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  1. How to Think About Equity as a Startup Employee

    6h ago

    How to Think About Equity as a Startup Employee

    Episode SummaryAlexei Mitko is a partner at Co-Ventures, the architect behind Eucalyptus' ESOP plan, and widely known in the Australian ecosystem as "ESOP Guy." He was around employee number twenty at Canva and one of the early employees at Koala, giving him a front-row seat to three of Australia's biggest consumer tech outcomes. In this episode, Cheryl and Maxine unpack how Alexei designed the ESOP plan that led to roughly $300 million distributed back to Eucalyptus employees, the largest ESOP payout in Australian history. He walks through the three questions every founder faces but rarely verbalizes: who gets equity, how much, and why you have an ESOP plan in the first place. You'll also hear how he modeled allocation across multiple rounds and hundreds of hires to avoid giving too much away early, why he personally walked the first two hundred employees through their equity, and why Australia's lack of a secondary market keeps ESOP feeling like monopoly money. Alexei closes with his Big Cojones moment: proposing to his wife, the most nervous he's ever been despite having climbed Europe's highest mountain. Time Stamps00:00 – Intro 03:01 – The three ESOP questions every founder needs to answer 05:58 – How to model equity allocation across rounds and hundreds of hires 09:10 – Using ESOP as your most powerful recruitment and retention tool 12:02 – How walking 200 employees through their equity built culture and trust 15:02 – Open financials, shrinking cash balances, and what went wrong along the way 17:55 – Why Australia's ESOP ecosystem is still behind Silicon Valley 26:48 – Teaching employees to understand equity: the Google Sheet that started at zero 29:20 – High salary vs heavy equity: giving employees a real choice 32:16 – Common ESOP mistakes founders make and how to avoid them 35:03 – Why Australians treat startup equity like monopoly money 39:11 – The secondary market problem: why liquidity changes everything for ESOP 43:25 – Why your startup career is a portfolio of equity bets 46:36 – What angel investors can do to help portfolio companies build better ESOP plans Sponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ___ Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman. As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs. The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business. As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartree First Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows. Mentioned in this episode: Deel x PX_Script 1 Deel x PX_Script 2 Pear Tree If you're a founder or operator trying to scale, here's the reality — Australian hiring is getting harder, salaries are at record highs, and the talent you need is increasingly out of reach. The best operators are quietly building offshore teams of engineers, marketers, accountants and analysts at a fraction of the cost. Pear Tree does it differently. We headhunt highly skilled talent from the Philippines and South Africa with full transparency on where every dollar goes, so your team is paid fairly and fully focused on your business. As a Day One listener, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

    50 min
  2. The Part No One Tells - WBGS Yas Grigaliunas (Part 1)

    6h ago

    The Part No One Tells - WBGS Yas Grigaliunas (Part 1)

