Will superannuation funds continue to back Aussies VCs, the launch of the Governments COVIDSafe app and do we trust them with our data, how Elon Musk wiped $14bn of Tesla’s stock with one tweet, and why founders like Jeff Bezos and RedBubble’s Martin Hoskings stepping back in to take the reins in a crisis.

Jaime Bott is a partner at Sequoia Capital, managing their Talent Advisory function. She leads a talent team of 14 who help Sequoia’s portfolio companies hire amazing talent, assemble a recruiting function, and build a board. Since Jaime started at Sequoia in 2010, talent evolved into an essential function for VC firms. 10 years ago there were less than 5 people in the Bay Area working for venture firms in a talent function; now there are at least 280 venture talent partners around the world.

VC investment activity since Covid-19 hit, including latest Aussie startups to raise capital, Google and Apple join forces to fight coronavirus, the decline in podcasting listens and ad spending, and is this the end of WeWork and the SoftBank vision fund?

Today we speak with Michael Pryor, co-founder, CEO and current Head of Product for Trello at Atlassian. Trello was acquired by Atlassian in 2017 for $425M and stands as Atlassian’s largest-ever acquisition. Trello is one of many products developed by Fog Creek Software, a company Michael co-founded with Joel Spolsky back in 2000. Michael’s co-founder pitched Trello at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2007 with the lofty goal of attracting 100 million users.

Nick Carter is one of Australia’s leading energy experts; he is currently Senior Vice President of Energy Tech and Solutions at Macquarie in Australia. He joined Macquarie from Tesla, where he managed APAC business development for the Tesla energy software suite. Nick has a long career in the energy space and has also worked with electric vehicles at AGL Energy, environmental policy and strategy at Toyota, and engineering at General Motors.

Topics discussed include how are startups faring in these tough times, what is government doing to support the ecosystem, what are some companies (or trends) that are doing well. Plus a look at some of the news that you may have missed.

In this episode, Phaedon chats with Luke Anear, founder and CEO of SafetyCulture. Luke founded SafetyCulture in his garage in Townsville back in 2004 and has gone on to scale the company globally, attract thousands of customers from a wide range of industries and complete millions of inspections with SafetyCulture’s iAuditor app. The last time we interviewed Luke was October 2017. Since the last time we spoke:

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.

In this episode, Ian sits down with one of the leading figures in the Australia startup ecosystem. Sally-Ann Williams is the CEO of Australia’s founding deep tech incubator, Cicada Innovations. Prior to taking over as CEO at Cicada in 2019, Sally-Ann spent 12 years working her way up to the exec level at Google Australia.

Failure is a topic few entrepreneurs are willing to talk about but many need to hear about. You won’t find anyone in the startup ecosystem who talks as openly and eloquently about failure as Jodie Fox. Jodie is an exceptional founder who built an incredible business in Shoes of Prey, the former cult-fashion startup which allowed women to customise their own shoes. A banking and finance lawyer by trade and a dedicated creative, Shoes of Prey was a perfect nexus of the corporate and creative worlds for Jodie.

This week, Ian is joined by Hannah Field from Tempus Partners. Tempus are “investing in the next generation of impossible,” with their long term approach to investment allowing them to delve into tech solutions that convention may say are impossible yet to them, are profoundly possible.

This week on #OPTPBD Ian is joined by Rick Baker, partner with Blackbird Ventures. Founded in 2012, Blackbird is a venture capital fund with a vision to accelerate and champion the most ambitious founders. Their portfolio includes an impressive line-up including; Canva, CultureAmp, Zoox and RedBubble. Prior to breaking new ground with Blackbird, Rick was busy running the venture portfolio at MLC where he invested half a billion dollars into venture capital.