Lana Weal highlights the mental health challenges faced by founders

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. 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. On the episode today, we have—

3:18 Lana Weal: My name is Lana Weil. I am a Kiwi based in Melbourne, and I am the founder of Market Mindfully, a purpose-driven marketing consultancy company. How did I get started? Well, I studied management, which is very general. I had a major of international management, which is even more general. I was from a small town in New Zealand and I knew I had to kind of get out to make the most of the opportunities in the world. So I moved to Melbourne and then the first place to give me a job was Census, the Yellow Pages. So I started out writing Yellow Pages ads, which was very, very, very interesting talking to thousands of small businesses across Australia. And then I found SEO, search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, and I worked in SEO roles for about 4 or 5 years advising small businesses and then massive international companies about how to get their websites ranked higher on Google. And then I found the startup world after that as well. So after earning my stripes in the SEO world, I became a generalist after that, advising people on all of the marketing things, and I was drawn to the kind of impact side of the startup world as well, and female founders, obviously, too.

4:24 Adam Spencer: How did you discover the startup world, and what year was that?

4:29 Lana Weal: So that was in the end of 2017. I went to an event, so I was in Melbourne and wanting to, you know, connect with inspiring people and people with creative ideas who are working on fun projects, and there was an event on, it was hosted at MYOB, and it was on getting started on your big idea, and while I didn't have a big idea, I knew there would be, you know, interesting people in the room, so I went, and it was actually an event It was kind of like an accelerator recruitment event run by SheStarts, and SheStarts is a female founder accelerator, and I was really inspired by the speakers and the founders, and then I stalked SheStarts online, I stalked their parent company BlueChilli, and BlueChilli was hiring a marketing person, so—

5:10 Adam Spencer: Ah.

5:10 Lana Weal: That's actually how I got into it, and while I didn't know much about the startup industry before that, BlueChilli was definitely an amazing place to learn the lay of the land and support amazing founders as well. I worked with hundreds of founders there.

5:23 Adam Spencer: I didn't realize BlueChilli were in Melbourne. I knew they were in Sydney, but I didn't realize they were in Melbourne.

5:28 Lana Weal: Yeah, well, they were at the time, and during the recruitment campaigns they've done, or, and we did when I was there as well, we did events in Adelaide and Brisbane too.

5:37 Adam Spencer: I'm so happy that you said, you know, the event was hosted at MYOB because I believe they are going to be the first major sponsor this that is on board for the series. So that's awesome.

5:48 Lana Weal: Wonderful news. They're a huge supporter of startups in Melbourne and Australia, and yeah, they do a really amazing work. That'd be great to have them as a partner.

5:55 Adam Spencer: Can you tell me a bit more about your time at BlueChilli? Because I, so that was where you really got initiated into the startup ecosystem, which is a fantastic onboarding process to come into the startup ecosystem through BlueChilli. A lot of amazing people there.

6:09 Lana Weal: Oh yes.

6:10 Adam Spencer: Can you tell me a bit about that time and, how you kind of, during your time with BlueChilli, saw the ecosystem change and grow and evolve?

6:19 Lana Weal: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It was such an amazing time. The BlueChillians are such phenomenal people. They're amazing people.

6:29 Adam Spencer: We're keeping that in. That's staying in.

