On Thursday 13 July 2017, Jobs NSW announced the creation of the “Sydney Startup Hub”, a new, 17,000 sq m space dedicated to housing, and nurturing, much of Sydney’s startup community. Anchor tenants of Fishburners, Tankstream, Stone & Chalk and The Studio. Scheduled to open later in 2017. 

Slightly different episode format this week. This was recorded at an Innovation Bay event in Sydney, so we had the fun of recording at a live event in front of a studio audience. Please forgive the audio challenges around the Q&A section. Apart from a mis-joke about Paul growing up in Liverpool (he didn’t, but I actually thought he was serious when he said he did!) this is a great and fascinating chat with Paul.

Based in Western Sydney, Ed Husic was elected to the House of Representatives as the Federal Member for Chifley in 2010. Currently in his third term, he was re-elected to Parliament in 2016.

Over the course of Paul’s career he has built and sold four previous companies and has then become an active consultant and non-executive director of some major companies like Trade Me and iiNet. 

Elaine is Head of Venture Capital at Blue Sky and is responsible for the management of the Blue Sky venture capital fund and portfolio. Established in 2012, her division has over $100 million in assets under management across a broad range of industry sectors. Amongst her notable investments was a $25m injection into Vinomofo in April 2016.

The sharp-eyed amongst my listeners will have noted the reference to “2001 – A Space Odyssey” in the title of this podcast. Whilst certainly no HAL 9000, Andrea Boyd is one of the controllers of the International Space Station, albeit from the relative comfort and safety of Cologne, Germany, Planet Earth.

Daniel is one of the most successful Venture Capitalists in Australia. He is a founder of Airtree Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital company. Prior to Airtree Ventures he was the Founding Chairman of netus (a technology investment company acquired by Fairfax Media in 2013) and prior to this role he founded Australia’s largest internet investment company, ecorp. The returns to investors from all of these funds were nothing short of extraordinary – eg Netus invested in and exited nine companies over a six-year period, delivering a 4x cash-on-cash return to investors.