that's what I mean there's actually not necessarily like an archetype itself or like there's many archetypes but there's no like commonality across all founders but the one thing that they do have in common is It's almost like they have a chip on their shoulder. They want to prove something to the world. And they want to prove the wrong, the world wrong. Like starting a company is like the hardest thing you can possibly imagine you're starting a company where you go against the incumbents, which are multi billion dollar companies, which have been around for 30 or 50 or a hundred years. And you go against every single industry norm, every single commonly accepted principle. And you say to the world, me in my garage with a hundred thousand dollars, I've got to do something that nobody else has done before. It's like, it is so incredibly hard. And it takes this really specific person who has a lot of confidence. And, but also is able to see that kind of like window into the future to actually make that happen. And talking about going, looking to the future and building business and how hard that is a big part of what you guys have within Startmate is mentors and people who have been there and. Done that. And it's a bit of a, a who's who of sort of Australian tech. do you want to just tell us a little bit about that and how important that is to start, mate? Yeah, absolutely. And so there's two aspects to this one as well. Like, so actually maybe for context here, what we do at Startbait is essentially we invest 120, 000 into, um, those 30 companies a year, and we help them for 12 weeks in particular on the customer side of things, on sales, on marketing, on building your product itself. And since you get you're ready for to usually raise one to 4 million. Our mentors, like I said, are the who's who of kind of like Australian tech and venture. So like, for example, our mentors and investors include Michael Brooks and Scott Parker from Atlassian, or Kate Morris from Adore Beauty, or the CultureM founders, a lot of our alumni. And there's like two parts now to what we, um, expose our founders to, and which is very much the mentors. and the best things about our mentors are they are founders and ex founders who are a couple of steps ahead of you. So those are the types of things that our, our founders can actually learn, which is don't make the same mistakes as other people have done before you. that's no brainer. Like, why would you repeat in this? Some things, which like, I don't know, setting up a CRM system or a marketing system, like this, like there's proven pathways there, you essentially can copy and paste a lot of things that other people have done. other part is way harder though. Like even if you expose yourself to founders and ex founders, because you're inherently making something. happen in the world that nobody's ever done before. So the problem that you often have is all those mentors tell you all those things that worked for them. Yeah. and you're in a completely different industry, you're doing something that is by by definition new. So you can't actually just take the lessons from everybody else. There's always that kind of like, spectrum here of like, how much do you listen to people who have come before you versus how much do you actually need to innovate yourself? Because in the day, if you're going to be successful, you've got to back yourself and work out what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. Make all the tough decisions. But by the same token, to be able to talk to people who have been there and built companies worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, that's a massive opportunity. Massive, massive. And, the other kind of part, which is quite interesting, cause you just said that with a billion dollar companies is actually the best mentors for founder are not even necessarily the founders of billion dollar companies, but actually they're the founders who are two or three steps ahead of you. Cause the Right, the billion dollar companies, they have like three 4, 000 stuff and haven't actually been in a driver's seat for a couple of years. right. who just came ahead of you, which might've raised a series B or C, or they've just hired the hundredth person and you're a team of like 20 people, that's actually where the real lessons are because they had just gone through those problems. They have to scar tissue just there Mm hmm. to them. And that's the best kind of like mental experience that you can have as a founder. Yeah, I saw something when I reading through on I think maybe on the website where you've talked about the founders. Who mentored this, this founder who then mentored that founder and so on it goes, which is a pretty cool sort of, system to have in place right where you've got the, the time that's gone by where you've got people being able to come back in and mentor others after they've been mentored. So this is actually a big part of the start by culture, which two aspects here. Like the first one is paying it forward, like the entire community is literally just build on paying it forward and just giving your time and, and advice to the next kind of generation essentially. And the second one is, is actually the incentive structure. So, um, are very big on, having a skin in the game. So every single mentor is actually required to be an investor in our fund. we raise a new fund every six months. We raise roughly between two to three million dollars every six months. But the key difference is that every single mentor who is in founders expand that they actually have to invest into that fund, which then invests into the founder in that cohort, which then means that those mentors not only are they only a couple of steps ahead of you and give you real advice. they actually really care because the money is on the line and to actually help the next generation of founders as well. What makes a great mentor? I mean, we talk about founders and what makes a great founder, but it's a bit like, you know, not the best players are not always the best coaches. Right. So what makes it a great mentor? Yeah. Oh, and so many, different parts here, but, the first one I would say is, it's probably what makes a bad mentor. