SPEAKER BIO
Toby oversees the portfolio of ventures in development and in market at X15. He has been at CommBank for 5 years, pushing new innovations, partnerships and features in Digital, including the launch of new ventures like Beemit. Prior to CommBank, Toby led a Fintech ...
Toby Norton-Smith'S RECOMMENDATIONS
Book
I’m a fiction guy, the last one I read “Stalingrad” recently translated by Vasily Grossman. Before that was actually a non-fiction “Let my people so surfing” Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia. What a great story and a great individual!Podcast
I like my history so “In our time” Melvyn Bragg, a nice disconnect from everything else. At the other end of the spectrum and a nice way to try and stay young NPR’s “All songs considered”, its a good way to stay up to date.News Source
The Guardian, and I recently made my first contribution to aid them. It's important to support media!Gadget
App
Coastal Watch, I’m a bit of a weekend warrior when it comes to surfing. Saves me driving an hour for some sloppy surf. Second place would be Nintendo Switch Parental Controls, such slick interface and controls.Favourite Tech CEO / Founder
In the tech space I thought I would go for an Aussie; Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian. The leadership role he plays in the community with conviction and grounded in community.If you could do a TedTalk on anything what would it be on?
I would love to do it about surfing, the truth is it would be about unlocking corporates with potential. How in a new world and ways of working, we can find new ways of working with talented people in corporations and help them find a sense of purpose.February 2020 saw the launch of new venture-building entity X15 Ventures, part of the CBA group.
Ian sat down with Toby Norton-Smith the new Managing Director of X15 Ventures to chat about
launching the initiative and what this will look like in the future.
Toby oversees the portfolio of ventures in development and in market. He’s been at CBA for 5
years, pushing new innovations, partnerships and features in Digital, including the launch of
new ventures like Beemit. Prior to this, Toby led a Fintech business in the wealth management
space.
X15 are looking for entrepreneurs, to present, receive funding and work in a derisk environment,
to scale quicker; with support, guidance and access to the CBA customer base and distribution
networks.
Many of this new team have felt the pain of creating a company. Toby goes into what it was like
to be in the creation team for Beemit; spinning a technology team out of CBA core and how they
were set up off stack to get them away from everyday business and start building in a very
different way. They moved fast and broke things. Toby reveals that when you’ve been through
that pain a few times and you passionately believe that there is more value that you can unlock
for customers this is where an asset like X15 can help you, with their assets they wanted to find
a more repeatable and scalable solution.
Join us on 23 April for a breakfast event which will dive into X15 and answer questions as well
as introduce us to the first founders in X15 Ventures.
On this episode Toby tells us introduces X15, and tells us where this new CBA venture-building entity hopes to go. Settle in, get comfy and have a listen!
