When Gabby Leibovich migrated to Melbourne from strife-torn Israel in the mid-1980s as a teenager, he had no idea what he wanted to do, besides being obsessed with soccer, having fun and trying to master English. After university he worked in his father’s electronics store and the sales bug bit him. Last Episode Gabby explained how he graduated from working the bricks and mortar shop floor to eventually expanding into selling online, and building with his brother their first e-commerce empire in...
Oct 19, 2020•30 min•Season 2Ep. 2
When Melbourne-based Gabby Leibovich, and his brother Hezi stumbled across the internet, they were already experienced salesmen, Gabby had worked for years on the floor of his father’s single electronics shop In the Melbourne suburb of Brighton, interacting with customers and selling product. The brothers had also branched out and sold products at suburban market stalls around Melbourne. Then they jumped to a store on eBay, and the internet‘s vast possibilities hooked them. In Part 1 of my inter...
Oct 11, 2020•44 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Serial startup innovator & Redbubble co-founder Martin Hosking believes that aside from those enduring values learned from his mum, his University of Melbourne History degree, of all things, plus his career stint as an Australian diplomat, navigating the tricky politics of the Middle East, were perfect foundations for his eventual entrepreneurial journey. Throw in returning to uni to complete an MBA and time working as a management consultant at McKinsey’s, Hosking believes all that experien...
Sep 20, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Martin Hosking co-founded art & design website Redbubble to put visual artists’ creative output directly in touch with consumers. But for its first 3 years Redbubble went virtually nowhere, with no traction and few sales. But little by little, with the support & belief of the artists themselves, and a few funders, Redbubble began to make headway. While initial scale up was so difficult, Hosking and his team have built Redbubble into a global design market juggernaut. Starting and still b...
Sep 13, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Law academic, linguist and theologian Dr Michael Spence AC has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney for a dozen years, & in that time he’s modernised and simplified the venerated sandstone institution, by essentially bringing together what he saw as a bunch of warring Faculty factions, to unite to make the university more community-facing, rather than inward-looking. Along the way he’s had his critics and some spectacular fails. But one of his enduring successes was the massive I...
Sep 06, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Melbourne-born corporate lawyer Adam Schwab was 24 years old when he and a schoolmate began their entrepreneurial journey. While Adam was still living at home with his parents, the two friends started out sub-letting apartments to backpackers, as a side gig. Bit by bit, through much trial and error – including waging war on bed bugs! – the pair made enough money to dream bigger. They gave up their lucrative day jobs and they ventured into the digital online space. The co-founders created the suc...
Aug 30, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Co-founder of AirTree Ventures has been an Australian role model & trailblazer in the digital technology space for over 3 decades. But after early business career success working for Bill Gates at Microsoft, a seismic personal event made Daniel Petre decide there was more that he needed to do to become, in his view, a better person and a good dad to his daughters. So he set out on a slightly less travelled path. He kept up the business success – as one of Australia’s premier venture capital ...
Aug 23, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Co-founder of AirTree Ventures, Daniel Petre is a serial entrepreneur - not only did he build successful digital startups inside bigger companies for bosses like Bill Gates and Kerry and James Packer, but in the past 7 years he’s built up over $600million in Venture Capital funds to invest in many promising Aussie startups, creating one of Australia’s largest VC companies in AirTree Ventures. In Part 1 of this interview, Daniel Petre talks about how he came to work for the brilliant Bill Gates i...
Aug 16, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 27
While Bronte Capital’s self-styled eccentric co-founder John Hempton has made a reputation chasing corporate frauds; he also loves, delves deeply into and invests in, strong, quality companies around the world. Another surprising thing about him? Hempton can also admit when he’s pursuing the wrong strategy, and the 10-year bull market since the GFC, has proved a bit of thorn in his side. What might also surprise, in Part 2 of this interview, he shares some rather unexpected investing tips for yo...
