Synergy IQ 0:01
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Daniel Franco 0:20
Hey there synergisers and welcome back to another episode of The creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco and today on the show we have a man who is known as the godfather of venture capital here in Australia, co founder and partner of Blackbird ventures. Niki Scevak, just a quick note, this podcast is brought to you by Synergy IQ a leading management consulting firm in Australia who specialize in helping leaders in corporate and government organizations navigate their way through the overwhelming complexities of change, whilst enhancing their leadership capability. Check them out at Synergy iq.com.au. Niki is co founder of Blackbird the venture fund that exists to supercharge the most ambitious founders. Blackbird Ventures is one of the leading venture capital funds in Australia and New Zealand, counting companies such as Canva culture, amp and safety culture as part of its portfolio. Niki co founded Blackbird in 2012 with initial $29 million. That initial fund proved to be hugely successful with the fund selling 40% of fund won $400 million. The sow provider that guarantee three times returns all 96 investors who contributed to fund one while retaining an interest in the total portfolio companies with carrying a value of $6.50 per every $1 invested. On today's show, Niki and I started the chat hearing about his journey from starting a business with university friend Mike Cannon-Brookes, who you may know as the founder of Atlassian. To all the way of founding Blackbird ventures and how he became the godfather of venture capital here in Australia. Niki shared the Blackbird investing philosophy taking a chance on the hungry, not proven, which means he's more interested in those who are passionate to succeed than those who possibly have already proven themselves. And we also discussed why investing is more psychological than it is data and analytics. On the show. We also talked about what are the some of the key qualities that Niki looks for in entrepreneurs, which leads to their success, the pivotal role that organizational culture plays in startups. What the Australian startup scene looks like over the next five to 10 years, is advice for entrepreneurs to attract investors, is believed that the constant need for personal growth is always required, and what the future looks like for Blackbird Ventures. It was an absolute pleasure talking with Niki, and I know you're absolutely going to love this chat. If you would like to check out his profile, you can find it at Niki Scevak. That's N I K I S C E V A K on LinkedIn and definitely check out the company website@blackbird.vc. Feel free to connect with me to where you can find me at Daniel Franco on LinkedIn. If you'd like to learn more about some of the other amazing leaders that we've had on the creating synergy podcast and be sure to jump on the website at Synergy iq.com.au or check us out at the creating synergy podcast on all the podcast outlets. Cheers. So welcome back to the creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco. And today we have a very, very good man in the name of Niki scale back on the show I did pronounce that correctly did I

Niki Scevak 3:47
shevak although shevak, although would not be the last to not pronounce it in that way.

Daniel Franco 3:53
I did a bit of research and there was a few people pronouncing it different ways. And I'm like, Oh, I can't figure out which one to land on. So obviously I missed the boat on that. But I want to start off with a question. Well, first and foremost, who is Nikii? And how did you become known as the godfather of venture capital here in Australia?

Niki Scevak 4:18
That's a very mixed compliment. So co founder of Blackbird, and we started Blackbird exactly a decade ago, and then two years before Blackbird founded. Stop me which was almost a precursor in all of the same philosophy of successful technology founders helping the next generation, investing in Australians and Kiwis who are looking to be the best in the world rather than the best in their local country. And, and so have through that journey been fortunate To meet and invest in incredible founders from companies like Canva, and culture app and safety culture and sort of the list list goes on Jindou from happyco, which I know it was a, it was a previous guest. So so the people and the relationships you get to build and the company stories and successes you get to watch from this courtside seat is, is the joy of the job

Daniel Franco 5:27
It would be amazing. And I've been geeking out at your story, as I've been doing the research and obviously from our chat and whatnot. But I let's take it back. Because you've obviously started your own, you know, serial entrepreneur by yourself. Right? So you've had your own startups, let's let's go back to the day that you decided to drop out of uni? And was Am I correct in saying that you went to uni with the likes of Mike Cannon-Brookes in from Atlassian?

Niki Scevak 5:55
Yeah, so we that's how we met. I did a university degree called Business Information Technology. So sort of half commerce, half computer science, but I would say more than that it was a scholarship course. So you got to, you got paid to go to university that was the the highest feature that I was attracted to. And even though you only got paid $200 a week, you had to do this work experience that made that $200 a week, $5 an hour. That that was the that was the attraction. And it was, you know, a whole bunch of people applies, I think it was sort of eight or 900 people in for 40 scholarships. And so that's in the same cohort was Mike and also Scott Marquard. And many of the initial Atlassian employees and many other entrepreneurs, that that did great things, or went on to do great things. Ramy Weiss, who's the founder and CEO of Health Share, and Matt Dickinson, successful entrepreneur who sold a number of marketing companies to the photon group and Joe Stepneyski. All of these great sort of people in the course actually had nothing to do with entrepreneurship and nothing to do with technology startups it was it was framed in a sort of like help corporate with their IT systems, a sort of endpoint to the journey versus, you know, create global technology companies from from Australia. So Mike and I were good mates and roommates, in fact, and we started the bookmark box, which back in 1998, was an online service similar to the idea of Hotmail, which allowed people to access the email from any back then you had different computers of like your work computer, your home computer, your computer that you use at university, and so on, and you had all these different systems and email was local to the computer. So there was nothing, that no concept of the cloud and so we were applying a similar sort of concept to people's managing of their bookmarks and information. And that actually took us into an interesting sort of journey where, because back then Google was just getting started. webspam was a real problem. Like, if you just put online casino in your title of your webpage, you ranked for online casino with all of the other search engines. And so there was sort of this trust breakdown of search engines. And we had, I think we had 50,000 users and 8 million bookmarks. And so we had this great sort of signal to say, this, this is a website that should be trusted, or this is a web, this, whatever is on that page can be a great signal for you know, being a high quality page, because someone has taken the time to bookmark it and to add their sort of description of it. And so it turned into almost at the end, this idea of forming a sort of high, high trust, high quality search engine, based on the sort of signals of people saying this, this was a this was a high quality page, we raised a little little bit of money from, like my uncle and his dad and you know, one other person and set off on this entrepreneurial journey we didn't drop out of university. From a that sounds very theatrical and dramatic, we're sort of shifted to part time so we're doing uni at night and bookmark box during the day and but I would say that the all of my learning came via studying the bookmark box, not through the university lectures and tutorials. And also I think, you know, Mike, and I used to like, run to the newsagent, every month. Back in 1998. There were these flagship publications of like the red herring and business 2.0. And we'd like they used to be like the sizes of three 400 pages every couple of weeks and we'd like run to the new agent pay $20 for a magazine back then which is huge. And for our budgets huge and sort of devour everything about startups and technology and in the business of of creating technology and that that was the hints that was that was really the trigger to say, this is what I want to do with my life. This is what I, the kind of industry and the kind of people that I want to spend my time with. So I think that that, that that was the benefit of the first startup, it was like a tiny, moderate financial success, it was tiny, moderate, I think product success. As I said, we built the company to 50,000 users and 8 million bookmarks and had great retention and customer happiness. And so you know, those basics of business and those basics of company building, but it was still very much like a Elpida experience. And, you know, Mike's only founded two companies in his life, and you probably wanted to have found Atlassian, not the bookmark box, you get to pick one of those, one of those two, but, you know, I've learned so much from him, both as, personally as a friend in in life, and obviously, the journey of Atlassian. And the business decisions and the business instincts that they built up. And the whole journey of the company is, again, another degree in and shaping my thoughts on on the world of business in the world of technology. And I then moved to New York, and ended up starting another company, again, sort of like moderate to low success, so not not not successful as a founder in the the venture sense, I should also say that even at university, I was super interested in investing, and more than that, sort of pulling apart how a business works. And then the psychology of investing and how people get too sad, during down markets to, you know, too excited and during up up swings in markets and sort of training your emotions training your brain to react in the, in the, in the right way to these kinds of market swings that I've always found fascinating. And so Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, all of us to read, like all of the hedge fund letters that got published on the Internet, which are a great sort of insight into the minds of some of the world's best investors. And I've always been very interested in that. So that that even from a non technology point of view, just from an investing, investing, philosophy, and I think, as I went through my career, I realized, probably not, I'm not, I'm not a great operator, I'm not a great founder in the sense of of that, but I love. I love the creation of businesses, I love the philosophy of investing. And so I think, when it really came together, in those first few years of startmate to know that this was my calling, this is what I would love to do with my life. And then forming Blackbird to do it in a start me was still a part time endeavor for a couple months of the year. And then to do it in a full time way. And through Blackbird and teaming up with Rick and Bill Bharti to form Blackbird. That that that was when it all came together. I think, for me in my career, and men Blackbird has been 1000 times more successful than than anything I've ever done in my life outside of it.