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Start there. Yeah. What makes a bad mentor is the person who has all the answers, tells you exactly what to do and like, Hey, this worked for me. It's going to work for you. And that's kind of the anti thesis of a mentor, right? And so what makes a good mentor is actually often the person who says, Hey, I actually don't know the answer, but listen to my experience and maybe you can take something away from it. Or even being able to say, Hey, I don't know, the answer, but here are three other people in my network. Could actually, help you out in the different segments. So often the good mentors don't necessarily tell you and what they actually often never tell you what to do but actually by examples by Almost like case studies by their own experience but often it also just connects you to the network because best thing you can almost do to afford to a founder is actually connect them with customers the end of the day the real answers to the questions will come from the customers. Anyway Yeah. And I guess in some respects, it's a little bit like coaching where, ultimately the, the person who's being coached or is the, the mentee, They probably know a lot of what they need to know. They just need to know, work out how to get to those answers. And maybe it's about asking certain types of questions or whatever. So I imagine some of those mentors who have been in a similar situation, even if it's a different industry, it's hard to find great people. there's ways you can go about asking questions around how to get to the next part of that solution. I, I, I imagine it's more around that developing the questions to ask. Yeah, it's so much like so many people think that you need to have all the answers. But like you said, it's exactly that. know, they, the founder actually knows the reason we invest in those founders is because there is nobody better one, there's nobody who understands that space better than that founder. Cause they are so obsessed with the problem and with the customer. So what a good mentor does is actually exactly that ask great questions for that founder to come to their own answers. cause they, that is the reason why you trusted that founder with your money in the first place. How important is that the, the domain experience? And it might not be domain experience as such because some of these areas are not, not necessarily what they have domain experience, but they are hungry to learn everything about that topic. But they, they gain the, the knowledge that goes with the domain experience. How important is, is either domain experience on one hand or the curiosity and the, the drive to learn everything there is to learn? Oh, great question. the second part that you mentioned is necessary for every founder, that kind of Yeah. and trying to get into like that, that is like a given. And it has to be the case for every single founder. main experience is an interesting one, but like there's definitely some, aspects of some businesses and industries where you absolutely need domain expertise. If you think about actual rocket science or chemical processes and so on, like there's no way around it. Like you actually need the domain experience. it's actually quite an interesting, spectrum here as well of a founder with too much domain experience versus complete naivety. And it's actually the people who have complete domain experience who actually never start companies because they are so ingrained in the system. They're like, I have learned this. I know the answers. It would never work any other way. And they are just stuck in a way. So you actually, as a founder, you need a degree of naivety to be like, Hey, I understand the science, the philosophy behind it, et cetera, but actually do think there is a path forward. So it's, uh, you actually do need to go into it and with a bit of naivety itself. which honestly is also kind of necessary to start a company because, if you knew all about all the challenges you're going to have the next 10 to 15 years, you probably would never start it. yeah, exactly., that's a common theme I hear from people. Right. Whereas if I knew how hard it would've been, I might not have started 10 years ago, 20 years ago, but that's the benefits. You don't know. And then you, you're so far in, you're on your way to success, and you've overcome all the challenges. there's a great quote as well, which was something on the lines of, I didn't start it because, is easy. I started it because I thought it was easy or Okay. That, that's a really good one.. I, I like that a lot. what about in terms of, your strengths in what you bring to. Start mate, and that sort of thing. What do you see those as being? are my personal strengths aren't, very much along this, the lines of, um, stakeholder management communication and, and juggling a lot of balls. Um, and then staff mate, what we do, we have actually expanded our scope where we essentially saw in Australia. in New Zealand, what we are really good at is investing in founders, but actually there's so much more missing outside of that. So you can actually almost see my strength. It's MyStrengths, which is stakeholder management, but also, juggling a lot of balls, very much reflected in the way StartBit has been grown as a company over the last six, seven years. we then essentially expanded beyond the founder into also helping operate us into people who are actually joining startups, but also into the investor space. So essentially, MyStrengths are kind of very much reflected in the way StartBit built all the different programs, because now we run roughly 10 programs twice a year. And we work with roughly 1, 500 people every single year and we're a team of 17 people. So it's like, it's, Yeah, okay. so we're a very productive, efficient team and with excellent communication and great kind of feedback frameworks as well to keep it trading. And bringing in operators, I mean, that was going to be something I wanted to ask about when we're talking about the mentor side of things, where sometimes you want to bring in mentors who might not have been only two steps ahead, but other times, presumably the best mentor for a certain point in time may well be someone in a different type of capacity. is that something that you find as you go along? I assume it probably is. