Darryl Lyons believes Australia has an opportunity to lead the world in Agri-tech

0:00 Adam Spencer: Let me tell you about our partner, Teamified. If you need to build a top-notch team quickly, Teamified is your go-to solution. They not only provide fractional CTOs, they can also do contractors and even remote team members tailored exactly to your needs. And whether you're looking for expertise in the Philippines, India, or Sri Lanka, Teamified has you covered. What's amazing is that Teamified uses a blend of AI and human expertise to cut hiring times by 50%, cent. The platform handles everything from automated onboarding to day-to-day management and even performance tracking. You can also handle rewards and recognition, buy equipment, and order training all through their platform. Simplify your hiring process and get the best talent fast with Teamified. Check them out now and transform your team. Go to dayone.fm/teamified. That's dayone.fm/teamified. Thank you, T-E-A-M-I-F-I-E-D, and get started today. Hi, I'm Adam Spencer, founder of the Day One Network, which is bringing the history of the Australian startup ecosystem to you. I believe in founders. It's why I do everything I do at Day One and our media company, W2D1 Media. And that's why the Day One Network exists, to create helpful content for founders. We've got some great shows in development, but a large part of what we do couldn't be done without support from our partners and sponsors. And I couldn't be happier than to be working with NTP, who get community better than any other technology recruitment company out there. A Newcastle company like mine, NTP are invested in seeing the growth of the local tech community in Newcastle, Sydney, and more broadly Australia. So thank you, NTP, for helping us bring helpful content to founders and the startup community in Australia. Back to the interview. Hi, I'm Adam Spencer, founder of the Day One Network, which is bringing the history of the Australian startup ecosystem to you. I believe in founders. It's why I do everything I do at Day One and our media company, W2D1 Media. And that's why the Day One Network exists, to create helpful content for founders. We've got some great shows in development, but a large part of what we do couldn't be done without support from our partners and sponsors. And I couldn't be happier than to be working with NTP, who get community better than any other technology recruitment company out there. A Newcastle company like mine, NTP are invested in seeing the growth of the local tech community in Newcastle, Sydney, and more broadly Australia. So thank you, NTP, for helping us bring helpful content to founders and the startup community in Australia. Back to the interview. Hi, I'm Adam Spencer and welcome to Day One, the podcast that spotlights Australian startups, founders, and the organizations that empower Australian entrepreneurship. We go back to the beginning to tell the story of Australia's most inspiring founders and how they built their companies. You're listening to a special interview series as part of a documentary W2D1 is producing about the history of the Australian startup ecosystem. This episode was conducted by guest host Will Cho.

3:19 Darryl Lyons: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Australian Startup Series interviews. Our guest today is Darryl Lyons. So good to have you on, Darryl.

3:25 Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

3:27 Darryl Lyons: Could you introduce yourself?

3:29 Speaker C: My name's Darryl Lyons. I work as the entrepreneur in residence for James Cook Uni in the tropical North Queensland Drought Hub and also for a national agri-tech startup group called Farmers to Founders.

3:45 Darryl Lyons: So what are you doing at James Cook University as well as Farmers to Founders?

3:50 Speaker C: Basically helping run sort of pre-accelerators and accelerators and then also mentoring, you know, regional startups on their journey to become successful and then helping them, you know, grind through the ups and downs of their startup journey.

4:04 Darryl Lyons: I see. I'd love to dig in a little bit into your background, Darryl. Take us back even to when you were at university days. Would you say that you've always been an entrepreneur?

4:13 Speaker C: Yeah, I didn't go to university when I left school, so I left school and traveled Australia picking fruit and then went overseas for a bit. I grew up in an agricultural area. My parents are cattle farmers, so I kind of ran away from ag after traveling, ended up in the construction industry for quite a while. I had a few different businesses. I always say my claim to fame is I'm a failed NBN contractor as I went in to build the NBN across Northern Australia with a team of 60. But that was a mistake working for a government-owned entity that was a, you know, political football. And then following that, actually, that big failure, I looked at a sign for a Startup Weekend in Cairns and decided to go to that. And that was— That was kind of life-changing for me, basically learning to fail fast. And that was probably 6 years ago, and that started my startup journey.

