Startup WRiter & columnist
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7 secret ingredients to an innovation culture (in BLUECHILLI.COM, OCT 2019)
My favourite Halloween movie is Beetlejuice. The first time I saw it I was seven, and it was scary and chaotic and made me uneasy, if not queasy – but I could not wait to watch it again.
It’s now an annual Halloween tradition in our house, and as October 31st approaches I can’t help but think about how much this cult classic – with its wacky characters on an offbeat adventure – reminds me, weirdly, of my job: to catalyse an innovation culture at BlueChilli and teach big corporations how to innovate the startup way. Hear me out…
Women in leadership: It’s just good business (for the BlueChilli Blog, Feb 2018)
When Melinda Gates announced her findings that female founders are systematically getting less than 3% of Venture Capital (VC) investment, I have to admit that the 3% was not the scariest number in that equation. The scary number was 2017 – meaning that we are still having this conversation 17 years into this new millennium. It’s chilling.
I Took stress leave for a week & this is what I learnt (in The Collective Hub, Jan 2018)
The most stressful part of being on stress leave was actually telling people that I was on stress leave. I’m not sure if that falls into the Alanis Morissette type of irony, which is to say, it’s more inconvenient than it is ironic. Stress leave usually carries a lot of stigma.
I Hate #WomenInTech (In the startup Daily)
I hate #womenintech. Not the actual women who work in the technology space, but the expression “women in tech.” The more conversations I have about it, the more irritating it is to me.
Ironically, I seem to be encouraging this conversation more and more in the last few weeks. In a weird way, it’s a lot like eating broccoli: the more I force myself to do it, the less unpalatable it eventually becomes.
As a result, I find myself using it over and over – on Twitter, on Facebook, in casual conversations, over drinks, on the phone … However, the crux of the issue is not how often we have the conversation but the expression sitting at its core. The issue is that we are just talking to ourselves. [Continue reading...]
"THE ART OF LETTING GO OF STAFF" (In the collective hub)
“It’s chaos, so be kind.” Michelle McNamara, author and researcher.
I have learned that finding humour during trying times is one of the smartest things a leader can do. Comedians are great philosophers, especially when it comes to magnifying the knocks of creativity and vulnerability, rejection and resilience. Founders and entrepreneurs can relate to these stories all too well…. A few weeks ago, I found myself in search of comedic relief. The leadership at the company I work for was in the process of making some difficult staff decisions. Our business model had changed and we were working through a round of redundancies, something this organisation had never gone through.
I needed a jolt of joy. Instead, I found Patton Oswalt’s Annihilation on Netflix. [Continue reading...]
FIVE KEY LESSONS FOR CORPORATES FROM AN ENTREPRENEUR IN RESIDENCE (In the startup Daily)
At 5ft tall, most of my life has been informed by my being petite – my nicknames growing up, my dating life (I tend to prefer taller gentlemen…), my choice of furniture and the now infamous height of my heels. The last thing I thought would be informed by smallness would be my career. And yet, I have carved a whole career path by embracing minuteness. Namely, getting big things done by starting with the tiniest of things. [Continue reading...]
Wyatt Roy is the Taylor Swift of Australian politics: a reflection on last weekend’s #PolicyHack (In the startup Daily)
Over the last 4 years, my boyfriend Steven and I have taken several road trips up and down the wonderful Australian coast. As I don’t drive, it falls on me to play DJ so Steven is now reluctantly accustomed to driving to the sound of dance remixes of Let it Go and the rousing lyrics of old Broadway musicals. So when I turned to him and asked him “hey, do you want to hear something weird?” he was rightfully alarmed.
“What is it….?” “
“Def Leppard did a live version of Pour Some Sugar on Me with Taylor Swift.”
He let out an audible “WHAT THE…?” I’m surprised he didn’t drive the car into a tree.
That was roughly the reaction I had when I heard about #PolicyHack. As a BlueChilli collaborator, I got the all-team email from Seb explaining #PolicyHack about 45 minutes before it went live to the public. I immediately thought: this is going to be crazy. [Continue reading...]
