What scammers and founders have in common - and why slowing down matters

0:00Founders, 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. We are, but, highly programmable, unhairy apes trying to live on a muddy rock with status anxiety.

0:49Hello and welcome. Budri Gemma Wara from the Gedigo lands here in Sydney. It's time for Startup 360 in the last fortnight of winter. Yay! Hi, I'm Simon Thompson, editor of StartupDaddy.net, and I am once more joined by the effervescent, ever fabulous, and Trell LLM. Trell LLM. Trell LLM. Julie Trell. Julie Trell. Welcome. How are you? I'm good. You're great? I'm good. You're feeling sparkly? I am going to try and bring my inner sparkle outside. It's been a little bit dampened, honestly. Before we go any further, let's get straight into the biggest sparkle we're going to have in here today. Who is our guest, Miss Julie?

1:31We have Stacey Edmonds, who is one of the warmest, sparkliest, positive storyteller who has created a company that will teach people how to be wary and spot scams, cyber scams. It's a great company, Lively, and it's got Fish You or Not, which is I think the corporate version. Yes. Dodgy or Not. Dodgy or Not. Which is for schools and teaching kids how to pick what's going on. And then, of course, Phil, her new one with generative AI. Yeah, and I think it's great because that kind of stuff is not so sexy, but how she packages it and teaches it and brings it into companies so everyone is aware from the bottom to the top how to spot the scams.

2:19I think we all deal with these moments and it's kind of like livestock in the middle of the road on a foggy night. You are driving along and suddenly it's fuck and it's in an email and you swerve and hopefully there are no collisions. But it's ever present, the whole thing. And to the point now where I do worry that I'm a little bit paranoid and people who are trying to be genuine with me, I accuse of being a scam. Yeah, it happens to everyone. So I'm sorry for that. It was meant with good intent. I'm the sort of person, though, that likes a little bit like Aparthe, the Genitive AI anti-scam company.

3:03I'm the sort of person who likes to talk to the scammers and lead them along and engage them for as long as possible so I'm wasting their time. It entertains me at least. I like to call it getting curious. Getting curious. Getting curious, asking questions. Yep. Seeing what you can surmise from it. Yep. Well, I think this is going to be a great conversation. Before we go any further, I do want to say that Startup360 is supported by Deal. Hire, manage and pay anyone, anywhere. Thanks to Deal. As always, for being our fabulous sponsor, which leads us into the Deal spiel for this week. I think it's got to be AI again.

3:41AI is the huge one. Of course, last Friday, just as the show went to air, our dear friends at Firmus, the Australian slash Singaporean data centre, oh, they don't call them data centres, they call them AI factories, which they want to build all over Australia, landed another$2 billion, about$2.85 billion Australian in a new equity round featuring NVIDIA once again and Kuatu, the New York investor. A few other locals chipped in along the way. $15 billion valuation now. This is a company that was worth less than$1 billion 12 months ago. And its product is still not in market. So the whole thing is quite astonishing.

4:31A lot of AI news. First of all, while that was happening, the South Australian Premier Peter Malinowskis was over in the US. He was doing a big tech tour, catching up with the bros. And one of them happened to be OpenAI and he signed a deal there to have OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, roll out in South Australia at various levels so that we skill up and do a bunch of different things. But then the interesting thing is he got home and next thing you know, he's having a royal commission into AI to figure out the good, the bad and the ugly. They're going to kick it off in October and report back by the end of the financial year.

5:16So by July 1, 2027, the report will be on the table on the best way to have AI in South Australia so that it doesn't have too dramatic a social impact and helps everyone along the way. Is that cart before the horse signing the contract before doing the Royal Commission? Look, I think politicians are capable of doing two things at once and probably it would help frame what comes next. It was a memorandum of understanding. So I suppose sign the memorandum and now he's getting into the understanding on that deal. So we'll see how that plays out. And the other big news this week is safety culture.

5:58All those years where the sub-editor in me would argue over the fact that, no, it's one word with a capital C in the middle, not two words. Luca Nia, who kicked that off in a North Queensland family garage in 2004, has decided he is more than safety culture. He has spent the last five months working on the AI strategy within that business, rebuilding it completely. and as a consequence they've rebranded as Mitty. Yes, not Walter. How do you spell it? M-I-T-T-I. Mitty is the new name which, of course, was the name of the insurance product that they launched several years ago in a JV and he thinks that insurance and what AI can bring to the table in understanding business insurance will be a key part of their growth strategy.

6:49future. So AI everywhere. On that note, should we take a quick break? I'll punch out a couple of scam ads on Facebook while we do that. And then we'll come back and talk scams. Absolutely. All right. Don't go away. We'll be back with Stacey Edmonds in just a moment. 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.

7:34Visit deal.com slash 360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360.

7:45Welcome back. Here we have it. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, it's good to be here, but wait until we share who we have on the couch today. Oh, hang on. I'm just going to put on my Kmart smart glasses, and that way I can recognize. Oh, yes. Okay. Interesting. Oh, my God. You did that? Wow. Incredible. Pleased into you. Yes. She has done it all. So personally, a fellow teacher, a youth worker, a recovering corporate partner, a horror film director, and soon to be added a stand-up comedian to her list of things she has done. Yeehaw. Who she is, is someone that you just want to be around. She is authentic.