5:05 Darryl Lyons: That's amazing. What made you stick around?

5:07 Speaker C: In the startups or?

5:09 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, in startup land after you went into that startup week in Cairns.

5:13 Speaker C: It just was a huge light bulb moment for me, just lit me up and just realized the way I've been trying to run my businesses and create them and put so much capital and time into create something and then not really hitting the mark sometimes. And then also working as a contractor in the construction industry with a lot of resources and time and squeeze of the industry, it was really hard. Whereas how do you go and make something that's scalable and can kind of make money while you sleep? But more around like how you go around and do that for, you know, not much equity in the Lean Startup methodology, which we did on the weekend. And then I went out and went— cool, this is what I need to do and created 2 startups which kind of fell over, but that was a good learning tool to continue there.

6:02 Darryl Lyons: What year was that when you first dipped your toes?

6:04 Speaker C: So that was 6 years ago, so yeah, 2017.

6:09 Darryl Lyons: What was it like back then? Did you find that when you wanted to transition into this whole startup ecosystem, what was the support structures around you? Do you remember any notable organizations?

6:19 Speaker C: Yeah, I went through a place called The Space in Cairns, and I guess as I've kind of learned along, you know, there was a fair bit of involvement from the Queensland government back then to help kind of set up regional ecosystems. Yeah, that was my involvement to get in there, to get connected and have some people very excited to kind of help teach about that journey and how to go forward with that.

6:42 Darryl Lyons: Yeah. Do you think over the last 6 years, the startup ecosystem in Cairns Has the growth been what you expected it to be?

6:49 Speaker C: No, it's been really challenging in the regional areas. And I guess after my failed startup, I formed a company startup called Eskavox, which is going pretty well. We kind of track food in the supply chain and we've got a team of 20 down in Sydney. When my partner and I decided to have another baby, that's when I decided to take on the EIR roles because I'm passionate about regional activity and I think there's a huge opportunity for very successful startups to be based in the regions. One of the problems though is I guess the regional ecosystems are normally set up by a couple of people who are very passionate, you know, might get a grant to get them going for a while and it takes a lot of energy and they kind of, you know, hard to keep that momentum because they kind of like might burn out or don't get some funding. So I've sort of seen that a fair bit across the regional ecosystem. What I think might change in JCU gone about it in a different model. We're yet to see if it's going to be successful, but through the state and federal governments and JCU, they built a large $30 million building here called the JCU Ideas Lab.

7:55 Adam Spencer: Oh.

7:56 Speaker C: It's a venue that hopefully will attract people and open them up to the talent that's in the university, but create an ecosystem. So it's a different model. Uh, it's only been open for 12 months, starting this see some good green shoots come through. So I'm hoping this is a new model that actually allows that entrepreneurial capacity because there's a hell of a lot of it in regions and the regional people are probably very resilient as well. So yeah, hopefully there's some really big success stories to come out of here in the coming years.

8:28 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, that's awesome. The only thing that came to my mind is it seems like it isn't a talent shortage that, as you say, that there are plenty of talented entrepreneurs up in regional areas. But the problem seems to be that there wasn't just attention given? Why is it only within the last 12 months attention was given?

8:45 Speaker C: I think there's been attention given over the 5 years that I've been involved and probably before, but it goes in cycles and funding cycles, and it's really hard to keep that momentum when it's only a few people trying to lead the whole ecosystem. So they're potentially dependent on funding cycles, which kind of, I guess, takes away the momentum that's needed to kind of keep that critical momentum to allow that founder ecosystem and kind of work on that talent to get them moving through their journeys.

9:15 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, absolutely. Switching gears a little bit, what sort of advantages would you say setting up your startup in a regional ecosystem has over, say, a metro city?

9:25 Speaker C: One, I guess, you've got the Great Barrier Reef, you've got World Heritage Rainforest, you've got, you know, 15-minute commutes with a couple of sets of lights, a very casual city to live in. I guess definitely COVID has dramatically changed real estate in Cairns and a lot of people have kind of moving up here to work out how good it is. And remote work is obviously not an issue compared to what before. So people could create their startup up here, they could have regional workforces with tech talent that they might not be able to source here. It's a great environment for tech talent to actually move up here. Cost of living is a hell of a lot cheaper. There's kind of lots of positives and I guess COVID's actually, you know, making it a lot more enticing. And I guess the investment that James Cook University and the government's put in with facilities like this will hopefully enable that because I guess this gives confidence that this place was back for, you know, a decade and there's going to be support and an ecosystem in this building. So it won't be that stop-start momentum that might have hindered it previously.

