August 10, 2025 • 33 mins
Data is everywhere in your organization, but do you truly understand what it means? Sam Spencer, CEO and CISO of Aristotle Metadata, reveals how the missing piece in most data strategies isn't fancy algorithms or massive storage capabilities—it's simply understanding what your data means and where it lives.
From measuring podcast listeners to protecting patient information, Sam explains how his Canberra-based software company helps organizations describe their data in human terms. "A database will tell you how many listeners there are in a podcast, but it won't tell you how you measure a listener or what a listener is for your context," Sam notes, highlighting the critical difference between having data and understanding it.
The journey of Aristotle Metadata is a testament to bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Starting with code written in a "dingy little apartment" in Belconnen a decade ago, the company has grown to over 20 staff with clients across government, healthcare, and academia in Australia and internationally. Sam shares candid insights about surviving near-catastrophe when 40% of his workforce left within two weeks, and why—despite preaching the importance of taking breaks—he's only now planning his first real holiday in seven years.
Have a listen!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to the Canberra Business Podcast.
I'm Greg Harford, your hostfrom the Canberra Business
Chamber, and today I'm joined bySam Spencer, the CEO and CISO
of Aristotle Metadata.
Sam, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you very much.
Now let's get started.
What is Aristotle Metadata?
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
What do we do?
The short answer is we make iteasier for organizations to find
and use their data.
So we're a software companybased here out of Canberra, with
clients internationally and, togive you a really good example,
a lot of people, when they comeon podcasts or when they talk
about these opportunities, talkabout, you know, listenership
and audience.
(00:51):
So what we do is we help peopledescribe that, because you know
, listenership is a veryinteresting number.
If I was to listen to yourpodcast five times, you know, am
I counted once as one listeneror is it five different events?
And it's really useful for usto know that when we're trying
to compare you know differentpodcasts, like how do you
(01:11):
measure your audience versusother people?
So what we do is help peopletalk about what their data means
, and we find that that's reallyuseful for helping them find
you know where their data is,because they can search through
that meaning and interpret itbetter.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So we're not just talking about podcast data,
though, right, we're talkingabout all sorts of information
that businesses hold.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
We do everything.
So we work with a lot of reallydiverse organisations, so we
work with a lot of governmentorganisations here in Australia
and we measure, you know,citizen data data about all of
us to help protect it, because,you know, the more we know about
data, the more we can protectit.
We also work with organisationsover in Europe in the
(01:54):
healthcare sector looking atpatient data, and we've also
worked with areas in the privatesector looking at hospital data
, but also looking at heavyindustry and manufacturing,
because data really controls allof our lives.
So it's important that we knowwhat it is and know how it's
used.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
So do you kind of suck data out of your customers
systems or do you get them to,or do you sell a system that
they put the data into?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
We sell a system for them to put meaning into.
So we don't actually connectwith data systems very much.
We do have some connectors tokind of pull bits out, but the
biggest gap I think the biggestopportunity for a lot of
organisations is actuallywriting down what your data
means.
A database will tell you howmany listeners there are in a
podcast, but it won't tell youhow you measure a listener or
(02:44):
what a listener is for yourcontext.
So we actually have systemsthat have, you know, hundreds or
thousands of users for ourclients, where they'll have you
know everybody in their businessareas talking about why they
collected data.
Because data doesn't tell uswhere it came from.
It doesn't tell us why itexists.
It's people who make thosedecisions.
(03:05):
You know, one day you and yourteam sat down and said we're
going to do a podcast and wewant to measure the impact of
that, and there's probably somereporting that goes to you as
the, you know as the CEO of theorganization that says you know,
this is something that we wantto keep doing.
We measure that impact andthat's what we want to do is go
well, you know we made adecision to collect some data
(03:25):
through these podcast channels.
What does it mean and how doesit really relate to business?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And presumably you can then, as a business, use
that data to inform your futuredecisions about where you go and
what products and services youmight be wanting to offer.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So how long have you been going at Aristotle?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's a really good question.
So we've been as a business.
So you know and I think this isa really fun one to talk about
as a founder is we were foundedin a coffee shop in Black
Mountain seven and a half yearsago.
And I say it's one of the mostinteresting experiences because,
if you look at the paperwork, Isat down and I was the only
(04:04):
person officially present at themeeting, even though my
co-founder was there.
And you know, I voted myselfinto three or four companies and
we registered, but the firstline of code was probably
written a little over 10 yearsago.
So I'm a, I'm a softwareengineer and a data engineer by
by my you know trade.
And I one day sat down and saidI'm going to build a software
(04:26):
company that's going to haveinstallations around the world.
And about 11 years ago inBelconnen, I sat down in my back
room of my dingy littleapartment and started coding.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
And it's obviously been working.
So how's your growth been overthat time?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Steady.
I think the software industry.
We have this expectation ofwhat they call hockey stick
growth, where you go kind ofslowly and you hit this
inflection point and you gothrough the moon.
We've been growing, you know,probably double digits year on
year, for, you know, ever sincewe started and you know, from a
staff perspective, this year wecracked 20 staff, um, uh,
(05:06):
in-house, uh, that's all of ourdevelopment and product team.
Um, so yeah, we've been, we'vebeen growing very, very well.
Um, in that time we've grownnot only in the ACT or the
federal market, but uh, in, youknow, states across Australia.
And then you know, we're slowly, uh, starting to see expansion
internationally, which is whereour next big jump is, which is
(05:26):
where I met you over in NewZealand on an export mission
recently.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So tell me about your export journey.
I mean, how has that gone foryou?
Where did you start and how didyou get your first
international customers?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I think software is really it's a bit easy when it
comes to exporting, and I saythat because I think it's a bit
easy when it comes to exportingum, and I say that because I
think it's it's really difficultand you know, I think we had a
couple of conversations when wewere over there, because we were
over there with the canberradistillery and and some some
other manufacturers and puttingproducts into market is actually
quite hard when you've got toput a physical product, you know
(06:01):
, into market um, but forsoftware you just need a website
and you just need interest andI think over the last you know
probably what 25 years cloudcomputing has made it even
easier.
You know we have a, we have anisland data center and we have a
us data center for our, for ourinternational clients, um, as
long as an asian, pacific andaustralian data centers, and you
(06:23):
know technologies like you knowamazon Services, who we use, or
Azure, have made it very easyfor software companies to just
open those up.
I think a lot of the time it'sjust good positioning and good
online marketing and AdWords andall those kind of things and
(06:43):
then making sure that peopleknow how to contact you.
I think the difficulties arefrom a business perspective and
I think this is universal isbeing able to navigate different
tax systems and differentinternational selling rules.