8:35She will say yes and. She has no qualms about trying things. And if they don't work, she is a very resilient person. So I am so excited to be here. And she is the best storyteller. And? And she is the CEO and founder of Lively. Yes. What else am I missing? And who is she? Oh, her name. Yes, that bit. Stacey Edmonds. Well done. Welcome. I knew she was. Great to have you on. Yeah, exactly. I just thought you should share that with our audience. That is important. Thank you. Unless they're wearing their ANCO$89 sort of camera glasses as well to be able to figure it out. Correct. So welcome, Stacey.

9:13Welcome. Thank you. Lovely to be here. Thank you for having me and love the glasses. So, Stacey, I love how you start your stories with everything of who you are and teaching is a really big part of it. So let's start from there and tell us how it all began. Well, deciding to be a teacher. It's really funny. You know, some people say I had a calling or a profession or an idea. And I did. I was 12. 12? I was 12 and I wrote the list of things I wanted to do. And one of them was to be a Blue Peter presenter, to be brutally honest. Oh, yes. Excellent plan. Be warm because we lived on a very cold council estate with no central heating in a tiny village in the Chiltern Hills and it was freezing cold.

10:01And the other one was to be a teacher, a youth worker teacher. So that was my calling. But also thinking at that time, I remember it was a really drizzly dark day, surprisingly in Britain. I know you're like, surprise, how did that happen? And I was really cold again. And I thought for me to be warm, I need to educate myself. That's the aim. And when I applied for my visa to come to Australia, I'm going to be warm because I've grown up on Neighbours and Home and Away and everyone is always warm on Neighbours and Home and Away. Then I arrived here and realised none of the houses are built for winter.

10:38Yes. We don't really have winter out here, do we? I mean Melbourne kind of dabbles in it occasionally and England is now sort of a giant hothouse. I know and the houses are not prepared. They're not prepared for that. My favourite part is that everyone, especially restaurants, are madly all putting in air conditioning now that they never bothered with before. Well, I just want to say when you keep saying warm, I'm not thinking of the weather warm, I'm thinking personality warm. Oh, thank you. So you have brought that. And I think in what you've done, fangirl, hashtag fangirl. All bags, bringing the warmth.

11:09So your background in criminology, is that what led you into start-ups because it just made sense or what was going on there? Totally jealous, yes. So my first degree, psychology, sociology, criminology and communication studies. And really that's, you know, social engineering. I spent some quality time in Barlini special unit, which is for the most violent criminals in Scotland. Bit of a Clarice moment there. And throughout that. And then my second degree was in education. and so going through that process of the the sociology really is where the social engineering space sits psychology how do we really react you know respond to that and criminology how do we have what is that behavior what is it driven by how much is nature and how much is which we're jumping all over the place but i want to make sure this criminology background jumps to the social engineering that you're doing and the work that you're doing?

12:13How have you turned that into a business? It's really interesting because people say to us, how do you constantly update the platform and the game every single day with the latest scam or the latest crime or the latest grooming attempt or the latest extortion attempt? Well, number one, you just go to your own inbox and your own algorithms because we're all being hit up every day. Number two, spend quality time on the dark web. I've never thought about it as quality time before, but yes. And I just want to add such a beautiful, perfect comedic pause. Yeah. Spend quality time. I don't go on my own though, so I'm going to go with friends because it's a bit scary.

12:55But do you, you can buy some interesting things there? Oh gosh, yes. Well, it's also quite interesting in the context at the moment of a US judge ruling that Meta was basically shredding the documentation around the Andrew Forrest scam ads, you know, hiding it and trash it and getting rid of it. So they've kind of been busted, disposing of the body really is probably the best way to describe it. So does anything really disappear though? Well, so do you know the what, how much the Meta have made? so it's an actual line item, it's a revenue model. What's that? $16 billion in 2024 in scam ads. $16 billion?

13:39Yeah. From scam ads? Yeah. So that should be proceeds of crime. Not only that. I'm just. So I'm sorry, I'm just going to land that way. Not only that, but wait, it gets worse. Of course it does, it's meta. So what happens? I laugh. Like I have to laugh. I find life on the whole utterly ridiculous. But I think that's because I've also seen quite dark things and spent time in dark places with police force and youth work and social work. And so my response sometimes is to laugh. And sometimes people go, oh, that's a really weird thing to laugh at. Just saying, just putting it out there. It's hard to explain because people who work in EDs or are emergency responders and who deal with a lot of trauma, it's part of the coping mechanism along the way.

14:31So the humour can be quite dark and out of context people do sort of find it a little bit shocking and perhaps offensive but it's one way when you deal with something that most people you hope will never have to actually face or confront or try and unpack, it's one way of tackling it. you keep it light and bright. Thank you. I think you've just summed up my light and bright approach. So Meta, they know, they have the thing called the scammiest of the scammers. Or they call them their high rollers, don't they? High rollers. If they're 95 % sure that they're a scammer, they will, you know, there's an effort to replace it.

15:13If they're not sure, they increase the price of the ad. if they're not sure if they're a scammer, their solution is to make more money from it. Now, when you go onto the dark web, there are people there, so scamming, fraud, sextortion, it's not your teenager in a hoodie in a basement anymore. We know it's industrialized, well-organized, I've always, I always years ago thought, does calling crime, does calling crime organized crime? Make it sound more professional. Like we're not just randomly doing crime. Industrialized crime is what it is. It's not like disorganized crime. They figured out how to scale it.

