Series: CEO Series

Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase. Brian and his co-founder, Fred Ehrsam, founded Coinbase in 2012 as a way for investors to trade Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

Mark Bouris is an Australian businessman who is best known as the founder and chairman of 'Wizard Home Loans', Australia's second largest non-bank mortgage lender behind Aussie Home Loans. He is now the chairman of Yellow Brick Road, a business which he founded in 2007. He’s also the founder of Mentored, a platform that inspires, educates, motivates future business owners! Want more Mark? Listen on his podcasts The Mentor and Straight Talk.

Tim Fung is the co-founder and CEO of Airtasker. Since its founding in 2012, Airtasker has grown to more than 4 million users and over $1 billion in work. Airtasker, trading under the ticker ART, listed on the ASX in 2021.

Felicity and Candice are joined by Don Meij - who’s celebrating 35 years in the pizza business in 2022. Under Don’s leadership, the Company has grown into a thriving international enterprise with more than 3,000 outlets across 10 markets (Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and Japan to begin with), making it the biggest Domino’s business in the world outside the United States. Seven pizzas are sold every single second. Don discovered his appetite for the pizza business back in 1987 in the small seaside suburb of Redcliffe, Queensland, where he worked part-time for Silvio’s Dial-a-Pizza (Silvio’s) while studying to become a high school teacher. He quickly rose through the management ranks at Silvio’s, which later acquired the Domino’s brand in Australia. In 1996 Don opened his first Domino’s store in Caboolture, Queensland, and the rest is history. Felicity and Candice unpack Don’s story, look at how the industry has changed in the years since, and find out what’s next for Domino’s.

Vicki Brady has just been announced as the new CEO, at a company everyone listening in Australia would’ve heard of - Telstra (ASX: TLS). Vicki has over a decade of experience working in Australia’s telecommunications industry across the two major players in the space Telstra and Optus.

Dr Chong is the CEO and Managing Director of Imugene, an ASX-listed biotechnology company working to change the paradigm of cancer treatment - trading under the ASX ticker IMU. Dr Chong has over 20 years experience in leading clinical and department development in oncology including at major pharmaceutical companies Genentech, GSK and Roche.

The basics of crypto have been covered - we have defined and understood what crypto currencies are, explored some of the use cases for these digital assets (both positive and negative) and now some might be ready to take the plunge and invest - but how do we do so?

Chris Bates started his career as a Financial Adviser in the UK back in 2007. After four years working with High Net Worth Investors, he returned to Australia to work with young families and since 2012 his clients have only been young families in their 30s and 40s.

Adore Beauty was the largest female-led IPO in Australian stock market history. On today’s episode, CEO Tennealle O'Shannessy gives us her best elevator pitch for why Adore Beauty is a great investment (cough cough, TimTams).

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was appointed CEO of Optus and Consumer Australia on 1 April 2020. Prior to joining Optus, Kelly spent 14 years with Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) where she held several senior positions.

Darren Steinberg is the CEO of Dexus and an Executive Director of Dexus Funds Management Limited. Dexus is an Australian Real Estate Investment Trust managing an Australian property portfolio valued at $42.5 billion. Darren has over thirty years' experience in the property and funds management industry with an extensive background in office, industrial and retail property investment and development.

Investing is an important way to grow your wealth and set yourself up for financial freedom. But it doesn’t have to stop there. It can also be a tool to give back to causes that you care about. Ever thought that you could micro finance women's businesses or fund farms that are trying to grow sustainable agriculture practices? Well, it is all possible through impact investing

This episode, Bryce and Alec are joined by the CEO of Kogan, Ruslan Kogan. As well as being the CEO and founder, Ruslan is a serial entrepreneur, and together they have a great chat about the founding story of Kogan, the numerous and varied verticals the company operates in, and the effect of covid on e-retailers. Bryce and Alec pose many of the questions gathered from our Equity Mates community, and also discuss the future of Kogan, and what success would look like to him.