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So like, we've expanded even that a little bit more now like you said, Founders wear so many hats as well that they can be great founders on the kind of the founder journey, but sometimes you do need really specific advice on like, let's call it like a marketing deep dive or go really hard into sales. And at that stage, you actually do need excellent operators. And so we do have other streams now where we're actually. On the one stream, it's kind of like if somebody has led a business unit, um, to success. So it's called the head of sales and has scaled that into X number of revenue or people, et cetera. Then we actually bring them in specifically as coaches or mentors for the founder as well. On the other side, actually a lot of our investors will come for our programs now as well. They actually are investors because they, um, for example, were very successful in what they were doing and now are able to just investing into businesses and often are actually retired as well. And their experiences can be absolutely incredible as well. So you do essentially surround founders with really specific, a specific set of people. What are some of the other things in relation to whether it's startups or companies, and that whole process are missing? You talked about things that you saw identified that are missing and you've obviously put some of those things in place. What other things if you look ahead that, if you had unlimited money, what would you, what would you, put in place not just within the company, but within the ecosystem that you, the gaps? Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So this is very much like a start made roadmap here. the first one and I'll stop right at the top here, which is like, why do we not have more founders and why do we not stop more companies and why don't we have more kind of like, Australian tech companies on the world stage. actually comes back to, to culture, to Australian culture, to Kiwi culture, of what do we actually get exposed to when we're young. So what I would actually love to see is tech and entrepreneurship in literally like. Primary schools, high schools, university, and you actually should be getting exposed all throughout because I think way too often we actually graduate high school or even university to be honest and essentially we're given the pathways of, well, become a banker, a doctor. Or, go into Australian lines or something like that, like it's actually very fixed kind of, pathways, which are slow to change, like, it's very much like given from our parents, etc. So I'd love to see that way more. This is kind of what's missing. so at Startbit we've, for example, now built a student fellowship and the student fellowship has now 500 students cover it every year. where I literally established it because, I'm European, I'm from Austria. And when I was going for uni, I love doing my internships in different companies to just even explore what there is out there. And unfortunately, Australian unis don't have quite the same mindset there yet, just yet. And so essentially at Startmate, we expose students in the winter and summer holidays, just for two weeks in the bootcamp. So they literally choose to spend two weeks with us rather than go on the holidays. to just explore startups and that makes a huge difference because then you finish and graduate uni and suddenly there's a whole new career option of either starting your own company or joining a startup as well. And is that at uni level or high school level? That's, um, so I'm still at uni level and I'm personally, I actually really want to work my way downwards. So like starting at unis and the high schools and further, yeah. Like, I, I, I, I think that's Awesome. And, and clearly missing, uh, within, and it is a, a cultural thing, right. With, within Australia, we don't think that way. We often, want people to have a, a good business, but not too big that type of, you know, we've got a sort of a, um, a different sort of a mindset, but having those types of philosophies, even at primary school, right. Being exposed to stuff because kids are, um, kids are naturally pretty entrepreneurial. So to give them something that actually is. More than just the basics that parents or people might talk about if they're entrepreneurial, but something that gives them, I think that is critical to like the next phase. But obviously that's a generational, um, job to tackle. but that is, I don't, I think you have to overestimate how important that would be for the future of the country. If you could embed that throughout the nation, that type of Thinking, in your mind, is that a tech kind of, program or is it an entrepreneurship program? I actually don't really mind whatever you call it, whatever label you put on there. It's almost like the idea of, empowering people to something from scratch. Whatever Yeah. tech entrepreneurship, but like you can put any kind of label on that It's kind of like rather than having to work for somebody else rather going to pathways What if you actually build something that you're passionate about? But if you actually pursue your own paths like that is what excites me It's almost like that independent thinking and actually the ability of also just standing out like we definitely have the culture of Of a tall poppy syndrome as well. And that's actually a most destructive type, um, of, of culture because anyone who stands out who does something special, you cut them back into like, come back into Yeah. Bridge the norm. Yeah, we're happy for people to be successful, just not too successful, right? That's, And that's sad. Yeah. oh yeah, it's terrible. do you see that type of thing anywhere else in the