How Lucinda Hartley’s great Australian dream is rethinking home ownership

0:00Lucinda Hartley: Founders, I know what's on your mind at stupid o 'clock. After failed attempts at counting funding rounds and doom scrolling, you've finally settled on something that will surely put you to sleep. Payroll and compliance. Don't let the boring stuff slow down your startup growth. Global HR and payroll platform DEAL, that's D-E-E-L, can handle all the complicated stuff around international payroll, compliance, visas and onboarding, so you can stay focused on building. Visit deal.com slash 360 to learn more today.

0:33Majella Campbell: The biggest predictor of how long you're going to live is your postcode. More than your health, your genetics, your any other underlying factor.

0:48Lucinda Hartley: Hello and welcome to Startup360, the weekly show from startupdaily.net on all the tech and the people behind it. It's more founder fun than founder mode and Startup360 is all about staying human and finding out what it is that makes founders tick. If you like what you're watching or listening to, be sure to hit subscribe. Now, you're probably wondering what my face is doing here, doing the intro. Well, today, Simon is off in the slopes. He is, I'd be not sure if we can use the word skiing, but maybe ice slushing around. So today, Julie and I are holding down the fort. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:26Lucinda Hartley: And it's a little funny me just owning the show, having been gone for six weeks. Thank you for having me back. Thank you for being back.

1:34Julie Trell: Tell us, how has everything been going? It's been good. It's been fun sitting in your seat, keeping it warm. You've big shoes to fill. Oh, gosh, I wouldn't say that far. Yeah, thank you. It's been fun to have this conversation.

1:46Lucinda Hartley: It's been great. Well, I'm feeling very well rested after a good long trip in Europe. So plenty of exciting times all throughout there. We've had some big and exciting news across the Tech Week as well. We've had a very, very big raise from Blackbird. Should we start with that? Sure. I think it's their sixth fund close. Blackbird have just closed a$1.05 billion round, which is, I think, their second billion dollar fund, which is just insane. Its focus is on early or ultra early stage, pre-revenue, pre-product, and sometimes pre-idea, which is going to be really, really interesting. And I think it's a very interesting time for that to be coming about as well.

2:27Julie Trell: Very interesting with all the vibe coding and AI happening. What they're looking for will be really interesting. Maybe I'll throw my hat in the ring.

2:34Lucinda Hartley: Yeah, absolutely. They've got a number of new LPs as well as some returning ones as well, which is all very exciting. So they, yes, everyone knows about Blackbird. I don't need to go too much into a history, but they have$3 billion deployed over across 190 companies. They are one of the biggest or I think the biggest VC in Australia. So massive congrats to their team. It's a huge huge feat. So looking forward to seeing all the great things that come from that. I think a second race. This has been a week of the VCs perhaps because I believe Galileo also opened their second fund. Galileo Ventures which is an early stage VC based out of Melbourne, Sydney and San Fran.

3:17Lucinda Hartley: They've had the first close of Funtu, which is called Expansion. They haven't disclosed how big it is. However, they are offering check sizes of around 250 to 500K per deal. So very, very exciting. And they're going to be focusing on emerging Australian founders and 40 % of the capital will be embarked for Victorian founders. So look at those sitting down south.

3:44Julie Trell: I just keep thinking how VCs are going to be having to think differently in what they're looking for in these new companies, given the change in the speed of technology.

3:53Lucinda Hartley: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, we probably aren't going to do justice to the news the same way that Simon can. So if you're interested in all the details of coming up for this week, be sure to check out StartupDaily.net for all the juicy stories that will be lined up there. I know that they'll be pumping them out all week. Before we go any further, Startup360 is supported by Deal. Hire, manage and pay anyone, anywhere. Should we get in and talk a little bit about our upcoming guests? Absolutely. Do you want to kick us off?

4:22Julie Trell: Yeah. So today we have the Lucinda Hartley, who is a serial entrepreneur, urban planner, and really good human who has done a lot for this country, for communities, lived all around the world. and excited to hear her stories talking about what property will look like, what it looks like now, what it looks like in the future, and how to get some funding to buy housing.

4:46Lucinda Hartley: Yeah. I mean, what she's building with Xero is just incredible. They offer 100 % home loans to people looking to buy and live in the properties that they're purchasing. So a massive move, I think, in the property space and I can't think of a better team of people to do it. So it's all super, super exciting. Very keen to nerd out on some design stuff as well. I've got some questions lined up to ask. So should we just go ahead and get into it? Let's talk to Lucinda. We'll be right back. Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any business in minutes.

5:18Majella Campbell: Hire anyone, anywhere and get visas handled fast so you can stay focused on scaling.