    Yas Grigaliunas turned a backyard charity garage sale into Circonomy, one of Australia's most recognised circular-economy companies — years before "circular economy" was even a phrase. In Part 1 of her Perspective X conversation with Pauline Fetaui, she traces the rise: from selling homemade cupcakes at 5am triathlon training and asking herself "how do you raise money without asking people for money," to $15,000 in a single day, to quitting her job with no plan B, to a $4 million raise in four weeks with Officeworks on the cap table. It's also a portrait of the engine underneath: a relentlessly data-obsessed, "burn bright, not burn out" founder who walked into rooms she was told she didn't belong in — including a memorable run-in with Steve Baxter at River City Labs — turned "surprise chain" into supply chain for Officeworks the weekend COVID shut the world down, and built a company on the conviction that idle assets, and overlooked people, are worth far more than anyone assumes. Part 2 is the harder conversation — the cost, and what happened when it all changed. Episode Summary Yas Grigaliunas, founder of World's Biggest Garage Sale and Circonomy, joins Pauline Fetaui for Part 1 of a Perspective X conversation about building a circular-economy company in Australia before the term existed. From a charity garage sale that did $15,000 in a day to a $4 million capital raise in four weeks, Yas unpacks the data discipline, the conviction, and the well-timed moments that turned "dormant goods for good" into a national enterprise — and the energy source that, after 30 years of people predicting her burnout, still hasn't run dry. Time Stamps 00:00 - A garage full of stuff, and one question: how do you raise money without asking for money? 02:10 - Welcome to Perspective X: Pauline's "love letter" introduction to Yas 03:13 - The cancer-charity origin and "dormant goods for good" 05:30 - The first World's Biggest Garage Sale: $15k in a day, 50 volunteers 12:58 - Scaling the events: $15k to $60k to $150k in a single day 18:06 - River City Labs, Steve Baxter, and "I'm not a tech founder, I'm a business builder" 24:55 - 168 hours in a week: time, data, and consistency 31:14 - Confidence, the seesaw, and falling in love with yourself 36:57 - Coining "Circonomy" before circular economy was a buzzword 41:29 - From events to a warehouse: building a real business 48:07 - Officeworks, "surprise chain," and the Retail Rescue the weekend COVID hit 49:54 - The $4 million raise and the "capital raise cave" 51:13 - Raising $4M in four weeks as a female founder 58:55 - Preparation, persistence, and watching who opened the pitch deck About the host Pauline Fetaui hosts Perspective X, the Day One Network show that goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the inner worlds, convictions and turning points of founders and leaders. About Day One Network Perspective X is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators and investors. Join our newsletter at https://dayone.fm/newsletter to hear about new and upcoming shows. Perspective X is powered by Deel. Sponsors:Perspective X is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone Follow Day One: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/dayonefm/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dayone.fm/ · TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@dayone.fm Mentioned in this episode: Deel x PX_Script 2 Deel x PX_Script 1

    1h 7m
  3. Building AI at Scale: Inside Australia's Largest Bank with Blair Hudson

    3d ago

    Building AI at Scale: Inside Australia's Largest Bank with Blair Hudson

    This is a #paidpartnership with Commonwealth Bank Episode SummaryBlair is the Chief Engineer of Generative AI at Commonwealth Bank, overseeing nine to ten teams building the AI platform that powers Australia’s largest bank and its millions of customers. Including me, a Dollar Mite since primary school. His origin story is not what you would expect. He was a self-described hacker who grew up clicking through every system configuration setting he could find on his mum’s school computers after hours. That curiosity took him from building on GPT-2 before ChatGPT even existed, to the heart of one of Australia’s most important institutions. In this episode we get into: The litmus test he uses to spot bad AI use immediatelyWhy context matters more than promptingWhat an AI platform actually is and why your company probably needs oneWhy software engineers need to take more accountability for what they buildThe single security mistake most people are still makingWhy it is absolutely not too late to figure AI out for yourself Practical, candid, and full of things you can action today. Time Stamps00:00 Intro 03:05 What Does a Chief Engineer of AI at a Bank Actually Do 06:02 How CBA Collaborates Across Hundreds of Engineering Teams 08:56 How to Keep Up With AI Tools Without Getting Overwhelmed 12:04 Why Tool Consistency Matters in Enterprise AI 14:56 Why Blair Shares His AI Insights Publicly 17:51 What Being a Hacker Really Means in Tech 20:50 How Blair Hudson Went From Startup AI to Commonwealth Bank 23:59 Why CBA Starts Every Sprint With a Real Customer Call 27:06 Why Over-Engineering Is Killing Your AI Projects 29:47 Where AI Is Actually Moving the Needle in Banking Right Now 32:15 Why the Year of the Agent Was Overhyped 34:41 How to Build AI Fast Without Cutting Corners on Safety 39:28 What Is an AI Platform and Why Does Your Company Need One 41:49 How CBA Handles Shadow AI and Tool Adoption at Scale 45:09 Why Context Is More Important Than Prompting 50:29 The Number One Security Mistake You Are Still Making 52:30 The Easiest Way to Start Using AI to Save Time Today 54:05 Why You Should Never Ship AI Output Without Reviewing It 55:38 Why It Is Not Too Late to Learn AI In the Blink of AI is made possible by our wonderful partnersDeelFounders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ✨ Connect with Georgie HealyWeekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginahealy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georginahealytech/ The Day One NetworkIn The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter Mentioned in this episode: Deel x PX_Post Intro