10:30 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, definitely. Do you have any perspectives on potential solutions on what we could be doing better for regional ecosystems? Because you said that it's run only by a few people, and if they get burnt out, then momentum kind of dies down.

10:45 Speaker C: Yeah, I think a lot of the people— my specialty is probably in the agri-tech area, and I guess that's a potential opportunity and of strength in regional areas in Queensland, in Australia. So how do people really play at the strengths in what's a good theme in their area and not trying to boil the ocean and have a bit of everything? And that will kind of attract groups of startups that can kind of leverage off each other. And then I think it's kind of like, how do we stop duplication of services between different regions that may be, you know, for example, doing agri-tech in the Darling Downs, in Townsville, in Mackay, in Bundaberg and in Cairns. How do they all work together that can actually help those new startups and founders in that industry and help them accelerate? And I guess that enables a lot, you know, getting a fair bit further with the bang for buck of what those regional ecosystems do have.

11:41 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, so it's just all about specialization. So when your ecosystem is known for, you know, as you mentioned, agritech, naturally all the people who are interested in that will start to flock towards that area, and it won't just have to be a couple of people trying to drive everything.

11:58 Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's the opportunity.

11:59 Darryl Lyons: When you mentioned to try to prevent duplication of services, that kind of piqued my interest. Would you say that competition is a good thing? When, say, Townsville and Cairns try to do the same thing, then they can try to compete with each other.

12:12 Speaker C: I guess Cairns and Townsville have competed with each other forever, kind of like a Sydney-Melbourne kind of, you know, knock each other off, off. But I guess, you know, But in reality though, if they try to compete on exactly the same thing and try to offer the same services to people, and it's just not, you know, they're small towns compared to obviously cities and there's a lot less people. So it's, you know, and the resources we can attract due to the population are probably, you know, not as large as the metro areas. So it's kind of how do you work together? To use your resources to help improve, you know, the overall ecosystems in each area.

12:57 Darryl Lyons: Switching gears to a national perspective, is there anything top of mind that you think that as a country we should be doing better for our entrepreneurs?

13:05 Speaker C: One of the things I'm kind of passionate about— I'm Indigenous, so I kind of feel there's a really big opportunity to push our Indigenous entrepreneurs and get them a bit more represented in the ecosystem. I know there's a lot of people doing lots of different things and that's becoming a little bit more topical. I think there needs to be more momentum and support for that. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if, I guess, the other area that I'm really close in is in agri-tech and just trying to get that recognized as an industry, which is kind of then recognized across federal government and state government and regional government and kind of all ended up with a bit of a similar policies to enable that area to flourish. And I guess that goes for any other vertical startup ecosystem regionally as well.

13:53 Darryl Lyons: Yeah. When you mentioned trying to support the Indigenous founders, what mode of support would you like to see? Is it funding or?

14:00 Speaker C: What we're finding in a few of the programs and accelerators we run, there's a bit of an education around startup, which is a bit scary for some people, but there's a huge entrepreneurial capacity, and that's been there for tens of thousands of years. So I think there is a piece of education. And then I guess then there's also a piece of, in the accelerators we run, we potentially don't match them for like skill set as far as like runway and, you know, runs on the board because they're new to the whole startup scene. So if you nurture people through the different accelerators, they'll actually accelerate quite quickly. And I guess— That goes back to my education piece. When I went to a Startup Weekend 5 years ago, I'm still educating myself around it. So it takes a while to get people on that journey and for them to be successes. So the more work we can get those Indigenous founders in early is going to start that pathway. And then we get around and celebrate the successful people as well because, you know, they're the shining lights so people can aspire to.

15:08 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, absolutely. It's all about just encouraging the tens of thousands of years of skills and entrepreneurial skills in the indigenous founders and educating them so that we can bring them along the journey as well.

15:20 Speaker C: Yeah, totally.

