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

TDM Growth Partners

“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. Mission Zero - Global Money Movement Reimagined: Kristo Käärmann, co-Founder and CEO Wise (LON:WISE) [S10:E1]

    FEB 4

    Mission Zero - Global Money Movement Reimagined: Kristo Käärmann, co-Founder and CEO Wise (LON:WISE) [S10:E1]

    My guest today is Kristo Käärmann, the co-Founder and CEO of Wise, the fintech  £10b powerhouse that's fixing one of the most broken systems in the global economy: how money moves across borders. Wise simply started as a personal workaround, with Kristo trying to move money between Estonia and the UK, where he soon realised that international payments weren't just slow and expensive by accident. They were structurally opaque, riddled with hidden fees, and built on systems that hadn't meaningfully changed in decades. From that experience emerged a very simple idea, and one that became Wise's mission. Money should not have borders. Unlike most mission statements, though, this one actually constrains how Wise operates. It shapes pricing, product design, technology investment, culture, and even how the company thinks about its bottom line, with Wise consistently using its scale not to expand margins, but to collapse prices for customers. Underneath the product, though, sits something much deeper: a global payments infrastructure built directly into domestic payment systems, sophisticated treasury and ledger technology, and long-term relationships with regulators that have become a significant competitive advantage rather than a constraint. Today, of course, Wise moves tens of billions of pounds around the world each quarter, operates critical financial infrastructure across dozens of countries, and is increasingly becoming the underlying platform that other banks and fintechs themselves rely on. Wise is one of my favourite companies, both as a consumer in love with their product, but also as an admirer of the incredible scaling journey both Kristo and Wise have been on.

    42 min
  2. From Olympic Gold to ASX 200 - Grant Hackett, CEO Generation Development Group (ASX: GDG) [S9:E8]

    10/25/2025

    From Olympic Gold to ASX 200 - Grant Hackett, CEO Generation Development Group (ASX: GDG) [S9:E8]

    Grant Hackett is a three-time Olympic gold medallist and undoubtedly one of the greatest distance swimmers of all time. Since stepping out of the pool more than 15years ago, he’s crafted a second chapter as an executive and now as CEO of Generation Development Group (ASX:GDG), a diversified financial services business that has grown fifteen-fold under his leadership to become an ASX 200 company. Grant is a unicorn leader. His experiences as not just an elite sportsperson, but one of Australia’s greatest, give him a unique perspective on leadership, motivation, discipline, and resilience. He’s not someone you’d want to back against — and that mentality has flowed through into how GDG has intentionally scaled its culture as it has grown. This is both a personal and business story of reinvention, drive, strategy, and thoughtfulness.

    50 min
  3. The Next Chapter: Relevancy and Reinvention - Bruce Buchanan, CEO and Co-Founder, Rokt [S9:E7]

    10/14/2025

    The Next Chapter: Relevancy and Reinvention - Bruce Buchanan, CEO and Co-Founder, Rokt [S9:E7]

    We last sat down with Bruce Buchanan in late 2019 — at the time, Rokt was in hyper-growth, having just raced through the US$100 million revenue mark. The business was laser-focused on the transaction moment — unlocking its potential for merchants, advertisers, and consumers alike. In the six years since, Rokt’s revenue has grown more than eightfold. The company is now strongly profitable and has built on its original insight  - the power of relevancy. Bruce and his team have transitioned the business to a suite of AL powered  products and with each new capability deepened e-commerce partner stickiness, expanded both sides of the network, and delivered greater returns for merchants and advertisers. This episode dives into Rokt’s next chapter of growth, and the role it is playing as a neutral, trusted intermediary for first-party data, how the business is positioned to become an intelligence layer for ecommerce in a world that is seeing real time technological change with the rise and capability of AI agents. Just as importantly, we’ll discuss what the last six years have revealed about Rokt’s culture, and how Bruce has leaned into the hard decisions needed to scale the business for the long term. Without doubt, this period has cemented Bruce Buchanan as one of Australia’s greatentrepreneurs and leaders. And yet, the story is still being written.

    52 min
  4. From The Archive: Art Meets Science - Bruce Buchanan, Rokt CEO and Co-Founder

    10/08/2025

    From The Archive: Art Meets Science - Bruce Buchanan, Rokt CEO and Co-Founder

    We’re reaching back into the archive  for the second time this season to revisit a conversation from 2019 with Bruce Buchanan, the co founder and CEO of Rokt. I will be sitting down with Bruce again soon for a follow-up episode covering everything that’s happened since 2019. Even if you have heard this episode before or if  are new to Scaling Up since then,  this is a must listen.  It serves not only as a great primer on Bruce and Rokt, but also shines with insights drawn from Bruce’s intellectual curiosity about consumer behavior and psychology, as well as his clearleadership principles that guided Rokt through its early hyper-growth phase. At the time of recording, Rokt was around the US$100m in revenue mark, growing fast, with offices across both Sydney and New York. It was hyper focussed on the transaction moment and unlocking it's potential for merchants, advertisers and also consumers. It has been an incredible ride since 2019, with the business now in 2025 valued at US 3.5b billion dollars, has seen exponential revenue and transaction growth, tonow be a trusted partner by the world's biggest brands and ecommerce partners…but that part of the Rokt story is not for now. Enjoy this re-release of one of our most-loved early episodes—with Bruce Buchanan, co-founder and CEO of Rokt

