Adam Spencer: Hi, I'm Adam Spencer and welcome to day one, the podcast that spotlights Australian startups, founders, and the organizations that empower Australian entrepreneurship. We go back to the beginning to tell the story of Australia's most inspiring founders and how they built their companies. You're listening to a special interview series as part of a documentary W2D1 is producing about the history of the Australian startup ecosystem.

Adam Spencer: On the episode today, we have.

Julie Trell: I'm Julie Trell, an American woman on Gadigal land, Sydney, Australia. I came to Australia four years ago to help to take over from Annie Parker running MiroD, which was Telstra's accelerator. And while I came down here, I started, I helped bring a fund down here called SHEEO, which is a new way to get, move capital to, for, by with women and non binary entrepreneurs working on the world's to do lists.

Adam Spencer: What is your day made up of now, um, in terms of the split between, um, CEO, uh, playful purpose, and what else have you got going on?

Julie Trell: Since my role was made redundant at MiraD, I'm currently doing my own startup consulting playing called Playful Purpose where I work with founders and business people on how to do more play in the world in which they work, which is really about communication, collaboration, co creation and creating safe space.

Julie Trell: So I do that. ad hoc, as well as building up and growing the CEO network in across Australia. So we have over 500 women that have gotten involved and they're called activators, where they're activating their capital, buying power, expertise, and network. And the fund, it's a zero interest loan fund that gets loaned out to women led and non binary led ventures.

Julie Trell: So we have well, close to 800, 000 in this fund that's going in and out.

Adam Spencer: So I know you were involved in setting SheYo up in the, in the States, was it? Or was it in Canada?

Julie Trell: So Vicky Saunders, who's the founder, she started it in Canada and I just loved how she was disrupting and wanting, disrupting this investing world and getting capital to women and changing minds, the mindset of companies and ventures and.

Julie Trell: Uh, solutions that we should be investing in. So I just loved how she was doing things differently, and I just wanted to get on board and help her with this new way of, of thinking, a new way of business, new way of investing, and I helped launch it in the U. S., and having that experience, and then the opportunity to come down to Australia.

Julie Trell: I said, I'm going to bring it down to Australia.

Adam Spencer: Did you move to Australia with the intention of bringing CEO here or?

Julie Trell: Uh, when I got the job offer to work with MiroD, I said, and I saw my predecessor, what Annie Parker had done, launching CodeClub, if she was going to be able to do this venture on the side, I wanted to bring this down to Australia.

Julie Trell: The other reason was New Zealand had already launched CEO. So I figured let's be collaborative antipodeans and, um,

Adam Spencer: When did you first get involved in the Australian startup ecosystem? What year was it? When did you come here?

Julie Trell: I came down in 2017, so the ecosystem was already well on its way. However, it was well behind where I was coming from in the Silicon Valley US ecosystem.

Adam Spencer: From your perspective, what is the major difference?

Julie Trell: Well, it's a smaller market for one. Um, my, so my history was I had met Mark Benioff in 1998 and he knew he wanted to start a company that was going to sell software over the web, which was crazy back then. We were still getting, you know, AOL on CDs. And he also knew he wanted to bridge the digital divide, which I was a teacher back then.

Julie Trell: And I said to him, if you're going to deal with kids and technology, you need to hire teachers. Don't just be a company that gives away money. So in 2000, I moved out from Atlanta to San Francisco to help start the Salesforce foundation in this new startup world. There are a hundred employees at the company.

Julie Trell: And I just grew up then the next 12 years on thinking big and taking chances and taking, making, taking risks and not being afraid and having a leader that was so visionary. Where was a really safe space when I got to Australia, there was a lot more fear and there was a lot more aversion to risk. And so I found that to be a big difference.

Julie Trell: And as well as the, the investment landscape of VCs being a lot. Having that fear as well, um, with really challenging, uh, terms a lot of the times with the investing in the startups, which constrained the startups on really thinking big, taking risks and trying big things.