world in terms of your travels and your experiences with that? Or is it really an Australian type? Um, I'm sure it's, spread throughout the world. but then maybe the best comparison is where does it not have that culture? and I think the polar opposite of that is like, would actually be, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. And because there it's actually celebrated to be one of those 12, 12 puppies, like people genuinely like applaud you for ambition and applaud you for giving it a go. And, and even when you do fail, you actually are celebrated for the lessons that you've learned rather than for the failures that you've had, whereas in Australia, unfortunately, as soon as a startup, raises 10 or 20 or 50 million and then fails, there's a whole, onslaught of, social media or public, PR as well about how, so many millions have been lost on an endeavor, which never would have worked anyway. As if anybody had known it at the beginning, yeah, It's completely closed minded, right? And not one of the people has ever tried anything anyway. yeah, okay. it's very easy to, to criticize things, but it's, it's so much more magical when you can believe in somebody's idea and actually unleashed it. Yeah, I think it's fascinating. I think just as there is like, talk about studies and programs around, entrepreneurship and, and, thinking bigger and those types of things, I'd be really curious to see what's been done around that, the opposite of that, and I haven't done any research or reading on it at all. I'm probably going to go away and do some now around that tall poppy syndrome and actually why that's so embedded. because you almost can't reverse that. Until you understand why and where it really comes from, in some respects, you know, like we can talk about, oh, you can do this, but if people go home and it's great to come into place where you can sort of celebrate that type of thing and understand it. But there's so many pockets of society where. You go back into wherever you, you come from, and that's the mindset. So until you sort of unpack that, I think there's probably, and there's probably lessons to be learned. I don't know what they are, but I've actually, maybe got my own little project to go there. Just a little revert to that, because you can't, I just don't think you can unwind that until you work out why that we got to that point. Does that make sense? A Hanson. Yeah, it's a huge cultural shift. I maybe it's like a different lens here on ambition, which is, which I can add to this conversation as well. It's just a one off. nobody's born with ambition. Nobody just. Pops out and goes like, I'm going to be an ambitious human. ambition is something that, is almost cultivated along the years. It's every single time you get exposed to failure or to success, it's kind of like the question of how am I going to react to that now? And is there success? Is it going to propel me to become more ambitious? Or do I actually stop because they're like, Hey, I've actually reached my limit now or failure. Am I going to fail and then be like, Oh my God, I'm going to do better next time. Or do I react to it being like, Oh my God, this was embarrassing. It was terrible. I'm going to revert back into my shell kind of thing. And it's exactly those micro moments, which then help you become more and more ambitious. And it's this kind of culture that we should all pray being like actually encouraging people to learn those lessons from failures and to think bigger, like, and it's not like this one big thing that happens, but it's a lot of micro moments that we can all actually help other people be, um, Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's really interesting in itself as to the way people react to those things, whether they learn from it and go, okay, I'll work that out next time, or we'll do whatever next time, versus the people who, revert back, or don't get those lessons. that part's where the real problem is. And if you can actually help those people, not even encourage people to be more ambitious, but encourage the ones who recoil, to not recoil so much, just to, and we've got a good mentality there when it comes to having a go, right, as Australians. So that's embedded, that part where people have a go, but then they don't. It doesn't work. There's something there that's missing where they just record and that's that's sometimes an individual thing as well as cultural. I'm not sure where that sits, but it's an interesting topic. That's for sure. You often find with people who are the most successful you go back through their history. There was often moments like you're talking about where they had. whether it was Michael Jordan getting cut from the high school basketball team or Steve Jobs getting thrown out of the role at Apple, the company that he founded. And then that just drives them to their next part of why they want to be great and get to the next level. There's often that hardship and pain, but for every story like that, there's probably a hundred of people who didn't. react that way to a similar situation. And, you've only got to unlock a couple of other people out of that hundred to really create, massive opportunities. You know what I mean? Like that's more interesting to me in some respects than what created the greatness is how do you, you know, Let those people that took a step back become great. Absolutely. I love that. And even if you just change the percentage point to about a couple of percent, I think Yeah, it doesn't have to be huge, right? Yeah. yeah. You've got, changes lives. Yeah. it's not just that individual's life that changes. It's the impact these people have on society is, is outsized, right? In terms of, you know, you've got outliers and outliers. It's, the impact is huge. So that part of it. And that's got to go back to a, primary school level in terms of understanding the psyche of people, because it starts there where they first stop, they get nervous because they get up and tell news and everyone laughed at them. And so they didn't want to ever do it again. And so they recoil, well, they had such and such. And so all these little things formulate where people end up. And if you can unpack some of that along the way, and I know we're going way back, but this is at the core of the issue is then you do unlock those few. Like you say, percentage points difference, but it actually unlocks one new great founder out of the a hundred, you know, or whatever it might be, you know, making the numbers up. Absolutely.