The Inflection Points Podcast
The Inflection Points Podcast is Australia's home of long-form policy discussion.
The podcast is hosted by Jonathan O’Brien, editor-in-chief of Inflection Points. We'll also have regular contributions from our editorial team and broader community of writers and reformers.
The Inflection Points Podcast
Brandon Sheppard: Building here, selling overseas
Every successful Australian tech company follows roughly the same playbook: build the product here, test it in our market, then export it overseas. Atlassian, Canva, Safety Culture—they kept a lot of their engineering and R&D in Australia, while their sales teams conquered international markets.
The secret to Australian tech success is to treat it like an export industry.
Brandon Sheppard is the COO at Instant and has been in Australian tech since 2012—back when major VC funds didn't exist here and Canva was just being founded. He's lived the reality of building products in Brisbane while competing for talent against companies offering three times the salary in San Francisco.