Have you ever been captivated by the sheer determination and strategic acumen that fuel a startup's rise to success? This episode promises a riveting narrative as Tom Batterbury, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Auror, joins me to discuss his entrepreneurial journey.
Tom opens up about the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, including the challenges of Aurors earliest days to a game-changing pilot with Walmart, painting a picture of the tenacity and relationship-building skills needed for conquering new markets.
We delve into the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance amidst the whirlwind of scaling a global business.
Tom also shares his wisdom on deeply fostering a strong team culture and adapting sales strategies in the intricate U.S. enterprise market.
Have you ever been captivated by the sheer determination and strategic acumen that fuel a startup's rise to success? This episode promises a riveting narrative as Tom Batterbury, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Auror, joins me to discuss his entrepreneurial journey.
Tom opens up about the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, including the challenges of Aurors earliest days to a game-changing pilot with Walmart, painting a picture of the tenacity and relationship-building skills needed for conquering new markets.
We delve into the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance amidst the whirlwind of scaling a global business.
Tom also shares his wisdom on deeply fostering a strong team culture and adapting sales strategies in the intricate U.S. enterprise market.
And just this passion he had for what he was doing was really, really infectious, and so I think that left an impression on me. We figured out that the best customers for us would be the biggest retailers, with the most stores and supermarkets in particular. It doesn't happen overnight, so, yeah, it takes persistence and it's a long game. And you know there's all these kind of cliches like people buy from people.
Speaker 2:You're genuinely an inspiration because you're quite a bright guy. You have got the hustle that is needed for the startup culture, but you're just a hell of a nice guy. Hi, everybody, my name is Greg Sheehan and I am the host of this new podcast series that is all about the innovative life, and what do we mean by that? Well, firstly, we are going to be talking to the world of startups. For those of you crazy enough to be in this world, you know how incredibly hard it is. It is like scaling an ice cliff it's insanely hard. So we are going to hear from guests that have been on this journey, and we hope that you feel inspired and that you also feel educated around some things that you might be able to do in your own startup to make your chances of success so much higher. Equally, we are going to hear from people who have absolutely nothing to do with the world of startups, but they have made massive, transformational changes to their lives, and we're going to hear their stories. So, for those of you feeling a little stuck, then tune in, because you are going to feel a real dose of inspiration. Don't forget to follow us. That helps us reach a few more in the audience. So let's hear from our upcoming guest.
Speaker 2:I've got Tom Batterbury with me today. Tom is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Aura. Welcome to the podcast, tom. Thanks for having me. Greg, it's a super. It's actually a really a bit of a delight for me to interview you and I've been looking forward to this for a few days. You and I met in the US. We met in San Francisco last year. We were up there for SESTA and we did a few dinners. We did some nice meals. Actually we had a lot of fun. And your story I mean, in fact, you told me a couple of really cool stories about some of the things that have happened in the Aura journey but I would love to originally get back to your origin story. I know you're a Westlake Boys High School lad from the North Shore in Auckland in New Zealand and went on to Otago, but I'd love to hear your early story. There were signs of entrepreneurship for you early on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool. Thanks, greg, and you're hitting me with the hard question early on because it's talking about myself, but let's give everyone a bit of context. So maybe first of all, just about aura, for those that don't know, we built a crime intelligence platform. We're about 170 people, uh. Today we operate in australia, new zealand, the us and the uk, and the business has really hit its strides in the last few years, um, so it's been a hugely rewarding journey, but also challenging, so looking forward to talking about a bunch of that.
Speaker 1:Uh, for me personally, um, I was born in christchurch, lived there till I was 10, moved to auckland, uh, with my mom, did go to west lake boys, uh, as, as you talked about, um, but I think one of the unique things about my upbringing is that I lived in over 40 houses by the time I was in my early 20s, and so, again, I think that's made me really really enjoy change, and change is a really, really important. Being comfortable with change and actually thriving in change and seeing the opportunity in change. I think it's something that's really, really helpful in startup land and building companies, so that's been something that's been helpful to me, uh, and then you move 40 times like what was, what were your parents doing were they were in a circus or they were in a circus, yeah you think that no?
Speaker 1:so my parents, um, weren't together from the age of us two, uh, so between mum and dad they moved to multiple houses, so then I sort of lived between the two, so that sort of racked up a few uh numbers and um, and then I guess, with my mum being a single mum when I was largely living with her just moved. We seemed to move sort of every year or so, um, and you know, if at that time and stage of life she had a different partner or whatever, then we'd be sort of living somewhere else. So, um, yeah, it's made me quite and, as I said, that will change like I went to a few different primary schools, but it was really good that by the time I came to high school I was able to sort of solidify into one place for a few years, which was helpful. And then I went on to go down to otago and, as you touched on and um, at otago I um studied commerce, but I ended up doing postgraduate and entrepreneurship as well because, yeah, for a long time I'd had an interest in entrepreneurship and there's a couple of touch points in my upbringing that that spurred that, I think. So one of mum's partners when I was less than 10, was a restaurateur in Christchurch and he was just so passionate, so passionate about his company he'd be, he'd be in his restaurant every single night, like going around to every single table and talking to them, like supporting his team, and just this passion he had for what he was doing was really. And so I think that left an impression on me and I subsequently, sort of as I got older, like started and tried like little businesses around you know, like at Christmas buying and selling cherries in Auckland on Queen Street and doing things like that, and I found that sort of that sales interface with customers and then all sort of the commercials and stuff to be really, really interesting. And so then, after studying, studying, I got a job as a management consultant at deloitte, which I loved, and I got some really cool opportunities there, like working in the us within the first 12 months, um.
Speaker 1:But ultimately when we saw the opportunity for aura, um, it just felt like a real global opportunity. So we saw that shoplifting there's an article that said shoplifting cost two million dollars a day in new zealand and we just didn't believe it. We're like, wow, that's, that's a lot of bottles of wine or a lot of tvs. Uh, when you sort of do the maths, um, and then we saw globally it was over 100 billion dollars. We're like, okay, this is a pretty interesting problem.
Speaker 1:So then went out and started speaking to you know about 100 retailers in new market over the course of a week, a weekend, and started to ask them, like is shoplifting really this bad? Like how do you feel about it? Like, talk to us. And the overwhelming kind of theme that came through was, yes, that is really bad. But it was the sense of frustration from the store teams that their head office didn't care and that the police don't do anything, and so that was really interesting insight. And so then we went and started speaking to the police to get their perspectives, and from the police's perspectives, the retailers weren't doing enough to prevent the crime in the first place, and so they felt like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
Speaker 1:And then you start to dig into, well, what's the process to report crime? And so if a crime happened in your store and you report it to the police, you could spend 20 minutes on the phone and the police may never respond. So if you've apprehended someone, you might be waiting for hours and then they never come. Then you have to drop off footage to the local station, the the local station probably can't play the footage on their t, on their computers, or they'll lose the usb, and you have to drop it off again and this might be for a hundred dollar crime, um, and so all of this is just a huge amount of effort, and so you can see why the crimes don't get reported. So we saw an opportunity to basically build a platform that sat in between the retail community and law enforcement to streamline that process. But really there's a big data opportunity around connecting all the crimes together, which I can kind of elaborate on later, but I've taken a bit of creative license with your question here.
