Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders

We last sat down with Bruce Buchanan in late 2019 — at the time, Rokt was in hyper-growth, having just raced through the US$100 million revenue mark. The business was laser-focused on the transaction moment — unlocking its potential for merchants, advertisers, and consumers alike.In the six years since, Rokt’s revenue has grown more than eightfold. The company is now strongly profitable and has built on its original insight  - the power of relevancy.Bruce and his team have transitioned the business to a suite of AL powered  products and with each new capability deepened e-commerce partner stickiness, expanded both sides of the network, and delivered greater returns for merchants and advertisers.This episode dives into Rokt’s next chapter of growth, and the role it is playing as a neutral, trusted intermediary for first-party data, how the business is positioned to become an intelligence layer for ecommerce in a world mthat is seeing real time technological change with the rise and capability of AI agents. Just as importantly, we’ll discuss what the last six years have revealed about Rokt’s culture, and how Bruce has leaned into the hard decisions needed to scale the business for the long term.Without doubt, this period has cemented Bruce Buchanan as one of Australia’s greatentrepreneurs and leaders. And yet, the story is still being written.

We’re reaching back into the archive  for the second time this season to revisit a conversation from 2019 with Bruce Buchanan, the co founder and CEO of Rokt.I will be sitting down with Bruce again soon for a follow-up episode covering everything that’s happened since 2019. Even if you have heard this episode before or if  are new to Scaling Up since then,  this is a must listen.  It serves not only as a great primer on Bruce and Rokt, but also shines with insights drawn from Bruce’s intellectual curiosity about consumer behavior and psychology, as well as his clearleadership principles that guided Rokt through its early hyper-growth phase.At the time of recording, Rokt was around the US$100m in revenue mark, growing fast, with offices across both Sydney and New York. It was hyper focussed on the transaction moment and unlocking it's potential for merchants, advertisers and also consumers. It has been an incredible ride since 2019, with the business now in 2025 valued at US 3.5b billion dollars, has seen exponential revenue and transaction growth, tonow be a trusted partner by the world's biggest brands and ecommerce partners…but that part of the Rokt story is not for now. Enjoy this re-release of one of our most-loved early episodes—with Bruce Buchanan, co-founder and CEO of Rokt

Owen Jennings, the head of product at Block Inc(NYSE:XYZ) and a key person around the executive table of what is now by market cap, one of the largest 500 companies in the world.Block (formerly known as Square) is really several powerful ecosystems under one roof: Square serving millions of merchants; Cash App, the consumer super app that's become the financial home for tens of millions of people; and of course, Australian founded Afterpay, the global buy-now-pay -later platform that connects these two bringing shoppers and sellers together. Owen is one of the rare executives that has truly grown up inside acompany over the past 13 years. Owen has worn just about every hat from early roles in ops to becoming the COO of Cash app where he helps scale it from a scrappy side project into a FinTech powerhouse that now generates c$6 billion in annual gross profit.Today Owen leads product across all of Block. He's widely credited for the new sense of product velocity inside the company and the ability to ship faster, to experiment at scale, and to embed AI as a multiplier in everything they do. Most importantly, this is a story about scaling culture. Block’s managed something that very few founder-led companies of its size and scale can achieve re-engineering that start up DNA inside a scaled business. Owen has been atthe heart of this cultural reset - hands-on close, to customers and unafraid to tinker with the new ideas himself.

From a kitchen table in Liverpool, England, to the dressing rooms of some of the world's biggest sports teams, Castore is one of the fastest growing premium sportswear brands on the planet. Founded in 2015 by brothers Tom and Phil Beahon, both former professional athletes. Castore was built on grit, obsession and a bit of a chip on the shoulder. With no fashion experience, no contacts, no outside investment – the brothers remortgaged, their parents' home, lived off just a thousand pounds a month and packed boxes late into the night. Their mission - to build a British challenger to the global sportsweargiants Nike and Adidas - a brand that blends high athletic performance gear with the sophistication of luxury fashion. Fast forward almost a decade and Castore is rewriting the rules of the industry. They've developed proprietary fabrics, run a fully integrated design to distribution platform, and perhaps most disruptively, ripped up the old team apparel playbook, forging deep digital first partnerships with elite teams in cricket, rugby, football, and Formula One.

