Rich List, Atlassian Crash, Seek Horrors, Operation Epic Fury, Biennial Disgrace, Councils Behaving Badly and Adir’s Great and Terrible Calls

25:17Like, she's not in the mainstream, but now I just mentioned her name. You know who she is. I get the Streisand effect. I think that's what's going on here. Like, who cares about this thing? I don't care about this thing. I'll never go to this thing. My point is, why is this thing getting millions of dollars of taxpayer money? Well, that's a good question. It should be going elsewhere. Well, actually, it's a bad question because we all know the answer, but it's a good point. I've got no issue with these ridiculous events happening. They can have all the anti-Semites in the world, get this DJ, Haram, whatever she's called, get all these anti-Semites.

25:44so they can have their own convention whatever they want. Why are we funding it? Why is every single Australian paying for these crittens to get their orgies of hate on our dime? That's the problem. Have the only event you want, zero taxpayer dollars. Council, state, your mate Chris Minns funding it. Of course he is. Well, he's not my mate. When he's not appointing... I'd be happy if he was my mate, by the way. Jew hating judges is he's giving money to the biennial. So I don't know how this guy is so-called hero of Jews when he does nothing of a sort. Chris Minns, I'd be happy. He looks nice. He's a handsome guy.

26:09That's about where it ends. If you were my mate. I'm happy for him to be. He's not my mate. I'll take him as a mate. But the thing you should get worked up about, I mean, not that you're short of things to get worked up, but the thing you should get worked up about is that when asked about this, he essentially reaffirmed ongoing funding to this event. That was my bigger issue with this. I can't disagree with anything you've said here, but I do think it worries me much more that the Greens have shamelessly adopted a platform of Western hate. That worries me much more. Fundamental North Star, though.

26:41But they were a mainstream party. And so their brand, they still have brand equity. Now, it's diminished, but they still have some. Strong in that niche. In the Juha niche, it's incredible. Biennial, Biennale, whatever it is, no one even knows what to call it. This has got no brand equity. It's got brand equity amongst nine people that turn up to it, right? So I wouldn't worry about any of this. like worry about the things that have impact. These kind of things. You know that actor, which is the actor that like said, he made these comments about opera and ballet and they were badly misguided. Oh, that was Timothee Chalamet.

27:17Timothee Chalamet, who had very bad photos of him taken at whatever that was at event with the bad items. No, you know, you don't know what I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. No, there were the Oscars, yes. No, well, that's another word for the Oscars. Actually, it's two words. No, they went to this after party. Oh, Vanity Fair. You didn't see those photos? Listen, no one cares less about these people than I do. But when they say the lighting was terrible at this party, I'm like, I'll have a look at what terrible lighting looks like. And they weren't wrong. It did make them all look terrible.

27:47Anyway, so Timothee Chalamet, he made these comments. I think what he was basically saying is, it's nice that people turn up to movies at the cinema without taxpayers having to fund the industry, unlike opera and ballet, which is accurate, right? There's a great Yes Minister episode on this very topic that people can look up for themselves. And he was misconstrued as saying ballet and opera are junk. Now, you might think they're junk. You might not. He definitely didn't say that. Yeah, and we tracked it straight away afterwards. Yeah, but I think people say it cost him an Academy Award, and I say I couldn't kill us either way, and I'm certainly not watching the Academy Awards.

28:24But my point is, people stood up at the ballet or the opera or whatever people stood up at when they put the kefias on last year and they made this whole fuss. That was a cine opera, I think, or cine theatre company, I think it was. And like 200 people were there or 500 or whatever, right? That stuff doesn't, like it sucks. And it's bad that taxpayers fund that. But that's not the main... Oh, we're looking funded by Jews. Well, not anymore. Not anymore. But that's the stuff that doesn't worry me. The stuff that worries me is when you have politicians that tell lies about things because they think it's going to get them votes Marine Farooqui.

28:59In Western Sydney or wherever else, right? That worries me. Yeah. The Biennale, Biennial. I couldn't care less about that. I don't care. Have the Biennial as much as you want. That's the taxpayer. She sounds like a terrible DJ, by the way. Yeah. She'd have got Dr. Lux to perform. I don't know who that is. Your name's Dr. Lux? Oh, that's a good name. I'd be less hate-filled than her. Oh, I'm not sure about that. It'll just be directed elsewhere. No, I would definitely vote for your hate over her hate. 100%. How's this for a great headline this week that my lawyer friend in the UK, Fanonapod, sent me through?

29:38Kirkland, Kirkland Ellis, the biggest law firm in the world. Kirkland smashes US$10 million profit per partner as partners now make enough to buy a Rolex a day. What do you make of that headline? That's a funny unit of measurement. When you're making that much money, that's the unit. Well, does that mean, hang on. $10 million per partner doesn't mean partners take home$10 million. The best one makes$30 million, as in the highest paid one makes$30 million, and someone probably makes$2 million. I'm saying$2 million like it's a small amount of money. What do I think about this? You don't really care what I think about this.

30:09You want to say what you think about it. So why don't you say what you think about it? You think about it. You know, I think it's ridiculous, and it's one of the problems with society, that the people that are making tons of money, the people that are not contributing to productive output in society. I've got no issue with lawyers being paid a decent salary. A living wage. A living wage. Well, it is expensive for lawyers to live. But I don't know. Even$10 million feels pretty excessive for a lawyer to make. It's outrageous. And this is in the US where they charge more. But in Australia, there's lawyers getting$5,$6,$7 million a year.

30:41A nurse earns$100 million. Which is way more than most CEOs get. Well, you should just say a nurse earns$100 ,000 a year. And so I don't mind if they earn$1 million a year, these lawyers. That's fine. $2 million, that's a lot of money. But we're on the same page on this. I care less about the individual lawyer and more about what it's saying about society because this is what leads to the economic polarisation of society and then eventually it's torches and pitchforks and we kind of deserve it if this is what we're doing. We haven't really talked much about Operation Epic Fury, of course the joint US-Israel strike on the murderous Iranian regime and in many respects it's actually going pretty well with the Ayatollah killed in the first few...

31:18Well it hasn't gone well for him. It didn't go well for him, he was killed in the first few minutes of war. Of course, joined by Ali Aljani, the architect of the murder of 30 ,000 brave protesters earlier this year, as well as other thugs, including the commander of the IRGC, the chief of the general staff of the Iranian armed forces, the commander of the murderous Bazij paramilitary forces, and the minister of intelligence, who doesn't appear that intelligent. Mojtaba Khamenei, the leader's son, has theoretically taken over, although many suspect he's dead or continuing on weekend at Bernie Stile, having made no video appearances since his alleged elevation.

31:50Do you know when you have your son take over, it's not called a theocracy. That's called something else. That's called a monarchy. Yeah. And that is the reason... The original Shah was deposed, right? So that is exactly... And by the way, that is the reason in the Arab Spring that the army allowed Mubarak in Egypt to fall because he was trying to pass it on to his son. And the army said, we're all in favour of military dictatorships, even brutal and oppressive ones. Like, they seem to go fine for us. but monarchy were not so supportive of that and so they didn't defend him and the Muslim Brotherhood came.

32:26Mohamed Morsi, remember him? He had his brief moment in the sun before going into the dark shade of a prison cell and then just a different guy took over from the army and so I think one of the things that is not spoken about very much because I think people don't really know what they're talking about when they talk about this conflict is that the IRGC will not be unhappy with the way this leadership assassination process has played out. It's been good news for them. Even though they portray this... What could use of the guys who were assassinated? Well, even though they portray Kamenai Jr. as more hardline.

32:59I'm not sure what more hardline means when you see a group of kids protesting and your answer is kill them all. Basically... People mourning Lajani as some sort of moderate. This guy murdered 30 people three weeks ago. He's about the opposite of a moderate. No leader that's being killed. you could say, oh, that was a good guy. Like, zero. But I would say this is not bad for the IRGC yet. Like, they've lost some assets, and they're quite vulnerable, but they retain the power to attack their neighbours. Their strategy is pretty clear. It is, let's try to make sure that the Gulf states suffer so much pain that they pressure the US to stop the war.

33:39It's a good strategy. Not great for your relationship with the Gulf states. I think it's Shias and Sunnis. Like the relationship... But Qatar was the bank of Iran, so... Yeah, but Qatar is agnostic, morally agnostic. They're getting bombed by Iran. I know, but that is always beneath the surface. I think they were surprised to get bombed. I'm sure they were surprised to get bombed. And so at the moment, I think things are not terrible yet for the IRGC. They look worse from the outside than I think they would feel on the inside, unless you were one of the commanders that had the bomb fall on your head.

34:10One of the big sort of criticisms of the war is obviously the Stratafamuse that was closed and led to oil prices going up. So I think that's – let's talk about this oil price going up myth because clearly oil prices have gone up in nominal terms. Well, that bit of it's not a myth. It went from like, what,$60 to$120. That's if you're looking – you've got to look at it in context. And there's two contexts. There's one is what's the historical level of oil, which has been at$150 before. And it was far higher than this sort of two years ago. So there's the – even in nominal terms, it's not that high.

