The founder mindset for doing good, with Mark Dombkins

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0:40That's founder mindset.

0:49Hello and welcome, Budry Gamalwara from the Gadigal lands here in Sydney. It's time for Startup360 with your fabulous hosts. Well, at least one fabulous host and me, Simon Thompson. The other one happens to be... I'm Julie Trell. Welcome. I have the privilege of every week sitting in a chair with you talking to amazing founders. Isn't it the best fun? It is. And I love doing it with you. Of course, Startup360 is more founder fun than founder mode. We like to lift the bonnet on the startup car and see what the donk is like under the engine. what powers people, what drives them, what inspires them.

1:29And, of course, we like to finish with finding out what brings them joy. A little bit of flirtings along the way, a bunch of stuff. Now, Julie, who is our guest this week? We've gone a little bit, I won't say off reservation, adjacent. Let's say that. So while this next founder, he was a founder. Founder, absolutely founder. Is more in the not-for-profit realm but still solving important problems, which most founders do in the tech space and helping others succeed or their customers succeed as well. We have Mark Domkens from Forever Project, and he will share his story about his adopting of some kids in Tanzania, his family of six, how he got there, what he's doing, and taking things, not just showing up as a white man savior and how his organization is really helping the community in Tanzania.

2:19I think he could teach Elon a thing or two about philanthropy. Agreed. in Africa. But it's such a great story. And of course, he was the partner in Startup Standup that you were involved with last week. He also does this incredible trip to having spent time in Tanzania up Mount Kilimanjaro. And last year, I know Andrea Gardner and a bunch of other founders, people from the Australian tech ecosystem, went and did the climb up Kilimanjaro, which is 6 ,000 meters. It is serious. You know, you're not quite in that really, I can't breathe anymore area, but you certainly feel it. You certainly know about it when you climb.

2:59So I'm looking forward to that conversation. And also a plug that he was a teacher, a maths teacher. Yes. So the pivot from maths teacher to philanthropy founder. Yes. Teachers of a feather converse together. Correct. That's what we're doing today. Correct. Fellow Chalky. How's your week been? What have you been up to been good um sitting outside i did laundry for the first time and hung my at my new place and hung my laundry out to the sun which was nice simple thing you use the solar powered yes organic you called it excellent now before we go any further i do want to say that startup 360 is supported by deal hire manage and pay anyone anywhere thank you to deal for their support every week all through 2026.

3:43We really appreciate it. Now, interesting news this week. Anything that's caught your eye as we do the deal spiel? I have stayed off the news mostly. I mean, of course, the horrible news this week has been the attack on the independent MP Helen Haynes, who was seriously injured, has lost one leg. And as we go to air and we're recording this, they're trying to save for a second one. It's the conversation we've had about engaging with politicians and how we treat each other and how we should respect each other. You wouldn't find a more empathetic and understanding person. Helen was a midwife and a nurse before entering politics in 2019.

4:31Widely loved, admired and respected. As Elekra Spender said this week on 7.30, She's the best of all of us. And my love and thoughts go to the Haynes family through what is a horrible time. I just know the power of that woman is she will bounce back and rise above this. But it's a reminder to all of us to treat each other a little bit more kindly. I hope this doesn't change the country for the worse because the fact that politicians do just wander through Woolworths with us is kind of nice. Or you see him at the footy. You know, I think Alba said, you know, sitting on the hill at a game is important.

5:16It is something that I do like about Australia. Yeah. Rather than having an entire security detail and the beast weighing 10 tonnes to protect them getting from A to B. But let's talk a little bit about start-ups and what's been going on. One of the things that caught my eye, because, of course, the firmness thing continues to roll out and it's been interesting because there's been a lot of backwards and forwards in terms of start-up stuff, in terms of AI data centre stuff. There was a plan that AirTrunk was going to do in Singapore. They were going to do a REIT up there. That stopped. There's been a Kuala Lumpur company that listed there.

5:56It got absolutely hammered. Off the back of it, it's going public. And, of course, Fermis has been talking about how it's going to list on the NASDAQ and apparently Oliver Curtis is looking for$4 billion now in capital to replace the$7 billion the IPO would have raised. But it was a story that I read on The Australian this week and I also covered it on StartupDally.net and that was that the northern New South Wales investor, Tectonic, who had about 4 % of firmness and had the listing gone to plan, that would have been worth$1.75 billion or so. This goes back to the escrow side. Now, there are no hard and fast rules around what you shouldn't do.

6:43And there is mandatory escrow. Of course, the ASX expects you to have at least liquidity of 20 % of your total shares when the company lists. The interesting thing about this, of course, was that it was about 46 % of the shares in escrow. And so nearly 60 % of them were free to trade. and that created a little bit of concern and unease. Now, the story in Australia was that they tried to do voluntary lockups and three key US investors, NVIDIA, of course, which is where I think Curtis is right now with Jensen Huang in Europe, Blackstone and Kuatu all didn't want to be a part of that. They wanted the opportunity and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to sell but it means they have the option to sell if they want to.

7:32They didn't want to sign a voluntary escrow. And then Tectonic was the same. And the signal, I think, from four of the biggest investors in the company made others nervous. So there's been discussions this week about risk and whether our risk appetite is changing. I think the interesting thing is I think of it more like a hot potato, you know, the pass the parcel with a potentially exploding share price in it. And I don't think anyone wanted to be left holding that bag because their shares were locked up whilst the others were able to get out while the going was still good. So still some way to play out.