And all of a sudden you'retalking about you know, I think
it was at Duns and Bradstreetwhere you've got to have a
particular internationalidentifier like an ABN, but for
(07:05):
international, and I think theother one is really looking at
making sure that you understand,you know international context
and you're able to operate ininternational time zones.
So you know, for us to scale,we still operate from here, but
that means there's been somepretty interesting late night
you know conference calls withpeople over in in uh in europe
(07:28):
now, many people I talked aboutexporting say that relationships
are key to building andmaintaining a successful export
trajectory.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Um, but in a software sense, is that true or is it
actually just quite different?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
um, I think it's a little bit true and again, I
think it's it's interestingnoting the distinction between
the two um and I won't.
I won't profess to be an experton what it's like in in, you
know, physical industries, buthaving someone who can, you know
, advocate for your product inmarket, you know, in another
country, in another geography,is really, really important.
Um, and even on the scale ofAustralia, having people that
(08:03):
you know know you over in Perthas a good example is really
important.
So I would say that when we'reworking internationally, our
networks are less important inthat regard.
Like, I think it's reallyimportant that we have strong
relationships with our clients,because when you move into a new
market, it can give you areally rapid growth in that
(08:26):
market if that's interconnected.
But I think in software and inthe knowledge economy, some of
the people that I've worked withinternationally have had
contacts back here in Australiaas well, because they go to
similar conferences and becausewe don't have that challenge of
putting products into the market, we don't need to worry about
them being able to take thatproduct in through a
(08:47):
distribution channel.
When we start to look at ourpartner network, which is
probably one of our big growthstrategies for this year, then
again, that'll change as well.
But I think for software, Ithink it comes with different
unique challenges when it comesto positioning things in market.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Okay, you talked a little bit about government
clients before, and obviouslyyou've got a number of private
sector clients as well, but whatsort of businesses are making
use of your services?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
At the moment, our biggest sectors are government.
Healthcare and academia areprobably the three biggest
sectors we work with, and behindthat would be, you know, large
industry.
So I think a lot oforganisations are trying to
leverage their data, but thebiggest challenges we see are in
(09:39):
organisations that are largeenough, where it's difficult to
track what's happening with thatdata.
Again, one of the examples justto bring it back to yourself is
to say a lot of organizationsare now running events like
podcasts and they getinformation and they run events
like the.
What is business after dark isthe one I'm ready business after
(10:00):
business business afterbusiness, sorry, business after
business.
I'll see you at that, but withthose we collect a lot of
personal information throughsystems like Eventbrite.
So somebody will go and you knowI had to give my name and my
telephone number to you to comealong to the event and I think
(10:30):
those are the areas where we'reseeing data that's existing
outside of the you know thesphere ofdo, because you know we
can't move eventbrite into adata warehouse.
It's a, it's an external system,but it's still a data source.
So we see, the biggestopportunity for ourselves is
with clients or with with areaswhere they're collecting data
from a lot of disparate sourcesand they're starting to worry
about where that data is flowinginternally.
Because I think it's importantfor us to recognize
transparently that that datathat goes into that Eventbrite
(10:50):
event and we do the same thingit feeds into our marketing
lists and it feeds into ourassessment of the market to
understand market size.
We're using that data forbusiness intelligence and I
think what we want to do is makesure that everybody, regardless
of whether they're in atraditional data area or a
business area, or marketing andsales or even administration and
(11:11):
HR making sure that they knowthat other people know what data
they've got.
You know, not giving access toit, but making sure that
everybody knows what's there,and that's where you know the
biggest industries are.
You know, healthcare andgovernment and and those larger
private sector.
Biggest industries arehealthcare and government and
those larger private sectororganisations.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
And obviously in healthcare and government, and
indeed across education andbusiness, I guess as well.
Security of information isreally important.
How do you go about protectingyour clients' data?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
We do what we say we do and I think we do what we
tell our clients to do, which isyou need to know what data
assets you hold.
Um, you need to, you know,capture it.
You need to, to tell peoplewhat you've got, and that starts
with just writing it down, um,you know, keeping a really good
inventory and making sure thatpeople have access to that
inventory.
(12:04):
I think there was a big eventearlier in the news with Qantas
not realising how much data hadmoved offshore and moved to a
third-party organisation, andthere was a big data breach that
I was impacted by.
I'm not sure if you wereimpacted by that one, greg.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And I think it's making sure that we write it
down and that's what we do is weinternally have a nice little
data inventory that we keep upto date, because I think it's
important for us to demonstrateto ourselves and to demonstrate
to our clients that we followthe same practices that we
encourage them to follow do youthink that we're doing enough
(12:43):
about cybersecurity across theboard?
No, oh, wow, no, I don't thinkso.
I think there's a couple ofthreads that we can pull on this
one, but I think we're nothelping non-technical people and
I'm putting that in air quotesfor people at home,
quote-unquote non-technicalpeople to.
(13:03):
I'm putting that in air quotesfor people at home, you know,
quote unquote non-technicalpeople to understand what they
can do.
I think, again, a lot, of a lot, of what we do with data comes
down to how we treat it and howwe tell people what it is and
where it is, and I think that'sprobably the biggest area that
we can improve is to tell peoplethat you don't need to be a
(13:28):
data expert to know what data isor why it was collected or
where it's stored, and that'swhat we need to be capturing as
a first starting point is.
One of the principles that wetell all of our clients is you
know what data do you have?
You know how did you collect itand who has access to it, and
how do I find out who has moreinformation about it?
Are four very, very simplethings to collect, and that's
(13:53):
what we really need to focus onis building better practice
around pulling that informationtogether.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
So in Aristotle, you're both the Chief Executive
Officer but also the ChiefInformation Security Officer.
How do you navigate theresponsibilities of leading the
company while ensuring robustdata security?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I think one of the things that I've learned in my
time is that the chief executiveofficer ultimately is
responsible for everything.
That's your role is you'reresponsible for the operations
of the company and we havedelegates to support that.
We had a really good colleaguewho joined us for a short period
(14:39):
of time, who took the hat, but,you know, moved on to different
opportunities and we're veryproud of them.
But I think ultimately, the CEOneeds to understand that you
have responsibility over thesethings, whether or not it's part
of your title.
You know and that comes to, ifyou're a chief executive officer
who's not the chief informationsecurity officer, you're still
(15:01):
the person who appointed themand you know you may have
delegated that responsibilitydown a layer, but you know, to a
certain extent you still haveresponsibility and that's why I
think one of the things that weneed to be training executives
on is to understand, from a dataperspective, you know, what
they can do.
You know what's in their controland what they need to do from a
(15:24):
leadership perspective to helpothers along that journey.
So what?
Speaker 1 (15:30):
what does the future hold for aristotle metadata?
What sort of products are wegoing to see?