It’s time the government started testing and validating their ideas towards a better future for Australian startups (In the startup Daily)
It is interesting to me that the government was having a debate on marriage equality on the morning of the day Labor for Innovation was held up. It is remarkable that this far into the millennium, the Australian government still has such a hard time meeting the most simple needs of their constituents – let’s treat people like people. The great majority of Australians support marriage equality which is and should be an unalienable right – and yet, the government seems to be behind its own paces to make same-sex partnerships legal.
Something similar is afoot with this partnership with #StartupAus. [Continue reading...]
Australian startups’ fetish with fundraising is the French Bulldog equivalent of artificial insemination (In the startup Daily)
As an avid aspiring dog owner, I have been researching puppies lately and I came to an abrupt realisation about dog breeding that mirrors the industry we live in. French Bulldogs could not and should not exist in nature. Their hips are too narrow to give birth naturally so they need a C-section for every litter. Their heads are too heavy for them to mate in the, let’s say, ‘traditional’ way as their top halves would literally topple over. They are born with respiratory problems because of their short snouts. French Bulldogs have short lifespans that we keep unnaturally extending with medication, artificial breeding and designer dogfood. Yes, they are cute to look at, but the result of this cosmetically-driven overbreeding has resulted in delicate, greatly expensive, almost mutant animals who could not survive on their own. They are unnatural and should probably be put down to take them out of their misery.
A lot of the startups in our local ecosystem are French Bulldogs. Let me explain why. [Continue reading...]
That Startup Show’s latest episode reminds us of the human side of being a founder (In the startup Daily)
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!
The show was introduced by the founders and showrunners, Anna Reeves, Ahmed Salama and Sally Gatenby. Their enthusiasm and incredulity was palpable and familiar. We have all known founders who are constantly gobsmacked at their achievements. It was a great feat to watch, and the grouphug that followed what truly heartwarming. This community rarely gets to see true vulnerability on stage at startup events – those are usually filled with rehearsed speeches and over-abused sentimental phrases. It was clear to all in attendance that the team behind That Startup Show had been through the ringer together and were grateful to see their (threeway) baby come to life. It was truly humbling and inspiring. Big props to That Startup Show! [Continue reading...]
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Beyonce of tech events (In the startup Daily)
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.
But let’s rewind a little (pun intended). Slattery IT, event and marketing managers for IT companies, were celebrating 20 years of commercial internet in Australia by bringing the key players, past and present, to the Doltone House at Hyde Park. The focus was our two decade-long online journey and what the future holds for the web. It was sure to be an exciting afternoon!
As I walked into Doltone House, I was confronted with a familiar landscape: dozens of middle-aged white men in suits and nodding heads of white-hair. I thought to myself, “If a bomb were to go off here, Viagra would go out of business immediately…” I snaked through the afternoon tea crowd to grab my name tag and take my seat. A man smiled at me and handed me a glass. As I turned to thank him, I quickly realised the glass was half-empty. “He thinks I’m a waitress. We’re off to a great start.” [Continue reading...]
Businesses that are being built to last: A Review of last night’s INCUBATE Demo Day (In the startup Daily)
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.
What sets this batch of Incubate companies from any other Incubate class in the past is the range of industries addressed, spanning from stop-motion animation to cancer treatment tools, as well as the diversity represented in the founders and presenters. Great marks all around.
The only drawback of the night are issues symptomatic not of Incubate specifically, but of industry-wide problems: a stale townhall format, pitch-heavy statistics and reliance on “change-the-world” cliches, which we’ll discuss later. {Continue reading...]
Australian startups and immigration policy: A victim of the popular vote? (In the startup Daily)
Last week I wrote a column on the growing limitations our retrograde immigration policy presents on the startup community. This issue is not only a matter of urgency in terms of talent migration, but it presents a huge challenge on the growth front. We are facing a policy checkmate where new startups are prevented from acquiring talent and, with it, access to diverse ideas and markets.
At first sight, The 457 employer sponsorship visa scheme is the most immediate solution to the talent void in the country. The principle is seemingly simple: an employer has a need to fill a particular role with the local talent and seeks out a foreign individual to fill it. However, the complexity of the process, high costs and, the time-consuming nature of the requirements act as deterrents for new companies to take action. This is particularly true in the case of not-yet-validated startups and bootstrapped ventures.