34:39but you need to look at oil in inflation-adjusted terms. And you know I think inflation is always being cooked. So the real inflation is gold. Now, gold now is at record levels and probably itself somewhat inflated up, but I'll use gold for now as the measure because we're in a relative world. Oil, in terms of gold price, is the cheapest – well, not the last – two or three weeks ago was the cheapest it's ever been, and even now is still the cheapest it's ever been other than the last few months. So if you look at oil prices now, I call it 100, give or take 100, and gold is cork, you would take 5 ,000.

35:10So it's a 50 ratio. All right. It was down to 10 in 2010. That's easy. The ratio is easy. This is when oil was high and gold was low. So we're literally five times cheaper than it was in 2010. That's 15 years ago. So oil has been hugely deflated since then. I think a decade is not the timeframe where people think there's an oil spike problem. It's more like a two-week problem where it was X and now it's 2X. Why did that happen? Well, no oil can get out of this straight. Oh, that's pretty bad. And so I think that is what's – so I take your long-term point, and you could add to that. It's not over the long term.

35:45It's like going back three months ago, and it was cheaper. All right. It's much cheaper now. Is that right? Yes. Than three months ago? Certainly revisively gold. Well, I don't really keep track of the oil. I got sucked into the whole transition argument. Partly because gold's gone up so much. I lost track of oil. But even look at gold. Oil was well over 100 in the 2010s. So, look at everything else. Look at how much house prices have tripled since then. So, if you compare it to virtually any other asset, oil is so cheap now. It's just insane. We've got profiteers. Oil hasn't followed the inflation curve of everything else.

36:17It's gone the other way. Look how cheap air flight is. The spider cartel keeping the supply constrained. Well, there's a question how much they keep it constrained. But I will say this. What we've seen is the American shale gas revolution. So, all the supplies. The US is now the number one producer of oil in the world. That's an incredible thing to think of 20 years ago. So why then does this closing the strait, it's not closed, right? It's selectively open. It's closed for the non-Iranians. It's closed for the good guys. For the US and Israel. And I can't imagine Israel sending many ships through.

36:48No, it's not just that. It's anyone who is on the side of light versus darkness. India's getting through. I wouldn't say India's darkness. That's true. I wouldn't say China's necessarily darkness either. You can criticise some stuff, but they're not Iran. They're not a democracy. No, but they're not Iran. No, I agree with you. I would more say if you're on the liberal democratic side of the equation or a Gulf Arab state, your oil's not getting through, right? And so the thing about that is… Is Saudi considered a Gulf Arab state? Because they're obviously tunneling it out to the Red Sea. Yeah, no, but they're still on the Gulf.

37:26Yeah, so they're getting their oil out the other way. Through a pipeline. The pipeline to the Red Sea. where the Hooties are. Where the Hooties are waiting. But Hooties now have a great region. It's a great region. Sable. So, but most of my question that I'm asking you, if everything that you're saying is true, and like I don't doubt the things that you say, although sometimes it takes a bit of a roundabout way to get there, but so why is this curtailing of this much oil having such a dramatic effect if most of it's coming from the US and the US is quite persuasive on the Venezuelan equation now, so it takes a while for Venezuela to restart their oil production.

37:59to it. It is to restart that. But why is this having such a dramatic effect? Well, I argue it's not a dramatic effect. I think if it was having a dramatic effect it would be$250 an hour not$120 or$110 or$107. I was surprised when I filled up my car. Am I allowed to save a petrol car? This podcast you can say anything. No one cancels you for anything on this podcast. So I was surprised it wasn't more expensive when I filled up my car a couple of days ago. And as I look at this window there's a lot of trucks driving down this road and I wouldn't say there are fewer trucks driving down it than a month ago so it is true that it doesn't seem like there's been much of an effect.

38:33I would say that the Iranian regime does probably put a$15 to$20 per barrel premium on oil. It's lighter and sweeter. No, but no, what I mean is because there's an embargo of sorts on them and that oil is not in the open market. Oh, you mean they discount it? Yeah, because it just goes to China and Russia, right? And so, I don't know. Look, I don't really care about all this oil stuff. Like, the reason I say that is there's a regime that has been in power since 1979, has done bad things for... And it self-stole power, let's not forget. That's right. How do international rule, international rules ways order, and you're breaking international law.

39:13This is an illegitimate regime that has been illegitimate since day one. That has killed Westerners for the better part of 50 years all over the world. Took hundreds of people in the US embassy hostage. This is a legal government that should never have been allowed to stay in power. who was listed by the French, we should add, who gleefully flew the original Khomeini back to Iraq. Well, they didn't want to go to Paris, did they? And so I think that the truth is this. We can't let these people get nuclear weapons because they'll shoot them and that will be very bad. That will be World War III and so they have to be stopped.

39:45And so I don't know how close they were to getting nuclear weapons. They definitely were doing things that you wouldn't be doing if you didn't want nuclear weapons. Like, I don't go any rich uranium in my house because I'm not looking for a nuclear weapon. And so there was no reason for them to do all of the stuff that they were doing and it's pretty clear that, at least aspirationally, they were hoping for nukes. And so something had to be done. Why did they do it now? I don't know. We can all have conspiracy theories or maybe it was just good timing because sometimes you've got to do things when they're available to be done, right?

40:14Golden windows. But the bottom line is whatever the price is of oil right now, it doesn't really matter compared to if Iran, best case regime change to democracy, not impossible, feels tough. But even if Iran is severely weakened so that this is going to be a problem in 30 years, not in five years, I mean, that is worth an oil hike. I think people have got the wrong attitude towards this. I think the reason why oil has only gone up really, let's say its long-term average is more like 80 or 90, it's only up to 20 % above its average, is because I think people think this war is going to end soon-ish and no one wants to be holding its expensive future contracts.

40:50So I think people are pricing in and oil drops. Because as soon as this war was done, arguably oil drops further than it was. Most people want oil between sort of 50 and 80. So that's 60 and 80. And oil was at real risk of dropping below 60, into 50 or even lower. So oil was at the risk of getting too low. So we could have actually that reverse problem, which is why I think it hasn't gone up that much. Well, I think this war's going to escalate. I don't mean because of Trump's comments about bombing stuff. Basically, I thought the biggest risk of an escalation was a lot of Israelis getting killed by an Iranian missile because then the Israelis are going to go bananas, right?

41:24And they didn't kill a lot of Israelis, but they wounded 110 Israelis. It's pretty – like you see the footage. It's hard to explain how much – how Israelis feel about that, right? And so I think – I'm shocked Grace Thayme didn't come out and criticise someone attacking civilians. She was probably disappointed that it was not as effective as it could have been, the missile attack. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I think it might escalate. But ultimately, you know, you don't have to use a nuclear weapon to have the power of a nuclear weapon. Like this Straits of Hormuz thing and firing at Gulf states, I think this tells you everything that you need to know about who this regime is.

42:00I heard 3 ,000 innocent people killed in January told you everything you need to know about the regime. Right, but then people in the UK, for example, or in, I'm going to say, Norway, they might say, but that's an internal Iranian issue. That's not going to affect us. Selfish, right? Yeah. But when you see what Iran is doing now, I don't understand how you could be a Western liberal democracy and not say we've got to put an end to this because we can't be held hostage like this by these lunatics. So that's my view on that. Before we move to the next thing, I just want to give you one quote. You tell me what you think about this quote.

42:34Do I want to give away who this is? I'm not going to give away who this is. First you have to try and guess who said this, okay? It's essentially just a mining project, right? Did you read this quote? I haven't finished, but I thought you might jump in early. Remember you told me - Can I buzz in? Yeah, buzz in. Oliver Curtis. Great. Who is Oliver Curtis? Great quote. I mean, I didn't say it's Jeopardy, but that's fine. We can deal with that. It's essentially just a mining project, right? I'm digging something up. There's electricity. There's the processing plant, which is the data center itself.

43:02And I've got the widget output, which is the commodity, now articulated as an AI token. And I'll tell you how I felt after I read that quote. I thought, not only does this guy know nothing about what's involved in mining, but he seems to know nothing about what's involved in data centers. A data center is not a mining operation in any way. He was mining Bitcoin. He never actually mined it, but he intended to mine it. Well, that's like every miner just about, isn't it? But I do get that he might be a bit confused because it was called a Bitcoin miner. but a data centre business like this has nothing in common whatsoever with a mining operation like that.

43:45This is obviously from Joe Astin's fabulous interview with Oliver Curtis. I haven't listened to that interview yet. I listened to it yesterday. Did he shred him or was he nice to him? He's very nice to him. I thought Oliver came across quite well talking about the insider trading stuff. I thought that that was... Well, let's not forget, we've been big defenders of him on this show. I remain a big defender of that. Same, but let's just point out a few things. One, he pled not guilty. Yeah. And tried to pin it on the other dude. Yeah. It was mostly him. Yeah. That was the argument. And so this whole - Hartman actually got less, who now runs Andrew Forrest's private family office.