And then, and then, what's thegrowth?
What's the growth plan?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
uh, what's the growth plan?
What products are we going tosee?
What growth are we going to see?
What growth are we going to see?
I think so growth is a reallyeasy one.
Again, you know, growth is very, very easy to talk about quote
unquote.
Easy to talk about in software,in the sense that I think we've
not hit 1% of our size, likewe've not even captured 1% of
the market that we think isthere, because we think, I think
(16:02):
, that we're approaching thisfrom a very human-centric
perspective.
A lot of our clients have verylarge percentages of their staff
on our platform, so it's not atraditional data platform.
We'll have hundreds orthousands of staff on these
platforms talking about theirdata, and I think that's the
thing that we want to change.
(16:22):
So we're about to enter apartnership with a local
university to really expand onsome methodologies that we've
been producing.
So we authored the MASTmethodology, which I think is a
really great framework that wecall the Agile for Data
Management, which is reallytelling people what we want them
to do and how we want them tobehave when it comes to data at
work, and I think that's goingto unlock, you know, the next,
(16:46):
you know 100 or the next 1,000clients for Aristotle New
products.
I think again, there's a lot ofopportunity in helping people
understand what their data meansand how we use that
intelligence and how we use datagovernance to drive decisions
in organisations.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
How do you drive continuous learning within your
team?
Obviously you've got a teamthat's grown relatively fast
over a number of years.
The aspiration is for moregrowth.
You've got to keep peopleengaged.
You've got to keep peoplelearning over that time.
How do you drive that culture?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Again through leadership.
I think again, when you build acompany, there's a lot of
knowledge in your head and oneof the principles that I've had
is I want to get as much out ofthat as possible.
So and I'm happy to talk aboutthis, but I'll be taking my
first holiday later this year.
So I haven't had a holidaysince we started.
I've been on conferences.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
In seven years.
Yes, Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Well, we've been on trips to visit family and we've
been on conferences and stayed acouple of extra days, but this
is the first time that my familywill be taking a full-on
holiday where we don't talk toanybody, and I think that's been
a long journey because you haveto get all that knowledge out.
I think one of the things thatyou have to do as an
organization that's very hard toculturally challenge is you
(18:13):
really want to make everybody alittle bit redundant, because if
nobody knows how to operatewhen you're not there, then
you're never going to take abreak and you're always going to
get messages and you're nevergoing to get it perfect.
But if you don't try to get ridof that information to get
other people knowing about it,then that's a real challenge and
(18:34):
that's something that I've donesince the start, because when
you're a small organization, ifa couple of people leave, it can
be really disastrous.
If a couple of people leave, itcan be really disastrous, and I
think one of the proudestmoments, one of the scariest
moments, was when we were stillfive people and we had two of
our engineers leave in a veryshort space of time, and I've
written about this as a chapterin a book that I'm publishing,
(18:57):
and when two people leave in abig organization, that's, you
know, a bit rough.
That was 40 percent of ourworkforce who left within two
weeks.
One was poached and then one hadfamily matters that they needed
to move into state for and itwas very much a make or break
moment.
I was like you know I don'tthink I told anybody I was like
I don't know if we're going tosurvive.
(19:17):
We were petrified and myco-founder, lauren, and one of
our former employees who's leftnow, but Dylan, who's a great
guy and I'll make him listen tothis podcast we sat down and we
were like, what are we going todo?
And we started to think aboutit and we were able to hire two
(19:37):
you know, relatively juniorstaff to replace them.
We brought someone on soonafter that as well, and the big
thing for us is at the time.
You know we only release everytwo weeks now, but at the time
we were releasing weekly, so wedo a weekly release of all of
our software and that was ourbig moment of truth was we had a
staff member leave on a Fridayand we released on the following
(19:59):
Tuesday and that was a bigrelief because we're like, okay,
we can actually run the companywithout him.
So we've really focused on likea lot of internal whiteboarding
sessions and knowledge capture.
So you know, a couple of theteam have said that I like to
teach and I do Like I like toteach people how to, you know,
be the best that they can be.
So we do a lot of whiteboardingsessions where they can ask
(20:20):
questions and ask really toughquestions about why we do things
or how we've built things, andI think making sure that
learning and development is abig part of your culture is
really important.
So we do, you know, every twoor three weeks we'll do like a
little whiteboarding session.
We try and capture everythingin our knowledge base.
We practice, you know, allthese routines that we set up.
So you know we can releasereally quickly.
(20:42):
And we go to conferences and wego to events.
So we actually go to a coupleof conferences in Canberra and
say, go and learn some stuff and, you know, come back with good
ideas.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
And the issue with small businesses I think that
you raise is a really importantone and resonates, I think, for
many business owners, not justin the software space but sort
of right across the board.
The smaller you are, the morereliant you are on your team.
So have you got any tips forkeeping people engaged and
productive?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I would say so, first of all is, I would say, really,
when it comes to recruiting,one thing that I've done that is
, again, there's a lot of luckin the industry, so I don't know
how well this has worked for us, but I've always focused on
hiring for redundancy first,before bringing on new people.
So that sounds a little bitweird, but what we've done is
(21:38):
we've always made sure that ourcapacity to do what we currently
do is really strong before webranch into something else.
If you have, you know, fivepeople doing five different
tasks, if one of them leaves,one of those tasks is getting
dropped.
So we we focused on going well,let's build a really good
development team, okay, and thenlet's build a really good
support team and then let'sbuild a really good marketing
(21:59):
and sales team and then we focuson the next thing.
Uh, when it comes to keepingpeople engaged, I would say, uh,
I think you know there was areally good article in the
workforce you know the abcrecently about, uh, underpayment
in the workforce and you know,um, you know people taking
advantage of young workers andwe have a relatively young
(22:19):
workforce is, I think, makingsure you're meeting your
obligations is really step one,as a first stage, is making sure
that you're a good employer,and that's as simple as paying
on time, being transparent,making sure that all of your
superannuation obligations areup to date.
(22:42):
Because, like Greg, I'll tellyou you quite honestly, it's a
bit of a sad, sad state ofaffairs where doing the right
thing sets you apart.
You know that story in the ABCthis morning talking about how
there are employers out therewho are just not paying their
super annuation obligations.
You know, there's little thingslike.
Little things like that, likefollowing the law.
You know they set you apart andand talking transparently about
(23:03):
why you do those things, Ithink is important.
And the other one is makingsure that people are taking, you
know taking their annual leave.
You know, I think one thingthat we don't realise is oh,
that goes.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
I was going to say but you yourself haven't managed
to take a holiday.
In seven and a half years I'vetaken time off.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
So I will caveat that time off.
So I will, I will caveat that.