Daniel Franco 13:28
That's amazing. And a really great story and the there's so much to unpack in that I think you can you can be the claim to fame to Mike Cannon-Brookes as a success. You told him everything you had early on in his piece and but no doubt your success has just gone through the through the roof as well. And given where Blackbird is going, I mean, kudos to you. I'm really interested in the early part, though it just at this point in breaking down. I mean, you've described yourself as a curious person, right to and in my head. We're, we're all born curious. Right? So the, you know, the kids that stick their finger in the PowerPoint, right? We're always curious by nature and then naturally, and you talked about behavior and psychology naturally, I believe, you know, parenting and environment and things like that sort of put a put a dampener on, on someone's curiosity and their ability to continue continue being curious. What was it about the startup world that you were so curious about? Like, what was it? And what does the behavior of curiosity look like when you're going through that process early on in your career?

Niki Scevak 14:45
Well, I think startups and investing it's this curiosity Wonderland. It's like, not limited in any way. And the even you know, I I had first got the internet in sort of the early 90s, I think I was like year, seven or eight in high school, you had to, you know, it was like the sort of 2400 board modems, if you remember, back in those days, and it was text based, not even Netscape, or Netscape, just arriving at that point in time. And I just think the internet allowed, if you had the desire and the curiosity, you could learn about anything, I mean, think YouTube is the ultimate University of knowledge, it's just, there's so much on there, you have to kind of know what to look for, or have the motivation to, to look for it. I think startups. Again, it's this environment where you just learn so much. So quickly, as I said, like the, the, the amount I learned through the bookmark box in that, you know, 18 month period was probably 10 times as much as I learned in the university degree, which again, is sort of this regulated, they'd dose out the learning. And then, you know, as you go into corporate, structured environments of like bigger companies that have this sort of structured pathway for your career and structured steps along the ladder, and you know, micro dose, the knowledge out at each different step, and you can't get ahead of yourself. And it all runs at the same pace, versus this sort of wide open land of startups where if you don't do anything, nothing will happen. And also, I think, in those environments, what you do you get this visceral sort of response of what the customer thinks and what they do, and that there's like, you do something and you see the reaction, there's like the direct connection versus I think there's in a larger corporate environment, there's a feeling of like, you are a cog in the wheel, you're disconnected from the end user, you don't really get that same sort of oxygen of didn't actually work or, or not work, or did they love it? Or did they not love it? And so, I think startups are this huge opportunity to again, like, redline your learning and to the pace of learning and where you point the, what you want to learn. It's his ultimate opportunity, I think, also with investing. It's a pursuit that has such nuance, and everyone sort of appreciates the basics, but there's so hard to get right. And there's so hard to exactly calibrated exactly sort of know, what to how to weight a piece of information versus how to just, you know, whether you should discard it or not, it's like this, the more you go in, the more intriguing, it sort of becomes in mastering the the the craft of investing. And so I think, being curious, you're naturally I think, going to be sort of sad in those environments that regulate and microdose the learning versus like these kind of like, let let let let you go wild, kind of. So, technology, startup investing, I think combined, you know who I was, and again, it's this wide open field of opportunity to learn at at a high pace.

Daniel Franco 18:15
Yeah. Yeah, I echo your comments wholeheartedly, I have my own. No, if you call it a start up anymore, we're probably if anything in a scale up phase, I'm not in tech though so I'm one of those who went into the services world, growing the business from you know, zero from two people to to 20 odd people but the the, the last four years of this of my life in this business, the learnings that have come out of running your own business, and have preceded the 20 years of business that I was involved before that, like the learnings are astronomical because there's no other option but to learn. And I think that's the beauty of, of the startup if you if success is what you're after, and you've got a good purpose and good mission and some good vision in mind, then the idea of, of, of not succeeding. You know, you have to you have no other option but to learn. So really interesting point. As, as we as we grow, and as you're growing through your career, and you've had a couple of those early ventures and why just going back to your original point, why didn't you keep on working with with Mike Cannon-Brookes in in the Atlassian world is that this is an opportunity that went missing or it was something you both because you went over to New York, you just went both separate ways or what happened in that regard?

Niki Scevak 19:48
Yeah. Obviously from a financial opportunity would have been a legendary decision to join him at Atlassian. But I think from a personal point of view, The the sort of developer ecosystem and products related to technical teams, that that, you know, that wasn't I think my calling and my passion that certainly is Mike's passion and Scott's passion. And so I think, from the point of view of as an industry, I would say, my interests lay elsewhere. Obviously, if I, the learning journey, I of Atlassian, and the great success and the multiple moments of sort of reinvention of the company, those are all an incredible, you know, I think, up there in the top stories of, of Australian business history, I mean, we're still really awesome mates. We actually moved to New York together, Mike moved across to start the first American office of of Atlassian. And so it wasn't so much to do with that side of thing, as I said, I got to follow from a courtside seat point of view, the evolution of the company and how it looked at different stages and some of the key decisions that they got to make have lots of awesome friends who were part of the early employee journey of Atlassian. And so I felt like I, I got to enjoy the the success of Atlassian through those personal relationships. But I think, obviously, it would have been a lucrative financial decision, but I think ultimately the calling and, you know, it took a few years for that realization to set in, but I think that that that role of investing in that pursuit of investing greatness, that that that's the that's the interesting fuel that will keep me going for decades and is my life's worth not building a company like Atlassian even even though it is probably the best business story in Australian history.

Daniel Franco 21:58
Now, I love it, you stick to your purpose. I mean, that's that, that in its own right is what makes you successful, right is you do what you love. But before we jump into the investment side of things and the investment into camera and culture and all the above you mentioned Jindou so Jindou Lee's been on the podcast you know you've been involved with him from an investment point of view. He's He's podcasts that we did is probably one of the most in depth yet lighthearted podcasts that we've ever had like he's personality is next level when I absolutely loved him to bit. And I flicked him an email saying on Niki's a great cam on the show, give me some gas. And any and you know, in (inaudible audio) style, he wrote back 3 1 sentence straight to the point. His response was asking him about heartbreak hotels and the dangers of investing in fairy cakes. So can you can you elaborate on what that means? Because I've got no idea.

Niki Scevak 22:59
I'll leave the Heartbreak Hotel for another day. On the on the theory Gaikwad, I would say that that's a reference to I would, I would say that a very sort of strong theme through my life is taking a chance on the hungry, not the proven. And this idea of the decorated person. Being the most qualified person is just not not not how the world works. If you look at how all of the best companies in the world, and who started them, they're actually like these super unqualified, hungry people. Like, you know, Microsoft didn't finish university, Google just finished university. The sort of notion of like, if you follow this career ladder, if you follow you collected these, like I would I worked at Google that I worked at BCG and then I worked at blah blah blah It's like these these sort of logo collectors of people that get trapped in this competitive system and I think the world that they are smart people but the world over values and over favors that that that segment of the population versus the I think the the the people who are the most interesting and the most that my kind of people are the hungry unqualified do not have that resume trail. And and I think you know, as you get into the you know, like Google and all of the benefits and the cafeteria and the you know, massage and the it's sort of you get these kind of fat and happy cows that a that are massaged each day and sort of they don't have that same hunger as the you know, the person who came from nothing and has this underlying fire or this, this in a mongrel I think, of just getting it done and not complaining and achieving and just this high bar of self being self critical and high standards and like that, that that that kind of person, so I think the fairy cake reference is in the I went to Stanford and then I was an associate product manager at Google. And now I'm doing a start up and you know, I won't leave until I have my seat brand locked in and I need all of this money to pay myself and you know, that there's none of that sort of hunger and none of that kind of inner drive or inner fire, as you get from from a different type of founder.

