Simon Thomsen saw technology alter the news and publishing landscape

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0:59 Simon Thomsen: Thank you.

1:01 Adam Spencer: 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 Simon Thomsen: Hi, I'm Simon Thompson, editor of startupdaily.net and also presenter on the Startup Daily Show on Ausbiz, 2 PM every weekday.

3:30 Adam Spencer: How did you get involved with startups? Like, what was your very first experience?

3:36 Simon Thomsen: In some ways, I kind of think that my first experience was before the word had even been coined back in the early 1990s. I was a young man, mad keen to get into journalism after traveling the world and doing a bunch of other crazy things. And the opportunity came for me to buy a newspaper. And it was one of those, like, you know, the exuberance of youth and the belief that, you know, you could change the world. And of course, media was— is a great way to do it. And so I did. It was up in a town called Lismore. It's been in the news, of course. Yeah. Of course, this year from the flooding. So, you know, I've been a little bit heartbroken and talked to my friends up there who I send lots of love to because it has been a pretty torrid time. But this is where technology started to change publishing. The barriers to entry came down. Desktop publishing occurred, you know, and within a decade we'd gone from sort of a whole bunch of really old, slow technology. And if you think about it, even— Yeah. Just the way pages were composed for a newspaper, we'd gone to digital. So, you know, there was Quark, there was Adobe Express, there were all of these tech solutions starting to emerge. And of course, by the late '90s, digital cameras were there. So I was taking photos on digital cameras. You know, they were around, I remember, for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, although at the time Kodak was still sort of handing out lots of free film. And that sort of transformed transformed how newspapers could be published and that whole economic model. And so we didn't even need a printing press. We outsourced that to another company. And, you know, by the end of that period, and I sold the newspaper in 2008, had quite a good exit, I would sort of say, to put it in startup terms. The whole thing was digital. You know, even the pages themselves were being picked up. There was a time— Yeah. 10 years earlier where I was driving them to Brisbane or if I'd missed the bus they otherwise went on, 'cause we do miss deadlines occasionally, journalists. But it was this extraordinary technical transformation that interested me. So I remember it was 1996, I put the paper, which was free, on the internet for the first time. I beat The Herald and The Age to a website for a newspaper and I'm still pretty proud of that. It was only by a couple of months, but we did it anyway.

6:00 Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.

6:00 Simon Thomsen: Because I just sort thought, you know what, this— the internet is extraordinary and you can spread your story around the world beyond the physical confines of a printed newspaper. And that opportunity was there. So I was interested in the technology and that trans— digital transformation. Gosh, 25+ years ago now. Um, but then the other side of that was I ended up having a career as a restaurant critic for a while. Got, um, distracted, interested. But the great thing about that was you always got to invite fascinating people out. for a meal. But then in 2013, again, another change in publishing. Business Insider, the US brand, came to Australia as a joint venture project, and I was invited on as one of the early employees of that, just as we're building it out. And this was the era of digital pure-play media. So, you know, you think about the Huffington Posts of the world, you know, there were all of these brands that were just starting to emerge that up until that point, of course, newspapers were printing and, you know, they had a website. But then a whole new era of the junkies, you know, the Gizmodos, uh, the Kotakus, all started to emerge in that era telling stories in a purely digital form. And off the back of that, of course, the distribution channels were the social media side. So it was the Twitters, it was the Facebooks, you know, the LinkedIn. All of that started to really change the distribution model and the readership.

7:28 Adam Spencer: I love that you talked about the impact that technology was having on media in the, was it late '90s that you mentioned or even mid-'90s?

7:37 Simon Thomsen: Yeah, yeah, it was, well, if you think about it, it was the mid-'80s when the first Apple computers came to Australia, I remember that. And even back then, 'cause I went up there initially to go back to uni and study media, I had a Mac Classic II, which cost me a couple of thousand dollars, and I think it had 4 meg of RAM and 40 meg for the hard drive. I can't believe, you know, what it was then and where we are now. Through the '90s, of course, after I'd sold The Echo, I was working for the major media companies. First of all, for Fairfax, which is now Nine, and then for News. And, you know, it was the digital thing that was, I was kind of trying to push and advocate for at the time. So, you know, when I was the restaurant critic, we built the Good Food Guide app because I just thought it was a new way to tell this story and a new way to engage an audience. And the smartphones were here, it was a possibility. So printing a very large book, which was very expensive, as good as it looked, being able to sell an app of the same material was to me just a great way to be able to tell this story in a new way. Mm-hmm.

