Larry Diamond

00:01

hi everyone i'm emma from uts startups

00:04

and i'm really excited to welcome you to

00:06

uts startups festival 2021 a month-long

00:10

series of interactive experiences

00:13

live digital events and on-demand

00:15

resources to help you take your next

00:17

step in entrepreneurship uh but i'd like

00:20

to begin by acknowledging the gallagher

00:22

people of the euro nation upon whose

00:25

lands our city campus now stands

00:27

i'd like to pay respects to elders past

00:30

present and emerging acknowledging them

00:32

as the traditional custodians of

00:33

knowledge for this land and of course

00:35

that extends to whatever country you're

00:37

on around australia and the world and if

00:39

you know who that is feel free to pop it

00:41

in the chat

00:42

um so he doesn't really need an intro i

00:45

probably will do it anyway because

00:46

you're all here to see him

00:48

so larry diamond is the co-founder and

00:50

ceo of zip one of australia's most

00:53

successful startup companies uh zips a

00:56

buy now pay later product simplifying

00:58

the way people pay

01:00

launched only in 2013 with his

01:03

co-founder peter gray and it sought to

01:05

disrupt the very broken credit card

01:08

model using technology to create a

01:10

fairer more flexible alternative

01:13

zip now has over 7 million customers

01:15

globally and is valued at 4 billion

01:19

you might not know though larry is a uts

01:21

alumni holding a bachelor of information

01:24

technology and is also the recipient of

01:27

this year's uts alumni award for

01:29

excellence in the faculty of engineering

01:31

and i.t

01:32

uh so he's actually joining us from new

01:34

york at the moment where it's 10 30 at

01:36

night so we are incredibly grateful to

01:38

have him join us today

01:40

welcome larry how are things over there

01:43

yeah thanks thanks so much for uh having

01:45

me um

01:46

it's good you know look thankfully here

01:48

things are things are open so you know

01:50

my heart goes out to everyone back home

01:53

um

01:54

who uh you know where you guys are are

01:57

all and um yeah just uh

01:59

snuck away have to thank my wife for

02:01

giving me a couple of months to uh

02:03

integrate the teams and spend some time

02:05

here so i'm going well we'll live

02:07

vicariously through you

02:09

um but we only have about 25 minutes

02:11

with you so we'll dive right in um our

02:13

uts startups community has sent through

02:15

a bunch of questions and we'll get

02:17

through as many as we can

02:18

but of course we'll start with the early

02:20

days um you know in your study and

02:22

career you

02:24

went through the corporate route with

02:25

pwc

02:26

amex specific brands and then what

02:29

you've referred to as your formative

02:30

years at macquarie bank

02:32

but zip isn't actually your first foray

02:35

into the startup world

02:37

um after the gfc hit you bought a

02:39

t-shirt screen printing business in

02:41

sydney tell us a bit about those really

02:44

early days of entrepreneurship and what

02:46

you learned in that business that you

02:47

could apply to sip

02:50

yeah funny time so we uh

02:53

for one year in one day we were the

02:54

owners of a t-shirt printing factory in

02:57

rosebury um and

03:00

and actually sports while it was like

03:02

embroidery for the rugby and back back

03:05

to school um so i was so i'd never run a

03:08

business i was made redundant from

03:10

deutsche bank and my cousin actually

03:12

said hey

03:13

um we can buy a business and it needs a

03:15

bit of restructuring so i had you know a

03:17

lot of finance experience and um

03:20

basically we took over this business

03:23

which i hadn't really managed people

03:25

before even in investment banking maybe

03:27

one person right

03:28

so um

03:30

it was a great up you know we came in

03:32

one was going into administration the

03:33

other one we bought out of

03:34

administration and so a lot of that

03:36

finance experience allowed me gave me

03:38

the confidence to kind of do that and

03:40

you know there were 25 people the

03:42

printing 30 people at the embroidery we

03:44

had to manage people so i think what

03:46

that taught me um is that businesses

03:49

actually start and begin with with the

03:51

people you have to take care of people

03:52

take them on the journey explain the why

03:54

and

03:55

and i think that really gave me a lot of

03:57

that

03:59

empathy when you are managing change and

04:02

now zip there's change happening every

04:04

single day every single week

04:06

fantastic not quite what i was expecting

04:08

but you know people are

04:10

our most valuable asset really

04:12

um so after that you started developing

04:15

the idea that became zip how did you

04:17

identify that gap or opportunity and

04:20

what enabled you to develop that

04:21