Aug 09, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Global fund manager John Hempton, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Sydney-based Bronte Capital is a maverick investor who prides himself on being eccentric and loves to track down corporate frauds and short sell their shares. He creates critics, particularly amongst managements, because he’s a short-seller. In Part 1 of this interview, Hempton explains why he short sells, or bets against companies whose shares he believes will go down. In its 11 years, he says Bronte Capital has shorte...
Aug 02, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Canva co-founder Cameron Adams reveals how the Canva teams pulled out all stops in the past 12 months to fuel massive growth, leaping from serving individuals’ design needs, to servicing much larger corporates’ needs, and how that’s paying off. While much of Canva’s product is still free, Canva Pro team has launched a new tool giving paying customers access to some 60 million different photos and illustrations, up from just 5 million available previously. Cameron also reveals how translating the...
Jul 19, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Cameron Adams began mucking around with computer games as a kid, in the back room of his dad’s suburban Melbourne computer shop. After uni he parlayed that computer literacy, fuelled by a passion for graphic design, into a job at Google. But his entrepreneurial spirit serendipitously led him to meet 2 young people with a dream - Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht wanted to transform their small school year book production company into a global vision to democratise design online, allowing anyone ...
Jul 12, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Graham Skroo Turner was bitten hard by the travel bug. Twice. Creating and building not 1 but 2 business empires specialising in travel. There’s the massive, now publicly listed Flight Centre, which operates in 24 countries, and writes billions of dollars in travel sales each year. But then there is another empire he built, from scratch, with the help of a few mates back in the early 1970’s, at just 24 years of age while travelling in London: his 1st babythe cheap European bus tours group Topdec...
Jun 28, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Flight Centre co-founder Graham Skroo Turner witnessed bookings & sales in the giant global travel company’s leisure division plunge 97%, within just 1 week in March, as nations, Governments & states closed borders; ordered citizens & businesses into lockdown; and planes essentially stopped flying. How Skroo Turner & his leadership team went straight into survival mode to shore up capital & protect the jobs & company he’s built up, after starting with just 1 shop 38 years...
Jun 21, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Carolyn Creswell started her entrepreneurial journey young… she was just 18 years old, working part-time as a student mixing up small batches of muesli for a mum & dad operation. When that business was about to fold, with her job threatened, she and a pal bought it for just $1,000 each. But it was no overnight success. After several years of hard grind -- perfecting muesli recipes, sourcing quality local grains, nuts & fruits, carrying around bags full of her product to court potential s...
Jun 08, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Four Pillars Gin entrepreneur & marketing whizz Stuart Gregor and his co-founders LOVE making craft gin, pouring heart and soul, plus the best local & exotic botanicals into their boutique Aussie brand. In just over 6 years, Four Pillars has won prestigious international awards, become a local G&T favourite, and was selling an impressive 600,000 bottles of gin a year. That is, until COVID-19 knocked them for six. Find out HOW the pandemic lockdown led to their saviour: when Gregor &a...
May 31, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Young, 3rd-Year Resident, who is yet to graduate in her Specialty training, Dr Daniela Petraglia talks candidly about the almost crushing challenges faced by frontline doctors & nurses caring for the avalanche of ill Covid-19 patients which threatened to collapse the entire hospital system of Emilia-Romagna, one the hardest hit regions of Northern Italy. The heart-breaking decisions forced on senior doctors as to who gets ICU ventilator care and who doesn’t during the crisis peak of late Mar...
May 24, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Professor David Isaacs, senior Sydney pediatric specialist in respiratory virus infections and immunisations, at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, bluntly assesses WHY Australia has managed this pandemic pretty well so far compared to many world-leading nations and HOW only minor, firmly-controlled COVID-19 infection breakouts might occur once lockdown lightens. Plus he calmly explains the evidence on whether children spread this virus; the case for schools to stay open; and is asymptomatic s...
May 17, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Melbourne-based medical device entrepreneur Jefferson Harcourt talks of the heroic collaboration going on right now between normal business competitors, to build from scratch and then deliver 2,000 invasive breathing Ventilators: new, much-needed “weapons” in the frontline fight against COVID-19, which will contribute to the Federal Government’s National Medical Stockpile. But what’s amazing about this extraordinary effort by several Aussie high-tech manufacturers, is that this entire project, f...