Speaker 2:It's great, that's exactly how we. I can kind of elaborate on later, but I've taken a bit of creative license with your question here. It's great, that's exactly how we like things to roll here. So when you and your co-founder were, you know, you were hunting for the problem and then you realized this was a, you know, shoplifting was a really big problem globally. Were you working other jobs at the time? Were you both working?
Speaker 1:for you know you were working for Deloitte et cetera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they ended up. There was actually at the inception five of us, but four of us were at Deloitte and Phil, who's our current CEO, was at Simpson Gresson as a commercial IP and privacy lawyer. So between the five of us all working full time do the whole bootstrapping thing, do things on weekends, do things after hours, and that went over a period of a couple of years and answer things after hours, and that went over a period of a couple of years. And then we got to the position we had a paying customer and it was quite a classic sort of that would only happen in New Zealand story where we figured out that the best customers for us would be the biggest retailers with the most stores, and supermarkets in particular have really low turnover, sorry, low margins, so that when they have theft, like you, have to do a lot of sales to then cover the costs that were stolen and so anyway.
Speaker 1:So we looked up on linkedin to see who was the national loss prevention manager for countdown, or now walrus um got his name, rang up reception, and we're like hi, can we please speak to bruce mckinnon?
Speaker 1:And they're like sure, let's put you through, um, and that just does that sort of stuff just doesn't happen in the US, right?
Speaker 1:And so we then head over to Countdown, have a meeting with Bruce, and if you think I look young now, like we were pretty young 12 years ago and pretty green around the edges and credit to him for, you know, having the time with us we were able to ask him a bunch of questions and he said let's pilot this this is interesting Got a four-store pilot and then, uh, we signed a contract with him, uh, and we basically said to him like, hey, if we, um, can we extend to all 170 stores nationwide, because obviously we want the contract to be biggest would help us raise capital and get more traction.
Speaker 1:And he said if you go, train them, um, sure, and so so Phil and I literally drove around the country and trained every single Countdown store so that we could get our contract from four stores to 170 stores, and that was really important in raising some early capital. So we went from sort of bootstrapping to then being able to get a bit of funding where we could quit our jobs, pay ourselves survival salary, and then we sort of held that pattern for a few years as well.
Speaker 2:So this is like you're jumping into doing. You know you've got the four stores with Countdown, so when you're travelling around to see the other 166 stores, are you at this point? Are you still at Deloitte though?
Speaker 1:Or have you had?
Speaker 2:left. So you're like, okay, let's do this. And how do you even sort of go about building a product to satisfy something like this? This is quite complicated, so how do you even start to solve the problem?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So out of the five co-founders, two of them both James and James were software engineers, and so, as we were talking the countdown and getting to the position of piloting the four stores we built, I suppose you'd call it our MVP, and one of the things I think we were really strong at is being super responsive to the customer and to the feedback from the users, and so we'd meet with them, get the feedback, keep improving the product, and so I think that held us in good stead for those first few years. But it also ultimately led to a huge amount of technical debt for us because we'd never built a scalable software platform before, which led us to completely rebuild our platform, like everything about five to six years ago, which again I can sort of talk to, and that set us up for the trajectory that we've had in the last five years.
Speaker 2:So when you were building the software, what did it do initially in that early MVP? What was the job it was doing as such?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so making it really really simple, for if someone pushed out a trolley from a store and maybe they were aggressive with the store team on the way out, that store team would just open up Aura like a web application and they would basically report the incident. But we made the reporting form for the incident as beautiful and easy as possible Because, as you can imagine, a lot of the frontline workers in retail they're not crime detectives, right, and a lot of them aren't security guards. You just need to make it really really simple, but you also need to capture really structured data out of it, and that was the unique part of Aura. So a lot of retailers globally, and particularly outside of New Zealand, already had systems in place. Each retailer would have individual systems, but they're not user-friendly. They would have lots of open text fields, so you're not getting structured data. So the key thing for Aura is to make it simple for store teams to capture really accurate structured data in a short space of time so they can get back to their job.
Speaker 1:But that all the magic and aura. Because if in that scenario I told you, there was um, actually two people that pushed out the trolley, one of them was threatening um and had a knife and then they went to a vehicle to leave. Within the form we make it simple for the store team to capture that, but we create basically two people and a vehicle and they're all connected and then now we've built a whole bunch of interesting um and novel ai approaches to connect these individual what seem like individual crimes together, across retailers together, so that you can focus on the totality of offending and um. I guess the thing that a lot of people don't appreciate is that 10 of people and the platform are driving 65 of the loss and so a lot of it is like the majority of crime is by a minority of people and it's causing a huge amount of harm and without Aura it's very, very hard to surface that from retail and for law enforcement to work more effectively.
Speaker 2:And so the five of you having conversations with retailers understanding crime, I guess you're getting really close to how some of these crimes are occurring. You're building a sense of how to solve this problem. One of the big I guess the big elephant in the room is the law enforcement agency. So in New Zealand, the New Zealand police did. Did you then go to the New Zealand police and say, hey, listen, this is what we think we can do? And and were they receptive to that?
Speaker 1:yes, they were. So the way that that played out is, as you can imagine, every individual retail store around the country, the actual store manager will know the local like police constable, because they have some sort of relationship, because obviously they're a regular victim of crime. And so what we created is we effectively have a freemium model on Aura where, on the law enforcement side, where retailers can just invite these law enforcement partners as they meet them into the platform. And so organically in the early days of Aura we got maybe and you know it started with 100, but let's just fast forward and say we got 2,000 law enforcement officers within New Zealand out of 10,000 with access to Aura, because we made it easy and that's sort of a model that we've continued to have in all geographies, and so that that happened at a local level and as that started to build momentum, we're like, wow, and a lot of local police were telling us that you really need to engage with PNHQ. So, like Police National Headquarters in Wellington. So we got connected in um, you know, with um, some senior stakeholders there and and talked about what we're doing and um, again, like they, they found it really interesting. There's this, there's this. Uh, what they often talk about is like public, private sort of partnership around, like how do we keep community safe? And like, or is really sitting in that sort of space, because we're connecting the retail private ness and building the, the law enforcement layer in there.