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5:40Majella Campbell: Visit deal.com slash 360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360.

5:51Julie Trell: Welcome back. And it gives me the most exciting pleasure to introduce not only a friend of mine, but an amazing entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur who is doing amazing stuff in the world. I'll give you her bio, but I want to add, I will add how wonderful a person she is afterwards. She is an urban designer, Lucinda Hartley. Let me just drop her name in there. Lucinda Hartley is a urban designer turned serial tech founder, named one of Australia's 100 Most Influential Women by AFR, co-founded Neighborlytics and co-design studio before turning her attention to the housing affordability crisis as co-founder of Zuru Home Loans.

6:31Julie Trell: And she's an author of the book, Finding Homes. And most importantly, I got to meet you back in 2017 and fell in love with how you think in terms of an urban planner, really, really including humans and people.

6:48Majella Campbell: So right at the beginning of the journey.

6:51Julie Trell: Right at the beginning of the journey. So let's start with how did you get into being an urban designer?

6:57Majella Campbell: It's an interesting question because I think it's not a career that people necessarily understand or really know a lot about and I didn't either growing up it wasn't really on my radar at all but I think what led me to study architecture and urban design was that I grew up living in six different countries I've now lived in 10 and part of that experience of living in cities that were vastly different to each other was a curiosity about how the built environment, I guess, the housing, the streets, the places that we live, shapes the opportunities and the type of life that you have. And that led me to have a great curiosity about cities and city design and into urban design.

7:38So perhaps

7:40Majella Campbell: not your typical pathway, but that's continued to be a lifelong curiosity. And all of the different hats that I've worn since have in some way been related to cities and housing.

7:51Julie Trell: And one of the things that I think is really special on how you see cities and housing is really how people experience it. You helped me shift my thinking about design when it comes to people actually using it and finding value of it.

8:08Majella Campbell: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point when you think about like if you're a product designer or you're building software or whatever company that you're building, it's always ultimately for a customer or a user. and great companies have the user in mind and great cities are the same. Great cities should be thinking always about the user experience. How are people, all kinds of people getting from A to B? How are they experiencing this place? Do they feel safe? Do they feel comfortable? I think sadly we get it wrong a lot of the time. I think it's really easy for us to be clinical about how we plan and design cities, but ultimately the question should be, How is this like a place for humans to thrive?

8:53Julie Trell: You mentioned the human data gap.

8:57Majella Campbell: Yeah, that's when I first met you, Julie. And thinking about this question, it's really, you know, you manage what you measure, right? And when it comes to cities, the things that were historically measured are the things that are easy to measure. like how tall the buildings are, how fast the traffic is going, the things that you can like quantify and get out a ruler and measure. And that only tells half the story of what's actually going on in a city. And if you're a property developer or an urban planner or someone who's thinking about what goes where and how to create value, only having information about the building height isn't really what's going to drive value.

9:38Majella Campbell: So if you understand the community and the economy and the cultural landscape, you're going to be much more effective. But historically, that's been really, really hard to measure. Like you've had like a five-year-old census, and I know we just had the census, which I'm personally very excited about, but perhaps more than the average person. But you haven't had real-time data. And so in my previous company, Neighbolitics, what we were able to do is tap into all of the digital footprints that we have around us today, like anonymized mobile phone, location information, social media data, restaurant reviews, and create metrics about communities and lifestyle that we could measure in real time.

10:16Majella Campbell: And that was then a tool that property developers and governments could use to plan what goes where, looking through a human lens as well as through like the physical environment lens.

10:28Lucinda Hartley: Listen, you've had such an interesting career and working on some really interesting and big problem spaces. I'm keen to sort of dig in a little bit on how did this all come about? I mean, when you were younger, you know, what did success really look like to you? And how has that pathway really changed since you've grown into the person you are?

10:46Majella Campbell: There's a lot of different threads. Both my parents are academic scientists, which comes with a whole other kind of side of trauma. But the part that I think that I've kept is being curious. I think scientists are naturally very curious about asking why and also understanding how you measure because I'm quite intuitive by nature, but I'm also prepared to be wrong if the data shows me that my intuition is off. So in all the things that I've been building and doing, it comes from a quantitative lens of trying to get data and measurement about how we work. Even in the work I'm doing right now, which is in home loans, working with first-time buyers, we've got a 0 % deposit mortgage product.