Daniel Franco 25:45
Yeah, I love that. I mean, that sort of echoes the quote, the Steve Jobs quote, right, you know, here are the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the those who are crazy, to change the world are generally the ones that do. So yeah, I absolutely love that approach. I am curious, though, because that is a quote that, you know, it's plastered all over the website, and you've been quoted a few times, you know, take a chance on the hungry, not proven, what is in a world of formula, right? We live in a world of formula and data. And you know, and you mentioned Charlie Munger before and deep dive into him a bit later, but you know, the idea of building a business, we know there is some foundational things that need you need to know, right, which is, you know, finance, sales, marketing, whatever it might be, these are some of the finance, foundational things. So is it those who are proven in startup? You know, I know a few people who have created startups they've built they're sold the first one for say, 50 million, and they went on and sold next one for 100 million, and then they so so they have this proven model? Is that not of interest to you? Or is it you're looking for those unicorns and those completely different type of thinking, you know, something that most people don't believe in? Right? You know, they will, you'll have a lot more naysayers in those sort of earlier in those early phases.

Niki Scevak 27:12
certainly open to anyone. So you know, we have invested in repeat founders. And it's not to say that the experience is of a, of a journey that ended up in particularly, I think, journeys where they succeeded in a really hard business. Like, you know, we've invested in folks that did like a web agency kind of business. And then it's like a really hard business to make work. Like when there's the times a good you try to hire these people to satisfy the customer demand you have and then times are bad, you have to reduce your team. And it's always this sort of, treadmill of of toughness in running a, like a web agency, as one example. And if people have succeeded, that they can certainly succeed in a product business where you have recurring revenue, and your customers give you more money next year than they gave you this year. As they add more people on their side, and it's just this beautiful, luxurious business, that that is is grows so easily and effortlessly compared to the sort of Treadmill type business. And so particularly in that like where people have gone through this crucible of like, building a tough business and then succeeding in some way. Doing that that's that's a really super high signal of when they do a product business. I think it's it's more like people think, how do I create a business? And you mentioned you need to know sales and marketing and finance. And I would challenge that, in sort of what at least reframe it from a you don't need to know it at the beginning. Yeah, you need to know it and eventually get up. But in the sequence of events, the most important thing is that you have this connection to the problem, this sense of this, this is what your this is your life's work and this unique belief that you built, you feel like the world should work in a different way or the industry should work in a different way you have this special inside of this special fire within you around the problem. And you know the example of Mel from Canva, who, you know, she taught graphic design at University. Her in Cliff had created this high school yearbooks business, which is selling sort of to schools where teachers and parents and kids would collaborate to produce a yearbook that they would then print out and the kids and parents would pay for and it was a it was a almost like a tougher, rougher version of and smaller version of Canva. But in building fusion books, they had developed all of these foundational insights into what a general purpose graphic design platform they gave anyone the ability to create this beautiful and In a great design, to everything that they did, that was formed in the insights of that experience of our future books and just teaching people graphic design in general in a university setting. And so I think it's, it's this opinion and how that opinion is formed the connection between the person and the problem or the person in the industry, their sort of journey and why they've become obsessed with the problem. And that that connection between them and the them in the industry, that's, that's really the thing to, to examine. And then, as I said, I think there's two steps, there's build a great product, and then build a great company build a great product involves all of those insights into what the product should be and what the product should not be, I think, you know, oftentimes, it's what not to include, or what to delete from the offering that that is the magical insight. And then if you have something and people love it, and they love using it, and they love, they refer to their friends, and they pay and they don't complain about the price, they say yes, quickly. And once you have that you have that's the really the oxygen for creating a company, unless you have that happy customers. Foundation, then it's no point in building a great company, because you know that step one is happy repeat customers, then as you build a great company, then you need to become great at all of these other, you know, how are you going to acquire customers at scale and design? The product such that, you know, it encourages the product to be shared and discovered by new people and so on? How do you create all of the? How do you create a great environment that attracts the best people to come and work for your company? How do you create great hiring processes that have a great experience in identifying who's a good person who's a bad person? How do you create all the systems and the structures to allow to allow those people to do their best work? Once they join you? How do you constantly redesign the organization as you hit 20 people as you hit 50 people as you hit 150? People? How do you create a great culture that, you know, once no one knows you, and once you can't speak to people one on one, culture is really the sort of kind of lever in which all of your beliefs are passed on to those new members of the team and, and kind of what is a sort of way to act or a way to make a decision or a way to sort of be in the company versus versus elsewhere. So all of those things, you know, it's an unlikely journey. It's an unlikely path from founder to great CEO. But in the very best cases, in the very best outliers. People have that product magic, and then they also then develop and learn and go on that journey to to have that builder company magic or that great CEO magic that's developed over time.

Daniel Franco 33:14
Yeah, I love it. Everything you're saying there is, is ringing true to me. This, the work that we that we are involved in is helping customers are in our customer base through change in large scale change, whether that be cultural change, whether it be understanding their purpose and vision and getting them back on track with their strategy, why they're actually here. So you know, and then and then not, not to mention the workforce, we do a lot of work in that space. How do we design for the workforce of the future and where we're going? And so really, really interesting space. And yeah, I love everything that you just said, then I want to, you obviously mentioned Cameron, and we can't go into a conversation with you. And obviously this says given the ridiculous unicorn that it is. You mentioned Mel and Cliff and also this Cameron as well, who, by in their own right have created not only an amazing company that's you know, turned into this sort of $40 billion valuation, but it's their world leading in the ways of their thinking. I saw Cameron speak recently, in an event where he was talking about the stuff they do it from an ESG level so that they're leading on all fronts, right, which is, was amazing. But what what's really interesting for me, is I want to go back to the first conversation that you had with these guys and what did you see in them and and what did it look like? And how does, how does the investment process work for someone like a Cameron and had it like just early early stage stories? I think a really interest

Niki Scevak 34:48
Yes. So my fellow co founder Rick met Mellon cliff while they were still in in WA and yet to move across to to Sydney and also I met them before Blackbird technically existed, we were sort of out raising our first fund and but we hadn't closed the capital as yet. And so we met Canva before the fund was ready, and they they actually left their seed round open for us to close the fund and sort of complete the, the investment in them. And in many ways, Blackbird and Canva have been built in parallel. Along the same sort of timelines, the it was just very, very clear. As I said that this was their life's work. I say, I'm probably more weighted people are like, Oh, it's all to do with the founder versus say, the market or the the the idea or whatever it might be, I'm probably more weighted to the idea as being the most powerful aspects, you need everything you need, you know, everything to be great. It's not an either or question, but I bet it would. I do place high value in great ideas. And I think Canva is such a wonderful example of at the very beginning, having deeply thought through the problem, the industry, the idea, and I think the definition of a good idea is like not, you know, you say the idea. And it's the first sentence. It's where does it go from there? So in the second meeting, and the third meeting, as you delve deeper and deeper, do you get more and more excited? Does the idea, get get better and better, as you go deeper and deeper, usually ideas, it sounds fine in the first sentence, or everything sounds okay in the first sentence, but most ideas are this sort of facade where you hear the first sentence and then as soon as you start talking about it, it's very clear that there's there's no depth, so there's nothing behind the initial statement, versus the great ideas, sort of grow and excitement and grow in detail and grow, as you'd go deeper and deeper, just how clearly it is that the founders have thought about the the these like small details that have such a strong opinion and why they made the decision and what they're going to leave like, it's just the joy is in. As that gets more and more exciting. And I think Canva is the prototypical example of at the very beginning, there was such a clear, a thought about a very, very long product roadmap, a very, very detailed opinion into how the world should work differently, why 1% of people go to university become a designer, they aren't they join a job as a designer in your title, they spend 10s of 1000s of dollars on software and computers and to be a designer, and then it's sort of restricted just to that small fraction of an audience of people to do great design and versus all of the 99.9% of people who don't have designer in the title. But is there a sort of an effortless way, where they don't need to go through that education process, they have this powerful way to create graphic design a beautiful graphic design themselves? You know, the insight and, again, I the, the spike for me, in the early days was just how fresh How unique? How detailed how wonderfully long dated? The idea of Canva. And what they would do, was it I would say, even looking back, people sort of like, like usually like to say, Oh, we tried a and then we completely did a 180 turn and did b and had to pivot and throughout this and I'd say Canva you could look back at that first seed round deck. I think it's even published on the internet. It's so remarkable how the, the sort of journey has been exactly what they had hoped it to be. And even that first slide deck standing up to the first decade and even what they're still working on are becoming a canvas. So I think that that to me, is sort of the the testament to you know, what a wonderfully high quality idea they had at the at the very beginning.