8:12Of course, Firmus has also announced a new deal today where a partnership signing on to take more of their product over the coming years. They still have to build it, but we'll see what's happening. Kia ora to everyone in New Zealand because one of the great stories this week was Icehouse Ventures have raised$180 million New Zealand for their third fund with Simplicity, which is one of the New Zealand retirement fund managers going in on that. And so they invested in Halter, Kallar Kerb, Superbase, and they'll be investing in 20 more companies with this$150 million New Zealand fund. So that's great to see that happen.

8:57And then the other interesting thing I'd just say was OpenAI has put together basically its team of Avengers from Australia who are going to be looking at what's been happening out here. So they've got this little advisory group coming together who will be exploring, let's just say, how to keep the horses corralled inside the fence before it goes awry because, of course, the backwards and forwards on that has still been happening and the investigations. So just a little bit of the local news this week. But shall we take a quick break and we'll get Mark Dobkins in to talk about Forever Projects?

9:34Yes. Okay, don't go away. We'll be right back. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any business in minutes. Hire anyone, anywhere and get visas handled fast so you can stay focused on scaling. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits and compliance so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 37 ,000 fast-growing companies trust Deal to move fast. Visit deal.com slash 360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360.

10:14Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. So today we have Mark Domkins, the founder and CEO of Forever Project. An amazing story, former and current classroom teacher, maths. Maths is his area of expertise. And an amazing story addressing, and I wasn't sure which part of the flywheel to address that you are working on from education, entrepreneurship, health, and addressing malnutrition in Tanzania. Yeah, yeah. And father of six. And father of six. And high-ass expert, I would imagine. Oh, Keir Carnival. Keir Carnival. There you go. Yeah. Looking for sponsorship. There you go. Always be pitching.

11:02Welcome, Mark. Hey, sir. All right, so for our viewers and listeners, let's explain Forever Projects. What are you up to? Yeah, so non-profit, funding teams in Tanzania who oversee a 12-month program that help women create income, nourish their babies, and then keep families together. So I lived and worked over there a couple of years as a teacher by trade, and three of our six kids are adopted from there. So let's, let's go in. Let's really go into that story. That's let's, I think that's a really important story. How you ended up there, what you were doing. Yeah. So going way back, um, our first, uh, little baby Jackson was six months old.

11:37And, um, we just, I don't know, I just sitting on the couch, just like this, looking through, you know, TV at night and just coming across this documentary around, um, kids who'd been abandoned in, uh, Southeast Asia and these volunteers had snuck in and they were like, they brought some kind of cameras, GoPros or something to kind of, expose what was going on and you know we're just looking through channels and for some reason decided to stay on this really heavy program and it was just so um the contrast was so jarring like here's our little baby just being fed loved and then here there's kids that are just being left effectively to die because there's no one care for them so that that moment for us was the one that was just like wow what would it look like to maybe open our family up to kids who didn't have that same open love that little jackson did so we didn't then get on a plane next day and move to tanzania but that was the kind of initial point so we started exploring potential foster care and adoption through the australian system a lot of bureaucracy and red tape there and we'd always wanted to live and work abroad so um a couple years later we'd had our second baby and so jackson was four jermon was one and being a teacher it was an easy way to kind of get a ticket to work at an international school and we'd always wanted to explore africa so took our young family moved to tanzania and worked at a school on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro which was incredible yeah yeah and I'm curious about that experience going in there as a white mzungu yeah I think that's where I'm going to go yeah um to go into a school and what that was like how accepting were they how critical or what was that experience yeah so it was an international school um really targeting like you know as East Africa continues to kind of grow you've got expats you've got growing middle class people wanting an education system that might give their kids access to international college and all that sort of stuff.

13:18So we weren't teaching at a local government school. It was a well-to-do kind of school, which we kind of needed to get by and sustain life over there. But half the students we taught were Tanzanian. And the thing that they loved about the teacher, their favourite teachers were ones that were really trying to immerse themselves in the culture. So I said, look, I'll teach you maths, you teach me Swahili. And so every lesson you teach your trigonometry, with me like all right last night i was studying in my swahili book am i saying this correctly and so very quickly i was able to kind of get you know conversational and then go into the markets or you know fruit veg rice you're buying just doing swahili and um yeah so i think the students and the culture more widely would say that you were trying to really lean in and really appreciated that and you would have been a cool teacher too and of course master teacher and of course funny when uh when you didn't quite get it right yeah they love that and i think they love saying all right like you know learning is all around embracing incompetence and being comfortable with your incompetence in the way to being more competent and so if you're modeling that in anything whether it's maths or language or whatever then the kids are like okay i can take a risk as well and getting it wrong doesn't matter have a laugh that's found a mindset yeah yeah it is and on the other side of risk comes trust yeah they're trusting you you're trusting them yeah let them teach you i love that vulnerability part of it yeah and and tell us a little bit about your kids growing up in that experience yeah well we jackson was four and jemima was one so our youngest that when we moved there um she didn't remember obviously doesn't remember australia before so she considers herself african um and my son's the kind of um you know make sure everything's safe and okay so in our backyard we had you know the occasional black mumber or green mumber or monkeys and so it was his job to kind of make sure everything was okay and occasionally he'd run like a staff meeting for the kids and say okay guys monkeys here's what we do in an emergency i've got a whistle you know all that sort of stuff so just growing up in the dirt and with you know and we should say that the green and black mambas are not cicadas they're actually a quite deadly snakes yes so we had a cat we bought a cat to protect us from the mambas and do your kids speak yeah they do they um they we did a trip back there which we can get to um a couple years ago and so So they brushed up on it then.