Speaker 1:But effectively, one of the cool things about New Zealand police is that they were receptive to the conversation and they wanted to figure out how to make it work, and so we got an MOU in place and we started putting terms of use in place and sort of training and all that sort of stuff. But they also allowed retailers in New Zealand that if they wanted to report the crime to police and it was non-urgent rather than having to ring up the phone they could click a button within Aura and we sent that to the comms team and we built a bunch of little integrations that would then end up making that an official crime and that would update back into Aura with the crime number and that just saved both retailers and police a lot of time. And so those are the examples of those time efficiencies, um that we created. Um, but it was really awesome that new zealand police were willing to do that and, again, like, our platform's come a long way and our team's come a long way.
Speaker 1:Now there's a lot of, a lot more sophisticated stuff that we're doing, but the fact that in those early days new zealand police were willing to work with us to set up that partnership and prove out what was possible, and they were very grateful for that and I think it's gone on to deliver a lot of value for New Zealand and keeping our community safer. And often we've sort of reflected that if we started our company in the US, where there's 18,000 law enforcement agencies, like there's just no way you could have built Aura, like it's just too complicated. So it's almost been beneficial to start in New Zealand, prove out what's possible in a more simple market and then be able to take the model overseas and then over time know that it does work out if we follow a certain strategy around how we activate a market.
Speaker 2:And so you start to get success. You're getting genuine traction. You know there's a problem. You're starting to solve success. You're getting genuine traction. You know there's a problem, you're starting to solve it. You're talking to both the retailers and the law enforcement agency. Originally in New Zealand. Yeah, so you start to grow. What does that look like? Are you hiring people at this point beyond the five co-founders, and how are you funding that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how are you funding that? Yeah, so once we got that first sort of contract with Countdown and we ended up getting Z Energy and Briskis Group as early customers too, like we raised a local round and I had some friends and family and some early VC money and again, if you go back sort of 10 years ago, a lot harder to raise capital in New Zealand than it is now and it's awesome to see how far the markets come back. Then it was pretty tough. So we we, for instance, raised $300,000 a million dollars, and very, very dilutive. It also meant that when you have $300,000 it's very, very hard to hire really awesome talent because you just don't have it.
Speaker 1:So we, we ended up when we did hire, hiring relatively junior team and this sort of compounded our challenges around um, around technical debt etc. But we, we did what we did and then we got to where we got to and and we probably wouldn't change anything because of all the lessons that we learned um. But that was sort of that process and, and I would say for the first um, six years of aura, um, some context, it took us six years to get to two and a half million in ARR and the last three to four years we've gone materially, materially higher than that. But those first six years were we ran the business very cash constrained, did what we needed to do. Often in a year success was just getting one or two more retailers on.
Speaker 1:It was quite binary, didn't hire a lot. And then, as we rebuilt the platform, we basically rebuilt our whole product organization. We rebuilt our culture. We got the real fundamentals right in our platform to allow us to go into the US. And then we've raised significant more capital in the last few years and that's where we've accelerated from a team of 20 to 30 to a team of 170 and I would love to talk about you growing into the us, because you told me a story over.
Speaker 2:I think it was some sort of we went to some meat, uh specialist.
Speaker 1:We got, I think we got the meat, the meat sweats. After that brazilian yeah, the brazilian barbecue.
Speaker 2:That's right, it was fantastic and I think it was there where you told me the story about and I know you've shared the story a couple of times of how you got a very large US retailer, and I'd love you to tell us that story because I think that's a super fun story of like why not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, cool, yeah. So with Aura, I mean from the early days as founders, we were very ambitious for the company and we knew that we weren't going to build the company that we wanted to build being new zealand focused. So we're very much global from day one and we knew that we had to get into australia as quickly as possible and ideally into the us, uh, and and of course, we wrote down like who would be the best customers for us? And and walmart would be. Walmart was at the top of the list because of how many stores they have and for lots of obvious reasons. When, what we did in 2015, we went over to a big trade show in the US.
Speaker 1:So retail loss prevention at these huge trade shows, we've done little versions in New Zealand, australia, we rock up to this trade show in Long Beach and just phil and I and and probably relatively naively, we just had one of those crappy little pull-up banners. Um, we even, we even flew over with a with a computer monitor to help do demos on. Like you know, we were trying to save a hundred dollars. Um, you know, phil and I shared hotel rooms for eight or nine years. We did all that stuff that we had to do to keep, keep our costs down and survive until we hit the the right kind of points to be able to double down. Anyway. We rock up and this trade show convention center is three football fields long. There's little cranes like erecting the other booths and we just looked at each other and said, oh crap, um, and we're we're like right at the back end. We're like no one walks past and you get there and there's not even carpet like. There's just like a little sign that says we were then called identify. The little sign called identify there's like no table, no, nothing, um. And so that was a pretty funny, uh, pretty funny experience.
Speaker 1:But the reason that we're investing in that and you know again, at that time we we didn't pay ourselves so that we could afford the money to do the flights and all that, so all the stuff that you need to do, but we really needed to validate that the way that we were building our platform to work in Australia and New Zealand was going to hold true in the US, and so we started that in 2015. And all of those lessons that came out of those things helped us identify that there's a core kind of concept in how our platform works. That wasn't actually going to hold true in the us, so that that led into part of our rebuild um motivations etc. And but then we fast forward down the line so we learned a lot sort of start to rebuild the platform. We need to go into the us. That that's our key market.
Speaker 1:At the time, greg foreign, who's now the ceo of new zealand, was the ceo of um walmart us um, and so we use the care network to get introductions to him um, which is really cool from the care network and that whole you know shout out to care network yeah, yeah, that was amazing.
Speaker 1:And we did the old um email to greg like, hey, greg, like nice to meet you. Um, we're going to be in bentonville next week. Like, do you have 30 minutes? Like no one goes to Bentonville unless you meet at Walmart, right? So I'm sure he saw right through it. But, um, again, like gratitude for him to take the time to go, like sure, I would love to meet you. Um, come on over. And so we're like epic.
Speaker 1:So we booked our flights and stuff, got over there and before Phil and I went in to Greg, we had a bit of a team talk around like let's not go in there and just sell Aura. Like we don't want to jam Aura down his throat, let's like get to know him a little bit. So we had this plan. So we walk in and obviously we're at Walmart home office. It was all very exciting. And we get taken to Greg's office and we meet him and Greg's got quite a presence about him and he straight away looks at me and goes tell me about yourselves. And so in my head I'm going don't pitch aura, don't pitch aura, don't pitch aura. Um, and, and, and. So I go um, uh, so I was born in Christchurch, uh, live in Auckland and we just bought a dog and he and he was just like okay. And then, just like, turned to Phil and in my head I was like I screwed that up, uh.