8:48 Adam Spencer: So Business Insider, was that the thing that preceded joining Startup Daily?

8:53 Simon Thomsen: Yes, it was. In 2013, Paul Colgan, who I knew through news.com.au, he was the editor of that news corporation site at the time, which of course, you know, he helped build with a bunch of others into the leading news digital brand in the country. You know, we still used to sort of sit around and chat about, you know, what we could do better, how we could do it. And then when the Business Insider thing came along, Paul jumped on it and kicked it off and then rang me and sort of said, hey, do you want to come on board? I think the funny thing at the time was that probably because he'd known me all the way through my restaurant critic days was he didn't realize that I'd spent a lot of time doing general news, political news, a whole bunch of different things. So my country newspaper training where you sort of write about everything and everyone stood me in good stead because Business Insider, yes, focused on business, but it would tell popular culture stories. I was I was telling, yes, food, wine, and travel stories, but I could do everything from architecture to whatever story came along. Prime ministers, premiers resigning, being ditched by their party, all of those sorts of things. And then along the way, I started getting interested in the tech thing because we'd have tech editors and they were younger journos. They were on the make and within a year or two, they generally take off and either launch their own startups or they'd go and work for a startup on the media communications side So we kept having these gaps where I would take over the beat and cover technology. And the more I did it, and if you think about it, this is the early days of companies like Atlassian, you know, ahead of it listing on the NASDAQ. It was SafetyCulture, you know, when Luke really was still back in a Toowoomba garage. It was Shoes of Prey, you know, which was an extraordinary story in its day. And we were seeing this first generation, the Envatos, all of these emerging tech companies, which are now— Yeah. Big unicorn businesses just starting to tell their stories, starting to get traction, starting to grow and starting to get these initial funding rounds and we were seeing those early days of venture capital. I remember there was a time in between Restaurant Criticism and me joining Business Insider where I sat down with Pollinizer and had a chat with those guys about a couple of digital ideas I had. Didn't come to fruition at the time, but you know, The fact that those guys were around doing what they were doing, and I still have vivid memories of that and how it would work, and just even my mind being blown by the opportunity of how it would work with the funding and everything was just that first insight into what was going on.

11:39 Adam Spencer: What struck you the most over the last, even the last few years of how much the technology landscape has changed, the startup landscape has changed?

11:47 Simon Thomsen: I think it's been the, inflow of capital. It's been this massive, massive opportunity. It's been VCs who are hungry to find deals. The deal flow has absolutely grown. And if I think about it, even just in the 3 years that I've been at Startup Daily, you know, there was a pretty set scene around every Tuesday, there'd be 1 or 2 or 3 announcements around a company getting funding. Nowadays, it's almost every day and it's 3, 4, 5 every day. So the speed that it's going on, of course, we've seen the likes of Startmate, which has been there for a long time now, but then new players like Antler have emerged and they've got their model for backing new startups. We've seen a whole bunch of other industry-specific ones, you know, the agri-futures kind of guys, the health tech guys. There's all of these little niche ones now that are building start-up companies that address their industry-specific problems through accelerator and investment programs. And even the universities, you know, you look at what's happening with UNSW Founders nowadays and the programs that they're developing, the focus on deep tech they've just announced, uh, this year, that we're seeing all these opportunities being created with investment for them to sort of try and get to that next level.

13:12 Adam Spencer: In those last 3 years, as you've just said, being the editor at Startup Daily, is there anything that you've noticed that makes the Australian startup scene or community stand out? Like, are there any traits that kind of separate our community from maybe other communities around the world?