May 10, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 16
With less than 2 years as a practicing doctor, Internal Medicine Physician Dr Anna O’Kelly talks candidly about the heart-breaking challenges faced by frontline doctors & nurses in ICU caring for Covid-19 patients, who need to be invasively ventilated, to hopefully breathe again. Working in one of Boston’s busiest hospitals in the USA - now the global epicentre of this highly infectious, dangerous virus - Dr O’Kelly talks of the distressing reality of patients dying without families by their...
May 03, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 15
3D-printing entrepreneur Paul Docherty speaks about HOW his small advanced medical manufacturing facility is currently trialling their new 3D-printed swabs for much-needed Covid-19 tests, in conjunction with the Doherty Institute and University of Melbourne, to test the swab’s efficacy, and await TGA approval. 3DMEDiTech is also 3D-printing parts for the crucial breathing ventilators, all part of a collaborative approach by governments to get the best medical and business know-how together to ma...
Apr 26, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Making it onto Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 List for 2019 shows just how rapidly Kristy Chong’s baby, Modibodi reusable leak-proof underwear, is growing: from a humble start-up 7 yrs ago to a global star. But what really drives this young entrepreneur is giving customers what they want & need: a solution to personal hygiene leaks and spills, and a solution to the billions of fem hygiene tampons and pads dumped in landfill globally each year. Modibodi’s turnover is now close to $50million a ...
Apr 19, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 13
New mum Kristy Chong wanted to solve an everyday, often embarrassing, problem for women, & men, without the massive amounts of disposable personal hygiene products eventually being dumped in landfill. With passion & perseverance she created revolutionary underwear that promises to soak up leaks, periods and perspiration, building Modibodi into an empire growing recently by up to 400% a year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 11, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Highly experienced virus & infectious diseases specialist Professor Dominic Dwyer who’s working on the frontline at Westmead Hospital, talks plainly about where we are at with COVID-19, & what are the crucial weapons in the fight to diagnose, treat and stop the spread of this virus & disease, that ALL of us in the community MUST engage in, & what he is worried about. Prof Dwyer also explodes some of the Internet myths & tips on exactly what kills the virus. Calm, knowledgeabl...
Apr 04, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 11
How entrepreneurial Tony & Josephine Sukkar’s hands-on approach to everything -- from interviewing every cadet to negotiating massive building contracts – built their empire. But it also boosted their ability to agitate for gender equality and changen not only on building sites but in one of our oldest sports, Rugby Union! Hear how Josephine was instrumental in pushing rugby to establish the Women’s competition, Super W! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 29, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Fleeing civil war in Lebanon as a teen, while protecting his younger siblings, made Tony Sukkar AM resilient and ready for any crisis, later forging a construction empire out of his former employer’s corporate collapse. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 22, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Entrepreneurial Fund Manager Geoff Wilson AO, founder & CIO of Wilson Asset Management, on Being a Maverick, Outspoken Shareholder See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 15, 2020•11 min•Season 1Ep. 8
“Fundie” whizz Geoff Wilson bet big to back his financial judgement at just under 40 years of age: HOW he took his life savings of $500,000 & turned them into a massive business investing and growing other people’s money. 21 years later he now has $3.5 billion in funds under management. And find out just how much of a factor in that success was running a book on the Caulfield Cup, as a schoolboy? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 08, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 7
How being retrenched pushed entrepreneurial Alexandra Smart to create a start-up fashion label with her sister, that grew into Ginger & Smart, a high-end designer brand & retail business, now sold around Australia and the world. “We thought, if we work this hard, and kill ourselves for someone else, let’s do it for ourselves.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mar 01, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In Part 2 of Helen’s chat with travel website Rome2rio’s co-founder, Michael Cameron, he details HOW he turned his simple frustration into an idea then into concrete reality, disrupting online travel along the way and building a globally reknowned website business, in less than a decade; a shining example of an Aussie start-up that now claims a staggering 18 million unique visitors per MONTH. It was recently sold for $40million! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 23, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 5