15:31But if you use it, it stays with you. So, yeah. So from the teaching, how did things evolve? Yeah, so as I mentioned, we were always keen on exploring foster care and adoption. And so during our three and a half years living over there, we fostered and eventually adopted three more beautiful kids from an organisation in Mwanza, northwest Tanzania, called Forever Angels. So it was an organisation for kids who'd been abandoned. And the thing we felt very confident about with this organisation was that their commitment was to keep kids with biological families at all costs. And, you know, adoption could be a beautiful thing, but a last resort if kids had no other option.

16:10So we thought maybe we'd adopt a sibling pair, but it turned out that the organisation needed someone to look after it. Three siblings had been abandoned. And so there was twins and their older brother. And so we went from two to five overnight. and the twins were one and their older brother was jabari was like almost two but one so we were like not even turned 30 and we had a four-year-old and four one-year-olds and it's like what are we doing just obviously very naive so you became an expert in logistics very quickly well a classroom teacher has classroom management skills so i mean by default it was we would describe as beautiful chaos yeah so you know and just thinking about like washing you couldn't afford buying like disposable nappies so it was all washable nappies the washing machine we had was one of those old ones you had the spin and you had to hang your stuff out in the dry on the clothesline very quickly we're like let's get a secondhand dryer and proper electric washing machine because we're not going to last here acquisition and scaling yep and being innovative that's it and minimum viable products minimum viable machine yeah i make that joke about kids all the time it's like until i get to like like jackson to about 20 they're still pretty much mvps yes all the way through this process.

17:23That's it. So let's skip forward, what, 16 years to Forever Projects and the climb because in 2025 you took, was it a dozen? Yeah, 15. Yeah. People over to climb Kilimanjaro, which, you know, for an Australian it just looks like a big hill, but it's a bit more than that. Yeah, it's a big hill but it's just a bit high. yeah yeah yeah well what two and a half times um cosy osco yeah yeah yeah yeah so we'd um moved home we founded for the projects to fund the work of the team that we'd adopted through who were creating that program to keep women and the families together through income and nourishing their babies and uh so you know 10 years in had good some good fundraising traction had been fortunate to stumble into the tech ecosystem and so we curated an immersion trip for 15 liters in the system so um we climbed kilimanjaro and raised 125 grand um through the generous people the leaders and their networks on the on the trip some you know great venture um firms in australia like oaf ventures sponsored some of their staff to join us and really generous and then within 48 hours of being on the summit the team was able to then connect with the local team that we support um and see exactly where that money's going which was really incredible um and it was just lovely creating a sanctuary of leadership and development for these you know tech leaders in an exceptional environment like on top of Kilimanjaro it feels like you're on Mars and just watching the dynamic between them you know peer-to-peer kind of learning and we used Ben Crow's leadership program to really try and prompt some insights and some transformation and then we wrapped it up with a safari which was just a beautiful way for all the perspective shifts and reflections the surface yeah i'm i'm really interested in the what the 124 000 went to like you talked it went to the organization yeah what's the impact what's the roi it's not going to be a financial roi it's going to be a bigger community i'm hoping so what what were some of the impacts that that that specifically yes yep so um it's 1200 aussie dollies for a woman and her baby to go through this 12 month program not unlike a accelerator where you go in and come out confident and transformed um so so this is a parent accelerator well yeah it's a woman who is in poverty unable to breastfeed so it's an entrepreneurship it is because she she graduates with a chubby healthy happy baby and a profitable business that means she's got a hand up not a handout and then 10 years later the early you know um founders in that program multiple businesses they're funding their child education and it truly is a sustaining like um support for these women So that funding helps a hundred more women through the program, which is incredible.

20:05So it's taken the teacher man to fish into teacher woman to build a business. Incredible. And that's how, I mean, that's where I was talking about that flywheel of women are educated and bringing in the income and taking care of the family and the malnutrition reduces. Any favorite stories? Have you gotten to meet any of the women in their families? So, and it's incredible in adoptive parents thing, seeing like there were 65 kids when we adopted our beautiful three through that organization and then you know now there's only like 15 kids in that orphanage um and the numbers are so far down because these kids aren't being abandoned and uh the organization's got a reputation amongst the hospitals police social welfare where women know now i can go here and i don't need to abandon my child um some favorite stories there's a woman named shikuru who was one of the i think she was the 11th woman to join the program 2015 um incredible sewing um business that she was able to create and um so with the profits from that she was able to look after her little boy joseph finished building her home um and then during covid she ended up creating a big business and getting a lot of other women involved selling masks um and then the team kind of noticed that as she was kind of because the graduates come back like coaches might do in start mate and continue to connect with the new women who are joining and they'd noticed wow like women like shakira were actually in some ways more better position to guide the new women who are joining than even the staff so they started giving women like shakura like a coaching wage separate to their business where they would then take on one or two trainees um to diversify their income which is incredible um yeah so seeing her story from almost you know separated from little boy joseph to now a woman with such stature and status and um leadership in her community it's it's really cool to see the dignity and the ripples that come from just that$1 ,200.

21:52Dignity, big work. That's what I love hearing with nonprofits that are giving dignity back to people who may have felt that they lost it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and that trust around, like, they are incredibly entrepreneurial. They just need that initial hand up. And once they've got it, once they've got the support and the community around them, get out of the way. Yeah. Which leads me to ask about that practical philanthropic aspect because we have a big debate in tech about what we should do, how we should do it, and we've gone through the effective altruism debate. We've got Elon Musk this week handing out.

