Welcome to Day One

Erin's story is out on April 8th. Subscribe to the podcast now so you don't miss it. Search for Youngpreneur Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

CompEAT are doing what they can to help Dietitians and those in their industry affected by our current challenges. Daniel & Alicia have released the dietitian side of the CompEAT app to help dietitians connect with their clients in these difficult times. CompEAT are organising a virtual conference for athletes with a number of different topics and speakers. One topic will be helping athlete's with resilience and finding their identity and purpose during these times. Learn more about the Virtual conference here -> https://conference.compeatnutrition.com

Taj Pabari started his first business when he was only 11 years old. A tech blog for kids amassing an audience of 50,000 views per day. After that business was sold, Taj started the company he is still building today, Fiftysix Creations. Taj launched Fiftysix creations amongst a mediastorm, being featured everywhere from National Geographic to Sunrise with Kochie. "Within six months we were on the front page of pretty much all media outlets from News Corp, to National Geographic, to ABC, 60 Minutes did a half an hour profile of us during prime time on a Sunday night with Liz Hayes, Koch put us on Sunrise, we were on the Today Show with Karl. We literally had every media outlet in Australia jump on, and we sold a lot of devices." -Taj Pabari

Lara Davis started her business when she was only 13 years old after convincing her parents to let her start the business with a 16 page powerpoint presentation. It was a steep learning curve but it has been all worth it. "It was just about starting, because I knew I would learn more from starting in that time than trying to figure out what to do." - Lara Davis

Taj's story is coming on April 1st. Subscribe to the podcast now so you don't miss it. Search for Youngpreneur Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Lara's story is coming on the 1st of April. Subscribe to the Youngpreneur podcast now so you don't miss it. Search Youngpreneur Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you have a really cool idea for a business? What's stopping you from giving it a shot? Starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur while we're young is an incredible opportunity. A rare time in our lives when we can give stuff a go while we have the flexibility and room to fail fast and learn. "It's ok to fail, take what you've learned and then try again. Because failing while you're young is the best time to do it." -Cheryl Royle, Entrepreneurship Facilitator at Hunter Futurepreneurs. Hosted by Adam Spencer, the Youngpreneur Podcast shares the experiences of other young people just like you, who took a shot and built incredible businesses. Maybe they aren't millionaires yet, but entrepreneurship isn't just about Startups, Scaleups, Seed Rounds and Big Exits. It's about learning new skills that you can't learn anywhere else, it's about creating an opportunity for yourself and it's about having a go and taking control of your future. The Youngpreneur Podcast is brought to you by Hunter Futurepreneurs. The Hunter Futurepreneurs program is an initiative of the Commonwealth government and free to eligible participants. The program has been designed to inspire, educate, mentor and connect future entrepreneurs to start or build a sustainable business.

Today I'd like to share with you the story of Your Food Collective. Your Food Collective is serving over 1400 people since they opening in 2017 at an 80% customer retention rate with a very good average order value. They have hubs all over Newcastle where you can collect your orders and catch up with your local champion and they've recently entered the Sydney market too. Your Food Collective is growing and bringing truly fresh food to everyone. Now, let's go back to day one, where this story begins...

Today you're going to hear the story of Eat Your Water featuring Liam Scanlan. Before we go back to the beginning, here's where we are today, Liam has been named one of the top 50 people in e-commerce in the whole of Australia. In November 2019 alone over 100,000 people went through the Eat Your Water store and Eat Your Water has one of the lowest cost per purchases at 27 cents per purchase with an average order value of $56. Very impressive numbers and Liam is an impressive guy and is only 23 years old. Now, let's go back to day one where this story begins...

Today you're going to hear the story of Startmate featuring the head of operations at Startmate, Michael Batko. Startmate is the leading tech accelerator in Australia and they take 10 to 15 companies and new stage founders in each cohort and help them from three to four months to get them to the next stage of their business. They look for just the most ambitious founders and then work with that talent. Startmate doesn't necessarily specialise in a certain area or industry. Startmate just focuses on the most ambitious founders and work with them to create immense value. Let's go back to day one, to a pub in Surry Hills where this story begins...