44:16Well, because he pleaded guilty. Yeah. That's how the system works. No, usually he plead guilty at a discount. Yeah. Whereas in this case, it was reverse. Was it? Curtis got less than Hartman. Oh, that seems unfair. I'm sure Hartman thinks that. But he might have been one was more responsible than the other. Yeah, potentially. But when there's contrition now, let's not forget, it's contrition after a not guilty plea, trying to pin it on the other guy. He didn't talk negatively of that, of John. But now there's this whole shift in narrative, which is like, you know, there was this thing that happened and I made this mistake.

44:46Now, that's fine and you did your time. But I don't feel like that's really owning it. Really owning it would be I was greedy. I did this bad thing. Then I said it wasn't me. It's the shaggy difference. and then the court said, it was. And then I went to jail and that kind of sucked. And when he speaks about going to jail, he makes it sound like he said a quote along the lines of, it's very hard kissing your kids goodbye and not knowing when you're going to see them again. You're not going to war. He's not going up the beaches like Normandy, right? He knows exactly when he's going to see them again, either at the end of his sentence or when they come and visit him, like one of those.

45:31And so I just think the whole framing of this is rubbish and it's not honest. And I actually think he's totally suitable to run this business. I've got no issue with that bit of it at all. But I just feel like this is not true contrition in any real sense of the word. I'm less critical on that stuff. He was young. He was 21 at the time, whatever. What I'm critical of is he seems to have another clue what the hell this business is doing. And this is a business that he's throwing billions of dollars at this guy. Well, that's an advantage. Because if he knew what it did, you wouldn't be trying to float this thing.

46:00It's just insane. And see Nick Curtis, who's a super smart operator. That's the dad. It's a hundred million bucks. Secondary last week. We know where smart money's going. It's out the door. This thing's an absolute rort and there's no way this is ever going to generate a dollar a profit. Oh, but your story's changing now. How is it changing? I sent you a message and I said, I feel like you're warming up the environment for a backflip. Me? Yes, flip-flop. You said this is not going to IPO. I said it's going to IPO. Is it going to IPO? I still don't think it might be a IPO. Oh, come on. come on I'm not backfliping just yet it's going to IPO on that note we'll go to Super Craig we've got a very special guest coming in really soon

46:47and we're back with a very special guest our third time on the pod I think so you and Joe are just head to head to Australia's most powerful journal so John Stansholt editor of The List and I would have said we can break this story but unfortunately we got scooped by Fairfax papers a couple of weeks ago, your now arch nemesis. You've got a book coming out, which I'm especially excited about. Before we get to Rich List, tell us a bit about the book. Yeah, sure. We've got Perry Williams and I, my colleague at The Australian. We've got a biography of Mike Cannon-Brooks and Scott Farquhar. Atlassian, it's a company.

47:18I've never heard of these guys. What do these guys do? Yeah, yeah. I think Ideas French with them. Yeah, so Atlassian, yeah. So it is a bit of a funny explanation of what they do, but they're a software company. Come on, collaboration software. that are getting eaten alive by AI at the moment. So you've written a lot about Atlassian. You and Perry have written last year, obviously, we were first, but you guys come about three, four years later after we broke the story. Right, right. Okay. Do you want to read that? What's happening at Atlassian? You've had some incredible scoops. Obviously, people are singing like canaries in there, a bit like the Iranian government that's going to you.

47:51So you must have some incredible sources. What's the feeling like in Atlassian now? If the share price is down 80%, everybody seems to dislike this company. SaaS killing it. What's the latest there? I think it's a really interesting case study of what happens when a small startup that's a cool place to work, a bit like here maybe, what challenges do you have in keeping that culture up when you become a really, really large company? So yeah, it's a tale of two decades almost. So if you can think back to Atlassian when it started, Mike and Scott, it was the cool company. pre-IPO post-IPO pre-IPO post-IPO absolutely which does almost coincide with that time frame so it was won a string of all those great places to work awards you know they were notorious for having amazing you know all the beer taps in the office this and the other well actually went to the office back then as well that's true that's another thing too right so and then now it's sort of switched to yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of unhappy people there it's just not a it doesn't feel like and they're going to deny all this right that's their stock thing is to deny everything yeah and it just doesn't feel like a happy place anymore Unhappy because the employees are now dropped 50 % of their wage or unhappy for other reasons on top of this massive wealth destruction?

49:00Look, I mean, there's a couple of things here. That stock-based compensation, which is so popular in the tech world, that's clearly an issue because the share price has fallen so much. I mean, it's still – it's halved since January 1. It's sort of got to a level where maybe you're comfortable with the valuation now. What, 19, 20 billion US market cap? Yeah. And that's halved – I think if there was a different CEO, I'd be very happy with this valuation. Obviously, Mark has got to have super-pervoting shares, so unless he wants to go, he's not going. Well, that's right, and there's all sorts of permutations to that relationship, right?

49:29So, yeah, it's gone from – yes, the stock-based compensation is clearly an issue. And I think the change in culture when there was an influx of what they called Metasoft, people from Meta and Microsoft. Former CTO who just got fired. Yes, correct. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I guess there's a change in that culture from a cool Aussie place to work to that maybe a little bit more corporatised America. They talk about the way that they measure people's… Stank ranking. Yes, stank ranking, correct. Probably your best scoop, I think, has probably been the over-the-fence dispute with Mike and Scott.

50:04I think everybody thought, Adia was actually right on this early days, but I think most people, myself included, thought these are two best friends and they built this great business together, together forever, great friends, and it turns out they seem to hate each other. Well, I was only on it because someone told me about that situation. like unless you that's how you would find out yeah but I wasn't a guest like someone said to me this is what's going on and that was some great reporting by you but John obviously you're all over this do they hate each other like what's the current status of the tech bros well I think as we've written and you know what might be coming up in the book and stuff yeah I don't think they're great mates anymore were they ever great mates oh look I think there was I think there was a time where they were clearly pretty close right now whether were they were they best friends at university I don't think so from what we've been told.

50:48Nicky's clearly been very, very close to Mike and continues to be close to Mike. And you can see, you know, through all the photos from that time, there's always, Nicky's always there next to Mike. Well, Nicky and Mike were business partners and a couple of them. Correct, they were, yeah. And that's right, yeah. Obviously Mike back to Blackbird early in the early days and Startmate in the early days. So they've been very close mates. So if you look back at all the photos from that time, and there's a lot of photos from them from the internet in that time, by the way, Nicky's always in the photos.

51:12Scott's not in the photos very often at all. I mean, take of that what you want, but they clearly had an amazing business relationship there, an amazing business relationship. They were best men at each other's wedding. So there, of course, there was a relationship there. There was a time, for sure. Now, I think any relationship goes through its ups and downs and that clearly has gone through its ups and downs. I'm not going to give away anything yet because I want you to buy a copy of the book when it comes out. I'm assuming a pre-signed copy. We'll buy 100 copies and we'll give them out to readers.

51:40You need to keep that in. He said 100 copies. When you say buy, you mean we'll take 100 copies. Well, I mean you'll buy 100 copies. The bigger issue with Atlassian, something you said very early on, which before anybody was talking about this particular thing, is the nature of the way they gave the stock-based compensation and the fact that you could sell it so quickly relative to any other business. Yeah. And I think the thing is, that has caused them, I think, the problems. Well, be it you have tax issues if you sell it for a year. So you would really think that it'd be rare that you'd sell it straight away.

52:13But when you say you can, that is no longer a long-term incentive. I don't even mean that from a compensation definition of long-term incentive. I'm talking about it emotionally. The catapult share price has gone up and down. When it goes down, people are less happy than when it goes up. But when people believe in the business long-term, they can wear the downs, right? What they think when it's down is, these idiot investors, don't they understand how good the company is? And I think the problem that is going on in Atlassian today is there's a few problems, most of which you've highlighted over the years, some of which probably have been cut out before the podcast went to air.

52:52But one, they sold this dream to staff and it hasn't materialised and they viewed that as a part of their compensation. Two, the founders have been selling down whilst the staff have been getting stock. That's$4.5 billion each, right? That's right, yeah, yeah. And so that's... US, by the way. Oh, US. Oh, so$6 billion Aussie. No, sorry, so$3.5 billion US. so it's a four and a half five that's the total they've sold down each yeah each no each yeah in total they've each sold that in total yep and so like that I've been much more sympathetic than you about that about selling down but I do agree with you it's on a good look when you're selling stock and you're kind of forcing your my issue was the company was funded by the employees like they've lost 3.6 billion since listing and that capital is coming from the employees instead of paying instead of paying them in cash they pay them in shares And so you can play that game provided you put your employees up on a pedestal.

53:48That game can continue. And I really think what's happened here is that the bubble has burst because they've torn the employees down very publicly from that pedestal and have effectively said in the way that the message was delivered as well, you're just cattle. And like we don't... This is the recent 1600 fire. Yeah, 1600 fire. And we don't... Like you're better to us as beef than milk. Yeah. I remember too that it's only a couple of years ago, right, that they were talking about targets of having 25 ,000 employees rise. And I know things have changed. I know the rise of AI has come along. But these are the sort of series of missteps, I suppose, that's happened.

