DevReady Podcast

In this episode Andrew and Anthony get to know Philip Nowell of Ontogo. Philip shares his knowledge of entering the medical device industry. With his experience as a surgeon and passion for medical devices, Philip began working in the private sector. In 2003 he led and developed Cook Medical, a medical device company based in the United States. Once he retired and moved to Australia, Philip saw a demand for guiding others through the regulatory world of medical devices or along the journey of creating new commercial products. That’s how Ontogo came into being. Ontogo is a network of professionals who have practiced their knowledge base, not theorized it. And with their expertise, they give real guidance to clients struggling to see their product ideas realized. Philip tells Andrew and Anthony how to start off right, when creating a new product. From testing your product idea, evaluating the market, and preparing for investors, Philip gives detailed steps to save you time, money, and help you avoid common mistakes. The best take away from this episode: understand your market acceptance. Is there a market for your product? Is there a problem and have you solved it? If not, you are only investing in an idea not a product.

On today’s episode, Andrew and Anthony speak with angel investor Hamish Hughes about how he got his start as an investor, and how the process of seeking investment rounds actually works. After a short stint in politics, he was drawn to the VC world based on how popular it was in the UK. Moved by how under-developed the industry was in Australia, he took up investing work there. Hamish discusses the role that investors play in the early stages of startup development and takeoff, and he shares some of his own stories. He explains some of the things that startups really need to consider before even approaching an investor, how to contact investors successfully, and how to scale after funding the founding of the company. Andrew and Anthony also pick Hamish’s brain about the world of VC investing, what makes companies successful, and how to avoid failure (if you’re in the 10% of companies that succeed). The best takeaways from today’s episode are centered around demystifying the investment process, as well as some of the tips Hamish offers up to debunk investing myths. Best practice is to have a good idea, don’t worry about others stealing it, and don’t expect investors to buy into something if the potential for return is not high. And above all: be actionable. There are a hundred million dollar ideas—but only some are executed.

On today’s episode, Andrew and Anthony speak with CEO and founder of FinalCall, Paul Arnost. Paul’s interest out of high school was initially as a heavy metal vocalist, proving you can be anything. Shortly after, he worked his way into a career in the banks before starting a career in the tech world. Over the course of this episode, Paul and the hosts get into many different topics related to success as a startup. Paul explains the concept of designing processes, business agility, and the need to communicate better. Paul is the founder of a company that helps real estate agencies connect homebuyers to their respective homes while saving them time and money. He goes into the ins and outs of the conception of that idea, some of the roadblocks he hit along the way, and how he was able to find success, even amid the COVID pandemic. During their conversation, Andrew and Anthony also get into many of the issues that plague tech startups in general, including workflow, project management, and delivery problems. They also list some red flags to look out for in the beginning phases. Paul laments working with many companies who struggled on the delivery front, and he opines that delivery is paramount to making the client happy. If you can just commit to always delivering the product, a lot of the other things will fall away. They also spend a little time talking about investors and how people manage to get their startups off the ground. Paul signs off with some advice on how to stay motivated as an entrepreneur. The risks are real, and the stress is high, but the rewards are great. Paul has left us his email for anyone who wants to reach out to him.

On today’s episode, Andrew and Anthony speak with Aurecon’s Digital Futures Leader, Stewart Bird. The three talk about forging client-focused initiatives, dealing with challenges in the corporate world, and looking into the future to adapt for a digital and automated world. In addition to the world of automation, Andrew and Anthony hear from Stewart about how mindset might be the number one change agent in business. The learning mindset, or the growth mindset, is what pushes business to improve their processes and continue to find ways to add value to their brand. “By doing, you’re learning,” they say. They incorporate McKinsey’s Three Horizons to group and plan their research and development. Stewart also talks a good deal about this idea called the “Prosumer”: that customers are moving away from business that still happens transactionally. They are instead looking for relationships to connect in a human way with their partners. This kind of thing comes as a challenge, but Stewart spends a good portion of the rest of the interview describing some tactics for how to do that, including streamlining your processes internally and looking for ways to incorporate technology that will make your job easier. Finally, the hosts ask Stewart to share some parting wisdom. He ultimately says to listen to your customers. If you don’t have a “finger on the pulse,” you’re going to be dead in the water. This means being flexible to adapt to change. It means looking for ways to automate processes and checking for faulty designs. It means going out in the field to see what your customers really want. That’s the only way you can truly add value to your brand. And you have to trust them. Think externally: what will this lead to? Prepare for those changes as your projects develop and your ideas come to fruition, because you’re going to want your customers to keep coming back to your business. Make it easier on them. Show that you care about who they are. And deliver your best work possible.