Today you're going to hear the story of Slingshot featuring Trent Bagnall and Craig Lambert. Today slingshot is Australia's number 1 corporate accelerator. Trent told me that Slingshot is really invested in supporting regional and have a strong focus on supporting really early-stage startups. They've done 20 investments within the Hunter Valley alone at the time of recording. Which is as he told me, probably more than any other investor in the region, let alone accelerator. Slingshot has a strong pedigree, they've been around about the same time as Startmate, 6 to 8 years. Slingshot is here to stay for the long term. With that in mind, let's find out where Slingshot comes from and how they got started, starting with Trent studying at university. Let's go back to day one, where this story begins...

Hear Trent Bagnall, the founder of Slingshot explain why building a startup in the regions is not only a fantastic opportunity but is a competitive advantage. "I started my business out of regional, I think that's the key thing. I think, when you're trying to build a global business, there's no reason you need to be in the city, right? So, if you're trying to attack global markets, it doesn't really matter where you are. The good thing about the regions is resources are easy to get, so that's cheap rents, better people, less competition in terms of just marketing and PR and all the things, and the oxygen, I think, that startups need. You get better mentors as well because there's a lot of great people in the regions, that want to help regional founders as well, so if you go to Silicon Valley you're probably one of 300 companies doing exactly the same thing in Silicon Valley on that day. If you're in a regional centre, you're probably the only one, and that does help, and there's no reason why you can't attack those markets from here and get big enough. And sure, go overseas or move to the markets where you need to, but I think the regions are a great place to start, and as we both know, there's some great founders that have built great businesses in the Hunter already, so there's no real reason why anybody else can't do it." https://welcometodayone.com/subscribe https://welcometodayone.com/slingshot Support 'Welcome to Day One - The podcast for regional startups' on Patreon https://welcometodayone.com/patreon

Craig Lambert: Co-founder of Slingshot "The initial idea wasn't really about corporates. The initial idea was raising a small venture fund, which we did pretty quickly once again with PwC's help, through an introduction to Artesian Capital. So we had a $10 million investment fund and the idea was really to use the accelerator to make, or to give us a pipeline of high-quality investments. But along the way, because our profile was growing and because we were embedded in PwC's offices, and they had a lot of corporate clients, who wanted to start to understand what innovation and disruption, and what that was going to mean to them. Yeah, we were going out, we were talking to a lot of corporates just about the process of innovation and the process of lean methodology, and how you parade ideas, how you turn ideas into minimum viable products for testing. And we did quite a bit of that, but none of those engagements were long term and none of those engagements were really significant enough to influence change in the corporates. And I remember clearly, NRMA came to us and wanted us to do a similar thing and we dissuaded them from doing that, and encouraged them actually, to do something on a large scale, which is run their own accelerator. We would create a brand on their behalf. We would go into their executive team, and we'd work with them and identify themes, or areas of their business they wanted to improve. We would turn those themes into how we recruited, and really, the Slingshot model was born out of that. Once we got early success within NRMA, we started to be approached by other corporate clients and then really the journey began. Subscribe so you don't miss the full Slingshot story. https://welcometodayone.com/subscribe https://welcometodayone.com/slingshot

Today you're going to hear from Alan Jones - The Nice One. Alan Jones is a startup entrepreneur, a mentor to other startup founders, and an angel investor who is building a venture fund. Let's meet Alan Jones.

Today you're going to hear the story of Startup Muster through its founder Murray Hurps. Startup Muster is a report that produces the most comprehensive data on the Australian startup ecosystem with the goal of measuring and publishing the progress, challenges, and opportunities within the startup ecosystem. Startup Muster is important because the startup world here in Australia is in no sense of the word booming. But it could be, and Startup Muster aims to make the data available for us to course-correct our ship. All hands on deck, let's go back to day one where this story begins... https://welcometodayone.com/startup-muster