Why you’re not your startup: Judy Anderson-Firth explains

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. I love a failed founder because they've got scar tissue and they won't be doing that again because it hurts.

0:48Hello and welcome, Budri Gamawara from the Gadigal lands here in Sydney. It's time for Startup360. I'm Simon Thompson, editor of StartupDaddy.net And I'm here with my fabulous co-host, the ever-sparkling queen of bin chickens. Julie Trowell, here to play. Welcome. How's your week been? It's been good. I do love your Ibis earrings, which I know you wear on the show every week. I hope people notice. Pay attention. They do, they do. And I also have Ibis socks and an Ibis hat. Well, it's a shame you're not wearing the Ibis socks with the orange sandals. I do have orange Ibis socks from University of Sydney.

1:24You could cast yourself off as English if you wore sandals with your socks. Or Paz. Or orange. Or Paz is orange. Paz is orange. Paz, I don't think, wears sandals and socks. Listen, I want to say that Startup360 is more founder fun than founder mode. It's all about staying human and lifting the bonnet to see what makes people tick, which leads me to who is our guest this week? Today we have the fabulous, magnetic, brilliant Judy Anderson Firth from Euphemia. And Triple Bubble. Triple Bubble. And a bunch of other things. Absolutely fabulous to have her up here from Victoria, from Melbourne. And the Pies fan, of course, was one of our finalists as one of the most important people in Australian tech at the Startup Daddy Best in Tech Awards.

2:18So really looking forward to the conversation with her. A couple of things that we'll get to a moment in the Deal spiel, but before we go any further, I do want to say that Startup360 is supported by Deal. Hire, manage and pay anyone, anywhere. So thank you to Deal for that. Have you had a great week so far? I have. I've also been notified of some data breaches. You have. Let's go straight into the Deal spiel then. And I should say we're recording this on November 11th. It is Remembrance Day. That's why I have my red poppy on. I bought that from the crew. Hello to everyone who serves this country.

2:58Thank you for your service. It was great to bump into them this morning and buy my poppy. I'll get one on my way out. Good. Excellent. So, yes, Dielspiel. Dielspiel. Data breaches. Now, who should give a crap about this stuff, Julie? Yeah, anyone who wipes their bum. Yeah, who gives a crap is I got a notification from them as well as Notion. But what's interesting is it wasn't hackers that broke into the company, they were through a software or third party supplier of tech. A couple of things that caught my eye this week. Of course everyone's talking about Nvidia. Be interested to see if the CEO who says he wants to stay is going to stay on this one because there's some big things at play.

3:42Trump seems to be, yeah, whatevs. But a fair bit to happen on this one because it then goes to has China, which America has some issues with, got access to a whole lot of Nvidia chips because Wang has been advancing the relationship with China and saying, hey, we should be selling. So now with the Democrats in control of both the Congress and the Senate, things could get very interesting for the tech bros who have had a pretty good run under Trump and they might... It's all good that the President can sort of wipe his hands and sort of say, nothing to see here, move on. But I don't think the Dems, after what they've gone through over the last two years, are going to be quite as forgiving of the Elons and the Jensens and the Zucks and everyone else.

4:33So we'll see how that one plays out. But speaking of AI, of course the big news locally was that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese got up yesterday, Tuesday, and announced that we're going to get an AI czar to make sure that everyone is safe and sound and secure. We're going to get an AI regulator to keep an eye on safety. And that includes saying, give us your model, we're going to put it through independent testing. And as I commented on StartUpDaddy.net, it's going to be a little bit, looks a little bit like Julian and Grant as the eSafety Commissioner in terms of they will also have powers to say if you don't notify us of breaches and what's going on in a timely fashion, there will be fines and penalties.

5:17They're even talking criminal charges, which is kind of full on. No details. Like all great governments, they love the announcement and then they figure out the details later on. Of course, the data centre thing, which played a big issue in the US midterms. The question here is, you know, if you live down the road from Pro's data centre, which promise means more to you, that Canberra will test an AI model or that the company will pay for grid upgrades because that's all in the mix. The government also released its speaker breaches, the Medicare breach when OpenAI got in there and accessed a database that it shouldn't have.

5:54They released the recommendations to that, not what they actually found, just the recommendations. The government says, yeah, we're all in on those. So we'll see how that one plays out. Probably the other one, Hi to everyone in regional New South Wales and Queensland. Invest Rural has been on the road this week. Annual trip through Tamworth, Gundawindi and up to Toowoomba, mighty Toowoomba. They're spending days with business owners who might think that a bank loan is the only way you can find capital. I know Kirsten from Birchall's on the trip, a couple of other investors. So one of the things that happened out of last year was there's a brewer up in Bathurst where they turned up last year, who went on to raise more than half a million dollars on virtual in a crowdfunding campaign out of this.

6:39So really practical, really amazing adventures and well under Claire Bull and the team who've put this little trip together to let the regions know what can be happening. But without further ado, shall we take a quick break and then we'll be right back with Judy Anderson-Firth. Don't go away. 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.

7:26Visit deal.com slash 360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360.

7:38Welcome back. I am thrilled to introduce our next guest for today, Judy Anderson Firth, who our worlds have been circling each other and we've probably crossed paths at a wedding or so and in the startup ecosystem. But on paper, but we're going to hear the real her, is she is the group CEO of Euphemia. It's a family office of the Australian FinTech founder, Dom Pym. Never heard of him. I know. She leads the investment portfolio, deal flow, due diligence, investment decisions, and portfolio support, and then some. And also the Euphemia Foundation, which I am personally interested in, which gives to people in need.

