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Welcome to Day One with Adam Spencer

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Welcome to Day One with Adam Spencer

Let's go back to day one, where this story begins...

About the show

The podcast for Aussie founders, startups and organisations that support Australian entrepreneurship.

"I've never seen someone pull together audio clips with this level of clarity and logic, it really is top-notch work." - Murray Hurps, Director of Entrepreneurship at UTS

Hosted by Adam Spencer

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Damien Mahoney from Stackla

Latest episode24 May 2021

Damien Mahoney is the CEO of Stackla, a global company with dozens of employees and offices in the US and UK. Many of its clients are household names: McDonald's, Nintendo, Toyota, and Sony, just to name a few. In recent years the company has worked through the pandemic, which hit many of its key clients, and a legal dispute with Facebook. Before we hear how Stackla came through those years, we go back to day one, to the story of how a part-time job in radio that was too good to pass up would ultimately lead Damien to become the CEO of a global technology startup. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle and Newihub, a growing and vibrant community of Newcastle's startups & founders.

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21 episodes

24 May 2021Damien Mahoney

Damien Mahoney from Stackla

Damien Mahoney is the CEO of Stackla, a global company with dozens of employees and offices in the US and UK. Many of its clients are household names: McDonald's, Nintendo, Toyota, and Sony, just to name a few. In recent years the company has worked through the pandemic, which hit many of its key clients, and a legal dispute with Facebook. Before we hear how Stackla came through those years, we go back to day one, to the story of how a part-time job in radio that was too good to pass up would ultimately lead Damien to become the CEO of a global technology startup. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle and Newihub, a growing and vibrant community of Newcastle's startups & founders.

16 May 2021Antony Martin

Antony Martin from Hone

Antony Martin is the co-founder of Hone. At the time of recording, Hone had 13 full-time team members and a small team of casuals who come and go with big projects, with customers all around the world, and was scaling up manufacturing of its device ahead of its first large runs in 2021. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle’s innovation platform, Newihub, a growing and vibrant community of Newcastle’s startups & founders. Now, let’s go back to day one, where this story begins…

2 May 2021Mike McKiernan

Mike McKiernan from Deckee

This is the story of Mike McKiernan and Deckee, a free mobile app designed to provide up to date information to people out on the water when boating, fishing or sailing in order to keep them safe. At the time of recording, Deckee was approaching a million dollars raised through investors and was officially endorsed by three state governments in Australia. The app is also available worldwide, and international expansion was one of the priorities for the company. How did Mike go from studying visual communications at Newcastle University to becoming an investor-backed entrepreneur overseeing a team of employees and scaling a tech company internationally? To answer that question, we go back to day one, and hear how a job Mike got as a student would reveal a whole set of problems he didn’t even know existed. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle and Newihub, a growing and vibrant community of Newcastle’s startups & founders.

25 April 2021Colin Goudie

Colin Goudie from Social Pinpoint

Colin Goudie is the co-founder of Social Pinpoint, a software as a service platform aimed at the community engagement space. Most of its clients are councils and large infrastructure projects that needed to create a place for the community to collaborate with them. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle’s innovation platform, Newihub. Now, let’s go back to day one, where this story begins…

18 April 2021Ryan Macpherson

Ryan MacPherson from Coassemble

Coassemble is a Newcastle startup with customers internationally, and Ryan MacPherson is its co-founder. Coassemble is a service that helps businesses create their own interactive online courses which can be used to educate their teams or their customers. It is a global company with staff in Denver, Wisconsin, LA, Canada, and Newcastle, backed by venture capital, with a latest series A raise of four and a half million dollars. 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, we 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. Welcome to Day One is brought to you by the City of Newcastle.

12 April 2021

Innovation in Newy

Today is a special episode titled Innovation in Newy, the goal of today's episode is to understand what innovation is and take a brief look at where Newcastle has come from and where it's heading.