“What does it take to scale one of the most trusted brands in Australia without losing its soul?”Today’s guest is Michael Schneider, Managing Director of Bunnings since 2016 and a 20-year veteran of the business. Bunnings is more than a retailer. It’s a cultural institution. With more than 380 stores, $18b in revenue and  55,000 team members, it’s hard to imagine a time when Bunnings wasn’t the default answer to every home improvement question.But behind that dominance is a story of quiet leadership, discipline, and culture at scale.In this episode, we dig into how Bunnings earned and maintained this dominance – from Every Day Low Prices and delivering brand promises at scale,  to the cultural consistency that is stitched into the fabric of the business, this is a story of of what it really means to scale up — not just fast, but for good.

When Steven first joined us in 2019, GYG was already making noise—130 stores, a cult-like customer base, and a founder who was across every detail of the business from avocado sourcing to store design. That episode became one of our most replayed for good reason: it was raw, passionate, and incredibly insightful.But so much has changed since then. GYG has nearlydoubled its footprint, gone public, entered the U.S., scaled a drive-thru model, launched a new app, and pushed network sales past the billion-dollar mark. The team’s changed. The scale is bigger. But what about the founder?This episode is about going deep on that next chapter—what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what Steven’s learned along the way. It’s a candid look at what it takes to lead through hypergrowth without losing the heart of the brand. As always, please reach out if you have any feedback or comments, and for more insights on a whole range of topics the new TDM website is a great resource for investors and operators alike.

We are reaching back into the archive to revisit a conversation from 2019 with Steven Marks, the co-founder and CEO of Guzman y Gomez. This was one of the most electric conversations of the early years of the show. Steven shared his passion for food, brand, technology, and most of all, people—with a clarity and energy that defined him as a founder on a mission.At the time of this recording, GYG had around 130 stores. Steven was founder-CEO, still obsessing over every ingredient, every system, every hire. They had global ambition, but the U.S. was still a dream, the IPO was years away, and COVID hadn’t yet tested the foundations of hospitality businesses everywhere.We’ll be sitting down with Steven again soon for a follow-up episode covering everything that’s happened since 2019. But before we do, here’s where it all began. Even if you have heard this episode before, or if you are new to Scaling Up since then, this is a must-listen-to episode full of nuggets that will not only act as a great primer for our next episode, but will also leave you in awe of his energy and passion.Enjoy this re-release of one of our most-loved early episodes—with Steven Marks of Guzman y Gomez.

Tim Doyle is the co-founder and CEO of Eucalyptus, a digital healthcare business that in just a few short years has redefined what 'patient first care' can look like in this country and abroad. If you haven't heard of Eucalyptus, you might know it via its house of Brands, Pilot, Kin, Software, Juniper, each delivering vertically integrated care in everything from men'shealth to fertility to weight loss.Before founding Eucalyptus, Tim was part of the founding executive team at Koala, the mattress in a box leader in Australia that scaled rapidly to over a hundred million dollars in revenue and beyond. Here, Tim cut his teeth in the high growth direct to consumer business model and perfected how to build brands that truly resonate. But health, as Tim rightly notes, is a totally different beast. It's a regulated, deeply personal high trust industry, and that makes the scale up journey all the more fascinating.In today'sconversation, we cover a huge amount of ground on the evolution of thebusiness, a mini deep dive into the market of GLP-1’s, and most notably thefascinating team building framework that Tim has used up until this point. Whatstood out to me was Tim's clarity about how and why Eucalyptus will win as itcontinues to move through this hyperscale moment of execution across a range ofglobal markets.

Silvija Martincevic, the Croatian born, San Francisco based CEO of Australian founded Unicorn Deputy.Silvija's executive career has been immense in the world of fast-growing technology, as the COO of Group On, and then the chief commercial officer of Affirm, that scaled annual revenue through the billion-dollar ceiling and beyond IPO. Silvija grew up in Croatia and while she didn't learn English until she was 18, she's an incredibly lucid storyteller. We traversed some key scaling challenges from moving Deputy from a point solution to a full workforce management platform trying to move from the fickle SMB market towards solving larger and more complex problems for mid-market customers. All of this is wrapped up in a big global push to continue the growth trajectory that now has reported revenue well over a hundred million dollars a year. While Silvija is known in the industry as an incredible executor, as an operator, it's her leadership skills that have been front and center in Deputy’s post Covid transformation, despite not being the founder, her ownership mentality is the cornerstone of her values-based leadership principles, which come clearly through as accountability, trust, and empathy. Her insights into scaling culture as a non-founding CEO were a real highlight of the conversation. As always, please reach out if you have any feedback or comments, and for more insights on a whole range of topics the new TDM website is a great resource for investors and operators alike.