8:21and before euphemia she was ceo of startup victoria now startup network australia's largest founder community with 16 000 plus members she chairs the advisory board of luna and sits on serves on i like to say serve rather than sit on a board because you're actually doing work serve on the board of virtual and an observer for euphemia and she was also a startup finalist best in tech champion yeah and a little champion and a little uh don't forget triple bubble triple But we'll get to it. I'm going to let her share a lot of things. But even before that. You're going to sound very busy. We're going to run out of time on the show.

8:55I know. Well, last thing. Her first investment was as a kid she sold potted plants door to door. Oh, what kind? Now you're talking my language. Something I can understand. The free kind from my mother's garden where I bribed my, well, convinced my elder sister who's quite a nice artist to paint the pots for 20 cents each. Ah, so you value added. I sold them for$2. So definitely got the good end of the deal. Excellent. There you go. So welcome, Judy. Great to have you on the couch. And let's start off with how you got into Euphemia. We'll start in the middle, into Euphemia. Yes. So Euphemia is the family office of Dom Pym, as you mentioned.

9:37I mean, most people know Dom for Building Up, which is Australia's most loved digital bank, very popular with under 35s. and I met Dom when he was one of my members at Startup Victoria. I used to run a scale-up founder peer group where we'd meet for dinner once a month and education events, things like that. So I'd seen Dom regularly for a couple of years and at the time when I was succession planning for a new CEO at Startup Vic, Dom was actually someone I went to for feedback and advice. I was sort of outlining all of the problems and opportunities I was seeing in the Australian startup ecosystem, what I thought I could do to help, some ideas for what I want to build.

10:15And he had just sold up to Bendigo and Adelaide Bank at the end of 2021. So our path sort of crossed at this really opportune time. And Dom's feedback to me was, all those problems you want to solve, they're all the things that I want to do now that I've sold my company. Why don't we do that together? I don't think we even realised we were building a family office at the time. We sort of figured that out along the way. But that led to the creation of Euphemia, which is Dom's family office, and that business is on a mission to go big and grow home. Is there, I love that phrase, first of all. Say it again.

10:49Go big and grow home. And I'm curious about the name Euphemia. Oh, yes. So it is, well, first of all, it's a woman's name. And when we were doing a market scan of, you know, how is Euphemia going to be different in the marketplace? Like what does a typical family office look like? or what does a typical investment firm look like if you're a capital allocator? There was a lot of blue. There was a lot of black. There was a lot of, you know, I would say like very male, like dominant branding language out there in the world. And a big part of our thesis at Euphemia is to back women, not just female founders but also female capital allocators, so female investors.

11:32And so we wanted to not necessarily signal woman but we definitely wanted to signal inclusivity and gender neutrality generally. So finding the name Euphemia was a great thing for us. We didn't want to call it the Pym family office because if we're successful at what we do, you know, Don will be even more well-known than he is today and having some anonymity for his family in life is a good thing. There's a different feel when it's a family office versus – And I think there's a deliberate in there, more deliberate. Exactly. And it's also the Greek origin of the family name. Also it wasn't just that he was a Harry Potter fan.

12:14Harry Potter's grandmother is called Euphemia, you hear that? That is some good folklore. So, yes, the Pym family name is derived from the word Pymia, which comes from Euphemia, which means to speak well, to be of good repute, to act in good faith. And the goddess Euphemia was martyred for not basically sacrificing and to the God of War. So it all just sort of felt right for us and, yeah, the domain was available. I love that. The most important part. Yeah, I love that. I love the provenance of where names come from. So just quickly, family office. What does that actually mean? Is there a question there?

12:49Do the grandkids come in? What is a family office? Yeah, well, the saying goes you've met one family office, you've met one family office, so I can tell you about ours. So obviously I'm not family. I'm a professional hire CEO and I work for and with the family. You're adopted. Exactly, exactly. And hopefully they keep me. And really it's the business of private capital. And so what the business of the family is, is really bespoke to what the family cares about. And Dom's mission in particular is not about creating intergenerational wealth. So that is a very common path for a family office to tread, is you typically have, you know, in the first generation, a matriarch or a patriarch who's created wealth.

13:31They built something of value. They were rewarded for building that with value. And then the job typically becomes how do we custodian that to the next gen, the next gen, the next gen, to take care of the family and the legacy. And that is right for some families, for many families. Dom's mission is actually not to create intergenerational wealth. He came from the school of hard knocks and he would actually like to invest his wealth back into the next generation of Australian entrepreneurs. So our secret mission is to create more euphemies because we can't do it all on our own. Love that, love that.

14:07And you mentioned the reason. So you're investing in companies. What is the thesis for your investments? What do you look for? Yes, so we invest in fintech, so anything that's going to help fix money, climate tech, anything that's going to help fix the planet, women-led business and female capital allocators and also tech infrastructure. So think robotics, you know, AI infrastructure, things like that. So they're the four sort of pillars of the things that we are either really good at and we can do due diligence, we get great sources of deal flow, or they're the things that we really care about for how we think we can make the greatest impact.

14:43Okay, so we've got a bit of the Dom story. We really want the Judy story because, you know, you only have to sort of sidle up to Dom and he'll give you the story. We want yours. Of course, as Julie said, what led you down this path? How did you end up in a sector like this? Because at one stage you were in property, weren't you? I had some property clients, yes, when I was a consultant way back when. So I know a little about a lot. I think that's generally my background. So I've been fascinated with entrepreneurship and innovation my whole life. Like as Julie said, I was hustling for extra pocket money when I was in primary school.

