Ahead of the TechStars Sydney ‘Demo the Future’ evening on December 8, Startup Daily is profiling the 12 startups and their founders in the 2025 cohort. Our next profile is SurfLab – the platform elevating surfer skills and enjoyment, while also enhancing their community connection. SurfLab Founder: Ant Arena One-liner: SurfLab is the world’s first AI-powered surf… Read more »
If you’re not a celebrity or crypto bro with money to burn on Bored Ape NFTs, or bananas taped to a wall, but would like to buy art, then an exhibition opening in Sydney this week is just for you. James Erskine founded the Liverpool Street Gallery in East Sydney more than 20 years ago,… Read more »
Back in 2016, around the time LaunchVic was kicking off in Melbourne, Dave McManus left the city for Silicon Valley, determined to become a startup founder. Now he’s back in Victorian capital and the founder of Lightning Ventures has plenty of stories to tell and advice to share on episode 40 of Startup 360. Explaining… Read more »
Here we go again. Private school fee letters for 2026 are arriving, and for many families the numbers are confronting. Many schools appear to be lifting fees by something between 5 – 7%. For financial advisers, these costs have shifted from being background noise to a central conversation in financial planning. As fees rise faster… Read more »
If you’ve been in the workforce for more than about five minutes, you’ve met them: The boss who thought the title automatically made them brilliant – and would like you to know about it – the same one who called “urgent” meetings that could have been an email, or could have waited until next week. The… Read more »
If you’re a young person in Australia, you probably know new social media rules are coming in December. If you and your friends are under 16, you might be locked out of the social media spaces you use every day. Some people call these rules a social media ban for under 16s. Others say it’s… Read more »
Alex Miller was having rapid success with his subscription management platform Hudled when he spotted a nugget of insight in that startup and launched a second, Rechargly. Like a Marvel movie spinoff, he’s now enjoying even more success, as Alex explains on episode 39 of Startup 360. Listen here Cohosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell… Read more »
Over the next decade, Elon Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire. The Tesla board recently proposed a US$1 trillion (A$1.5 trillion) compensation plan, if Musk can meet a series of ambitious growth targets. Australia’s corporate pay packets aren’t quite on that scale. Yet even here, it was recently reported departing Virgin chief executive Jayne… Read more »
Currents, the Gold Coast startup community-building group backed by Torus Ventures, has acquired Michael Batko’s Startup Striders. The purchase price was undisclosed, and the deal was completed entirely in cash. Startup Striders began in 2023 as a Saturday morning run and coffee meetup in Sydney. Since then it has become a large community with more than… Read more »
For 60 years, Warren Buffett has written an annual letter to shareholders of the company he’s run since 1965, Berkshire Hathaway. He acquired the small textile company for US$18 a share to fire the CEO. Buffett subsequently described it as “the dumbest stock I ever bought” despite the fact that today, Berkshire Hathaway Class A… Read more »
When I began reading Elaine Castillo’s Moderation, a new American novel about the psychological damage of online moderation, I had to pause. I’d read novels that confronted difficult material before, but this one blurred the line between bearing witness and re-enacting pain. The book follows Girlie, a content moderator for a social media giant whose… Read more »
This week’s Startup 360 kicks off with cohost Simon Thomsen recounting the two days spent in the NSW Supreme Court this week as senior council for the liquidators of failed medtech StrongRoom AI probed cofounder and former CEO Max Mito, and director Divesh Sangvhi, about the potential insolvency of the business. Sangvhi sold his company,… Read more »
Recently, I had a tough conversation with my 12-year-old son. Australia had just announced that from December 2025, no one under 16 will be allowed to create a YouTube account. The idea is simple: protect kids from harm. But here’s the problem – this ban won’t do what it promises. In fact, it risks making… Read more »
This is part three of Christie Jenkins’ five-part series on bravery. It is inspired by her chat with Crista Samaras, the founder of Brave Enterprises. Trampolining was my first sport. For 17 years, I did flips every day. “Does it feel like flying?” people ask me. From their view, I get why. I’m often 10 meters… Read more »
Watching the credits roll on The Outer Worlds 2, it dawned on me: I had beaten this game in a single long weekend. Purchased on Friday, finished on Cup Tuesday night. All while fitting in family and friend commitments, too. It wasn’t a short title either, taking around 20 hours to complete to a level… Read more »
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