22:33Yeah. I'm sorry. SpaceX shares to every kid. I mean, what child wouldn't grow up wanting to have a SpaceX share? But let's do this in a practical way, and I want you to explain this to people in the startup sector. What does effective philanthropy look like? Because we've seen Bill Gates and Melinda through the foundation over many years focus on core health issues around the world. What you're doing here is going back to dignity but also recognising that people have innate skills that they just have to have an opportunity to express. Talk a little bit about how you decide what path to go down.

23:18Sometimes you can just write a check. Like, you know, I've sponsored a kid at the Smith family. Our family has for a decade or more. Now, aside from the occasional note and the monthly debits, that's the level of engagement and I leave it to experts. But there are so many different ways to do things. Yeah, yeah. I think it starts with, it's so important to start with listening. It seems so cliche, but for us, that was what started our journey was as adoptive parents wondering what would need to have changed in our adopted kids, biological mum's story, so that they didn't need to be abandoned in the first place.

23:51And the local team guiding us and saying, well, we're already deep into the research on this and this program we're piloting is a solution that we want to test. So by listening and understanding the local team on the ground who are in the best position to do this work and then go, okay, what do you need? and for them it was just that pilot funding. So I think that for us the core of it is who's the expert on the grounds that's in the best position to understand the context, the culture and what change looks like. Like an investor would back a startup founder. If you've done your DD and you believe them, then back them, get out of the way and then they'll project a particular milestone.

24:28You know, early days they said, we want to just see 12 more women through the program, the pilot program and then we'll come back to you with the data on how that goes. So I think that there is a bit of pattern matching that people in tech can do in that same space. But just being very clear on what are the metrics you're looking to see at different milestones. And then if they hit them, like, great, well, more trust given, more funding given. And I think we see Mel Perkins and Cliff doing this really well with the Canva Foundation, where they've backed an organization called Give Directly in Malawi.

24:59And it was all just cash grants, not a loan, cash. and they would then really closely follow what was done with the cash, which demographic was most effective and efficient with the cash that they were given. Women in the community, starting businesses, looking after families were most effective with it. So then next grant, more money, targeted at that group that they seem to be the most efficient and effective with it. And they've scaled up the volume of that philanthropy based on the evidence. But it's the underlying philosophy of trust is there. And that gives the dignity that you mentioned, Julie.

25:29And the local partners, they're all local Tanzanians. that have grown up there that know the culture, that know all of the ins and outs. Yeah, and it's a great combo because we recognise they're in the best place to actually deliver the programme, but they've also got a fundraise and funding, if it's going to come from a place like Australia, we're in a good position as like a trust bridge for our family story and the community we've built for our projects to support that. So it's not that, you know, sometimes I think the white male might go, oh, what place do I have here? I don't want to get cancelled.

25:59Don't do nothing, but don't turn up and think you've got all the answers without using these. Yeah, say that again. It's both. And it's the nuance that's interesting, I think, and important that we miss all the time. Yeah. So is a measure of success in some ways making yourself redundant? Yeah. In terms of you talked about the orphanage and how the transformation that the orphanage becomes redundant, which is one measure of success. Yeah. Children aren't abandoned. Yeah. Does it get to a point where the whole process becomes self-sustaining and then it's if you wish to continue down this path with Forever Projects, you have to go and find something else to do.

26:35Yeah. Well, ideally that would be the case where you can move on to a different region or a different country or a different issue. Needs always there. Yeah, that's it. And that sustainability piece is always the driving kind of question. So it's initially, okay, we're catching kids that have been abandoned. That's better than not having interim care. But what's better is than being with a family. Let's create a program that does that. and now we've got this program but it's relying on philanthropy or what would a social enterprise look like that might fund some of that and so one of the partners has just kicked off a social enterprise some of the funds from that are funding this 12-month program so there's always this desire to level up in terms of sustainability and systems change um yeah and i think sustainability doesn't necessarily mean not philanthropic but it means creating a a sustainable value exchange with another partner.

27:24So even the comedy night, I don't think anyone left there feeling like, oh, I felt guilty or obliged to give. It felt like a real joy to be partnering with us for that. And so, so long as there's that ingredient baked into the kind of partnership, then it can be sustainable. I wonder if we flipped the script and what you were doing there would be useful or able to replicate here in Australia. We often get asked that question, like would you want to operate to run a program in australia like that and i think going back to who knows the the problems and solutions best it's people on the ground and it's already great organizations doing stuff like that in australia you mentioned smith family sorts of organizations doing stuff across the country so if someone is generous and and says oh look i want to give my own backyard i don't try and convince them here's why you know the safety net in tanzania is way lower than australia so why should you give here i'd say thanks for being generous here's some organizations you might want to get behind um and if you know anyone that wants to get behind ours send them away yeah so let's talk about the kilimanjaro project because you're going to be doing it again yeah next july 2027 yep yep so talk talk our listeners through it yep so it's a two-week immersion trip and includes that kilimanjaro summit uh and then a boutique safari at the end to wrap it up connection to our work at Forever Projects through the fundraising and then we also did a really cool tech mixer with some of the local tech entrepreneurs in East Africa and our group through Caleb and Mario at Tech Safari collaborated with him and so that was really cool for these tech leaders to not only experience all the obvious stuff that we've talked about but just saying okay what's it like to build a business in East Africa and what are the kind of problems that these founders are facing what are the solutions that was really cool seeing all them engaging yeah I think that The big thing we've heard from the group that came last time was that, you know, as you contribute to the transformation of other people, you come back transformed and changed too.