11:34Majella Campbell: But a lot of what we're trying to do is help those home buyers buy homes that we expect will appreciate in value and high growth homes. And so we're using all kinds of conventional and unconventional data to help do that. So bringing that data lens. But I think the mix of that perhaps scientific thinking, but mixed with living in a lot of places that, you know, I'm sure you've traveled a lot, lived in a lot of countries. When you live in different places, it builds in you a curiosity because you don't expect that you know how things work. Like if you're walking around, I lived for a long time in Phnom Penh and Hsimin City.

12:09Majella Campbell: And when you're trying to just go to the doctor or just pay a bill, you don't know how it works. You don't assume you know how it works. And so that means you have to be flexible and curious to understand what is the system here, what is going on. And to me, that has really informed what I would call like an entrepreneurial mindset. I think startup founders do that. I think startup founders ask why they're curious. They're trying to understand, is there a better way to do this? How would you measure it and get information? And so I think there's a mix of those different experiences that have informed what's been perhaps a pretty curvy career path.

12:49Julie Trell: So any stories with that data that you've collected from where you've been that have changed ways that cities have been designed, things that you've learned in a different city. I'd love to hear how that data is also a storyteller for you.

13:01Majella Campbell: Yeah. So something that's really interesting in the work we're doing right now with Zuru is, and this is probably builds on my background in social and human data and working in that space, is when you buy a home, most people have the expectation that it's going to go up in value. It doesn't always actually, but we have that expectation. And when we're trying to understand And what actually drives growth? It's quite a complicated question. And at Zeru, we're asking, how does it drive growth for owner occupiers, for first-time buyers, for people who are going to live in their home? I think it's a different question if you're an investor.

13:39Majella Campbell: And traditionally, there's so many property models out there. There's so much property data, but it typically zeros in on the financials. So like supply, demand, price growth, rental yield. And it's often this trade-off between yield and capital growth and it's in that cycle. And look, you know, if you're investing, that's the model that you probably want to look at. But if you're looking for a place to live in, you want the growth, but you also want so many other things about your life to work. You want to know that it's a neighborhood that's going to suit you. And so we bring in quantitative metrics of lifestyle, like walkability.

14:18Majella Campbell: And so not, you know, a lot of property ads will have distance to a school, but we're actually trying to build like what's the character of that place? What can I walk to? How many shops are there? What's the density of the shops? What's the quality of them? And by bringing in that quantitative information combined with the property data, we've seen extraordinary results. Like all of the homes in our portfolio have grown at about 20 % per year, which to me just shows that we often undervalue all of that like placemaking community side of the city, which is actually ultimately what drives growth.

14:51Majella Campbell: So it's kind of an interesting combination.

14:54Julie Trell: I want to get into what Zeru does, but there's also a quote that you just made me think of that you said, is your postcode is likely to affect your life expectancy as your genetic code? Yeah. Yeah.

15:06Majella Campbell: That's some research that I read 20 years ago by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It's a longitudinal study in the US and it continues today. And what they correlated was that the biggest predictor of how long you're going to live is your postcode, more than your health, your genetics, your any other underlying factor. And social researchers would call that social determinants of health. If you're living in a neighbourhood where you can walk easily, you don't have to get in the car and drive two hours a day, which isn't polluted, where you have access to good healthcare, where you have access to good schools and opportunities around you, it's your life outcomes are higher.

15:49Majella Campbell: Now, what's kind of alarming, but also, you know, true also in Australia is that research has been replicated by RMIT with their livability work. And in places like Sydney, where you are today, you're likely to live 10 years longer if you live in the eastern suburbs compared to the west it's 12 years longer in Melbourne if you live in the eastern suburbs than the west and so the the shape the way that cities shape not just you know we think of it as I want to buy a house or I want to live somewhere but actually there are deeper fundamental questions about health and well-being that can go along with those decisions.

16:28Lucinda Hartley: I'm really interested to know what you know with um the work that you're doing with zero how do you feel that um that is going to help change and shape the the housing property market and this is what we'll make about

16:39Majella Campbell: buying properties yeah there's you know it's it's a really interesting space right now and interesting probably isn't the right word because it's you know it's a it's a dire situation uh i mean the whole catalyst for writing my book finding home was really we need a new story for housing in Australia. We actually need to reinvent what it looks like, what we think it is, because we have the most unaffordable housing market in the world as a ratio of median house price to average income. And so, you know, when we think we feel like, you know, housing everywhere in the world is increasing, but Australia is actually really extreme.

17:18Majella Campbell: And so it's really hard to even think about getting into the market or moving around for so many people. and one of the I mean data can help in some ways like I'll get to that but one of the things that I really challenge in the book is the story of housing that we're told so when you think about the great Australian dream which is kind of a cultural identity for so many people in Australia it was really born out of post-war 1950s Australia where there was also a housing shortage a massive housing shortage in the post-war era. And there was a huge push to build more housing, provide employment for a turned serviceman.