opportunity into something more tangible

04:25

so i was

04:26

i was consulting to a good friend of

04:28

mine greg moshall who is the founder of

04:30

prosper which is one of the one of the

04:32

one of one of the great business lending

04:34

businesses here and while i was doing

04:36

that i saw that he was leveraging

04:37

technology to disrupt the world of

04:39

finance for business and i thought wow

04:41

wouldn't that be awesome if we could do

04:42

it for consumer i'm way more passionate

04:44

about consumer

04:46

and so

04:47

that's really where i got i got excited

04:48

by it i looked around to see if there

04:50

was anything else out there

04:52

there wasn't and i thought all right

04:54

we're kind of

04:55

on to something here and um

04:57

managed managed to find um i pitched

05:00

about 60 investors um to kind of raise

05:02

money and they said to me hey that's

05:04

really cool but you don't know anything

05:06

about credit i thought that's actually a

05:09

good point

05:10

and i and i met my founder but when we

05:12

were starting out i'll never forget um

05:14

because i studied at utsbit we did

05:17

database database design

05:19

um and i actually was looking to find a

05:21

technical co-founder but i couldn't and

05:23

i ended up just hiring an engineer out

05:25

of cba and so all the original database

05:27

design was from my rusty relational

05:30

tables which all the engineers still

05:33

cursed me for today

05:36

and and really look we saw opportunity

05:39

to leverage technology to really get to

05:41

know customers and underwrite them

05:42

really really quickly and um we would

05:44

have been really happy to build a

05:46

you know three million dollar business

05:49

i think that's really relatable because

05:51

you know

05:51

it shows that not every

05:53

successful company started out perfectly

05:56

we all started with some

05:58

little work around a little dodgy thing

06:00

here and there that you just made happen

06:01

and and built upon

06:03

but you mentioned your co-founder you

06:05

had somewhat of a unique um

06:07

way to find your co-founder and afr's

06:11

referred to the both of you as yin and

06:13

yang can you tell us how you actually

06:15

found your co-founder and how you're

06:16

both navigating startup life

06:18

together yeah so i think you know i

06:21

definitely wouldn't be here today had i

06:23

not met the love of my life the second

06:25

love of my life peter gregg uh but look

06:28

i ended up calling um

06:30

i went online looking we you know we

06:32

kind of met online i was looking online

06:33

for uh someone to join the company and i

06:36

found this guy that was that applied for

06:37

the for the credit job didn't know him

06:40

from a bar of soap and i think um what

06:42

you kind of realize over time is that

06:44

it's you know sometimes you can have you

06:46

can actually be the only founder and you

06:48

can have people below you

06:50

sometimes you need complimentary skills

06:53

and i think ultimately you have to be

06:55

really self-aware on what you're good at

06:57

what you're passionate about and equally

06:59

what you're not passionate about or some

07:01

of your weaknesses to create the jigsaw

07:02

and there's many ways to kind of create

07:04

the jigsaw um and uh you know pete was

07:07

10 years older than me

07:09

he'd been in consumer finance and you

07:11

know

07:12

all the serious stuff for about uh 10

07:14

years prior but we had

07:16

really the same values we love people

07:18

and we had we shared passion around

07:20

disrupting um and when he joined you

07:22

know i'll never forget like working out

07:25

is he the right partner you know when

07:27

you kind of start out the first day 12

07:29

30 comes he goes for a run

07:31

i said

07:32

i came home that night i said to my wife

07:34

i think i've partnered with

07:36

someone really like this is a fight for

07:39

survival he's going for a run the next

07:41

day he did the same thing and um and

07:44

then you realize you know

07:46

he needs to run to work things out as

07:48

part of as part of his kind of vibe and

07:50

it's been an incredible partnership and

07:51

i think ultimately because we've each

07:53

had our swim lanes and so together we

07:55

can actually cover um a lot of things

07:57

that you need to to build the business

07:59

but i think the call out is

08:00

find the jigsaw and every jigsaw is

08:03

totally different but you have to have

08:05

common values um ultimately

08:08

that's some great advice i hope

08:09

everyone's taking down some notes at

08:11

home

08:13

um and i guess so zip it is a unicorn

08:16

multiple times over now

08:18

but like every startup you started with

08:20

just one customer your first sale which

08:24

happened to be a 500 bicycle can you

08:26

talk us through how you actually went

08:27

about securing your first customer