6:31 Lana Weal: Fantastic. Yeah. BlueChillians are amazing. And all of them have gone on to do some really amazing things and work with different programs and things as well. It was such an inspiring place to be. So I was there for all of 2019. 2018 and '19, and I learned so much about how to work fast and test and learn and all that type of thing as well. And we ran, I think I was involved with 3 or 4 programs. There were 2 SheStarts programs, which was focused on female founders. There was one prop tech, which was sponsored by Stockland, one sponsored by Coca-Cola Amatil, which was really interesting about like data and supply chain and product and all those types of interesting things. And there was also another one, City Connector that was about impact and sustainability as well. So it was really amazing to have these structured programs to support founders to go from idea to MVP. And BlueChilli was very unique as well, supporting founders, supporting non-technical founders to create technical products. There was a technical team with a product manager, designer, developer who helped to get their MVP built as well. So it was really like the most intense startup education I could have wished for, I guess, seeing from the backend all of the educators and the mentors and the advisors advisors and all of the support, like how it takes a community to build a startup really. Like it's not just one person working by themselves with a computer, even though there are a few companies that are like the company of one, like Paul Jarvis's book, "The Company of One." But you know, the most successful companies or the best kind of companies that you see are people who have a bunch of people who they lean on to support. And you know, they've got advisors, they've got developers, they've got a team, you know, they've got a whole community supporting them. So that was really amazing. And then, What I've seen since BlueChilli or like through that time, I guess, is even more niche programs pop up, which has been so great to see, you know, like impact investors or more female founder programs or, you know, industry-specific programs as well. It's so great to see a lot come out around sports or crypto or, you know, female founders is one of my passions as well. So I really, really, really love that there's more founders for that as well. There's definitely a lot more funding options as well. So now I'm at the ATTO Accelerator. So we support female founders and it's quite, it's a broader definition of tech. So at BlueChilli, we worked with people who had new tech ideas. So it was completely new tech, whereas at Atto, we work with tech-enabled businesses, which is slightly different to the traditional startup. And I really like it because we encourage founders to use no-code tools to build what you can first before spending a whole bunch of money on developers to build something that maybe you could have built, you could have hacked together a few different tools kind of thing.

9:06 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

9:06 Lana Weal: So I think the industry has definitely become more diverse and, you know, there's more niche pockets that people can go into. I've always loved Startup Vic's work as well. Their regular pitch nights every month, they've got a pitch night, which is so great where they hero founders. They even share a lot of the startups who might not have gotten to the pitch night, but then they, you know, still want to showcase all of their awesome work. I think there's like 60,000 people in their community now. So—

9:32 Adam Spencer: Wow.

9:33 Lana Weal: There's a lot of passionate people there, keen to make a difference and keen to work on fun and interesting projects. So that's been wonderful to see too.

9:39 Adam Spencer: Have you had much involvement with maybe the Sydney ecosystem, any other ecosystems across Australia? Because I wanted to just see if you can compare the ecosystems.

9:51 Lana Weal: Ooh, yeah, so I've been based in Melbourne this whole time, so I wouldn't say I know Sydney as well, but BlueChilli's hub was in Sydney as well, so I did have some involvement there, and I know the Sydney Startup Hub is a very, very, very impressive place, and Fishburners do a lot for startups there as well. I know they've got regular pitch nights too.

10:08 Adam Spencer: Promotional partner for the series, Fishburners.

10:10 Lana Weal: Amazing.

10:11 Adam Spencer: So I just gotta get the plugs in.

10:13 Lana Weal: What a crew, that's so good that they're on board. And then there's Launchvic, another Vic-based one, but they do really amazing work, a lot of advocacy work.

10:21 Adam Spencer: Yes, another sponsor, another sponsor for the series.

10:24 Lana Weal: Ah, amazing.

10:25 Adam Spencer: Gotta get another plug in.

10:25 Lana Weal: Love it, love it. They also kickstarted the ESSO Accelerator as well with a bit of funding, so that was really amazing.

10:33 Adam Spencer: Right.