17:56Majella Campbell: And that housing boom really did accelerate housing ownership. But it also created this, there was also a huge propaganda marketing story that went around it about home ownership. Now, home ownership is really important. It's one of the most fundamental things that you can do in your life. But what we've come to conflate is home ownership with a particular type of house. So, you know, when we think about the Great Australian Dream, you don't think about buying a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Melbourne. You think about a white picket fence. And that's what the story that I think that we need to reinvent.

18:31Majella Campbell: Because when you think about like my parents, your parents, our grandparents' lives in the 1950s and 60s, their relationships are totally different than they are today. Their work patterns were totally different than they are today. their family structures everything and we've in some ways evolved a modern story for family for work but we haven't evolved a modern story for housing we still expect our housing to be the same as it was like 30 years ago and I just challenge that narrative I'm not saying that it's right or wrong necessarily but you know we all want to find our own path we always all want to find our own story.

19:06Majella Campbell: So why are we clinging to this particular story? So part of what the book is about is around really identifying what home means for you and then what pathways to finding a home that might open up for you in terms of different choices, different lifestyles, different opportunities. And data is a part of that because I think when you want to think about population growth in Australia, housing shortages, how we meet the crisis. We probably can't build a four bedroom house for everyone. And that's, I mean, that's going to sound harsh, but that's probably not the reality of what we're able to achieve.

19:48Majella Campbell: It's also not how the rest of the world lives. Like if you've traveled, not everyone in London, Paris, they're not living in four bedroom houses, but they're still having a pretty good life. So data comes into the modeling of how we think about neighborhoods, but also into how we plan for new neighborhoods, both, you know, moving out, but moving up as well. What kinds of amenities we need, what sort of restaurants, shops, schools, etc.

20:13Julie Trell: So as someone that is looking for housing, I need to rent given the whole American investment side of things, but it's been really, really helpful. And so I would love to hear more. What is Zuru solving? give us a little background on what Zeru is and how it's solving some of these problems you have outlined.

20:32Majella Campbell: Yeah, so housing is a really complex problem. There's lots of different areas of that to solve. But one of the biggest barriers to homeownership in Australia is saving for a deposit. So the gap between housing is 10 times the average wage, as in the 90s, it was three or four times the average wage. So on average, if you're trying to save 10%, 20 % deposit, that will take you a decade. By the time you've waited a decade, housing prices have increased and you're even further behind. So unless you have the bank of mom and dad or start your startup or some other way of making money, you're never going to get there.

21:10Majella Campbell: It's actually a huge kind of societal problem. So what we have found is that there's a lot of people who've got good income, They're paying a fortune in rent. They could potentially afford a mortgage. They just can't save for a deposit on top of rent. So they can't get in. And so what Zuru offers is a 0 % deposit home loan, which means we bring that opportunity forward. You can loan 100 % of the house value and buy today. And we're really involved in the way that we work with homeowners to do that. So what we really want to do is make sure you're not just buying any home, and by home I mean apartments, townhouses, houses, it's not necessarily just a house, we want that home to be able to increase in value.

21:59Majella Campbell: Once it's increased in value to a sufficient volume that you've actually earned your deposit in equity in the property. So if it was worth, round numbers,$1 million today, in five, seven years it's worth$1.5 million. We're able to refinance and exit. So we refinance a 10 % fee to exit and the remaining equity in the property becomes your new deposit so that you're able to refinance onto any regular home loan. You don't need us anymore. We can go and help the next person. So it's the primary premise of the model is helping homeowners buy today, but it's also helping people to buy well, you know, buying good properties that are going to really set up for success.

22:46Lucinda Hartley: it's I mean working in a space like property you say is incredibly complex but it can also be really regulated particularly when you start moving in all the financial elements as well and talking about borrowing I would love to sort of get a bit of a your your journey on how you actually started to get those initial building blocks in place when you were starting zero and how are you navigating all the complexity of that to get to where you are yeah it's super regulated

23:08Majella Campbell: certainly I thought that property and planning was regulated but finance for good reason is a whole another set of regulations. So my co-founder Nia has done most of this work, but we've set up so that we've got the proper licensing, like an Australian credit license, we're able to do 100 % lending under that license. With the shared equity or the, we call it a growth equity model, we've been deep through legal reviews, through ASIC reviews to make sure that we can demonstrate that the customer is always better off in every scenario. Way too complex for this session today, but we have a whole range of different exit scenarios for customers so that you do feel safe and secure taking on a loan like that because 100 % loan is a higher risk loan.

