Scaling up: Lessons from the world's best CEOs and Founders TDM Growth Partners

What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them.

By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive into to pull some common threads together.

This second episode of the Culture Scaling Playbook is wholly dedicated to the integral culture scaling topic of hiring and retaining great talent. The crux of every scaling success is great people, and this episode aims to give operators meaningful and tangible best practise ideas for them to execute upon when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent - be it from onboarding, feedback or remuneration (and everything in between).


Culture Scaling Workbook:

Includes show notes, links to sources and other interesting thought starters - ⁠DOWNLOAD



Chapters:

(02:00) The importance of belonging in high performing teams

(06:56) What makes for great hiring and why is it the centre of successfully scaling culture?

(13:56) The role of the Chief People Officer and the right time to hire one

(16:29) The importance of onboarding when it comes to building a cohesive culture

(20:12) Let's talk remuneration

(23:43) Building trust through feedback

(30:34) Diversity of thought and why it produces better outcomes

(33:23) The wrap up







For more content and insights:

⁠www.tdmgrowthpartners.com⁠

⁠https://twitter.com/TDM_Growth


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What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them.

By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive into to pull some common threads together.

This first episode of the Culture Scaling Playbook is wholly dedicated to the role values play in successfully scaling people and culture; why they are important, how they have to be at the centre of every decision made and every behaviour exhibited in a business and importantly how best to do this.


Chapters:

(02:00) High performance in teams

(04:18) What is culture - the triangle framework

(07:18) Link between effective cultures and exceptional business results

(13:02) Values and when they get formalised

(21:35) Living the valuies and codifying them

(26:13) Values and hiring - from interviews to onboarding

(34:25) Can you refresh or change your values?

(37:07) The wrap up



Culture Scaling Handbook:

Includes show notes, links to sources and other interesting thought starters: Download

For more content and insights:

www.tdmgrowthpartners.com

https://twitter.com/TDM_Growth




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Adam Schwab is our guest on Scaling Up, the CEO and co-founder of Luxury Escapes – a travel marketplace with almost $1b in bookings annually.

Adam’s story is that of a quintessential and accomplished entrepreneur – one of trial and error, learning from mistakes and applying it to the next chapter as is always required. Luxury escapes and its coming to being is exactly this – the twist and turns of a variety of businesses, over almost a decade, that eventually spun out something that was scalable and incredibly capital efficient.

While the scaling story is largely unknown but none the less incredible – it is a story born out of customer obsession, and providing consistent value to both sides of the market place
What comes next for Luxury Escapes is been exciting enough to get Adam back from 18 month sabbatical, and we not only discuss the many iterations of the business and its future, but also how Adam has thought about his own journey as a leader.

Buckle up, this is a fast paced and frenetic end to another great season of Scaling Up. We will be back in 2023 with another series, a new format and hopefully many more lessons for business builders, executives and investors alike.
Show notes:

Adam with a longer versioon of the start up years and founding story - https://open.spotify.com/episode/4cXyal7vsWQqskWSwfymov

Adam on work from home - https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/careers/love-working-from-home-maybe-you-re-a-task-filler-20220606-p5ardi

Adam's podcast "From Zero"



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Reggie Aggarwal is the co-founder of Cvent, a $600m revenue Software company, that is listed on the Nasdaq (ticker CVT). Cvent is allows organizations to  more efficiently run, manage and host all formats of events from virtual to in-person and hybrid. If you have been to a large conference recently, chances are it hasa been powered by Cvent.

Reggie is in a very unique position, having founded the company in 1999, he has seen 3 recessions, an IPO, A SPAC, a merger, competitors come and go and everything in between, and so it was a privilege to try and piece all the important moments in history together, and distill into lessons for current operators.

To have been at the helm of a business that has scaled from 12 people to almost 5000 people has also required Reggie to be on his on scaling journey and to dig into the how he has thought about this, from someone who is consistently voted one of the best CEOS in the US, makes for a fascinating conversation.

This is probably a great conversation to pair with a previous TDM blog, what makes a great CEO, as no doubt going through the conversation, you will be able to identify many of those traits shining through.

As previously mentioned, all our podcasts now have transcripts available, and you can find them at our website tdmgrowthpartners.com.

This is a great podcast to pair with our previous TDM blog  - What makes a great CEO

Show notes:

Cvent Founding Story (3:13)

Cvent’s product evolution from a point solution to an integrated and highly scalable platform (8:40)

How pivoting out of necessity created Cvent’s Triple Threat; in-person, virtual and hybrid

virtual events (14:35)

Cvent’s balanced and ‘frugally profitable’ approach enabling sustainable growth and longevity (18:10)

Maintaining confidence and market share against rapidly scaling competitors (22:55)

The differences and unique challenges of IPO and SPAC processes (25:50)

Lessons and growth opportunities from being taken private by Vista (31:54)

Managing an executive team with a long-term tenure (36:15)

Continuous involvement and hiring tips to effectively scale across countries and cultures (40:03)

Strategic and tactical advantage of the New Delhi office (43:13)

What makes a great CEO and fostering an intrapreneurial culture (45:09)

The three Proverbs Reggie lives by that enabled his and Cvent’s longevity (47:25)



This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.


