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.