So we will like, uh, my, my, mywife and I, we do go to the us
because she's got family thereand, uh, we go.
So we go to family and we, wedo take time off over there, but
I think, you know, I'm off tofiji later this year, um, but
kudos on calling me out for myhypocrisy there um, but, and
again, the reason I say that islike, it's okay if you, if you
(23:41):
own the company, you, it's veryhard to switch off.
And that's what I think one ofthe things that I've really been
careful to help my teamunderstand is that if you're
like, and and I've been a worker, I've been an employee and you
know, I I say this because mydad, uh, you know, when I was
younger, um was in the seismicindustry and worked
(24:03):
exceptionally long hours for,you know, share options that
never eventuated into anythingand it actually put my family in
a rough state.
And and that's why I say is,you know, employees need to look
after themselves first and youneed to help them understand
that.
And and the other thing is fromthat, from that annual leave
perspective, I think, as anemployer, understanding that
(24:23):
every time that somebody doesn'ttake leave, that's a liability
that sits on your balance sheetand it grows and grows and grows
and grows and one day one ofthose people will leave and if
they've got 60 days of leave,you've got to pay that out.
So it's good for you to do that, but it's also good for them,
because you get more out of yourteam when they're rested and
(24:44):
recovered.
You know when they've, whenthey've had a chance to switch
off and digest.
So I think, um, yeah, it'sreally about making sure you're
doing you know the things thateverybody expects of you and
then, once you've got a reallygood organization in place,
making sure that you're you know, giving people the
opportunities and really meetingthe bonus kind of factors cool
(25:05):
foosball tables and ping pongtables and beer on a Friday and
pizzas and stuff.
So I think it's twofold have agood place to work, have a nice
place to be, and then figure outwhat you can throw on top of
that to keep people engagedfigure out what you can throw on
top of that to keep peopleengaged.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Let's just touch, finally, on the startup process
of Aristotle Metadata Now.
As I understand it, you werebuilt without you founded.
The company co-founded, thecompany was built without
external investment.
What were the key challengesand advantages of bootstrapping
the company, and how did thatshape your growth?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
So there's a couple of I think there's a couple of.
I think there's a couple ofthings to talk about here,
because we we are a traditionalbusiness to business company,
which which really changes howyou are for people who are
thinking of looking at a startup.
I think what you want to focuson before you, you know, start
down that journey is figure outwho are you trying to target to,
because that can change.
You know you can get very biguser numbers if you're focusing
(26:03):
on individuals.
You know if you're doingbusiness to, because that can
change.
You know you can get very biguser numbers if you're focusing
on individuals.
You know, if you're doingbusiness to customer things like
Facebook or, you know, uber orTinder, you can get really big
numbers and that's reallyattractive to investors.
For us, because we were lookingat businesses, it meant that we
could have, you know, onecustomer with a thousand clients
, but it still looks like onecustomer and from a risk
(26:24):
perspective, it's a big riskbecause you've got one customer
who might just take away allyour users.
So I think knowing that beforeyou start down that journey is
really really important.
I think the thing beyond thatis sorry, what was the question
again?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
You don't have to edit this bit out.
I was just talking about youknow what were kind of the
advantages and disadvantages ofthat approach.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
So I think the advantage is you maintain a lot
of control, like you maintain alot of creative control, and I
think anybody who considersthemselves to be a founder they
feel like they're the creativeinfluence.
So being able to exert thatcontrol for a longer period of
time is really good.
We haven't, you know, refusedinvestment.
I think we just haven't foundthe right fit yet, and that's
(27:11):
you know good, because you getto control it.
But you know the flip side isthat you know it's on you, it's
all on you.
The other disadvantage to thatis, I think, you know,
investment from when you look atthese stories online, you know
it makes things easier and youcan kind of have a big impact
really fast.
So it changes how you burn.
(27:32):
Um, so I think that the, the,the pros and cons here really
are um, you know, if you, if youseek that external investment,
making sure you can communicatethat message really really well
and understand that you get abig drive to have to grow really
really quickly.
If you do it in a bootstrapfashion, like we did, you really
(27:53):
have to learn about thefundamentals of running a
business, because there's noguardrails, there's no a round,
b, round, c, round d round.
You don't just get people kindof giving you money and hoping
that it turns into the nextfacebook.
You've got to make sure thatyou're managing profit and loss
and and I think, um, that'sgiven us a very strong insight
onto what we're going to looklike.
(28:14):
You know, when we are as big aswe want to be and, I think, to
give you the dream, to give youthe closing out, you know, one
of the things we say is I thinkwe're canberra's Atlassian,
we're going to be the biggestemployer in Canberra and that's
what I want us to be.
I think that's as big as we'regoing to be is we're going to
have the same influence thatAtlassian does on Sydney, if not
(28:34):
more.
And I think, by going throughthe heart of the yards now of
learning how to operate abusiness according to the
balance sheet, it gives you avery, very different perspective
, um, not better, not worse, um,but it means you have to
operate with a different set ofparameters around you.
So I'd say that anybody who'slooking at at doing a startup
(28:57):
it's to do, you know, kind ofbuilding a startup is is.
You know, figure out how youwant to grow, figure out who you
want to target, because that'sreally going to influence how
you do that, and you know,understand that.
You know there's a lot of prosand cons with both directions, I
think you know.
Would our journey have beenfaster or easier with external
investment?
Probably yeah, but at the sametime you give up a lot of
(29:18):
control.
So I think you know you need tounderstand do you want lots of
control because you've got thatvision and drive, or do you want
to get there quickly?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I love your aspiration that you want to be
Canberra's biggest employer andthe Canberran answer to
Atlassian.
Do you think Canberra is theplace where businesses really
can grow and scale?
There's a lot of chatter aboutpayroll tax and business
settings and so forth.
Will you grow here or will youlook to put teams elsewhere?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I think we'll have.
Yes, we will have internationallike we'll have, you know.
I think you know we'll haveinterstate teams and we'll
probably have internationalteams.
Actually, we'll have to haveinternational teams absolutely.
But I think Canberra is a goodplace to build a business.
We have, you know, access to alot of good universities, uh,
and there's a lot of opportunityhere, and I think one of those
(30:15):
opportunities is that it is a, a, a market where you can have
influence.
You know, I think if atlassianmoved here tomorrow, they would
have such an impact on who this,what this city is, um, I think
if an organization of that sizecame here, it would really
change who we are.
And I know we had aconversation, um, earlier this
(30:37):
year when we're over inwellington.
We were talking with the peoplefrom the convention center
about, you know, building abigger canberra, and I think the
the question that I would askus is, you know if,
hypothetically, if we were thenext atlassian, if we were to
build this here and we wanted tohave, you know, an
international conference here,uh, similar to to teams conf,
which atlassian runs over invegas, which is like I think
(31:00):
it's 10 000 people, we wouldn'tbe prepared to run that, and and
we don't need to do thattomorrow, but for Aristotle to
grow here, we need that.