24:01Majella Campbell: So our particular agreements have had a lot, huge amounts of legal reviews and grey hairs to get through that because when you're trying to create something new in fintech and in finance, you know, you have to sort of go the harder path because there isn't necessarily an existing category for that. But we're confident that we've got everything in place. You know, shared equity as a concept, it has been around in Australia for 20 years more. The government has a shared equity scheme. So I think on the basis of that, there is some familiarity with the model. Ours is a little bit different, but we've had to work through a lot of that regulation.

24:42Majella Campbell: And now it's really about being able to accelerate the growth of that model.

24:48Lucinda Hartley: It's incredible. And what would you say like when you were in those times where, you know, working at the frontier and pushing, I guess, where things are going, what are the types of places that you've turned to for support in that area and to help keep things moving on the business side, but also for you personally?

25:05Majella Campbell: yeah i think any uh one is doing something new in any sector whether it's you know starting a startup or a company or youtube channel or whatever it is it's uh so it can be a pretty lonely journey uh this time around it's not my first rodeo in that this is the third company i've been involved in building and the while i learned huge amounts in the first two what i've found, I guess, most difficult, but also easier in this one is like being, being in that financially regulated sector. Like it's not a free open experimentation bucket. There are important rules that you have to pay attention to. So that's meant that we've perhaps gone more slowly, more methodically.

25:49Majella Campbell: It's not the go fast and break things model. It's the go carefully, get it right, and then go to the next step. And then when we're sure, then we scale up, which is the stage we're at now sort of a few years in, having done, you know, lent our first sort of$100 million worth of loans, we're now ready to move to the next stage. But on a personal level, and, you know, I've known Julie on the journey of a lot of this, it's been, you know, I've been in spaces where, you know, I'm an urban designer, an architect, but I'm actually building big data companies, finance companies. like you need a lot of support around you to sort of feel okay with that sometimes so I've really tapped into a lot of mentor networks um you know including groups like Coralus that um Julie's been a part of in the past but the biggest lesson I think I found coming into this one that I didn't learn in my last startups is I very wholeheartedly 100 % I identified myself and my person with the business as if we were the same thing.

26:51Majella Campbell: And then when I left, which inevitably happens with any company, you know, you, you know, we exited the last company, we sold that to REA, but the one before that I stepped back and left, you know, there's, there's going to be an end. Um, it was diabolically confusing. Like I, it was a real spiral moment for quite a season. and what I've been trying to on a personal level be really intentional about this time around and you know let's come back in the year and see how we're going with that is to see the business as the business and myself as myself and that seems like obvious because of course you're not actually your business but we can conflate those things in our head and I actually think I'm a better leader because of that because I'm trying to see it more objectively and not like it's not me um i'm over here and i'm working on this um still all in but not in the same way that i hope it

27:48Julie Trell: has that identity challenge well if i can provide some comments some feedback from a very good friend of both of ours because i like to reach out to people before i interview the guests here and yaz of serconomy for in the corallist first corallist cohort is you when i i asked her for some hey give me some stories of lucinda she just i got a yaz message very excited remembers the first time you met running in the rain at the house the for the offsite and she said she's my people I love her I would back her and know she has my back so you've been really important to so many people myself included on how I think about people and humanity and and connections and place um she just said you're the type of people that you want in your life so you've made an impact on others as well yeah um I did want to go back to one other thing You mentioned about being wrong and using the data and being wrong, which I love you can admit that.

28:44Julie Trell: And I like to ask this question. What are some of your flirnings, learning from failures? Now, I know failure is a big word, but mistakes that you've made that you have learned from either because of the data or the market or co-founders or what have you. What's your biggest flirnings?

29:01Majella Campbell: Oof, so many. um yeah i can share sort of some in the business and then some um perhaps some personal ones as well like i think with the last business stablelytics they're like where it was difficult for us having a new data product in a pre-ai era actually i think a lot of these problems may be like solved today because you could just iterate so much faster um was just investing way too much in a product before doing enough testing, like enough signals. Because what I learned is that people will give you feedback, but the feedback that they give you is not the same as a user who's used it or doesn't use it.

29:42Majella Campbell: So you'll show people something and they'll be like, that's amazing. I want that. And then you build it and they're like, Oh, I don't think I'd pay that much for it. Um, or I, or they think it's like, it's a nice to have. They, I think it's interesting but not a whore and i think not a painkiller yeah that's right human nature like we think lots of things are going to be interesting right like i think skiing is interesting i'm not i can't do it like but i think it's interesting so it's it's you've got to have like that grounded like if you're really going to invest in something you've got to have the feedback from the people who will actually pay for it use it adopt it change decisions and we did get there but I feel like we perhaps made too many assumptions about what the product needed and because at that time it was very expensive to build it, spent a lot on products that we then had to change and change and I think that's a common startup story but you will also die if you don't iterate fast enough to get to market scale.