Speaker 1:And then Phil went into a full pitch about, like, what aura does, uh, and how we help retailers. And again he said, um, and I am kept awake at night about our most, you know, 20% of our most risky stores, and at a business like Walmart, if 20% of your stores are really high risk, that's a thousand stores where you're worried about people's safety and let alone the profitability. And he said just give me one sec. I'm going to go and see if the executive who leads this area of the companies is in his office and bring him in. So he goes down the hallway, brings in, um, the then vp, that uh, and and basically I think the way that he positioned it was really cool. He said, look, um, the guy's name was joe, like look, joe. Um, these guys have come over. Um, I think they've got a pretty interesting proposition, by the sounds of it, around how we can keep our stores safer and reduce loss. Um, obviously this is your area of the business, but I would love if you could sort of hear them out and let us know what you think. And so that was the beginning of that journey.
Speaker 1:We ended up doing this pilot in Chicago and we did it against two other systems that they piloted in different regions and we put everything into that pilot because of, obviously, how important it was. Everything Like we hit it out of the park, like the store feedback, like the the net promoter score from the store users was like 92 and for those that don't know how any promoter score is measured, like the maximum you can get is plus 100 and the worst you can get is negative 100. And like a really world-renowned company like apple was probably about 40. So like being plus 92 is just insane. Um, you know they had 300 increase in the amount of events being reported, like the amount of theft prevented, like it was through the roof. And so, as we get into the negotiation stage and this is going to be one of our first north american customers, most important customer globally for us um, you know walmart walmart is in their dna is about delivering products as cheaply as possible to their customers, like it's their core proposition. Everybody knows that. And so the whole time we're starting to have these conversations with the stakeholders and with their procurement team. Like they keep drilling everyday low price and we're like, yeah, yeah, like we get it. Like because of aura, we're going to help you save more products in your stores and, plus, keep your staff members more safe, and that's because you have less theft, you're going to actually be able to keep your cost lower for your customers. But they were so caught up, obviously, and our price was here and the two competitors prices were here, and like we had so many discussions internally about it. We're like, but the value we're delivering for them is just insane, right, and so we kind of held our line around like this is what we think is fair, um, and, and so I guess we sort of optimized for that to try and get like a fair amount of revenue out of it so we could keep investing in the partnership, etc.
Speaker 1:Um, during this time, I then put my hand up to move with my wife, a dog and my then six-month-old daughter to the US, because it's like we need to get on the ground, like when we work with Walmart, we need to hire a team to support it. We're then going to have to build on that momentum with other retailers. So we had a big plan. So I'm now living in the US, we get a call with their team and they go well, I'm sorry, but we're going to go with one of the other solutions and like, obviously we're just absolutely devastated. Um, we put everything into it, yeah and and and so, like we were devastated, but at the end of the day we said, um, like it is what it is, everything happens for a reason. Um, actually, that's a good lesson. Like phil and I got some, um good coaching around, like nothing's good or bad. Like you've got to try and have both perspectives on every situation. That helped us a lot and that still helps us a lot today. Um, so so we sort of said to them look like, if you go with this other solution, this is how it's going to play out anyway.
Speaker 1:Fast forward six months, ringing them up all the time, and then one of the key champions is like all the things that you said are going to play out is now happening. Can you come to Bentonville tomorrow? I was like, yes, and so ring Phil, because he's still in New Zealand. I was like we need you in Bentonville tomorrow. We're gonna go there and make this happen. Um, and and then the the rest is sort of history from then. Like we've, like, the partnership is is just going from strength to strength. Walmart are a great partner. We're working really, really hard to deliver them a lot of value to keep the stores safer.
Speaker 1:Um, but, but, man, that was a. That was a tough period and at the same time, covid happened. In the US, the Black Lives Matter movement happened. Uh, it was winter, we'd had winter. Um, you know mixtures of feeling like fearful with COVID, looking back at the New Zealand team that all don't have COVID in New Zealand. Everyone's working in the office sitting by myself and with the one other New Zealand US team member. Um, and, yeah, it was, it was a. It was a pretty hard time, challenge mental wellness a lot, but to kind of to reflect on where we are today and all that and all the pain we went through to get there, um, yeah, it's pretty epic.
Speaker 2:Tom, that experience must have been just shit. You know like it must have been, it must have just been really, really bad at that point because, um, you know all of those things are happening, but you just did whatever it took and phil jumped on a plane and got to bentonville what you know 24 hours later, because that's what it took. So when you were in the us, was there anybody else other than walmart as a customer, or had you kind of gone there to build the walmart relationship?
Speaker 1:and then obviously that fell over at that yeah, so, yeah, so one of our uh, I think our earliest, so earliest north american customers is rexel, which is a pharmacy chain in canada. So we had them, and then we, as I went over there, we signed a deal with lululemon um as as well. So we had those two customers, but obviously, to get the US market unlocked and like, yeah, walmart was absolutely the strategic lighthouse customer that we wanted to be working with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. Now take me to your co-founder relationships. You have five of you, so four co-founders for you. Has that always been been, you know, super easy and, and, like you know, kind of all all gravy, or has it been really challenging and tough at times? I don't know this.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure, so I'm genuinely asking that question?
Speaker 1:yeah, cool, um, and I I'm one of those people that I guess have recency bias too, so when I think about, I'm like broadly it was all pretty good, but like that. Of course there were some trials and tribulations. So in the aura business today there remains three co-founders and and for the last six years it's been three of us so phil, the ceo, and then james corbett, who, um, is our vp of technology and like, helps like bring in a lot of our product kind of step changes and stuff. So we've been in for the last six years. Um, there were a couple of things that have been challenging. So you know we had one co-founder that never really came into the business, um, who, like, was definitely part of the inception and and added value but never came into the business because had similar sort of crossover skill sets to phil and I and was doing other work. So they sort of never really in, ended up being sort of a minor shareholder. So that's sort of their journey.
Speaker 1:And then the other, james, who's one of the other technical co-founder. He exited the business about six years ago, so just when we decided to do the rebuild afterwards and again from his like that was hard at the start. But then everything happens for a reason. But from his perspective he was a little bit older than us. We were paying ourselves $40,000 for six years salary. He was earning I don't know like $280,000 as a data engineer, consultant. So he was doing huge salary sacrifice and I think he, given he was a few years older than us, he'd had a partner and like that sort of thinking about next stage of life and a house and all of that, and I he'd had a partner and like that sort of thinking about next stage of life and a house and all that and I just like completely get it right. So so he exited the company.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't say exited in a completely harmonious way in the sense of like I think he just sort of gave up on the mission. We didn't have great trust between like mostly like Phil and I and and him and just sort of talking things out and he sort of left. But it is what it is. He was able at the time to sell his shares and I think he made. He made the money that I would say he sacrificed over the previous six years. So I don't begrudge him for that. I think that's awesome and that we wouldn't have got to. We got to without him. That being said, it's super motivating. It's like a chip on your shoulder when people leave and they sort of don't believe in the company and and in some regards, are sort of saying like I almost don't trust Phil and Tom on the business side of things. And then to look at where we are now and the value that we've built and the company that we've built and what we're doing for customers, communities and the team is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Thanks for sharing that, because a lot of founders wouldn't share what you just shared and I think you've been able to by being able to take us through that story. There'll be founders out there that will learn something. Any other thoughts and tips for people dealing with co-founder relationships?