Adam Spencer: From what you've seen over the last three, what, three or four years, what do you think the Australian ecosystem does really well?

Julie Trell: I think they're learning and growing and listening to one another. A lot of times when I would take the field trip from Australia to San Francisco, they saw how the ecosystem up there was very collaborative, supportive, willing to introduce a network. And then I found when the founders, with the companies that I was with, when they would come back, they were inspired, they took what they learned, and they were ready to apply it.

Julie Trell: So I do think that there is, once they see and experience what, what is possible, they're willing to take those risks.

Adam Spencer: What do we have to do to get it to 50 50 in terms of, you know, equality in startup land?

Julie Trell: Okay, so what do we need to do? We need to have more diverse people that are making the investments, that are making the decisions.

Julie Trell: We need to have it. It's not just women. There's also, um, like indigenous. We need to have more inclusive people that are making the decisions that are writing the checks. And a lot of the work that I'm doing now with playful purpose and the concept, what I call the other AI applied improv is listening to the differences and accepting different gifts and as, as offerings as what the, the, the solutions to problems that we have and not continually.

Julie Trell: Continuously doing it the same way we've been doing it. The systems that have been set up are set up by the people who set up those systems. And so we need to take a step back and it's not a zero sum game and organizations like SHEEO are Helping to move the capital the right to in different ways in new ways that where it's inclusive Where everyone can make decisions.

Adam Spencer: What drives this passion that you have for making these opportunities available to everybody?

Julie Trell: I just, the disruptiveness, trying things new, and I'm going to throw out the word innovation, because again, the systems that have been set up, have been set up by the people who set them up, and they're not supportive or they're not inclusive of the, the women that are solving problems that might not be the next unicorn, but they're solving problems in the community that are making the world a better place, not necessarily the bank account bigger.

Julie Trell: Part of the process of getting funding, standing in front of a table of five experts and pitching your idea, where there's such a hierarchy and a status of the founder who's down there and the investors that have, that write the checks, where it needs to be more democratized, which is one of the ways what CEO does is the women that are, have contributed their capital, the activators, get to select companies that they want to invest in, that they want to see to get this, this funding.

Julie Trell: And we come down to five and it's a very democratic process. Um, the process of applying in and of itself is 10 questions right? Like you speak to someone, the people that are reviewing it are everyday non investors and making those selections.

Adam Spencer: Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about CEO and that process of, of getting an activator on board?

Adam Spencer: Um, is there, what is there something in particular that you look for?

Julie Trell: You all, anyone can be an, any woman, any person identifying as a woman or non binary can become an activator. And so they contribute 1, 100 or 92 a month. And then so they submit that, so there, that's how the fund is made. And then ventures who are applying need to be women or non binary entrepreneur.

Julie Trell: 51 percent of the company needs to be owned by women or non binary. And they need to have a minimum of 50k up to 2 million dollars in revenue from a product in market. The way the process goes, so we have hundreds of women applying and they fill out these ten very simple questions. The activators then review the questions and they decide, yep, send this person, send this venture to the next round or no, and they can add feedback to it.

Julie Trell: Once they go through the second round and five ventures are selected, the ventures, the founders of those ventures go on to a retreat, they get coaching, they get to know one another, they get to learn about each other's businesses, and then they decide how the funding is divided. And there's two rules. It can't be divided evenly and it can't all go to one person.

Julie Trell: Now, remember it's a zero interest loan. So you take what you need and it's over five years, zero interest, and the venture founders really then become exceptionally collaborative and making sure that everyone in that cohort is, is successful.

Adam Spencer: Does any other model like this exist?

Julie Trell: No.

Adam Spencer: How was it developed?

Adam Spencer: Cause it's so unique. How did someone come up with this?

Julie Trell: Yeah, so this is Vicki Saunders. Vicki was very, was seeing what was happening where women were pitching to investors and looking for unicorns. And they have to be these unicorns and making sure there's a 10x return. When she felt and she saw these ventures that were solving the world problems and making, making a difference in community where it was both a social impact as well as a financial return on investment.