Very rarely do you get to tell the story of a wildly successful entrepreneur that is largely unknown beyond the immediate circle of influence. Today on Scaling Up, Greg Boorer, the CEO and Founder of CDC, formally Canberra Data Centres, which is in some rarefied air among companies globally, having compounded earnings at over 30% for the last 15 years. It's now valued well in excess of $10 billion and is at the centre of the beating heart of Australia's critical infrastructure. All this, and it still has a massive growth runway ahead of it. Greg's story in many ways is the CDC story from an aspiring cyclist and reluctant it graduate. Greg has become the face and often lead salesperson of a business that has rewritten industry standards as it relates to innovation and security. In what is seen from the outside as a commoditised industry, CDC has thrived by listening to customer needs and adapting accordingly. This is a story of initial hustle and belief in an opportunity, but ultimately it's about resiliency and delivering on promises. Greg has undoubtedly built one of Australia's best businesses from the ground up, and to hear him speak about this scaling journey with the knowledge and passion that he does will undoubtedly be inspiring to all our listeners. Transcript: CHAPTERS:   (00:55) – Greg’s beginnings   (05:50) – A foreign start   (11:32) – Moving back to Australia    (18:40) – Building Canberra Data Centres , now CDC (22:40) –Tactics, tips and techniques (24:12) – Technological and competitive ddvantage    (30:54) – Solidifying CDC’s Future   (36:58) – CDC’s scaling journey  (44:08) – Why you need to partner with the right people   (47:33) – CDC’s sustainability commitment 

Bill Beament grew up in a working class family out of Esperance in Western Australia. He dreamed of being a general manager of a mine one day. Instilled at a young age with a deep work ethic and an acute commercial sense, he achieved much, much more than this as CEO and Executive Chair of Northern Star. Bill reshaped the underground gold mining industry and built from scratch a $16b, ASX 50 behemoth. Not resting on his laurels though, Bill has more recently turned his attention to wrapping up all his learnings about mining, about people and about leadership to his own venture Develop Global (ASX:DVP), which is on the precipice of replicating Northern Star's success in critical minerals with its unique business model of both mining services and mine ownership. This is one of Australia's great stories, largely unknown and untold outside the resource community so heavily centred in Perth, but the scaling lessons, as you'll hear, are applicable to all sectors and leaders of businesses, of all shapes and sizes. This episode takes you underground into a world unfamiliar to most, but applicable to all. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scaling Up with Bill Beament, CEO and founder of Develop Global.  Show Notes: CHAPTERS:   (00:55): Bill’s upbringing in country WA (04:09):  Starting in the underground industry   (06:19): Lessons from Barminco  (09:11): Building Northern Star    (14:03): What makes a world-class underground mine operator (18:48): Operational excellence at Northern Star and starting Develop Global    (24:23): Unearthing critical minerals   (29:14): DVP's business model (32:34): Buying Woodlawn mine (35:59): Best in class hiring and retaining talent (41:47): Remuneration philosophy

Hiroki Takeuchi, the co-founder and CEO of GoCardless started in 2011. GoCardless is a star of the blossoming UK FinTech scene- last valued at $2.1b, the business is on a mission to take the pain out of payments for businesses of all shapes and sizes – from your local gym collecting monthly membership right through to the Uk’s biggest utility companies. Payment collection is a problem as old as time, and in creating a bank payment network to rival the card networks like Visa and Mastercard , it is also an incredibly complex ecosystem to navigate and operate in. But Go Cardless has seen tremendous success – it currently processes over $35b in payments annually from close to 100,000 customers. Aside from regulatory complexity that is only heightened when you throw cross border payments into the mix, the challenge of scaling a business that form day one  has had such a variety of customer shapes and sizes gives rise to some wonderful lessons for operators. Hiroki’s personal story is incredibly inspiring. The founder’s journey always involves a level of grit and determination to overcome adversity, but Hiroki takes it to a new level; five years into the Go Cardless journey, a bike accident resulted in a spinal cord injury. If anything, it gave him a him a perspective on life and leadership that has enabled Go Cardless to flourish like it has. Show Notes: (02:12): Founding Story (06:45): Why direct debit? (10:03): Unraveling the complexity around cloud-based payments (12:31): Navigating the rules and regulations on collecting payments (14:02): GoCardless’ competitive advantage (19:00): Scaling challenges when expanding internationally (21:52): G2M success via partnerships (24:21): GoCardless’ culture journey (26:55): Embedding and living company values (28:26): Leading the business post bicycle accident (31:10): Evolution of leadership when scaling a business