15:22That's like, that's always been, I've been curious about business, curious about people. And when I was younger, I didn't know the word entrepreneurship. And so I just thought I was gonna be an inventor. You know, I was gonna like build things that would solve problems. And so my whole life, I was drawn to those subjects in school. I was drawn to the people that were challenging the status quo and were being creative. And then when it got to the business end of school, you know, it was really, do I do something I'm super passionate about, which is music? or do I do something I'm really good at, which is business?

15:53And I thought better maybe not to try and earn a living off of something I'm passionate about like music so I don't ruin it. And I went into business. And it just felt natural to me. I studied entrepreneurship at RMIT in Melbourne and met some amazing people who went on to build great companies, moved to the valley, et cetera. And then I got a little bit lost for a period of my career in my early years with imposter syndrome. I thought, well, I'm too young to really know what I'm doing and I don't really know yet which problem I'm like so passionate about that I can throw a decade at it. So I'll just spend more time learning.

16:34And so I would say like the first like decade of my working career was really focused on learning as much as I possibly could about as many different things. So I went in to work in a large firm, Deloitte, in the innovation team. so working on things like tax innovation, Deloitte Digital, Deloitte Private. So I got a bit of a span of like professional services and that world. Then I went into a boutique innovation consultancy called Inventium that used organisational psychology, neuroscience, management science and that firm's job was to teach, you know, your ASX 250 who were more distant from their start-up roots how to protect themselves from the disruption of start-ups, how to innovate within.

17:19So that was things like strategy, you know, rewards and incentives, the science behind decision making, resource allocation, things like that. I loved that role. I got to travel the world, worked in every continent except Antarctica. I never, ever, ever want to see the inside of a plane ever again if I can avoid it. And I used to run a Silicon Valley tour in that role, which was excellent. And one of my tours, I was sitting in a room with Alan Blue, who's the co-founder of LinkedIn, one of the PayPal co-founders, part of that mafia of fintech in the Bay Area. And just hearing how he spoke about the world, I had this epiphany 10 years into my career going, I've just spent the last 10 years thinking I don't know anything, learning about all sorts of disciplines as a consultant from property to funeral homes to vitamins to anything you can imagine.

18:11Banking, Lego, Google, like the whole spectrum. And then this gentleman is maniacal in his belief on how to change the world with technology. And I just left inspired. I ended up camping in Yosemite for a week and going tech-free, which I know is so cliche but it really worked, came back and... There's something about staying at El Capitan that kind of helps you reset. Completely. And my hot tip is if you go, don't have the idea of climbing at sunset because then you're at the top in the dark like an idiot. So don't do that. Don't do it in the summer. But yes, I quit my job and then I was on the search for, well, where in Australia are all the founders?

18:49Where are the Alan Blues of Australia? And that search led me to Startup Victoria. And so that business at the time was a scrappy not-for-profit. It started as a meet-up group called Lean Startup Melbourne where founders would get together on a Friday night for beer and pizza at Inspire 9 in Cremorne, one of the original co-working spaces in Australia. And I thought, well, that's a business I can help. I can bring everything I've learnt over the last decade of scaling companies and bringing some structure and governance. And then at the same time, I can meet everyone. It's still even at that day, there was only about 15 ,000 people in the network at the time.

19:23And today it's over 75 ,000 people. So, you know, that was an amazing chapter because I just got to meet all of the great founders, Dom included, across Australia, the people who were wanting to work with them, the investors, the providers, the talent exchange people, the government. And so it was an incredible role. and that's also where I learnt a bit more about what's the shape of me in this ecosystem and how can I use what I'm good at to achieve what I'm trying to do which is really, as we said, like go big and grow home, make Australia an awesome place to build and start a tech company so that our greatest export is our ideas, our ingenuity, our innovation and it's an economy that we can all participate in.

20:07It's accessible. Like when I first started at Startup Vic, one in 25 of our event attendees were women. And when I left in 2021, it was one in five. And so that's, again, just another signal of like if you lead from the front and you're conscious about creating spaces and things that are inclusive, you have more diverse participants, which leads to better outcomes. I want to go deeper into the working with people. You have such a magnetic personality. I'm sure people are chomping at the bit to get into the fund. And so how do you collectively support founders and the teams in the portfolio? I know you like startup infrastructure, but how does that pertain to the people?

20:51So, yes, you brought them together. Do you have specific things that you do with and for your portfolio? That's where she uses the Vulcan mind tricks she picked up early on in her career. Exactly, the secret psychology tricks. Well, maybe it's helpful to explain what the fund is. um so as we've explained euphemia is the family office that's that's dom's capital that's the mission that we explained around going big and growing home um a couple of years into the journey of the family office we realized that we were very good at making investments and we were very good at growing assets under management like we tripled our assets under management in the first four years but even with that like our goal is to unlock five billion dollars of capital into the Australian venture ecosystem within the next five years oh wow we don't have five billion dollars yeah so damn how do we yeah how do we ephemia times 20 exactly like how do we achieve that it's certainly not just by doing deals by ourself like that's awesome and we've built an incredible portfolio we have over 70 companies that we've invested directly in we're in 23 funds across 32 vintages like don't get me wrong we've done some great deals but it's not actually going to get us to that goal and so we realized we actually have to use what we're great at which is building relationships with people getting into deals where other people can't getting early access being able to do good due diligence helping once we're in those companies grow and unlock their potential and we can do that not just with Dom's capital but with other people's capital.