54:24Well, as stewards of capital, it's hard to say, especially Mike, but both of them have been disastrous. They've burned$3.5 billion in capital. Forget the share price. We can be distracted by share prices. They continue to lose money when they should be making money over the last. They should be making money hand over the fist. in the last 10 years. Because on a gap accounting basis, they've been making substantial losses and it just looks like they haven't on a cash basis because they've convinced employees to take... And this is what's his point about Canva as well when they talk about cash basis.

54:51Anything you don't like, I feel like we've got to define the word fraud for you. So it doesn't mean something I think is bad. It means that's illegal. No, it means you're being deceptive. Yeah, I call it deceptive. That's a good word for you, deceptive. And the question is, though, was it deceptive? So I said it was a fraud, not their fraud. There's a difference there. Well, I think that is – it might be too thin to split hairs. But what does it mean – which bit of it do you think was deceptive? In terms of they point – they spent 15 years pointing to we're profitable, we're making cash profits, look at our cash flow, and ignoring the fact they spend a billion-plus dollars a year on employee share-based payments, which are excluded from this, obviously.

55:30So that's where the deception comes in. And what's the main thing? I mean, obviously, people will buy this book. This has got a lot of interest value, this book. It's a big company. This could knock off Joe's book, I reckon. Qantas is hard to beat. I think Qantas is much more well-known than Atlassian. We've got a bit of editing and lawyers should get past first. Yeah, you could sell it in the US, this book, I think. It'll come from Joe's old 70 ,000, I think, which is an incredible result for a business. So many books. I think Joe's old 70 ,000, Chairman's Lounge. That's a lot of books. Chairman's Lounge, it's called.

56:03I think you could sell 50 ,000. I don't think it's out of the question. Let's hope so, but that's a lot. That's a lot of books. And so what can you say that's something that you've learnt or a view that you've now formed about Atlassian as a consequence of writing this book? Has something changed in how you look at that business? Look, firstly, I hope that you get me back on the podcast to talk about the book when it comes out. We want to save our good material here. No, look, I think it's a tale of two different decades. as I said the first decade was so positive and it was just this great growth story of you know they were profitable very very early I mean they were pioneers in so many ways cloud or whatever you want to call it profitable from pretty much from day one I mean those were really heady days they were in the cloud until recently but they were obviously sass so they were profitable very early and they were crazy they were profitable very early and you go back and look at the financials from that time you know they were paying themselves dividends very quickly yeah absolutely very very quickly And these guys were in their mid-20s.

57:05It was very, very impressive. The biggest remarkable change, and we can talk about your rich list, the biggest remarkable change is they were a business that was pioneering in the sense that they didn't take any primary VC money. They basically funded it themselves. They were secondary from Excel in 2015. Yeah, like the VC money from Excel was them pocketing cash. and to pivot from that a business so disciplined on profitability to whatever to this pin up for burning other people's money to grow your business employees money even worse than other people's money I just that is a shocking change and And equally, so that's shocking to me, and equally shocking to me is the fact that of all the companies that I can think of today, that is genuinely imperiled by the rise of AI.

57:54They are probably at the front of the queue. Multiple ways. And if you said that to me five years ago, if you said their whole world of business would be completely imperiled, I just couldn't have seen a way for that to occur five years ago. I'll just make one point on that, which I think probably Adam in particular will enjoy. So on the one hand, you have the rise of Anthropic, you know, having a huge effect on Atlassian share price. And on the other hand, you've got Mike's private company, one of his private companies in SunCable, which is the company that wants to build this massive data centre in the Northern Territory with huge solar panels next to it to power it.

58:29And it's a whole data centre AI story there. Who is he trying to get in there as a big customer, as Anthropic? So, you know, it's kind of like there's a bit of irony at play there. And we're kind of asking. when you said you couldn't have foreseen it I've been on the record saying Jira is one of the most hated products in the world like people don't like Microsoft products but you kind of they're clean they work whatever it's hard to find a product manager who likes using Jira like people hate it so there's lots of things people hate especially lots of things you hate right I'm not a fan out there too right I mean people would you know have like huge meetings about it there'd be fan groups of it there's this website called ihatejira.com like it's There's also websites called I need to use something to power my day-to-day work.

59:12I mean, there's probably not a website called that. It's a long URL. And so you don't have to love something to need it. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying, but as soon as people have an alternative, as soon as people have an alternative, they're going to tell you that. If you love something, you're not going to go off it. I agree with everything that you just said. The last step is I would not have foreseen that people would have such. So the whole customer base would so dramatically all have such an easy alternative. so quickly. I thought it was totally unforeseeable. So let's get back to the list.

59:43So obviously you released the list, I think you call it, biggest selling edition of the year for the Australian? Richest 250. Richest 250? Is this the biggest selling edition? Look, it's the biggest year. On an annual basis, biggest year in terms of subs, huge readership numbers as well. Yeah, I'm not really sure yet about the physical copies. It's only come out a few days ago. But yeah, I remember the first one in particular. How many years since you've moved across? It's the eighth one. If you remember, the first one was the one with Anthony Pratt, you know, lying on the bed with his socks and stuff.

1:00:11I got told, and I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, it was the biggest, I don't know, it was eight years ago now, pre-COVID, it was the biggest selling paper edition that they'd had since the one when Gough Whitlam died. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it did shift. Now, how it goes now these days, you know, I think obviously the internet, digital, is much more of an important distribution channel, but yeah, it still shifts copies. Can I read you a quote from this edition? you have to tell me who you're talking who I'm talking about and then I want to ask you a question this is 250 names on this list no no you'll know this quote every day he rises at 4am at his house in Florida's Palm Beach across the lagoon from President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort I might have been talking about this guy a few hours ago but just stay focused on this last bit and he's out the door in less than 60 seconds he wears the same clothes casual dress shirt shorts it is Florida ironically not photographed in shorts in the paper, in the edition, and Deodora's sneakers he carefully laid out the night before.

1:01:11So who's that?

1:01:15Well, it's a guy called Rob Hilmer. I think it describes entrepreneurs like Adam Schwab as well, surely. He doesn't put on shoes. That's a difference with him. That's true. There's a little bit different. Less than 60 seconds. This is my question, though, that I want to ask about this. I am sure he's lying because there's one telltale giveaway. I'm not sure he is. I haven't met him, but the 60 seconds, it can't be true. Because to me, there's one telltale sign of why it can't be true. And you know the story of like, it was like maybe Van Halen or someone who said you've got to give me a bowl of M &Ms but no brown M &Ms because they wanted to make sure like if that went wrong, how could I trust all the rigging that these people are doing, right?

1:01:54And so I worry like one little crack in a wall and you wonder if the whole thing is cracked. So why can that not be true? It can't be true. I get out of the house in 60 seconds. I should have done it. What you're saying is I should have flown to Palm Beach. In hindsight, this was a mistake. I should have flown to Palm Beach and been at the door at 4am. And watch what he was doing. There's one thing you would do. He would have made me get in the hot tub and the sauna that he does. Is it an ice bath? The ice bath, sorry. But there's something that you do in the morning that takes longer than 60 seconds.

1:02:25Every morning you do it. It takes longer than 60 seconds. A few things. What is it? Name a thing. Rush tape. Exactly. Is this guy walking out of the house every morning without brushing his teeth? It can't be. And so that cannot be true or else he's got the worst breath and his teeth are all going to fall out. It can't be true. No, I kept reading. If he gets to the office of 405, no one's there to know. I know. He probably brushes his teeth at seven or something. I kept looking and reading what he did when he got to the office. It was very precise, a lot of detail, no tooth brushing. It can't be true.

1:02:55Look, is there something you want to leave out? So I think what you've encapsulated there is the colour and the movement and the interesting stories that keep people reading it to you. I look at that. Do you think a criticism I had for this? This is obviously Fred Hilmer's nephew. Fred Hilmer, one of the worst CEOs in Australian media history, this guy. I'm shocked that you say... Oh, there we go. Okay. Yes, he was. When you miss REA, Domain and Car Sales, that's raw. I thought to myself... I wouldn't say Fred... It wasn't one of the... I was at Fairfax in those days. It wasn't one of the most loved CEOs.

1:03:24And now, James Packard had that... Do you remember James Packer's infamous line to him when Hilmar was trying to give him advice and Packer goes to him, you f***ed up Fairfax, f*** off. I think the problem with Hilmar, other than his uncle, is he's got about$2 billion under management, I think he said, and it looks like he's invested in core, where he's opened up. I reckon investors aren't going to go on that well next year. This is where we get to the Adams questioning all the valuations. This one seemed a little weird. So this guy's got a couple of billion under management. Regal's got$20 billion under management.

1:03:57Regal's worth$900 million. And I think you had$1.3 billion on this guy. Phil King, no, it wasn't that much, by the way. Phil does his best to stay off the list. Phil's off the list. But Phil runs a much bigger business than this guy. Obviously, Phil doesn't take a nice bath like this guy does. But how was he – obviously, he had that 4 % investment from some random guy we never heard of. But was it purely based on that 4 % investment? Look, I mean, like Carolyn Leavitt, I'm the Carolyn Leavitt of the rich. I could justify anything that's on here, mate. I demand Adir be on the list at 10 billion next year.