Julie Trell: And she wanted to make it so That it was fair and it's a lot of these practices have to do with indigenous history and culture

Adam Spencer: Can you take me back to day one in terms of how you got involved with she? I don't think we touched on that yet

Julie Trell: It was I actually met one of the ventures that was I was in a program called think one of the ventures Founder says you can't tell anyone this is a secret surprise that we just got selected as one of the ventures and she shared how She was saying it's this new model where we were selected We get to divide the money and we're really excited and oh my god I have thousands of women that are backing me in not just finances But in support and just so meeting one of the ventures seeing how how How they, the network and it's, it wasn't just about capital.

Julie Trell: It's not just about capital was being supported. And, and it was just completely new model where they, I see. And I also see with the ventures, there's less stress in there. They know that they can reach out. They know they can be vulnerable and be authentic and say, I'm having trouble here. The pandemic has just wiped out all of my funding.

Julie Trell: And there's other women that will literally roll up their sleeves and it's like, Here's a loan or here's some, I want to take equity in your company. Here's, here's an investment. And it's just a very new break the rules kind of model. I think the reason, the other reason I like it is I like to color outside lines and this is, there's, there's a new structure and we're figuring out how this works.

Julie Trell: They're still throwing spaghetti and seeing what works, but I'm also seeing it's this incredible. Community and it's funny some of the women who are in it. They're like, this is a women's network for women who don't like the women's networks

Adam Spencer: Can you tell me a little bit about your opinion of corporate accelerators are they important where do they fit into the ecosystem

Julie Trell: I think corporate accelerators have a lot of potential with the right backing and visionary people in the company for what they, what they can do.

Julie Trell: So when MiraD was started with, with Annie Parker, it was, really wanted to grow and infuse the startup ecosystem. Cause I don't think there were many accelerators back then. And their mission and their vision was to find, tech companies to help them be successful. Now, these tech companies did not have to be, have anything to do with telecoms or Telstra, and that was intentional.

Julie Trell: So at the start, and I think that was fun. That was great. Creating a new sandbox, all this play, um, long term given where we are now, it was really challenging. And so with the right visionaries at the corporates, with the right understanding of how it's mutually beneficial for founders, ventures. The corporate, the corporate's customers and the ecosystem.

Julie Trell: That's the triple home run.

Adam Spencer: Hmm. What year did Mirror D start in Australia?

Julie Trell: 2014, I believe.

Adam Spencer: And when you say challenges, what kind of challenges are we talking about?

Julie Trell: Telstra was making a lot of cuts. Um, corporate accelerators are cost centers and It's also a long tail game where you're not going to see the return on investment.

Julie Trell: So Telstra did make financial investments in the In the startups, which may, which added another layer of complexity, um, that return on financial investment. That's not why you go into making these accelerators. It needed to hit a lot of other points such as how can customers use them? How can the company benefit, which, um, wasn't the intention set up at the beginning, which was a great learning curve.

Adam Spencer: Yeah, I'm jumping all over a little bit right now because I want to go back to you, you know, you said you met one of the ventures, um, for CEO and that's how you got involved. What happened then? Did you like reach out to the leadership team at CEO and say, hey, I've got this experience. I really want to help or how did that happen?

Julie Trell: Yeah, so it's a lot of, my life has been a lot of serendipity. It was I actually happened to run into Vicki Saunders or I had met her a year prior and I Caught up with her again with some other ideas that I wanted to create and it just you know I was went into her to talk about one thing and then here I got sucked into Helping follow be a follower which in a sense is a leader for a CEO for what she was doing You know I So it's, it was, there's a lot of serendipity.

Julie Trell: Serendipity, how I got down here, I say that I was, how did I get down here for this role was serendipity, flip flops, and a love letter to Mary Poppins.

