Join us for an in depth hour-long webinar that will cover topics such as the tech recovery roadmap post-COVID, his current book, capital raising challenges for Aussie founders in Australia, versus abroad (including the cost to hire talent, government grants, and visa requirements), the successful Landing Pad among other topics.
Malcolm Turnbull was the 29th Prime Minister of Australia. Prior to entering politics, he enjoyed successful careers as a lawyer, investment banker and journalist.
Malcolm was born in 1954 and grew up in Sydney. For much of his childhood he lived alone with his father Bruce.
While studying law at Sydney University, Malcolm worked as a journalist and continued doing so when he studied at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.
It was during his time at Oxford that Malcolm met and was hired by Harold Evans, the editor of London’s Sunday Times newspaper.
After his time at Oxford, where he married his wife Lucy, Malcolm returned to Australia and practised law where he quickly established a reputation as an effective advocate, most notably when he successfully defended former MI5 agent Peter Wright against the British Government, in the “Spycatcher” trial.
Malcolm established an investment banking firm in 1987 and during that time specialised in the media and technology sectors. He worked with some of the leading media moguls of the time including Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer, Conrad Black and Bob Maxwell and at the same time established a number of new businesses of his own.
He co-founded the first big Australian Internet company, OzEmail Ltd, listing it on the NASDAQ in 1996 and selling it to Worldcom three years later.
Malcolm joined Goldman Sachs in 1997 becoming a partner of the firm the following year and headed their Australian business for four years until he retired to pursue a political career.
He entered the Australian Parliament in 2004 and during that time served as Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Minister for Communications and as Prime Minister from 2015-18.
During his time as Prime Minister, Malcolm delivered an economic growth agenda that lead to record job creation on the back of cutting personal and company taxes. His government legalised same-sex marriage and reformed the school funding model to ensure a consistent, needs based approach across all school sectors.
His government embarked on the largest peace-time expansion and modernisation of Australian defence forces and defence industry, including commissioning 54 new Naval vessels.
Malcolm has a deep interest in energy issues and renewable energy. He recognised the urgent need for large scale storage to make intermittent renewables reliable and started the construction of the Snowy Hydro 2.0 pumped hydro scheme, which will be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. He also identified the opportunity for similar pumped storage systems in Tasmania.
He successfully negotiated a deal with President Trump to maintain a refugee resettlement deal he had agreed to with President Obama.
When Trump pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, Malcolm refused to allow that 12 nation free trade deal to fall by the wayside, rallying the remaining eleven countries to commit to a continuing TPP-11.
He radically reformed the way the Australian federal Government deals with states and cities, establishing a series of City Deals where the three levels of Government agree on common goals and then work together to realize them. As part of the Western Sydney City Deal, he commenced the construction of a new Airport for Sydney.
At a time of growing nationalist sentiment across the world, he opposed racism and division at every turn, ensuring that Australia remains the most successful multicultural society in the world.
Since leaving politics, Malcolm has resumed his business career and regularly speaks at global conferences.
Malcolm is married to Lucy, the former Lord Mayor of Sydney and former Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission. He has two children, Alex and Daisy, and four grandchildren – Jack, Isla, Alice and Ronan.
Al Ramadan
Al is an expert in a new discipline called category design.
He is author of one of the top leadership and management business books which featured on many summer reading lists.
He regularly gives keynote speeches at conferences and workshops including Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Floodgate to name a few. He also lecture on Category Design at Stanford University.
Al works with high growth technology companies who are seeking to become what we call category kings. In conjunction with my partners we have created a category design methodology and I have practiced this process with more than 40 of our portfolio companies over the past 10 years. These companies include Qualtrics(Sold to SAP for $8Bn), Dropbox, Clear Metal, Sensity Systems (sold to Verizon), Treasure Data (Sold to ARM).
Prior to that he was a CEO and entrepreneur practicing category design on his own companies including Quokka Sports, Macromedia and Adobe.
He cut his teeth writing Fortran 77 on a Vax 11/780 and still writes the odd piece of Python code when he needs to. He has been named as one of the most influential people in the digital economy by Time Magazine, sailed in the Americas Cup, awarded a honorary Naval Aviator by the US Navy and hiked the John Muir Trail.
RECENTLY FEATURED ARTICLES
LinkedIn Top 100 with Suzy Welsh and Daniel Roth
Business journalist and television commentator Suzy Welch put together an intriguing article on the companies where people want to work and what they all have in common. This take is based on the release of the LinkedIn Top Companies of 2017. Turns out, that Category Kings make up 7 of the top 7 on the list! Think about that for a second. This shows the power of why it's so important to build a great company, product and category at the same time.