13:32 Simon Thomsen: Look, I think I'm gonna sort of go a little bit with something that Mark Pesci pointed out in his discussion with you, and that's that collaboration side. I am filled with admiration for that because having covered a number of industry sectors over the years, um, yes, you do compete on some levels, but you also need to collaborate to survive. And I've seen industries where everyone is— thinks they're fighting for the same piece of the pie, um, rather than understanding that if you grow the pie, there is more opportunity. And startup founders and entrepreneurs bring that state of mind, I think, to the opportunity every time. They know that they're building markets that perhaps don't exist at this point in time. So they know that they're making the pie as they go. And if we all succeed, then there will be opportunity for everyone along the way. That sense of ecosystem, if you look at, you know, what Atlassian is now and where it is, it's a business that is like a giant planet with this gravitational pull for a whole bunch of other companies around it. So, you know, they're building— Yeah. In that. And of course, they invest in some of those companies. Some of them just create opportunities off the back of it. We saw that with Apple over the years, you know, there was a whole bunch of companies that emerged as tech solutions to something that Apple had built along the way. So, you know, you could buy something for half the price that Steve Jobs or Tim Cook was otherwise charging you.

14:58 Adam Spencer: Where do you think we need to make the biggest improvement from, from your perspective? You're in a unique position, you've seen a lot of startups and you have a very kind of bird's eye view of the ecosystem. Where do you think we can make the biggest leaps forward, positive leaps forward?

15:14 Simon Thomsen: I think Australia struggles still with being brilliant. I think we're still a little bit scared and a little bit terrified by it. America certainly does have that brash hero myth success thing, whereas in Australia there's a natural humility, don't get too big for your boots. We'll remind you if you are being a bit of a dickhead thing going on. But by the same token, we've done some extraordinary things. Let's go back to Wi-Fi. Put the Hills Hoist to one side, although I think that's a great technical innovation, but Wi-Fi is the most extraordinary thing that we have given the world. We should be incredibly proud of this. We could have a National Wi-Fi Day and just have another day off, which would be great, where we all celebrate.

15:59 Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.

15:59 Simon Thomsen: But, you know, it's those sorts of moments in our storytelling, in our mythology, that I think are really, really important. But off the back of that, and this is where I think sort of deep tech, pure science, the longer-term stuff that will really transform the world is going to be so important. Sure, we can build another SaaS company that will scale rapidly and investors will get their 50x really, really quickly. But the transformative stuff, you know, whether it's the Cochleas of the world, whether it is sort of, you know, heart surgery, whether it is— and I see so many extraordinary ideas from scientists coming forward who are not necessarily naturally entrepreneurs and need a little bit more help and a little bit more push to make it happen that could transform who we are as people, societies around the world. And I think on that front, we need to value that a little bit more than we do and also have a little bit more patience. You know, the one thing I would say about startup sector is there is that kind of get rich thing quick idea that is slightly alluring, certainly alluring for investors. You know, if you can get an exit in 5 years and sort of quadruple your money along the way, absolutely fantastic. But you know what, I think, and again, I think people are good and bring a lot of goodwill to the table. If you are going to back something that 10 years down the track makes everyone's lives better, you might not get as rich as quickly, but you will feel better at the end of the day.

17:38 Adam Spencer: Along the Wi-Fi line, I just heard the other day, I'm surprised I didn't know this, The very first LAN network that was ever put together was here.

17:48 Simon Thomsen: Was here.

17:48 Adam Spencer: Was here by KPMG, I think.

17:50 Simon Thomsen: Not sure if it was KPMG, but I knew it kicked off here. Yeah, we were doing all of this stuff at the start. It was absolutely astonishing.

18:02 Adam Spencer: Do you have an unpopular opinion about the Australian startup ecosystem?