16:08Yeah. So years ago, I remember going, it's actually quite funny that we call it organized. You know, oh, awesome. There's a profile. um so what they're doing is for example there is ransomware as a service you just buy the service and I was walking working with one of the large banks and they said the irony is the customer service in ransomware as a service is actually better than our actual customer service um so we're learning a lot from it then you've got so you've got ransomware as a service we've got the Sextortion Guides. I have read the 170-page comprehensive guide to sextortion. Jesus.

16:48Now, I've done, as I said, my past is, yeah. That hits home. What to do, with whom, children. Like, it's appalling. I can't. And 170 pages. Oh, it is comprehensive. It does what it says on the tin. Again, example of humour that. It... So what we did was reverse engineered the tactics into the game. Tell more about the game. So in 2010, I was watching the social network, Oh, the irony, Hot or Not. And I remember sitting with my friends going, I don't need to know whether someone's hot or not. I want to know whether they're dodgy or not. And that's where the name came from. Oh, the irony. 2014 I designed the game for a client because they said our phishing simulations aren't working people hate it we actually need to build a skill I said the skill we're missing is social engineering and critical thinking this is sociology 101 but we're not doing that we're not building that skill in anyone and marketers are excellent at it um as I say to my friends in marketing what I do is for good what you do is for evil but don't say that out loud and um Um, so we went through that process and then I ended up as, I headed up as a woman in leadership at transport for New South Wales and I had the budget.

18:13So I thought, what if we do a test? What if we create the game? And at the time, I think I built it in authorware in a day and we created the game, cyber meets Tinder. It's dodgy or not. And you get feedback on which social engineering is being used against you is it you know too good to be true urgent action all mapped to robert cialdini's influence and it worked we had our control groups and it worked and i thought that's amazing i then moved to deloitte and so and then we bought it into deloitte white labeled it incubated it and that's how dodgy or not and fishy or not were born and i just want to add something if i could throw in some teacher language here what you're doing is higher on the Bloom's taxonomy of critical thinking versus read a screen, click yes or no, and you've done your compliance.

19:06Yes. So that's what I love. First of all, gaming, teaching, education, interactive conversation, all of the things versus, oh my God, I got to sit down and get my tick box that I've done this compliance that the company knows that I have done it. And I'm just going to guess and that read no it's a really good point julie because at the moment fishing and simulation and teaching people how to not get scammed is a tick box exercise it's not actually genuinely building anybody's actual skills they need for misinformation disinformation even being able to use generative ai anything we're we're dumbing down so if i was going to throw some academic terms in there and get all is we're using inoculation theory so safely you can test in an environment and inoculate nudge so it's a daily a daily update explicit teaching in schools so we know not whether you clicked on it or not but what social engineering you're susceptible to so we know in our first year of schools we've reduced the incidence of children falling for scams that have luring tactics in them by 50%.

20:17So when I first set up the, when we were first putting the marketing together, Carolyn Rees, I said to Carolyn, I've got the tagline. She's like, I said, saving lives, livelihoods, and democracy one game at a time. She's like, I think you're prone to hyperbole. I said, you might be right. So we're building digital instincts, but we are actually building digital instincts. And when I read the Guide to Sex Torsion, and then we reverse engineered it. So that's why I ended up on the ABC last year explaining the impact of age assurance. We are asking children to do the things that put them in danger of being lured.

21:04We're asking them to give their photo, give their personal information, go to a second location. and often keep a secret because they're all trying to get onto free VPNs? I was scammed and I'm not a teenager. How were you scammed? I went, I have some Harry Potter books to sell, some hard copy. They're in great condition. And I put it on Gumtree. Rarely have I been on Gumtree. And I now know why. So I put it up there and within like 20 minutes, someone reached out, wanted to buy them. Bought them, said, I just paid the money and I hadn't set anything up yet. And I was still going through all that.

21:39and they gave me a QR code. I've paid, just hit the QR code and then give me your phone number. And I did go too far. Like I really wasn't thinking it was happening so fast. And I, I logged into my bank account. I did not put my credit card number in there. That was weird. I'm selling something. Why do you want my credit card? But I did go probably too far, freaked myself out. I did put my, I think my bank account password in there, which I've since changed, immediately shut it down, locked the person, reported the person. He also kept asking for my phone number because I know what that means is once he gets in, then he can steal or spoof the number so he can get the code, right?

22:19I never gave that. I then get one of those texts that says, hey, dad, I lost my phone. Here's the number you can reach me at. First of all, I'm not a dad, nor do I have a son or a kid. So I blocked it all off, freaked out, and I don't think that they got into anything but I and oh because I copied and pasted the QR code into Claude saying is this right I said no that's a scam and so I tested myself but I went probably a little too far but I think I'm okay uh I'm really sorry and the worst thing is how you feel afterwards um yeah I felt stupid yeah and then I felt oh my god I can't afford this if if something happens It was also dodgy that I looked at this, his profile was just made that month.

23:04Right. I mean, I did have a little conversation. Why do you want these books? Oh, my wife shops. Have you bought a lot of things? And I did go to his QR code, took me to another location. But the thing is, it's how you feel. So I've got friends of mine whose parents have lost 1.2 million USD over a two-year socially engineered scam. I talk to people every single day who cannot afford, it's ruined their lives. Like when I said lives, livelihoods, you know, I'm not joking. There are people, there are children who are losing their lives. We have people who are losing. And what's happening now is this shift to older people.