What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them. By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive into to pull some common threads together. This second episode of the Culture Scaling Playbook is wholly dedicated to the integral culture scaling topic of hiring and retaining great talent. The crux of every scaling success is great people, and this episode aims to give operators meaningful and tangible best practise ideas for them to execute upon when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent - be it from onboarding, feedback or remuneration (and everything in between). Culture Scaling Workbook: Includes show notes, links to sources and other interesting thought starters - ⁠DOWNLOAD Chapters: (02:00) The importance of belonging in high performing teams (06:56) What makes for great hiring and why is it the centre of successfully scaling culture? (13:56) The role of the Chief People Officer and the right time to hire one (16:29) The importance of onboarding when it comes to building a cohesive culture (20:12) Let's talk remuneration (23:43) Building trust through feedback (30:34) Diversity of thought and why it produces better outcomes (33:23) The wrap up For more content and insights: ⁠www.tdmgrowthpartners.com⁠ ⁠https://twitter.com/TDM_Growth

What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them. By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive into to pull some common threads together. This first episode of the Culture Scaling Playbook is wholly dedicated to the role values play in successfully scaling people and culture; why they are important, how they have to be at the centre of every decision made and every behaviour exhibited in a business and importantly how best to do this. Chapters: (02:00) High performance in teams (04:18) What is culture - the triangle framework (07:18) Link between effective cultures and exceptional business results (13:02) Values and when they get formalised (21:35) Living the valuies and codifying them (26:13) Values and hiring - from interviews to onboarding (34:25) Can you refresh or change your values? (37:07) The wrap up Culture Scaling Handbook: Includes show notes, links to sources and other interesting thought starters: Download For more content and insights: www.tdmgrowthpartners.com https://twitter.com/TDM_Growth

Adam Schwab is our guest on Scaling Up, the CEO and co-founder of Luxury Escapes – a travel marketplace with almost $1b in bookings annually. Adam’s story is that of a quintessential and accomplished entrepreneur – one of trial and error, learning from mistakes and applying it to the next chapter as is always required. Luxury escapes and its coming to being is exactly this – the twist and turns of a variety of businesses, over almost a decade, that eventually spun out something that was scalable and incredibly capital efficient. While the scaling story is largely unknown but none the less incredible – it is a story born out of customer obsession, and providing consistent value to both sides of the market place What comes next for Luxury Escapes is been exciting enough to get Adam back from 18 month sabbatical, and we not only discuss the many iterations of the business and its future, but also how Adam has thought about his own journey as a leader. Buckle up, this is a fast paced and frenetic end to another great season of Scaling Up. We will be back in 2023 with another series, a new format and hopefully many more lessons for business builders, executives and investors alike. Chapters: (02:39): The Founding Story of Luxury Escapes (09:30): Business model: Part 1, The Flash model (16:20): Business model: Part 2, Building trust in the brand (23:09): Business model: Part 3, Scaling Product and TAM. (29:58): Business model: Part 4, Horizon 3 and the billion dollar question. (35:51): People and Culture: Journey and Philosophy (40:02): Retaining Talent and views on remuneration (42:05): The Roles of Coaching, Mentoring, and Managing Show notes:Adam with a longer version of the start up years and founding story Adam on work from home - Adam's podcast "From Zero" Adam's podcast "The Contrarians"

Reggie Aggarwal is the co-founder of Cvent, a $600m revenue Software company, that is listed on the Nasdaq (ticker CVT). Cvent is allows organizations to  more efficiently run, manage and host all formats of events from virtual to in-person and hybrid. If you have been to a large conference recently, chances are it hasa been powered by Cvent. Reggie is in a very unique position, having founded the company in 1999, he has seen 3 recessions, an IPO, A SPAC, a merger, competitors come and go and everything in between, and so it was a privilege to try and piece all the important moments in history together, and distill into lessons for current operators. To have been at the helm of a business that has scaled from 12 people to almost 5000 people has also required Reggie to be on his on scaling journey and to dig into the how he has thought about this, from someone who is consistently voted one of the best CEOS in the US, makes for a fascinating conversation. This is probably a great conversation to pair with a previous TDM blog, what makes a great CEO, as no doubt going through the conversation, you will be able to identify many of those traits shining through. As previously mentioned, all our podcasts now have transcripts available, and you can find them at our website tdmgrowthpartners.com. This is a great podcast to pair with our previous TDM blog  - What makes a great CEOShow notes:Cvent Founding Story (3:13) Cvent’s product evolution from a point solution to an integrated and highly scalable platform (8:40) How pivoting out of necessity created Cvent’s Triple Threat; in-person, virtual and hybrid virtual events (14:35) Cvent’s balanced and ‘frugally profitable’ approach enabling sustainable growth and longevity (18:10) Maintaining confidence and market share against rapidly scaling competitors (22:55) The differences and unique challenges of IPO and SPAC processes (25:50) Lessons and growth opportunities from being taken private by Vista (31:54) Managing an executive team with a long-term tenure (36:15) Continuous involvement and hiring tips to effectively scale across countries and cultures (40:03) Strategic and tactical advantage of the New Delhi office (43:13) What makes a great CEO and fostering an intrapreneurial culture (45:09) The three Proverbs Reggie lives by that enabled his and Cvent’s longevity (47:25) This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