Speaker 1:yeah, and so I'll probably focus on phil and I, because we we're such an important combination and and an aura and that's not to discredit anything that james does but we've we've effectively like run the company. We were co-ceos for many years together and I think Phil and I are very yin and yang and that's actually what the magic is. Um, so I'm a heart on my sleeve, very open, probably overshare, um, I can go up and down as we go through the roller coaster based on my feelings and energy levels. Phil's very steady, even Kiel perspective seeker, whereas I'm a perspective giver and he's got very good sort of judgment and I think those two pieces have just worked together really, really well. But we've been very, very deliberate around building I don't know what company came up with it was it Spotify?
Speaker 1:Like trust batteries, and so you basically have a trust battery with everyone right and you want the trust battery as high as possible. And when the trust battery is high, when, when you collaborate, like things are just easier and better, and when the trust battery is low, it's easy for the brain to start seeing negative intent on others, actions and all those sorts of things. So we used sort of the framework of like, how's our trust battery right now and what? What is it? Is it anything causing issues to it? And you just had those conversations. But phil and I except for when I was in the us and except for now because we're between all of us founders we had a crazy amount of kids in the last five years. Um, we walk every day and so, like in our walk for an hour, um, we just literally talk about everything and, like, we get each other's perspectives. We disagree with each other and some things, but like we but we come out aligned and we come out, um, with better ideas and and and better thinking through it. So that's been huge, that investment. And you find that if you go for a couple of weeks and you don't have that, then all of a sudden the trust battery's down. It's just because you haven't, you haven't put the energy and keeping it charged up right. It needs the charger and for us that's the walking and the transactions of talking through things. Uh.
Speaker 1:And then, secondly, we've had a lot of coaching um, so we've had two um I guess I'll call them executive coaches, for lack of a better term or high performance coaches, um and through our journey, and two very different styles at different stages of the journey and and and we'll have times where we jump on those sessions together and we sort of talk things out and work through things and um, so that's been super useful.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing I would say is that, although we're different and james is different to all of us we're 100, all trying to do what's best for aura, and so that therefore makes you never take offense for anything, because you know that they're just trying to do what's best for aura and you've just got to figure out, like, where the difference of perspectives are coming from. But that's such an important grounding. And then I think we have a similar philosophy around you know, um, like how we want to build teams and like you know, transparency and, um, that sort of stuff. So we've got this core grounding. That's important. And then we've got differences, which are strengths for aura, and we respect each other's differences. And then trust batteries, because, no matter what things, things wobble with people and then we figure out the ways of keeping the trust batteries high.
Speaker 2:I love the walking together thing. I think that's really cool because obviously you're getting fresh air, but you're also able to share in a way that you're not actually looking at each other, you're walking side by side. It's a very male thing.
Speaker 1:I've heard where we don't like to be sort of. Confrontational thing of a very male thing I've heard. We don't like to be sort of confrontational.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, we used to run, by the way, but now, just just, it's easier to talk anymore. Yeah, that's right. And and what? What have you learned? Um, in terms of you know, the growth as a leader. So take away the co-founder piece and and thinking more about just your role as a leader. You know, when you started, there were five of you. You weren't really in leadership roles. Now you've got 170 people and you've had some coaching around that. What have you learned about? Maybe it's stages of growth, maybe it's just how you need to scale as a leader. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, often you hear in the startup world you'll hear people say like I'm just a one to 10 guy or a zero to one guy or gal, and then I sort of change, like the company got to a different stage so I had to leave. So you sort of hear all of that and it's really easy to label yourself and so for me in particular, like I would probably more easily could skew to the earlier side just because of how I am and how I operate and sort of the hustle. But the conversation that Phil and I had and the deliberate approach is like why do we have to label ourselves? Like, why can't we, as the company grows, grow with the company and be the leaders that the company needs to be at each stage and see that as a personal challenge? So don't just self-select out and be like no. So that's been a really cool deliberate mentality and mindset that we've taken is to to grow with each stage. Um, and I would say like we got good at all the previous stages and now we're at this sort of 170 and we're going to be at least 250 in the next 12 months.
Speaker 1:Um, again, it feels a bit of a stretch right, because you're like, okay, like how you have to lead is different, like you know sort of team of teams, and like leadership layers, uh, and all that stuff. So it's like I don't feel completely comfortable, but actually it's a good place to be because it keeps it interesting, like I'm someone that gets bored if it's just the same challenges all the time. So, um, I'm probably at the beginning of that next phase journey where I'm feeling a little bit out of the comfort zone. I wouldn't call it imposter syndrome, but I bet I. But it's making me want to stretch, which is pretty exciting. And you know I've seen Phil go from strength to strength in the stage that we're in. He's coming into his own as a CEO and the gravitas and how he leads, which is really really cool to see as someone that's worked with him so closely.
Speaker 1:But the second thing that we're really mindful of is this whole like every person's got a unique set of strengths and experiences that gives them a zone of genius that's different to everyone else. And it's like working really, really hard to understand that and then try and engineer the roles to put you in your zone of genius as most as possible. So like I'm constantly on this journey around that, which is why I asked to not be co-ceo anymore, because I want to get more into customer and product, without all the other stuff that comes with being co-CEO and just the noise. And for me, like a good day is when I've got an empty calendar and I can think and then deliberately go and meet with people and whiteboard and all of that sort of stuff. So again, it's that thinking about your zone of genius and where you want to play and how you can maximize the impact you can have for Aura, because there's so many ways to make aura better, like every single thing, or it could be better um and I say that positively, not negatively um, and so that's been part of um the journey for us as well.
Speaker 1:I could probably elaborate more, but I'll pause this I love, I love that, I really love that.
