Twista - This Week In Startups Australia

June's LAUNCH Sydney event brought to light two startups doing outstanding work. ParentTV works to provide the most thoughtful answers to the questions that every parent faces at one point or another. CryptoFlip uses blockchain and smart contracts to take the 'house' out of gambling - and looks set to completely revolutionise the industry. Chalk and cheese -- yet both startups point to innovation and success in Australia's expanding startup ecosystem - and it's all here on TWISTA. Thanks to TWISTA sponsors MYOB, UTS and Creative3 for making our show possible!

TWISTA talks to Rachael Lonergan, who turned the lessons learned from a breast cancer diagnosis into CanDoApp - but can her idea for good also be profitable? Then we speak with Jelix VC CEO Andrea Gardiner about shifting the model of how a VC fund works - by opening the doors to a new range of investors who gain a bit of guidance as they take their first steps into angel investing. We've got a great startup ecosystem in Australia - but can we take it from great to good? Thanks to TWISTA sponsors MYOB and UTS for making our show possible!

Creative tech has produced some of Australia’s most successful startups – businesses like Canva and Envato (both interviewed here on TWISTA). And now there’s a place for creative tech startups to be born, grow, and thrive – The Studio at Sydney’s Startup Hub. TWISTA talks to the doyenne of Australia’s creative tech scene, Chantal Abouchar, about the half-decade journey that brought The Studio into being – and what’s next for Australia’s creative tech community. We follow that up with a mind-blowing interview with Oovvuu co-founders Ricky Sutton and Greg Moore. Their mission to ‘repatriate’ the $20 billion taken away from media organisations by Google and Facebook is both audacious and has been very well executed.

Australia has an incredible tradition of innovation - typified by the CSIRO, which gave us WiFi, plastic banknotes, one of the best modern lifestyle diets, and much more besides. The CSIRO is an engine for the nation's science - but too often science misses the opportunity to commercialise its innovations for the benefits of the innovators - and the nation.The new Main Sequence VC fund - backed by CSIRO and the Australian Federal Government - looks to change that by identifying the scientists with the 'spark' that would make them great entrepreneurs. TWISTA sits down with Main Sequence general partner Mike Nicholls for a tour through Australia's "deep tech" investment landscape - and how it could well lead to a new generation of fundamental breakthroughs! In a new segment profiling all of Australia's many incubators and accelerators, we speak to SBE Australia's Sue Hogan about their E3 program for entrepreneurs.

Four years ago Jason Calacanis charged us with creating the first international podcast worthy of his "This Week in Startups" brand. In those four years Australia's startup community has grown from strength to strength - and legendary angel investor Jason Calacanis joins us to launch series 6 of TWISTA with a wide-ranging conversation about what it takes to make it in the news business, how he grades each investment offer presented to him, why ICOs aren't the end of angel investing - and how Australia can use angel investors to amplify its incredible startup success. An interview 23 years in the making - on this episode of TWISTA!

TWISTA visited Brisbane's River City Labs two years ago - and my goodness, how much has changed. The new government has put nearly half a billion dollars into funding various startup activities - including a lavish new 'Precinct' for the startup community. TWISTA talks to two residents of The Precinct, Anne-Marie Birkill, Managing Partner of OneVentures, then we catch up with one of the most mind-blowing startups we've ever had on this show, Maxwell MRI co-founders Elliot Smith and Matt Brown. It's all happening in Queensland, on this episode of TWISTA.

In the year since our last VR special, cyberspace has exploded - and virtual reality has become a real business. We speak two the founder-CEOs of two of Australia's most successful VR startups, starting in conversation with Zero Latency's Tim Ruse, then closing in a chat with Start VR's Kain Tietzel. Virtual reality is a real business - with real customers and real revenues. We go exploring the new _business_ landscape of virtual reality in this special episode.

Over the last 3 years, the Space Race has roared back into life. Not just the 'big space' of SpaceX and BlueOrigin, but lots of startups - some of them Australians - taking us back to the stars. We explore this new era of rocket science with Delta-V Founding CEO Tim Parsons, then explore the Space-Command-as-SaaS market with Sabre Astronautics CEO Jason Held. This special is out of this world!

UPDATED: In our first news special for Series 5, host Claire Connelly talks to Carthona Capital's Dean Dorrell and journalist Paul Wallbank about Australia's struggle to commercialise research, the arrival of Silicon Valley tech accelerator powerhouse 500 Startups - in Melbourne, Uber's no good very bad week and what start-ups get wrong about the press.