1:04:29He's more legit than this guy. A hundred billion. Yeah. The thing about - Adir hates the list too. He secretly hates it. I like the author of the list. But there is, I think the bigger issue, tell me what you think about this, because you talk to all of these people. This guy I thought was a very interesting story. He kind of came out of nowhere. Adam would say he came out of nowhere because he shouldn't be on the list. But let's just say he came out of nowhere. Well, clearly I don't think you're reading my stories enough because I've written about him for several years. He came out of nowhere on the list, right?

1:04:57Because he wasn't on the list at all last year. And this year's almost a billion dollars. Yeah, sure. That's all paper wealth ideas. I know. Paper wealth is terrible, by the way. It tends to go up and down a lot. In my experience. Very volatile market. It is. And so this is my question that has nothing to do with wealth on the list. This guy's almost 40 years old. His entire life appears to be completely dedicated to collecting gold coins. That's how I call it. Because like in the Mario game, you jump and you collect the gold coins. That's what this guy's dedicating his whole life to. There was no talk in your story about family.

1:05:35There was no talk in your story about anything that didn't involve... And I don't see where he would have time for anything that didn't involve the accumulation of gold coins. Well, he doesn't work very hard on Christmas Day, he admitted. He works half an hour on Christmas Day. I thought he said four hours Christmas Day. Yeah, just the morning sort of thing. Yeah, and so... An AB guy. Like, I don't even know the question I'm trying to ask because I don't want to be judgmental. I think we're getting to the stage of the podcast which you do every year where you talk about this is the happy list.

1:06:01But you understand. And so what do you make of people, like tell me what you see that is different to people like this than when you just talk to other kinds of, you know, regular kinds of people. Normal people. Oh no, well clearly there's some sort of, what do you want to call it, like some pathological lunacy in here or something like that. Of course there is. Like why is he doing this? Why is he doing it? I mean, he's doing it for the accumulation of, look, probably wealth, power, influence, you know, the challenge of doing so. I mean, look, there are all those things. Yeah, I mean, you're right.

1:06:33The rich are different. No doubt about that. The people that make money in finance, some of them are different. Not all of them, right? Like Mark and Rafi are billionaires. What are Mark and Rafi on the list? A bill. Yeah, a bit over a bill. A bill, a cheech. Yeah, yeah. And that's all public stuff now. Yeah, that's legit. Yeah. That was predictable, but when you talk to them, they're not like this. But you know them as friends as well, right? So I'd argue that they would have some of these tendencies too. They're clearly extremely hardworking, and they're probably quite ruthless as well in their certain ways.

1:07:04They don't work that hard. And Rafi has got lots of interests outside work, and like Mark also does, but Rafi's more visible. Maybe they're more clever about the way that they work, right? Work smarter, not harder. but I don't think that I don't think they're just doing 10 hours a week you know either right no one's doing you're not doing 10 hours a week no one's doing 10 minutes who's your favourite billionaire oh favourite billionaire that's a that's a and you said the person who gives you the most time on the private jet sure do you spend more time on private jets than Mike Cannon Brooks these days that is not actually possible although you I will note and you know you have the link that I did actually did make a private jet trip for this edition but that's just for the service of the reader Adam Thank you very much.

1:07:46Would you say you go on 100 hours of private jet? No, not even close. Not even close. I think that's a… Have I understated it? I've been writing a book as well. I've got a bit of time to go on the private jet. Are you not able to answer who your favourite billionaire is or you can't answer because I've asked you 15 questions on the back of it. I mean, you're not meant to be friends with these people, I think, for a start, right? I mean, there's people that I… Who do you like the most? Who do I like the most? I mean, there's some really interesting characters on there. Gina. I mean, I'm not, Junior's not a big fan of the original.

1:08:15Obviously Lachlan would be your favourite if he was on that. Of course, actually, no, he's on the, oh, he's on the, okay. Yes, I should say that. What's his, what's his dollar value? What's his dollar value? He's, I think it's about 3.5 billion or something. 3.5. Yeah, yeah, What would Rupert be if he was on? He'd be like, he'd be in the top, he'd be in the top 10. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Which is a big achievement considering his fortune doesn't come from rocks. No, No, look, that's a very – I find a lot of them interesting. Kerry Stokes is about$10 billion. He's in the top 10. Yeah, there's a few people that I – is that a question of, like, who would I like to have lunch with?

1:08:49Yes, who would you like to hang out with? I think there's some characters in there that are quite funny. Like, I really like – Max Beck's a funny guy. Jerry Ryan I really like. What's Jerry in at now? So Jerry's – oh, look, I mean, it's probably undervalued, about sort of$800 million from Jayco. But, I mean, like, he's a guy. Yeah, it does, yeah. Yeah, but he's a guy that floats under the radar a bit. I know Jeremy Andrews is a great guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Jerry floats a bit under the radar. I mean, I once did a feature with him and I said, oh, look, Jerry, you know, a lot of people call you a benevolent dictator.

1:09:19And he sort of paused for a moment and went, yeah, it's not bad actually. But a lot of people focus on that benevolent part. I think as far as I know, look, they all have their ruthless streaks. As far as I know, he's a guy that is quite likeable. A lot of his friends really like him. He's done a lot of good for Australian sport. you know, for the people that works for him and things like that. So, you know, he's pretty generous with his money. So, you know, that's probably a good example. Do you think there's a difference in the vibe you get from people who have made their money building a business versus, and maybe I'll say digging rocks might be part of building a business, versus people that have made their money in finance, i.e.

1:09:57moving money around to make, because when you think about finance in its purest sense, it is I've got some coins, I'm going to buy this thing, and when I sell it, I want to have more coins. Like that's effectively finance. What about someone like Mike Dorrell who's done both? He's built this great business but the business is investing but he's also built the business. All right, but there is a difference or not really? That's an artificial… No, I think there's still people that are quite interested in what's on the list across all those. Are there many finance people on the list? I wouldn't thought that.

1:10:26I thought it was relatively small. The phone managers. There's not that many. You've got a country. I mean, you've got your L1 guys, for example. Yeah, Kern Wilson. 12%. of the world and so on every single person you employ 2 % of their salary is going into super and people are taking 2 % management fees and 20 % carries on that if they're lucky if they're not getting in-state money if they're running LICs they are and so like there is I might have to sell this to you the amount of money that's being pulled out of Australians savings every year by funds managers is mind blowing and so that's a great thing to be is Alice Wayslist on the list?

1:11:02he's still on the list yeah I think there's a difference The clear difference, I think, is the people who have made the money themselves, the self-starters, the entrepreneurs, and the people that have inherited. What percentage is inherited versus self-made? I think it's probably like, let's call it, say, roughly 60, 40. 60, self-made? Self-starters, yeah, maybe slightly more, actually, 70, 30, I reckon, yeah. Oh, really? But that's clearly, but the average age is 65, and there's a lot of people in that 70s and 80s now. So that's going to change, right? Yeah, exactly. So in the next 20 years, there's going to be that huge wealth transfer of people across families.

1:11:32Totally. And I think there's a – yeah, I can definitely tell you that the self-made ones are much – mostly are much easier to talk to or to deal with than the people who've inherited. Well, you know, the thing is inherited wealth is a big problem, but it's not a problem in the rich 250. It's a problem in the$50 to$100 million net worth bracket. Like if you want to know where the aristocracy is, that's where they are. They're not here. I mean, this is crazy amounts of money. I mean, there's one exception to that, I think, or one I can think of very quickly is with Anthony Pratt, right? So, I mean, he obviously inherits the company, but he was building the wing of that in the US.

1:12:10So I think he's a self-starter in that way. Now, obviously, he had a safety net, but he's taken the business from here to there. I think he surprised everybody on how well he's done. Absolutely, very surprised. It's a pretty incredible business, what he's built. Yeah, sure. And the other one that people, I think, mistakenly say is inherited wealth is Gina. Like, she gets labelled by a lot of people as well. she just inherited her dad's wealth. It's not, it's incomparable to what she's built. It's a tough one. She's very sensitive about that too. If you ever call her an heiress, you know, you hear messages from people.

1:12:40She inherited a group of assets. What's Angela Bennett? What's Angela Bennett? Yeah, yeah. Because they were half, 50-50. That's right. That's the inherent component. Well, what's the difference? What are they on? They're 10 billion, right? No, no, no. It's more like sort of four and a half, five. Okay. So she's gone from four and a half to 40. So that's what, she would have had four and a half and she has 40. Okay. She's 10X. That's a good return. I'm not saying it's not a good return, but can we put it in a lot of things to give you a 10X return? Well, I think like everything to do with her, it's complicated.

1:13:09I think she's a good operator. I think she's a much better operator than some people give her credit for, but you can't also say she... I think she'll be able to like... Yeah, you're right. I mean, yes, you have to say that there was a group of assets. Now, maybe the assets weren't going very well or weren't being managed very well. Like Lang had completely lost the plot. Exactly right. But she has taken it from X to Y. She's the Tim Cook of the straight. To pull together that$10 billion funding package, the US$10 billion that she had to do for Roy Hill, was quite an achievement. Then to pay it off early was an incredible achievement too.