In five years' time, like,we're going to have to find a
venue that can support, you know, 10,000 international users to
launch our next product and tolaunch the next, you know, the
(31:22):
IPO, because this is the townthat I want to do it in, because
I think nobody else has done it, and that makes it a really fun
challenge and that's what weneed to start thinking about
from a Canberra perspective is,if we don't think about how
we're going to build thesethings, we're not going to have
the support to do it, we're notgoing to have a reason to do it.
So you know what I'd say to you,and you know what I'd say to
(31:42):
you and what I'd say to theChief Minister is we need to
build that convention centre,because in five years' time, I'm
going to bring a 10,000-personconference here and if it's not
us, it's going to be someoneelse.
It doesn't necessarily need tobe the Aristotle Convention
Centre, though I hope it will,but we have to prepare for that
future.
We have two, three universities, um, probably what?
(32:05):
Six universities, I think.
Uh, here we have, you know,some of the most educated people
, and I think the bigpossibility is in in gov.
Tech is to take the expertiseof the public service and build
software products, like we'vedone, and ship them
internationally.
We have some of the smartest,well-educated, most resourced
people.
If it's not us, it's going tobe someone, and I think Canberra
(32:29):
needs to be ready for when thathappens.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Well, I love your ambition, and it's certainly one
that the Chamber's reallysupportive of.
We want Canberra to be thegreatest place in Australia to
do business Well.
Canberra is the greatest placein Australia and we need
companies to get in behind usand really sort of drive for
growth.
So it's really good to hearthat that's the plan.
Sam Spencer from AristotleMetadata, thank you so much for
(32:53):
joining me here on the CanberraBusiness Podcast.
It's been really great having achat.
Really enjoyed it.
Hope our listeners have enjoyedthat as well and if you are
tuning in, don't forget tofollow us on your favourite
podcast platform for futureepisodes of the Canberra
Business Podcast.
Sam Spencer, thank you so muchfor your time.
We'll catch you next time.
Hello and welcome to the Canberra Business Podcast.
I'm Greg Harford, your hostfrom the Canberra Business
Chamber, and today I'm joined bySam Spencer, the CEO and CISO
of Aristotle Metadata.
Sam, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you very much.
Now let's get started.
What is Aristotle Metadata?
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
What do we do?
The short answer is we make iteasier for organizations to find
and use their data.
So we're a software companybased here out of Canberra, with
clients internationally and, togive you a really good example,
a lot of people, when they comeon podcasts or when they talk
about these opportunities, talkabout, you know, listenership
and audience.
(00:51):
So what we do is we help peopledescribe that, because you know
, listenership is a veryinteresting number.
If I was to listen to yourpodcast five times, you know, am
I counted once as one listeneror is it five different events?
And it's really useful for usto know that when we're trying
to compare you know differentpodcasts, like how do you
(01:11):
measure your audience versusother people?
So what we do is help peopletalk about what their data means
, and we find that that's reallyuseful for helping them find
you know where their data is,because they can search through
that meaning and interpret itbetter.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So we're not just talking about podcast data,
though, right, we're talkingabout all sorts of information
that businesses hold.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
We do everything.
So we work with a lot of reallydiverse organisations, so we
work with a lot of governmentorganisations here in Australia
and we measure, you know,citizen data data about all of
us to help protect it, because,you know, the more we know about
data, the more we can protectit.
We also work with organisationsover in Europe in the
(01:54):
healthcare sector looking atpatient data, and we've also
worked with areas in the privatesector looking at hospital data
, but also looking at heavyindustry and manufacturing,
because data really controls allof our lives.
So it's important that we knowwhat it is and know how it's
used.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
So do you kind of suck data out of your customers
systems or do you get them to,or do you sell a system that
they put the data into?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
We sell a system for them to put meaning into.
So we don't actually connectwith data systems very much.
We do have some connectors tokind of pull bits out, but the
biggest gap I think the biggestopportunity for a lot of
organisations is actuallywriting down what your data
means.
A database will tell you howmany listeners there are in a
podcast, but it won't tell youhow you measure a listener or
(02:44):
what a listener is for yourcontext.
So we actually have systemsthat have, you know, hundreds or
thousands of users for ourclients, where they'll have you
know everybody in their businessareas talking about why they
collected data.
Because data doesn't tell uswhere it came from.
It doesn't tell us why itexists.
It's people who make thosedecisions.
(03:05):
You know, one day you and yourteam sat down and said we're
going to do a podcast and wewant to measure the impact of
that, and there's probably somereporting that goes to you as
the, you know as the CEO of theorganization that says you know,
this is something that we wantto keep doing.
We measure that impact andthat's what we want to do is go
well, you know we made adecision to collect some data
(03:25):
through these podcast channels.
What does it mean and how doesit really relate to business?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And presumably you can then, as a business, use
that data to inform your futuredecisions about where you go and
what products and services youmight be wanting to offer.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
So how long have you been going at Aristotle?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's a really good question.
So we've been as a business.
So you know and I think this isa really fun one to talk about
as a founder is we were foundedin a coffee shop in Black
Mountain seven and a half yearsago.
And I say it's one of the mostinteresting experiences because,
if you look at the paperwork, Isat down and I was the only
(04:04):
person officially present at themeeting, even though my
co-founder was there.
And you know, I voted myselfinto three or four companies and
we registered, but the firstline of code was probably
written a little over 10 yearsago.
So I'm a, I'm a softwareengineer and a data engineer by
by my you know trade.
And I one day sat down and saidI'm going to build a software
(04:26):
company that's going to haveinstallations around the world.
And about 11 years ago inBelconnen, I sat down in my back
room of my dingy littleapartment and started coding.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
And it's obviously been working.
So how's your growth been overthat time?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Steady.
I think the software industry.
We have this expectation ofwhat they call hockey stick
growth, where you go kind ofslowly and you hit this
inflection point and you gothrough the moon.
We've been growing, you know,probably double digits year on
year, for, you know, ever sincewe started and you know, from a
staff perspective, this year wecracked 20 staff, um, uh,
(05:06):
in-house, uh, that's all of ourdevelopment and product team.
Um, so yeah, we've been, we'vebeen growing very, very well.
Um, in that time we've grownnot only in the ACT or the
federal market, but uh, in, youknow, states across Australia.
And then you know, we're slowly, uh, starting to see expansion
internationally, which is whereour next big jump is, which is
(05:26):
where I met you over in NewZealand on an export mission
recently.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So tell me about your export journey.
