Launch week of Kindling!

Hey! Welcome to edition #1 of the Kindling Weekly.

You are SUPER early and we appreciate you being here.

So what’s this all about? 

We’re on a mission to build our dream company. 

What we’re building:

• A platform to enable business & technology creators to scale and monetise. We’ll tell you the details soon. Promise.

• But first, we’re going to build our own technology media company. Why? Because we love it, it helps us build the platform and audience-first companies are the way of the future.

But why should you read this newsletter?

We’re going to give you super secret information each week that you can’t find anywhere else: insights from our podcasts, behind the scenes stuff, updates on our build and more.

Week 1 saw us in an AFR article, have a really warm reception, stir some controversy and interview a former Prime Minister. Scroll down for more.

Malcolm Turnbull in the hotseat

We opened with a bang, with an episode with former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, actually our second episode with him.

Why interview him? Wasn’t he a politician?

Not known to all, but Malcolm was a technology investor before politics and always had enthusiasm towards innovation. He made key regulation in the startup world that made life easier for startups and investors.

Watch the podcast on Youtube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

What we talked about: politics vs private sector, what Aus media gets wrong about tech, why Australians need to embrace failure, the Tiktok ban, defence spending, the creator economy, political legacy and what he would do now.

Episode Insights

1. When assessing his own political legacy, Turnbull says that there were certain reforms that wouldn’t have happened without him, but admits that a social and economic current at the time meant greater forces propelled certain change too

2. Where does Turnbull’s proclivity for innovation come from? His answer is that he’s always had a determination to optimise processes. Throughout his life and career he’s always asked how things can be done more efficiently

3. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, the limiting factor for the growth of the technology industry in Australia was capital - there simply was not enough investment funds for startups. That problem has largely been solved now

4. The lack of capital problem was mirrored when Turnbull took OzEmail public in the US in the 90s due to underdevelopment in the Australian stock exchange

5. For more growth in Australian startups, Australia needs to embrace a mindset that is more geared towards risk-taking and accepting failures. Only by acknowledging that not everything has to succeed, can we begin to experiment more and try ambitious things

6. Turnbull says his most important contribution to innovation during his time in politics was talking about innovation positively and optimistically. He believes Australian media still has a large role to play with improving our language around technology

7. Government departments need to be active supporters and customers of Australian startups. Often governments only want to deal with big companies or give grants to small companies, but it’s increasingly important that governments become a revenue provider to startups

8. Advice for young people making media: just tell the truth. Don’t buy into angertainment or making up lies for engagement

9. Technology that Turnbull is worried about: Tiktok and deepfakes

10. Would are the three things Turnbull would focus on if he were PM again? His answer was: innovation policy, the clean energy transition and keeping multi-cultural Australia united

Building in Public: Launch Week

We’d been ramping up to launch for 3 months now. This time had seen us: build a studio, hire 2 amazing full-time people and 2 interns, interview an array of guests, work to 10x our production quality, work on new media, roadmapping the big business and so so much more.

Launch week hits and it started off fantastically! The AFR article was positive. Whilst it didn’t quite encapsulate our mission statement (our mission is making a world class tech education free for all, not to make content creators rich!), it was generally fair.

The article lead to good momentum - sales people hitting us up for sponsorships and creators reaching out. And then it turned slightly funky: someone decided to personally attack us.

To be honest, we expected this. Whenever you’re confidently putting your ideas out into the world, there will always be detractors. So we decided to stay heads down and focus on our mission.

We’re pursuing a positive-sum mission to spread inspirational and educational content in the world that helps others, as well as helping boost other educational creators. We have absolute conviction in this mission and are powering ahead with it.

After a few noisy days we had a podcast with Michelle Simmons on Friday morning. This was AMAZING. She is a leading quantum physicist in Australia and CEO of Silicon Quantum Computing.

These are the sort of interviews we live for - people that don’t try to be loud, but are pursuing impactful missions that help humanity. we want to elevate these voices.

What we’re reading/watching

1. Tim Ferriss on Invest Like The Best: It’s no secret that we fanboy Tim a lot so it was cool hearing more about his personal life, his plans in media and his struggles.

2. The Genius behind MrBeast & Casey Neistat’s Videos (Dan Mace Interivew): We’re hardcore learning about vlogging and videography right now. Interview’s like this bring us into the minds of the best.

3. Jocko on Diary of a CEO: Whenever you listen to a podcast with Jocko, you always walk away wanting to be a more resilient version of yourself. This episode also goes into the emotional life of Jocko, talking about how to deal with loss.

See you next week!

Liked what you read? Send this to 2 friends! If this grows, we’ll spend more time on it, but we need to know you like it.

What’s coming next? On Tuesday this week, our episode with Elicia McDonald, partner at Airtree ventures, is coming out. After finishing the episode, I genuinely wondered if we could ever find a better role model.

We talked about investing at Airtree, her values, balancing a big life in work and family and characteristics that make her great.

P.S. We LOVE feedback. Comment below your thoughts or DM us if you have points on how we could improve this newsletter!