1:13:38The thing is this. Where does it start and end inheriting money? So you've built a business, and then someone else has built a business. But maybe someone else came from, like Rizlam will say, I came from housing commission flats. I had no money. I was on a golf course. And so can he look at you and say, yeah, look at what you inherited. Of course you can build a business. like look where I started so I think it's all degrees everybody's had a degree of luck but there's we've both had heaps of luck along the way no one's doubting that compared to the single mother in America obviously who built a business while looking after three kids but then inheriting four billion I know that's another level so like it's always a different level tell me about Lawrence Escalante he's on the list right what's he this year he's on the list yeah so well he's down but that was down off the valuation of VJW which went through that transaction he wanted a lower valuation correct yeah because he was buying out yeah the minority shareholders so yes he's you know he's ran that sort of three three and a half billion dollar mark uh we don't know what's going to happen with warrants do you know do you have a view on so obviously has he been charged yes yes and so obviously it's multiple things but it's wa so they've got some nasty laws about those confiscation laws are absolutely confiscation laws they're taking all your money you get caught doing a line of cocaine they take 10 billion dollars from you what what kind of communist dictatorship of living.

1:14:56Well, I don't really worry about these things because one is I don't do lines of cocaine and two is there's no $10 billion to take from me. So I'm happy to roll with it. But it does seem extraordinary. You're moving to Perth. Yeah. It seems all right. I want to be the beneficiary of taking$10 billion from... So he could be, I mean, notionally, he could be off the list if he gets the wrong judgment from the confiscation law. Surely he doesn't get it confiscated. Surely we don't live in that kind of world. I mean, it could... Yeah, you're right. It's an extreme, isn't it? It would be the most profile, most high profile sort of extreme.

1:15:25It would represent a level of sovereign risk that would be unprecedented in Australia. I don't think that Catalano was never on any of this, was he? No. He's obviously had a tough week. What do you make of his predicament? I think, well, there was numbers that were bandied around that at some stage he was worth sort of 100 to 200 million. Yeah, I think it's... Sounds like it's a lot less now. Regardless of the horrendous accusations. Yeah, there's things that have come out. There's a lot of debt. He's got debt to private credit and they're at 15%. It feels like he could be down to close to zero based on this.

1:15:54There's a lot of issues there in terms of paying things back. Yeah. And there's a credibility question mark with him as well, of course. The Alessian guys are the biggest losers this year. They dropped about, what,$15 billion each? Yeah, about$17 billion each. Which is pretty incredible. Yeah, that's right. Who else dropped massively? Richard White. Of course, my mate. So with WiseTech, you know that halved as well. And the other sort of shareholders. So the overall wealth is down for the first time in a long time. $25 billion. And it's pretty much to do with those three. Pro Medicus? Pro Medicus has been down to a lot.

1:16:24yeah you're right still billionaires or not billionaires yeah absolutely yeah yeah but they went from seven to four that was seven each yeah yeah yeah yeah pretty incredible that's what happens at a hundred times earnings 300 I think it was yeah I want to talk about while I've got you I did another lesson you talk about it because good mates with so many billionaires including these ones but you may have seen a couple weeks ago embattled Sikh CEO Ian Narev came out swinging early this year he's not billionaires is it Sikh is not billionaires no I'm getting to that they're not billionaires but just you have generally billionaire mates so do I yeah I don't think I know Mark, Andrew.

1:16:54That's true. They're only billionaires this year, aren't they? You might know more billionaires than I do, do you? That's like a carried away. That feels very unlikely. Ian Narev, former CBA CEO, of course, came out swinging, claiming that the benefits from the investment over the years in AI capability are abundantly clear. They're not hopes. They're right through our results. Narev told the AFR that it seeks ability to match candidates and hires is built on 750 million data points on its platform and they cannot be scraped or replicated by a GPT or clawed. Sadly for Ian, Seek investors don't seem to have as much faith as he does with the company's share price being smashed down a staggering 50 % in six months.

1:17:30Seek's share price is back down at levels last thing in 2014. Bearing in mind the ASX has more than doubled since then. If you invested in Seek in 2007, what compound return, what do you guys reckon your compound annual return was? This is 20 years ago, 2007. What's the current share price? I'll give it away if I told you that. Zero. Zero? You were in zero in 20 years. Yeah. Five or six times? 2%. Oh, I'm close. Yeah, close. Because you anchored it low because you knew I was so critical. Well, I thought you were going to say negative or something, to be honest. It was actually one of the worst performing tech businesses globally since 2007 that's still around.

1:18:05In its recent earnings update, Seek wrote off almost$200 million from its disastrous Chinese website, Xiaoping. Interestingly, Seek was able to grow revenue 14 % in Australia. It's only a substantial market, but saw volumes drop 2%. So basically increases revenue only in the back of charging advertisers. more. Well, that's a good strategy. It all flows to profits. It has limited you. Eventually, you can only start charging more for so much. Do you never increase your prices? You're so opposed to price increases. No, I'm fine with price increases. I've never met someone so opposed to growth through price increases.

1:18:33I think when you increase it by 17%, there's only so long you can increase prices by 17 % until customers go, hold on, this is an idea. There's not a luxury escapes fuel surcharge yet? There's no fuel surcharge. We're the, in fact, our Maldives flights are the cheapest. We're the only flight in the world I think that hasn't imposed this fuel surcharge. I'm sure you'll be on the Maldives flight, the first one he'll be on anything that involves not paying for it is it a global express that we're flying it's not a Bombardier in that case I'm not really sure you can't get on it so Seek's market cap is now a mere 5 billion dollars down from 11 billion dollars is it yeah I'm shocked to hear that REA is valued at 21 billion and car sales at 9 billion so Seek was always way more than car sales and now car sales are double Seek it is true that I wouldn't let you talk about it like hack into Seek on this podcast that is true and it is true that you've wanted to short it for a very long time and wanted to advocate shorting it on his podcast for it and i have been a bit defensive about it but um but i don't think we didn't have massively different views on the business we just had different views on the social constructs that we live in well you're friends and i'm not could you could you plot your feelings about the seek share price to the secure well that was part of my resistance that was part of my resistance to allow him to speak about this on the podcast.

1:19:46How much is I opposed the president's decision making versus a guy that doesn't run the business anymore, right? We appointed the CEO. He still perfectly controls the business. There we go. It's outrageous except I do want to pin this up. Well, and Paul's obviously left, and really since Paul left, that's when six started going down. How is Paul not a billionaire? He's not a millionaire? That was my question I was going to. Look, it's a long journey that question. It's probably been, I would say, probably five or six, seven years since they've been on the list now. Yeah. Paul obviously has interest in Square Peg, which is essentially Canva, which has done incredibly well.

1:20:23He's got a private interest in Canva, doesn't he? As well. So his carry in Canva must be in the billions. No, his carry wouldn't be in the billions. Really? Yeah, his carry wouldn't be. I'm not sure about that. Because he had the first round of investment, but not really subsequent rounds for reasons I don't want to get into on this podcast. But first round was crazy. I know, but there's limits to how much you can buy. Yeah. And so, but I've, well, you know, I don't know if you saw Canva's announcement today, Cliff's announcement today. It wasn't an announcement. It was more like a sort of, you know, we're still going.

1:20:53Our price hasn't gone down at all despite the SaaS collapse. And AI is not really a risk. And Google's replication of our product is not really a threat. Neither is Microsoft. So I think what I want to mention was the sort of job cuts that they had with the Leonardo business a few weeks ago, which we had in our paper. So it's clearly, you know, some growing pains at the very least. So if you say, maybe you can think about it like this. The first round of that business, I don't know the numbers. I just want to emphasize that. But the first round of Canva's valuation. 100 mil or something? No, it was lower.

1:21:23Lower. It was lower. Because I remember 10 mil went in. Or maybe it was lower than 100. But let's say he put in 10. Like his carry wouldn't be a bill on that because there's a lot of dilution that's happened. No, there's not that much dilution. There is. There would be like 30 % dilution. That's not that much. and he wouldn't have gotten that much in there and there's been I don't think there's been any subsequent investments but he's had a lot of other wins they've had a lot of other wins he's in Rocked as well super early so that's been a huge win but there's no billion dollar carry on Rocked no but it's still in the hundreds but it would be interesting to know whether he's a billionaire I think he could be close to being a billionaire I think he should be on the line I think you should need to work on that now what about the Blackbird Gold what about the Blackbird founders are they not billionaires their carry's going to be worth a few billion dollars Blackbird founders it's very hard to get transparency on that right well no it's not like you can you can work it out I don't know the people I don't know the people I think we can back solve this if Canva's worth 60 billion USD it's given it's domiciled overseas anymore it's not as easy as it's you could go back and find the old company and to be honest with you we can reverse engineer this you're not going to give Canva a 60 billion USD valuation anymore but you might give them a 30 60 Aussie.