23:46And they're losing a lot. The super funds should be scared. and because we as a nation have an enormous superannuation pool of them. We're also at that generational wealth transfer moment, which is the opportunity, the honeypot, no doubt the industrial crime is looking at. And because I'm in it every day, I'm seeing it every day and also seeing what's coming. and the professionalism and generative AI. I mean, I always say it's really good for cute cats and criminals. Really. Well, I do want to dive into that particular issue. What has Gen AI done? Because, of course, it is being used for good.

24:35Apartheid is an example of that and the work they're doing with Commonwealth Bank in engaging with the scammers and sort of wasting their time and collecting data and it's operating as a countermeasure. but it's also you don't have to be that good at being a scammer anymore. You can just prompt for it. Absolutely. You've been a deep faker. You deep fake. I'm like, I'm there day one. I jailbreak everything for learning purposes. For training and learning purposes, Simon. But no, it is. So in the old days you needed to have skill. So now I think we don't need skill anymore. We don't really need intelligence and we don't need skill.

25:17And what we're seeing is we don't need research time. It used to take time to research someone. You want to spearfish someone. We can research anyone in a really short period of time now. And we've got actual products. It's built on Generative Eye to track people down, to give people the information to spearfish them. Whitebridge AI, total disaster, that product. I wrote to them two years ago, and what on earth are you doing? I even wrote to the Lithuanian government to say, this is a really bad idea. So just for people who are hearing this for the first time, let's go back. Spear phishing, first of all.

25:56Just explain that. That is where. So often when we do, we send out a scam email. Now, remember in the old days, I remember this, the Nigerian prince letter would be posted to you. That was sent to everyone. So I'm just going to phish everyone, and probably 1 % of people are going to respond to that general request. Now what's happening is, so Arup is a case in point. One person, the CFO in Arup, they were targeted, specifically targeted for their role and who they were. They sent an email to them saying, look, we want you to transfer some money. And they said, nah, that's ridiculous. But then what they did was send an email, a team's invite, and everybody on the call was a real-time deepfake.

26:44They real-time deepfaked the CEO and other people in the team. Then they had a whole conversation about moving$25 million, which that CFO did systematically that day. At the end of the day, they called the CEO to go, was that okay? I transferred that money to which the CEO went, what money?

27:11so that person the people who are often spearfished are executive eas yep makes sense yeah um administration staff cfos anyone who holds the money so in the old days you know you'd have to do some work about it you need some skills you might have to design an email i'll post you the check work by that anymore I remember um the EAs kept wanting my password it was a very I was working at a company with a very old on-premise platform and I just come from Salesforce in the cloud and I refuse to give my password like I'm not giving you my password we need delegated admin rights and then my boss was saying well don't you want work to get done but I just knew giving out your password is is social engineering essentially because when we when I grew up at Salesforce there was a phrase opwad other people's passwords are dangerous so oh i love that yes take it it was you know so i was trained that way so it's really interesting like giving your ea this a password i trust you but sort of like you know if you do something wrong or they would literally write the password and stick it on their monitor to in i had a um y2k job well i feel like i'm an episode of the office right yeah let's keep going but you're absolutely right i was a y2k job and in the year 2000 it was a great job cba um in the year 2000 the num i started that's when i first started rolling out cyber awareness and learning right and the number one thing was people putting their passwords on post-it notes and sticking it to their screen that was the learning don't do that yeah especially when if you can't remember abc123 right then you already have some If you can't remember password one, two, three, you're already losing.

28:57So Stacey, I just want to go back to you talking about the CEO and the CFO and the EA that gets scammed. But there's also love issues. There's people who have lost a lot of money with the love trolling or spear phishing, if there's a term for that as well. So often the scams, often in scamming world, the categories of crypto scam, fraud, romance scam. So they've all kind of got names. But underneath are the same tactics. And so that's what - There are fundamentals. There are fundamentals. We are humans. So I like to say we are, but highly programmable, unhairy apes trying to live on a muddy rock with status anxiety.

29:40Now, if we just start there, let's just build from the ground up. Yeah. So if that's the case, we are highly programmable. And Robert Cialdini's Influence, I don't know if you read it, best book ever. the laws of power use those for good or not evil and so what happens is those romance scams people are on dating like Tracy Hall is a case in point her whole story that's a real life she started online and then real life con man and he is already back on hinge or something as someone else about to romance scam someone else so what do you do you build trust you build likability then you ask for a little bit of money.

30:21You've given a little bit of money, so then you give a little bit more. Crypto scams. Interestingly, and Julie, what you said, after you felt scammed, you felt ashamed. So many scams do not get reported because people feel embarrassed and ashamed. So if you've got a young man who's been crypto scammed a lot of money, a young man who's been sextorted, a young man, they're not reporting. So any numbers we see in the press, we've got to remember that's maybe one in three. this is i'd be surprised if it was that high i would think it's probably closer to 15 maybe 20 maximum in terms of what's actually going on and going down yeah i mean i i try to be kind due to the reporting um warm it's it's every single person when i say what i do tell me their story or their parents story or their child's story it's heartbreaking like it's truly heartbreaking people are their lives are decimated and i think we there's lots of talking about doing things but we're missing the actual skills that need to be built so romance that's classic love bombing that's classic likability i'm going to give you something you give me something um but also what you said earlier which was i checked their profile and it was really new reverse search those images you pop most of those photos online i get hit up so often on linkedin i love the saudi arabian ones um oh you got my message then you got my no i just want to make sure i just want any validation that i hopefully that i wasn't really scammed and that I have done enough and what else can I do to make sure that I might have been scammed and that I can double check on that everything is assume you have change your password did yeah change your password lockdown number one is your password your multi-factor authentication and which is now becoming a problem in its own which is coming you know another one biometric data now we've gone a little bit minority report remember in the old days when they come in and go i need your biometric data so i'm going to chop off your finger and put it on there that's where we're at at least with a password you can change it now we're using biometric data yep we can't change our biometric data so what do we do now the other thing is with the claude situation with the is it the um gym gym's gym i keep seeing all this start this in startup world.