    1 hr
  4. You Can. But Should You? | AI and Ethics with Dr Simon Longstaff

    May 28

    You Can. But Should You? | AI and Ethics with Dr Simon Longstaff

    "Can does not imply should." That one line from Dr Simon Longstaff cuts to the heart of everything wrong with how the tech industry is currently building AI. The Executive Director of The Ethics Centre and one of Australia's most respected moral philosophers joins Georgie for a conversation that is equal parts grounding and mind-expanding, and one of the most important episodes the show has produced. Simon's path to becoming Australia's foremost ethics expert is not what you would expect. He left school at 16, cleaned toilets on a remote island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, drove ambulances, became a paramedic and fire officer, and was eventually adopted by one of the clans of the Anindilyakwa people. It was at the end of a ship loading wharf that an indigenous elder taught him something about seeing patterns in the world, a lesson he has carried through 35 years of philosophical work and only recently realised had shaped everything. In this episode he unpacks why ethics is not an optional extra bolted onto technology but the foundation it has to be built on, why the pharmaceutical approval model could be the blueprint for governing AI, and why "necessary fictions" mean that CEOs deploying AI are responsible for outcomes they literally cannot understand. He also makes the case that the coming wave of job displacement does not have to be a catastrophe, and explains what ancient Athens and pre-colonial Indigenous life have to do with universal basic income. In the Blink of AI is made possible by our wonderful partnersDeelFounders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ✨ Connect with Georgie HealyWeekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginahealy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georginahealytech/ The Day One NetworkIn The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter Mentioned in this episode: Deel x PX_Post Intro

    59 min
  5. How to Price Your Business So You Actually Take Home Enough | Quinnie Chen from Profit Plainly

    May 27

    How to Price Your Business So You Actually Take Home Enough | Quinnie Chen from Profit Plainly

    Quinnie Chen is the founder of Profit Plainly, a web app built for solo founders and freelancers who have no finance team, no CFO, and no clear picture of whether their business is actually working for them. Quinnie built it to solve her own problem, after years of running a website and software design business post Canva, she kept reaching the end of the month and realising she had underpriced her work, taken on the wrong clients, and had no way of knowing what she actually needed to earn to replace a salary. In this episode, recorded live at the Cremorne Digital Hub in Melbourne, Quinnie joins Alan to talk through the early stages of bringing Profit Plainly to market. Alan challenges her to think more carefully about who her first customer really is, why accountants and bookkeepers might be her smartest go-to-market channel, and why per-usage pricing could unlock growth that a traditional SaaS model would block. It's a candid, practical conversation about the decisions every solo founder faces before they have any customers, any pricing, and any real clarity on where to focus. If you're building something early and trying to figure out where to start, this episode is for you. Time Stamps 00:00 Trailer and Intro 03:01 How Quinnie Chen Built Profit Plainly to Solve Her Own Freelancing Finance Problem 05:47 Why Emotional Labor and Opportunity Cost Are Missing From Most Business Finance Tools 08:52 How the Business Ikigai Framework Helps Solo Founders Identify Their Best Clients 12:05 Why Accountants and Bookkeepers Are the Smartest First Customer for Profit Plainly 14:54 How to Find a Go-To-Market Channel That Generates Both Revenue and Referrals 18:02 Why Traditional SaaS Pricing May Not Work for Price-Sensitive Solo Founders 21:04 How Per-Usage Pricing Could Help Profit Plainly Convert More Early Stage Users 23:46 How to Start Experimenting With Paid Marketing Before Your Product Is Ready 27:14 How to Build a Community and Reward Engaged Users on a Zero Budget 30:03 How to Join the Profit Plainly Early Access Beta and What Comes Next Sponsors:Pick My Brain is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ___ Galah Cyber offers Application Security Assessment Get a clear, ten-minute snapshot of your AppSec maturity across the five core principles. Fast, practical insights you can act on straight away at https://www.galahcyber.com.au/assess The Day One NetworkPick My Brain is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors.To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new and upcoming shows. The only content we create is content that will help Australian founders. Mentioned in this episode: Deel x PX_Script 1 Deel x PX_Script 2