Daniel Franco 39:20
Yeah, that's amazing. What is that? When you so Blackbird and you mentioned that hadn't started but obviously it grew into and you're securing the first round of funding and whatnot what when you did invest and then you start so you're obviously investing in these remarkable human beings with with a remarkable idea and a very, very clear plan. What what happens from there, what Where did where does it go and what is your input in regards to helping them grow and helping them you know, Obviously money is one thing and can pave the way. But I mean, experience and knowledge is also another key aspect to anyone's growth it is that is that what you are offering in those early days as well.

Niki Scevak 40:14
I would like also, that's probably the, you know, every investor says, we're not just money, we're value add, like, there, it's not to understate the role of an investor is to get the best people the money in a very straightforward way. And to, I would say, even beyond the money, it's this belief, you know, you you subscribe to someone's vision, you're not there to educate them, you're not there to tell them what to do, you're not there to disagree and sort of say, you know, I would do it this way. And therefore, you should do it that way. That that is that is, that is not what an investor in my mind is there to do an investor in my mind is to, there to believe in the people believe in the vision, believing the company's mission and do everything they can to in service of, of the founder and service of the Mission and Service of the vision of the company. And so, I think it's this sort of uplifting belief in all of those things, that's the role of the investor you can help. Again, you know, the, just the, obviously, that the capital is the most important thing, and if something is working, to be able to, again, direct this pool of capital, which mainly is the superannuation system of Australia that are part of the funds that we form, and direct that to the most worthy of missions and the most worthy of founders. It's not, don't underestimate that, that's, that's the job. And that's the the key and in getting that. Absolutely right, and having an opinion on who are the worthy missions and who were the were the founders. And again, that's so important. And, but I think it's to, it's to, it's to go with that tide of here's the vision here is the mission and do everything you can help them hire, help them, build the team, help them help be a network switch, to say that once you come up against this fork in the road, or once you come up against this problem, go and speak to this other founder, who has just gone through that experience, or who had a decision to make around that. And so also not to view ourselves as the expert, and to view ourselves as the switch and the network founders are the best people to help other founders founders, at exactly the same stage or One Step Ahead. So it's not even to say that, you know, whatever seed stage startup, it's, it's less useful than to go to Mike and Scott at Atlassian, than it is to go to another company that is, has experienced just that problem in the last six months. And there's so much of decision making of knowledge, startup knowledge that is perishable, and is dependent on today's hiring market, or today's environmental, today's, you know, available solutions. And so viewing ourselves as that sort of community, and I think community is at the heart of Blackbird, and being a network switch into that community, I think that's the way in which we, we can help people the most, but don't underestimate just the power of, again, wholly believing in someone and getting, getting the money to the right people in the right mission is that that that's, that's what we're here to do.

Daniel Franco 43:38
And that's where the hunger comes from. Right. So, you know, you're given to those people who are hungry, and you know, that the money that you're that you're providing them will be able to help them realize their vision and change the world. And obviously, then you reap the benefits of of that investment. You know, we you mentioned Charlie Munger before and as you can see over my shoulder, and I know it's one of your favorite books is the poor Charlie's Almanac and, and it is also one of mine. He, he has been on this pursuit on any I think you alluded to it before on how to understand what makes a business high quality right and, and no doubt that you're on the same trajectory. You You're, you're trying to understand the same thing, which is probably why you love this pursuit so much in your experience, and given the fact that there are these companies that are providing you and you're able to, to raise capital and they're giving, they're giving it to you guys at Blackbird on the knowledge on the basis of your knowledge of what makes a good startup, right? So they're they're believing in your skill set. They're in your experience, what is and what qualities do you believe to be paramount in success for any startup? And I know that we've we've talked about the purpose and vision but is there anything out side of that, that you believe is critical and fundamental.

Niki Scevak 45:05
I product, and I wouldn't say we are product investors. And product really is the only durable advantage. You can grow quickly in the beginning through sales and marketing. But it's sort of this sugar dynamic of like, you kind of get to a stage where more sugar doesn't make it sweeter. And product is this foundation. And as I mentioned that product roadmap and even, I would say the expanding product roadmap. So as they go down a path, and they discover all of this information about the market and customers, and reraise their ambitions around reshaping the future product roadmap, that's the thing to understand deeply. And that is the only sort of determinant of whether you know, something can compound for decades rather than compound for years. I would also say that just product love or customer happiness, again, that if you have that you have a business people used to be really nervous and really worried. They'd be like, Oh my god, I'm not sure if Facebook's gonna make money. I'm not sure Twitter's gonna make money because they have eyeballs. And those people use it every day. But you know, how are they ever going to make money. But if you look at every single, you know, in that that example, every single platform that has super high daily engagement, and super high customer love and zero revenue, there is 100% conversion from that state to multi billion dollars of revenue. And in the case of Google and Facebook, hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue. And so I think people are looking at, I can't see how it makes money, even though they've got hundreds of millions of people who use it every day and love it. I think, again, you're just looking for two people truly, like it's like, are obsessed by the product, or whose lives have been transformed, or working lives transformed or off the charts kind of positive around about the product. That is like the forward predictor of success. If you have that you'll be successful 100% of the time. And again, it's like forming an opinion on Is that Is that true product Love Is that true? customer happiness, that there's like, there's signals and metrics that can can can give you a hint as to the truth or not of the matter. You know, in software businesses, you see super low churn, or you see customers upgrading, or you see this sort of behavior of like, everything, you know, if you have recurring revenue, if you have no one churning, if you have the same customers paying you more and more like snowflake is the is the best example of this business, if they didn't sign a new customer, they'd still grow 70% plus per year, because seven like every single existing customers paying them 70%, more the year after in their sort of data warehousing product. And so you look for these hints that no one churning high upgrade revenue, if it's a SaaS company, and so on, and so forth, as well as just the product, like a great example of in safety cultures case, it had zero revenue when we first invested. However, the average user, which is a free user, the average user was using it 18 times a month, I think it was and there's 20 working days in the month. And this was a product used by airport workers and construction sites and these industries that, again, don't typically show this kind of universal sort of product kind of engagement. And it was so clear in the case of safety culture. And again, that that if you have that you have a company, eventually you have 100% conversion from that to awesome business, from a revenue and so on point of view. And so I think you have to understand products, and you have to understand customer happiness. And if you can do that, I think you'll be a very good early stage kind of startup investor.

Daniel Franco 49:19
Yeah. So on the flip side, though, there's going to be some things that stop businesses from moving forward. Right, and you know, product is one thing, but then it's sort of application and behavior and the ability to execute and strategy and whatnot for it for the for the founders, right. Is it frustrating for you when you see a really amazing product, but the founders just don't have what it takes to move it forward.

Niki Scevak 49:49
Yeah, I mean, looked at I was not frustrating, I'd say sad sadness. Because it is typically the case the average result is absolutely that. I would say the average result is that the what they're building no one cares about. That's probably number one. Number two would be the founders end up hating each other. And it's not, it's not any more complicated than that. It's such a crucible experience of founding a company together, you have very little money, you have this high pressure, you have this, I'm running into a brick wall feeling you have everything against you, you have, unless you do something, nothing gets done. Every everyone has this apathy, and you have to like generate, you know, momentum or generate energy. So it's this very, very testing environment. And so it's not unsurprising that, you know, people who are sort of in the trenches with each other, will end up, you know, not liking each other after that experience. But that, that, you know, that would be the case. And there's also, you know, maybe even another case where you have sort of like a successful product or idea, but the sort of company collapses, they build a great product, but they don't build a great company, and they hire really bad people, those people hate each other, or they hate the founders, they leave the good people leave the bad people stay, you know, that there's certainly stories in that regard. But even that, like these, these sort of wonderful ideas are so resilient, like you look at read the founding book of Twitter, like, basically every founder was fired, or left or she huge employee turnover in the beginning, you know, service couldn't even be kept up and live. No idea about revenue until, you know, years after a normal company would have had an idea about revenue. It's almost like they, they, they were a test case in, in sort of, like, how can we try to screw it up, and yet, still have a company worth, you know, 10s of billions of dollars. And so, it is quite, you know, once you do have a special idea, once you do have this sort of extreme customer love, it's actually, you know, quite resilient to any incompetence. But, you know, yeah, these are, these are fragile things. Equally.

