big bets and bad calls

Clint McIntyre and Andrew Nash
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We explore how big ideas become real businesses and what it really takes to build something new. We talk with founders, funders, and everyone in between who’s helping shape the next wave of innovation. Hosted by Clint McIntyre and Andrew Nash

Episodes

  1. 21H AGO

    big bets & bad calls with Trove

    Sheree Andersen didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. She grew up on a Tasmanian farm, spent two decades in corporate HR, and stumbled into startups when she fell in love with building something from nothing. In this episode, Sheree — Co-Founder of Trove, the platform supercharging how brands manage corporate gifting at scale — walks us through the bets that defined her journey: leaving a working business behind to build something entirely new, sending co-founder Johnny to Singapore without a single local contact, and deliberately targeting Asia's gifting culture before anyone told them to. She also gets honest about the bad calls: building before validating, hiring before the business was ready, and chasing big partnership opportunities that quietly went nowhere. We get into AI, team culture, the female founder funding gap, and why saying no is sometimes the most powerful thing you can do. Warm, candid, and full of hard-won wisdom.

    59 min

  2. 6D AGO

    big bets & bad calls with Eolas Dx

    Two electrochemists. One $1.50 hack. A diagnostic platform that could go anywhere. Prof. Conor Hogan published a breakthrough mobile diagnostics idea in 2011 without patenting it. Someone called him an idiot. He never forgot it. Years later, he did it right — secured the patent, landed a multinational licensing deal, spent five years developing a smartphone-based wine sulphite test. Then the company walked away. The IP came back to La Trobe. What felt like a gut punch turned out to be a free shot on goal. That's when Dr. Saimon Silva showed up — a Brazilian electrochemist with the manufacturing instincts Conor didn't know he was missing. Together they founded Eolas DX, built on a simple insight: the audio codec in every smartphone can do the same work as a $20,000 lab instrument, for $1.50. Wine testing first. Heavy metals, roadside drug tests, and disease biomarkers next. The mission: accurate diagnostics, everywhere, for anyone.

    1h 1m

  3. MAY 5

    big bets & bad calls with MyFast Medical

    What if the problem with healthcare isn't the doctors — it's the whole system they're trapped in? This week, Clint and Andrew sit down with Dr Farhad Goodarzy and Sadaf Tamizkar, co-founders of a healthcare startup that's quietly rewriting the rules on how Australians access primary care. And they're doing it in a way that's as practical as it is ambitious. It started with a simple observation: international students were showing up sick — not because they didn't have insurance, but because they didn't understand how to use it. From that seed grew something much bigger: a model that brings GPs into workplaces, surfaces silent cardiovascular risks before they become crises, and builds the kind of connected wellness network that GPs actually want to be part of. Oh — and they're about to flip the name. By the time you're listening to this, the rebrand is done. But the vision? That hasn't changed one bit. In this episode: The pivot from international students to manufacturing workplaces — and why 6–10% of workers were walking around with serious undiagnosed heart conditionsWhy selling software to GP clinics doesn't work — and why owning the clinics doesThe "Project X" vision: AI-powered wellness insights, a network of GP practices, and telehealth — all talking to each otherAustralia's looming GP shortage (11,000+ by 2031) and how smarter data could stretch every 15-minute consult furtherBad Calls will have to wait — these two are moving too fast to make many yet. We'll have them back.

    34 min

  4. APR 28

    big bets & bad calls with Mark My Words

    James Smith had 150 students, five English classes, and a standing Sunday appointment with a pile of marking that never got smaller. So at 25, with barely two paying customers — both friends of friends — he quit his job and bet everything on fixing a problem he knew better than anyone. That was two and a half years ago. Today, Mark My Words is an AI-powered writing assessment platform in schools across Australia and New Zealand, with 200 new schools onboarded in the first five weeks of this year alone — and conversations underway in the US and UK. In this episode, James walks us through the quit-your-job moment, the $80 wake-up call that shaped his entire tech architecture, and the scrappy $9.99 pricing hack that cracked open the school market from the bottom up.