I mean, how has that gone foryou?
Where did you start and how didyou get your first
international customers?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I think software is really it's a bit easy when it
comes to exporting, and I saythat because I think it's a bit
easy when it comes to exportingum, and I say that because I
think it's it's really difficultand you know, I think we had a
couple of conversations when wewere over there, because we were
over there with the canberradistillery and and some some
other manufacturers and puttingproducts into market is actually
quite hard when you've got toput a physical product, you know
(06:01):
, into market um, but forsoftware you just need a website
and you just need interest andI think over the last you know
probably what 25 years cloudcomputing has made it even
easier.
You know we have a, we have anisland data center and we have a
us data center for our, for ourinternational clients, um, as
long as an asian, pacific andaustralian data centers, and you
(06:23):
know technologies like you knowamazon Services, who we use, or
Azure, have made it very easyfor software companies to just
open those up.
I think a lot of the time it'sjust good positioning and good
online marketing and AdWords andall those kind of things and
(06:43):
then making sure that peopleknow how to contact you.
I think the difficulties arefrom a business perspective and
I think this is universal isbeing able to navigate different
tax systems and differentinternational selling rules.
And all of a sudden you'retalking about you know, I think
it was at Duns and Bradstreetwhere you've got to have a
particular internationalidentifier like an ABN, but for
(07:05):
international, and I think theother one is really looking at
making sure that you understand,you know international context
and you're able to operate ininternational time zones.
So you know, for us to scale,we still operate from here, but
that means there's been somepretty interesting late night
you know conference calls withpeople over in in uh in europe
(07:28):
now, many people I talked aboutexporting say that relationships
are key to building andmaintaining a successful export
trajectory.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Um, but in a software sense, is that true or is it
actually just quite different?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
um, I think it's a little bit true and again, I
think it's it's interestingnoting the distinction between
the two um and I won't.
I won't profess to be an experton what it's like in in, you
know, physical industries, buthaving someone who can, you know
, advocate for your product inmarket, you know, in another
country, in another geography,is really, really important.
Um, and even on the scale ofAustralia, having people that
(08:03):
you know know you over in Perthas a good example is really
important.
So I would say that when we'reworking internationally, our
networks are less important inthat regard.
Like, I think it's reallyimportant that we have strong
relationships with our clients,because when you move into a new
market, it can give you areally rapid growth in that
(08:26):
market if that's interconnected.
But I think in software and inthe knowledge economy, some of
the people that I've worked withinternationally have had
contacts back here in Australiaas well, because they go to
similar conferences and becausewe don't have that challenge of
putting products into the market, we don't need to worry about
them being able to take thatproduct in through a
(08:47):
distribution channel.
When we start to look at ourpartner network, which is
probably one of our big growthstrategies for this year, then
again, that'll change as well.
But I think for software, Ithink it comes with different
unique challenges when it comesto positioning things in market.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Okay, you talked a little bit about government
clients before, and obviouslyyou've got a number of private
sector clients as well, but whatsort of businesses are making
use of your services?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
At the moment, our biggest sectors are government.
Healthcare and academia areprobably the three biggest
sectors we work with, and behindthat would be, you know, large
industry.
So I think a lot oforganisations are trying to
leverage their data, but thebiggest challenges we see are in
(09:39):
organisations that are largeenough, where it's difficult to
track what's happening with thatdata.
Again, one of the examples justto bring it back to yourself is
to say a lot of organizationsare now running events like
podcasts and they getinformation and they run events
like the.
What is business after dark isthe one I'm ready business after
(10:00):
business business afterbusiness, sorry, business after
business.
I'll see you at that, but withthose we collect a lot of
personal information throughsystems like Eventbrite.
So somebody will go and you knowI had to give my name and my
telephone number to you to comealong to the event and I think
(10:30):
those are the areas where we'reseeing data that's existing
outside of the you know thesphere ofdo, because you know we
can't move eventbrite into adata warehouse.
It's a, it's an external system,but it's still a data source.
So we see, the biggestopportunity for ourselves is
with clients or with with areaswhere they're collecting data
from a lot of disparate sourcesand they're starting to worry
about where that data is flowinginternally.
Because I think it's importantfor us to recognize
transparently that that datathat goes into that Eventbrite
(10:50):
event and we do the same thingit feeds into our marketing
lists and it feeds into ourassessment of the market to
understand market size.
We're using that data forbusiness intelligence and I
think what we want to do is makesure that everybody, regardless
of whether they're in atraditional data area or a
business area, or marketing andsales or even administration and
(11:11):
HR making sure that they knowthat other people know what data
they've got.
You know, not giving access toit, but making sure that
everybody knows what's there,and that's where you know the
biggest industries are.
You know, healthcare andgovernment and and those larger
private sector.
Biggest industries arehealthcare and government and
those larger private sectororganisations.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
And obviously in healthcare and government, and
indeed across education andbusiness, I guess as well.
Security of information isreally important.
How do you go about protectingyour clients' data?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
We do what we say we do and I think we do what we
tell our clients to do, which isyou need to know what data
assets you hold.
Um, you need to, you know,capture it.
You need to, to tell peoplewhat you've got, and that starts
with just writing it down, um,you know, keeping a really good
inventory and making sure thatpeople have access to that
inventory.
(12:04):
I think there was a big eventearlier in the news with Qantas
not realising how much data hadmoved offshore and moved to a
third-party organisation, andthere was a big data breach that
I was impacted by.
I'm not sure if you wereimpacted by that one, greg.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And I think it's making sure that we write it
down and that's what we do is weinternally have a nice little
data inventory that we keep upto date, because I think it's
important for us to demonstrateto ourselves and to demonstrate
to our clients that we followthe same practices that we
encourage them to follow do youthink that we're doing enough
(12:43):
about cybersecurity across theboard?
No, oh, wow, no, I don't thinkso.
I think there's a couple ofthreads that we can pull on this
one, but I think we're nothelping non-technical people and
I'm putting that in air quotesfor people at home,
quote-unquote non-technicalpeople to.
(13:03):
I'm putting that in air quotesfor people at home, you know,
quote unquote non-technicalpeople to understand what they
can do.
I think, again, a lot, of a lot, of what we do with data comes
down to how we treat it and howwe tell people what it is and
where it is, and I think that'sprobably the biggest area that
we can improve is to tell peoplethat you don't need to be a
(13:28):
data expert to know what data isor why it was collected or
where it's stored, and that'swhat we need to be capturing as
a first starting point is.
One of the principles that wetell all of our clients is you
know what data do you have?
You know how did you collect itand who has access to it, and
how do I find out who has moreinformation about it?
