00:22:19 · S2, Charlie Gearside, Adam Miller
[00:22:19] S2: Why has, you know, your kind of being in Australian startup ecosystem for this long led to you now on this new journey of becoming a content creator or a YouTuber and kind of sharing your opinions about Australia as a whole? What... What's that kind of connection? [00:22:35] S0: Well, I think it's like the first thing... I think the startup stuff's almost separate to it. Yeah. And you sort of realize over time that it's it's connected because it's like... Firstly, I love I love this country. Yeah. And I think, like, we're all super lucky to, like, grow up to be, like, nineties kids in in Australia in Sydney is, like, amazing. It's like... [00:22:58] S2: Yeah. I feel like you're checking that in your head. 90... I'm 99, so on the on the edge. [00:23:02] S0: Yeah. Jesus. [00:23:05] S2: Thank thank you. Tom's sitting back there. It's like 2006 or something. So... Yeah. [00:23:10] S1: Come on then.
00:23:11 · Charlie Gearside
[00:23:11] S0: So you were seeing the jigs. Like, you missed the actual high point of this country. That's right. It's like private equity cards and integrate. No. I I like... I love it, and I'm, like, worried about it. Yeah. I think when I joke about the Olympic Games being a high point, I'm actually like, wow. You know, the prosperity of this country was, like, at its peak there, and I feel like a lot of decisions are very short term since then. And so economically, we're in a bad place. Young people have it really tough when it comes to, like, housing, cost of living, yeah, like, wage growth, all those kind of things going nowhere. And then... So that... There's that sort of general sense in the back of my head. And then when you have it in parallel with startups, which have given me so much personally, you're kinda like, hang on. Is there a connection here? Like, young people aren't getting paid more and more. They can't afford houses. They're told, like, the way to to get wealthy is to, like, buy an investment property, you know, by these dodgy, like, real estate people. These spruikers sitting in the seminar or something like that. And then startups are crying out for good people. We're crying out for more startups. We're crying out for more capital over here. Is there a way that we can, like, direct more young people into companies rather than boom away as of getting getting wealthy and, like... And and at the same time, can we, like, get back... Get Australia back to, like, a place where we're producing... You know, we're prosperous and everyone pulls each other up.
00:24:53 · Adam Miller
[00:24:53] S1: Yeah. It sounds like you're almost asking for a new narrative. Is that there's been this boomer property minerals focused narrative of Australia. There's this startup thing happening and we haven't maybe fully embraced it as part of our character. Yeah. And for this next leg of Australian history, there needs to be this new techno sort of optimist narrative where it's not just about property, but it's about equity. It's, it's about getting high growth jobs in technology companies changing the world.
00:25:20 · Charlie Gearside
[00:25:20] S0: Absolutely. It's like, you know, it's like that classic... You know, the whole, like, weak men create bad times about... It's like, obviously, people, like, take the piss out of that because it's like, but it's kinda true. It's like the... That the era... What I define as, like, sort of like this property obsessed, minerals obsessed, you know, the last thirty years in Australia is is sort of it's about juicing what we have. It's about like... Yeah. We we... We're not we're not producing anything new. We're sort of just like writing this thing down and it's all about selling houses to each other or, like, extracting things Yeah. And capturing capturing value. And I think that Australia, you know, there is... We do have a DNA of, like, being smart people that invent stuff. It's just sad that every time someone talks about what Australian invented, it's always the Hills Hoist, Wi Fi, and the cochlear implant. It hasn't fucking changed, really. I mean, you could add Canva and Jira to that list. Yeah. I don't know if software has the same, like, emotional attachment, but, like, it's part of our DNA. We just have to, like... It's... Maybe it's up to our generation to pick it back up.
00:26:36 · S2
[00:26:36] S2: I think there's a lot of interesting kind of strings to pull on there. I think where I wanna kind of... What I wanna hear you articulate is, like, everyone kind of knows what American identity is. Right? Yep. Every... People kind of have a sense of, like, what UK identity is and Canadian identity. You can also argue it maybe declining in the same way. Yep. Do you think we need to move closer to some of those American values of free enterprise entrepreneurship, like anyone coming in and building something? Because I think in America, it's actually not, you know, building something off your own back and actually creating something is relatively high status, while in Australia, I don't think it really is.
00:27:15 · Charlie Gearside
[00:27:15] S0: No. Yeah. I think there's a lot of really impressive things about American culture. Obviously, there's a lot of, like, downsides to that level of breathlessness Yeah. Particularly when it comes to, like, safety nets and whatever. And I think what Australia's, like, social element egalitarian element is, like, a critical part of who we are. Yeah. That said, in Australia, we have a word for... Like, we... It's a slur against someone who, like, tries hard. You're a tryhard. Yeah. I mean, I think we're all tryhards at this table. Sorry, boys. But, like, I'm I'm I'm sort of proud to be a tryhard. And I think the unpicking of that mindset is, like, is, like, a critical part of it. Mhmm. But I I think there's signs that the generations coming through are, like, unafraid to sort of put themselves out there and, like, be ridiculed and be sort of brought brought back to the past.