Claudia Barriga-Larriviere

Claudia is a change and relationship management professional specialised in early innovation. She has built strong technology teams and generated new business proactively across 9 years of agency, digital and startup. She is a keen observer of human behaviour, especially in the organised chaos of startups. A Pollenizer alumni, Claudia is an expert at trimming the fat off processes and testing solutions via lean tools, always in heels and with a smile.

Brains Trust

Wyatt Roy is the Taylor Swift of Australian politics: a reflection on last weekend’s #PolicyHack

- October 20, 2015 7 MIN READ

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.

pollenizer
Brains Trust

‘Startups are human’: Lessons I learned from Phil Morle and my eternal gratitude

- August 10, 2015 7 MIN READ

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

- July 31, 2015 4 MIN READ

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.

News & Analysis

Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Beyonce of tech events

- March 30, 2015 5 MIN READ

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

- October 24, 2014 5 MIN READ

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

- October 8, 2014 5 MIN READ

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

- September 17, 2014 4 MIN READ

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

- July 1, 2014 3 MIN READ

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.