18:08 Simon Thomsen: Look, I'm gonna put it this way. I think making a profit is important. I've been covering business for, you know, a long time now, certainly pretty much full-time for more than a decade, and startups are a business. I do think we tell too many land grab stories, which are impressive, but, you know, we've got businesses in the tech sector now that are coming up to 20 years old and have still not posted a profit. I'm not sure what other sector you could get away with that. And I think the fundamentals of business are the fundamentals of business. You know, we've seen market corrections in publicly listed BNPLs certainly this year, you know, so that, that exuberance that existed over the last couple of years from investors in public markets is now seeing a correction. We've recently seen a couple of companies that have had massive cash burns and then come to a screaming halt. Now we know that startups will fail along the way. We know the mortality rates around great ideas and not everyone will get across the line. But I do think setting the example of making a profit is an important one. And let's, you know, someone asked me about this last night with their startup and they said, well, you know, what's a reasonable timeframe? Well, when I had my business, I bought it as a loss-making entity. It's why it was sort of slightly cheaper. It was my firm belief that I could turn it around and make it profitable. That took a couple of years and I took investors on at the time to do it, but we got to profit. And we grew and our audience grew and we had a whole bunch of success, but in the end, if you're gonna pay everyone, you just can't keep taking on more capital in order to keep the business growing. You've gotta come to a point where this is working really well, people are giving us money, and now we redistribute that wealth to your shareholders, to your investors, to your employees. There are all of those options. Yeah.. And I think that's just a really important fundamental lesson that, you know, the startup sector wants to be able to tell across the board because of course the other part of that is you pay tax. And we've seen the debates in this country around global tech companies and whether they pay tax and, you know, how they arrange their tax affairs. I think Australian startups will need to lead the way on this one and say, we are good corporate citizens and this is how we contribute to society. It can't just be.

20:43 Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.

20:43 Simon Thomsen: Billionaire founders and philanthropy. It can't just be sort of this constant growth and constant losses. There needs to be profitable businesses so that they set an example for all others.

20:54 Adam Spencer: As you may have heard, I ask all guests the startup advice question. I kind of want to do it in two parts with you. Over the years, how many founders would you say you have interviewed?

21:07 Simon Thomsen: Well, let me put it this way. On the Startup Daily Show on Ausbiz, I did stop at the end of 2021 and figure out that we spoke to roughly 1,200 people during the year. Now that's not 1,200 individuals. There was, we have regulars on the show, you know, who come back on, but there was roughly 1,200 interviews in the year. But every day I would be talking to 3 or 4 founders of companies, either for the site or on the show. So, you know, multiply that out over 50, we're talking a couple of thousand people.

21:36 Adam Spencer: Is there anything that stands out to you that of the successful founders that you've spoken to, that you see in every one of them?

21:48 Simon Thomsen: Something that stands out, let me put it this way, this is about relationships, everything's about relationships. So, you know, investors choose founders not so much for their idea, not so much for where they think the business will be in 5 years' time, certainly not for the exit. They invest in the founders and they feel it. And I think when you're an interviewer, you feel the people who are good, who bring a good heart to the table. You feel the ones who kind of are a little bit sort of Gold Coast, sort of white shoe developer vibe as well. You do see a few of the hustlers along the way, and I think I've got slightly better at picking those after you've had a chat with them. Um, you know, you see the full gamut of humanity, as you would expect. But I do think the good ones do bring a humility to what they do, and they also bring a desire to bring everyone with them. They have that sense of, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats. They want everyone to succeed around them, not just themselves. And I think that's a really notable thing. But I also, I suppose, because I am sort of getting into that later stage of my career at this point in time, when I look at the younger entrepreneurs, what I've loved seeing is that shift in compassion and purpose that they now bring to the table and bring to their efforts. That wasn't part of, you know, I grew up in the Christopher Scase, you know, Alan Bond, you know, Holmes Court era where it was all slightly crazy, make as much money as you can. And I suppose we still have that one aspiring politician at this election who happens to be a billionaire. Won't name him, but you know who we're talking about. But it is that thing of, there's this great generational shift that it's not just good enough to be there making money. You have to be doing this for a reason that leaves everything a little bit better. So we are tackling issues around climate. We are tackling issues around equality and diversity. And I think that's a fantastic, mind shift that we're seeing in the next generation of entrepreneurs that wasn't necessarily there earlier on.

24:00 Adam Spencer: Yeah, what do you, what drove that change? Do you have any guesses?

24:05 Simon Thomsen: Well, you know, if you want to sort of believe the sledge, they're just woke, but you know, I actually think they're just better people. I think the next generation are slightly better at being human than our generation was, and I think that's a good thing, you know, and we can learn from them. I love this. This is, this is one of the things I kind of describe myself sometimes as a vampire because I feed on the energy that they bring to the table, the ideas they bring, that enthusiasm. It's just fantastic to watch. And it's that sense that the world will be in better hands. It will be a better place because there are some great people with great ideas tackling some seriously big problems.

24:43 Adam Spencer: And the other part of that question is advice, maybe something you've learned along the way or from your turning the newspaper around. What advice would you have for new entrepreneurs?