Daniel Franco 52:18
Yeah, no doubt. I'm thinking, yeah, when you're, as you're talking there, and you've got three young children as well, three daughters, I have, I have two daughters. So the Lion King is something that pops to mind. And if you think of like this beautiful startup world, you know, where it's Pride Rock, and Simba and everyone are looking at, and there's this beautiful greenery, all the animals are looking, and then you've got the discarded startups over in where the hyenas hang out, you know, where all the bones and that are collected, is there opportunity in that space, I'm just thinking like, if there's, there's these beautiful and great products that have been created, but then just through the, through the fault, or whatever it might be from the founders not getting along with these products been discarded? Is there an opportunity over in that space to look at. Hang on, there's a, there's a really great idea here, if we just, you know, get the right people in in here. And we can, we can make this work,

Niki Scevak 53:12
usually, usually not in the same vehicle. So not in the hey, this company failed, because of the people reasons, and therefore bringing new people usually it's, it's not in that form. But it is in the form of both the idea being done by different people, but also the idea being done in a different time. And so Atlassian was the 100, bug tracker, shopper fi was the 100 shopping cart, Google was the 100 search engine. So there is this idea of usually every idea is a good idea. It just needs to be tried, by the in the right time in the right environment, by the, you know, different people with unique sort of fresh takes on the idea. And so I would say if an idea is good, and most ideas are good, if an idea is good, it will be tested hundreds of times through these different attempts over history, and eventually one will break through and one will become the defining search engine or the defining shopping cart or the defining bug tracker. And so you do get that effect. But you get it through, you know, these these kind of different attempts by different teams over different time periods.

Daniel Franco 54:27
Yeah. In your opinion, what role does leadership play in the success of the company?

Niki Scevak 54:37
It is, it is the thing. I think, more correctly, I think the creation of a great culture, is this the most scalable thing and we're talking about scalable companies and scalable sort of scale, you think scalable, you think software and that's the scalable thing, but actually culture is the scalable thing and like you know, it's almost Like what happened before we had the English language like, or whatever, before we had language, it's sort of like nothing, a lot less got done, because a lot less cooperation happened and a lot less. And so it's almost this this form of language, culture is this, this set of ways in which to encourage people to cooperate on a shared goal. And I think that that culture is the is the sort of long lasting effect, that is the thing that keeps a mission going. That is the the amplifying effect, that is the the reason something kind of happens. And I think, you know, great leaders, set that culture, nurture that culture, change that culture, if required. And that that's actually the biggest lever, or the biggest, scalable thing someone can do is, is is the creation of a great culture.

Daniel Franco 55:58
You're here and thank you for bringing culture into that conversation. Because, you know, we work, our service that we provide is purely with large organizations that have, you know, been around for a while, and their culture is sort of fallen by the wayside. Why is it so prevalent? In your opinion? Why is it so prevalent that culture is important in the startup world? But then as these companies grow into behemoths culture is one of those things they get forgotten about? And, you know, productivity and, and dollars, and how do we, how do we introduce and a lot of our listener base are the sort of the C suite senior executive world in their corporate space, how do we, how do we get that sort of entrepreneurial spirit back into the larger organizations and reintroduce some of those, you know, the excitement, I guess, of the early days,

Niki Scevak 56:52
I guess I'm a little sort of less optimistic than then than a lot of people in that in that pursuit, I think, oftentimes, like to change the way something happens, it's better to do it outside the system than within the system. And so it's harder to change an existing thing than to create something from a fresh, I also think that culture is like beauty, it's perishable, it sort of fades with age, and unless you sort of fight against it, you you won't maintain it, and unless, and then, and then there's also this sort of, gravitational effect of like, even as you're growing and growing. It's just like the culture of Google at 100 people, magical the culture of Google, you know, I don't know how many people they have now. 100,000 people, it's just different vintage different. And sort of the beauty has faded. And so I think you can do things to slow it down, you can do things to maintain your, your, your beauty, but the direction is down, not sort of that can be turned around with age. And so I think that's the unfortunate reality. That's the advantage of startups, you know, starting from a fresh without those legacy. sort of history of why the culture is the culture at that point in time. And, you know, the reason why startups exist, the reason why startups change the world the reason why, you know, history evolves as it has

Daniel Franco 58:37
you, yeah, yeah, I'm probably a little bit more optimistic. But I hear you loud and clear, it is a slow moving ship, to get to get back on track in regards to why we're here. And what we're trying to achieve when there is so much involved, especially from a shareholder point of view, and, you know, the stakeholder point of view and community point of view, and, you know, the, the expectations are much higher, and it is a much more of a slower burn. I am very interested in, obviously, and I'm going to ask this from a personal point of view, in the clarity of a founder, or CEO or managing director of a, of a startup that's grown and has scaled and picked particularly point of from the point of view of those who those businesses that don't necessarily attract funding, right. So you know, service business like my own IT people aren't sitting there going, oh, you know, we believe in you. Daniel was the founder, he's, you know, a couple of million bucks to get yourself going but so, like, I've never received any funding or anything like that from anyone and then grown from scratch and you know, doing relatively well. But the hustle of the start at the start, right, where you're involved and you're doing everything and then as you Grow, you need to transition, you know, you start hiring the right people and you get the all of a sudden you've got some ops people in and you've got some salespeople in and you start growing, growing, growing, growing marketing and all the above and you know, finally, your business just grows. But that that's the most difficult piece is that whole luck, as you often hear, as a founder or as a CEO, or as a managing director, you should be thinking, right, you should be happening time away to think you should be putting time away to strategize, you should be, you know, your main role is to attract talent and keep talent and you know, and so, there's all this Yes, I know, I know that I need to do all this. But if I, as I'm gone, that growth trajectory, it's really difficult. So I'm really interested in your thought thought process, and maybe advice to those businesses who aren't attracting the dollars per se to help them grow that quickly or quicker? And what your advice would be and what should they should stick to on that growing and learning curve in the in the early parts of the of their business?

Niki Scevak 1:01:10
I would say you don't need to raise capital for any of this to happen. I think the chief advice would be to surround yourself with other founders who are going through a similar journey, I think, you know, YPO, EO has sort of perfected the the helping people find others who have a going through this journey and to share all the difficulties to share the accountability of be accountable for you know, what they said they did, and what they eventually did, and sort of swapping notes and getting advice. And so I would say the number one thing is to surround yourself with five other people. And there's even a if you want sort of more detail and more, there's actually a fellow Blackbird Nick Crocker wrote a blog post around called the elephants. Elephants is a sort of name for a group of people that sort of walk together through business and some of the ways in which you could do it, and meetings and how to structure them and so on and so forth. So I think surrounding yourself with other other founders, and going along the journey with them, I think that that that's the, that'll that'll be the best input into your learning and growth. And there's organizations like YPO, and EEO, in a general business centers, technology focused organizations like innovation Bay have a program where they are placed, Scott is sort of scale up founders to together, there's, you know, I would say, within each of the venture capital firms again, we all aim to nurture these groups of folks that that sort of go on the journey together and swap their knowledge, I think that that's the most prevalent. Way, that's the easiest way to grow in a personalized kind of way. There's also as I said, like, if you want to learn, you'll be curious podcasts. I've just learned so much about life and business through podcasts, reading and reading books, like poor Charlie's Almanac, and I think that dedication to reading and, and listening, you're gonna learn a whole lot as well, and having cultivating the desire to learn, I think that that that's the ultimate meta level. Driver. And so the those, those two things that are the key, and then I also say that by default, people think about the long term vision, and they think about the next 12 months by default, you're sort of like, okay, what am I? What am I doing? Why, why am I here? How do I, what's my dream for the business? And then they also think, you know, what do I have to do in the next 12 months to complete a, you know, to progress? People, less often think about what they want to do in three years, three years is like this interesting timeline of, it's not super long term, you can actually see it and imagine and, you know, kind of flick forward on your calendar. It's not so short term that it's like, you know, you're going into asana and writing out discrete tasks. It's sort of this midway point between, and I think it gives you this connection between what you're doing today and what you're doing and what your dream is for the business. And I think that exercise and pushing yourself to always be sort of like, imagining what you are in three years is a great revelation. I think that not enough people do because it's not sort of default. Thinking like you have to think about today and this you have to think about longer term, but you don't have to think about three years and I think three years is is quite a magical timeline.