\ what, what about things that you weren't as good at that you've had to sort of learn as you've got into this, this role here and seeing the way things work. Yeah. one thing that comes to mind straight away is people management and I think people management, I don't know anyone who doesn't struggle with people management, especially in the beginning. but it is so hard and it's one of those things where like you actually can't I just learned it from books. You can't have people explain it to you. You actually must need to go through the experiences yourself and probably make a bunch of mistakes and get better. The way I personally worked on it is still something I do to this day, which, in my first ever job at American Express, I started in an Excel file or a Google sheet for myself. And every time I observed something that my manager did incredibly well, I brought it down there. And I was like, this is the type of manager I want to be. But also the flip side, which is every time they did something that sucked, I was like, I'm never going to be like that. I don't want to do that. And now because there's four Excel files with like 30, 40 rows where I'm like, this is the types of things I want to be doing and not doing. It's quite interesting how like, again, like your scar tissue forms yourself as a manager, but also like the positive experiences that you have form you Are there any examples that you can think of that, of things that might be on that spreadsheet that are sort of really interesting learnings, positive or negative? Yeah, sure. I give you the two really, really simple ones. it's actually from my first ever job at American Express. So I was an intern, like in a huge organization. I was there for a year, essentially. And, the two things which still stand out to me to this very day was one, I'll start with the positive side. Actually, I had a manager who would always tell me the bigger picture. He would just never give me a task, be like, Hey, you're an intern, just like get this done. It's P and L just fix it. He would always be like, Hey, this P and L fits into this grand, grand scheme. And it fits into American express because of X and Y and Z. And I appreciated it so much being like, okay, now. This thing that's going to be probably really monotone and take me two days. Like actually, I finally understand how it fits into the grander, greater picture. And I love it. And this is actually a practice, which I know, try to embody as well. on the negative side, I had a manager Who would essentially be really grumpy in the mornings and I would come in and she would not even say hello or greet me in the mornings. I was like, Oh my God, like I never want to meet that person. Like make people feel welcome and just be friendly because it makes a world of difference. Yeah. what about the best advice that you've been given along the way? And what advice would you give to founders starting out? the best advice I was given. This is now related to me actually working with founders when I first started at Startmate in 2018. I was so excited. was working with like 15 super ambitious founders and, was like so impressed by them and essentially was like the biggest cheerleader. I was just like, yes, let's go. Like this is going to be awesome. Like I'm going to help you out here and here and here. And after my first cohort that I ran, Nikki, actually Nikki from gave me that feedback, which essentially was you need to learn how to pour cold water. So anybody can be a cheerleader and anybody can just tell you like you're amazing and you're awesome. And so that's actually what's way harder is to be the person who knows when to pour cold water over somebody or to essentially say, Hey, this is not good enough. this is actually not going to work. And even though it will hurt in the moment, it will hurt the person. And it would hurt yourself as well, delivering it. People actually will appreciate you in the longterm for that, because if it is the right advice, you actually, even though your short term relationship might be damaged in the longterm, it actually will be the better solution and people will come around it. And especially with founders who actually have to. have to embrace reality. They will probably be offended and just tell you like, you know, it's absolutely will work, but then again, like a year or two or whatever later, they will actually really appreciate the, no bullshit type of, feedback. Yeah. That makes complete sense. And it sounds like Nicky as well. So yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, But it's critical, right? People want to, people want to know, well not even want to know, they, they need to know the truth. Unvarnished. And raw, whatever it is, and a good founder will work out, that that's the right advice. Or even if it's not, they'll weigh it up and know it was given with the right intent. Exactly. Yeah. And that's, that's why I like trust and relationship building ahead of time is so important. So we do that pretty well at Startmap where we build the trust actually very, very quickly. And we literally do it in 48 hours of meeting a founder. And by the end of the 48 hours, we bring all the founders together. Like people share like the deepest life experiences each other and it's absolutely magical. But what it then allows you to do is actually give the feedback where like, Hey, I care about you. is going to be a hard feedback to hear, but you will be better for it. And that's actually a really good place to be. And what about in terms of advice you would give founders? what's some of the key? Obviously, there's lots of different things, but what's some of the key things that come