PO > CAST Peter Ostick

Lee Kuan Yew was the founder of modern-day Singapore.  He took Singapore from third world to first in one generation.  His candour in analysing other counties such as the UK, US & China is incredibly insightful.
So here is what you are in for the next 45 minutes of your life.  I want to look at:
Who was Lee Kuan Yew? What was the back story to Singapore we see today? What were his principles and guiding philosophy of pragmatism and meritocracy? Considering Singapore famously had no real assets how does it now rival the US in GDP per capita?   What did he think about the demise of the UK after WWII, can BREXIT learn from Singapore and the future of the United States. Given his position of respect by the Chinese politburo, what can he tell us about China? What are the criticisms of his authoritarian control of the state?   

In this podcast, I use Will & Ariel Durant's book Lessons from history to examine why there is a tension between freedom and equality.
"Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias.  For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies."
I look at examples such as Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, John D Rockefeller and Jeff Bezos and question are some people just better equipped to compete for scarce resources than others in a free market or is it due to hereditary privilege. 
I question whether freedom in countries such as Australia, USA, UK and Singapore has to decline to ensure equality and examine if anyone has an elegant solution.

I want to dive into the Roman Stoic’s and in particular why the believed tranquillity or peace of mind should be an ultimate goal.
 
First, we need an introduction into the Roman Stoics, second why the goal of tranquillity or peace of mind was deemed so important and finally, I think more importantly I want to share some of the techniques that the stoics practiced for peace of mind.  Hopefully given the wild times that we are living in at the moment these tried and tested ancient techniques might be helpful to just one person out there.

I am currently going deep into how technology is impacting Healthcare. As part of that I am speaking to early-stage entrepreneurs in the initial staging of funding, but as part of my research, I came across Rami Weiss who is the CEO of a fully scaled up health tech business called Healthshare, which is building innovative products that improve access to health information and health practitioners. 
 
The conversation feels quite timely as we covered the debate over the Australian Governments design and execution of the My Health record, which has come under scrutiny from many including myself over concerns around how well client privacy will be protected.  This for me is a real double-edged sword.  On one hand, connecting patient data frees up time for practitioners and enables them to have a more holistic view of the patient, it also potentially opens up a viable opportunity for applying machine learning to look for solutions to disease.  The downside, for example, would be my podiatrist being given automatic access to completely unrelated  areas such as my sexual infection history would be a pretty sensitive one (Disclaimer I am as clean as a whistle I think!)
 
Thanks again to Rami for taking time to speak to me and if anybody is listening who is working in the health tech space or believes they have a solution to a problem in health, do reach out on the socials I would love to chat more. 

One of the areas that I have thought a lot about over the years, is the financial sustainability of social ventures. I think it's fair to say that my track record on this is mixed.
 
The positive intention has without doubt been there. 
 
For example, I started writing the outline for the business that became TVN in the foreword of the book by Mathew Bishop Philanthrocapitalism 
 
I bonded with TVN's co-founder Josh Ismin whilst at a Microsoft event in Atlanta where Blake Mycoskie founder of Tom's Shoes was the keynote speaker. 
 
In fact, the original business model for TVN had a 10% profit share baked into it, for investment in a social venture. Sadly we never managed to operationally align TVN and the social venture we identified.
 
That did not stop me trying again, however, this time in a seed investment in Andable which was a digital marketplace that gave 10% of the sales transaction profit to Kiva, a microloans organisation that provides credit to small businesses in the developing world.  Unfortunately, I know now more about the economics of a successful digital marketplace than I did in 2012 and sadly Andable is no longer around.
 
So it was with these best intentions and a little bit of scar tissue that I got to sit down with today's guest Paul Frasca,  CEO of Sustainable Salons. Paul is a serial entrepreneur who has been able to not only create an organisation that is sustainable in the re-use of waste sense of the word but has also built a social venture that is self-sustainable from a financial sense.  
 
Paul is a super interesting character and if in years to come scientists find the DNA that is linked to being an entrepreneur he would undeniably have it!  We talk about the innovation and incubation stage of the startup and go deep into Paul's journey with Sustainable Salons before finishing with an exploration of some of the future use cases for how technology could build a brighter future.
 
Hope you enjoy and thanks again to Paul Frasca.

It's June 30th 2017 and Josh Ismin and myself are at the end of a two-year earn-out for the acquisition of our company TVN, the digital video marketplace we started in my basement in Tamarama 7 years ago.  All the vital signs of the company are great:  Our revenue is pushing $45million, we are operating in 9 different countries in Asia Pacific,  we have survived competition from Google and Facebook as well as a host of well funded US ad tech companies trying to squash us in every way you could imagine.  All is well that ends well.  
 
Fast forward to the present day and I got to catch up with my old business partner Josh Ismin  over a bottle of wine.  I ask Josh for his take on the trials and tribulations of starting a company, scaling it and living to tell the tale.       
 
 Any questions message me on any of my socials, Enjoy Peter