There are times in your life when you just know you need a change. A change in job. A change in house. Maybe a change in town or country. Change is good. Change is all around us. Change is the only constant. Three years ago, standing in front of a UWA graduating class at Hackett...Read More

There’s research going back decades that shows that women make better managers than men. On nearly all of the relevant qualities that relate to leadership effectiveness, women simply outperform their male counterparts. And yet, here we are in 2020, and still there are more men in top positions, more male CEOs, more male board members,...Read More

In the seventh post of this series, I cast my mind back 20 years to when I co-founded a tech startup … So there we were. We’d launched our new tech onto an unsuspecting world. A few early (aka brave) customers were trialling it. Likewise some brave staff members and investors were on board. Here...Read More

On the morning of the 6th December 1999, I took the 99 bus from near my house down to the aussiehome.com office in Nedlands, getting off one stop early to pick up the copy of the local newspaper.Read More

I was speaking at a business breakfast the other day, and the subject of the morning was ‘creating an enterprise culture in WA‘. With our long history in successful resources and other entrepreneurial ventures, one might think that we had a great enterprise culture already. And we do. If you want to develop a mine,...Read More

In the fourth post of this series, I recall 20 years ago when we decided on a name for our startup, and the issues it then caused for the next decade… Before the idea, there was context, an unforgettable comedic event before we talked to people we trusted about our idea. Now, a few weeks...Read More

In the third post of this series, I recall 20 years ago when conversations with various people massaged ‘an idea for a business’ into a business itself … Before the idea was born, there was context. Then – spookily – an unforgettable comedic event would herald the idea. Now, the idea needs testing. Could it...Read More

In the second post of this series, I recall 20 years ago when an evening with Dame Edna led to a memorable phone message, and a dotcom idea … Before the idea was born, there was context. A back story. A breeding ground for an idea, with a few push factors that made me look...Read More

Valuing a tech startup is one of those ‘how long is a piece of string’ questions (which is no help at all), but it’s still an important factor in trying to raise money for your early stage venture… Naturally, both sides will look at valuation in opposite ways. The plucky founder will want to give...Read More

In the recent Business News corporate finance report for calendar year 2018, I added up over $9.58B worth of equity capital raisings for WA companies, across 548 deals. That’s $17M+ per deal. And this does not count another $41B+ in M&A (merger and acquisition) activity. How much of the capital raising money went to early...Read More