29:24So it's a beautiful kind of win-win there. So, yeah, it's a great chance for people who are maybe looking to level up in a way that's non-traditional and through immersive experience. And I also just want to explain because, you know, my son Archie was in Nepal recently and he was up at 18 ,000 feet. Kilimanjaro is nearly 6 ,000 metres, so a little over 19 ,000 feet. Just explain what happens to your body as you do this, even when you think you're pretty fit with good VO2 and all those things. Yeah, well, it's unpredictable. You can get the most fit people at altitude, you know, have all kinds of, you know, like they might get nausea, headaches, start to, I remember walking, we used to do the trip, the Kilimanjaro trip when I was working at the school with students and we were walking with one of my colleagues and, you know, we'd have a rest school excursion yeah so like different the different excursions like year eight go up to two and a half thousand meters year nine three thousand meters and so the goal was to get them to the summit but one of my mates i remember watching him stumbling around on the summit night we just stopped for a rest and he just slumped down and had a sleep it just it can make you tired so it can just have all these different impacts on you um and so you know you've got to get your boots worn in you've got to get lots of kilometers under your legs but you've also got to have a humility that maybe i won't make it um and it's the conditions that i've got to kind of submit myself to humbly but yeah it is it's an incredible so is there training pre training here in australia before going yeah it's just really find some trails yeah puts lots of kilometers in it's not about finding altitude because we don't have any um and so much of that's mental towards the end it was really cool hearing um some of the members who joined so andrea gardner from jillix joined and you know that last night she was really pushing herself and she was saying I'm just, she'd raised like 30 grand, her and him together went to their network and she was like I'm just thinking of the women that I'm doing this for and that's she said what got her through that last part of the night.

31:19Extraordinary drive and it's also an extraordinary mountain because it's three volcanoes. Kibo is I think dormant and the other couple are extinct but as you mentioned before it's like Mars at the top. It's such a different environment. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that experience. Yeah, well, it's crazy because you started at about a bit under 2000. So you're in this beautiful rainforest. And then as you're kind of just walking day by day, and as you said, it's a hill. It's not like you're ascending rapidly. The vegetation starts to change, starts to kind of get a bit more sparse, spread out.

31:52And you start to get that alpine desert, some really crazy looking pineapple cactus plants that only grow on Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and Mount Meru. And then it gets to the point where you're like, I haven't seen a plant for like three hours. And it's like, literally, they call it a lunar desert. and then you can see the glacier on Kilimanjaro as you're approaching and then the last couple hundred meters, you're trekking through a glacier. And you're like, am I in Africa or am I in Europe? Where the hell am I, Antarctica? Yeah, it's pretty cool. So if people are keen to be a part of this next year, what do they do?

32:23Yeah, just connect on LinkedIn. I'd love to share more about the trip. And yeah, it's a great way for individuals to level up, but also, as I've said, there's been some really generous firms and investors and so on in the ecosystem that have backed their staff to join and kind of seen that as a way to kind of, you know, show them some appreciation and help them level up. So yeah, if there's any of those that resonate, right? So share some of the tech entrepreneurs that are there that are solving probably markedly different problems here. So what were some of the companies that you met with? One of the big things is just the infrastructure that we're kind of building on here in Australia system isn't quite there yet so a lot of the startups are actually contributing to infrastructure like fintech and all sorts of stuff um and they might have an idea for a business you know that would work but they're like i've got to solve the fintech problem before i can solve the other problem um so a lot of it's around that uh there was one that stood out which was and this was quite close to um our heart in education for some reason uh in tanzania they'll teach primary school kids um in swahili then they'll make the switch to english in secondary without any transition oh wow so and even the teachers struggle that's a pivot with that it's yeah not a wise pivot and so one of the um entrepreneurs that started a um her business was effectively making that transition easier for students and an app that would um effectively like help them with that translation and transition yeah and how does she how was she sustainable with that Right.

33:52Is there funding and building? Yeah, like early stage startups. So, you know, she already had a job in education, but this was kind of her side hustle. Yeah, it was great. There was a really cool startup hub in Arusha that we'd visited. And so she was kind of working out of there when she wasn't teaching and just a lot of energy. And like if you went to Stone and Chalk or Fishburners or whatever it might have been, that kind of vibe where it's I'm around other people that are doing the same thing like I am. And are there startup hubs and co-working places, spaces? Yeah, it's amazing. All right, Julie, Mark, we're going to take a quick break.

34:25We'll be right back. And when we return, I want to talk about this book written by your wife, Anna. It's home forever. So don't go away. We'll be right back. Hello, it's time for Built on Oracle, our regular check-in with Aussie founders scaling on the next-gen cloud. I'm checking in with Kian Lee, founder and CEO of Owner. Thanks for joining Startup360. Thank you, Song. So Kian, give us a quick intro to your business and tell us where you are on your scale up journey. Yeah, so we started Ono 10 years ago. Ono is an early education software. So we're in about 4 ,000 centres here in Australia, 8 ,000 globally.

35:03What we do for our customers is we've built an all-in-one solution that does everything for them. And when I say everything, I literally mean everything. from photos and videos for families to compliance to payroll and timesheets to collecting payments on centers VR. So that is impressive. Tell me, what's been one of the biggest challenges you face? One thing lately that's been on the card for us is keeping our costs down. And that includes stuff like our cloud infrastructure costs and so forth. So in that context, Keang, how has Oracle helped you scale with confidence and pursue your growth strategy?

35:40To be honest, we thought Oracle was just a database company, ERP, ERP software and so forth. But once we learned more about Oracle and the cloud infrastructure that they provided and the breadth of features and so forth that they had, it just made sense to us to move a lot of our workloads over to Oracle to be able to save on the cost side of things for us. So we used Oracle Cloud for a bunch of things. We store a lot of our images and videos that centers upload for parents on the Oracle cloud platform. We do a lot of AI with Oracle as well. Our voice assistants, where centers and parents ask questions and so forth and get answers, is powered by our Oracle AI.