Speaker 2:what about, um, building a global team and building culture around that? So you know, one of the things founders find is it's challenging building teams, even if they all live in the same city and they're working remotely, so they're all working from home or, you know, as opposed to coming into the office, but you're building a global team, so you've got that on. You know, in spade loads. How do you think about building culture when you've got so many people in so many different places?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we've been. It's an ongoing journey, but we've been so deliberate about this and I would say that it is one of the strengths of Aura that, if any outsider comes to Aura and talks to people, there's this palpable, tangible culture that you can feel within our company and super, super proud of that, and everyone in Aura contributes to that and builds on it. But, yeah, it's a lot of deliberateness and hard work over time to build that. So, for instance, two weeks ago, we just had Aura Impact, which is our second. It's our all hands. We get the whole company together in New Zealand and that's our second one and we did it initially in 2023, the first one, um, like money was relatively tight, like we'd slowed down hiring because of the climate and sort of coming out of covid and just seeing what happened, like we didn't do any, we didn't let anyone go during any of those periods, just because we managed things really, really deliberately. But we made the call that we need to get everyone in the company together for a week, um, and it was a relatively big investment, like it might have been, say, five hundred thousand dollars, um, but when you think about that, like 70 of our cost base as a, as a sas company, is people right, and so we're going to spend roughly two percent of the investment that we spend on people overall. We're going to spend like two percent or less to hopefully bring them all together, to build up all those trust batteries, to build all that connective tissue across teams, to get everyone more mission orientated. And it's sometimes hard to validate this stuff, but we were just so confident that that would 100% pay off and it was amazing. And so then we fast forward to two weeks ago. We had 160 people made the trip and you had a week of being together, with some very deliberate sessions and gala nights and awards and all sorts of things, and that just helps the team connect. So, so, so much.
Speaker 1:And then all the other things that you do around culture, like obviously for us like guiding principles and being super deliberate around them and how you embed them and how you model them. And we've evolved our guiding principles and being super deliberate around them and how you embed them and how you model them. And we've evolved our guiding principles three times over a 12-year journey because the way that they start and the way that you need to operate and the zero to one might be different to how we operate now. So, as an example, in our zero to one phase we had a guiding principle which was run fast to make things happen because, like, if you don't make things happen, nothing's going to happen, right, uh, but that? But as you built to a team of 20 or 30 and you've got run fast to make things happen, that led to people making mistakes, and this makes mistakes that you can make, that you learn from, that are good, and there's mistakes when it's around like data and the nature of the data that we have and information and stuff where you just can't. We can't have any of those situations.
Speaker 1:And so we did a that kicked off a guiding principle review and you know, you get everyone's input and you look at like what's actually authentic to the company today and then also what's aspirational for the company, plus with team's input, and then you craft kind of the guiding principles that you think are fit for the next stage of the journey.
Speaker 1:And so for us, you know, one of them then became like be deliberate, and then sort of like what would be deliberate mean, um, so again, like, I guess what I'm trying to show is that we're so intentional around culture and there's the whole like execution. Each strategy and culture kind of eats execution as well, like so it's all those things and I think culture is one of the strongest things we have down at aura. But but it also you can't just sit there and let it go like it's constant work and and we're trying to encourage everyone in the company, like you all, in culture like this isn't a top-down thing, this isn't us thing, this isn't a px people experience thing, this isn't a founder thing. This is all of us um, and take that ownership mindset and help us like it's not this um one-dimensional thing. Like it, help it, help change it, help make it make it better, be part of that evolution, which is, yeah, really cool.
Speaker 2:So you've gone through massive change in the 12 years of Aura's life from those earliest days of that real hustle and you know having to share a hotel room and put up with somebody snoring, probably, and all that kind of stuff to. You know spending a bunch of money flying a whole lot of people around the world to have aura impact. You know like it's pretty cool. So lots of change. And you personally have shared about when you were younger how you moved house a lot and you were quite good at understanding or handling change. Any thoughts for people listening on or ideas about how to handle change it's innate for you. Yeah, Do you think that there are things that people can do just to make that so much easier?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think I think the fact that it is innate is sort of probably hard to almost preach on that one. But like the big thing for me is just see the opportunity and change like just see it as a lens of of positive thing, like not like a scary thing, and just once you understand that everything changes, um and and and sort of have that that mindset of like cool, like how do we make the best out of the changing data points and scenarios and things, and just be like that's part of our, it's part of our role in our careers to change, to drive change, to capture the opportunity from change, and also in your personal lives as well. It's like, just don't be afraid to change. I think you can live a more rewarding kind of life when you just embrace it with like a glass half full kind of approach.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's probably hard to preach on because it's like if you're sort of wired that way, it's easy for me to say it, but for other people might not be. It's like it's just as if I needed to go up and speak in front of 300 people. You know like I might not want to do that for someone else. It's like cool, that doesn't take courage. It's like you know everyone's got different things.
Speaker 2:Don't have their different skills. Yeah, yeah, and I want to talk a little bit about enterprise sales because I'm presuming that you know, if you give the example of Walmart, that they are, you know they're very much in the enterprise space and I presume a lot of your customer base is enterprise.
Speaker 2:Now, yes, any thoughts or tips for people listening about how to go about enterprise sales, because you know my understanding, it's pretty challenging, right, it takes a long time. There can be like nine or ten sign-offs. Often. Any thoughts about making that easier, better, faster yeah, like it does it does.
Speaker 1:It doesn't happen overnight. So, yeah, it takes persistence and it's a long game. And you know, there's all these kind of cliches like people buy from people. So from us starting to show up in the us in 2015 to then getting paying customers in 2019 but by the time it was 2019. And now if we fast forward another five years, like you know, for myself personally, I know so many of the stakeholders in the us, so when I go there it's like hey, tom, how's it going? Like high fives, hugging. It's like we've been around for a long time, like doesn't mean that we're sold to all of them, but like we show up, like this isn't flash in the pan, stuff. So it's that kind of long-term commitment.
Speaker 1:And then we've also had this um model that we got from a sales coach around um, what is it? Um, slow is smooth and smooth is fast, yes, and so you can get. Yeah, so you can get. Like you can like really try and push deals, particularly in the early days, because like that one deal, like your success of the company is so binary of it, or you know you can't, you're not going to make it if you don't get the deal, or you're not going to raise capital or whatever your scenario is, and it's so easy to try and push things, but you can't like, at the end of the day, the buyer's not ready to buy, the buyer's not ready to buy, and like, yes, there's all the things you can do to try and sort of nurture that faster, um, but slow, smooth, smooth, as fast, as is just so important and and and just control the things that you can control.
Speaker 1:Um, you have to have persistence, like you have to be deliberate, like everything has to be strategic, like you can't have missteps. You have to constantly try and build alignment. You have to make your champions, the heroes like I probably talk about this for ages and rod and our team have to make your champions, the heroes Like I've probably talked about this for ages and Rod on our team, who leads us in the company. So many lessons, isn't it Probably not like one particular thing you can do.
Speaker 2:And what's hard for you right now. So I'm presuming that 12 years ago what looked hard was something relatively micro. It was having those first conversations with Countdown or talking to the New Zealand police, when they seemed a bit scary at that point. But now you know, 170 staff, potentially moving to 250, operating across multiple countries. What do you personally find quite hard?