On today’s episode, Andrew and Anthony speak with William Strange about his company, Sports Performance Tracking (SPT), his history of entrepreneurship, and the future of tech. From Melbourne, Will got his start in real estate, he saw successes in the industry and moved over to the property development side of things. Not long after, in 2013, he founded a subscription-underwear business for men. He was able to land an investment on Shark Tank for his subscription company Three65. Ultimately, he ended up selling Three65 shortly after his appearance on Shark Tank. Will explains that in order to be successful, you need to build your processes so that anyone can do it. Create the infrastructure that will allow the buyer down the road to jump on production with little friction. Andrew and Anthony discuss the stages that an entrepreneur must walk through, including the conception stage, research and development, and testing the prototypes for the initial product delivery. Born out of the idea of GPS tracking bikes and cars, William developed the GPS tech necessary to track the movements of high-performing athletes. Ultimately, this required him to develop his own hardware because vehicle-based GPS was limited in its ability to monitor precision movements. Unfortunately, Will didn’t have the software, either. So he not only needed to develop the hardware, but the software as well. Trying to deliver this product proved to be more difficult than he imagined at first. Will also goes into how the COVID pandemic has impacted his cash flow and his team. Beyond this, Will discusses how the business world is likely going to be changed by the impact of the COVID-19. Most businesses are going to reevaluate their expenses when it comes to office space and overhead because most are still able to work from home and keep the company alive. There is some concern about monitoring employees, however. In conclusion, the hosts reflect with Will on the future of business in the tech industry and look forward to more conversations about the marriage of tech and sports.

In this weeks episode of the DevReady Podcast, we spoke to Terry Wilson from Chat Metrics | Conversation as a Service - CaaS | Live Chat | Lead Generation. When developing a #Saas product, we can sometimes focus all our energy on the building the tech. But in the end, like every other business, we need to understand how to market, nature and convert our leads. Chatbots is a new piece of tech that many businesses have begun putting in the corner of their websites. If you have a chatbot, have you considered the experience that your customers and prospects are having with the bot? Terry is an advocate for live chat, having real people talk to your customers and helping them engage and interact with your webpage and service offerings. Love to hear your thoughts below. Would you prefer to talk to a bot or a real person?

In this week's episode of the DevReady Podcast, we were joined Miriana Taflaga, Principle - Experience Design from Symplicit. During this episode, we explored how Human-Centred design can dramatically increase your likelihood of success. In simple terms... Work with your users! Throughout our journey of designing and developing software solutions, we have heard this time and time again. "We want it to be perfect before we show users." Are you making the same mistake?

On this week's episode of the DevReady Podcast, we interviewed Adam A. Jacoby, founder of MiVote, Chairman Esport Mogul (ASX:ESH), 2 X Codex World's Top 50 Innovator, Director Global & Strategic Innovation Swinburne University of Technology Innovation Precinct. This story of a non-tech founder describes what it takes to deliver upon a moonshot idea. Through MiVote, Adam's objective is to reimagine what democracy could be when delivered through a startup company. In this episode, you will learn about the highs, lows and everything in between for a startup entrepreneur.

In this weeks episode of the DevReady Podcast, we were joined by Joana Inch from Hat Media Australia talking about all things marketing. Joana and her team at Hat Media help SaaS businesses better execute their marketing and social media campaigns. In the episode, we discussed how understanding your niche and buyer personas could dramatically increase your marketing results. With competition ever increasing in the SaaS space, it has never been more important to create great content that answers your customer's questions and solves their pain points.

Would you like 43.5% of every dollar that you invest in innovation paid back to you? On this week's episode of the DevReady Podcast, we were joined by Caitlin Harvey and Alexander Paykin from RnD360 Advisory Group. During this conversation, we took a deep dive into the R&D Tax Incentive. - What you need to know - How you need to structure your business - Assessing your likely eligibility - The rules and regulations - And we even explored the significnt benefit of setting your startup up as Early Stage Innovation Company (ESIC)

"Right now, your chances being published in the media and building your profile is HUGE" - Jules Brooke from Handle Your Own PR. We enjoyed talking to Jules about her tech journey so much that we had to invite her back to explore how PR can help non-techs build their brand and business profile. Have you ever wanted to be published in the Fin Review or share your story on the Evening News? In this weeks episode of the DevReady Podcast, we took a deep dive into how to write an article and then get it in the hands the right journalists. PR is a powerful awareness exercise and it has never been easier to get published. Through the pandemic, the media is getting about 4x as much traffic and half as much content sent to them. To learn more how you can utilise PR to build your brand, check out the full Episode