08:31

yeah yeah i mean the and the other thing

08:33

is the journey is actually more

08:35

important than the destination there's

08:37

like no point going to the end and

08:38

having that billion dollar company

08:40

because it's actually what you learn

08:41

along the way that is way more valuable

08:44

and the good thing about founders is you

08:45

actually have to do everything right

08:47

from pitching i'd never been in sales

08:49

before

08:50

but because i was passionate about this

08:52

i actually was brave enough if you like

08:55

to pick up the phone i tried to hit my

08:57

networks

08:58

no retailers were popping out of the

09:00

networks and i think people kindly were

09:02

looking at us going you don't really

09:03

have a product

09:05

and managed to get to um chapelli cycles

09:08

to a friend of mine we pitched the idea

09:11

he liked it and i think when you're kind

09:13

of building startups you can't wait for

09:16

the finished product so you actually

09:17

have to build and fly at the at the

09:19

exact same time so you almost got to

09:21

sell knowing that you can deliver

09:24

and we started zip in june by december

09:27

we had we had brought on shapely and i

09:29

think the first day

09:30

we took the website down okay because we

09:32

were using an agency in

09:35

in in vietnam a guy named fung who was

09:37

awesome who couldn't speak great english

09:40

by the time we started but by the time

09:41

we finished he was he was flawless and

09:43

he became you know one of our greatest

09:45

wordpress developers um and but i think

09:49

just knowing that we were we were going

09:51

to iterate we said to him look we're not

09:53

going to have the perfect solution for

09:54

you day one but we commit to iterating

09:56

learning having that

09:58

you know that fast feedback cycle zip

10:00

back and we'll kind of just trust us to

10:02

kind of get there and i think when you

10:03

have that that that um open sense of

10:06

communication and are willing to go on

10:07

the journey nothing's perfect there's

10:09

always going to be problems and uh and

10:11

then we built from there

10:13

we're getting a little glimpse behind

10:14

the scenes here but can you broaden that

10:17

and paint a picture of what that first

10:19

year it looked like

10:22

yeah i mean um

10:23

so it started out just peter myself

10:26

neither of us had really started

10:28

businesses before

10:30

i came to work in ripped jeans and a

10:32

t-shirt pete came to work in a full suit

10:34

even though there were just two of us

10:36

working out of my brother's um

10:39

groupon office and it was really about

10:42

and we'd only raised 170 grand half of

10:45

it got spent on plugging into the

10:47

bureaus and all these things so we have

10:49

to work out what do we need to do to get

10:51

to the next gate now you can't do too

10:52

much what are the three things we have

10:54

to do

10:55

um set up the company get the licenses

10:57

build a prototype get the get the

11:00

merchant the customer and so every day

11:02

we'd come in and we'd just really narrow

11:04

down what we needed to do because we

11:05

were doing sales we were we were

11:08

building the product licensing customer

11:10

service

11:11

you know pete was taking applications

11:13

seven days a week between 7 a.m and 11

11:16

p.m and you end up doing everything

11:18

right

11:19

it was complete madness we were

11:20

expecting more money from our investors

11:22

to fund the loan book that wasn't

11:25

happening so

11:26

five grand worth of sales would kind of

11:28

go through over the weekend and we'd

11:30

have to drive around in our pickup truck

11:32

looking

11:33

looking for money from fred you know

11:35

fools family and friends any of the 3s

11:38

and um

11:39

and then we managed to get a cto

11:42

one of the founding team adam who was in

11:44

data science and the five of us would

11:46

just we could all do everything and all

11:48

we had all multiple hats and i think it

11:50

was actually a really

11:52

great time to to set up the business and

11:55

find the groove to give us the

11:57

confidence to move to the next gate but

11:59

it's crazy you work in and i think both

12:01

of us had just had our first child

12:03

large you know working from home a bit

12:05

so it's just complete chaos

12:08

but great times two babies at the same

12:11

time

12:12

one being your business one being an

12:13

actual baby that is

12:15

fun

12:16

you've spoken about the next gate you

12:18

know a few times um but

12:20

in those early days beyond the next gate

12:23

how big did you actually think the

12:25

company could become

12:28

you know as as first-time founders i

12:30

think for us we would have been

12:32

incredibly

12:33

um proud

12:35

had we

12:36

had we built a business that got to make

12:38

you know

12:39

10