31 January 2021Monica Zarafu

Monica Zarafu from BYKKO

Today you’re going to hear the story of BYKKO and it’s founder Monica Zarafu. Born in Romania, Monica moved to Australia in two thousand and ten. Motivated by a need to mitigate the threat of climate change, and seeing the mass adoption of bicycles in parts of Europe, Monica is aiming to do more than build a successful business. With the lofty ambition of reshaping the way we think about transport in Australia, Monica has been working hundred hour plus weeks to build BYKKO as a proof of concept, with the hopes that an electric bike sharing model could be adopted by governments and used as part of integrated public transport systems. But before we dig into the details of how Monica believes electric bike sharing can change transport in Australia, first we need to go back to day one, and learn about the research Monica undertook which ultimately led her to believe that, as she says, “bikes are the future”.

31 January 2021Naomi Findlay

Naomi Findlay the Renovation Queen

Today I’d like to share with you the story of Naomi Findlay. Naomi is a remarkably hard-working woman with a wide range of active projects, all of which aim to position her as Australia’s queen of property renovation and home styling. She has a digital video series, Renovie, hosted on Youtube with nearly two hundred episodes and approaching two thousand subscribers. She has a blog and hosts a weekly podcast, Reno Radio. She has appeared on TV shows including Channel 9’s Location Lifestyle Living and Channel 10’s The Home Team. She created an app, Rapid Reno Mate, designed to make home renovation a breeze. She has designed and runs courses and workshops to assist people in many facets of renovating, styling and selling their home. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! The list goes on and on. Perhaps even more remarkable is that creating beautiful spaces was not the first career path Naomi chose for herself. In fact, Naomi is Dr Naomi Findlay PhD, and in a previous life worked for around 15 years in radiation oncology in Australia and around the world. To learn why Dr Findlay would completely overhaul her career in pursuit of a new life, first, we need to go back to day one, and hear the story of how two conversations with two mentor figures spaced a decade apart would end up sending Naomi down two very different paths.

23 June 2020Melanie Mury

Melanie Mury from IMBY

Meet Melanie Mury from IMBY (In My Backyard). IMBY operates in the proptech space (Property Technology) and is working to consolidate the development application process or at least make it easier to navigate. Melanie started IMBY with Chris Mury. This isn’t just a story about a business venture, this is a life story, one that started and changed forever when Melanie was 18 years old and decided to head overseas. Let’s go back to day one where this story begins.

9 June 2020Linda Bergskås, Kara Armstrong

Linda Bergskas from Visionise with Kara Armstrong

Today you’re going to hear the story of Linda Bergskas and Visionise. Linda started Visionise, a full-service fashion branding service after she sold her own international fashion brand in search of a more balanced lifestyle. With such a successful career and a large network within the industry, Linda found herself constantly being asked for her expertise to help start and grow fashion brands.

12 January 2020Lauren Branson, Cara Cooper

Lauren & Cara from Your Food Collective

Today I’d like to share with you the story of Your Food Collective. Your Food Collective is serving over 1400 people since opening in 2017 at an 80% customer retention rate with a very good average order value. They have hubs all over Newcastle where you can collect your orders and catch up with your local champion and they’ve recently entered the Sydney market too. Your Food Collective is growing and bringing truly fresh food to everyone. Now, let’s go back to day one, where this story begins…

8 December 2019Liam Scanlan

Liam Scanlan from Eat Your Water

Today you’re going to hear the story of Eat Your Water featuring Liam Scanlan. Before we go back to the beginning, here’s where we are today, Liam has been named one of the top 50 people in e-commerce in the whole of Australia. In November 2019 alone over 100,000 people went through the Eat Your Water store and Eat Your Water has one of the lowest cost per purchases at 27 cents per purchase with an average order value of $56. Very impressive numbers and Liam is an impressive guy and is only 23 years old. Now, let’s go back to day one where this story begins…

24 November 2019Michael Batko

Startmate – Featuring Michael Batko

Today you’re going to hear the story of Startmate featuring the head of operations at Startmate, Michael Batko. Startmate is the leading tech accelerator in Australia and they take 10 to 15 companies and new stage founders in each cohort and help them from three to four months to get them to the next stage of their business. They look for just the most ambitious founders and then work with that talent. Startmate doesn’t necessarily specialise in a certain area or industry. Startmate just focuses on the most ambitious founders and work with them to create immense value. Let’s go back to day one, to a pub in Surry Hills where this story begins…

27 October 2019Alan Jones

Alan “The Nice One” Jones

Today you’re going to hear from Alan Jones – The Nice One. Alan Jones is a startup entrepreneur, a mentor to other startup founders, and an angel investor who is building a venture fund. Let’s meet Alan Jones.