33:03Oh, it's so great. You can start up, you can just build Claude and you can build a site and then you connect Claude to all of your internal systems and your banking systems and the agents can do everything with you. And now you can build a bajillion dollar. I'm like, no, stop. Please stop. Claude is going to be living in Rio de Janeiro with your money. please stop please stop well number one how are you going to secure your product i mean we have we're a cyber product we iso was it 1700 yes sock two we're we're doing the safety for schools we're on we're ict you're not going to get to do those processes even the internal processes and the governance you need and the thinking you need to do to get that product into market and I'm seeing lots of medical products out there um I'm just giving away data now that's really great now you know I'm a sociologist so you know 1984 all well and all the rest but what we're seeing now is how is our data being used so a friend of mine said oh well everyone's got our data anyway well that's fine until someone decides to use that data to use 85 cameras to track you down because you've decided to have an abortion and then we'll arrest you.

34:27So until you're living in a fascist state, I suppose it's fine that everyone has. Well, you only have to look at China social engineering using technology. America has now gone down that path. Palantir has certainly turned it into a profitable revenue stream on behalf of a government that seems eager to monitor its home of the free land of the brave in a very intrusive way there's there's fear people are afraid of filling out the census also that information too which is which is a little bit sad look i'm i'm conscious that we're going to get completely horrified by this conversation uh and everyone is gonna sort of probably head to the beach or go outside into the sunshine and breathe fresh air because it does feel very dark and deep.

35:17So I want to go practical for a moment, Stace, and say picking up on what you were talking about with, you know, I can build a billion-dollar company just by hooking into Claude. It was like, no, you can spend a billion dollars on tokens, probably more likely. But putting that aside, what are the things that founders need to think about as they build in the AI era? Because to me, going back to compliance and the SOC 2s and the ESOs and everything else, and there's a whole bunch of AI compliance that's now coming out, what do they need to keep in the back of their minds so that, let's just say, if your latest model does go rogue outside of the sandbox and suddenly has hacked into your company and has pulled the entire thing apart and deleted all the data, what if it should be there in the first place to prevent that sort of shit happening?

36:14And that really is a thinking and governance question and depends on what you're building. So, for example, what data, let's start from the base, you know, we all know this is all data. Really it's data analysis. So what data do you hold? Do you need to hold it? Yep, the old credit card question. Do I need your credit card on file? So it's really what we were doing 20 years ago. I mean, we've been doing digital transformation for 20 years, right? So it's those basic key concepts which I think have been overseen, like hidden, not discussed in the speed and the excitement of what can be done. and I think you know this speed to market and we're shipping everything and the acceptance I'm seeing I mean we're all seeing is that we can ship something that doesn't work that breaks needs to be taken back off the market that to me if we think about what we were doing 10 years ago would we put random products into market that we knew we didn't know whether they were going to work the department of fair trading used to go to town on your ass if you did that sort of stuff with a faulty product because it's not fit for purpose do you see what i mean so i think when you're saying what do we need to do you need to sit down and really think about so for example what we've done for our schools product is we don't hold any personal identifiable information or we don't hold that data the schools know who the students are we have de-identified data we don't know and so we don't actually hold the data perfect so we are then reducing our risk of being a target because the other thing is the more personal data you hold on people the more you're a target in structure and canvas not only when you know the largest breach in ed yes um not only did they hold data on the students, the parents, credit card details, but they also had, they've also got conversations between lecturers and students, which is gold to be able to do targeted spear phishing.

38:38And so a lot of that training and information, it's not sexy. It's not sexy. But what you do is so important that every, everyone at every company, whether there's two or 2 ,000 need to go through this. So they know that social engineering, you know, when they're a target. And that's what I love about, you know, what you've done is you've turned it into a game and playing and reaching higher critical thinking skills for people to stop and not just in, I think the generations after us, it's so easy just to click a button and this is safe, I can do it rather than stopping to question things. So I just see like a play day of cyber and testing everyone.

39:15And, you know, so everyone learns and understands how important this is throughout the entire company. Yeah, thank you. It is a skill. And I'm thinking now when you're saying it's a skill and then thinking about what you said about Simon, what we need to think about. Base 44, you can make a website, yeah? So I whipped up a website, staciebans.ai, just to see. I thought, you know, see how it works. There are security settings, you know, and I'm asking people to fill in a form. I filled it in didn't I I filled it in yes I'm asking people to fill in the form now unless you go through all the setting in base 44 and ask the question what settings where is that data being held can anyone access that data is that code locked down have I secured you can do that in base 44 if you ask the questions so you need the thinking to go but I what I'm seeing is it really is I think you said it better than me earlier but a bit cowboy a little bit cowboyish we're just there there are no rules we're just gonna do a bit of slingshot bang open the doors ship stuff it's kind of like you really need to do the thinking it's all down to the data and what you hold yeah and it's that knowing how important it is because I'm I'm actually building something in Claude on github yeah that's it and I know I know levelball had something in there like I want to have create something or some persona to go in and test it and be security and where are the holes and make sure that it's safe like I think that's a prompt that I haven't heard enough you know making sure there's also startups that are building things and shipping without having a human who has significantly more experience to go through it and check it out yeah and my my I love those jokes you know sometimes I go in learning there's a thing called uh that were learning styles it's been debunked years ago but of course it's all over the internet so it's all in all the models must be real then because it's been said enough totally real hashtag real and i go and still i've programmed you know i program the models to this is not a thing and still we're getting the info you know and we know that the models are being trained on what everybody is currently doing so what everybody is currently doing will then be driving the next decisions or the questions that the models are going to use or ask us.

