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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Phil is the CEO and Managing Director of Pacific Smiles Group (ASX: PSQ), an Australian dental group operating over 100 dental centres under the Pacific Smile Dental Care and the NIB Dental Care brands. In this conversation Phil explains how to conceptualise the industry, identifies the main players in the scene, talks at length about this leadership philosophy that was reinforced and tested during the pressures of the pandemic, and talks to the future of Pacific Smiles Group.

Brian is an Australian business executive who was the Managing Director and CEO of Westpac from 2014 to 2020. He has recently released a book, The Leadership Star: A Practical Guide to Building Engagement. In this episode he talks specifically about the his key leadership learnings, and personal career perspectives, and answers questions about his time guiding Westpac through the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry,

It’s the most eagerly anticipated episode of 2021! We sit down for a chat with Larry Diamond – the founder and CEO of one of the ASX’s hottest stocks and one of the most discussed companies in the Equity Mates community, Zip Co (ASX: Z1P).

Today we have another episode in our CEO series, as Bryce and Alec speak to Brickworks’ (ASX:BKW) CEO & Managing Director, Lindsay Partridge.

Blake Cassidy is CEO of Bamboo. Bamboo is Australia’s first crypto micro investing app, allowing investors to invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Gold and Silver.

Usually when Matt appears on Equity Mates, he’s talking about stocks in the US. This time though, Bryce and Alec wanted to take a different angle, and explore his entrepreneurial journey building Stake.

In today’s episode, Alec and Bryce talk to Brian Ward. Brian is the founder and chief executive officer of Aroa, a company of much discussion in the Equity Mates’ Facebook group, and a company that featured in our summer series.

In this episode we were joined by Orni Daniel, the Co-CEO of Israeli Software as a Service (SaaS) business Gefen Technologies. Orni is currently guiding Gefen through the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process, with plans to list on the ASX by the end of 2020.