"These are the companies where people really, really want to work now. Here's what they all have in common" - Suzy Welch
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-companies-places-where-people-really-want-suzy-welch
How Unicorns Grow on Harvard Business Review
The meteoric rise of Uber and other “unicorns”—private, venture-backed companies valued at a billion dollars or more—feels unprecedented. But is it? And does that matter?
Research from Play Bigger, a Silicon Valley consultancy that works with VC-backed start-ups, confirms that they really are growing faster in recent years, at least as measured by market capitalization. It also examines whether raising lots of private capital prior to an IPO is an important determinant of future success and looks at the best time for these companies to go public.
https://hbr.org/2016/01/how-unicorns-grow
The CMO’s of Tomorrow Will Be Category Designers
It’s not hard to understand why many think that category creation does not belong in the world of the CMO. Just ask yourself who were the CMOs behind the categories listed above? There’s a reason why that is hard to answer, because until now, category creation has lived in the realm of the founder and CEO. That’s about the change, but to understand why, you have to learn a bit more about category creation.
http://www.bpinetwork.org/thought-leadership/views-commentary/421/the_cmo_s_of_tomorrow_will_be_category_designers
RECENT BLOGS AND POSTS
Corning: A 150-year Old Category Creation Machine
Knowledge @ Wharton
Great enduring companies don’t just develop products. They continuously create, design and dominate entirely new categories of business.
When we studied category kings and the concept of category design, we focused on startups like Uber, Salesforce.com and Facebook – obvious category kings. But we looked for big corporation that could teach us about continuous category creation, and one in particular surprised us: Corning, the glass company, which was founded in 1865.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/corningware-category-creation-machine/
6-10 Law Update.
Motivated by a spirited debate with well known VC’s Mike Maples and Bill Gurley, Al and his research team released new and revised findings of why companies who go public between 6 and 10 years create the vast majority of post IPO value creation. Including the FAANG stocks.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/6-10-law-2017-edition-al-ramadan
Playing Bigger in Australia.
Al was joined by a distinguished panel including John Bertrand AO, Rick Baker from Blackbird Ventures, Samantha Wong from Startmate, Didier Elzinga from CultureAmp, Jon McCormack from Monash University to discuss the arc of the Australian Technology Industry which is in the middle of an amazing renaissance.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/playing-bigger-australia-al-ramadan
How to create and dominate markets on Sandhill.com
On April 3, 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage for one of his famously dramatic product unveilings. The room went dark, and Jobs put up a picture of an iPhone and a MacBook laptop, with a question mark in between. “Is there room for a third category of device in the middle?” Jobs asked the audience.
http://sandhill.com/article/how-to-create-and-dominate-markets/
Playing Bigger in Singapore
Al was a keynote speaker and led a distinguished panel including Rosaline Koo from CXA, Shirley Wong from TNF Ventures, Alex Campbell from XERO, Chris Mazza from ClearMetal, Ted Tschang from Singapore Management University to discussed the emergence of the Singaporean Technology Industry which is rapidly becoming a key driver for the country and the region.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/playing-bigger-singapore-al-ramadan
RECENT PODCASTS
Stanford ETL
Al Ramadan and Dave Peterson, co-founding partners of the category-design firm Play Bigger Advisors, share the science behind the strategies that innovators use to create and dominate product markets. They also discuss the marketing concepts for building a brand and identity, and for inspiring customers to see the world as you’ve framed it.
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/videos/4226/How-to-Be-a-Category-King-Entire-Talk
BRAINFLUENCE with Roger Dooley
What better way to break into an industry than by being the first company to understand exactly what it’s missing? On this episode, we sit down with Al Ramadan to discuss how software engineers, innovators, and companies do just that.
http://www.rogerdooley.com/ep-117-play-bigger-dominate-market-al-ramadan
Startup Playbook with Rohit Bhargava
Al and Lucas Ramadan (Play Bigger) On creating category kings
http://startupplaybook.co/2017/03/ep042-al-ramadan-play-bigger-creating-category-kings/
Morgans Startup Series with Chris Titley
In the latest episode of the Morgans Startup Series, Chris Titley spoke to Al Ramadan from Play Bigger. Al was a Co-founder of Quokka Sports, and has held senior executive positions with Adobe and Macromedia before becoming a mentor and consultant to top start-ups.
https://soundcloud.com/morgans-financial-limited/mss-al-ramadan-co-founder-play-bigger
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