12 August 2019Murray Hurps

Startup Muster – Featuring Murray Hurps & Maria MacNamara

Today you’ll hear the story of Startup Muster through its founder Murray Hurps. Startup Muster is a report that produces the most comprehensive data on the Australian startup ecosystem to measure and publish the progress, challenges, and opportunities within the startup ecosystem. Startup Muster is important because it makes the data available to help grow the Australian startup ecosystem. Let’s go back to day one, where this story begins…

29 July 2019Yolanda Surjan

Yolanda Surjan from Creatures & Co – formerly Radvet

Today you’re going to hear the story of Yolanda Surjan from RadVet. Dr Yolanda Surjan is a senior lecturer of Radiation Therapy at the University of Newcastle, she has a bachelor degree in Medical Radiation Technology, a graduate certificate in health promotion, a masters in health science education and a PhD. She has worked in Europe and North America and she has a total of 5 teaching awards and was awarded CSIRO’s Breakout Female Scientist of 2017 and is the founder of RadVet. RadVet has gone through CSIRO’s ON Accelerate program and is helping to treat cancer in animals through Yolanda’s research, we will talk about all of that and so much more, but for now, let’s go back to day one where this story begins…

30 June 2019Daniel Edge, Alicia Edge

Daniel & Alicia Edge from CompEAT Nutrition

Today you’re going to hear the story of Alicia, Daniel and CompEAT Nutrition. The concept of CompEAT first planted itself in Daniel & Alicia’s mind in 2016. Since then they’ve bootstrapped it themselves for quite some time and invested a lot of themselves into bringing this amazing company into existence, they eventually went through the ICON Slingshot program at the Newcastle University’s Integrated Innovation Network and all while raising a young family. Daniel & Alicia are trying to fix a real problem and it’s a two-sided problem. CompEAT Nutrition are well on their way to solving the problem with their first product to market. 300 active users and they’ve been very successful in the last 12 months in proving their assumptions around scalability. We’ll cover all of that and more, but for now, let’s go back to day one where this story begins…

22 May 2019Joss Kesby, James Bradley

Joss Kesby from Diffuse Energy featuring James Bradley

Today you’re going to hear the story of Diffuse Energy and its founders Joss Kesby, James Bradley and Sam Evans. Diffuse Energy is a company that, right now, is building wind turbines that are twice as efficient as their competitors, but the vision that Joss and his team have for the company is, well, the sky is the limit. We will hear all about that, but for now, let’s go back to day one where this story begins…

9 May 2019Andrew Mears

Andrew Mears from SwitchDin

Today you’re going to hear the story of Andrew Mears and SwitchDin. SwitchDin provides software and hardware solutions for managing distributed energy resources. SwitchDin connects with utilities to help them work more efficiently with the grid. We’re going to hear all about SwitchDin, where the idea come from, Andrew’s backpacking adventures, the pivots that SwitchDin has gone through and so much more, but for now, let’s go back to day one where this story begins…

21 April 2019Jade Ryan

Jade Ryan from Cake Server

Today you’re going to hear the story of Cake Server and Jade Ryan. Jade blew me away. Jade went to university to study structural engineering, became a structural engineer, started and built a side hustle while working full-time and then went through the accelerator program ICON offered by Slingshot in partnership with the University of Newcastle and started a company called Cake Server, which you will hear about today. Oh and one more thing, Jade bought her house at 24. By. Her. Self. We’ll get deeper into Jade’s and Cake Server’s story. But for now, let’s go back to day one, where this story begins…

10 March 2019Heath Raftery

Heath Raftery from Newie Ventures

Today you’re going to hear the story of Heath Raftery from Newie Ventures. Newie Ventures is an engineering agency. They build solutions to their client’s problems. Basically, their customers come to them with an idea, and Heath and his team go to work figuring out how to build it. In the last 12 months alone Newie Ventures’ client base has tripled and its headcount has more than doubled. But as Heath says although those numbers sound impressive in reality things have moved very carefully and very deliberately. Let’s go back to Day One, where this story begins…

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