    41 min
  6. Learn how to use AI at its exponential with Anthropic's Head of Platform Engineering

    May 21

    Learn how to use AI at its exponential with Anthropic's Head of Platform Engineering

    Episode SummaryWhen Katelyn Lesse was leading engineering at Stripe, she noticed everything around her shifting because of AI. So she left, and joined Anthropic. Today she leads platform engineering at one of the most important AI companies in the world, which is why we were so thrilled to host her for Anthropic's first ever interview in Sydney. Katelyn does not lead with technical jargon. She leads with a question every builder needs to sit with right now. Are you building on the exponential, or are you stuck on the linear? Most people, she says, are already further behind than they realise. In this episode she shares the exact framework she uses to think about building in the AI era, why your frustrations with Claude are actually signals you are onto something, and what it really means to be AGI pilled inside Anthropic. Time Stamps00:00 Intro 02:53 AI Hack: Using Claude to Pick Wine 03:42 Katelyn's Background and Path to Anthropic 05:32 Why She Left Stripe to Join Anthropic 11:22 What Building on the Exponential Means 11:48 Why Australia Is a Top AI Market 13:05 Is the Claude Obsession Healthy? 15:20 The Framework for Building AI Products 16:38 Why Evals Are Non-Negotiable 18:18 Inside Anthropic's Developer Platform 20:11 What Is Harness Engineering? 25:13 AI Security, Sandboxes and Human in the Loop 29:09 Cloud Managed Agents Explained 31:56 Open Source MCP vs Closed Claude 33:48 How AI Is Changing Engineering Teams 36:24 How to Choose the Right AI Coding Tool 39:12 The End of the Traditional Tech Team 44:30 The AI Magic Moment Everyone Remembers 45:30 What It Means to Be AGI Pilled 47:21 Rapid Fire With Anthropic 49:56 Advice for Developers Building With AI In the Blink of AI is made possible by our wonderful partnersDeelFounders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ✨ Connect with Georgie HealyWeekly Substack: https://georgiehealy.substack.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginahealy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georginahealytech/ The Day One NetworkIn The Blink of AI is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Sign up to get your weekly insights into the up-and-coming AI startups: https://dayone.fm/newsletter Mentioned in this episode: Deel x PX_Post Intro