Speaker 1:right now specifically acute as my wife and I had a third newborn, uh three weeks sorry third baby three weeks ago and so so, like one week before that aura impact, my wife's an absolute hero because she looked after Ollie through that week and I was largely absent. But like it's the there's only so many hours in a day and I'm a massive advocate for work-life integration and it doesn't make me, it wouldn't make me proud to build a scale up or a company where, man, we work 80 hours a week and our team works 80 hours a week. I'm trying to be the opposite to that. Like our goal is to build a company that's highly impactful, highly successful for our customers makes difference in our communities people love to work. We're doing really, really awesome work, but you do it in a 40 hour week more or less. Of course, sometimes there's, there's circumstances that doesn't change, and so for me now having a newborn and for me taking responsibility of the kindy drop-offs of the youngest, the older children, like there's only a few hours each day to be impactful. And then, when there's just growing demands like as I said, there's so many opportunities across the company, you can look at them as fires. Some fires like really need attending to or whatever. Um, and that whole sort of prioritization piece, like I'm naturally good at that stuff, but I've found in the last three to six months it's just getting a lot harder because there's just so many things on.
Speaker 1:I think this is part of that scale journey and having the right people. You know the right people that are doing the firefighting, so that you're not always doing the firefighting. We're sort of in that um growth stage. So I think, yeah, it's just, it's just time and then and focus. Like it's hard to do, you can't do everything right. So it's like how do you, how do you move the needle on the one or two things that are the most impactful for the company? Meanwhile there's just 50 things coming in every direction and building, building that own, clearer ownership through the company.
Speaker 1:That's continuing to scale. Like we added 20 people to the team last quarter. Um, how do you get that ownership quickly? And then, how do we build that culture of accountability? Um, like all of those things are I'm finding quite challenging. But it's not just my job, uh, to solve um, but it's just the stage that we're in and and again, I sort of see it overall as exciting, um, but I don't think we're fully through the journey yet of nailing it and you sleep okay yeah yeah, I sleep good, except for, except for the, except for a baby that's probably the dumbest question when it was a week or so into having a third child and how do you look after yourself physically?
Speaker 2:so obviously, you've got three young children and you've got an incredibly busy role. So what do you do there? Do you just, you know? Do you take time out? Do you read, do you run? Do you walk? Do you, you know what? What is it?
Speaker 1:well, yeah, and early in the journey, like I said, when Phil and I would do the walks or the runs, like I would actually feel really guilty, like I wouldn't even call that work at those times. I would feel really guilty if I spent that time during the day exercising, even though we're talking about work and stuff, so like it really is work, um. But one of the things that Phil said to me earlier was like if you sort of wrote down the top 10 priorities in your life I mean 10's a lot obviously um, actually the seek, the way that you sequence or order them, actually changes the output on them, and so you have to put wellness first. If you're not your best, how are you the best for? If your next two things are your family, and or, and your third one is or or, whatever order that is, how are you going to be your best and show up for those two things if you haven't put wellness first?
Speaker 1:So that really changed my mindset sort of five to six years ago and and and seeing like working on wellness is not a selfish thing, it's actually and I not put like you actually do have to put yourself first um, so once I got my head around that. I've been quite deliberate. Like I exercise every day, like on a good day, I bike to and from work. Um, you know, I might listen to one of your podcasts or someone else's podcast on the way in, yeah, which is, which is awesome.
Speaker 1:So I get three birds of one stone I get to work, I exercise and I learn um like I'm trying to bring like weights training back in and then um executive coach every couple of weeks and then now I'm actually um trying a therapist as well, because I've felt that everyone's everyone's got trauma from their upbringings and like, ultimately, you don't want to be a victim to it, you want to take all the positives, which is why I told you the change story.
Speaker 1:But there's so many things from my upbringing that has impacted me and I can see that I get when I'm in a bad space. I can see those things playing out. I can see I get triggered in different things, and so I decided that 2024 is the year to open it up and I suppose, like you know, last year or previous years, I've almost been scared to open up the box to see what comes out. But I've got myself into the position of like leaning in and I'm really excited um to sort of do that work. Um, and again, like if someone on my team or a friend ever came and said, hey, I'm thinking about going on therapist, I would have 100% been like that is so amazing, like good on you, da, da da. But there's this weird thing for myself around needing it. Almost felt like I'm broken, and so that was something to reconcile, but I've kind of got through that part.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing that. I really do appreciate you doing that. And to those listening, like, honestly, spending money on a therapist is better money than you would spend on going to the gym. It's probably better money than you would spend going and getting a massage, albeit those things are equally, yeah, really important. But getting getting your head right it's, it's uh, that is a superpower that anybody can, can, can go and do so. Well, well done. Hey, interested to sort of talk a little bit about the future of aura from here. So what are you excited about? Where do you see this company going over the coming years?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean the momentum that we've been building in retail and all of our geographies. Like we entered the UK 18 months ago and we now have seven UK retailers on our platform, which is just so much faster than we did any of the other geographies, and there's a variety of reasons for that. We've got an amazing leader in the market. The product's way better. We've got customers like Best Buy on walmart on the platform. So the name recognition, um, but the, the retail traction, like almost the retail engine, like we've finally sort of built that out where it's not founder dependent anymore and we've just got some amazing people in the team. We've got, um a growing market of just absolute customer advocates, um, and, and one of the really unique things about Aura is just the network effects that our platform builds. So every time more customers come on, it gets more valuable. More law enforcement come on, it gets more and more valuable. So I guess what I'm saying is we've never felt as confident about our retail business and where we're going and how we're delivering value to our retail partners as we do today, and that sort of confidence has um come in the last 12 months. We don't take it for granted. We're not complacent, got to keep innovating and all that sort of stuff. But I would say that that part of the business is going really, really well. But something that we've always wanted to do and had ambition as as founders is to like really fundamentally transform how police, policing and police officers can work more effectively to keep our community safe as well. And once you start getting exposure to like the software systems that police have, like they're definitely data rich but the, the, the connections and the data and all of those things and a lot of the systems are built in sort of the 80s or 90s like. They're just not new there's so much opportunity to help policing be more effective and that's something that is really really exciting for us and I'd call that like.
Speaker 1:Often we talk about the three horizons from mckenzie right and so um, horizon one is our core, um, core business, which is retail. Horizon two is sort of expanding the core and so we do a lot of um, like new products that create new value propositions back into retail. And then horizon three is like emerging kind of businesses and opportunities and markets, and so I put sort of the law enforcement space a little bit in there. Um, for me personally it's like building a startup again, because it's like, like, really like, having a beginner's mindset, like I've learned a lot around law enforcement, but it's having a beginner's mindset of all the things that we could do for them and the value that we create.