Daniel Franco 1:04:48
Yeah, great advice. You, you you touched on the the personal growth aspect of that, like, you know, reading and listening to podcasts and it's you know, Uh, as you can see by the books in the background and in the obviously just the the starting of this podcast and being able to pick brains like yourself is definitely been a massive contributor to my success in growth. And I do the same actually now that I think about I go who the in the business world who are some of the people that I hang around with the most and it is those who have also started their own businesses and we just bounce ideas off and go through the pain together. Because there's a lot more pain sometimes and then what there are the winds, but pain is progress. It is yes. That was a was a monk quote, too, wasn't it? No, that was Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio quote. That's it. Brilliant. What? What importance do you place on your own personal growth and development? I mean, do you is there routines that you have in your in your life that you place like this? I'm, you know, I had a, we had a CEO Jim McDowell on our podcast recently, who was ex CEO of VA systems for 10 years and CEO of nervous systems now. So being in the defense place been CEO of Department of premium Premier and Cabinet. So worked in some really high roles, and, you know, dedicates an hour of reading every morning and every night to minimum of two hours a day, do you do something similar? Do you? Do you have a dedication time where you put you know, to thinking to reading to podcasts, whatever it might be?

Niki Scevak 1:06:28
I absolutely, and you tried to sort of clean out my calendar on a regular basis. But I, you know, given I have three young kids, I love to wake up super early, I would say, since I've had kids, I just tried to push myself to wake up early and early. And, you know, I wake up shortly after 5am. And that, that between that and you know, the sort of two hours or three hours. That's the magical time, that's what I love to read the most got a dog. And there's also like, walk the dog, listen to podcasts or audiobooks. So I think sort of trying to create these buckets of time that, for that, and then like, it's, it's almost like you do it, you know, a few times in a row in the habit forms. And so the sort of uphill battle is just that first instance of forming that habit. And, you know, I would say, if you just sort of push through something, it might seem hard in the beginning, but as soon as you do it, like seven times, and it's natural, and you don't think about it, you automatically do it, it's just creating those sort of buckets time, but I would say that, if I, I would just love to read all day like I would read all day and do nothing else. But that, I know that once I retire, it's almost like, I would retire just so I could do my day, to read all day. And that I think that's, that's my hat, that's where I'm happiest, I think you have to find your life's calling, and you have to find the area that you want to make a mark in. And if you do that, then actually, it's quite natural to want to learn as much as you can about it. So you need to I think find the calling first. And then it's, it's natural. And then, you know, again, I I just love learning and love, reading and listening and so on. So I would do it all day.

Daniel Franco 1:08:28
Here, I'm, I'm very much in the same boat. You mentioned the three kids in waking up earlier. And I know, I know that feeling all too well, as well, and how to prioritize and prioritizing time and, and how to actually be successful in business and yet be successful as a father or a parent. So, there's a question that I often asked, you know, and I'm really interested to hear your, your thoughts, you know, is how do we actually realize our visions whilst cultivating loving and fulfilling relationships? Right, like, it is? And I know, yeah, for me, it's just a, it's a constant battle. And I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on that as well.

Niki Scevak 1:09:19
Yeah, it's, it's, it's tough, but I would say also, at least personally, I don't work like that hard, like, I finish it 430 Every day, some of the days I'll pick the kids up from school. And just having that hard boundary is actually you know, I would say before I had kids, I was like hanging around and you know, you'd work late and but having this sort of forced, okay, the day finishes here, and you better get everything done. Otherwise, you know, the day finishes here. The productivity increase, like I 10 times as much And then also like it gets you to prioritize, it gets you to focus, it gets you to say is this really important gets you to really sort of zoom in and, and so that, and then I think, you know, like I'm, I'm, I used to go to a bunch of events, I don't go to any events at night, I don't see after sort of delete these valuable good things, but you know, let go of and prioritize the right, you know, I believe the right things of you want to spend as much time with the kids as possible in the magical years of their development. And so you just have to make deliberate decisions in favor of family over business. But I would say on the whole, having the constraint of absolutely not going to go over that line of 430, for me, then you actually get a lot more done. If you have the line versus if you're sort of like, younger, and you're hanging up and you go, you know, office and seven o'clock or 730, you might go home but you didn't actually do anything more than someone else who finished it, you know,

Daniel Franco 1:11:05
does that fly in the face of what the, I guess the entrepreneurial startup world recommend through I like, you know, burning the midnight oil and doing this and that.

Niki Scevak 1:11:18
The other Asterix is that venture capital venture capital is opulent or luxurious business where it's not the hours you work, it's the quality of decisions. And it's usually like one or two decisions a year that you make that determine your 80 or 90% of your success. And so it is a job that allows that, I think from a founder point of view, it's there are no there is no escaping the the you don't have those choices almost in the beginning, everything is on your shoulders, if nothing happens, if you don't do anything, nothing happens. And so I think from some point of view, it's it's, it's 100 times harder as a founder than it is as as an investor. But I think some of those principles still apply where I think the problem, the main problem of a founder is there are so many things you could do 99% of them are marginally good, like 1% of them are actual game changes. And so I've seen a lot of founders in the beginning, they get trapped in, in this 99% of things that are not bad, so that they're definitely not negative. But they're so mildly positive, that it's, it's not really going to make a difference. And so I think, in as a founder, it's identifying the 1% of activities and decisions and so on, that will determine your success or not, and ruthlessly prioritizing and ruthlessly deleting and I mean, so much of startups is theatrical, and people are focused on the wrong things and talking to big companies and partnerships and media and blah, blah, blah, that doesn't matter to the success, what matters is product and happy customers. So I would say as a founder, as a parent and the founder, it forces you to identify the 1% versus the 90%. And I think, you know, the key message or advice I always give is like, yes, it's a positive thing, but it's so mildly positive, and just don't bother doing it. Now against don't bother doing it ever. It's just don't bother doing it now.

Daniel Franco 1:13:35
Yeah, prioritize the I think I hear you loud and clear. And it's definitely, I think this is a learned skill, right? It's a learned skill to be able to get to the point of, of prioritization. And not only that, sometimes you are budget constraints, it's like, if I don't do it, then no one else will be able to do it. So you know, and this is the hence the reason, founders I believe, work, or like, the job just doesn't stop me. And even when you're sleeping, you're thinking you're dreaming about what needs to be done. I am conscious of time, and I just want to sort of ask a couple questions in regards to Blackboard burden. And you know, you've got this really, really amazing view of becoming one of the biggest VC funds in the world which you know, kudos and I hope absolutely gonna watch with, with with, with some passion in my eyes and hope that you guys get there. Does that. Does that mean that you're because primarily you invest in Australia and New Zealand companies? Does that mean that you're going to look elsewhere? Or are you going to try to stick with that and really try to grow the Australian landscape further.

Niki Scevak 1:14:47
It's, it's growing the landscape and creating this wonderful environment in Australia, New Zealand to produce these generational companies and these sort of wonderful success stories. Is think people, it sounds like an unlikely statement? How could we build the world's best VC firm from Australia and New Zealand? But it's not unlikely, from the point of view of where do so venture capital is all about generational companies, these outliers that account for the majority of returns? And where do those outlier companies come from? Well, they used to come from Silicon Valley, but they don't now they do not come from Silicon Valley. If you look at the sort of 100 billion dollar type companies, Spotify, from Sweden, Shopify, from Canada, Atlassian, from Australia, they come from outside of Silicon Valley outside of America. And so could we, sort of, with the Olympic Olympic analogy, create more gold medal winning companies? Can Australia, New Zealand rise up the gold medal winning counts of the business Olympics, and I think, focusing on creating this environment, focusing on creating better ecosystems and better communities and better landscapes, we have a chance of doing that if the Australian and New Zealand win more gold medals, then, by definition, Blackbird will be the best venture capital firm, if we're able to, again, partner with those generational companies right from the beginning. So I think that's the pathway to becoming the best of the world is through, you know, the gold medal winning companies of Australia and New Zealand?

Daniel Franco 1:16:22
How do you find this talent? Or do they come knocking on your door?