10:33 Lana Weal: Yeah, I'm a big fan of their work, and now they just released like another award series. They've got the Alison Anderson Fund to support female founders. So many programs, or they support so many programs, like over 100 now, I think it's over 130 programs that they've supported. And it's just amazing work, you know, that extended impact that they're having, not only the people that they're directly funding, but then the people that they're supporting as well is really inspiring to see as well. And other than that, the only involvement I've had with other regions, I would say, are like Facebook groups. There's quite a lot of Facebook groups around Australia that I think are doing some really awesome stuff, or, you know, just people in the groups are contributing as well. And then, yeah, I think even though Startup Vic is a Victorian-based organization, I think they do a pretty great job of supporting people Australia-wide as well. Spark as well is another community I'd say is super, super great. They always do a really great roundup of all the events going on in the ecosystem. And they've also done a really great job of connecting all of the accelerators as well. It's a collaboration over competition thing where just recently, I think it was over 30 representatives from the accelerators pitched their accelerators, so like a reverse pitch. And I represented Addo and had 2 minutes to pitch Addo. So that was a really fun experience to, you know, get the microphone in front of me to be like, "Haha, now you have to pitch now, and you've been talking about pitching to founders for years, and now it's your turn." So that was really great. I love that Spark did that for us.

11:55 Adam Spencer: 2 things. 1, Spark Festival, promotional partner for the series.

11:59 Lana Weal: Amazing.

11:59 Adam Spencer: Great guys, Maxine's amazing.

12:00 Lana Weal: Yes.

12:01 Adam Spencer: 2, can you please do that pitch for me?

12:03 Lana Weal: Oh, oh, okay. It's funny, you know, like all the events online these days, I had notes in front of me, but I did practice a lot. But I don't know if I have it all on hand, but I can give you some of it for sure if you want it.

12:18 Adam Spencer: Please, yeah.

12:19 Lana Weal: Yeah, okay. So I think I started out saying, Kia ora, my name's Lana Well, and I'm a passionate female cheerleader for female founders across Australia and Aotearoa. So you know how, you know when female founders often have they lean in towards perfectionism, or they might have a fear of failure, or they might have fear of success, or they might have imposter syndrome. Well, what we do at Atto is we provide all of the programs and support and coaching that you need to build your tech-enabled business. In fact, we have a pre-accelerated program, accelerated program, and a monthly membership for existing founders as well as emerging founders. And then I go into a bit of detail about the— we've got world-class educators. We've had some really great success stories like Bubble Tea Club and Air Rope, who have raised over $1 million each in different formats as well, VC funding as well as crowdfunding. And then I'm not too sure how I wrap it up, but oh yeah, if you want to hear more about it, check out ato.vc. But yeah, it was, I clearly need to practice it a bit more if I do want to whip it out.

13:19 Adam Spencer: No, no, that's great. So 2017 until now, what's that, 4 years? What's struck you most about how the ecosystem has changed in the last 4 years? You know, maybe COVID is going to be a big part of that answer, Yeah, how have you seen the ecosystem change over the last 4 years?

13:37 Lana Weal: Hmm, probably similar to what I was saying before. It's become even more open. I think people are even more engaged in wanting to create these niche groups and niche communities that people can really identify with and feel supported in. I know there's a lot of support for female founders, like there's even more support for female founders, but their mentality about startups, from what I've experienced, hasn't changed. Right. So, there's a lot of women who know that they need technology to build a business or they need technology to scale their business, but they don't know what a startup is. So, they come to EDDO or they come to SheStarts or they, you know, they come to Startup Vic and they say, tell me all of the things. And probably one of the things that I've always noticed and I think is kind of become more prevalent now is the education piece is so big about startups. And I think it's a really great place to be because people know you need to be a lifelong learner in the startup world, whether you're the founder or you're in marketing or you're in product, you're always, always, always learning. And I think the passion that people have in the startup industry for lifelong learning is one of the best things about it, for sure.

14:39 Adam Spencer: Looking at today and into the future, and you know, we've probably already covered some of this answer, but what are some of the biggest gaps? Where can we continue to make the biggest improvements in the community?