Ruslan Kogan, the CEO and co-founder of Kogan.com (ASX:KGN) is the guest on this episode of 'Scaling Up'. Kogan.com is Australia’s largest pure play online retailer with over $1b in sales. Many listeners over the years would have no doubt been introduced to Kogan.com via their incredibly successful own brand electronics business that catapulted the business to a size and scale that has allowed them to enact a phenomenal e-commerce playbook. Aside from expanding their direct to consumer product offering, Kogan.com has also been able to drive greater efficiencies and value to customers across a range of service verticals. Ruslan’s story in many respects mirrors Kogan.com’s story – bootstrapped and always thinking entrepreneurially as to what is required to succeed in any given moment. This episode also dives into all the big ticket decisions that any e-tailer has to face - from how to acquire customers cheaply, as well as the importance of best in class logistics and what that looks like,  be it warehousing, fulfillment or freight. Ruslan is character, a true entrepreneur in every sense, and someone who has changed the retailing landscape in Australia for the better. We are also now releasing transcripts of each episode, to find them, you can click through the show notes, or find all episodes on our website. https://www.tdmgrowthpartners.com/insight/ Show Notes: Ruslan’s upbringing in Belarus and the formative nature of immigration guiding his entrepreneurial spirit (3:10) Kogan founding story (7:08) The early years of Kogan with a bootstrapped and presale funded business model (8:43) Ruslan’s unique strategy to create customer attention by engaging with the enemy (12:32) Kogan’s diversification across new verticals through partnership with service adjacencies (18:11) Success of the Marketplace and Kogan First program, transforming Kogan into a platform business (22:10) Maintaining best in class in bound logistics in the e-commerce industry (26:51) Proliferation and efficiency of robotics and automation in warehousing (30:21) Launching a last mile logistic service in the pandemic and the transition back to external courier services (33:14) Understanding and optimising for your unique core position and competitive advantage (36:16) Initial hiring tactics e.g., only accepting CVs from Gmail accounts to filter for logical and analytical competencies (38:30) Expectation to ‘reply all’ in work email chains, building a culture of transparency and accountability (44:11) How Kogan’s cultural values have scaled from the company’s inception (45:48) This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.

After a mini hiatus, 'Scaling Up' is back, and we have some incredible guests lined up in the coming months, none more so than this episode. Alex Vynokur came to Australia as a 16 year old from Soviet Ukraine, not speaking a work of English, but with a steely determination to make something of himself. And that is an understatement as to what he has achieved since – in the midst of the GFC, he co-founded BetaShares, a passive Exchange Traded Fund (or ETF) fund manager, with roughly $23b under management, making them the second largest in Australia and New Zealand. An ETF mimics an index but allows it to be investible and bought and sold on an exchange. The industry has moved swiftly from fairly vanilla – think tracking the ASX 200 or S&P 500, to more thematic or exotic type indexes - be it ESG based,  or even more niche such as tracking a basket of companies involved in the creation of the metaverse. BetaShares has been at the forefront of this innovation – continually pushing the boundaries in its mission to democratise the ability for anyone to invest, given the ease, diversified and low cost nature of investing ETFs. BetaShares, despite having over 800k retail customer, will no doubt be an an under the radar success story to many listeners, but one I have been wanting to tell for a while now. You are about to hear why – it is a story of grit, and passion – and a little peek into what has driven the success of a massive business, with a huge opportunity still ahead of it. To learn more or donate to the United Ukraine Appeal visit theukraineappeal.org You can stay across all of TDM news and views via our socials, be it LinkedIn or Twitter, our handle is - @tdm_growth Show notes Alex’s background immigrating to Australia and lessons from growing up in the Soviet Union (3:14)  Influence of the Soviet Union on BetaShare’s mission to democratise investing and encourage equal access (6:42)  BetaShares Founding Story and the opportunity in the ETF industry (9:20)  Turning a great idea into a great business and disrupting incumbents in the ETF industry (12:13)  Nuances in the Australian retail ETF market that allowed for BetaShares growth (14:06)  The movement of the ETF industry to thematic and ESG investing (17:44)  Diversification and innovation in the index industry led by new index providers such as Solactive (21:41)  The future of BetaShares (Horizon Two) – leveraging technology to improve financial literacy in Australia (23:24)  People as BetaShare’s competitive advantage and secret sauce (26:06)  Fostering innovation by fostering a culture that breaks down the stigma around failure as detrimental to performance (28:56)  Lessons on empowering leaders, managers, and the team at large to see the benefit of failure and mistakes (30:39)  Hiring and testing for innovation and curiosity (31:36)  Diagnostic tools to measure innovation within BetaShares culture (32:45)  How to balance giving customers what they want and innovating to provide something they haven’t even thought of (34:03)  The United Ukraine Appeal –delivering non-military aid to the victims of war in Ukraine (37:30)