41:42It really is to sit down and think, I'm not just shipping a product, I'm actually building a business and there's a difference. So when we're building a business, we're building it from a governance data advisory council. How do we actually build a business? I built a business in Deloitte, I built a business in Corn Ferry. So how do we actually build a business and what's needed to build a business and one of them cyber and security used to be an administrative task and now it's reputation and brand and whether you're going to survive one of the things with all of this and i think this is what you're addressing is muscle memory because going back to the notion of scam you just need to make the mistake once that's the opportunity they need you can be diligent all the time but then that one brief moment because and other factors come into play and again because we're human we can get distracted we can have a familiarity that thinks everything is okay because you know we know we've we've been trained we've done this so this is about building the muscle memory talk to me about that particular mindset because you don't want to be, whilst you should be wary, crossing the line into leading a life that is suspicious and paranoid on a daily basis is a little bit torrid.

43:11How do you stay positive whilst also conscious of the threat around you? I know. It's a really good question. I kind of liken it to crossing the road. How do I stay conscious of the danger, especially in Melbourne because that freaks me out. I just can't tell because I'm looking at my phone as I step out on the road. Yeah, exactly. It's holding those two things at the same time. I operate in the world safely. I cross the road. I'm holding the, you know, we know, and I'm looking out for danger. I know what the danger is and I'm crossing the road. I'm keeping myself safe. I'm keeping my children safe.

43:51We're at the parks. We are going to our parked car and we're keeping ourselves safe. The critical thinking that comes in is how am I, critical thinking, social engineering and how am I feeling in this moment is just something to be aware of. So you can make those quicker decisions safely. So it's system one and system two thinking. So we're basically training our quick thing. We're training our long thinking so that our quick thinking speeds up. So, for example, I often now do find ads quite funny. my favorite tv show is the grew and transfer absolutely i think the grew and transfer is the most effective way to teach social engineering and should be shown in all schools um because it teaches us what the marketers are thinking of us what they want us to do what they want us to say and what they want us to buy that's what the scammers are doing it's not the marketers are doing exactly the same thing which is why marcuses would make amazing scammers or are in customer service you they're also you said you mentioned that at cva the customer service scammers excellent yeah right so and generally tv just writes you the scripts read robert cialdini's of influence and write me a scamming script that's going to fit this person at this time so to your point Simon we've made the aim of the game literally the aim of the game is just to practice whether it's a cure a squishing in real life a game in DMs in email so the current model in organizations to teach people how to not get scammed is you get a gotcha test in your email which most people know is a phishing test because it looks like a phishing then if you get it wrong you are punished with learning which hurts my little learning soul Simon that you get punished with my profession yep and so that's when I decided that probably wasn't the best way the flogging will continue until morale improves oh I love that yes the floggings will continue until morale improves um is that a classic deal but I love it I think it was something like that um i'm i'm going to jump ahead to phil you know yes the third product we've talked about fishy or not for workplaces dodgy or not for schools and communities phil the gen ai cyber safety system which you've done with unsw and uts p-h-y-l p-h-y-l p-h-y-l tell us what's going on there so what happened was um someone earlier on in product development people were saying to me What about, you know, Gen.

46:37I said, well. I actually built I built Phil already, which basically is programmed with all of our signs, all of our social engineering signs, what they all mean. And then you can instead which, Julie, you did, which was really good. So you said I put this example into Claude and it told me whether it was a scam or not. Thank you for the validation. Still, someone is telling you. so what we've done is built Phil so that Phil says okay do you have an account with Telstra if you don't have an account with Telstra there's probably you know um is it too good to be true do you feel like you're being pressured to do something are they asking for personal information um do you see what I mean so it's actually asking the questions that you answer and really replaces well our generation with our parents calling us and going is this a skill but what it doesn't do is give the answer a few reasons why what happens if we give the wrong answer we're liable for the scam two we're trying to the skill is critical thinking so we want to speed that up the idea is to speed up critical thinking so we do it without even thinking like we cross and learning from learning learning from learning um and also because the scams change so constantly it's about we're going back to the signs not the type of scam the type of scams are changing every single day and what's happening as well is scammers have stopped maybe using urgent action because they know people have started to recognize that now in a hastened world slowing down is a great defense or they've actually done a really good study where um this was a few years ago and they said just by pausing and think just by pausing a breath you reduce your likelihood of being scammed by about 52 just by pausing and so So, halving the risk.

48:50Yeah. Wow. So, that's what Dodgy or Not does and Fishy or Not and Phil. So, Phil is the opportunity to pause and think. The game is an opportunity to pause and think. We are now actually putting together the children's TV show with Screen Australia. We're looking, yeah, so we're going through the process of putting that together. And that is, think Scooby-Doo meets Ready Player One. Scooby-Doo-Boo? the portmanteau i love your mashups so we have that we have the book the game um fill the generative ai now back to i've built it i built it i built it in a few hours right so i'm a geek i took i taught micro sun microsystems i planet portal servers to yeah right so proper geek uh in a way um and so i built it myself but is that a product i could put to market absolutely not until we have proper guardrails, governance, security.