14:52 Lana Weal: Mm, I think funding is always gonna be an issue, especially these early-stage startups that need a lot of capital to build their product or their teams in the early stages before they become revenue positive. And I think more alternative forms of investing or funding are coming out, which is really fantastic. At Edo, we talk about the old funding models as well. So it's not just VC, but you can have grants, you could use loans, even you could use credit cards to kind of just kickstart your MVP, right? Before— and so you can start getting revenue as early as possible rather than working on an idea, sinking like 50 grand into an app that, you know, someone overseas might make and that doesn't end up being what you want. I've seen a lot of change with the funding models as well. And there's a lot of niche VCs and things that have come out, which has been really, really great. And I look forward to what else is going to come out as well, because I think it's almost like, especially at the moment right now, there's a lot, like every week we've got an announcement about some fund who's raised a whole nother millions worth of dollars to support, often a niche group of people as well, not just the fastest growing startups, which I think is really exciting. Yeah.

15:57 Adam Spencer: Do you have any, or do you have a unpopular opinion about the startup ecosystem? You know, it doesn't have to be something negative. It can be something positive, but just something that you firmly believe is the case, but it's very difficult to find people that are on the same page.

16:16 Lana Weal: Mm, I think there's some people that talk about mental health a lot, and then there's some people that don't mention it at all. And I think mental health and like the burnout is real. In the industry for sure, because it is so fast-paced. People do wanna do all of the things. So many founders have shiny object syndrome where they're working on 10 different projects at once, which could be us, maybe myself as well, maybe you, Adam, too.

16:38 Adam Spencer: Yes.

16:39 Lana Weal: Yeah, we just want to do a lot, I think, which is part of the problem in the information age. We're just consuming so much information and we're doing so much right now. I think it's very easy to not pause and look back and reflect on how much you have achieved and then acknowledge that as a great thing. And then, you know, be comfortable with that. Whereas I think a lot of people just keep striving and keep striving and then end up in burnout and then, you know, feel bad about themselves and then have to like go lick their wounds and then come back versus that consistent mental health care is so important.

17:08 Adam Spencer: Yeah. How is your background coming from, you know, marketing, I think marketing is something you specialize in, how has that helped you in the startup world?

17:20 Lana Weal: Oh, oh, it's been amazing. I feel like it's, I feel very lucky, like I kind of hate advertising inherently. So it's, I feel like it's quite challenging to work in marketing sometimes as well, because I don't like how much data is being collected about us and how it's used against you for advertising purposes. So I wanna say that off the bat, but I really love being able to craft stories and share stories of real people and showcasing what you can do if you have passion and you have drive and you, you know, commit to consistency kind of thing.

17:48 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

17:48 Lana Weal: So, and that's what I really liked about SEO, search engine optimization. You couldn't cheat that, you couldn't pay to get to the top page. Back in the day, you could pay for, you know, black hat, great strategies.

17:58 Adam Spencer: Yes.

17:59 Lana Weal: But now you have to have a great website, you have to have great content, you have to be fast, and you know, you have to serve your customers in a way that they want to be served as well. So that's where I come from in the marketing perspective, and I think it's been a really amazing way to be able to connect with people. I feel very, very, very lucky to be able to connect with all the people that I have, and I think Twitter has been a really great way to do that, and events for sure as well. Like, it's things are very different now being online. But, you know, when I was at BlueChilli, I was one of the only people in Melbourne on the team as well. So what I would do would just go to a lot of startup events to kind of fill my cup of, you know, seeing people in the startup world and hearing what people are working on. And Twitter is a really, really easy way to connect with a lot of people in the startup world as well. So I think marketing is a really, really great in, even though like, you know, some people are just tweeting, they don't think they're in marketing, but you know, if you're tweeting, that could be considered marketing. So it comes back to that thing of you're always pitching, no matter what you're doing. Even if you're not a founder, you're always pitching. And I think the more we can learn about storytelling and the more that we can tell our stories effectively, it's that classic quote of the more you tell your story, the more other people are drawn to you and feel okay to share their story too as well. So I think storytelling and communication is such an important part of the startup world because, you know, obviously if you don't do marketing and you don't have customers, then you won't have a company long-term either. Yeah.