22:24So we learnt really quickly that we have to move and become a professional custodian of other people's capital to achieve that goal. So that led to the creation of Triple Bubble which is a dedicated fintech fund for our region. So that invests in private fintechs at the earliest of stages, pre-seed and seed. It also does secondary transactions with series B plus companies. so those that are already starting to scale and that's typically some sugar hit liquidity for founders, early stage employees or perhaps some early investors who are sort of a shag on the rock of the cap table and those companies are looking to tidy that up and also reward them for their early investment.

23:03And also as a young fund I suppose it retrofits a little bit of that scale in there as well. Exactly. Like our last investment is a Series B RegTech that I can't announce yet but everyone will know the name of and what fund in its first year gets into a company like that. So we're sort of fast-tracking momentum. But we also have a listed equities part of that fund as well. So that's why the name Triple Bubble. We have private, secondary, and listed fintechs all within the one fund vehicle. All right, so that's a lot about getting the capital to the founders. What happens after the check is written to the humans that are running the company?

23:38I'm going to use my language. How do you play with them? What do you – how do you work with them together individually to make them – to help them and the company be successful? Are you a stern parent on the board or are you saying kids go outside and play? They're the best. Like they're our reason for being, honestly. Like don't get me wrong, I love our investors. They are also people that we have fun with and, you know, we learn alongside and learn from. But the founders and the people that they hire, they're exceptional and they're the Alan Blues of Australia. You know, like they are the people who have a maniacal belief in disrupting the status quo, bringing value to market and doing something different and putting something new in people's hands to make their part of the world a better place.

24:22So, you know, for example, this T-shirt that I'm wearing today, that's our first investment in Triple Bubble. That's a company called XMO, which stands for Extraordinary Money. And that is a ragtag group. I shouldn't call them ragtag because they're very organised but they are basically all of the best former Ferocians. Oh, wow. Yes. Okay. You know Ferocia. Yeah. So Ferocia is the tech company that built up. Yep. So there's some, you can't really see the back but it says Misfits of Finance. Yep. That's sort of who they are. It's part of the Caribbean for basically fintech. Yes. I don't know if they have rum in the office but maybe I should bring some.

24:59But they are awesome. They're basically building an agentic payment company. And so if you think about how payments work at the moment, it's a very conscious system, right? So if you pulled out a credit card today to pay for your coffee or you had a credit card in your Uber account, Exmo could potentially say, well, maybe the best thing is not to buy that with credit. Maybe the best thing is to put that on your debit card. Or I know you're about to do that new pair of sneakers with buy now, pay later. But actually, if you did this credit proposition, which was just for one particular purchase, as opposed to a 30-day statement period on a rolling balance that no one understands, like that's probably going to be better for you.

25:36So that team, incredible. Shut up and look at my money. I love it. I'm sitting here like that's medicine for my decision paralysis. I can barely get the right bloody credit card up in my wallet. So it's like, you know. So imagine Exmo like a front of wallet wrapper. So now it wraps around everything you've already got and you only ever transact with Exmo and the rest sorts itself out. So but do you answer your question? I feel like I've diverted the question twice. No, that was an excellent ad for Expo and they are you a slab for that. I want to hear you. But like how we play with them, to answer your question, so they've got an office down in Collingwood and they very generously have an open door policy.

26:19So from time to time we'll just pop in. They do demos on a Friday every week so we'll just come in and see what they're building, check it out, say hey, have a yarn in the kitchen, do some of our work just side by side. We're just around and have those little water cooler moments for the in-the-moment advice. And then that's one example. On the other end of the extreme, we sit on boards, we play a formal governance role. Generally our philosophy is to not push ourselves in. So because of the way our fund is structured, board rights and formal governance rights really only come with the check-size power of leading around a pre-seed or seed.

26:54So that's why we have more board seats and things like that to be there in case we're needed. and for the later stage companies it really is just about having great relationships with people. So our job is really unblock them, connect them with the right customer, the right investor, the right partner, the right talent, the right next hire. Like if you think about being a good investor is kind of like a Mario Kart game where like your job, like we're not in the driver's seat. Like we'll never be the one that knows all the things and is building all the things or has intimate knowledge of the customer.

27:31But what we can do is lay speed ramps in front of them. We can tell them where the bananas are on the track so they don't go that way. Like, you know, we can see the forest for the trees. So that's really our job is either put up the guardrails, put down the speed ramps, most of the time just get out of the way. You're kind of the shark drone of building a company. The capital wrapper, like the XMO of VC. I'm just trying to connect the analogies of what XMO does. So the wrapper around all of the things that an investee at a company would need. Yeah. And beyond that, obviously our head of venture, Poppy Truella, she's an absolute rock star, Sydney-based.

28:04She spends a lot of time with all of our portfolio companies, both on the family office and the triple bubble side. She basically meets with the founders, the execs, and finds out what are their biggest problems, what are their pet peeves, what's keeping them up at night, and then she goes and builds solutions for that. So, for example, sometimes she'll speak with a CFO and they've just done a subscriptions review and their AWS bill is through the roof and so she'll go and negotiate a better rate with AWS or any other sort of, you know, software provider. Could be a hiring. They need a fractional CFO.

28:35We've deployed fractional CFOs. When they're doing capital raises, they don't need to make a permanent hire, but things are crunchy for three months while they're doing their Series B. So we just deploy someone in for a period, do some extra modelling, things like that. Great. Wow. And Poppy, I mean, sort of talk about rescue, rescue remedy, jumping in. She's the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone loves Poppy. She does a great job. I want to ask, given, you know, part of what you do is advice. We've got the Victorian election coming up in a couple of weeks. The opposition, who looks like will be elected, has one position it wants to take, especially around Innovation Victoria.

