This week we are releasing #Ep71 of #OTPBD with Lucy Liu, President and Co-founder of Airwallex. Airwallex is building global financial infrastructure to help modern internet companies grow, by offering end-to-end solutions for businesses to move money programmatically at a large scale.

On this week’s OTPBD – EP70, we’re happy to have Dylan Lawrence, General Manager (Investment) at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) as our guest. After partnering together for our annual VC conference in New Zealand, Venture Downunder, it was great to catch up with Dylan and spend some time learning more about New Zealand’s tech startup ecosystem.

This week on #OTPBD EP69, we’re delighted to host Paul Bassat, Co-founder at Square Peg Capital. His previous founder experience at Seek and current VC journey makes this episode’s discussion very captivating! Square Peg Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in high-potential businesses in Australia, Israel & South East Asia with a specific focus on series A & series B. Square Peg has made around 35 investments to date and their portfolio includes some groundbreaking startups including Canva, Athena Home Loans, Deputy & more.

This week on Ep 68 of #OTPBD, we have the Co-founder & CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. Slack was founded by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson & Serguei Mourachov. The purpose of Slack is simply helping everyone get their work done. Slack is a one stop communication platform for organisations to work collaboratively and with high efficiency. Cal’s founder journey is definitely one of the adventurous ones. Slack was born out of personal experiences and need felt by the founders themselves.

This week we are releasing #Ep67 of #OTPBD with Damien Mahoney, Co-founder & CEO of Stackla. Stackla is a content-marketing platform founded in 2012. It is a classic example of how an Aussie startup successfully ventured into the great US market. It is a revolutionary platform enabling all types of B2C businesses to generate authentic, trusted and dynamic user-generated content. Stackla covers a diverse spectrum of sectors including travel, retail, media & entertainment, etc. They pride in possessing a prestigious customer base which includes big brand names like McDonalds, Lenovo and Visa.

In line with our upcoming Renewable Energy Founder Dinner, we were thrilled to host Darren Miller, CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Established in 2012, ARENA’s purpose is to accelerate Australia’s shift to affordable and reliable renewable energy.

Our guest this week on #OTPBD is the CEO, CTO and Co-Founder of Deputy, Ashik Ahmed. His success story is one of the most inspiring ones in the Australian startup ecosystem. Ashik has built a striving business which sustains on its excellent product. In this pod, he shares his entrepreneurial journey and valuable life lessons that he learnt along the way.

AFR’s tech editor, Paul Smith knows the in’s and out’s of Australia’s startup & tech sector. He’s not our usual founder or investor-type guest on the pod. However, as a regular reporter on the ecosystem, and a genuinely knowledgeable and well-versed guest, we were delighted to host him this week on #OTPBD and discuss media exposure for startups, the digital shift in journalism, the implications of new technologies and more!

All the way from Sweden, our guest this week on #OTPBD is the first employee and former CTO of Spotify, Andreas Ehn! Whilst Andreas’ early education and career path started off in tech and engineering, he had always had an interest in business and entrepreneurship, which has made for an exciting and impressive career so far.

This week, we’re excited to share a very special episode featuring our first ever ‘trio’ on the pod who discussed the impact, role, and necessity of Australian startup boards. Ian sat down with Amanda Price, Head of KPMG High Growth Ventures, Anthony Sochan, Partner at Think & Grow and Martin Dalgleish, Partner at Morpheus Ventures, for an in-depth exploration about company boards – discussing everything from how to create successful boards, to tackling board diversity, to when to start creating boards?

Recognised as somewhat of a startup celebrity, Steve Baxter is an entrepreneur, investor, and best known as one of the (more sharkier) sharks on Australia’s Shark Tank. We were excited to have Steve this week on #OTPBD to look back on his early telco & internet startup successes, deep dive into his considerable career, and listen to his strong opinions on government & politics, climate change and more.

On first thought, a Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of a superannuation fund seems an unlikely guest for Open The Pod Bay Doors. However, you’ll soon hear how Sam Sicilia, Hostplus’ CIO of 10 years, has become a driver for investment into VC, and is overall passionate about tech innovation for the future prosperity of the Australian economy.