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Ruslan Kogan, the CEO and co-founder of Kogan.com (ASX:KGN) is the guest on this episode of 'Scaling Up'. Kogan.com is Australia’s largest pure play online retailer with over $1b in sales. Many listeners over the years would have no doubt been introduced to Kogan.com via their incredibly successful own brand electronics business that catapulted the business to a size and scale that has allowed them to enact a phenomenal e-commerce playbook. Aside from expanding their direct to consumer product offering, Kogan.com has also been able to drive greater efficiencies and value to customers across a range of service verticals.

Ruslan’s story in many respects mirrors Kogan.com’s story – bootstrapped and always thinking entrepreneurially as to what is required to succeed in any given moment.

This episode also dives into all the big ticket decisions that any e-tailer has to face - from how to acquire customers cheaply, as well as the importance of best in class logistics and what that looks like,  be it warehousing, fulfillment or freight.

Ruslan is character, a true entrepreneur in every sense, and someone who has changed the retailing landscape in Australia for the better.

We are also now releasing transcripts of each episode, to find them, you can click through the show notes, or find all episodes on our website. https://www.tdmgrowthpartners.com/insight/

Show Notes:

Ruslan’s upbringing in Belarus and the formative nature of immigration guiding his entrepreneurial spirit (3:10)

Kogan founding story (7:08)

The early years of Kogan with a bootstrapped and presale funded business model (8:43)

Ruslan’s unique strategy to create customer attention by engaging with the enemy (12:32)

Kogan’s diversification across new verticals through partnership with service adjacencies (18:11)

Success of the Marketplace and Kogan First program, transforming Kogan into a platform business (22:10)

Maintaining best in class in bound logistics in the e-commerce industry (26:51)

Proliferation and efficiency of robotics and automation in warehousing (30:21)

Launching a last mile logistic service in the pandemic and the transition back to external courier services (33:14)

Understanding and optimising for your unique core position and competitive advantage (36:16)

Initial hiring tactics e.g., only accepting CVs from Gmail accounts to filter for logical and analytical competencies (38:30)

Expectation to ‘reply all’ in work email chains, building a culture of transparency and accountability (44:11)

How Kogan’s cultural values have scaled from the company’s inception (45:48)



This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.


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After a mini hiatus, 'Scaling Up' is back, and we have some incredible guests lined up in the coming months, none more so than this episode.

Alex Vynokur came to Australia as a 16 year old from Soviet Ukraine, not speaking a work of English, but with a steely determination to make something of himself. And that is an understatement as to what he has achieved since – in the midst of the GFC, he co-founded BetaShares, a passive Exchange Traded Fund (or ETF) fund manager, with roughly $23b under management, making them the second largest in Australia and New Zealand.

An ETF mimics an index but allows it to be investible and bought and sold on an exchange. The industry has moved swiftly from fairly vanilla – think tracking the ASX 200 or S&P 500, to more thematic or exotic type indexes - be it ESG based,  or even more niche such as tracking a basket of companies involved in the creation of the metaverse.

BetaShares has been at the forefront of this innovation – continually pushing the boundaries in its mission to democratise the ability for anyone to invest, given the ease, diversified and low cost nature of investing ETFs.

BetaShares, despite having over 800k retail customer, will no doubt be an an under the radar success story to many listeners, but one I have been wanting to tell for a while now. You are about to hear why – it is a story of grit, and passion – and a little peek into what has driven the success of a massive business, with a huge opportunity still ahead of it.
To learn more or donate to the United Ukraine Appeal visit theukraineappeal.org

You can stay across all of TDM news and views via our socials, be it LinkedIn or Twitter, our handle is - @tdm_growth

Show notes

Alex’s background immigrating to Australia and lessons from growing up in the Soviet Union (3:14) 

Influence of the Soviet Union on BetaShare’s mission to democratise investing and encourage equal access (6:42) 

BetaShares Founding Story and the opportunity in the ETF industry (9:20) 

Turning a great idea into a great business and disrupting incumbents in the ETF industry (12:13) 

Nuances in the Australian retail ETF market that allowed for BetaShares growth (14:06) 

The movement of the ETF industry to thematic and ESG investing (17:44) 

Diversification and innovation in the index industry led by new index providers such as Solactive (21:41) 

The future of BetaShares (Horizon Two) – leveraging technology to improve financial literacy in Australia (23:24) 

People as BetaShare’s competitive advantage and secret sauce (26:06) 

Fostering innovation by fostering a culture that breaks down the stigma around failure as detrimental to performance (28:56) 

Lessons on empowering leaders, managers, and the team at large to see the benefit of failure and mistakes (30:39) 

Hiring and testing for innovation and curiosity (31:36) 

Diagnostic tools to measure innovation within BetaShares culture (32:45) 

How to balance giving customers what they want and innovating to provide something they haven’t even thought of (34:03) 

The United Ukraine Appeal –delivering non-military aid to the victims of war in Ukraine (37:30)



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