29:14At the federal level we've got a government that is tweaking tax, capital gains, early stage investment, R &D. let's just say you were in a bar after a game down in Collingwood. How did you know my team? Well, you kind of have, you're giving me that vibe. You've got great teeth, I have to say. I'm representing for the Collingwood supporters who have teeth, yes. You're a pie supporter. And Jess Wilson walks in. What would you say to her? About the Victorian start-up ecosystem and why it matters. Hmm. Well, it matters everywhere. Hmm. I'm just...I'm starting there. We're going to go federal after this.

29:58Okay. I'd rather go there straight away. Okay. Because my view and, again, having spent time in other ecosystems around the world and seeing what we can learn from those markets while still playing to Australia's natural strengths. Like if you...so two cities I was in in the last month, Singapore, San Francisco. go. Singapore, very good top-down government-led roadmap. It's a small country with limited resources on the natural side and so they have to have a coordinated plan of attack for the whole nation to be able to win, to be able to survive and attract different people. And that's one playbook, right?

30:39We're certainly not Singapore but there's something to learn. But at the moment everyone is looking at Singapore and going, oh my god, no tax, I'm off. Yeah, we do. We have, and I'll be honest, we have, we were speaking at a family office summit there a couple of weeks ago as part of Super Return. And we did meet a lot of family offices that were setting up shop there off the back of the recent proposed changes to discretionary trusts at the minimum 30 % and then the potential scrapping of the 50 % discount on capital gains tax for innovative investments. Now, if you go to San Francisco, you have a completely different kettle of fish.

31:15Now that is a unique space within a unique landscape of federal versus state. So there's a bit more, I'd say, likeness, right? You have the federal system, the state-based system, and then the city within that system. And the city of San Francisco is like white hot, white hot on pace, white hot on capital, white hot on noisiness and influence in government. And I think, again, they're very different examples, but when I think about what is Australia doing and what are our natural advantages, generally speaking, we have a culture of like, she'll be right, mate. She'll be right, mate. You know? No worries.

32:00No worries, mate. And that can be a good thing when it comes to thinking about how is Australia going to compete on the international stage for innovation, for the future of infrastructure AI, physical AI, data centres, climate tech for water, cooling, all of those things. Having a concerted effort that is collaborative. And the reason I wanted to go national first is like the thing that we're very good at in the venture ecosystem and in the tech ecosystem is we have a lot of advocates in our sector, a lot of people with large followings and loud voices and platforms, and that can be amazing. But when they say different things or sing from different hymn books, it can be really confusing.

32:50It's a cacophony. To our friends in Canberra, to our friends in state governments, which voice to listen to. So what I'd love to see is the whole industry being a member of the Tech Council of Australia and really throwing our weight behind one voice into parliament so that we're consistent, so that we're deliberate, so that we are all on the same page. So I think we all have our own relationships with different ministers and whatever. There's like a whole fintech voice to parliament that Fintech Australia runs, which is excellent. But I'd say generally the whole sector, if we can be consistent in Canberra and then consistent across the states, I think that we'll get a better result.

33:28In terms of what's happening in Victoria specifically, we'll have to see what happens. ...after the election.

33:37Industry leading, generally speaking, has been how Australia has won in the past. Well, plenty to think about in the lead up to Victorians going to the polls... ...in a couple of weeks. Shall we take a quick break and we'll be right back with Judy Anderson-Firth. Don't go away. Welcome back. You're watching Startup 360 and our guest today is Judy Anderson-Firth from Euphemia, Triple Bubble and so many hats. You must have a hat rack by the front door of your house. I do, actually. Deciding which one to put on. Yes, one we haven't mentioned which is probably worth giving a shout-out to because it's just a really exciting company on an absolute tear is Buildkite.

34:20Yep. Buildkite is one of Dom's early investments, predates my time working with Dom. and Bill Kite asked CI for the AI era and if that's too many acronyms, everyone knows what AI is, but CI is continuous integration. So CI, CD, continuous deployment. Basically the job of Bill Kite is if you're building software, Bill Kite helps you check and test your software before you ship it to make sure that it's working. And so if you think about a tool like that and why that's on a tear right now, in a world where software was being created by humans, there were bums on seats, buying software licences and checking the code that they'd created.

34:57And now we have agentic code which is producing at a rate of knots in terms of code volume that almost none of us can keep up with. Should be alright. Yeah. Now we don't need licences, we need like product volume pricing. So you put those two things together, this 13-year-old company has found itself at the absolute heartbeat of the Frontier Lab AI boom. So the customers of Buildkite, Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Uber, like picture every Silicon Valley darling, they are customers of Buildkite. So it's a very exciting moment in history to be sitting on a board and observing the growth of the company and like Kevin Goodan, who's the CEO there, and the whole executive team, they've done a phenomenal job.

35:51The former co-founder, Lachlan McDonald, is now the CTO there. And what he's done with the product and being able to keep up with the pace of the technologists that are their customers is pretty remarkable. So that's a very exciting company that actually started with a secondary transaction. And doesn't she do such great product placement for the four cows? Yes, yeah. I got it. They're the people we exist. There's 98 more companies in the portfolio. I'm here for them all. I mean, I said I got 70. How much time have you got? We've got lots to get through. Great. Well, let's talk about some of the founders and risk.

36:26And we were talking earlier about the appetite for risk in Australia and the appetite for risk coming from a VC and what I've seen there. But you back founders who failed. Talk a little bit more about that and why. I love a failed founder because they've got scar tissue and they won't be doing that again because it hurts. You know, like failure is not exactly fun. Um, and so, you know, I think there's an art to like a graceful dismount as well, you know? So it's not like every founder that's failed will back again, but the ones that do it well, the ones that do it, uh, honestly, that do it transparently, um, that do it quickly, like they're ones that will back again.