12:40

10 million dollars like that would have

12:41

been absolutely incredible um

12:44

to build a business

12:46

identify product market fit find

12:48

customers that like the product are

12:49

willing to pay for the product and

12:52

and and kind of get there and what i

12:54

would say is often

12:55

you

12:56

we were quite fortunate that we were

12:58

solving a good problem at the right time

13:00

a lot of factors have a lot of external

13:03

factors often have to be there for you

13:06

as well right to kind of really make the

13:08

thing take off so you know if those

13:10

external factors weren't there for us

13:11

maybe it would only be 10 or 20 million

13:14

dollars but we'd be as passionate and as

13:16

happy about

13:17

about that result often you just need to

13:19

keep going because you don't know when

13:20

you're going to actually get a moment

13:22

that an industry changes or or or the

13:25

tailwinds really propel you forward so

13:27

as long as you're passionate and you can

13:29

keep coming to work and keep pushing

13:31

through you know hopefully it takes care

13:33

of itself

13:34

i might um be a bit cheeky here and ask

13:37

a question that has come through

13:39

if you can share any confessions so are

13:41

there any things about how you developed

13:44

the company or grew it in the early days

13:46

that you might not have shared at the

13:48

time but now in 2021 you can share some

13:51

of those things for others to learn from

13:56

um

13:57

there's lots of stuff i mean

14:00

there are i mean okay a great example is

14:04

that uh

14:06

we um we had a great back end engineer

14:10

um but we didn't have a great front-end

14:12

engineer to do the design the ui or all

14:15

that look and feel

14:16

look and feel and we and we um used uh

14:20

up work or it was um

14:22

prior to that it was called something

14:24

odesk um

14:26

and what we found out and so we

14:28

basically spent some money we got

14:29

screens designed what we didn't realize

14:31

is that

14:32

the person doing that had outsourced it

14:34

someone else had outsourced to someone

14:35

else and none of it actually plugged

14:37

into our our kind of back end so we

14:39

probably spent about

14:41

six months

14:42

just messing about trying to trying to

14:45

get this right um

14:47

the other the the other one so that just

14:48

shows you how like even us starting out

14:51

had just made so many mistakes we could

14:53

we could have got to a prototype way way

14:55

faster the other one i'd say is probably

14:57

when we were raising money we we raised

14:59

170 grand um we were now two years in

15:02

and we were out of money um i said to

15:05

the guys look i'm gonna have to cut

15:07

salaries which i cut for four out of the

15:09

five people and we went for six months

15:12

not not paying anyone or paying half

15:13

half salaries

15:15

and

15:16

we were kind of running we were kind of

15:17

getting to the end people were just at

15:19

their wits and we had two options option

15:22

one was an offer from a

15:25

a finance guy who basically would have

15:27

given us cash but it would have wiped

15:29

out the equity of all the other founding

15:31

team

15:32

well the other option was actually to go

15:33

public which is just that is another

15:35

crazy story

15:37

and we chose the crazier harder path

15:40

because the because people are so

15:42

important i think had we taken that it

15:43

would have been the easier option you

15:45

know probably easier for myself and pete

15:46

but if we would have removed equity from

15:48

you know all of the earlier guys and

15:50

that just wasn't an acceptable outcome

15:53

well thanks for sharing some of the raw

15:55

and real because i think quite often we

15:56

see startup stories and it's just the

15:58

polished end

16:00

product of an overnight success so it's

16:02

nice to hear some of these challenges

16:04

that you're facing early on and

16:05

continuing

16:07

um now on to some things where some of

16:10

our audience might really be able to

16:11

implement in their own startup um there

16:13

are some really heavy hitting by now pay

16:15

later players dominating australian and

16:17

global markets alongside zip

16:20

how did you go about differentiating

16:22

your brand and go to market strategy and

16:24

how has that changed over time

16:28

yeah so

16:29

probably probably a couple of things i

16:31

think you know we we started out with a

16:33

product that was great it was it was

16:34

good for bigger ticket items

16:37

couches furniture really disrupting the

16:39

old traditional

16:41

interest interest-free

16:43

but we realized that that wasn't going

16:44

to carry us the whole way forward and

16:47

as we were trying to sell that into

16:49

categories like marketplaces and shoes

16:51

where actually the bulk of

16:52