Immigration policy, like most of the laws on the country, is informed by the popular vote and, therefore, by a large electorate who does not relate to the larger startup problem. It is very difficult for a voter in rural Western Australia to understand the plight of a tech founder in Darlinghurst. The world are so far apart in terms of priorities and economic impact. However, this problem belongs to all of us. [Continue reading...]
Are you a startup vampire or a werewolf? (In the startup Daily)
The question I get asked the most, other than “Are you dancing?” is “How can I get a job in startup?” Many people ask me how I got started; they want my “foot-in-the-door” origin story. Unfortunately, there is no fairy tale, boy-meets-girl, tie-it-up-with-a-bow story behind it.
My startup journey was more a result of aversion: I wanted to run as far away from “agency land” as possible. So seven years later, here I am, shoulder-deep in the innovation world. Many of us have made the transformation from corporate to startup. If you’re anything like me, the change becomes pretty permanent. Startup is something that you live with for the rest of your life. Not unlike herpes.
I have spent a big chunk of my career putting together teams for startups and welcoming former corporate talent into the the fold. Many people come in wide-eyed and bushy tailed; others walk in jaded and glazed-over. The difference often depends on how far up the corporate ladder they were before they made “the change” and of the expectations they put on this new role.
WIth the proliferation of tech in the media, more and more people are making this jump. In fact, if you are reading this and are over 30 and currently working on a startup, odds are you have gone through this transition at some point. In the spirit of Friday the 13th, I have a question to pose to you:
Are you a startup vampire or a werewolf? [Continue reading...]
Hakuna Ma-startup: Fighting for diversity in our startup jungle (In the startup Daily)
My latest #flearn was attemptingto convince my theatrically-impaired boyfriend to come see The Lion King musical with. It was an comically heated argument….He could not understand why I was so adamant to sit through the show again. It’s a great pieceI had already seen it a hundred times. To be honest, I had no idea either until I heard myself say this: “When you’re a brown little girl and you go to the theatre and you look up and see a King who’s black, you remember that moment for the rest of your life.” Up until that point I had never seen a king who wasn’t white. More concerning even, I had never seen a king, or a leader of any kind, who wasn’t a white male. Who could I grow up to look up to?
Luckily I didn’t have to travel far. I was raised in a household where I was the boss’ daughter at both my parents’ offices. My parents are both very successful architects in Latin America. My father has had his hand in many notable buildings around Lima, where we grew up. My mother is an incredible artist, entrepreneur and an international lecturer on the future of architecture. I got to grow up watching two models of power, but most importantly, I routinely watched a woman be in charge and it was no big deal. It was my status quo. [Continue reading...]
Debunking the 457 Visa myths (In BlueChilli.com, Jan 2018)
The 457 visa debate ended abruptly in April last year in 2017 when many HR professionals (myself among them), learned on Facebook that the programme had been abolished in lieu of a more “Australians-first” approach, as proposed by the government.
Almost a year later, we are still waiting to hear what the actual implications of these changes are and the future for talent in the country looms uncertain.
(Continue reading...)
How TO CELEBRATE YOUR EMPLOYEES AND BOOST CULTURE (In the Collective Hub)
Your team’s had a major win – how do you celebrate?
“We’ve all been guilty of mindlessly sending out a group email, or booking a pub outing in hopes this will communicate how much we value the work we do as a team,” says Claudia Barriga-Larriviere, Head of People at start-up accelerator BlueChilli. “As a workplace culture expert, I think the biggest mistakes a company makes when it comes to team celebrations is going for the cookie-cutter approach.”
Don Draper and The Lean Startup (In the startup Daily)
The opening scene in Mad Men reveals Don Draper working at a bar, iterating on taglines for Gold Cigarettes. He is looking around, focused and observant. He is a student of human behaviour; picking up cues from the people around him.
A black waiter approached – he would have been “colored” in those days – and shyly took Don’s drink order. Don gently probes him about his smoking habits, not as a researcher but as an equal. “Hey, do you have a light…? You’re a Golds man, Lucky Strike man myself…” He smiles. “Can I ask you a question? When do you smoke Old Gold…?”
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. [Continue reading...