37:07And it's also a mindset though, for founders who have failed to get back up on that horse and to be proud of that scar. Um, so speaking of, do you have any failures? We like to call this part of the show the Fleurnings. You're fucked up or you're failures. Excuse my French if that offends you. But we swear. Any Fleurnings or a failure that you are proud of or one that you learned from? I am made of Fleurnings it feels like as we all are. Judy Anderson Fleurnings. Yeah. Let's add another name. Hyphenated. Where to start? But I think the hardest failings are anything to do with people, right? Like they're always the most painful.

37:51So whenever you make a mistake and you impact someone's career, their livelihood, their performance, like they're always the hardest pills to swallow and the ones that you've got to make sure that you learn from. Things on product, you know, they should just be run of the mill. Every time you make a mistake on the product and you ship a feature or do a thing that isn't working that someone's not paying money for or that a customer doesn't like or use, like that's kind of like table stakes failure. Like you've got to just be good at that if you're innovating and you're like building new products and services.

38:24If you can't like quickly pull a feature, pivot over that way, you shouldn't be in this business. And then I think the other more personal side of the learnings is just like being really honest with yourself and having good practices. Like I have invested a lot in my like personal professional development. I have paid money to have people hold a mirror, not a literal mirror, a mirror up in front of me to make sure that I'm like being honest with myself around my strengths, my weaknesses, my flaws. And those investments in myself always pay the highest dividends because I always show up better for my family, for my friends, for my teammates, for our customers better the next day.

39:14And when those kind of habits start to slip, so, you know, psychology, reading, speaking with other people, just being serendipitous and learning from them, shadowing other people, like those kind of things, when I don't do those, then you just get stuck in your own little vortex and I'm never good in that little vortex. Tell us a little bit about that discipline. How do you do it? Because, again, I go back to a founder mindset that can be, I have this vision, we're doing it, everyone come with me. And sometimes there does need to be dissent or you need to be honest with yourself. And we have a swirl of imposter syndrome and all the other bits and pieces.

39:57How do you keep yourself accountable? What's your strategy? A few things. So at a team level, we have a cultural practice of doing a monthly stop, start, keep. So and this is a mutual like in the moment feedback. This isn't a performance review. This isn't a KPI. This isn't performance management. This is how are we working together on a one-on-one dynamic and it's reverse feedback. So we tell each other what we need to stop doing or we need to start doing and what we should keep doing. And that's just a 20 minute catch up. You each do your pre-work. where you write down what you want the other person to stop, start and keep doing.

40:34You share each other's feedback and then away you go. And then you have another one the next month. You look at the last one and, you know, if there's anything you still haven't fixed, then that gets flagged. And obviously if it's flagged multiple times, naughty, naughty. So that practice happens and so we all do that as a team with each other one-on-one. So that's one thing we do at a cultural level. At an individual level, I just have like quarterly psych sessions booked in. I know that there's still some taboo around mental health and proactive mental health management. But for me it's like absolutely critical.

41:07Like it's like getting a service on your car. Like, you know, I just have it booked in and even if I don't think I need it, like sometimes I come up to the appointment and I'm like, oh, do I need that? Like I'm so busy. Like I feel like I'm in a good spot and then I have it and I'm like, oh, thank God. Like it really is just like that little tune-up. So I always have those plugged in every quarter. and we're lucky in Australia to have the mental health plan, 10 sessions with Medicare. Invaluable. Yep, if you're eligible. Is that focus also trickled down to the founders or your portfolio companies at a high level or some level?

41:40Yeah, I think, again, it's very personal preferences. So we don't force any of that on any of our portfolio companies, but we encourage them to have EAPs, employee assistance programs in place because the work environment of a startup can be quite stressful. there's a lot of pressure you've often got limited runway um you've got investor pressure customer pressure founder pressure so we do encourage them to have employee assistance programs in place um on the foundation side of the business that's something we've done before where you know founders have had really difficult times and the foundation has covered um some of that support for like couples counseling you know perhaps there's been a circumstance where you know the founder's partner doesn't really you know isn't in the loop on what's happening but they can see the impact it's having on their partner.

42:25And so having couples counselling could be really helpful for that individual, for that family unit, which in turn helps the business. So that's, yeah. I could go on on this topic. It's something I'm very passionate about. Keep going. Absolutely. This is really important stuff. It is. It is. I think often having worked with thousands of founders and entrepreneurs over the years, their identity is so woven into the business. and so when the business fails, it feels like a personal failing. And the more we can do to create identity outside of your business, the more resilient you will be to company failings.

43:07You know, one of the founders that I love in our portfolio, we were talking about her earlier, Grace Brown from Andromeda. Like I remember we catch up regularly. I'm that person she calls when like something's gone wrong and even though we're investors, we're investors in an indirect way. We invested in Galileo Ventures who led their seed round so we didn't invest directly in Andromeda but we're sort of indirectly invested through Galileo. So I think we're kind of almost like a safe, you know, a trusted... The neutral investor. A neutral investor. Like we've got skin in the game but we can't impact the company in any sort of way like that.

43:40And so she calls us from time to time. That's a social and emotional robotics company. and the problems she was solving three years ago. In aged care? Yes, in aged care putting, you know, little five-foot-tall rainbow robots with a bubble gun for an arm into an aged care facility. The type of problems she was solving then were very different. Now she's Series B, office in San Francisco, you know, she's in that big dog fight in America and, like, the problems she's facing now are of an order of magnitude more complex have bigger downstream consequences than the problems she was facing when she was just starting her company.