1:22:4060 Aussie. Okay. So 60 Aussie. How much of that business does Blackbird own? 25%. Is that high? I think 20. A lot of it, okay. 12 billion? Yeah, 12 billion. And how much do they put in? A lot less than 12 billion. I assume zero. Like close to zero. And so their carry has - I'm not sure it's that high that they actually have that shareholder. Anyway. 20 %? I'd be surprised if it's not. But even if it's, whatever it is, their carry, I mean, their carry has got to be a billion dollars, right? That's 20%. That's two and a half billion. Yeah, I know. And even Harvard, right? And so maybe they're not each worth a billion dollars.

1:23:11That's just one investment. They've had other great investments. Well, no, I think that's the only investment that matters. No, there's some good ones. There's no Canva. The Canva's the elite one, but they've had some other good investments as well. Nothing else matters. I think you're right. Your boys at Eucalyptus, they've had. You think that's going to move the dial compared to Canva? No, I don't think you do. No, I don't think that that's going to move the dial. I think that you could probably put the two founders of Blackbird in at a collective one billion, and you're not going to be wrong about that.

1:23:36I think that understates them. He wants to understate. He's the king of... He put Hillmoy in at a billion. This guy's worth 50. We're working on the 2027 list already. I think that's great. When I go to a deer off the podcast, he sort of tends to clam up about these things. I think the brothers bass at the divergence. So Paul sold out, started square peg, which is a pretty bold move at the time. VC wasn't really a thing in Australia. Backbag just starting. Paul's heading towards a billion. Andrew's probably down at like 200, 300 or something now. I think that's about right with Andrew. That's a crazy diversion.

1:24:05If you assume, so you make that assumption, but what about if some of his money went into SquarePig as well? What about if he has PA investments in Canva or some of these other things? I think his money's in the Seek Venture Fund. You can't have so much. How would you know? You as banker, it's public information. We can only deal with what we know, right? I know. As much as we can find out. But I think those brothers are close. We shouldn't write Andrew down too much on what he's got. The market's sitting down. We killed a one on the weekend, so you should be happy. I didn't probably deserve to win, but take it.

1:24:37Can't give them anything. So I think that you should put some VCs in because VC is portrayed as being akin to startup founding, but it's not. VC is funds management, and funds management is very, very profitable. Sure, sure. And I think that if funds managers have done this well, which they have, you should be the first list that starts rounding up these VCs. What, Pete, do you have been around the list? No. How can he not be on the list? I've spoken to people about that. And? They don't think he should be on the list. I mean, he's not going to fess up to it. I think he should be on the list. Does he have a private jet?

1:25:14That's a fair barrier to it. Does he have a private jet on the list? It's quite a lot. We did a list of private jet owners. There can't be more than half. No, but it's a lot. Yeah, so 60. You've got 200 people on the list, not with jets. Close to it. 150 on the list. So does everyone... I feel Ben should be on the list. He's got... They've got 6, 7 billion under management, right? Yeah, sure. Okay. And a 2 and 20 at least carry, right? I think they're higher than 2 and 20. And I think they're getting 20 % of everything they make. He made like 300, 400 from TPG. I think he should be on the list.

1:25:43What about Quadrant? Quadrant was taking a 30 % carry on. Chris Hadley probably should be on the list, I would have thought. What about the Pep guys? They must be doing all right. I don't love those guys. We'll keep them off the list. So we're going to people... It should be. People that Adir likes and that are in... I think the Paradequery guys should... Like, certainly these guys are doing a lot better than Rob Hilmer. Mr. Icebath. Do they get up as early as Rob? Maybe not as early. Maybe they don't get up at 4am. Sure, sure. But these guys have 10x under management. And they've actually had successful investments.

1:26:12Who else? Who else have you got on a list? I can't think of. On the top of my head, I can't think of anybody. Well, it's pretty. We've given you some good names. No, you are. About 20th at least. You couldn't have come to me two months ago or something? No, we wanted to let you put this some. Who's on your front cover? I love it. It's like the annual sort of roasting of John Steadshelm. Yeah. This is what the people want to listen to. Who's on the front cover? Is it Cole Barron, Matt Latimore? What does he do? Cole Barron. Digging rocks. He's trying to buy, he's a bit of the way Alice Steelworks.

1:26:45So Cole, trades Cole. What's he worth? He's called around about 1.3 billion. And that's a company that's making$100 million profits every year. And this is his second year on the list? Yeah, it is. I can't listen to mining. It was one of those, it's, I mean, one of the things that's happened in recent years is ASICs required more people to lodge their financial returns, which is really, it's thrown up a lot of people that, that you sort of thought were wealthy and, you know, and that's. And how do you, like, how do you, obviously they can lodge on ASIC, but you need to like look for them. How do you know to look for them?

1:27:15Like where do you get, how do you, how do you narrow down? Cause it's a pretty hard job. Yeah. Well, I mean, one good source actually is what the ACO puts out every year. I mean, it's a year behind, but they put out a list of all the top corporate taxpayers, right? And there's all sorts of weird and wonderful, you know, ACN numbers or, you know, like company names, right, that you never have heard of. I mean, one in particular, right, I mean, Joe Horgan and Peter Wettenhall with Mecca, you know, it emerged that this company that I had, that was a really, I'd noticed it for a couple of years. Really?

1:27:44Just on this year? R-C-C-H. No, no, they've been on the list, but a lot more than what they were worth. They're about two and a half billion. Two and a half billion? Yeah, I mean, that company, that company's making, the company that did not have their names on it before, the real company, RTCH proprietary limited, just used to have their, used to have their accountant's name on it. That was it until ASIC said, listen, you need to put their - What are they making now? Oh, they're making more than a hundred. Yeah. And paying big dividends. That was the whole thing. So they launched a whole bunch of financial that showed that the dividends - They make twice annually in profit what a door beauty is worth totally, which is, you argue, right?

1:28:20That feels reasonable. Yeah, it's crazy how well they've done. You know, once upon a time before the software industry, people used to run businesses that made money and they used to pay dividends. And then they bought property when a block of land cost$4 or something. And that's how people, like if you go back to the rich list of 1990, that was what the rich list will look like in 1990. And now the kind of semi-irony is a lot of the people on the rich list are paper money, like tons of paper money on the rich list. So, yeah, I think your point is that it probably is a proportion. They may even be less profitable than what they were 20-odd.

1:28:55That's right. I'm asking you the case in point. Yeah, sure. I'll tell you what would be an interesting… Can't buy case in point too, but that doesn't make money. Well, I mean, they claim that they do, right? Well, they're talking about cash profit, which means they're not making real profit. And so what's interesting as well is on that rich list that it's like it would be interesting to know what proportion like gambling and alcohol represent of that. So I think Australia is over-indexed for gambling. Not as much as you do. Is Adrian Patelli on the list? Yeah, Patelli's on there. That's gambling.

1:29:24Ed Craven. It's all gambling. Ed Craven's on there. Yeah, but it's actually pretty corporatised. I mean, you know, most of it, you've got to remember, most of the gambling companies are foreign-owned now, right? What about the wine guys? They're all foreign-owned. Any winery? Not as much anymore. Who was the New South Wales guys who used to be on there? Oh, it used to be like the McGuiggins and those sort of people, the Bordelies and so on. The Bordelies. Yeah, yeah. Are they still on there? Brown Brothers. Not as much now. No, no, no. It's overtaking them. Now you need rocks, not grapes. The guys that export yellowtail to America, they're still on it.

1:29:53The Casellas, right? Yeah, yeah. And also the Oatleys are on there, right, with Hamilton and Holland. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's, yeah, I mean, like, obviously they sold. Yeah, Rosemont. Years ago. Years ago. And they're selling Hamilton and Holland now as well. Yeah, to Blackstone, right? Yeah. Imagine if I said to you, I don't know how many years ago, a hundred years ago, the way that you're going to make the richest person in a whole country of 25 million people is what they do. They get rocks. They dig them out of the ground. They put them on a train. Then they put them on a ship. Then they sell them to China.

1:30:24It's like rocks? Why? Because there's great stuff inside the rocks. They don't take it out of the rocks. They just send the rocks to China. It is a crazy, crazy concept to think that that is what so much of Australia's wealth is being driven by. I can never wrap my head around that. We have all these discussions about innovation. But none of that really matters. It doesn't matter, right? It's the country up for the economy for a long time now. First it was like animals. Like first animals made this kind of sheep predominantly. And then like the sheep, New Zealand still does a lot of sheep stuff and dairy, right?

1:30:57And this country has moved to rocks and I don't know what you'd call gas, like a lot of gas, coal, a kind of type of rock, I guess. Like it's just a crazy concept to think. Energy. How much time we talk about what could make this country great and right now how little has actually changed in the last 25 years. I think one of my favourite people on the list, as in almost how he bucks the trend, is Harry Trigoboff, who's, what, 34 billion now. Yep, yep, and 93 years old. Incredibly competitive. Like building a part of it, arguably one of the most competitive things, highly commoditised. How has he been able to do so well?