Joel Montaniel is the Co-founder, and CEO of SevenRooms, a private software company devoted to improving the way hospitality operators leverage their data to enhance business operations, build better direct relationships with customers and deliver an unforgettable customer experience. In their own words, SevenRooms allows ‘the big to feel small and the small to feel big’ when it comes to customer relationships. The conversation traverses a wide range of topics; from scaling a global business from day one, leading with empathy and its power on customers and employees, and the great frameworks for how SevenRooms prioritises product innovation, given the breadth of their customer base. Named among the ‘Best Places to Work’ in New York, it’s clear that SevenRooms culture-first mentality is deeply embedded in the company’s DNA. With this in mind, Joel talks to how SevenRooms is investing in its employees and the programs they have put in place to enable them to do their best work. Show Notes; Founding story and inspiration behind SevenRooms (3:15)  Empathising with customers to better understand the problem and re-think the solution (5:27)  SevenRooms Value Proposition for restaurant operators (7:04)  Transitioning the hospitality industry from systems of record to systems of intelligence that drives outcomes for businesses (11:31)  SevenRooms competitive advantage to streamline operations, personalize service and maximise revenue profitability for customers (13:41)  Pain points when scaling a global business – how your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength (16:50)  Implementing a prioritization framework to inspire product innovation and identify where SevenRooms can uniquely serve their customers (18:57)  Fostering innovation to drive the hospitality industry forward as the company scales (23:00)  Supporting customers and managing interactions during the pandemic (27:27)  Inspiration to build a culture first company (30:00)  SevenRooms core values (33:54)  Career planning with employees to resolve cultural tensions and find an intersection between company and employee needs (37:46)  The importance of investing in employees and providing recharge periods – Fresh Start Program and 7 R&R (41:13)  How the leadership team catches cultural bugs and detractors in the company (45:35) 

Hugh Williams probably isn't a name that pops to the front of mind when talking Australia's greatest technology exports - but it should. His career leading huge teams on cutting edge projects at global tech giants Google, Microsoft and eBay have fundamentally changed the way we live our lives. Globally, few possess the depth of domain expertise as Hugh.  This episode dives into 'what great looks like' when it comes to individual engineers, small product teams and larger organisations, and his insights into hiring and fostering high performance teams and innovation, and describing how the best tech companies are built and scaled, are articulated simply and actionable for leaders of all teams.  We also discuss Hugh’s most recent passion project as the co-founder of CS in Schools, which is empowering the next generation of DigiTech professionals.  Growing up at the frontier of technology and working alongside some of the greatest minds of the era, Hugh’s experiences transcend his industry and will provide key lessons for all listeners, of all interests. Show Notes;  Hugh’s upbringing and introduction to computer science (4:00)  Initial career steps manoeuvring through a technology boom and the rise of search technology (6:20)  Lessons from working in Silicon Valley (11:28)  Current labour climate shifting the power back to the employer (14:10)  What makes a great engineer? (18:05)  How to foster the best performance and innovation within teams of all sizes? (21:45)  The two-pizza team (the optimal structure of a technology team) (27:34)  How do the engineers integrate with the wider organisation? (31:09)  Minimizing the number of company goals to unify and improve business functionality (34:09)  Key lessons as a leader to build a sustainable and scalable company culture (38:40)  CS in Schools mission and the key steps for Australia to be a driving force of technology progression (41:20)