44:21But they feel exactly the same because the hardest thing you've ever done is just the hardest thing you've ever done. And so what I found, like what I love to do is just help be that space for founders when they're solving that hardest thing that they've ever done before. Because if you're still in the CEO seat as a founder, you have to grow with your company as a leader, as a decision maker, as like a signaler to market and your whole life is just eating glass and like every day it's just a new thing you've never done before that you have to be an expert at overnight and so like just knowing that's the backdrop of the founder experience if you can create identity and purpose and self-worth and value outside of your company when that one day it all feels too much and it feels like you're overwhelmed and it's all coming down on you and it's just that one problem too far or one problem too many in that one day.

45:27When you've got something outside of work that isn't failing, whether that's a sporting community or a hobby that you have, a relationship that you've tended to, a garden that you love, a pool that you love, an ocean that you love to visit. Like when there are things that are yours as part of your core identity that are protected from the company, then the better your resilience will be. And you mentioned something that happens as a founder when the company grows, CEO. How do you have those conversations saying to get them to recognize, I know this is your identity, I know this is your brand. in order to grow we need X, Y and Z.

46:10Do you have any of those stories or how do you help transition? Because that's a big also emotional transition. Yeah. Yeah, I think just putting a name on it helps, right? You know, like even just a problem shared is a problem halved, right? So even just having a space to be like, you know, like that helps. Doing it so in a confidential environment also helps. Sometimes just being able to scream is all you need. Yes, yes. Yes, like Bette Porter in the L World. I don't know much of the L Word original series when she goes to her silent retreat and just screams into the woods. But, yes, I think the other thing as well is recognising, like we can all sit around here while we're nice and relaxed and talk very logically about all of this, but when your nervous system is in fight or flight, you can't logic out of that.

46:58You need to downregulate. You need to, like, have physical environment. ...you need to go into the woods, you need to go into the pool... ...you need to have physical experiences to downgrade your nervous system... ...you need to get away from the screens. Like you can't actually logic your way out of fight or flight. So you actually have to do some of the more physiological things... ...to start like getting yourself back in your seat.

47:25You mentioned being on the planes and having something that keeps you honest. A two-year-old son is pretty good at keeping any parent honest. The other hat. The other hat. Yeah, the other hat. Yes. Mum is on a plane a lot and away a lot and it kind of works now but you must be conscious in your mind that the demands on your time from family will start to transform your life. Yeah. How are you thinking about that? Yeah. I love being a mum and I love being a working parent and I am very lucky that there's been lots of great examples of what that looks like that come before me, right? Like when I was contemplating starting a family, having a baby, I knew a lot of female founders that were either pregnant at the time or going through IVF or had become mums.

48:14So I had this like little call list of people I could be like, so what's it really like? Like what do I need to plan for? What do I need to prepare? And of course there's no preparing. Hilarious that I tried to do that. Brace for impact. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, it was still helpful because even little things, right, like Jackie Villings, who's one of the partners at Airtree Ventures, she gave me a great tip which was when you're on maternity leave and people want to do those like check-in calls with you, don't book a specific time because when it's a specific time, that might be the time that the baby's vomiting, you're changing your diaper, that's your one window to have a shower.

48:47So give people windows, right? Like I'll call you sometime between 2 and 4. You know, like just a little hack like that actually helped And I didn't get it until I was in that seat. I was like, oh, my gosh, like that is so true. Because there's nothing worse than having a booked in call in your calendar... ...that's the one thing you're doing that week while you're on maternity leave... ...and it's the worst time with the baby. You can't choose between the baby and the call. You have to do the baby and then you've let... So that advice, little nuggets like that were very helpful. And then just being representation.

49:16I was so... Sorry. You're good. Go back to and then representational. I do think representation is important as well. So, you know, trying to just be myself and be transparent about my life and, you know, what I am or aren't doing. Like I was so proud to on International Women's Day be on the front page of the AFR eight months pregnant in an article about like women in capital allocation positions. I just was so proud of that because I was like that feels normal to me. Like it's, it's normal to me that like when we, you know, I'd love to have a second baby. And so there'll be a world in the future where I'm taking investor meetings and raising capital pregnant.

50:05Um, and so that's just par for the course. And, um, I don't think that's being naive about the impacts that it has on the business, but being able to demonstrate what are our plans for when I take a break, how do I come back? Who's doing what? How does it work? So I think as long as you are transparent about, you know, yeah, there are impacts to not being at work and then here's how we fix for those. But it is the normal course of life that men and women and people all over the world have children and have babies and have lives. And so, again, I just think the more we just normalise it. Future customers.

50:42Exactly. Exactly. You know, baby Jasper, Exmo, customer number one. So, yeah, I think you've just, it's just life. Yeah. I do recall at FinTech Australia a couple of years ago... ...there was a conversation around being a pregnant founder... ...and some investor feedback that was, let's just say, questioning the commitment. Are you capable of doing two things at once? What would your response to that be? Yes.

51:16Yes. Yes. I've always been the type to let the work do the talk. Yeah. That's my preferred method. And so let the track record speak for itself, you know. We've got the results and that's over the line. My son's now two. So we've done some amazing work over the last two years. And he's alright. He seems pretty normal. I think he's okay. He hasn't suffered. The business hasn't suffered. Like both have been performing great. So I think it's really just let the work do the talk. And for those who do have those concerns and, you know, it's not their risk appetite or not how they like to invest, then that's fine.

51:54We find our people. And so it's also just like natural selection of like who's part of our community, you know. That's also okay. Like there is an abundance of capital for the people that are your people. So it's really just how do you find those people and focus your efforts on where there's a fit. Well, let's go back to family. What's your vision and hope for Jasper?

