Hi and Welcome to Day One, the podcast for regional startups & the organisations that support Australian entrepreneurship. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle.

Today I’d like to share the story of a Newcastle startup that has been flying under the radar for some time. A local Newcastle startup that has customers internationally. That startup is Coassemble and its co-founder, Ryan MacPherson.

Coassemble is a service that helps businesses create their own interactive online courses which can be used to educate their teams or their customers. They are a global company with staff in Denver, Wisconsin, LA, Canada, and Newcastle. They are backed by venture capital, and their latest series A raise was four and a half million dollars. So how did Ryan go from being a PE teacher to CEO of a   global, multi-million dollar company overseeing thirty plus staff? To answer that question, first, we need to go back to day one and hear the story of how a policy of the Kevin Rudd government would dramatically alter the course of Ryan’s career.