Tim Doyle has a dildo problem and needs a hand

Eucalyptus cofounder Tim Doyle has revealed that the best way to get a job at his health startup is to solve his dildo problem.

He wants you to slide into his LinkedIn DMs to solve the “dildo mountain” he has in a warehouse – the result in a pledge in his startup’s early days.

Doyle was speaking at Blackbird’s Sunrise Australia in Sydney about building another successful Australian startup , when he was asked about the best chance of getting a job at Eucalyptus.

Figure out what to do with the dildos and you’re in with a shot, he replied.

His talk, titled “The dumb thing about dumb things” was down at his outspoken best, and considered the hightlight of Sunrise by many for the more than 500 attendees over the two days.

Eucalyptus has raised nearly $150 million from investors, including Blackbird, the Woolworths VC fund W23, and US investor Mary Meeker’s BOND Capital.

The marketer, now CEO of Eucalyptus, who previously helped the ALP with its election campaign strategy and played a key role in the growth of bed marker Koala, delivered a typically blunt assessment of the startup sector, having cofounded his telehealth startup in 2019.

The PR industry are parasites, Doyle said, LEO (Language Engine Optimisation) is the future of marketing and Australian VCs are not as conservative as people think – they simply have different focuses – although he did take a dig at EVP being conservative, except when fraud is involved.

He also rubbished crypto and NFTs said founders should avoid templates and that process kills creativity.

Australians are good at “startup theatre” but don’t act, he said, encouraging people to do it and launch a startup rather just talking about it.

Take advice with a pinch of salt, Doyle added, because even Canva simply made the right decisions at the right time, for at the time, nobody building a startup knows where things are going. The wisdom of success comes in hindsight.

Doyle’s dildos are a case in point.

In the early days of Eucalyptus, they launched a sex toy brand for women called Normal (it still operates separately under cofounder Lucy Walk.

They came, no pun intended, with a ‘100 night stand’ guarantee, that allowed people to return the product up to 3 months after purchase if not, ahem, completely, ahem, satisfied, alongside a trade-in offer to upgrade to a Normal vibe.

The popularity of trading in a manual for automatic was higher than expected, and while the Eucalyptus team had promised to recycle them, it turns our that’s well, hard, with silicon, so the “dildo mountain” remains three years on.

The revelation emerged when Blackbird’s Samantha Wong asked how to get a job at Eucalyptus when Doyle said they if you’re not ready to launch a startup come and learn from him and his team.

So if you can solve this, aah, huge problem, message Tim Doyle on LinkedIn here.