to mind? religiously, I always come back to customers of, of always talk to the customers like way too many founders start building or they have an assumption and they just go out there and spend way too long, coding or, essentially building something in real life. and talk to customers way too late. Like so many people think they actually need to like create a website before they, before anything else, whereas it's completely like people literally start with company name. I need to come up with my domain, setting up the website, making it pretty, You can really test it super simply it doesn't need any of that. Yeah, exactly. Like, talk to 10 people, ask them what the problems are, and that's your starting point, right? And, but so many people just essentially are like, Oh yeah, if I only had the money to make my idea happen, you don't even need the money. Talk to the people, and they, if they actually truly have the problem, they hopefully will give you the money. Or even just prepay it, or whatever it is. Obviously, I'm simplifying this, to talk to customers, number one, absolutely. which is not the most common thing you would see. I mean, that gets to the real core of the issue though, doesn't it? Because for all the other stuff, if you're not talking to customers, you don't really have a business. If you're not selling something to a customer, that's, I mean, that's, the thing is, well, like we're talking to customers is number one is you figure out what should you be building and you yeah, out who should you be building it for. So what you're doing by, by default is essentially doing product work and doing sales and marketing at the same time. it makes a lot of sense. few quick ones just to finish off, business people that, inspire you. Anyone come to mind? And the first person that comes to mind is actually Seth Seth Godin is an incredible writer. I just love his writing style and the way he builds community. Yep. And a brilliant marketer, right? Absolutely. Yeah. It's a way with words and simplicity, actually. And it's cool, which is just stunning. The way he articulates things is, is spot on. newsletter for probably like eight years, every, and I read it every single week. Yeah. Okay. You know, that's a good one. what about business books? Anything, in particular that you'd recommend or that you really enjoyed? I read a lot. I actually summarize every book I read on my blog. And I've now started about 200 books, business book. there's so many good ones. I just literally read the everything store, but the Amazon story, there's so many awesome ones on That's a, that's an awesome, that's an awesome book. I count that as a top five. Like it's, it's such a good insight. I remember reading it when it first came out and it was such a good insight into the drivers behind that company and why they will win. It really, it's, it's a very good book. Cause that mindset that he shows throughout the book, it's just crazy. It is like unbelievable, but an obsession as well. Like it just shines through. I personally also loved the whole angle of Amazon and how much they screwed up in the early days. And then Yeah. Jeff Bezos essentially put a complete stop on acquisitions. went into like just doing a few, but really well. And even that in itself was fascinating to me. Yeah, no, that's a, that's an awesome book. what about any particular quotes from life or business or anything that, that come to mind? You shared that good one before. I really liked that one around the, I didn't, I didn't think it was, I didn't think it would be, um, I didn't start it because I, um, it's going to be easier started because I thought it was going to easy. Yeah, right. that the one, um, which I actually tell every single, stop it court because I have the pleasure of meeting our founders on day one of this journey with stop it. And then seeing them 12 weeks later. Uh, and it's just absolutely beautiful to me how. After 12 weeks, every single one of those people is just completely different. They have grown by leaps and bounds. So one of the quotes that I tell them, on our first day is today is the worst you will ever be. And I absolutely love that quote because it's so inspirational to me because like, wherever you are right now, You will only ever get better because you improve by one percent, you learn more information and, and that is actually just such a, such a most important that the future is better than what it is, um, what, what the current situation is. Yeah. I love that. That mindset as well. Cause it is a mindset. It's a bit like the, you know, the old karate masters and the black belt, everyone who worked, everyone who's a black belt walked through the, the dojo door the first day, one time as a, as a white belt. Absolutely. It's as simple as that. It doesn't matter who they were. They were once. Where you are now as a white belt, it's a similar type of thing. Yeah. what's next for the business? We're going really deep into, helping women into startups. So we've been doing this already for three, four years. We've helped over a thousand women get into startups or start their own career. So we're doing that now across, helping women into startups, then helping women within startups, and then helping women leaders to create role models as well. So that's actually, a space which we're really passionate about. the other part is we are just about to launch, an initiative for engineers because every single founder always asks us for engineers, but this is kind of what's coming up next, kind of literally in the next three to six months for start date. And in the long term, it's definitely going to be, actually what we talked about earlier, I would love to go early into high schools and primary schools, Yeah. bring that kind of mindset into Australian culture way earlier. Yeah. Awesome. Michael, thanks very much for your time, mate. It's been awesome. Thanks so much. Great questions. Thank you, mate. Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, we would really appreciate if you would leave a five star review and share with family and friends. Thanks.