payments volume goes goes through we

16:55

realized we actually had the wrong

16:56

products and so we

16:59

we we we commissioned a few of our guys

17:01

to build a prototype um which was

17:04

wasn't even working at the time we were

17:05

pitching it to merchants and we kind of

17:08

pivoted really quickly to this to this

17:09

new product which actually gave us the

17:11

next um lifeblood

17:14

ultimately what i would say is you have

17:17

to continuously i mean the piece is that

17:19

one is nobody knows anything so you

17:22

you'll get lucky you might get lucky

17:24

with the first product

17:25

but you can't rest on your laurels you

17:26

have to continuously experiment

17:30

i think

17:30

thomas edison said you know genius is 99

17:34

perspiration one percent ins inspiration

17:38

there are no silver bullets you have to

17:40

and the faster you can actually

17:42

experiment get the feedback listen to

17:44

customers

17:46

you need to have the idea first and kind

17:47

of push it the faster you can remain

17:49

relevant and then i think underpinning

17:51

all of that is

17:52

and the earlier you do this i think will

17:54

work better is really identify what is

17:57

your purpose and what is your passion

17:59

and i think if if you can really anchor

18:01

around that that will be the guiding

18:03

light for you for the company product

18:06

design product innovation and give you a

18:07

lens through which to um to build

18:10

product and i think that's how we've

18:11

really differentiated here we've had a

18:12

strong focus on responsibility

18:15

when customers click our button we want

18:17

them to know that we have their back and

18:19

and our purpose is you know creating a

18:21

world where people can live

18:23

fearlessly today knowing they're in

18:25

control of tomorrow and i think you know

18:26

the sooner you can actually embed

18:28

purpose and who you are your identity

18:30

early on even if even it's just two of

18:32

you um i think that will propel you much

18:34

much much farther we knew it we probably

18:37

just didn't speak about it as a language

18:39

in the business as often as we do now

18:42

and as you've sort of gone about um

18:45

experimenting all the time um what have

18:48

been your biggest challenges as you've

18:50

scaled globally

18:54

um scaling globally which i'm doing now

18:57

is um

18:58

yeah it is full on okay because uh first

19:01

of all it's the first time we are doing

19:03

this

19:04

so you know we had a and what we've

19:06

tried to say to zipsters is

19:08

um you know our competitive advantage

19:11

needs to be our resilience to change

19:14

so have really good open dialogue teams

19:16

are going to change we're going to

19:17

reform we're going to change what we

19:18

need to to meet

19:20

the business needs for today going

19:22

global just breaks the brain we're still

19:24

trying to get it right in australia even

19:26

eight years in the right people and the

19:27

right roles the right

19:29

organizational architecture and now

19:31

now you go global so now i've got an

19:34

australian team here us team here and

19:36

i'm trying to work out how does the

19:37

regional how does the functional work um

19:40

and it's pretty hard like and so by

19:43

having good open dialogue setting goals

19:46

putting things in place for you know say

19:48

a quarter

19:49

and

19:50

almost be a self-learning organization

19:52

so we we may get it wrong we may get it

19:55

right okay we feel like it's probably

19:57

right in three months time let's sit

19:59

back let's work out what's working

20:01

what's not working what's missing what's

20:03

possible and let's

20:05

adapt the model and let's um and let's

20:07

do that and so we're continuously doing

20:08

that which is building

20:11

building the plane while we fly and

20:12

continue to drive growth customers and

20:14

all all that good stuff

20:16

so almost operating like an early stage

20:19

startup as you scale but just in a

20:21

different fashion as you go

20:23

and i think what we want to do is we

20:24

actually want to get back to the

20:26

beginning because it's the magic that

20:28

happens when you're small remember

20:29

imagine everyone's working together same

20:32

team same goals decision making is fast

20:35

and how do you do that at scale so what

20:37

we're actually trying to do now is as we

20:39

get bigger make the company even smaller

20:41

so

20:42

build you know autonomous teams which

20:44

are cross-functional that own different

20:45

parts of the customer journey

20:47

they're on microservices so they can

20:49

ship quicker they can make their own

20:51

decisions all under our purpose and kind

20:53

of okrs now that's much harder as you

20:56

get bigger so you've got to be much more

20:57

intentional around how you sort that out

21:00

interesting get smaller as you get

21:01