30:44Majella Campbell: So that's probably a lesson from that company. Um, and again, I think today, um, that would be less of an issue because you can iterate with AI like a thousand times faster and, and learn those things faster. Uh, I think, you know, some of the lessons that I've learned is I'm, you know, I've learned about myself is that I'm, I miss a lot of details because my brain moves really fast. And so I, I, I miss emails. I miss messages. I miss the detail of the document that's been sent to me three times. It's easy for me to skip over. And I have made mistakes. Like I've mixed numbers up in spreadsheets that were meaningful.

31:27Majella Campbell: I've, you know, I've not got back to important people. I've like missed stuff. Now that I feel like it happens to me more often than the average person, but it does happen to all of us. What I have learned though, about myself with that, because there has been some times that I've really created big problems by sending the wrong document or mixing numbers up or something like that, is just knowing that about myself more concretely. And that's come, you know, as you might expect with an adult diagnosis of ADHD. So I can now see it through that lens that that's a pretty typical brain pattern for my sort of brain.

32:06Majella Campbell: Just always, always, always, always have someone else check. Don't be afraid to ask people to send it to me again. I tell people like, don't assume that I've seen it. I know as an adult, like it's my job to look at it, but I always ask people to remind me because I just, I am more comfortable now saying those things, getting reviews rather than feeling I need to do it on myself because I know that where most of my big learnings have been has been because I didn't slow down enough to pay attention to the detail

32:40Lucinda Hartley: yeah that makes such a strong tie I guess to the way you design your life and the systems around you you know you having that awareness of your blind spots and being able to just design something that works so you can keep moving along I think articulate that that's great absolutely speaking speaking a little bit about I guess the emergence of AI and talking about iterating moving quickly one of the things I'm particularly interested in is and I would love to get your thoughts, I suppose, as an expert in design and human interactions is one of the things I think we're trading off with speed is, you know, the intentional design aspects.

33:13Lucinda Hartley: I think with vibe coding and all the rest, we're kind of taking away the steps where we make decisions about how things are interacted or for people who are not necessarily learned in the art of design, are kind of skipping through those processes. What do you see as a risk for startups who are kind of skipping that steps and what can they do to sort of help themselves make sure that they're making more intentional decisions about the way that their products or their services or innovations are interacting with the people that they work with?

33:43Majella Campbell: Yeah so it's such a it's fascinating and confusing and I think we're only just starting to see what might happen here because yeah you can build almost anything really like anyone can almost build almost anything and when I think about what we've been able to build in our technology with Zeru in the time and the resources that it took for Nabletics, it's like night and day. But at the same time, one of the ways I think about this is I've only been able to build that because I know what good looks like. I know how these algorithms and data are meant to be structured. I know the statistical models.

34:19Majella Campbell: I'm not the statistician, but I know which models it should use for that kind of outcome. and I think just to give you an example, if I was to just plug all that data into an LLM and like say, analyze it, build me maps, build me metrics, it would and they would be wildly wrong and you could easily make something that looked like you should trust it and make really bad decisions with it. And I think the risk with AI is that it looks really complete. It doesn't, nothing ever looks like a draft. Even when I just say, can you summarize this into a document? It formats it. And I'm like, I didn't need that.

34:57Majella Campbell: I just wanted some bullet points, you know, but when everything looks final, you feel like that's done. And I think any design process or any deep thinking comes from iteration and yeah, you can iterate with AI, but you want to be not getting to final and just like shoving outputs out the door without questioning and asking and reviewing and making sure. I think there's going to be a lot of areas where we outsource the thinking to AI and we end up with results that aren't nuanced enough, aren't specific enough, or just plain wrong. I think we've all had examples of it being wrong. So knowing how to work with it and it's evolving all the time, right?

35:43Majella Campbell: So you think you've got it and then a new release and it's all different. I'm a tech optimist, generally speaking, I would say I'd put myself more in that camp that I think we're going to solve a lot of problems this way. But we're also, I get concerned that if it's easy now, like, you know, we've probably all been working for a while doing things manually for years, decades. So it's amazing being able to accelerate some of your processes. But if you were at high school now, I've got teenagers, you're starting work now and you hadn't ever been through a manual thinking process to sit and deeply wrestle with problems without any technology.