19:20 Adam Spencer: I asked you, you know, the gaps and your unpopular opinion, so a little negative. Let's flip it a bit. What do you think the Australian startup community or the, you know, Victorian startup community does really well?

19:36 Lana Weal: If you compare Australia to other places around the world, I'm not too sure if we do measure up in a lot of ways. But internally, I think we hero the heroes pretty well, I think. Lately, I think there's a lot of news about capital raises as well. There's never any headlines of, women create sustainable business, makes profit and is happy.

19:56 Adam Spencer: Yes.

19:56 Lana Weal: You know, like that's not a headline that people read. And I think we could be leaning too much into this VC capital world where people raising millions of dollars are seen as success versus, you know, creating a revenue generating and profit generating business long-term. So yes, I think we do some storytelling really well. Like I think there's a lot of stories in the AFR and SmartCompany and Startup Daily and Innovation Oz that come out that are really, inspiring. And I think the access to the startup world is, um, there's no barriers to entry kind of thing. So like, if you just happen to start a book, if you tap into Spark, you can easily, you know, get connected very quickly with a lot of startups or a lot of people who know where to point you if you need help as well. So I think, uh, we do that pretty well, the connection.

20:40 Adam Spencer: Earlier you mentioned that you have worked with and helped hundreds of founders. If a brand new founder came to you tomorrow, what one piece of advice would you give them?

20:48 Lana Weal: Ooh, one piece. I'm gonna go with two. I'm gonna go with two. I'm sorry, I've already said one, but I'm gonna go with two.

20:55 Adam Spencer: That happens, that happens very often.

20:58 Lana Weal: Number one is the self-belief. Like people always talk about advisor whiplash, especially in programs where you've got a lot of advisors and things like that as well. It's always good to know your purpose and your passion and where you want to go while taking on other people's advice or forgetting other people's advice that don't align with you as well. So I always try and tell people like, in my opinion, I like to say it like that to like let people know this is my opinion. When you can take it or leave it kind of thing. And two is that the education is out there. There's so much free education online or communities that you can join, paid or unpaid, that will find the education or the connections or whatever you need. They're there to support you as well. So I think the access to information and self-belief is super important.

21:40 Adam Spencer: Before I ask you this last one, is there anything, anything at all that you, that we've glossed over that you think is a really important part of the story of the Australian startup ecosystem that should go in the documentary?

21:53 Lana Weal: Just that I think it's the, in my opinion, I think the startup industry is still in its infancy in Australia. Like I think, you know, there is a lot of government funding and support and funds now, but I still think it's evolving. You know, maybe in 3 or 4 or 5 years, maybe we might reach peak fund and accelerator program, you know, support. But right now I think there's still so much opportunity to educate people about what a startup is, how you can leverage technology and all that type of thing. So I'm excited for what the future holds as well, and I'm excited for this documentary to, you know, curate all of these ideas and put them all together, because I think the future is very bright for startups in Australia.

22:32 Adam Spencer: So keeping in mind that what we are trying to do here is create a documentary that will tell the history, you know, how we got to where about today in the Australian startup ecosystem. We want founders, academics, policymakers, investors, people from all corners of the community to listen to this story. All of those categories of people, or pick one, or make up a brand new one that I didn't mention, what message do you have for them? Like, what do you think people really need to hear?

23:04 Lana Weal: I get, coming back to the support thing and the programs and the, you know, the education that people need, I guess. Like, one, I think it's partly you need self-belief to be able to believe you can be a founder, that you can build a company, that you can build a team, you can be successful, kind of thing. But also, like, getting the right people to believe in you is super important as well. And I think with the right, uh, support networks or the right programs, or, you know, finding the right niche where you fit into, is super important too. So yeah, maybe the, the, the message is we've got to support each other more. because no one can do this alone. And the more that we do support each other and have collaboration over competition, the better the ecosystem will be as a whole.

23:51 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.

24:07 Lana Weal: Thank you.