bigger um on that note though

21:04

yeah fantastic um in the chat i think

21:06

it's uh nicholas asked how did you know

21:08

it was time to tackle overseas markets

21:12

yes so when again when we started you

21:15

know a couple of aussie kids we didn't

21:18

when you go traveling normally go

21:19

traveling overseas to have fun right

21:22

like let's go backpacking around the

21:23

world the greek islands uk we never

21:26

thought we'd actually do business um we

21:29

never we thought it's just

21:31

it's too far away um and so a couple of

21:34

years ago we were we realized that hey

21:37

this thing's actually working um it's we

21:40

are a technology business

21:42

why not give this a crack and

21:44

you know the board said to us

21:47

i don't know if you're going to be able

21:48

to handle it

21:49

things are not working perfectly in

21:52

australia how's customer obsession how's

21:55

the merchant pipeline the technology is

21:56

still being rebuilt so there's just too

21:59

much going on and um

22:01

we said fair fair enough let's just like

22:04

restructure some of the team put some

22:05

people owning it and and and let's go so

22:08

actually two years ago we were just in

22:10

australia we saw this phenomenon and

22:12

that nothing had really happened in in

22:13

the western world but even in the

22:15

emerging markets to leapfrog

22:17

credit cards and traditional products

22:18

and offer awesome credit credit and

22:21

financial products to the population and

22:23

in two years we've gone to 13 markets

22:27

all via zoom really because it's been

22:29

it's been under the under the geyser

22:30

covered and to get there we've had to

22:33

use our warm networks trusted people

22:35

which has actually allowed us to

22:37

accelerate really really fast

22:39

um i'd love to try to squeeze in a

22:41

couple more audience questions as well

22:42

so maybe we'll move to somewhat rapid

22:45

fire

22:46

love this one um from

22:50

josh what made investors trust you

22:55

a good question so when i mentioned when

22:57

we first started i had never i'd also

23:00

never raised capital before okay so i

23:01

had this clunky investment banking

23:03

presentation because i came from the

23:05

investment banking world i wasn't you

23:07

know i wasn't a tech startup guy and

23:09

pitched 60 investors

23:11

and one of them said to me

23:14

look i'm not 100

23:15

confident or sure of what you're doing

23:17

but i really like you and p and i think

23:20

in the formative um years for kind of

23:23

startup reality is

23:25

it's probably 80

23:26

of the individuals and 20 percent the

23:29

idea because many startups

23:31

um might not get there and in and

23:33

generally you might this experimentation

23:35

is iterating this adapting this is

23:37

really how the team for formation is i

23:39

think that was the most sound advice

23:40

it's like he believed in us

23:43

because of our passion and our hunger

23:45

and less about the idea uh he's

23:46

obviously benefited greatly from that so

23:48

i think it's also about finding people

23:51

that really don't just take money for

23:52

the sake of it although that's good find

23:54

people that can get evangelical about

23:57

you and and what you're doing

24:00

so this one is maybe um moving a little

24:02

bit more personal but still relatable to

24:04

all startup founders

24:06

um

24:07

tell us about a time that you might have

24:08

failed or had a perceived you know sense

24:10

of failure and how you've navigated that

24:15

ah look there's been many times along

24:17

the way and in fact you know the

24:19

business breaks as as it gets bigger and

24:21

bigger um

24:23

failures happened uh

24:26

you know missing out on merchants right

24:28

and you know if i remember pitching

24:30

cogan and fantastic furniture in 2013

24:34

the year they joined us

24:36

2017 and 2018. so i think first of all

24:40

don't give up just like incredible

24:42

endurance because ultimately it's those

24:45

that endure that um that that kind of

24:47

make it make it to the end the other

24:49

time was when we were i'd say listed on

24:51

the

24:52

stock market we're just trading sideways

24:55

um

24:55

and uh

24:57

everyone's doesn't believe in us right

24:59

they they think we're not going to win

25:01

um and i think it's again if you're

25:04

truly passionate about what you're doing

25:07

that that also fuels fuels endurance so

25:09

i think make sure that you are really

25:11

passionate about your subject matter and

25:14

um and that it plays to your to your

25:16

strengths um you know don't just go

25:19

chasing the money because it's

25:20

it can be quite quite a long journey

25:22

you're going to go up you're going to go

25:23

down you need to wake up every morning

25:25

feeling super excited about what you're

25:28

up to rather than going and working for