‘Startups are human’: Lessons I learned from Phil Morle and my eternal gratitude (In the startup Daily)
I have only written one fan letter in my life. It was not to Justin Timberlake or Hillary Clinton. It was to my IB World History teacher Mr William Cotner. It was a four-page letter written with a Bic pen and thanking him for opening up my eyes to the world and allowing me to pour my curiosity into world events. It has taken me almost 20 years to write my next fan letter – this time to one Mr Phil Morle of Liverpool who reminds me of Mr Cotner in more ways than one. Phil and I were on the phone last week and a colleague overheard me call him “Sir” a few times. She asked me why I did that. I responded, “That’s what I was always taught to call teachers.”
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. [Continue reading...]
Fashion and technology: A reluctant but inevitable match (In the startup Daily)
When most people picture fashion, they see runways, rail-thin models, haughty designers, sky high price tags and fabric swatches. Far from that, fashion is a multibillion dollar industry that stretches far and wide. From cotton fields to Paris ateliers, fashion is a cross-platform juggernaut eager and ripe for disruption. 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 be snobs and just leave it to designers and manufacturers to figure it out.
FashHack’s founder and mastermind, the petite powerhouse Victoria Lai, was inspired both by her love of fashion and her thirst for technology in the market. When asked where she got the inspiration to start FashHack, her simple answer summarises a concise product-market fit: “I can’t believe nobody has done it before.” It is baffling, considering the countless dollars to be made in the fashion tech industry, that indeed no one has done it before. With the surmounting luxury taxes and recent concerns over sustainable manufacturing, Australia seems ripe for the FashHack picking. [Continue reading...]
Sydney’s latest tech event Daze of Disruption was not my kind of circus, but it highlighted a bigger industry problem (In the startup Daily)
Daze of Disruption is the latest in the string of “disruption” events to hit Australia in the last few months. With an inaugural run over last Monday and Tuesday, Daze of Disruption eagerly opened it’s doors at the Surry Hills Belvoir Street Theatre. As many of us have hit peak event fatigue, the industry is left to wonder how to tell these events apart.
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”.
Daze of Disruption, at least in this initial run, went down as its own cautionary tale: have we jumped the disruption event shark?
Probably. [Continue reading...]
Startmate Demo Day: We’re back to focusing on real world businesses (In the startup Daily)
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. But most importantly, it separates the diamonds from the coal. Startmate Demo Day is particularly good at the latter, and therefore one of my favourite pitching events to attend.
Startmate is a very special organisation for the Australian innovation ecosystem. For those who are not yet familiar, Startmate is made up of an interesting group of startup executives, many with several businesses and exits under their belts. And if you think that it’s an undiverse board, think again: out of the 39 executives listed on their website, one whole one is a woman! So that brings the grand total of 2% females on their leadership team, which is more than we can say about Disney – an organisation that has more princesses in their movies than they do women in their boardroom. However, we can agree that Startmate could benefit from being more inclusive in the future. I’m looking forward to seeing what the team will look like in 2016. [Continue reading...]
Actionable insights from Dr Sam Prince’s presentation at Servcorp’s Business Shorts (In the startup Daily)
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. If you saw that episode of Friends where Ross buys leather pants, you’ll get the idea.
This event sat decisively on the fence.
The Servcorp Business Shorts are predominantly a corporate events aimed at finance and capital professionals. This was quite the departure from the pitch events and hackathons we usually cover. I clearly was not in Kansas anymore: I had left the comfort of Surry Hills coffee meetings and funding pitches to wander back into the corporate world for the evening.
As I walked into the Servcorp offices, an ocean of suits and pencil skirts swallowed me whole. I had rocked up in jeans, a fancy denim shirt and a jacket. Everyone else must have thought I was there to fix someone’s boat. It was semi traumatic. But hey, the view was great! {Continue reading...]
I have a love affair with the Lean Canvas (In the startup Daily)
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.
My love affair with the Lean Canvas started 5 years ago when my then-boss Phil Morle, co-founder of Pollenizer, handed me a copy of “Running Lean” by Ash Maurya and said these magic words: “I have a project for you I think you might enjoy.” Over time I would learn that every time Phil said that to me it meant “I’m about to hand you more than you can chew, but I’m confident you’ll figure out how to chew it.” The assignment was to understand the pieces of the Lean Canvas and come up with a functional, scalable template for the team- by the next morning. So I headed home with a copy of the book under my arm and a sense of dread in my heart. I didn’t sleep that night. [Continue reading...]
