Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders

TDM Growth Partners
Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders

“Scaling Up” is a podcast that tells the scaling stories of great growth companies from around the world, as experienced by their founders and CEOs. With the aim of inspiring and educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, as well as helping current business leaders, this podcast series hopes to give insight into what it takes to scale a business to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Hosted by Ed Cowan and supported by TDM Growth Partners.

  1. Putting the Care Back in Healthcare, Tim Doyle, CEO and Co-Founder of Eucalyptus [S9.E2]

    5 JUN

    Putting the Care Back in Healthcare, Tim Doyle, CEO and Co-Founder of Eucalyptus [S9.E2]

    Tim Doyle is the co-founder and CEO of Eucalyptus, a digital healthcare business that in just a few short years has redefined what 'patient first care' can look like in this country and abroad. If you haven't heard of Eucalyptus, you might know it via its house of Brands, Pilot, Kin, Software, Juniper, each delivering vertically integrated care in everything from men'shealth to fertility to weight loss. Before founding Eucalyptus, Tim was part of the founding executive team at Koala, the mattress in a box leader in Australia that scaled rapidly to over a hundred million dollars in revenue and beyond. Here, Tim cut his teeth in the high growth direct to consumer business model and perfected how to build brands that truly resonate. But health, as Tim rightly notes, is a totally different beast. It's a regulated, deeply personal high trust industry, and that makes the scale up journey all the more fascinating. In today'sconversation, we cover a huge amount of ground on the evolution of thebusiness, a mini deep dive into the market of GLP-1’s, and most notably thefascinating team building framework that Tim has used up until this point. Whatstood out to me was Tim's clarity about how and why Eucalyptus will win as itcontinues to move through this hyperscale moment of execution across a range ofglobal markets.

    47 min
  2. Founder Energy, Scaling Mindset - Silvija Martincevic, CEO, Deputy [S9.E1]

    6 APR

    Founder Energy, Scaling Mindset - Silvija Martincevic, CEO, Deputy [S9.E1]

    Silvija Martincevic, the Croatian born, San Francisco based CEO of Australian founded Unicorn Deputy. Silvija's executive career has been immense in the world of fast-growing technology, as the COO of Group On, and then the chief commercial officer of Affirm, that scaled annual revenue through the billion-dollar ceiling and beyond IPO. Silvija grew up in Croatia and while she didn't learn English until she was 18, she's an incredibly lucid storyteller. We traversed some key scaling challenges from moving Deputy from a point solution to a full workforce management platform trying to move from the fickle SMB market towards solving larger and more complex problems for mid-market customers. All of this is wrapped up in a big global push to continue the growth trajectory that now has reported revenue well over a hundred million dollars a year. While Sylvia is known in the industry as an incredible executor, as an operator, it's her leadership skills that have been front and center in Deputy’s post Covid transformation, despite not being the founder, her ownership mentality is the cornerstone of her values-based leadership principles, which come clearly through as accountability, trust, and empathy. Her insights into scaling culture as a non-founding CEO were a real highlight of the conversation. As always, please reach out if you have any feedback or comments, and for more insights on a whole range of topics the new TDM website is a great resource for investors and operators alike.

    48 min
  3. Keeping The Country Running - Greg Boorer, CEO and Founder CDC [S8E3]

    22/08/2024

    Keeping The Country Running - Greg Boorer, CEO and Founder CDC [S8E3]

    Very rarely do you get to tell the story of a wildly successful entrepreneur that is largely unknown beyond the immediate circle of influence. Today on Scaling Up, Greg Boorer, the CEO and Founder of CDC, formally Canberra Data Centres, which is in some rarefied air among companies globally, having compounded earnings at over 30% for the last 15 years. It's now valued well in excess of $10 billion and is at the centre of the beating heart of Australia's critical infrastructure. All this, and it still has a massive growth runway ahead of it. Greg's story in many ways is the CDC story from an aspiring cyclist and reluctant it graduate. Greg has become the face and often lead salesperson of a business that has rewritten industry standards as it relates to innovation and security. In what is seen from the outside as a commoditised industry, CDC has thrived by listening to customer needs and adapting accordingly. This is a story of initial hustle and belief in an opportunity, but ultimately it's about resiliency and delivering on promises. Greg has undoubtedly built one of Australia's best businesses from the ground up, and to hear him speak about this scaling journey with the knowledge and passion that he does will undoubtedly be inspiring to all our listeners. Transcript: CHAPTERS:   (00:55) – Greg’s beginnings   (05:50) – A foreign start   (11:32) – Moving back to Australia    (18:40) – Building Canberra Data Centres , now CDC (22:40) –Tactics, tips and techniques (24:12) – Technological and competitive ddvantage    (30:54) – Solidifying CDC’s Future   (36:58) – CDC’s scaling journey  (44:08) – Why you need to partner with the right people   (47:33) – CDC’s sustainability commitment

    57 min
  4. The King of Kalgoorlie - Bill Beament, Founder and CEO, Develop Global [S8, E2]