    52 min
  7. How to Pick Pre-Seed Winners Before There's Any Data

    May 17

    How to Pick Pre-Seed Winners Before There's Any Data

    Episode SummaryIn this 101 episode, Cheryl and Maxine go deep on the fundamentals of pre-seed investing, from how the stage came to exist to why the perceived risk gap between pre-seed and seed is much smaller than most investors think. They break down the history of how venture stages evolved from single rounds to alphabetized series, how seed investors eventually got pushed up the stack, and why pre-seed emerged around 2017 to 2019 as a distinct category. They unpack why PitchBook's definition of pre-seed as "whatever the investor calls it" muddies the water, how seed preempts from larger funds are inflating average valuations, and why thinking in risk stages rather than round labels is a better framework for evaluating early companies. You'll also hear why graduation rates from pre-seed to seed don't support the idea that pre-seed is two to three times riskier, why the Australian ecosystem is sitting on a talent surplus with a capital gap at pre-seed, and why this stage is particularly well suited for angels building diversified portfolios of 20 to 40 companies. Cheryl shares her framework for evaluating pre-seed opportunities through the lens of problem pain, frequency, and market size, and Maxine walks through how to think about return profiles, dilution, and valuation at a stage where there are no outputs to measure. Time Stamps00:00 Intro 01:56 – A brief history of venture stages: how pre-seed became a thing 07:14 – Why round labels are broken and risk stages are a better framework 09:23 – Seed preempts: how big funds are blurring the line between pre-seed and seed 11:48 – Is pre-seed actually riskier than seed? The case that it's not 16:41 – Graduation rates: what the data says about pre-seed to seed conversion 22:59 – Valuation dynamics: what pre-seed rounds look like in Australia vs the US 28:36 – Why Australian founders are leaving for the US at pre-seed and what that means 31:29 – How to evaluate pre-seed companies: inputs over outputs 35:05 – Cheryl's pain framework: frequency, intensity, and willingness to pay 38:28 – Why pre-seed is the best stage for diversifying who gets funded 43:44 – The AI revenue problem: why getting in early matters more than ever Sponsors:First Cheque is supported by our wonderful sponsors:Deel: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, and get visas handled fast, so you stay focused on scaling. Deel takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits, and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It’s why more than 40,000 fast-growing companies trust Deel to move fast. Visit https://www.deel.com/dayone ___ Pear Tree: Pear Tree helps Australian and New Zealand founders build high-performing offshore teams without the agency middleman. As local hiring becomes more expensive and harder to fill, many operators are turning to offshore talent across engineering, development, marketing, accounting and operations at a fraction of local salary costs. The offshore horror stories you hear usually aren’t a talent problem. They’re the result of outsourcing agencies that overcharge clients while underpaying staff. Pear Tree takes a different approach through a direct, transparent model where your team is paid fairly, fully compliant, and focused entirely on your business. As part of the Day One community, you’ll receive a free team audit to identify where offshore talent could move the needle in your business, plus 20% off your first hire. Learn more at http://dayone.fm/peartree First Cheque is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

    47 min
  8. What AI Is Actually Changing in Cyber and How to Keep Up

    May 14

    What AI Is Actually Changing in Cyber and How to Keep Up

    Episode SummaryEvery role in cybersecurity is changing fast, but most practitioners are still treating AI like a glorified search engine. In this solo episode of Secured, Cole Cornford shares his unfiltered take on three things on his mind right now: entrepreneurship in a tough market, the growing threat to SaaS product businesses from roll your own culture, and why the cyber industry needs a fundamentally different approach to AI. Cole makes the case that saying "hey Claude" is the least effective way to work with AI today, and that the real conversation has nothing to do with which model you pick. It is about how you interact with it, how you build a harness around it, and how you stop letting third party wrappers make all the decisions for you. He also shares early thinking on an AI course he is building for security professionals, covering AI fundamentals, using AI for security, and securing AI products. Along the way he tackles the rule of three as a framework for prioritising in a small business, why product moats are disappearing fast, and what qualities he is actually looking for when hiring graduates in a market where everyone is cutting them. Timestamps00:00 Trailer 01:01 Chainguard ad 01:28 Intro and today's three topics 02:30 Entrepreneurship in a tough market 04:30 The rule of three and how Cole runs his business 07:00 Why SaaS product moats are disappearing 10:00 Roll your own vs buying commercial security tools 13:30 When rolling your own actually makes sense 16:00 Cash flow warning for Australian business owners 18:00 Why Cole is building an AI course for security professionals 21:00 Models vs harnesses and why most people get this wrong 24:00 How the cyber industry needs to change its approach to AI 27:00 What Cole looks for when hiring graduates right now 30:00 Systems thinking, humanities and the skills that still matter 33:00 Grandma's pot and questioning everything you think you know 35:00 Closing thoughts 🐙 Secured is grateful to be sponsored and supported by Chainguard. Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. Get hardened, secure, production-ready builds so your team can ship faster, stay compliant, and reduce risk. Download your free CVE Reduction Assessment at https://dayone.fm/chainguard Secured is part of Day One.Day One helps founders and startup operators make better business decisions more often. To learn more, join our newsletter to be notified of new First Cheque episodes and upcoming shows. Mentioned in this episode: Call for Feedback This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

    29 min
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  • Channel
    Day One
  • Creator
    Day One
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    494
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Day One® is a registered trademark of W2D1 Media
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