15:21 Darryl Lyons: How about in terms of strengths as a national ecosystem? What do we do better than other countries?

15:26 Speaker C: Speaking from a regional perspective, I think everyone's really genuine, like, and, you know, they're genuine about their capacity. They have that entrepreneurial spirit. And I really like that honesty from the regional area. Again, I'm kind of passionate about the agritech area. I think that's a huge opportunity for Australia to be the best in the world at. And I think that get in and have a go attitude is really, really good.

15:50 Darryl Lyons: Yeah. What excites you about agritech? I noticed that this is a theme that's been mentioned a couple of times throughout our conversation.

15:57 Speaker C: My grandparents were in ag and farmers. My parents are my traditional side of the family, I believe, have practiced sustainable agriculture for tens of thousands of years on our traditional country. We've got such a diverse country with lots of different areas. We have our unsubsidized farming system. So basically all our producers have been entrepreneurial to succeed over the last few hundred years.

16:23 Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.

16:23 Speaker C: And our indigenous population had to be entrepreneurial to flourish in some some tough environments around the country for tens of thousands of years. So I think that breeds into that spirit of finding a problem, working out how to, to solve it. And I guess any application we build in this country is definitely usable right around the world. And I think with our clean food, which will go to, it'll breed more sustainable regenerative agriculture systems, which kind of brings in a lot of clean tech. We can get into a lot of food value-adding tech. We're putting sustainable, really healthy food, which the world wants. The tech required to make all that work is, is such a huge opportunity for us.

17:08 Darryl Lyons: So Darryl, could you tell me a little bit about some of the opportunities that you see in regional centers?

17:13 Speaker C: Yeah, I'd see the next decade and two decades as a huge opportunity for Northern Australia. I think it is a huge untapped potential, and I guess that still runs in the theme around the agri-tech and food. And I think agri-tech's going to play a huge part about increasing production in Northern Australia. And I also see an area that's just untapped yet, and that's around our Indigenous entrepreneurial spirit in Northern Australia and how we can start to work out how we can unpack that and then create that and see there's huge opportunity to get people involved in that.

17:47 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, absolutely. So Darryl, what we're trying to do in this podcast is to document as accurately as possible our history just so that we can inform future decisions. And we're aiming to reach all corners corners from policymakers, academics, founders, and investors. Is there anything that we haven't talked about today that is constantly top of mind for you that they need to hear?

18:06 Speaker C: I think one of the problems, I guess, we have with short election cycles is we get a bit of stop-start, and that's problematic in trying to, especially in regional areas, to just kind of keep momentum going. That has been mentioned before, but I think that's definitely a topical area that needs to to be reiterated and talked about.

18:28 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, that's a constant theme that I hear with a lot of founders on the show talking about how the whims of policymakers changes drastically, obviously, during election cycles, and it makes it difficult. Could you tell me a bit about some of the impact that you've noticed firsthand?

18:43 Speaker C: Yeah, so in our Escovox journey, we were lucky enough to be a recipient of this Accelerating Commercialization Grant, but when that, you know, goes into election cycles. That whole area in AusIndustry, when they announce caretaker and whenever it is in the next month or two, that whole area of grants will be going on hold and it's in doubt to what's going to happen if there's a change, an election, which could be totally ripped out or changed. So, you know, is it 2 years before they put something similar out there? That's just an example of a really successful program, you know, for Escovox, that we had a million-dollar grant from that which enabled us to develop our system, and we, we track food all around the world. If that's continuous, it just allows a continual flow of grants for people to keep going on rather than it kind of stop-start kind of mentality.

19:35 Darryl Lyons: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And lastly, if a brand new entrepreneur or founder came to you, given all your experience, your mistakes, and wins, what would you tell them to increase their chances of success?

19:47 Speaker C: Yeah, it's definitely not a sprint. How do you kind of work on your resilience ability and increase, you know, your skills to endure the ups and downs of the journey would be the key, yeah, advice I would pass on.

20:06 Adam Spencer: I hope you enjoyed that interview. More interviews are on the way. Follow the podcast wherever you're listening right now. Stay tuned for more interviews with many, many more amazing people from the Australian startup ecosystem. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

20:23 Speaker C: Bye.