    15/07/2024

    The King of Kalgoorlie - Bill Beament, Founder and CEO, Develop Global [S8, E2]

    Bill Beament grew up in a working class family out of Esperance in Western Australia. He dreamed of being a general manager of a mine one day. Instilled at a young age with a deep work ethic and an acute commercial sense, he achieved much, much more than this as CEO and Executive Chair of Northern Star. Bill reshaped the underground gold mining industry and built from scratch a $16b, ASX 50 behemoth. Not resting on his laurels though, Bill has more recently turned his attention to wrapping up all his learnings about mining, about people and about leadership to his own venture Develop Global (ASX:DVP), which is on the precipice of replicating Northern Star's success in critical minerals with its unique business model of both mining services and mine ownership. This is one of Australia's great stories, largely unknown and untold outside the resource community so heavily centred in Perth, but the scaling lessons, as you'll hear, are applicable to all sectors and leaders of businesses, of all shapes and sizes. This episode takes you underground into a world unfamiliar to most, but applicable to all. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scaling Up with Bill Beament, CEO and founder of Develop Global.  Show Notes: CHAPTERS:   (00:55): Bill’s upbringing in country WA (04:09):  Starting in the underground industry   (06:19): Lessons from Barminco  (09:11): Building Northern Star    (14:03): What makes a world-class underground mine operator (18:48): Operational excellence at Northern Star and starting Develop Global    (24:23): Unearthing critical minerals   (29:14): DVP's business model (32:34): Buying Woodlawn mine (35:59): Best in class hiring and retaining talent (41:47): Remuneration philosophy

    47 min
  5. Taking the Pain Out of Payments - Hiroki Takeuchi, Co-Founder and CEO GoCardless [S8.E1]

    27/06/2024

    Taking the Pain Out of Payments - Hiroki Takeuchi, Co-Founder and CEO GoCardless [S8.E1]

    Hiroki Takeuchi, the co-founder and CEO of GoCardless started in 2011. GoCardless is a star of the blossoming UK FinTech scene- last valued at $2.1b, the business is on a mission to take the pain out of payments for businesses of all shapes and sizes – from your local gym collecting monthly membership right through to the Uk’s biggest utility companies. Payment collection is a problem as old as time, and in creating a bank payment network to rival the card networks like Visa and Mastercard , it is also an incredibly complex ecosystem to navigate and operate in. But Go Cardless has seen tremendous success – it currently processes over $35b in payments annually from close to 100,000 customers. Aside from regulatory complexity that is only heightened when you throw cross border payments into the mix, the challenge of scaling a business that form day one  has had such a variety of customer shapes and sizes gives rise to some wonderful lessons for operators. Hiroki’s personal story is incredibly inspiring. The founder’s journey always involves a level of grit and determination to overcome adversity, but Hiroki takes it to a new level; five years into the Go Cardless journey, a bike accident resulted in a spinal cord injury. If anything, it gave him a him a perspective on life and leadership that has enabled Go Cardless to flourish like it has. Show Notes: (02:12): Founding Story (06:45): Why direct debit? (10:03): Unraveling the complexity around cloud-based payments (12:31): Navigating the rules and regulations on collecting payments (14:02): GoCardless’ competitive advantage (19:00): Scaling challenges when expanding internationally (21:52): G2M success via partnerships (24:21): GoCardless’ culture journey (26:55): Embedding and living company values (28:26): Leading the business post bicycle accident (31:10): Evolution of leadership when scaling a business

    36 min
  6. Culture Scaling Playbook: Hiring and Retention [S7.E2]

    23/04/2024

    Culture Scaling Playbook: Hiring and Retention [S7.E2]

    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

    35 min
  7. Culture Scaling Playbook: Values [S7.E1]

    19/03/2024

    Culture Scaling Playbook: Values [S7.E1]

    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

    39 min
  8. The 6-Star Entrepreneur - Adam Schwab, the CEO and Co-Founder of Luxury Escapes [S6.E9]

    13/12/2022

    The 6-Star Entrepreneur - Adam Schwab, the CEO and Co-Founder of Luxury Escapes [S6.E9]

    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. Chapters: (02:39): The Founding Story of Luxury Escapes (09:30): Business model: Part 1, The Flash model (16:20): Business model: Part 2, Building trust in the brand (23:09): Business model: Part 3, Scaling Product and TAM. (29:58): Business model: Part 4, Horizon 3 and the billion dollar question. (35:51): People and Culture: Journey and Philosophy (40:02): Retaining Talent and views on remuneration (42:05): The Roles of Coaching, Mentoring, and Managing Show notes:Adam with a longer version of the start up years and founding story Adam on work from home - Adam's podcast "From Zero" Adam's podcast "The Contrarians"

    47 min
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“Scaling Up” is a podcast that tells the scaling stories of great growth companies from around the world, as experienced by their founders and CEOs. With the aim of inspiring and educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, as well as helping current business leaders, this podcast series hopes to give insight into what it takes to scale a business to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Hosted by Ed Cowan and supported by TDM Growth Partners.

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