24:55 Simon Thomsen: I think the important thing is to have your story clear. I'm a storyteller, but founders are storytellers. You have to have a vision that you can explain to investors, to the team you're gonna bring along the way, to your mum and dad as to why you're doing this. So having that story clear in your own mind sets your goals and agenda along the way. So think about the story that you wanna tell everyone because life is a pitch all along the way. Get that pitch right and it's not about why you're giving me money, it's why I'm here in the first place.

25:28 Adam Spencer: Before I ask you the last question, I ask this kind of lazy one. Is there anything I missed? Is there anything you really want to talk about that I didn't ask about that you think should go in?

25:40 Simon Thomsen: Well, you've got Osman and Catalyzer. Osman Iftikhar, Western Sydney guy, he runs a program. So very simple backstory for him. You really should have him in there because I would say this, that part of Australia's entrepreneurialism, and let's take it broader than the idea of technology, has been founded on immigrants coming out here.

26:06 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

26:07 Simon Thomsen: And whether it is the corner milk stall, whether it is a range of other businesses that they've created along the way, whether it's Harry and his bloody apartments, you know, Meriton Apartments all around the city, John Hemmes and fashion, which then turned into Justin building a bar empire. There have been these extraordinary migrants who've come out to this country and built things from scratch, and that's some entrepreneurialism, which I think is such an important part of our story. We tell it slightly different to the American version, which again is the hero myth, because you go to America to make your fortune from scratch, but we do it in a way that's sort of, weaves back into the society in really interesting ways. Usman's backstory is quite simply that he got out here, he struggled, couldn't get a job, and despite being highly qualified, and that is part of what does happen around here, and we've got this debate around skills at the moment and skilled migration, but Usman came out and he— So he set up Catalyzer as a way for migrant entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. And so he does his own program, which I probably should have mentioned, you know, during that when I sort of mentioned Antler and Startmate. But because I think what Osman does is just as important, and he's branched from Sydney to Melbourne now, and he's giving new Australians, you know, this opportunity to build the business for the first time in a new country, which I just think is something extraordinary. So, you know, he brings an incredibly different perspective to the middle-aged white guy one that I have, but it's a great one. Well, no, I think we're pretty good and I think you're just going to get such an incredible— there are so many incredible layers. There is a temptation as a journalist to always want to have the giant umbrella over the top of everything and cover everything. But you know what? There is this incredible diversity in the people you're speaking to and the angles that they bring that we'll get there in the end.

28:05 Adam Spencer: That's what I'm hoping.

28:06 Simon Thomsen: Go off on an NBN rant and some lost years and wasted money and all of that, or I could sort of talk about what I think is now amazing is the efforts that we're seeing around climate tech and that transformation. I just think the wonderful thing is we are sort of seeing this moment where the market itself is sorting out what needs to be done.

28:30 Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.

28:30 Simon Thomsen: We often tend to turn, and certainly the last 2 years have conditioned us to turn to government to find solutions. The interesting thing is that the market and entrepreneurs will find solutions before government can even get a roundtable together of premiers and prime ministers to talk about it.

28:50 Adam Spencer: So this last question is, you know, we're trying to tell this documentary, we're trying to create this documentary that will tell the entire history to the best of our ability of the Australian startup ecosystem. We want founders, investors, academics, policymakers, everybody the community to hear this story. Pick any one of those categories or the whole group. What is a message that you have that they absolutely— the people absolutely need to hear from you?

29:14 Simon Thomsen: Believe in dreaming. And that goes back to the deep tech and science thing and pure research. I just believe that when we give people permission and opportunity to imagine, that's when great ideas emerge, great transformation emerges. And we've kind of gone into a slightly practical state of mind whereby, you know, if we train people to do this, then they'll be able to supply our labor market for this solution. There needs to be a little bit of time sitting around and just, you know, farting and sort of coming up with wild ideas because that's how you transform society. That's how you transform the world. It's those moments of daydreaming, and we shouldn't discount the opportunity to daydream and what can emerge from it.

30:02 Adam Spencer: Thank you so much, Simon, for joining me on the podcast.

30:04 Simon Thomsen: Great to talk with you, Adam.

30:15 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.

30:32 Simon Thomsen: Bye.