49:54And the work that we did with the Trustworthy Digital Society was amazing because we did all of that work. So whose data do we hold? Once we have that conversation, where does it go? Where is it stored? Are we building trust in someone? Do we now have someone who starts to depend on that, outsource that thinking when we want them to do that thinking themselves? We had to change the streak in the game for it not to be pervasive. So pervasive gaming is when, like for Enduro Lingo, you have to do it every day or you're going to lose your points. Think Tamagotchis, right? So at the beginning, we were like, oh, it would be great to have a street people like it.

50:31And am I a psychopath if I want the Tamagotchi to die? Oh, no. When I was a youth worker, all the children used to give me their Tamagotchis and I had to keep them alive whilst they played football. What the pressure? So what we've done is you have a streak in the game, but you never lose points because you only ever improve because otherwise it's a pervasive game, not a healthy game. So all of the unintended consequences. Now, I did laugh when someone said to me, but how would you know? Well, I'm sure the model knows. So when it was first, oh, we've released, you know, chat GPT. And it's like when we released the Internet and it was just total spam, wasn't it?

51:15It was a total mess. someone said you know the internet is not going to work as a top and what do we think we didn't upscale anyone we just let it out there what a nightmare chaos ensues same thing we're just going to put chat gpt out there and someone said we didn't know what the consequences were did anyone think to ask chat gpt if we put this into the world what would be the unintended consequences i'm gonna fuck humanity that's not that hard people anyway so um that's why with phil and everything is what is the flip side and I think working like I do in both worlds how you go about your thinking which is what's worst case scenario how can this what's worst case scenario and how do I work backwards from that but also just ask the model what's what does Phil stand for or how'd you come up Phil uh well at the minute we did have the dodgy guard um um phyllis our working name two reasons why fishing so we were trying to get in phil but also my grand's name is phyllis my friends my best friend's mom is also phyllis farquhar um so but at the minute phil just because it was kind of like a friendly yeah okay because it's uh philip and phyllis exactly um and you can you know so you can select and pursue and it kind of matches with the ph with fishing that's where we got it that so that's where that came from um but yeah so where the trustworthy digital society and working with universities comes in is the actual governance data where does it sit how do we hold it for if someone's giving personal information about a romance scam what does that mean how do children participate just all of those questions and you don't need to go very far you just ask the model what questions would I need to ask so talk about learning from learning my favourite question is flernings we talk about flernings so learning from failure I know the failure is a big word but it works as a word what is one of your stories of a flerning oh crikey so many

53:30I think I think I've been a bit naive I think I know. I do have, when I was young, my mum said I had a Pollyanna complex. Everything is a glass half full and the light shines through. Well, growing up in Thatcher's Britain, you probably had to have a little bit of that. You know, you do. You need to dig deep, especially when your neighbours report on you for benefit fraud and you can't eat for a few weeks.

54:06The, and then coming, I think, in youth and social work, that's all fine. You work in, you move then into corporate, Deloitte partner, funding, you know, that sort of more. I think I kind of made the mistake of taking those rose-tinted glasses and thinking that the perception I had was reality. And I think through that, I've been on the receiving end of some not so positive behavior that I didn't. I should have seen that I should have managed better that I should have recognized. Yes. And I think that's put me into kind of some difficult situations. So my learning really is from from failure is really try to understand the multiple perspectives of any situation, which is what I love about journey to be.

55:02And you did use that learning, something that affected me. So Stacey and I met because I applied for a job where she was a partner and I interviewed with her and she's like, this is not the role for you. You will not like this. I see so much different other things in you. Let me introduce you to another partner. So that authenticity and seeing that was really helpful. So thank you. Oh, no, thank you. It was an absolute, and I just thought you're perfect for this other role. this you're going to hate yeah that's good advice yeah you don't speak to many people that will see that for you so my learning and which i love about generative ai is please review this from the perspective of what would this role you know what would this persona think how would this person look at this perception because i do often come from the absolute positive and so i need to and And so it's being able to use it to see the flip side and understand the flip side, because I've often turned everything into a positive to get through.

56:02And let me plus one to that. So I like to do the Amy Poehler thing and reach out to friends or people you have worked with to give some a quote or something about you. And this is from Crystal McGregor, who is the former GM at Tech Ready Women. We had a great conversation and she says this. Always a go-getter, externally shows no sign of feeling barriers, comes back week to week having done the thing, not dwelling on obstacles. Oh, that's so lovely. That's Julie's This Is Your Life part of the show. Oh, I love that. Warm me cockles, as they say. Me cockles are warm. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it, mate?

56:39Now, lively. Yes. You've bootstrapped. Yes. Got an MVP grant from New South Wales government along the way. R &D. Yep. Trustworthy digital society. All of that. Yep. Which made a difference. But what's the ambition? What's the plan? What's the dream for you? Wah-ah-ah-ah. The dream is to… Prevent world domination. Wah-ah-ah-ah. Yes. Oh, you got it. Brilliant. I love it. Prevent world domination, yes. is really to replace the systemic and systematic failure that has been and continues to be teaching us humans how to recognise that we're being socially engineered. So in that context, how do we reverse engineer the skills that scammers use to build better businesses?