On this week's episode of the DevReady Podcast, we were joined by Jules Brooke, founder of Handle Your Own PR. Handle Your Own PR is a #SaaS and educations business helping small business manage and run their PR campaigns. Jules discussed the challenges that she faced when running a development project as a non-tech and even how she had to SELL THE HOUSE to continue to fund the development process. Here is her advice for non-tech building tech: * Always start with a plan * Release in small bites * Have a Roadmap in place * Get a great team around you "Regardless of the journey, it will be the best thing that you will ever do, ". - Jules Brooke

In the DevReady Podcast this week we were joined by Christina Gerakiteys, CEO of SingularityU Australia, to discuss how they are helping startups and businesses utilise technology to better serve humanity. Christina shared how we can all shoot for that moonshot idea and create new and innovative possibilities with technology to impact a billion people. In this inspiring look at technology, Christina shared many stories the will open up your eyes to the possibilities that are around us.

We are all overload by data. They say "data is the new oil", but does that lend us to capturing data for the sake of capturing data? In today's episode of the DevReady we joined be Jacinta Outlaw from The Fifth Element. During this episode, we explored how startups and businesses can better utilise and collect data to increase their value and solve greater problems. Learn how Jacinta and her team help businesses understand the value of data and how to better engineer your tech products with data partners in mind. A great episode about how we can strategically position of businesses to capture data and solve bigger problems.

“Opportunity is everywhere, except most of us have our eyes closed” – Neville Christie In Today’s Special Episode of the DevReady Podcast. Neville joined us to talk about the current state of the economy given the coronavirus crisis. 78 years young, Neville has been involved in 44 venture, 41 successful. A profound track record by anyone’s account. During this episode, Neville shared his amazing journey of how he was forced to become the family breadwinner at the young age of 12. By 13, Neville had begun 3 business, the 3rd of which was collecting and producing Scallop shell ashtrays. Selling them door-to-door, Neville turned this 5c item into a 75c sale! He then turned this profit into buying and selling newspapers at the local pub, later falling into the business microloans. At 13, Neville was making 5X the average wage! In this episode, we take a deep dive into how Purpose has played a major part in Neville’s success and he shared what entrepreneurial life could look like in the aftermath of COVID-19.

In today's episode of the DevReady Podcast, we had Daniel Mumby "That StartUp Guy" join us again. In this episode, we discussed an approach to building a team around you to increase your likelihood of investment and long term success in your tech venture. Dan's advice for founders; build a team of advisors and ensure that they meet the following criteria: 1. Walked the path before and 2. are emotionally invested in your success If you are a non-tech looking build tech consider finding advisors that can help across the following areas: 1. Technical 2. Industry knowledge 3. Sale 4. Knows your target customers 5. Understand the numbers

In today's episode of the DevReady Podcast, we were joined by Craig McFarlane, Director - Education and Professional Services at Essilor Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Mediterranean-CIS, Russia & Africa at Essilor Group. In his time at Essilor, Craig has been instrumental in moving the organisational training from face-to-face to blended (online and offline) and now even microlearning approaches. Craig shared his number one tip from building tech within an organisation. Keep it simple at the start! Take it one step at a time and build a robust solution that will allow you to expand your product in the future. This is great advice for any non-tech looking to build better technology.

In today's episode of the DevReady we had Jamie Skella join us. Thank you, Jamie, for taking the time to share your journey of developing digital products in both corporate and startup environments. At 13, Jamie first embraced technology as an online gamer and later played for Australia's top-ranked esports teams. Jamie has now gone full circle, where he now manages Mogul, Australia's first publicly listed esports company. We first met Jamie when he was running Horizon State, Winner of the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer award, joining the likes of Google, Airbnb, and Spotify. Voted 7 of 100 on a list of world-changing technologies by The Australian.

Thank you Martin Batur for joining us on the DevReady Podcast. Martin is the Co-Founder of GigSuper, a startup out of Melbourne that is helping the self-employed understand the importance of Superannuation. Did you know that over 1.3+ million Australians are self-employed and that 75% are NOT currently contributing to Super? Worst of all 20% have a NO super at all! GigSuper aims to solve this problem by educating the market and providing an innovative SaaS product to help self-employed folks build their super balance. In this episode, Martin shared how they approached the development of their product as non-techs. Learn about what they would have done differently if they had the opportunity to start all over again.