36:26Kiang, we wish you all the best with Ona. I hear you're going to the US, and we hope you crack that market big time. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Simon. This segment is supported by Oracle. Build, test and deploy on the Oracle Cloud with a free trial. Visit oracle.com slash ANZ slash cloud slash free to get started. Welcome back. You're watching Startup360 with Simon, Julie and our guest today, Mark Dobkins, who happens to be married to Anna, who has written this book. Well, I think you're all pretty lucky. Amazing family with six wonderful kids. And I love the photos in this book as well.

37:03the 2010 one of the tribe, the full tribe there, which is so gorgeous. Tell us a little bit about the book and why Anna wanted to write it. Yeah, well, she mainly wanted to write it for our kids so that shortly after moving home, just trying to document and write down everything that had happened so that those parts of their story weren't forgotten as we're getting old and losing our marbles. So it was really written for them and it was just a memoir of our adoption story and then a little bit at the end about how forever projects evolved um and so yeah that was the purpose of it originally it was just beautiful that when when she kind of finished that first manuscript after dinner every night sit around and just read a chapter to them and they'd ask questions and yeah it was it was great and it was uh she kind of wrote the epilogue when we'd gone back as a family in 2019 and the kids were in year four that was the first time going back so it was lovely for them to then have the story read to them having recently been there and reconnected with you know their culture and their people so yeah and then it was just one of our community members um was the ex editorial director at booktopia and said screw you i should write a book and i said oh and i's already written one and so that was how it ended up getting published this year awesome um and there's got to be some stories if not in there that you have of flearnings oh yeah flearnings are failures or fuck-ups where you learned from or one that you're very proud of with a classroom or a you know basketball team of six oh man um so many share some share some stories uh don't buy a four-wheel drive before you get there so we we thought we'd be clever and make sure our car was ready for us when we got there so we bought a honda crv our thumbs up talk about like not listening in first yeah and so our first family trip did a you know circumnavigated kilimanjaro it managed okay next trip went up the usambara mountains ended up blowing the you know the engine um overheated we ended up getting towed up the mountain by our friends in their land cruiser like 19 kilometers so we've got us and our kids in this car this is before we started the process with just four of us 19 kilometers being towed on these like hairy bends almost get to this this spot and then um there's a speed bump and he goes over it and i accidentally put the brake on he rips the front bumper bar off and we just roll into this village you know busiest time of day just a couple of white you know kids and family in this car just like waving so everyone gets out and helps us um get out of there and i remember there was a guy this old fella what's the name of that that um chevy chase movie the um one with the griswolds yes you're kind of like the griswolds it's rolling in a town oh mate and i remember this guy this old fella comes along he's holding this goose under one arm he must have been like 80 you know this old tanzanian guy and he's like i'll help it's because idea i'll help you so he's like pushing with one arm and at the end he's like get on some money i'm like mate you got a goose under your arm and then this big fella comes over he's like give him his money okay so so that yeah so get a better car and pay the goose man Well, you also said listen more, listen first.

40:13So listen to advice. I got that one. And what about building forever projects? What have the lessons been along the way there? Because I imagine you started with great intent and passion and then realised the logistics of what you and Anna were taking on. Yeah. Yeah, it started like our adoption journey, very naive, just thinking, okay, what's the next thing we can do? So early days fundraising was just whatever, throw them out of the wall and see what sticks and then we just fortunately connected him with um in gardner and the innovation bay team and he said i don't know if you realize what a startup is but you're running one come and join innovation base i'd learned so much through that i think that the biggest things there were thinking about you know a startup is trying to solve a problem for their customer and so for that you need to have empathy about what would draw them to your product or service and then what the friction is that they feel and so that's no different for non-profit so So for us, the friction was, well, first of all, philosophy, do we believe people are generous and want to do good or do we think that they're selfish and bad?

41:14Well, some are, but we think there's a lot of people that are good. So what gets in the way of their generosity? And it's confidence. Where's my money going? What difference does it make? So how do we make sure our USP contains enough that's going to remove those obstacles for people as they're hitting your landing page and scrolling down? So a couple of things we've learned have been just around our business model. we've got a unique model where a bunch of court owners cover our operational costs so every cent given like at the the night the comedy night the other night every cent goes to tanzania so when people say how much is the overhead we say yeah we've got overhead covered by this other group every cent you give will go charity water yeah yeah and then scott and the team there have been incredible mentors um i went over to nashville and met him in victoria last year and i love their model and so that kind of stuff's been really useful just thinking about um not crudely or commercially but just from a solving your customer's problem they want to do good how can you make that easy for them and and you have a campaign if it's not mistaken what's in your hands yeah say more about what that the what that's about and how you came up with it yeah early days friends and family raising some funds and made him I was a builder and he was saying just talking about fundraising community said one day I just thought what's in my hands I've got a hammer I can do something so he just said every time I build a home I'll invite the client and us to kick in some funds to help this program in tanzania so we thought oh we'd love that idea what's in your hands so we thought instead of through our storytelling saying donate donate donate let's just spotlight our community who are finding these really creative ways to use what's in their hands so a kid named todd put his hand up and says i'll play trombone i'm going to busk in moulongong mall i'll donate to her projects so hey here's todd he's being generous here's what he's doing what's in your hands and we just trusted the audience would like pick up on this and that's been you know as more people have gotten on board and done it we've just gone let's tell their story and let's tell where the impact has gone and then here we are last week you know what's in mike's hands at google a conference and an opportunity to support what's in rain's hands or body a t-shirt and and you know so people we love seeing the way people feel that permission and creativity to not just be one-dimensional here's my donation but what have i got you guys have got a platform you're generously using it right now so what's in your hands i'm already I want to go and meet the tech entrepreneurs and the women and the women that are doing this.