1:31:33I guess there's a scale element with him. He's been around for so long and he's accumulated so much land and that gives him so much buying power to buy more and more because when other developers or owners of land or buildings get in trouble, Harry will just pick them off. And he says, so it's that accumulation, it's almost like the compound interest of real estate. He's got a massive balance sheet clearly, but other people have big balance sheets as well. He's very well dead on it, by the way. He's very smart and very brutal. Yeah. So that's helpful. And he knows the market inside out. And also, when we talk about what drives this country, again, I just want to come back to the same points, right?

1:32:07Because you try to do all this smart stuff with this business. This is a smart business. I'll go out and get deals. I'll do this. There's some inverse correlation between intelligence and wealth at some level, okay, because this is too complicated. Basically, there were 10 million people in this country, and now there are 25 million people in this country, and few of them are living in houses with more than one person. So you need to have a lot of places for people to live. That was an easy way to make money. I should have just done that. There's like mining. Oh, there's a lot of rocks in this country that other people want.

1:32:37Just dig up the rocks and sell them. easy way to make money and then you've got like finance the country was poor and now the country is rich and so all the people that were involved in dealing with money a lot of them got very rich i just think like i'm talking to myself at least as much as you there it's so it's so easy half the pot it's so easy yeah i know it's just 90 of my life it's so easy to like think about these very sophisticated things to create and ideas and ai but like you know you've got this whole world of AI, and then you've got this whole world of like, let's just sell home loans to people that banks have.

1:33:13And it's very simple. But I think that it is easy to overthink how to make money. And basically selling something that people need is the easiest way to make money. I don't disagree at all. And talking about TAM and all that kind of stuff. But more of a question is, how has Harry Sugarboff done so well in residential property? When there's no one else? Is there anyone? Max Beck, maybe? Is there anyone? Is he bush? I mean, there's people like me, the royals of the world and so on. Who's that, sorry? No one's anywhere close to Harry. Who else is on there that's... So, yeah, Bob L, for example, he's got a lot of like...

1:33:39Oh, he's residential? Yeah, residential. I thought he was industrial. It's more like... No, there's residential, like a lot of like subdivision stuff in like Gold Coast. Is that leader? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Max, for example, down here in Melbourne. Yeah. There's a few others as well. But Max is a... Is he a billion? Yeah, just. Yeah, I mean, a lot of that's from the Essendon. A lot of that's from Essendon Airport, right? Yeah, exactly. Most of all, yes. So he's 34. The difference between him and everyone else in that category is what I'm trying to talk about. Like, you're right, it's a massive TAM.

1:34:05No one else has made a billion dollars in residential property. He's made 34 billion. He's that much better than everyone else. It's the relentless pursuit of every single spare property that comes up around Sydney. If you have a look at what they've got and what they've done, sorry, and also what they've got to do, there is so much still to do and to be done. Now, you might argue about the quality of it. I mean, I know other property developers sort of go, oh, Harry doesn't build as fancy as we do, but guess what? he's mid-market but he knows he knows that market so well I mean you could argue that there's not many other people that know the mass market of any product he's 93 now what happens when he passes so he's got he's got his grandson now running the business with him he's what 40 or something yeah he's 30 so he's the anointed one right and obviously they've got a very good management team around that and I think the idea is he's got a couple of daughters now so it's their kids that will be the ones running it so to speak yeah that's right but the family will still own it now it might become Lang Walker's another one by the way there's 6 billion dollars there but Lang was a residential yeah it was a whole bunch of things he was Melbourne Melbourne quarter and stuff absolutely so he was a lot of residential commercial he's more of Frank Lowy style yeah that's right what's Lowy's family now what's Frank now about 10 billion he was number one for a while wasn't he I think that was when you were AFR yeah back in the day yeah and Harry was number one there well Harry could be number one like if the Iron All Yeah, he could be.

1:35:32Oh, it goes down 20%. He's probably number one. I put Harry number one on the list. This is before Gina's sort of boom. Yeah, that's right. And the staff at Meriton described as one of the best days in the office ever because he was so happy. This is my question that I was going to ask, which is not a specific question. What percentage, or how many, whatever you want to say, of the top 50 wish they were number one on the list? More than you think. Yeah? More than? But they would never admit it publicly. And how many of those 50 wish they weren't on the list at all? Less than you think. Right. So people basically think it's a scoreboard.

1:36:09Yes, they do. More than you think. Now, if you want to get into this sort of analysing the sort of mindset behind that, that's a whole different issue. But, yeah, I guess probably, no, a fair percentage of that would just know that it's coming, right? They resign to their fate, so to speak. So they know. they know they're going to be on it. It's pretty obvious they can't get out of it, right? Now, if they could, there'd be probably a fair percentage that would. Some of them have used that being to the top of the list to their benefit, right? Whether it's been to open doors politically, to open doors with other companies, business dealings, there is benefits from it.

1:36:48Obviously, there's clear negatives too, invasions of privacy, whatever you want to call it. They don't mix with normal people. They can never be normal in that way. You say they don't mix with normal people. So I'll say, Mark and Rafi definitely would want to be off your list. Yeah, absolutely. Invisible. They want to be invisible. Yeah. And like, I get that. It's much better to be invisible. And I think, you know, when you say about mixing with normal people, okay, like I'll caveat that like, the world that we live in maybe is not entirely normal, but like, I don't, there will be nothing that I've got to say to Gina Reinhart, and I don't think there would be much of a social conversation to have with her.

1:37:25And it's like she hangs out with Trump, And maybe perhaps the same. Like, I don't think... I think that they all have... They all can be very, very charming. But I don't think I'm going to sit down and have a coffee with them in some cafe and it's going to be just, like, as if I was meeting anybody else. Like, there's probably going to be some... Something to it. But I just use this as an example. Like, Mark, I would sit down with him in just some random cafe and sit there and have a coffee and it's no different meeting someone who's... Well, turn it around another way then. I mean, how many of the people in the Richards 250 would actually be recognisable in public?

1:37:55I wouldn't say it's that many. Yeah. People would know what Gina looks like. People might know what... Maybe 20. Twiggy. James Packer, obviously. There's probably a few others besides that. I'm not even sure it's 20. I'm not even sure it's 20. So, you know, people could be... You could be in a coffee shop with a billionaire and you wouldn't know it. But my point is more people... Maybe not in White Earth or something. I think... Richard White, people know. Sure. The ladies know. LinkedIn. LinkedIn, definitely. There's been a change. Like, as the world has become less formal, like, I think the people on that list have become less formal.

1:38:25and so maybe you'd be walking into these lavish offices of someone in their 70s or 80s that are on the list, but with a few exceptions. It feels to me like the younger people that are on that list are more low-key and there's just a different – and also being rich, like in the past in Australia, there was a bit of a cringe about being rich and then it became like very amazing to be rich and I think Kerry Packer made it like quite glamorous to be at the top of the list. It might have been the 80s though, right? The 80s. But there is a pushback on being rich today, for sure. And all these no-kings protests in the US, some of that is filtering across to Australia.

1:39:03And I think you can feel a backlash against the ultra-wealthy. I think it's clearly because of, yeah, that's right, the polarisation of society and stuff. And look, they'll blame the government for not getting the policy settings right for housing to be more affordable. It's clearly an issue. And I agree with that, for sure. But, I mean, that doesn't detract from the amount of readers and interest in a list like this. It will grow the amount. Yeah, because that's going to be called the hit list. NFL draft. I mean that metaphorically. NFL draft has a famous term for the person who's last to be drafted called Mr.

1:39:36Irrelevant. And often tend to be actually really good players. Mr. What? Mr. Irrelevant. Irrelevant. Who's Mr. Irrelevant this year? Bruce Buchanan from Rocket. It was last year as well. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Because the valuation went up. Yeah, so I think he'll be less irrelevant as the valuation keeps growing. Sure, yeah. Of the past Mr. Irrelevance, who's gone on to much bigger and better things? Oh, look, Matt Lattimore was down there a few years ago. Yeah, pretty close. I was just trying to think in the 240s or 250s. I mean, like, you know, well, no. Mark and Rafi from L1 were pretty close to that.

1:40:05But he couldn't quite get them on. And all of a sudden they've catapulted us to billionaires for the first time. But, yeah, I think Bruce is a pretty good example of that. Adam loves Bruce Buchanan. Can't get enough of him. Let's go with Bruce. I think we'll probably wrap it up there. We've gone two hours and it's a bit past our bedtime now. But thank you for coming in, John. We can't wait for the book to come out. Tech Bro's out in bookstores in July. We'll have you back on before then. Gives you another chance to be out last year as well, which I know I dear hates. Another great job with the Rich List.

1:40:33It's one of the best reads in the country. Everybody go out and buy the Australian. You can't call it the Rich List. You have to call it the Australian The List. The List. Rich is 250. Rich is 250. Because it's 50 more than anyone else does for my series. Got scale now. I'm thinking about bringing out a list next year. It's called the Rich 251. Day before. You can put the basses on there, aren't you? The whole of the VC industry will be on there. Paul and Chris Hadley on there. That's great, John. Thanks for coming in. Our equal top guest, just each next to Joe. And thank you, I dear. Thank you, Mike and Joel, of course.

1:41:09And we'll be back on Saturday for our Ask Us Anything episode. Thanks for listening in.