    58 min

  5. APR 21

    big bets & bad calls with Cell Bauhaus

    Megan Coomer and Michael Stumpf are the co-founders of Cell Bauhaus — a startup building software that simulates biology on a computer before anyone sets foot in a lab. Think 10x faster, 10x cheaper biotech innovation. We dig into how a published research paper caught the attention of the Gates Foundation, what it's like to wake up to $3.1M in your bank account, and why they believe they're sitting on a $79B market with no real incumbent. Two brilliant scientists, one civilisation-scale bet.

    52 min

  6. APR 16

    big bets & bad calls with Scale Investors

    We sat down with Samar Mcheileh and Roo Harris, two of the three co-founders of Scale Investors to talk about being Australia’s First Women-Led VC Fund backing Women-Led Startups. Founded in 2013 as a gender-lens syndicate, Scale Investors launched its debut venture capital fund in 2025.The fund is backed by the Forrests’ Minderoo Foundation, the family of the late, iconic, female entrepreneur, Carla Zampatti, as well as the Thickins Family Office, founded by Celina Thickins and her husband, Joel Thickins, the head of private equity firm TPG Asia. They have raised over $30 million to date for early-stage, women-led ventures and have already made their first investment through the fund.

    59 min

  7. APR 7

    big bets & bad calls with Dr. Anushi Rajapaksa

    What if you could inhale your vaccine instead of bracing for a needle? We sat down with Dr. Anushi Rajapaksa, founder of Misti, who's on a mission to change the way biological medicines — including vaccines — get into your body. No needle. No clinic. Just a smart inhaler that uses sound waves, from the comfort of your own home

    53 min

  8. MAR 31

    big bets & bad calls with Byron McCaughey

    Most psychologists who work with entrepreneurs have studied the experience. Byron has lived it. Before becoming a psychologist, Byron was a venture-backed founder, navigating the pressure, the uncertainty, and the internal chaos that comes with building something from scratch. That experience is what eventually led him to specialise in exactly this space. Byron founded Sublime Studio as a psychological coaching practice built specifically for entrepreneurs. His work centres on what he believes is the real lever in any business: the mind running it. Clarity under pressure, genuine resilience, and the ability to challenge your own thinking — these aren't soft skills. They're the foundation everything else is built on. Alongside one-on-one work with founders, Byron partners with accelerators, universities, innovation hubs, and investment firms — including MAP, the University of Melbourne, Imperial Enterprise Lab, and THRIVE Global — delivering workshops and Psychologist-in-Residence support to founders at every stage.

    53 min

  9. MAR 24

    big bets & bad calls with Leah Ruppanner, PhD

    Most people think "mental load" means remembering to buy milk and book the dentist. Sociologist Leah Ruppanner Ruppaner says that's just the tip of the iceberg — and she's written the book to prove it. In Drained, Leah maps out eight distinct types of mental load that people carry, from emotional support and relationship upkeep, to dream-building for others, to the invisible work of keeping everyone safe and connected. None of it shows up on a to-do list. All of it is exhausting. In our conversation we dig into why people end up carrying so much of this weight, what it actually costs them, and the practical audit she's developed to help people recalibrate, without the guilt.

    55 min

  10. MAR 17

    big bets & bad call with Andrew Pankevicius

    We sit down with QuarterZip co-founder Andrew Pankevicius, as he takes us on his journey from multiple startups, exits, and pivots, and what the future holds for onboarding at enterprise scale

    57 min

  11. MAR 10

    big bets & bad calls with Nicole Jenkins

    Today’s guest is Dr Nicole Jenkins co-founder of FeBI Technologies, a deep-tech startup developing quantum sensing technology designed to prevent missed and misdiagnosed iron disorders. It’s a fascinating mix of cutting-edge science and real-world healthcare impact.

    1h 1m
  • 11 Episodes

About

We explore how big ideas become real businesses and what it really takes to build something new. We talk with founders, funders, and everyone in between who’s helping shape the next wave of innovation. Hosted by Clint McIntyre and Andrew Nash

Information

  • Creator
    Clint McIntyre and Andrew Nash
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    11
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Clint McIntyre and Andrew Nash
  • Show Website
    big bets and bad calls