25:30

the uh the evil corporation

25:32

and that requires real passion and fire

25:35

so we've got two more minutes i'll ask

25:37

two more questions one has come from ben

25:40

in the audience linking to what you've

25:42

just said now what would have to happen

25:44

for you to hang up the boots

25:46

that's a good juicy one ben that is a

25:48

good juicing one ben so i'm you know we

25:51

are eight years in all right i had no

25:54

gray hair when i started

25:56

um it doesn't look as great over here

25:59

with with my lovely background so

26:01

it's about

26:03

as long as we can preserve the things

26:05

that we really enjoy so i think if it

26:07

ever gets to a stage where i don't feel

26:09

happy to come to work

26:11

now

26:12

i like to rank every day as a zero a

26:15

minus one a zero or a plus one and i

26:18

think if you're generally in the zero to

26:19

plus one range things are good you're

26:21

going to go through tough times you know

26:22

and there are many moments when over the

26:24

years when

26:26

lots of people resigned for example we

26:28

lost lots of contracts the tech's not

26:30

working you are going to go up and down

26:32

up and down um

26:34

so i think for me it's if i ever come to

26:36

work and it goes for future time and i'm

26:38

just not happy right i don't feel like

26:40

i'm having an impact

26:42

there's um too much

26:44

bureaucracy you know in the evil

26:46

corporation which we won't let happen

26:49

so if i if i lose my passion

26:51

and don't feel like i'm making a

26:52

difference and one of the biggest

26:53

drivers for me is around

26:56

creating a playground at zip for people

26:58

to find their strengths and find their

27:00

passion and almost i believe if we can

27:02

do that we're going to have amazing

27:04

individuals and build an amazing company

27:06

so let's see how we go

27:08

also the other side of that is we are a

27:10

listed company and we have now fiduciary

27:13

obligations to kind of shareholders as

27:14

well so that adds another dynamic to the

27:17

equation

27:19

um so i guess your story and

27:22

success

27:23

is both inspirational and aspirational

27:26

but it can seem out of reach and

27:28

overwhelming for some people

27:29

so what advice do you have wrapping up

27:32

for early stage first-time founders or

27:35

even younger larry on how to take those

27:38

first steps in building a startup

27:42

so

27:43

probably you know i'll answer this in

27:45

two ways you know one is after i started

27:47

tech at university at uts

27:49

loved it um you know it really taught me

27:52

the power of technology

27:54

and i did that for a few years then i

27:56

moved into finance i did that for eight

27:57

years so we had the tech

27:59

we then had the fin and then when i

28:02

started fintech it's only when i look

28:04

back that i went oh wow i actually have

28:06

these two really awesome

28:08

super skills so i think first of all um

28:10

don't feel bad if you don't if you

28:12

haven't identified your strengths yep i

28:15

think you should actually go and

28:16

experiment have different experiences so

28:19

that you as long as it's adding

28:20

something new either something new that

28:22

you like or something that you kind of

28:23

don't like um so if you have to join the

28:25

evil corporation to do that don't feel

28:28

bad um

28:30

at the same time

28:32

on the startup side and starting

28:34

something out i think what is many

28:36

people just don't realize their

28:38

potential

28:39

right

28:40

and i think that's the mindset is the

28:43

growth mindset don't be afraid of what

28:45

other people say

28:48

reflect learn release the shackles and

28:51

everyone has a superpower and a super

28:53

strength and i think

28:55

many of you don't realize what you're

28:57

capable of

28:58

right and i think years ago when we

29:01

started we were scared of raising money

29:03

for investors

29:04

i think the founder is the most

29:06

important person very few people are

29:08

willing to take the risk

29:10

and so

29:11

and it's also you don't need to start

29:13

now if you feel you've got the idea and

29:14

you've got the team great otherwise keep

29:16

going and find a way to get there over

29:18

time

29:19

wow what a perfect way to wrap up thanks

29:22

larry i know i've learned a lot i could

29:24

speak to you for hours about this but

29:25

that was a really awesome 25 minutes and

29:28

uh we're all leaving leaving us wanting

29:30

more i hope everyone dialing in from

29:32

home um learned something as well he

29:35

might not hear your applause but i'm

29:37

sure he'll feel the love so everyone

29:38

please thank me and uh please join me in

29:41

thanking larry for his time and amazing

29:43

advice

29:45

virtual round of applause thank you very

29:47

much emma that was a good chat

29:50

thanks so much