Startups and immigration: The fuzzy end of the lollipop (In the startup Daily)
The most recent policy announcements have blown a cold wind up the spine of the tech industry. The new budget was met with a collective side-eye from the startup ecosystem, from founders to investors alike. Ever since, we have had a litany of complaints about the new budget, its proposals and the knuckle-headedness of its proponents. We get it: the tail is wagging the dog. Tony Abbott has been infamously traveling the world touting the future of railroads like it’s 1979, forgetting that this country was comfortably settled into the millennium before he stomped in, knocked it in the head and tried dragging it back into the cave.
What really makes my blood boil is that, even with the kicks and screams from the general public, this government seems to be in deep denial to what our economy needs and what growth actually means. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current talent vacuum.
The Skills Shortage Report put out by the government is an exercise in naiveté and self-congratulatory bullshit. You can find IT, technology and innovation are thrown into the same pile, making infrastructure professionals indistinguishable from innovation specialists. According to the list, “…[roles for ICT Professionals] were the easiest professional vacancies to fill…” We can simply turn to any online forum or talent board, or just to the person sitting next to us, to confirm that this is not true. [Continue reading...]
It’s time to inject some humanity into our startup hero culture (In the startup Daily)
Atlassian chiefs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar called out Tony Abbott on TV last night on his lack of vision for the technology and innovation industry for Australia. We all applauded (and shared the video around) because we know we need louder voices to unite around our industry. When the video snippet reached me, I was struck by the image of the Atlassian logo: the primordial Titan holding a celestial sphere on his shoulders.
He is literally holding the world on his back. That’s the way we tend to frame founders in the narrative of the startup – mythological heroes who will fight friend and foe on their fantastical quest, sacrificing everything on the way. We worship them, emulate them and parlay those tales to the next generation. We are creating startups gods; founders are our modern day Hercules, smiting nemeses left and right. But instead of swords and sandals, our heroes fight with iPhones and cotton-blend t-shirts.
This neo-mythology doesn’t bother me. We do need idols; we need models to shape the world around us and tales to make sense of things in uncertain times. That is what ancient myths were created to do. What strikes me as a harmful are the unspoken consequences of this almost religious worship of the startup Atlas. [Continue reading...]
I’m in love with Dave Goldberg (In the startup Daily)
Survey Monkey launched their Australian operation this week. To celebrate, The Hub Sydney hosted a Q&Asession with CEO Dave Goldberg on Wednesday. Mr. Goldberg, whom I immediately decided to call “Dave” in my head because that’s what I would call him if he was my husband, took us through his journey as an entrepreneur, his hiccups along the way and what the future held for Survey Monkey in Australia.
His delivery was candid yet focused – you could tell he had done this a thousand times before. Like many in the audience, I caught myself being unexpectedly fascinated by the lively journey.
Here are the 10 main lessons I took away from Dave’s chat: [Continue reading...}
Sleep Shaming in the Aussie startup scene: Rest is not a weakness (In the startup Daily)
In the span of my talent career I must have conducted literally hundreds and hundreds of job interviews for emerging businesses and startup teams. Consistently, I find myself stopping short of asking a very pressing but invasive question at the end of each of these interviews. It is not about sexual orientation or your career loyalties. It is not even about your age or your plans to start a family. The personal question that I have been too afraid to ask is “How well do you sleep at night?” [Continue reading...]
Is guilt a bug or a feature? (In the startup Daily)
he first time I tried to explain to my parents, both very successful architects back home in Lima, that I was working in startup I had a vague tinge of déjà vu. It reminded me of the time I had to tell them I was dating a recent MBA graduate who was at the time looking for a job. Both times I was nervous and I half-dreaded telling them the news as they somehow felt incomplete.
In both cases the future looked very bright, as it was all about the potential of what comes next, but the present was a bit uncertain. I remember that both news, each at their time, made me feel youthful and enthusiastic, but also like I had some explaining to do.
It wasn’t until very recently that I finally discovered why that was. Both working at a startup and dating an unemployed MBA graduate made me feel guilty. I felt guilty of betting on something that had not yet been proven; guilty because of the education I had gotten, much to my parents’ sacrifice and effort, and for the jobs that I given up to take this startup risk. And also, I guess, of all the merchant bankers I wasn’t dating instead of this guy... [Continue reading...]