Episode Summary:
Zrinka Tokic is the director of ThincLab, the University of Adelaide’s business incubator that has its headquarters in Adelaide but also has locations in Singapore and New Zealand. Zrinka is also director of the Australian eChallenge, a pre-accelerator program which aims to take a startup from initial idea to market ready or incubator ready. In her conversation with Adam, Zrinka discusses how her previous experience working as an interior designer helped give her an appreciation for design thinking, and how important the emergence of modern cloud tools have been for enabling startups to grow quickly.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Day One Podcast
00:31 Meet Zrinka Tokic
01:05 Overview of the eChallenge Program
01:55 Zrinka's First Exposure to the Australian Startup Ecosystem
02:47 Lessons from Interior Design Background
03:39 Growth and Impact of the eChallenge Program
05:38 Design Thinking Takeaways from Stanford
06:35 Evolution of the Entrepreneurship Center
07:00 ThincLab's Role in Supporting Students
08:41 Challenges of Running Multiple Locations
09:22 Rewarding Aspects of Launching New Locations
10:10 Development of the Startup Community
11:56 Mapping the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
13:28 Addressing Silos in the Startup Community
14:04 Current Gaps in Early Stage Funding
16:50 Advice for New Founders
17:30 Observations on the Startup Ecosystem
18:21 Tools Changing the Startup Landscape
19:50 Remaining Roadblocks in the Ecosystem
21:01 Message for the Startup Community and Government
22:21 Closing Remarks
