Brains Trust
Five key lessons for corporates from an Entrepreneur in Residence
The hardest part of being the lean engine inside a large organisation is convincing the people in it that small things are worth paying attention to.
Opinion
Don Draper and The Lean Startup
To a black man in 1960s America, being heard – his valued and counted – must have meant the world. In startup language, that is proto customer development. Don Draper would have given Eric Ries a run for his money.
Brains Trust
Wyatt Roy is the Taylor Swift of Australian politics: a reflection on last weekend’s #PolicyHack
My role at #PolicyHack was very clear – I was the lead facilitator for Team 3: tasked to improve gender equality in the ecosystem. The biggest lesson from #PolicyHack was how harrowingly hard it is to combat a systematic problem like gender equality in tech in one blow. For all the noise I make about this issue, I was truly humbled by how challenging it is to get anyone, let alone the government and the private sector, to agree on what to do first.
Brains Trust
‘Startups are human’: Lessons I learned from Phil Morle and my eternal gratitude
Along with being a champion and catalyst of the Australian innovation ecosystem through Pollenizer, Phil Morle has been a great teacher to us all. More than the technical learnings around lean tools and the testing methodologies, Phil has taught me that startups are, above anything else, human and therefore have a beating heart that should be enable and empowered. These lessons I learned from Phil Morle live with me every day.
Brains Trust
It’s time the government started testing and validating their ideas towards a better future for Australian startups
It is painfully apparent that even though this is the third iteration of Labor for Innovation, nothing really has been done since the first. The panel was very eager to let us know about what their ideas are, but we have not seen any action or even plans come out of these sessions. My concern here is not that these conversations are not useful, because they are, but that they stop when the events are over. There is no speed to action or testable MVPs that come out of these dialogues.
Brains Trust
Fashion and technology: A reluctant but inevitable match
This year has seen a boom in wearables. From the flop of the ill-timed (and ill-designed) Google Glass to the recent launch of the Apple watch, fashion and tech seems to be an inevitable match. We can no longer avoid being snobs around the fashion industry, leaving it to designers and manufacturers to figure it out.
Brains Trust
Australian startups’ fetish with fundraising is the French Bulldog equivalent of artificial insemination
Our local fetish with funding rounds are the French Bulldog equivalent of artificial insemination. We are keeping companies alive that perhaps should not be around. With over 100 incubators in the country, we are fast reaching saturation point for synthetically created companies.
Profiles
Sydney’s latest tech event Daze of Disruption was not my kind of circus, but it highlighted a bigger industry problem
Unfortunately, Daze of Disruption does not make a good case for itself. After the long series of keynotes and panels, it was hard to determine whether we were meant to feel threatened, encouraged, or any sense of urgency around this mystical “disruption”.
Profiles
That Startup Show’s latest episode reminds us of the human side of being a founder
That Startup Show celebrated its Sydney launch last Friday with a popcorn-fuelled soiree hosted by BlueChilli. This was unlike any other industry event I have been to in the last year – there was no pitching, no sponsors to over-thank, no Powerpoint slides. Everyone was there to have a good time. And a good time we had!
Profiles
Startmate Demo Day: We’re back to focusing on real world businesses
PItching season in Sydney comes around just like hunting season. But instead of Elmer Fudd with a shotgun, we have eager founders with powerpoint decks. Pitching season is the engine of our growing startup ecosystem – it injects money into growing businesses, it propels good ideas forward and showcases the best our local founders have to offer.
News & Analysis
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Beyonce of tech events
Do you remember that Beyonce Superbowl Halftime Show where she killed it so hard that she literally broke the power in the New Orleans Superdome, leaving tens of thousands of football fans in the dark for the 17 minutes following her kick-ass performance. That is the closest thing I have to compare Mike Cannon-Brookes’ panel presentation at Slattery IT’s Rewind/FastForward event this past Wednesday. Mike is the Beyonce of tech events.
Profiles
Actionable insights from Dr Sam Prince’s presentation at Servcorp’s Business Shorts
Servcorp hosted Zambrero’s Dr Sam Prince as part of their Business Shorts series at the 36th floor of their impressive Gateway Building location. This is an increasingly common trend amongst corporates who seek to bring entrepreneurs and visionaries into their fold in the hopes of adding some street cred to their brand. Most of the time, the results can be incongruent and highly amusing.
Profiles
Businesses that are being built to last: A Review of last night’s INCUBATE Demo Day
The Incubate Winter 2014 graduating class of startups pitched last night at a cavernous hall in the University of Sydney. The evening started with James Alexander, Founder and head of Incubate, making a bold statement: “We want to create entrepreneurial leaders.” Our industry could not be more ready for this new round of young, eager entrepreneurs.
Brains Trust
I have a love affair with the Lean Canvas
My life as a startup mentor has three constants: midnight anxiety, coffee and lean canvases. I deal with the first two with a combination of meditation and hard liquor, depending on how much time I have on my hands. Lean canvases, on the other hand, have become both a necessary evil and my favourite thing in the world. If you’re doing it right, running a lean canvas session is equal parts endless joy and cautious panic.
Profiles
Sleep Shaming in the Aussie startup scene: Rest is not a weakness
Sleep is a bit of a hot button topic right now. The startup industry glorifies long hours and all-nighters. It is often the anchor for founder narratives and media pieces. Our self-fascination with how busy we are has seeped into our unconscious hours. When you walk around most industry events, you will hear conversations peppered with how many emails you have waiting for you on your inbox or someone casually mentioning how overtired they are, accompanied by the frightfully low number of hours of sleep he or she might have gotten the night before.