36:24Majella Campbell: How are we going to validate whether these models are right? How are we even going to know what good looks like? So I think we need to be intentional of doing both, like leaning into the technology, but also not losing our neural pathways. not not not de-skilling our own brains um by outsourcing those critical thinking skills like

36:46Julie Trell: i reflect back to first grade where um first grade teacher we had to use an abacus this was a million years ago but like using abacus and how to think and problem solve so a plus one to that the how do we slow down and figure out how to do things i think you've nailed

37:01Lucinda Hartley: that yeah really what yeah uh we spoke a little bit before about you know that story of australian property market and, you know, and the story would have been sold. When we look to the future, you know, what do you see is the next story or is that even a story at all? Are we, is there just something for everyone now?

37:21Majella Campbell: Yeah, well, I think it's being forced to create a new story. And I think some of the tension is that we're not ready for it. When we think about the ways to solve the Australian housing crisis, the good thing is they're known. It's not like this is an unknown problem that we can't solve, we actually know what the solutions are, right? We need to build more housing, you know, increase construction, make construction cheaper. And, you know, there are ways that we can solve that. If you compare like what the car industry did with manufacturing, like if we did that to housing, like we could build the supply in a few years.

37:57Majella Campbell: But is it possible for cities in Australia just to expand forever? Now, from a housing perspective, probably like If you were just building houses, you can't just keep building houses. The part of that imagination, that story that we miss is that the best places that you've ever lived in, and I'm sure you can imagine many, they are not just like a field of houses. They are places that have great places to go, to shop, to connect, to spend time, to work, to transit. And so expanding cities is extremely expensive. It's four times more expensive to build more houses on the fringe from a sewer road perspective, you know, the critical infrastructure, than it is to build up in areas that already have that in place.

38:43Majella Campbell: So it's expensive. That's taxpayer dollars a lot of the time, you know, going into building more infrastructure. So we want to think holistically about how we create neighbourhoods. And if we're thinking about that, like how do we actually create that? They estimate, you know, another 1.2 million homes, maybe we've built 200 of those. So another million homes needed by now in 2029. That's quite a lot of homes. we have to go up as well as out and Australians are a little bit allergic to apartments it's changing a little bit in Sydney and Melbourne but uh generally speaking we've had some really bad examples so I don't blame people for that but I just look more globally like you know people in New York and no one in New York is living in a quarter acre block uh but you know I think you're still having a good life no one in Paris is living on a quarter acre block or even an eighth of an acre, they're having a good life.

39:39Majella Campbell: So I want to challenge like home doesn't have to be a house from a cultural perspective, but that's also something that we have to bake into like our construction processes to be able to build more denser homes. So I think the future of Australia probably will be denser whether we like it or not. And one of the biggest drivers of that is the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer that we're ever going to experience with baby boomers moving out of the properties that they mostly own in the middle ring suburbs of Australian cities. So if you have parents who've got a house in the suburbs, lucky you, you may inherit that or they may sell it and you may have an inheritance.

40:26Majella Campbell: but where it's different it's less likely that we have enough people who can buy a four million dollar house a three million dollar house and so what's more likely is that those houses get redeveloped into townhouses and we start to see suburbs becoming denser as well so we're going to see a pretty big shift in the way that we live and any kind of change in what feels familiar or nostalgic to us feels kind of scary and overwhelming and I understand that especially because we've seen really bad examples of dense housing in Australia. But I think if it's done well, and if you think of great examples that you might've traveled to, it can be a great way to live.

41:02Majella Campbell: And it's a far easier solution to the housing crisis than building out as far as we can go.

41:10Julie Trell: I want to take that question a little different direction, which is something that I call Remember the Future. It's 2031. You're back on the podcast. What's going on?

41:20Majella Campbell: yeah where are you what's the rule like so in 2031 like we've we've really helped now thousands of home buyers get into properties in australia homes that they never thought that they would be able to buy uh pathways that they never thought were going to happen and through getting thousands of people into homes they've also been able to to build equity faster they've been able to build wealth, they've been able to build security for them, their families, others. And that's set them on a pathway that starts to change the way that people live. Once you have security in your housing, you're able to invest more in businesses, in your community, in other pathways in life, because you're not so concerned about getting into the market all the time or being kicked out of your rental every 12 months.

42:14Majella Campbell: So on that pathway, we've now seen thousands of people living that way and it's becoming a model that's being adopted nationally by a whole lot of different partners as well.

42:27Julie Trell: If I could be a part of that story I noticed your fingerprints of parks have changed and they're more human-centric and they really have collected all the data so thank you for those five years of growth and exciting.