Niki Scevak 1:16:28
Yes, and yes, but that is the challenge of the business. And I think as the ecosystem succeed, in the beginning, we could meet 100 people a year, and meet the whole ecosystem, now we need to meet, you know, 1000 people a year. And soon we'll need to meet 10,000 people a year. So that's the, that's the challenge for growing Blackbird, and creating the programs and products and team and so on to enable us to meet every single founder right at the beginning, and to make a good decision as to whether to invest in the very first round of capital, or not. So that that's the interesting business challenge. That's the thing that will change. This year versus a decade ago. That's the thing that's going to change a decade from now, versus what it is today. And so that's that's what keeps me coming to work every day in solving that challenge. And, and being ultra competitive as to BlackBerry being an investor in every single one of those new generational companies. Is, is, is the thrill of the chase.

Daniel Franco 1:17:33
Yeah. So purpose aside, right. And I know that you're passionate about growing the state of of startup and growth and count of companies in Australia and New Zealand, you've obviously had some really great investments with the canvas and the culture and the safety cultures and all the above. Not to mention, you know, many other successful businesses that you've invested in also. But with those three, you've probably earning a pretty good quit on the side, right? Like, is there any reason like you just not sort of putting your feet up on the table that right now and going Yep, I've made some good decisions, and I'm gonna go and read my books every single day.

Niki Scevak 1:18:12
I don't think that's the satisfaction. I think the the adrenaline comes from the change in the scoreboard, not the scoreboard. And I think, like, the satisfaction of the job comes from seeing people go from nobody to somebody, you know, the seeing the companies go from nothing to something. And watching those stories unfold, watching the founders of those companies grow into great leaders, watching people start their careers at Blackbird and to develop within the team and within Blackbird. Those are the joys of the the business and the satisfaction of the job, rather than specific endpoint or specific dollars or whatever, whatever. I think it's the seeing people succeed as just just like as, as, as a parent, the, the joy of it is the pride you see in the in their development in their own journeys and their own unique a sort of successes and who they become. I think that's the that's the joy of the investment businesses.

Daniel Franco 1:19:21
Yeah, it's the opportunity to give right give back and

Niki Scevak 1:19:25
not even, just to be so proud to be able to, to watch them succeed. It's it's, it's just the best.

Daniel Franco 1:19:31
Yeah. I'm gonna ask probably what is might be perceived as a naive question, but I'm gonna ask you the original investment into Canva Canva, for example, was 250,000. Right? And you've seen that grow and that obviously that and then obviously, you go back, you reinvest your investor in this. Obviously, a company like Canva right now is at a point where it can generate the income that it needs is Am I correct in saying that because I know that you're They're still looking at investing or read somewhere recently invested another 200 million and and why do they need more investment if they're so successful, I don't, I'm not the I'm not, I can't join the dots there.

Niki Scevak 1:20:13
They don't need, they might want. There's that difference. So I think as a company succeeds from a don't need capital point of view, there's still a function around, you know, there's a role of secondary, you know, most of the stock market is basically, someone buying shares from someone else, it's not going to the company, and going through the company's needs in terms of the balance sheet. So there's obviously, that function, as a company matures, there's also the current version of the company. But you might want to acquire other companies Canvas quite successfully acquired a number of different businesses. And that's another reason to add capital to the balance sheet, just so that you can acquire other like minded and adjacent businesses to help you achieve again, that ever expanding product roadmap, and so on, sometimes you want to, just because you can be profitable doesn't mean you, you will be broke, like you don't want to be profitable. In terms of, maybe there's a unique time in history, where there's just a chance to grasp an opportunity or to take advantage of a situation where fine, you know, be lost making this year and you know, a couple 100 million, whatever it might be. But again, if you don't do that, and it's a one off event, then you're profitable the next year. So it's it's less of a it's sort of like there's there's two, I would say motivators, or two sort of reasons. In the beginning, people negatively motivated, they're like, Oh, my God, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, you need to raise capital not to die. But once it's clear that you've created something special, that you've tapped into a sort of vein of opportunity, then you have to be positively motivated, you have to be motivated by I want to, I want to make as much the biggest impact as possible, I want to grasp the full opportunity, I want to become the grandest version of this sort of vision. And so I think, you know, Canvas way past the Oh, no, I need to raise capital, because I might, I'm afraid of dying. And as in Canva, more than any, I would say this three generational companies to come from Australia so far. Atlassian, after paying Canva Canva, out of those three has the most chance to reach the levels of a Apple or Microsoft or a Google where you have, you know, a billion people plus using the platform to create a truly, truly special company that has this worldwide impact and has this incredible, you know, horizontal market opportunity of design is ingrained in every piece of communication in every facet of people's working lives. And so I think it's not a it's certainly not likely, but it has the most chance of reaching that level of kind of business stardom, and I think that's for Canva. The dream is to be on, on that level of impact and on that level of achievement. And there's plenty of reasons to use capital to help you get to that end destination.

Daniel Franco 1:23:32
Yeah, absolutely. Last question, before we jump into, or actually second the last question before we jump into the quickfire questions to round off the podcast. What? Paint a picture for us if you can. So thinking of the Australian startup scene intentive, 20 years time? What does it look like? Is it is it across Australia? Or is it like a Silicon Valley in one area? What does it look like for you in your, in your eyes?

Niki Scevak 1:24:04
I think it's more the impact of the majority of all Australians Australia's most valuable companies are technology companies, those Lighthouse companies have played a role in whether it's the founders investing or the employees of those companies, starting new companies or joining new fresh startups that are the heroes of the next generation. This sort of Lighthouse produces more lighthouses and the next generation and in 10 or 20 years, we'll have the chance for, you know, three or four of those waves. So you might have sort of three to five Lighthouse companies now but you in 10 or 20 years, you might have 30 to 50 Lighthouse companies and you might have millions of people working in technology, startups and technology companies you might have. I think Australia as a destination of people, building companies and joining great Startups, like hundreds of people have moved their lives from all around the world to Australia to work for Canberra. And I think, you know, if you multiply that by 1000, that means that, you know, there's a million or 2 million new Australian folks who have who've moved of the smartest people in the world who have moved their lives, to live in Australia, and to help those those companies, the vision come true. And so to me, it's at a much more massive scale, tend to even 100x. It's all the companies. It's not banks and mining companies, it's all technology companies that are the dominant sort of leaders of our business community. And that that will be the version of success.

Daniel Franco 1:25:44
So I'm, I'm going to check in another question there, because it's brought this up in my head is if I am an investor, how do I get involved? If I if that's what the landscape is going to look like, then I'm gonna want to invest some way shape or form what do I need to do?

Niki Scevak 1:25:59
Yeah, well, in many ways, you are or the listeners are in terms of the major source of capital for all Australian venture capital is industry superannuation funds, which is the millions of Australians retirement savings and obviously a small portion going into the system to nurture the whole ecosystem. So I would hazard a hazard positive guess that everyone is already exposed to do it in a in obviously a smaller way. I think if you're with someone like hostplus, is a particular pioneer of investing in many different venture capital firms in Australia, and has played such a leadership role in the industry. And now a whole host of other funds, joining in support and again, from Ozzy super tall, were super to Hester to all of these industry, super funds have nurtured the Australian venture capital industry. So I would say by default, everyone probably has exposure. Yeah, in terms of more exposure. And, you know, I think soon these companies will go public. And just like, sort of these generational companies, going public is the beginning, not the end, for many companies. Going public is the end and they don't succeed. But for those very special generation, company generation companies, the IPO is the beginning rather than you want to own Canva. And it's second and third decade, as much as you want to own it in its first decade. And so I think people will be given the chance to, for those generational companies, I think it was sad that afterpay disappeared from the the public markets from a, you know, 10 or 20 year point of view, I can understand the one year point of view of selling when the times are good, but from a 10 or 20 year point of view, I think it's a sad fact that they sold and then in terms of adventure, it's tough because of the the view of the government, that a sophisticated investor equals a rich person, which having known and got to know a lot of rich people, I can say that there is zero correlation between sophisticated person and rich person. There is no concept of demonstrating knowledge of or demonstrating your sophistication being the determinant, it's sort of, Can Can You Do you have enough money to lose basically, from a regulatory point of view? And so I think, instead of and also, financial education, in general is like, so horrible. It's like, you know, why? Why don't all of these sort of schemes that, you know, take, lose all this money in this horrible way? Why do they keep happening, and it's not? Like, you're always going to have the sort of scoundrels of the world, forming them. But the, the vaccination against them is education. It's like, what, like when you hear about these stories of like, I am a retiree, and I put 100% of my life savings into some crypto company or some, you know, dunk Island, in real estate investment, it's like that, that is sad. But it is also just sad, that that's that person made the decision to invest 100% of their wealth in something that was clearly you know, a scam investment or whatever you want to call it. And so I think, to me, it's almost like that vein of education, everything we should move towards, around demonstrating financial, it's not financial literacy. It's almost like financial psychology, psychology and more people know about that more people can demonstrate that make, you know, the sophistication test on whether you are six is sophisticated rather than sophistication test on whether you have money or not. So unfortunately, you know, I'm the venture capital funds can only accept money from this wholesale investor definition. Which again, I feel uneasy about because it doesn't seem to allow everyone to get a healthy sort of participation from the from the beginning.