Adam Spencer: What the heck?

Julie Trell: Yeah, what the heck? What the heck? So, uh, serendipity, flip flops, and a love letter to Mary Poppins. My predecessor, Annie Parker, wrote the job description was, the title was, looking for someone to fill my flip flops.

Julie Trell: She wore flip flops everywhere. She's English, so that's why she calls them flip flops and not thongs. Had it been a title, looking for someone to fill my thongs, very different outcome. So, um, I thought, oh, this is really interesting. And she was told that to write a love letter to the next person she wanted to fill her role.

Julie Trell: And this role was very, was, the job description was very authentic and heart centric. Looking for someone that has a gravitas to work for corporates. Someone that's more concerned about the success of others and their own personal gain. Someone that knows the startup ecosystem, like, This is really interesting.

Julie Trell: I want to have this conversation. And then when I got to Australia and I read the, the Telstra job description, it was very, very different. So kind of like when the kids were writing the, the letter of who they wanted for Mary Poppins, when Jane and Michael wanted their nanny, they wanted Mary Poppins and Mr.

Julie Trell: Banks wrote something very different. Um, so language and purpose has a lot to do in this ecosystem. That's what I'm talking about is changing that mindset, the behavior of how things have been done to making them

Adam Spencer: This is a question that I ask everybody. If a brand new founder come to you and you could give them one piece of advice that would increase their chances of success, what would you tell them?

Julie Trell: Well, without hearing what the problem is or the challenge is or what they're trying to solve, I would say play more.

Julie Trell: Exercise your growth mindset. Have fun.

Adam Spencer: Okay. That's a great answer. Is there anything else, um, anything that I've missed that's important to either the CEO story, the playful purpose story, the murid story, anything that should be included in the series that I haven't asked about?

Julie Trell: Well, I mean, you mentioned CEO is, is really changing the way capital flows.

Julie Trell: And giving women and non binary entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs a chance to change the world in how business is done and where, where we're going. Um, who should be funded. So they're, they're focused on the CEO ventures are all somehow self defined, focused on the sustainable development goals. We say they're working on the world's to do list.

Adam Spencer: Yeah. I love that line. We've come a long way over the last three years. How do we get to that 50, 50 mark?

Julie Trell: Yeah, I think we need to start letting others step into roles that we're not. That they might not think they were in. So here's a story. Also, I was very hesitant to take the interview with Annie because I had this voice in my head and people will hear me talk about her name is Beatrice, my imposter voice that said, who are you to run an accelerator?

Julie Trell: You've never been in a start. You've never been a founder yourself. I was early days at Salesforce. That was my early, that was my. Um, startup world and you know, what do you know about Telstra in Australia? And so I went to sleep, but I had dreamt about living down here. And then I remembered the Harvard, there's a Harvard Business Review article about how men will accept jobs where they have two of the ten qualification and women need to have at least eight or nine.

Julie Trell: And so I said, I'm going to continue this conversation. I'm going to still want to, I'm going to have a conversation, see what, what happens. And I'm going to trust myself and believe in myself and listen to what other people say about me, at least to my face, accepting these, these, the, that I am capable.

Julie Trell: And I think we need to start championing others and be champions of people where we see that have the capability. One of the tenants. Of, of improv, which I call the other AI and playful purpose. So one of the tenants is make others look and feel good. And if we continue to do that and encourage others to take roles that they may not think that they're right for, but we see something in them.

Julie Trell: Let's do it. So making others look and feel good is the next pandemic that I want to start no vaccine required.

Adam Spencer: Again, another great line.

Julie Trell: I'm giving you soundbites left and right. Yeah,

Adam Spencer: exactly. That's fantastic. I hope you enjoyed that interview. More interviews are on the way. Follow the podcast wherever you're listening right now.

Adam Spencer: Stay tuned for more interviews with many, many more amazing people from the Australian startup ecosystem. Thanks for listening and see you next time.