43:28I just want to go back to that for a second. You talked about what's in your hands. How are you getting that feedback back so people know that they're dollars? I understand the two. It's really important, the two different funds, the sustainability funds. It's the unsexy section. But a lot of people need to. Without that, you can't run your organization. And then 100 % of that going to projects. projects how do you storytell or get the impact back to the individual of their you know hundred dollars that they've spent or is it a general yeah so we'll break it down so a hundred dollars enables a month's access to the program for a woman four months twelve hundred dollars so we see people giving in hundred dollar twelve hundred dollar increments or twelve grand if they want to do something a bit more um significant so for the for the person who's giving directly to the program it's around the stories like shakura's that i showed earlier around transformation um people love seeing these more longitudinal stories like 10-year impact stories and meeting women who are there in 2015 and then seeing their families now and then anticipating that right when i give 1200 bucks in 10 years she's gonna be fine she's got a dignity she's got a business um but also there's a lot of data that's collected so the team we help the same kind of go from pen and paper to using some tech to make it easier for themselves to make data-driven decisions and report on donors and the donors and so on so um yeah there's a whole bunch of stuff around like after three months six months what percentage of the baby's weight's been gained um what's the percentage increase in profits from income um all that sort of stuff so it's kind of like the head and the heart both have got to be communicated i think what tools are you using for that out of curiosity yeah so we connected with um we've done some skill volunteering stuff with um atlassian so our data scientists there helped us um integrate with you use confluence um just for kind of the wiki for projects but um she led a project where we integrated flourish the data viz project a program that um cam required so it's a beautiful kind of data visualization product that kind of syncs in with our google sheet and then is able to create visual storytelling for donors and for the team yeah and it's lovely for h to go i love nerding out on data and i've now found a way to use those skills for good and my company's giving me time to volunteer into it Yeah.

45:38Funny as you mentioned$1 ,200 because I do want to paint a little bit of the picture that you shared with us. 12 ,000 families surrender a beloved baby due to death and childbirth, poor nutritional poverty. Formula costs a week's earnings for a Tanzanian, which, as you say, is a little bit like sort of going to Woolworths and spending$1 ,200 on formula for one week if you were living in Australia, which means that 30 % of young Tanzanian children suffer from malnutrition. You go on to sort of say that you've helped nearly 2 ,000 women and more than 2 ,000 babies as a consequence in six cities over the past decade.

46:20Paint a picture of how you see Forever Projects in five years' time. Yeah. See, we're at a point where clearly the program's working and so there's the opportunity to just really scale that and then help even more people it seems like cliche but the hard work of like de-risking this program in terms of is it working it's been done by the great team on the ground so they'd love to you know in 10 years we'd love to see 30 ,000 or more babies supported um we're up to 3 ,000 now so to 10x that um in 10 years where you start you start with the mother or the babies like that's so it's starting with the mother or if the mother's tragically passed away like an aunt or grandmother or other caregiver or the father if the father's still around um but the reason they're coming isn't because of the income initially it's because they've got this malnourished baby that they can't feed because they've got no access to breast milk or they can't afford the alternative so it is the parent on behalf of the child or niece nephew grand grandchild that's coming yep um and enough formulas just given each week for them to you know get through that week then come back and then each week as they come back more formulas provided child's way progress is monitored week on week and then there's a holistic kind of lesson that's given to the group so that after 52 weeks there's a pretty robust curriculum that's been gone through that um just means that they're really equipped to know how to like look after the family family planning lots of stuff but also then educate people in their community as well so solving two problems at once the immediate need of course is the malnutrition yep then the other one is the entrepreneurial side and building that and changing the system yeah yeah shifting the system yeah definitely education yeah that's what when you think about a start mate or an accelerator like there's a program and there's key things that you'd take founders through for that and then they leave with the confidence to go on to the next thing but so much of the hidden value i guess of those programs is the peer-to-peer connection jay with other founders on the same journey maybe coming into contact with coaches who are exited founders or current founders but further along and that's been the thing that local team who said when a woman comes in anxious and isolated and starts a conversation and there's a woman who's one month into the program who seems like she's at ease, she can exhale and she can go well and her baby's like putting on some weight, she can go, okay, there's hope.

48:39And I love the fact how the returning alumni come back as paid mentors or advisors, which again, shifting the system. Now, Mark, you mentioned it earlier, some of the lessons from bringing a founder mindset to what you've done. What else have you learnt in collaborating with the start-up ecosystem and having a social enterprise impact business? Because you mentioned the water before. I'm thinking of the humanities of the world. I'm thinking of who gives a crap. Australia does a really bloody good job of that social enterprise side and helping other communities through business. yeah i think learning learning a lot through those guys you know the legends like he's normal who gives a crap and the way that they uh learn a lot from the brand positioning and personality it's so playful and approachable and and charity water does this so well as well like you you don't turn up going oh having had a touch point with this brand i now feel guilty about my privilege or feel lack of hope they're not hustling you for a dollar today because you're not coming back if you feel guilty yeah so they really build that brand but um i think also a way that they find genuine ways to partner with individuals businesses communities in a way that adds value to those people that that's i think a big learning we've had and we i think you see that in partnerships in the caco system as well just um one plus one can be like 10 if you get the positioning around a partnership right so that's been a lot of and how do you find your partnerships and have there been any that you've turned down you know because i've i hear some there's some social enterprise challenges that you don't hear much about for instance like tom's shoes great kind of concept and the two for one yeah but what that did if people dig deeper and it helped it actually killed some of the um local entrepreneurs the local the local businesses that were shoe makers um so just looking at all of that and making sure that you're not one that's disrupting you're disrupting one way in a good way but then also disrupting in a in a negative way so i'm just curious how you've i mean you're working with partners yeah so what kind of partners and how do you vet them and have you said no to any yeah in terms on the ground in tanzania yeah um yeah so the i guess going back to the locally led thing like the the team on the ground uh that run the organization we'd adopted through forever angels baby home they've got a great network within tanzania and even now into other parts of East Africa where we trust their netting of, you know, who's an appropriate partner.

