Expedition 2026
Expedition26 is an exclusive three-day retreat on the Gold Coast, built around peer-led sessions, keynotes, workshops and hands-on work that give you the space to reflect and grow beyond the day-to-day.
This is your chance to be surrounded by founders running real businesses, building to scale, and serious enough about it to step away for three days to get it right. Our community sits mostly in the early scale-up stage, and this room will too.
27th – 29th October 2026 | Peppers Kingscliff, Gold Coast
Why attend?
There’s a decision you’ve been circling for months. You know it matters. You haven’t made it.
You’re not alone in that. Most founders right now are carrying some version of the same thing: a sense that the next few years will ask more of them and their company than any years yet, and a call they haven’t quite found the clarity or conviction to commit to. This is three days on the Gold Coast to change that.
What is Expedition26?
This isn’t a conference, and you won’t sit in rows watching slides. You’ll listen. You’ll be inspired. And you’ll do real work that matters.
Think closed-door conversations with founders who’ve built things that lasted. Deep-dive Q&A where the hard questions actually get asked. Small breakout sessions with peers at your stage, real bets on the table. One-to-one access to people who’ve made the big calls, the kind you can’t buy and rarely get. And the rarest thing of all: time to think above the day-to-day.
Fifty founders. Three days. All signal, no noise.
Who you’ll learn from
Luke Anear
SafetyCulture
Luke Anear, who built SafetyCulture from a Townsville garage to a ~$2.5B company, stepped back, then returned to take on AI head-on.
Raina Kumra
Founder & CEO of Spicewell
Raina Kumra is the indispensable operator and visionary every organization needs at the table. She brings over 20 years of proven prowess in scaling, launching, strategy, and mission-driven brand leadership, combining global network access and deep operational rigor across venture and impact, both as a founder and a funder. She currently helps place capital for venture funds and direct deals as a registered agent with Old City.
Paul Stovell
Octopus Deploy
Paul Stovell bootstrapped Octopus Deploy into a >$800m software company on his own terms.
Alexey Mitko
Co-founder & CFO of Eucalyptus
Alexey Mitko, co-founder and CFO of Eucalyptus, on the inside of a ~$1.6B exit and the capital strategy behind it.
Curtis Thomson
Co-Founder, Simpro
Curtis Thomson, who co-founded Queensland unicorn simPRO, scaled it to 38 countries and now backs founders from the other side of the table.
Vijay Solanki
Human-Centred Strategist & Founder Coach
Vijay Solanki is a human-centred strategist and founder coach, and the author of Founding Courage. Through The B’Old Intern, he has spent the past eight years working with purpose-driven leaders on both the business and themselves.
Before that, he was Shazam’s launch CMO, held senior roles at Unilever, lastminute.com, Castrol, BlackBerry and Philips, and served as CEO of IAB Australia. He now mentors founders, with a focus on digital health, education and media.
More to be announced
What to expect
Day 1: Built to Win
Get clear on the business. Stress-test your strategy, your moat, and your capital position against where the world is actually heading, in a market being reshaped by AI. Leave knowing which bets are yours to make, and why.
Day 2: Built to Rise
Build the company that executes. Sharpen the leadership, team, and culture you need to perform under pressure and ambiguity, and to carry the bet whether you stay or sell.
Day 3: Built to Last
Sustain the one asset all of it depends on: you. Come through the hardest stretch of the journey in one piece, with the clarity and conviction to keep going, whatever you build next.
Who’s Expedition26 for?
Founders running real businesses, building to scale, and serious enough about it to step away for three days to get it right. Our community sits mostly in the early scale-up stage, and this room will too.
Hear from our founder community
“Connecting with top Aussie founders, get inspired by amazing speakers and taking time out from it all at 40,000 ft”
Anna Rakoczy | Founder & CEO @Homemade Method
“There is no rule book, no university degree for founders. The best way to learn is by speaking to people who have done it before and have made those mistakes”.
– Adam Schwab | Co-founder and CEO @LuxuryEscapes
Previous Attendees
Expedition 2026
Peppers Kingscliff – Gold Coast, Queensland
50 founders. 3 days. all signal and no distraction
Expedition is proudly presented by