52:21And baby AF. Baby AF, yes, Anderson Firth. I mean we've been swearing on this podcast and we like to joke... ...that like obviously being Anderson's first... ...we're the most as fuck Anderson family you could ever find. So everything is the most. But I think education is obviously something that I think... ...many parents turn their minds to, you know, right? Like how am I going to provide the opportunity for, you know, my child to grow up in this world? You know, everyone who has a kid doesn't know what the future is. And so I think the type of things that I'm thinking about exposing Jasper to are less so on the academic side, more so on the like how to be a human in the world.

53:03So particularly I think having a young boy, like not ignorant to the male suicide rate in Australia and apologies for any triggering there. But that is something that I want to make sure he's prepared for. He's going into a world where being a young man is challenging. He'll be exposed to a lot of triggering content on the internet before I'm probably even aware of it. And so how do we give him the skills to navigate a world that is very noisy? How do we have him live in his body and not in his brain and his phone? How do we give him exposure to a world that is not as privileged as ours? Like we live in the lucky country and he has – will have every opportunity afforded to him.

53:53So how do we make sure he has perspective? How do we make sure that he knows that there are people in the world that need to be helped, that deserve to be helped, that need to have their own fair go? So I think I'm thinking more about experiences rather than schooling. Again, schooling is just like table stakes, you know. Like I'm not trying to take over the school system and build a new school. Like he'll just go to school, you know. The Brighton grammar phase will be$500 ,000 a year at this point in time. Well, yes. I think, you know, my parents came from very humble backgrounds. My mum was a primary school teacher.

54:26My dad was a railway engineer. They're both retired now. They live in the Yarra Valley. They're having a great time. Nice. Yes, they won the Most Romantic Couple Award at the music festival they went to recently. So that's sort of my appearance. They're amazing. Oh, I love that. But, you know, I think just giving him in the time away from school those kind of experiences. Now whether that's travelling to, you know, rural Australia and visiting people there, whether that's learning how to start a business during the school holidays and his version of pot plants or whatever that might be, learning how to give, learning how to save, learning how to invest.

55:02And then the school of life on like there are some systems just like the whole education system in the country that I'm not going to change, you know, in my time at least, like the taxation system, the superannuation system, the medical system, like, you know, the things that you're not taught in school but are skills that you need for life that unless someone teaches you, you have to learn them through the school of hard knocks. So I think just finding experiences for him where he can learn about that is what I'm looking for. And I want to pick up on music, your passion. I mean normally you're supposed to chase your passion...

55:35...but you decide to put it to one side. Was it going to be DJ Jude in the house or was it going to be... Do I look that cool, Simon? ...the Judy Symphony Orchestra or... My goodness. What path would you have gone down? Jazz. Yep. Yep. So I love jazz music. Improv. Improv? There it is. Oh my gosh, mate. I'm definitely a theatre nerd. I love music. I love the arts. And yeah, would have been jazz and singing, piano, those kind of things. I just, when I think, we were talking earlier about like mental health and nervous system regulation, like music is one of those things for me. So it is part of my routine to play, to sing.

56:15Like the vagus nerve loves to sing. It's a good reset. Absolutely. Even if you're bad, you don't have to be in pitch. Agreed. You know, it's just the practice. Agreed, yeah. We did an improv singing. It was terrible. Absolutely terrible. But we stuck it out and we sang in front of a bunch of founders. Yeah. It was great. Before we bring it home. Yeah. I'm curious who. Just stop.

56:43Oh, it's 11 a.m. Yeah. Sorry. It's 11 a.m., remember to say. Should we be silent? We will. Oh, it's five minutes. We've got five minutes. Our question, the big question that we put to everyone who joins us on the couch, what brings you joy?

57:02My family. I'm sure that's a common answer. Yeah, I love my wife. I love my son. I love my friends. My best friend Belinda is very humbling. She likes to remind me that I'm just a big goofball idiot and that's a really good experience to have. Everyone needs a Belinda. So, yeah, I think just time with the people that you love. It's so important. Judy, great to have you on Startup360. Really appreciated your time and insights. And we wish Jasper all the best. And you, swimming, singing, planting, whatever you want to do next. Because it will be amazing. Thank you very much for having me. Am I allowed to include a How to Find Us?

57:53for the audience. Well, that's the one product placement you haven't done yet, so please. So if anyone listening today wanted to learn more about Euphemia, Triple Bubble or wants to join us on our mission to go big and grow home, they can find me on LinkedIn. I'm at FastTrackJudy and they can also find us on the internet, euphemia.com and triplebubble.com. And which pub in Collingwood? Ah, ooh, which everyone has a happy hour. That's strategy. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Judy, great. to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Great questions. Great to see you. What are you up to this weekend, young lady?

58:28I don't know. Whatever falls in my lap. Well, the Swans after an amazing game on Sunday, which I dubbed the 28 seasons in one day game. Despite the fact that I wasn't well, I rugged up with the raincoat. Still wasn't enough because these squalls just kept coming through. They had a very good win. The game finished in perfect sunlight. So it was absolutely wonderful at the end. Well, that's it for this week. This show, of course, is a Smart Co Media production produced and edited by the fantastic Matt Jackson. Thanks to Ella Walsh, to Pearl Bendel, to James Vass, and, of course, to Deal for their support.

59:07Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or you can watch us on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe to StartUpDaily.net. Absolutely free. I'll send you a couple of emails every week and one on the weekend with a little letter where I might have some thoughts. But in the meantime, you have a great weekend. We'll see you next Friday. Bye for now. Bye.