51:08And they've got years and years of relationships with these people, seeing what they're doing well, seeing things that you think, wow, that's not actually in the best interest of the child or a family. So they are the ones that are able to kind of say, you know, pending funding, here's our next one, the list that we'd scale to in terms of partnership. Yeah. In terms of maybe funding partners, I think going back to the listening thing as well, you might have someone come along with a lot of money, but they might say without really listening or it's clear they haven't done much research into what you're doing at all they've already got the answers and the solution um okay and so you know learning to go you know that might be a short-term hit of funding but it would actually divert the mission and then the local partners would say no if i wanted to anyway um yeah so being able to have the hard conversations and saying this is actually what we're doing um really open to your input and strategy and so on but like let's make sure you actually got enough context before you start um and i guess it takes confidence to say that to people that come across like they know what they're doing they talk a lot don't listen much values match yeah and the time i got left mark jackson's 20 yeah you've got a bunch of late teens who are about to become adults yeah uh you've got one to go through the entire teenage thing hopefully we've had a little bit of practice there so you can deal with that yeah yeah what do you want for your tribe of six yeah just want them to feel um connected and happy like seems so super cliche but just that that dignity piece around i belong in my family in my community uh i feel like i'm contributing and adding value in a way that aligns with what i love doing and what i feel like i'm good at that you go kind of framework so at the moment we're trying to have lots of chats with the kids about like what would career look like thinking about ai and like what is a career that ticks all those boxes but is going to still be there in two or three years um and they're you know they're also different so um yeah but mainly that they'll just feel a sense of belonging and joy in what they're doing any of them entrepreneurs or solving there's one particularly who i think um would have that in him yeah yeah he's um he works down at the local cafe and there's a few people that have said you haven't thought about starting a business he just seems like he's you know he's got a bit more get up and go about him so um we'll see what happens there you should have them on the podcast yeah um and tell us what would your message be to startups who are just trying to figure out how to do philanthropy yeah i think it's like an anything right like just just starting starting small what's in your hands yeah it could be the platform piece like this like you might have a platform where you can like share about what we're doing you might just want to be able to give like a small amount a month um it could be using your skills reaching out ways you can support um or time running fundraisers like kind of thing um but i think what we've noticed with the people that are getting behind us is those those micro actions and habits of giving um they i think action informs identity and so say from like i'm trying to get back into running i don't need to run a marathon to feel like a runner if i get out and can make it five k's with my calf blowing out i can go there's there's an action today that reminds me and gives me a permission to say i'm a runner and so you don't need to be Mel Perkins or Bill Gates you can be like $10 a month that's part of the collective that's helping it for projects and every time that$10 comes out oh yeah that's right I'm a generous person I'm doing my bit and you know no one person's going to solve the whole thing but as I said earlier like with the team that went to Tanzania like any contribution you make to the transformation of other people is going to be good for you as well and transform you as well so yeah it's better for you to give I'd say try and make it$20 so at least you're matching your Netflix account yeah I'll cancel one of them would you like to ask the big question the big question which i mean this whole conversation was of joy but what brings you joy what brings me joy um i i love being with people that i love in these great environments so like last night um one of my daughters shay she's um really wonker in the school's production of charlene chocolate factory this is my adopted daughter shay so i was looking at her last night that leading this incredible production and just being there with friends and family like we're all cheering her on seeing her afterwards not about the ego the accolades but just seeing her and just i was actually looking at her thinking back to the first time we met first cuddle um and just going wow like life's pretty cool so just seeing like being with great people and seeing them really stepping out in confidence and um yeah that Yeah.

55:42Main thing, she wasn't cast as Veruca Salt. No, her cousin wasn't. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And then my son Max was one of the Oompa Loompas. Mark, great to have you on Showdown360 talking about Forever Projects. So what's on for the weekend? Any great plans? I am actually hosting a forum with executives on AI through Circle, like a forum space conversation. Cool. That Saturday morning to talk about how AI is being used and these executives will be sharing how they're using it, struggling or succeeding. Awesome. And hoping to get to the sculpture walk in Bondi. Awesome. My favourite. I've seen some of the photos.

56:21Ella from the team has been down already, shared them on Slack, and it looks amazing. Always love it. I'm off to Canberra. Speaking of musicals, our son, Archie, is in his latest one down at ANU along with his partner. So we're getting down Friday night. But that is the show for this week. This, of course, is a Smart Co Media production produced and edited by the fantastic Matt Jackson. Thanks to Ella, to James, and to Deal for their support. Subscribe to watch Startup360 on Apple, Spotify, and, of course, you can watch it on YouTube. All free, just like StartupDaily.net. So head there to sign up for all the latest Startup news.

57:00You have a great weekend. We'll see you next Friday. Bye for now.