Thank you Brian Ruddle for joining us on the DevReady Podcast this week. Brian is from Impact Innovation where they have been helping startups and corporate with their product innovation for over 13 years now. Brian has been involved in 4 successful startups, is an advisor in the startup space and is now the Chair of Innovation Management Standards at @standards Australia. In today’s episode, Brian shares his model describing Idea Complexity. The Idea complexity model provides a great framework to ask the right questions, explore our assumptions and validate ideas and business cases within a structured approach. This is a great episode for anyone that has had that lightbulb moment and looking for a model to maximise their potential of success.

In this week’s episode of the DevReady, we had Tim Walmsley join us from BenchOn. Tim shared his story of how he has continued to pivot his business, operations and even target customer to solve a major problem that we can all have in our businesses. Staff under-utilisation. Tim shared how this non-tech SOLD THE HOUSE and went all-in on his vision. In 2019, 4 years into the business BenchOn was name the “Defence Connect Australian Defence Industry Start-Up of the Year for 2019”. In this episode, Tim shared some great insights into what it really takes to create value.

Thank you Stewart Marshall for joining us on the DevReady Podcast this week. In this episode, we discussed some of the key challenges that a SaaS business can face. Did you know that 10/11 SaaS businesses fail and that in every SaaS category there is an average of 10 competitors? Through this podcast, you will learn about how to get ahead in this highly competitive landscape. If you run own a SaaS business or a looking to build a SaaS product this is a MUST listen.

In today's Episode of the DevReady Podcast we interviewed Cary Gee, founder of BOTTY Limited. Cary shared his story of how he went from growing and exiting a 200+ stores restaurant chain across Asia to now running his second tech Company. In 3 short years, this non-tech has grown the Botty team to over 25+ dev and engineers working across contextual AI and Machine Learning supporting 1,000+ clients. Through the Podcast Cary shared a great insight into how big questions have shaped entrepreneurial journal. If you are a non-tech looking to convert your ideas into a successful business, this Podcast will provide you with some significant insights.

It is never about the technology. In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, we interviewed Daniel Mumby "That StartUp Guy" - 15x founder, Startup Mentor, Angel Investor and Author of the book titled, "Before you quit your day job" In the episode we discussed how focusing on the tech can actually limit your ability to succeed. We looked at the importance of a strategic plan, understanding your business model and how to deliver a product and service that your customers will love, need and desire. This is a must-listen for anyone that is building a technology product.

In this week’s episode of the DevReady Podcast, we interviewed Robert Venter. Robert, thank you for coming on to the Podcast and sharing your journey. Robert is the founder and CEO of Eazi-Tender. In 2015 Robert set out on the journey to develop an all in one platform to solve the problem of having to work with multiple software packages with little integration in the project management space. Throughout his journey, Robert engaged with several tech partners and was even invited to Silicon Valley accelerator to realise his dream. However, success wasn’t realised until he discovered that the problem he was attempted to solve needed refinement. A core focus on a single problem that could add significant value to a large client base. If you are a non-tech building tech, this episode drives home the importance of understanding what your customers really need.

We have just launched our new DevReady Podcast. Our first interview is with Judy Celmins of Engage4Insights. She shares her story about jumping into the development of their own app, It’s a great story with plenty of interesting takeaways. Visit our website, or follow us on social media for more insights Website: https://aerion.com.au LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aeri... Medium: https://medium.com/aerion-technologies Twitter: https://twitter.com/aeriontech Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aerionTech EDM Dance Party by Alex Menco | https://alexmenco.net Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Today's Podcast is with Mellonie Francis, a non-tech founder of Find Book Beauty. Learn about her journey that started out building an MVP with a website builder. This led to engaging technical advisor and dev team which she later had to sack. If you are looking to take an Idea to Software this is a must listen. Visit our website, or follow us on social media for more insights Website: https://aerion.com.au LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aeri... Medium: https://medium.com/aerion-technologies Twitter: https://twitter.com/aeriontech Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aerionTech

Validating and Idea can be one of the biggest challenges when building a new product. Are we solving a problem that our customers actually value? Are solving the problem with the right solution? Let's face it, we all can fall in love with our ideas and sometimes this can mean we jump into delivery way too early. In this episode of the DevReady podcast we interviewed Nick Coster. Nick is from Brainmates, where he and his team help product owners deliver products that customers love. Nick shared a step by step approach to designing and validating solutions with our target customers. If you have an idea and want to deliver a technology solution, this is a must listen. Visit our website, or follow us on social media for more insights Website: https://aerion.com.au LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aeri... Medium: https://medium.com/aerion-technologies Twitter: https://twitter.com/aeriontech Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aerionTech