42:43Lucinda Hartley: for any founder who is working again at the frontiers and they're facing or facing doubts about what they do i would love to know what is the thing that people doubt most about zero and

42:58Majella Campbell: what do you say i guess in return with that yeah um we yeah it's in this um Um, in this particular market, I think there's a reasonable amount of doubt, like people doubt like, well, what if my property doesn't grow or what if I can't afford the repayments or what if I, you know, something in my life changes, or these are the sort of natural questions that, that people come up with. Um, in our particular model, there's, there's lots of ways that you can exit. So in, if I'm talking specifically to that, um, you know, if the property doesn't grow, it's okay we don't make any money but you're okay like you you you've still into you're still into a home and you can keep um owning that home uh if it grows slower we can exit slower if it grows faster we can exit sooner if there's hardship there's a whole lot of rules where you're protected under APRA for that to happen so I think on the financial side there's a lot of protection baked into the way that we've built um the agreements but then there's a personal question that I think for our customers is difficult is like, am I ready to buy a house?

44:07Majella Campbell: It's a big life decision. We only work with owner-occupiers at this point in time. In the future, we'll be working with investors as well. But that's a really difficult question to sit with. And actually part of the reason why I wrote Finding Home is to try and demystify the questions that you need to ask yourself to buy a home. Because when something's complex or difficult, human nature is we don't do it. It's just too hard. We just leave it. I think you'll never be ready. You're never ready to have a child. You're never ready to start a startup. You're never going to be ready to buy a home. That's not something you can arrive at.

44:45Majella Campbell: But you can reflect on questions that help you get comfortable with your decisions. And that's what the book is really trying to do. It looks at affordable living through 10 pillars. What does your time look like? Your average day look like? you know your friends your community your network and of course your finances and once you're able to answer some of those questions you can be more confident in the decisions that you're making but um sorry i'm giving you a long answer to your question but the two barriers that our customers face is like the financial security of what they're doing which there's protections around but the emotional readiness is a very personal journey that we try to take people on but for founders who are starting anything new, I think the biggest thing here is moving into finance.

45:30Majella Campbell: I'm from property background and it's aligned. I've always worked in and around property finance, but being squarely into it is a whole new set of thinking and words and language and ways to think about things. But I actually think that the best founders are sometimes the ones that come from outside and see things differently. And we continually see that in lots of industries that people come from another sector and they apply that thinking into a new problem. And so I think, but it does feel extremely scary if I was thinking about like you're at the beginning of starting something in a sector, particularly a regulated sector that maybe you don't know about.

46:09Majella Campbell: And it's like, who am I to create whatever it is, insurance product or a fintech product? But the best people who succeed in those are usually ones who come from outside in some way and think about the problem differently.

46:23Julie Trell: I do have one more Simon question that he likes to end on. What brings you joy, Lucinda?

46:32Majella Campbell: I mean, whenever people ask me something like that, the first thing that comes to mind is like running. But I think...

46:40Julie Trell: And you're coming up for the marathon this weekend?

46:43Majella Campbell: Oh, very good question. Yes, Sydney Marathon on Sunday. You shouldn't run a marathon unless you tell everyone about it. So that's, um, I think, you know, my, my kids, my family, my, like people bring me joy. Really. I think, I think of everything through a human lens. Um, and yeah, whether it's seeing our customers into homes, whether it's like helping friends solve problems, whether it's like receiving advice from another friend, I just, uh, more than ever, uh, human stuff really matters. and yeah, people bring me joy.

47:23Lucinda Hartley: Thank you so, so much for joining us today. It has been just a privilege hearing all about your insights and all the amazing things that you're building with Xero. So thank you so much. No, exciting. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.

47:37Julie Trell: So what's on your week this week? What is on for my week? I actually have to look for a place to live as a matter of fact. So this was helpful and pushing me now towards the Eastern suburbs. Oh, well, there we go.

47:49Lucinda Hartley: And you? You can have 10 extra years in your lifestyle. And what about you? Biohacking. For me, I have an event tomorrow that I'm doing with Max and Luca Marchionni. So really looking forward to that. And then heading off to the weekend for some more time off because apparently I haven't had enough. And welcome back. It's so great to work with you here today. It's so exciting. and it's great to have a fresh face and to thank you for letting me sit in the chair. I feel like you should be sitting in this chair while I've been away. You've been holding down the fort. I like your chair. This is a Smart Co Media production produced and edited by Matt Jackson.

48:26Lucinda Hartley: Thank you to Ella Walsh, to James Vass and Deal for their support. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube and read setupdaily.net all the ANZ tech news for free. Thank you so much and see you next week. Thank you.