Speaker 1:But then it's also applying the 10 years of knowledge, uh, but also the capabilities we've developed and how we can apply them more, more to law enforcement for all types of crime in our communities and just super, super, super pumped um personally about going after that opportunity for and that's why I talked about part of the zone of genius and moving away from co-ceo and trying to get into a space where I could do that, because I've found in the last 12 months I go so long without talking to customers now or in the product and like that's the stuff that gets me super excited is that intersection of customer and product and um, and when you grow a company a lot bigger, like it's very, very easy to just get pulled away from the analyst side of it because there's just so much things going on trying to keep the company orientated and all the things that you have to do, and that's why phil doing a great job at that um and other team members doing a great job at different things.
Speaker 1:It's like cool, like I want to figure this out for us because this could be a big trajectory changer um, often already good trajectory, uh for the company and and be something that new zealand can be really proud of. Like we need more.
Speaker 2:We need more zeros yeah, I was just gonna say I think we should all as as kiwis and actually everybody that's listening to this around the world should be quite excited for the prospects, uh, for aura, because I think you guys, you're're a clever bunch of people who are solving a really big problem and, along the line, along the way, you're also making people safer as part of that. So, yeah, I think we should all be pretty optimistic for what Aura has in its future. We're basically at that point where we're starting to kind of get to the end of the show, but I've just got a couple of quickfire questions that I'll run through with you. What would you say? Your superpower is tom, is it?
Speaker 1:that intersection of of customer and product, or is it something else that we haven't touched on? Yeah, I mean, you probably take different layers on it. Um, I think that is one. It's sort of like, you know, henry ford often gets um given that quote around. You know, if you ask people what they want, I'd be faster horses type thing.
Speaker 1:Don't know if it actually came from him, but uh, but that is something it's sort of understanding, like the problem, and where customers are trying to get to but not be lost in the detail that they are and and where technology is, and help bring that to market but also inspire the team to be able to deliver that. So I think that that is, um, the big one for the end, and the second one probably is just the ability to think big and put everything into into the puzzle and then just be like cool, this is what we need to do today, this is what we need to do in the next week, this is what we need to do in the next month, and just be able to do that very fast all the time. Um, although I would say that that is becoming harder now with 22 different teams. Uh, which is part of part of the growth challenge, but but it is genuinely a strength for me and what about a book that you might recommend, or one that you're even reading right now?
Speaker 2:have you got?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'll hit you a three quick ones. So no rules, rules. The reed hastings, the netflix thing. We took a lot out of that. There's so many good principles in there. Highly recommend people listening to it or read it. I won't elaborate because we obviously want to be quick fire, uh. The second one is, um, how you measure your life by?
Speaker 1:clayton christiansen's, probably my absolute favorite because he's the um person that created the innovation, um innovation, dilemma, disruption theory, um, but he's getting jobs to be done which a lot of people use from a product perspective now, but the the way that the book is written, so he he's died. He's dead now. He had terminal cancer at the time but it basically brought in all the theories that had come up for business but it applies them through the book, like each chapter, to business but also to how you should think about your own life. And for me, like I'm all about, you only live once and yola, I know it's a funny people mock the saying, but I just I feel like every day that I get up, like if I I get, I get almost depressed if I feel like I've wasted a day and that's in like all the things that I'm trying to push. And so that book for me was really, really important. I've listened to it a couple of times now.
Speaker 1:And then the third one which relates to the therapist kind of pieces. It's a book called the Choice, which is actually a book about a Holocaust survivor, holocaust survivor and I've never read those types of books. It just really puts things in perspective around what humans got, some humans go through and stuff and no matter that, the demons and the battles that you think you have and and this particular survivor, like the sort of the optimism and the, the ways that they were able to kind of build through things, is super interesting. But it's a different type of book than I've ever read, but I'm but I'm really enjoying it. Those are superb recommendations and in terms of your sort of personal philosophies for life is there something.
Speaker 2:It's a different type of book than I've ever read, but I'm really enjoying it. Those are superb recommendations and in terms of your sort of personal philosophies for life, is there something else in addition to the? You know you only live once, because I wholeheartedly agree with that as well. Is there something else, or is that just such a big one for you?
Speaker 1:I really think that is core to who I am Like I say like nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Speaker 1:You know, you, you got to roll the dice. Um, that that's one thing. So it's the sort of like let's try it. But then, at the same time I'm constantly talking about you've got to manage downside risk, like you have to be able to live with the worst case scenario of any action you take. And once you reconcile those two things together, it can make you be quite experimental and see that, um, life can be quite malleable, like don't stay in the lane that you think you're in, and then find yourself 20 years later being like cool, I'm still in my lane. Like that is all your own limitations that you're putting on yourself yeah, that's great advice for everybody listening.
Speaker 2:And finally, is there somebody that you think we should get as a guest on this podcast, and if so, what would? What would you uh want to ask them?
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, I'll give you two people if that's okay. Uh, so one is danny gilligan. He's um investor director and aura been on our journey for eight years. He's australian, so don't hold that against him. Um, he, for phil and I in particular, has been probably the most instrumental person and sort of our career and our thinking and our development and support of aura and believed in aura when we didn't, and all of our career and our thinking and our development and support of aura and believed in aura when we didn't, and all of those sorts of things. Um, but he's just got a very pithy way of thinking about things and getting messages to land, um and just really high eq, iq. Um, I just think he's really interesting if I can get him on yeah, um.
Speaker 1:And then the other one who you know is, I think, aaron ward from ask nicely is just a really interesting guy and every time I talk to him and we obviously had some, some of those meals together, the three of us in san francisco he's the type of person you just walk with and literally like you wish you had 50 hours for the conversation, but you only have an hour and like so easy to talk to and I just think his story and his value set that he's trying to think through around, like making mana and um, you know where he's got to on the ice nicely journey, and just the way that he thinks about stuff, um, I think he's just a great new zealand entrepreneur and I agree, and a wonderful recommendation.
Speaker 2:And the good news is he is booked in, so, um, he's I think he's uh sort of towards the end of uh end of the month, so so that'll be something to look forward to. Tom, it's been a real pleasure spending time with you this morning because I know, just as we started this, you just had a bit of an all hands and you have a very busy day, but you're genuinely an inspiration because you're quite a bright guy. You have got the hustle that is needed for the startup culture, but you're just a hell of a bright guy. You have got the hustle that is needed for, for for the startup culture, but you're just a hell of a nice guy and I think, for people that have got to know you, everybody I know that knows you, just thinks the world of you, but equally, we know how busy you are. So just want to say thanks for the time you've you've given today and also some of the things that you've shared, because I know that will help so many in and around the startup community. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Amazing, greg. I mean that's a huge compliment. So thank you, and thank you for doing this podcast. It's a bit of breath of fresh air and just interesting the stories and the questions and the conversations you're having. So keep going.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Tom.
Speaker 1:Appreciate it.