Are four very, very simplethings to collect, and that's
(13:53):
what we really need to focus onis building better practice
around pulling that informationtogether.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
So in Aristotle, you're both the Chief Executive
Officer but also the ChiefInformation Security Officer.
How do you navigate theresponsibilities of leading the
company while ensuring robustdata security?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I think one of the things that I've learned in my
time is that the chief executiveofficer ultimately is
responsible for everything.
That's your role is you'reresponsible for the operations
of the company and we havedelegates to support that.
We had a really good colleaguewho joined us for a short period
(14:39):
of time, who took the hat, but,you know, moved on to different
opportunities and we're veryproud of them.
But I think ultimately, the CEOneeds to understand that you
have responsibility over thesethings, whether or not it's part
of your title.
You know and that comes to, ifyou're a chief executive officer
who's not the chief informationsecurity officer, you're still
(15:01):
the person who appointed themand you know you may have
delegated that responsibilitydown a layer, but you know, to a
certain extent you still haveresponsibility and that's why I
think one of the things that weneed to be training executives
on is to understand, from a dataperspective, you know, what
they can do.
You know what's in their controland what they need to do from a
(15:24):
leadership perspective to helpothers along that journey.
So what?
Speaker 1 (15:30):
what does the future hold for aristotle metadata?
What sort of products are wegoing to see?
And then, and then, what's thegrowth?
What's the growth plan?
Speaker 2 (15:39):
uh, what's the growth plan?
What products are we going tosee?
What growth are we going to see?
What growth are we going to see?
I think so growth is a reallyeasy one.
Again, you know, growth is very, very easy to talk about quote
unquote.
Easy to talk about in software,in the sense that I think we've
not hit 1% of our size, likewe've not even captured 1% of
the market that we think isthere, because we think, I think
(16:02):
, that we're approaching thisfrom a very human-centric
perspective.
A lot of our clients have verylarge percentages of their staff
on our platform, so it's not atraditional data platform.
We'll have hundreds orthousands of staff on these
platforms talking about theirdata, and I think that's the
thing that we want to change.
(16:22):
So we're about to enter apartnership with a local
university to really expand onsome methodologies that we've
been producing.
So we authored the MASTmethodology, which I think is a
really great framework that wecall the Agile for Data
Management, which is reallytelling people what we want them
to do and how we want them tobehave when it comes to data at
work, and I think that's goingto unlock, you know, the next,
(16:46):
you know 100 or the next 1,000clients for Aristotle New
products.
I think again, there's a lot ofopportunity in helping people
understand what their data meansand how we use that
intelligence and how we use datagovernance to drive decisions
in organisations.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
How do you drive continuous learning within your
team?
Obviously you've got a teamthat's grown relatively fast
over a number of years.
The aspiration is for moregrowth.
You've got to keep peopleengaged.
You've got to keep peoplelearning over that time.
How do you drive that culture?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Again through leadership.
I think again, when you build acompany, there's a lot of
knowledge in your head and oneof the principles that I've had
is I want to get as much out ofthat as possible.
So and I'm happy to talk aboutthis, but I'll be taking my
first holiday later this year.
So I haven't had a holidaysince we started.
I've been on conferences.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
In seven years.
Yes, Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Well, we've been on trips to visit family and we've
been on conferences and stayed acouple of extra days, but this
is the first time that my familywill be taking a full-on
holiday where we don't talk toanybody, and I think that's been
a long journey because you haveto get all that knowledge out.
I think one of the things thatyou have to do as an
organization that's very hard toculturally challenge is you
(18:13):
really want to make everybody alittle bit redundant, because if
nobody knows how to operatewhen you're not there, then
you're never going to take abreak and you're always going to
get messages and you're nevergoing to get it perfect.
But if you don't try to get ridof that information to get
other people knowing about it,then that's a real challenge and
(18:34):
that's something that I've donesince the start, because when
you're a small organization, ifa couple of people leave, it can
be really disastrous.
If a couple of people leave, itcan be really disastrous, and I
think one of the proudestmoments, one of the scariest
moments, was when we were stillfive people and we had two of
our engineers leave in a veryshort space of time, and I've
written about this as a chapterin a book that I'm publishing,
(18:57):
and when two people leave in abig organization, that's, you
know, a bit rough.
That was 40 percent of ourworkforce who left within two
weeks.
One was poached and then one hadfamily matters that they needed
to move into state for and itwas very much a make or break
moment.
I was like you know I don'tthink I told anybody I was like
I don't know if we're going tosurvive.
(19:17):
We were petrified and myco-founder, lauren, and one of
our former employees who's leftnow, but Dylan, who's a great
guy and I'll make him listen tothis podcast we sat down and we
were like, what are we going todo?
And we started to think aboutit and we were able to hire two
(19:37):
you know, relatively juniorstaff to replace them.
We brought someone on soonafter that as well, and the big
thing for us is at the time.
You know we only release everytwo weeks now, but at the time
we were releasing weekly, so wedo a weekly release of all of
our software and that was ourbig moment of truth was we had a
staff member leave on a Fridayand we released on the following
(19:59):
Tuesday and that was a bigrelief because we're like, okay,
we can actually run the companywithout him.
So we've really focused on likea lot of internal whiteboarding
sessions and knowledge capture.
So you know, a couple of theteam have said that I like to
teach and I do Like I like toteach people how to, you know,
be the best that they can be.
So we do a lot of whiteboardingsessions where they can ask
(20:20):
questions and ask really toughquestions about why we do things
or how we've built things, andI think making sure that
learning and development is abig part of your culture is
really important.
So we do, you know, every twoor three weeks we'll do like a
little whiteboarding session.
We try and capture everythingin our knowledge base.
We practice, you know, allthese routines that we set up.
So you know we can releasereally quickly.
(20:42):
And we go to conferences and wego to events.
So we actually go to a coupleof conferences in Canberra and
say, go and learn some stuff and, you know, come back with good
ideas.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
And the issue with small businesses I think that
you raise is a really importantone and resonates, I think, for
many business owners, not justin the software space but sort
of right across the board.
The smaller you are, the morereliant you are on your team.
So have you got any tips forkeeping people engaged and
productive?
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I would say so, first of all is, I would say, really,
when it comes to recruiting,one thing that I've done that is
, again, there's a lot of luckin the industry, so I don't know
how well this has worked for us, but I've always focused on
hiring for redundancy first,before bringing on new people.
So that sounds a little bitweird, but what we've done is
(21:38):
we've always made sure that ourcapacity to do what we currently
do is really strong before webranch into something else.
If you have, you know, fivepeople doing five different
tasks, if one of them leaves,one of those tasks is getting
dropped.
So we we focused on going well,let's build a really good
development team, okay, and thenlet's build a really good
support team and then let'sbuild a really good marketing
(21:59):
and sales team and then we focuson the next thing.