57:37oh oh i like that a lot well it's there it can be applied it's gonna it look you can monetize evil quite successfully and with a good margin how do you monetize it you're a social enterprise how do you monetize it in a way that creates okay so from a relationship perspective um i'd say number one read influence um really understand your purpose when you meet with someone genuinely connect with them and learn something you have in common you're more likely to get a yes from someone who thinks you you have something in common with them if you'd like to socially engineer your way in australia particularly is other people recognition from others that you're an okay person and an okay business to be doing business with so do pr do marketing spend your time ensuring that you've built your purpose and where you are where you stand um do good for others because that's reciprocity i always say that wrong but someone does something reciprocity reciprocity reciprocity thank you so if you do something small for someone they feel they need to do something small for you and so without feeling that it is transactional yeah that is actually back as humans we're designed to live in what groups of 40 and make sure that we don't get thrown out of the group to be eaten by the lions we do that by doing things for each other building relationships one the in business business is when people say it's just business it's never just business it's all a relationship and so building being able to be trusted being able to do what you say you're going to do all of those small things build up to you're a trusted person you're a trusted organization i i want to work with and also

59:48doing for good i still mean like as a social enterprise i mean we're set up to so our business licenses pay for you know enable us to give the school addition really at cost and then free for vulnerable communities um how might we and i'm seeing i was just gave me joy when there was a young person online saying this is how we set up our business now we're at the you know the end of you know from a neoliberal capitalist perspective but this is how we set up our business and this is how we distribute the wealth in our business by distributing the wealth in our business like this everyone is involved and everyone has a stake therefore everyone is motivated to do the most they possibly can for that business and so years of in leadership and a will, a woman in leadership.

1:00:42I found the more that you lead and in a way that is inclusive and encompassing and sharing. It's really how you run your business, how you communicate your business and how you build yourself as a trusted partner. And you can do that. Read the book, read the book Influence and then use those skills for good and not evil. Wasn't that book, it was written in 2009. Yeah, Robert Cialdini. And it wasn't up to, it didn't uptake until recently with the influencers, right? It was like Coldplay's first album. Yeah. Nobody really got into it until now all the scammers and the marketers are using it. Well, it's really interesting.

1:01:26It's like the 48 Laws of Power. So when the 48 Laws of Power came about, I thought that is one evil book. But actually, when I listened to the author and I've forgotten his name, it'll come to me in a minute, he said, I actually wrote it because... there are laws of power that are being taught in elite circles that are not taught to the general populace because that would be a disaster. So I decided to codify that and put that in a book for everyone to see. So what's really interesting, even if you listen to small podcasts on Robert Cialdino or the influence, it says if you're in business, this is how you use those influencing skills for good one of the examples you go into a restaurant and at the end um if you if the waiter gives you the waiting staff give you a mint they get 13 percent more tips if they give you a mint give give give you give you a mint walk away and then come back and go oh for you i'm going to give you another mint the tips double in online shopping when you go in online you know if you get the little wobble on the car or a little your little dopamine hit that's the give you're likely to spend 10 more gamification is just one big mint mint is one massive mint all right to wrap Do we have to?

1:02:55Well, I'm afraid so because there are scammers to catch. Yes. You have to let Stacey get out. And people to teach on how to catch the scammers. What brings you joy? Oh, so much brings me joy. What brings me joy? It brings me joy when my most bringing joy is when other people are loving life. It brings me joy when people are laughing. It brings me joy when I'm back in the classroom teaching again. It brings me joy when I was in the lift coming here earlier and there were two young women in the lift complaining about their compliance learning they had to do today. And I said, hey, do you want to do something different?

1:03:36Because there's like this thing. It's like Simon meets Tinder. They're like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Thank you. We'd love that. Brings me joy. And what about your boys? What do you want for them? Oh, poor little souls I feel for them.

1:03:52to go out into the world with the skills they need and the self-awareness they need to function in a way where they can hold two truths in their mind at the same time.

1:04:08Yeah. Something the world needs more of. Correct. This has been an amazing conversation today. Thank you so much, Stacey. If people are interested, where can they go and find Lively, dodgy or not, fishy or not? You can do it. Search livelyco.com.au. I'm on LinkedIn. We're all online. Yes, you can search any of the dodgy or not, fishy or not, or livelyco.com.au. And come to Startup Stand-Up October 14th. Stacey is one of the comics. To my calendar. Yes, but the audience needs to. It will sell out. Yes. Stacey will be on stage. Cracker and I bet there's going to be some great material in that. That is the show for this week.

1:04:51Look, I hope you got something out of that and I hope you think a little bit more carefully. I have to say I have even written to my bank saying, please stop sending emails like this. They look like a fucking scam. You have written this like a scammer would write it. Do not do this because it is terrible communication and, you know, there is so much that everyone has to learn all of this stuff. But this show is a Smart Co Media production, produced and edited by the Sharks' number one season ticket holder in 2027. Just putting it out there now, anyone from Sharks HQ, Matt Jackson. Thanks also to Ella, to James and to Deal for their support.

1:05:28Don't forget you can watch this show. It comes out every Friday on Spotify, on Apple and, of course, look on YouTube. And don't forget to read startupdaily.net, absolutely free. email in your inbox some uh llms what would i say they are i don't know learning multiple means lllm learning like mad learning like mad i like that that's an lm learning like mad so go to startdally.net you'll learn like mad everything you want to know and of course we'll see you next friday have a great weekend everyone bye for now Time Forge