Kindling IV: Start Giving

Welcome to Edition IV of the Kindling Weekly

To our weekly newsletter veterans, I say thank you. 🙏

To the newly joined, I hope you find this week’s edition as entertaining as it is educational. 👨‍🏫

Week 4 saw us move into a smoother rhythm while building Kindling.

We had a lot on our plate this week. We:

1. filmed a podcast with Daniel Petre,

2. released a vlog with Steven Bartlett,

3. hustled on a project with Young Change Agents, a social enterprise,

4. met with new clients, and

5. grinded on a special documentary project

Grateful for all of you amid the chaos.

— Adam

(Podcasting) Daniel Petre

In America, when you get rich, you get into philanthropy. In Australia, when you get rich, you buy more houses.

The godfather of Australian technology, Daniel Petre, is trying to change this culture.

In this week’s interview, we feature Daniel, an ex-VP at Microsoft, founder of both Ecorp and Airtree, and a member of several boards. The former co-founder of Airtree is now heading up StartGiving, an organisation focused on getting Australia’s tech wealthy to give more.

Watch the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

On our latest podcast, we talked about changing Australia's philanthropic culture, working with Bill Gates, and chips on shoulders. We discussed Elon Musk and balancing going hard as a founder with being happy, as well as reframing success in tech, and finally, the evolution of the Australian startup ecosystem. You can watch it here.

Time Poor? Here are our Top 10 Insights!

1. It’s dangerous to delay thinking about life until after you’ve obtained success because it implicitly suggests that only successful people can lead a good life. Daniel believes “that’s simply not true.”

2. “What are you doing for others? How does that continue on? Can you be a caring venture capitalist? Can you be a caring lawyer? Can you be a caring investment banker?” are all questions Daniel encourages the audience to ask themselves.

3. Daniel believes it’s too easy to index success and that many people want their lives to be more than work. Creating frameworks to achieve enough in other aspects of life is one way to have a fulfilled experience.

4. Weird psychological drivers underlie the actions of many successful founders. Elon Musk’s childhood abuse is a source of anger that drives him, but Daniel asks if we really “want to take those away.” Founders like Elon Musk have changed the world for the better but can and do become “unhinged”.

5. Holding our most wealthy and powerful to account is the biggest thing that we can do as a society to become more generous with Australia’s money. If you’re a billionaire and you’re not giving to any cause you want, you should be called out. No one should be sitting on a billion dollars of cash or assets.

6. Every industry in Australia will be severely impacted by technology. Australia’s ability to turn research into global high-tech products is enormous, and the return profile for the country is significant. It is up to Australia whether the impact will be net-negative or net-positive.

7. A lot of successful founders are not successful across all areas of life. Their lives are clusterf*cked, and the lesson is to invest time in the important things, like caring for your partner.

8. We need fewer general-purpose funds across the board and more scaled thematic funds in areas of Australia that aren’t invested. This includes agri-tech, med-tech, and climate-tech. Although large funds can be useful in those areas, they have a lesser ability to go deep.

9. The Australian media does a horrible job of helping the startup ecosystem. Publications like the Australian Financial Review do not have the ability to understand the future of Australia’s economy and innovation technology.

10. Daniel’s text message to the world? Share unconditional love, always seek out the truth, and take responsibility for your actions.

Life Behind the Scenes

Founder’s Life: Episode 2

It’s been a while since we’ve been so excited to release a piece of content.

In this episode, you'll see the behind-the-scenes of meeting the man behind The Diary of a CEO, how we got onto Steven Bartlett’s team, and the advice he gave us for our business.

We’re big fanboys, so it was a dream come true.

Build in Public #2

We released Episode 2 of our Build in Public podcast. We discussed our current content strategy, how to develop taste in media, and the challenges we face in our day-to-day business.

The Week That Was

On Tuesday morning, we did a special podcast for Young Change Agents with a couple of young gun entrepreneurs. We interviewed two 18-year-olds who are building an AI startup.

It’s wonderful to see young, hungry talent emerging out of Australia.

The rest of the week was focused on doing our all pushing the needle in a few key segments: (i) working on content quality for existing and new projects; (ii) sales; and (iii) packaging our content really well.

We’re running various content experiments and starting to see some obvious data behind what is working and what is not. It is helping us become clear-cut about our media strategy. Right now, our lives are mostly about testing and checking data to validate or invalidate strategies.

We think the biggest risk is spreading ourselves too thin. So as time goes on, we want to narrow the types of content we’re promoting and focus on just a few social channels.

On a positive note, both of us are getting away this weekend.

• Sachin’s off to support our friend Niek’s effort in a 100 kilometer running race in the Blue Mountains

• Adam’s off to a friend’s beach house in Killcare

Something we’re trying to take on more is working in intense sprints and then resting. The more we talk to successful founders, the more we hear the need to take meaningful rest breaks. Working seven(!) days a week non-stop isn’t the best for either creativity or energy.

Our Content Recs

1. Who we’re learning how to improve sleep from: Dr Matt Walker on the Huberman Lab

2. Who we’re learning about GPT-4o from: The AI Daily Brief

3. Who we’re supporting: @youngchangeagents

Coming Up

This is probably the most inspired we’ve been after a podcast for a while.

But we’re finally releasing the episode we did with David Perell. He’s a famous writer in the tech community on the internet and has wisdom that far surpasses his age.

We’ve been making lots of new content, and we want to double down on what you love. We’d love it if you could give us feedback 💯.*

Liked what you read? We’ll spend more time on it. Help us grow by sharing! ❤️

Ensuring that everyone can achieve a world-class tech education for free.

*Especially, me, I love a good roast. Sincerely, Anastasia