TWISTA Co-hosts Claire Connelly and Mark Pesce in conversation with Wyatt Roy, the former Parliamentarian and Assistant Minister for Innovation, freshly back from his travels overseas, and deep into an artificial intelligence startup. Together we take a post-mortem look at the the government’s “Ideas Boom” as we ask Wyatt ‘what happened’? The inside scoop from the ultimate source, on this episode of This Week in Startups Australia.

TWISTA Co-host Claire Connelly in conversation with Paul Shetler, the former chief of the Digital Transformation Office (now the Digital Transformation Agency). With more than 20 years experience, Shetler has worked in digital transformation for both the UK government’s Cabinet Office and the UK's Ministry of Justice, as well as in the US private sector for companies including Oracle and Microsoft. He recently had some frank words for Turnbull administration - and the public service more broadly - and its role in the quote ‘predictable’ raft of recent IT failures across the ATO, ABS and Centrelink, to name a few.

TWISTA opens series 5 with Monica Wulff, CEO of Startup Muster, who goes through all the key points of the recently released 2016 survey of Australia's startup ecosystem. Then TWISTA speaks to Elanation co-founder Katherine Maree Pace and Aimee Atkins about building a lifestyle tech company that starts with a 'child-centred' design process.

When the Next Payment Platform rolls out in October, Australia will be a world leader with an open platform for payments - open to banks and any other company that wants to provide a payments product or service. This could make Australia the best environment to nurture a payments startup - if we take advantage of the opportunity. TWISTA talks to NPP Australia CEO Adrian Lovney and SWIFT Oceania head Bill Doran about the potential and reality of this once-in-a-generation transition

How do we get more and better women entrepreneurs in Australia's startup ecosystem? SheStarts Managing Director Nicole Hazell tells TWISTA to start by recruiting the best, putting them through a bootcamp, then give them the resources they need to succeed. Then TWISTA closes out Series 4 in conversation with ecosystem mentor Nicole Williamson and journalist Claire Connelly - and drops two bombshell surprises!

TWISTA series sponsors Braintree Payments gave TWISTA a brief to do a series of special episodes focusing on payments - perhaps the most-rapidly-changing area of fintech. We start our second payments special with an overview of the payments landscape provided by banking and payments maven Andrew Davis. Then we sit down with Kaushik Sen and Paul Bennetts, co-founders of Spaceship, a superfund for millennials that's focused on tech investments.

Ten years ago, Cyan Ta'eed decided that photographers needed a better connection to the marketplace, co-founding Envato, growing it into a monster force in creative collaboration, and quietly leading a business that's now worth nearly half a billion dollars. Rebecca Wilson decided that the media industries had overlooked a goldmine in the over 60s, and founded Starts At 60 to capitalise on the newly empowered market of seniors - cashed up and ready engage. Both Cyan and Rebecca have charted their own direction, against the tide - and both are well on the way to startup success.

We've had a federal election, the announcement of some huge VC funds, yet still find ourselves mired in sexism in the tech industry. Fortunately our expert panel of SCALE Investors Managing Director Laura Mckenzie and award-winning journalist Claire Connelly cuts through the noise to deliver some excellent analysis about the latest developments in Australia's startup ecosystem.

In this episode two founders from the Dolphin Tank Accelerator join TWISTA to discuss their SaSS businesses. First, Tania Walter, co-founder of Obzervr, tells TWISTA how field service can be automated into great savings for connected businesses. Then BookingBoss co-founder Renee Welsh details how ticketing and payments - big pain points for any tourist attraction - form the foundation of what may grow into a multi-billion-dollar business. One of these startups could well be Australia's next unicorn - and they're both on this episode of TWISTA.

SBE Australia has spent half a decade building a 'sisterhood' of amazing startup entrepreneurs helping each other build global scale businesses. Chair Topaz Conway talks to TWISTA about taking an entrepreneur through a process designed to broaden the mind and activate the potential of Australia's top female founders. Then Maxine Sherrin, Program Director for Sydney's Spark Festival, joins TWISTA to talk about how Spark will help Sydney's startup community share its passions with the broader community - and how that community is already responding. Two amazing guests with great insights on making better startups.

TWISTA series sponsors Braintree Payments gave TWISTA a brief to do a series of special episodes focusing on payments - perhaps the most-rapidly-changing area of fintech. We took that as an opportunityt to speak with two of our favourite Stone and Chalk startups. TWISTA begins with John Bush and Walta Kazzi of Easyshare, who are transforming personal payments, the sharing economy - and making lives heaps easier for anyone living in a share house. Then we speak with Spriggy founder Mario Hasanakos. Spriggy's debit card helps kids from age 8 and up to learn how to master money - establishing patterns that will serve them through their entire lives. Payments hit home on this special episode of TWISTA!