Bryce and Alec continue their quest to interview all the CEOs of the ASX 200, and Boral’s Chief Executive and Managing Director, Zlatko Todorcevski joins them this episode. In this conversation they cover a wide range of topics, including his atypical pandemic-influenced recruitment, the Seven Group takeover, his thoughts on ESG and sustainability, and what the future looks like for Boral.

Felicity and Candice welcome their first guests: Wimp 2 Warrior Co Founder and Head Coach John Kavanagh, together with Chief Executive and Co Founder Nick Langton. The company, is a Sydney-based mixed-martial-art start-up, that delivers the end to end marketing, content, publishing and payments platform for combat sports academies to connect with and monetise 500 million MMA fans, through a curated fitness and lifestyle experience. Felicity is a convert, and can attest to the brilliance of the programme, and throughout this episode they learn more about how the founders came to discover the program, the unique challenges of the pandemic and its effect on a contact fitness startup, and how the’ll use the recent funding to grow the company even further.

In this episode, Bryce and Alec talk to Vic Jokovic. Vic is the CEO of Chi-X Australia, a securities and derivatives exchange looking to disrupt the Australian investment market.

Don Meij has worked at Dominos for 3 decades, having started as a delivery driver in 1987, and working his way up to become CEO and Managing Director of Domino’s Pizza Enterprises. He's one of Australia’s great entrepreneurs and during this episode we get stuck into the conversation about the story to date, the technological developments of the company, and his approach to people and culture, as well as his answer to some of your community questions.

This year in Australia, the gender pay gap has increased to 14.2%. That’s a difference of $261.50 every week.

On this episode, Bryce and Alec talk to John Guscic, the Managing Director of Webjet. But before that, John was previously Managing Director, Asia Pacific for GTA and formerly Managing Director, of the Travelport Business Group, Pacific region. Based in Tokyo, Japan, he was responsible for the Galileo and GTA brands in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Indonesia. Previous to that John was Managing Director, Galileo South Pacific and Flairview Travel.

A common investing rule includes balancing your risk through diversification - and one of the ways to achieve this is through adding defensive assets to your portfolio! What are defensive assets, you may ask? Today we chat with the incredible Gaby Rosenberg, co founder of Blossom, to define defensive assets including the classic bond (no, unfortunately nothing to do with James) while exploring how she made one of the least accessible investments options available to people like you and me. Join us as we all learn about this new asset class.

Our first guest for this series is a long-term friend and previous guest of the show - Larry Diamond. Larry is the CEO and co-founder of Zip (ASX: Z1P), and in this conversation Bryce and Alec ask him the questions you helped put together - in our Equity Mates Facebook Discussion Group. Listen to his previous episode here.

It's no secret that New Zealand punches well above its weight with innovative, interesting companies that come across the pond and list on the ASX. In this episode, Alec and Bryce chat to Grant Straker - the co-founder and CEO of Straker Translations, an ASX-listed language translation service. Since co-founding Straker with his wife Merryn in 1999, the company has grown to $30m in revenue and a $130m market cap. Prior to Straker Translations, Grant was a paratrooper in the British Army. Straker has gone from strength to strength, with revenue growing from $10m in FY16 to $31m in FY21 (5 year CAGR, 25.6%) and guided for $50m in FY22, while the global market for language services was $43b in 2017, expected to be $67b in 2022 (5 year CAGR, 9.3%). Together they talk about how Straker will capture larger and larger market share in this growing market, their partnership with IBM, and what the future holds for Straker.

John is the co-founder and CEO of Superhero, an online broker offering Australian’s the lowest cost access to the Australian market and now the US stock market as well. Before co-founding Superhero, John was a stockbroker and private wealth manager at Shaw & Partners.

Angus is the Country Manager of ShopBack, a Singapore-based ecommerce company with more than 25 million members specialising in cashback loyalty programs. When shopping via ShopBack, shoppers receive a percentage of their purchase price back, paid for through affiliate programs by the merchant. Prior to starting at ShopBack in 2018, Angus was the National Sales Director for Groupon.