    45 min
  5. Block by Block: Building the Future of Money - Owen Jennings, Head of Product, Block [S9.E6]

    09/07/2025

    Block by Block: Building the Future of Money - Owen Jennings, Head of Product, Block [S9.E6]

    Owen Jennings, the head of product at Block Inc(NYSE:XYZ) and a key person around the executive table of what is now by market cap, one of the largest 500 companies in the world. Block (formerly known as Square) is really several powerful ecosystems under one roof: Square serving millions of merchants; Cash App, the consumer super app that's become the financial home for tens of millions of people; and of course, Australian founded Afterpay, the global buy-now-pay -later platform that connects these two bringing shoppers and sellers together. Owen is one of the rare executives that has truly grown up inside acompany over the past 13 years. Owen has worn just about every hat from early roles in ops to becoming the COO of Cash app where he helps scale it from a scrappy side project into a FinTech powerhouse that now generates c$6 billion in annual gross profit. Today Owen leads product across all of Block. He's widely credited for the new sense of product velocity inside the company and the ability to ship faster, to experiment at scale, and to embed AI as a multiplier in everything they do. Most importantly, this is a story about scaling culture. Block’s managed something that very few founder-led companies of its size and scale can achieve re-engineering that start up DNA inside a scaled business. Owen has been atthe heart of this cultural reset - hands-on close, to customers and unafraid to tinker with the new ideas himself.

    49 min
  6. Challenging The Giants of the Game - Tom Beahon, Co-Founder Castore [S9.E5]

    08/25/2025

    Challenging The Giants of the Game - Tom Beahon, Co-Founder Castore [S9.E5]

    From a kitchen table in Liverpool, England, to the dressing rooms of some of the world's biggest sports teams, Castore is one of the fastest growing premium sportswear brands on the planet. Founded in 2015 by brothers Tom and Phil Beahon, both former professional athletes. Castore was built on grit, obsession and a bit of a chip on the shoulder. With no fashion experience, no contacts, no outside investment – the brothers remortgaged, their parents' home, lived off just a thousand pounds a month and packed boxes late into the night. Their mission - to build a British challenger to the global sportsweargiants Nike and Adidas - a brand that blends high athletic performance gear with the sophistication of luxury fashion. Fast forward almost a decade and Castore is rewriting the rules of the industry. They've developed proprietary fabrics, run a fully integrated design to distribution platform, and perhaps most disruptively, ripped up the old team apparel playbook, forging deep digital first partnerships with elite teams in cricket, rugby, football, and Formula One.

    1h 2m
  7. Nailing Culture at Scale - Michael Schneider, Managing Director, Bunnings [S9.E4]

    07/14/2025

    Nailing Culture at Scale - Michael Schneider, Managing Director, Bunnings [S9.E4]

    “What does it take to scale one of the most trusted brands in Australia without losing its soul?” Today’s guest is Michael Schneider, Managing Director of Bunnings since 2016 and a 20-year veteran of the business. Bunnings is more than a retailer. It’s a cultural institution. With more than 380 stores, $18b in revenue and  55,000 team members, it’s hard to imagine a time when Bunnings wasn’t the default answer to every home improvement question. But behind that dominance is a story of quiet leadership, discipline, and culture at scale. In this episode, we dig into how Bunnings earned and maintained this dominance – from Every Day Low Prices and delivering brand promises at scale,  to the cultural consistency that is stitched into the fabric of the business, this is a story of of what it really means to scale up — not just fast, but for good.

    51 min
  8. Still Obsessed - Steven Marks, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Guzman Y Gomez [S9.E3]

    06/27/2025

    Still Obsessed - Steven Marks, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Guzman Y Gomez [S9.E3]

    When Steven first joined us in 2019, GYG was already making noise—130 stores, a cult-like customer base, and a founder who was across every detail of the business from avocado sourcing to store design. That episode became one of our most replayed for good reason: it was raw, passionate, and incredibly insightful. But so much has changed since then. GYG has nearlydoubled its footprint, gone public, entered the U.S., scaled a drive-thru model, launched a new app, and pushed network sales past the billion-dollar mark. The team’s changed. The scale is bigger. But what about the founder? This episode is about going deep on that next chapter—what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what Steven’s learned along the way. It’s a candid look at what it takes to lead through hypergrowth without losing the heart of the brand. 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.

    49 min
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About

“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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