Daniel Franco 1:30:20
Yeah, yep. It's targeted towards certain certain issues the rich get richer is.

Niki Scevak 1:30:28
Yeah, although, as I said, the vast majority of capital is funded that yeah, ultimately, is every single Australian going good. You know, it is, you know, by dollar value it is that so that that that is, that is heartening.

Daniel Franco 1:30:45
Last question, before we jump into the quickfire, what does the future look like for you, Nikki? What are you? Yeah, I

Niki Scevak 1:30:52
think we sort of pasted the vision of Australia and New Zealand and those gold medal winning companies and so on that, that's that's the dream.

Daniel Franco 1:31:01
That's where you want to be. I love it. Okay, quickfire questions. These are quite random. So, and we can elaborate as much as we want to honor him. But first and foremost, I know you're a big reader. What are you reading right now?

Niki Scevak 1:31:18
There is, what am I reading right now? I'm reading like 100 Different substack newsletters, I've sort of discovered a bunch of interesting writers through that. And there's one actually, I think, insecurity analysis is what it's called, is written by a German guy in the finance industry. And he's sort of taken this kind of historical view of mapping out the investment careers of these icons like Stanley Druckenmiller. And I particularly as soon as I say that in my inbox, you know, gravitate towards to reading it, so I would recommend that one. So who

Daniel Franco 1:31:57
was that? So what was that? Again?

Niki Scevak 1:31:58
I think it's called insecurity, analysis,

Daniel Franco 1:32:00
insecurity analysis. All right, we'll put it in the show notes beautiful. Outside of Charlie Munger is poor Charlie's Almanac, what is one book that you just feel stands out from the crowd in in regards to in regards to founders and startups? Or What books should they look at reading? Or what's one book that you've gifted the most outsider portrayal is because we know that we've plugged in a few times the

Niki Scevak 1:32:28
single work, defining work on startup investing and how venture capital works is zero to one by Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, you can comment on all of his personal views and so on. And he is an iconic mind and I think has contributed the most to understanding the psychology and the dynamics and the the sort of important qualities of how, again, almost applying that what makes a high quality business from a Buffett Munger point of view to, to to startup technology company point of view. So zero to one is probably my second most gifted book.

Daniel Franco 1:33:15
Yeah. Brilliant book. Brilliant, but it was one of the first ever books I got on my Kindle. Actually, when I get what. What about podcasts? Is there any other podcasts that you listen to that you feel other than this one? Of course, I mean, is there any other podcasts you listen to?

Niki Scevak 1:33:32
This one, I would say is in invest, like the best is sort of the best investment podcast I've come across, and I just absolutely love it. And as a sort of more recent, sort of riser, there's the all in podcast with Jason Calacanis and David Sachs and Chamath. And you get these great guests like Brad Gerstner. And Bill Gurley, and I've been enjoying that one lately as well would be, but but in terms of longevity and absolute favorite over many, many years, invest like the best.

Daniel Franco 1:34:09
That's one of the best. Check it out. What's one lesson that's taking you the longest to learn?

Niki Scevak 1:34:23
The longest to learn. I immediately sort of thought of the hungry, not the proven. It's this this sort of worldview as to how things work and the university version of it and just it's not how the world works. And the change comes from outsiders and insiders, the change comes from unlikely and unqualified in inverted commas people and I think that that is the lesson that is hammered home every single day for me.

Daniel Franco 1:34:51
Yeah, yeah, brilliant. I do love that. If you could invite three people for dinner, who would they be? And when Going

Niki Scevak 1:35:00
back to the books. Yep. Charlie Munger, Peter Thiel and Benjamin Franklin.

Daniel Franco 1:35:08
Oh, Benjamin Franklin.

Niki Scevak 1:35:10
It's such an interesting lesson.

Daniel Franco 1:35:11
Yeah, he was. I think I've got his book up there. I'm trying to look in one thing. Yeah. One of his actually events. No, not actually is actually there is no. Oh, who wrote Steve Jobs book? Uh, yeah. Walter Walter Isaacson. So yeah, so he wrote the book on Benjamin Franklin. Absolutely. Ripa. Ashley Vance was Elon Musk. Sorry, I went off.

Niki Scevak 1:35:34
Actually any anyone who Walter I think Walter Isaacson is writing a book about Elon Musk. Is he at the moment? Any anyone that Walter Isaacson writes a book about I would love to have dinner with

Daniel Franco 1:35:46
ya, Leonardo DiCaprio, there's there's been a Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. Yeah, I think there's an Einstein one I can see in the background as well. I've got all of his books, I love it. What's some of the best advice that you've ever received?

Niki Scevak 1:36:07
Just do it. Like, I think people tend to overthink things and be put off by the embarrassment of it not working or or, or the fear of it not being perfect. And I think just just do it often is the, you know, best. Best advice?

Daniel Franco 1:36:25
Yeah. Brilliant. If you had access to a time machine, where would you go?

Niki Scevak 1:36:34
I think the future not the past, I think the future is the world is getting better. With with time. And it's just remarkable. Again, sort of like the standard of living of every single person in the world and wherever they are, is probably 99% better, like 99% more likely to be better than all of the most, you know, decorated and wealthy and whatever people 500 years ago, so yeah, the world's getting better. So naturally,

Daniel Franco 1:37:04
into your in your in the investing game, right? If you're not going forward, there's a problem. Exactly. We've all seen Back to the Future in the almanac. You want to go pick the winners and then bring it back. And

Niki Scevak 1:37:18
Hollywood always has a dystopian vision of the future. I'm much more optimistic.

Daniel Franco 1:37:22
That is true. That is true. If your house was on fire, and your family and pets were all saved, and well, what is one, the one item that you would run back and grab?

Niki Scevak 1:37:37
I think it's my phone. Actually. It's not even it doesn't even matter anymore. Like I used to worry so much about losing photos, and, and so on. But now, you know, you don't have that anxiety with the cloud or anything like that. So no anxiety. I don't think I'd even need to run

Daniel Franco 1:37:55
back. The family safe. That's all I care about. If you had one superhero power, what would it be?

Niki Scevak 1:38:04
Hmm, I don't know. Calmness. Chaos.

Daniel Franco 1:38:13
Very good. Very good. I like that. Calmness comes from experience. And last question, my favorite is my favorite one of all. And we should say you should prepare for this one. What's your best dad joke?

Niki Scevak 1:38:29
I still don't have one. I know you said to prepare for it. I've been racking my brain and I'm sorry. I still can't think of one

Daniel Franco 1:38:37
Ah, no, we're gonna have to miss it. That's not not a problem at all. Thank you so much for your time today. And thank you. And thank you very much for just your contribution and where you are going in what you're doing in the Australian startup saying it's very, very exciting, you're giving life to companies that might not have otherwise had it so and being able to sit back and watch and grow must be very, very fulfilling and and I think from from the rest of us, thank you because it's going to really change the landscape of where we are from an Australian point of view in comparison to the next rest of the world and create jobs and do all the all the great stuff that can really, really grow the future and prosperity and, and help Australia flourish. So thank you to you and the team at Blackbaud. Thank

Niki Scevak 1:39:27
you and just getting started. Excellent. Sounds great.

Daniel Franco 1:39:32
Alright guys, take care. We'll catch you next time. Thanks again. Thanks for listening to the podcast or you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergy iq.com.au I am going to ask though, if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, rate and review. And if you didn't like it, that's alright too. There's no need to do anything. Take care guys. All the best

Synergy IQ 1:40:00
Thank you once again for joining us here at creating synergy. It's been great spending this time with you. Please jump on to the synergy IQ Facebook and LinkedIn page where the discussion continues after the show. Join our mailing list so you'll know what's happening next at Synergy iq.com.au And of course, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, please share it with your friends.