Uh, when it comes to keepingpeople engaged, I would say, uh,
I think you know there was areally good article in the
workforce you know the abcrecently about, uh, underpayment
in the workforce and you know,um, you know people taking
advantage of young workers andwe have a relatively young
(22:19):
workforce is, I think, makingsure you're meeting your
obligations is really step one,as a first stage, is making sure
that you're a good employer,and that's as simple as paying
on time, being transparent,making sure that all of your
superannuation obligations areup to date.
(22:42):
Because, like Greg, I'll tellyou you quite honestly, it's a
bit of a sad, sad state ofaffairs where doing the right
thing sets you apart.
You know that story in the ABCthis morning talking about how
there are employers out therewho are just not paying their
super annuation obligations.
You know, there's little thingslike.
Little things like that, likefollowing the law.
You know they set you apart andand talking transparently about
(23:03):
why you do those things, Ithink is important.
And the other one is makingsure that people are taking, you
know taking their annual leave.
You know, I think one thingthat we don't realise is oh,
that goes.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
I was going to say but you yourself haven't managed
to take a holiday.
In seven and a half years I'vetaken time off.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
So I will caveat that time off.
So I will, I will caveat that.
So we will like, uh, my, my, mywife and I, we do go to the us
because she's got family thereand, uh, we go.
So we go to family and we, wedo take time off over there, but
I think, you know, I'm off tofiji later this year, um, but
kudos on calling me out for myhypocrisy there um, but, and
again, the reason I say that islike, it's okay if you, if you
(23:41):
own the company, you, it's veryhard to switch off.
And that's what I think one ofthe things that I've really been
careful to help my teamunderstand is that if you're
like, and and I've been a worker, I've been an employee and you
know, I I say this because mydad, uh, you know, when I was
younger, um was in the seismicindustry and worked
(24:03):
exceptionally long hours for,you know, share options that
never eventuated into anythingand it actually put my family in
a rough state.
And and that's why I say is,you know, employees need to look
after themselves first and youneed to help them understand
that.
And and the other thing is fromthat, from that annual leave
perspective, I think, as anemployer, understanding that
(24:23):
every time that somebody doesn'ttake leave, that's a liability
that sits on your balance sheetand it grows and grows and grows
and grows and one day one ofthose people will leave and if
they've got 60 days of leave,you've got to pay that out.
So it's good for you to do that, but it's also good for them,
because you get more out of yourteam when they're rested and
(24:44):
recovered.
You know when they've, whenthey've had a chance to switch
off and digest.
So I think, um, yeah, it'sreally about making sure you're
doing you know the things thateverybody expects of you and
then, once you've got a reallygood organization in place,
making sure that you're you know, giving people the
opportunities and really meetingthe bonus kind of factors cool
(25:05):
foosball tables and ping pongtables and beer on a Friday and
pizzas and stuff.
So I think it's twofold have agood place to work, have a nice
place to be, and then figure outwhat you can throw on top of
that to keep people engagedfigure out what you can throw on
top of that to keep peopleengaged.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Let's just touch, finally, on the startup process
of Aristotle Metadata Now.
As I understand it, you werebuilt without you founded.
The company co-founded, thecompany was built without
external investment.
What were the key challengesand advantages of bootstrapping
the company, and how did thatshape your growth?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
So there's a couple of I think there's a couple of.
I think there's a couple ofthings to talk about here,
because we we are a traditionalbusiness to business company,
which which really changes howyou are for people who are
thinking of looking at a startup.
I think what you want to focuson before you, you know, start
down that journey is figure outwho are you trying to target to,
because that can change.
You know you can get very biguser numbers if you're focusing
(26:03):
on individuals.
You know if you're doingbusiness to, because that can
change.
You know you can get very biguser numbers if you're focusing
on individuals.
You know, if you're doingbusiness to customer things like
Facebook or, you know, uber orTinder, you can get really big
numbers and that's reallyattractive to investors.
For us, because we were lookingat businesses, it meant that we
could have, you know, onecustomer with a thousand clients
, but it still looks like onecustomer and from a risk
(26:24):
perspective, it's a big riskbecause you've got one customer
who might just take away allyour users.
So I think knowing that beforeyou start down that journey is
really really important.
I think the thing beyond thatis sorry, what was the question
again?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
You don't have to edit this bit out.
I was just talking about youknow what were kind of the
advantages and disadvantages ofthat approach.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
So I think the advantage is you maintain a lot
of control, like you maintain alot of creative control, and I
think anybody who considersthemselves to be a founder they
feel like they're the creativeinfluence.
So being able to exert thatcontrol for a longer period of
time is really good.
We haven't, you know, refusedinvestment.
I think we just haven't foundthe right fit yet, and that's
(27:11):
you know good, because you getto control it.
But you know the flip side isthat you know it's on you, it's
all on you.
The other disadvantage to thatis, I think, you know,
investment from when you look atthese stories online, you know
it makes things easier and youcan kind of have a big impact
really fast.
So it changes how you burn.
(27:32):
Um, so I think that the, the,the pros and cons here really
are um, you know, if you, if youseek that external investment,
making sure you can communicatethat message really really well
and understand that you get abig drive to have to grow really
really quickly.
If you do it in a bootstrapfashion, like we did, you really
(27:53):
have to learn about thefundamentals of running a
business, because there's noguardrails, there's no a round,
b, round, c, round d round.
You don't just get people kindof giving you money and hoping
that it turns into the nextfacebook.
You've got to make sure thatyou're managing profit and loss
and and I think, um, that'sgiven us a very strong insight
onto what we're going to looklike.
(28:14):
You know, when we are as big aswe want to be and, I think, to
give you the dream, to give youthe closing out, you know, one
of the things we say is I thinkwe're canberra's Atlassian,
we're going to be the biggestemployer in Canberra and that's
what I want us to be.
I think that's as big as we'regoing to be is we're going to
have the same influence thatAtlassian does on Sydney, if not
(28:34):
more.
And I think, by going throughthe heart of the yards now of
learning how to operate abusiness according to the
balance sheet, it gives you avery, very different perspective
, um, not better, not worse, um,but it means you have to
operate with a different set ofparameters around you.
So I'd say that anybody who'slooking at at doing a startup
(28:57):
it's to do, you know, kind ofbuilding a startup is is.
You know, figure out how youwant to grow, figure out who you
want to target, because that'sreally going to influence how
you do that, and you know,understand that.
You know there's a lot of prosand cons with both directions, I
think you know.
Would our journey have beenfaster or easier with external
investment?
Probably yeah, but at the sametime you give up a lot of
(29:18):
control.
So I think you know you need tounderstand do you want lots of
control because you've got thatvision and drive, or do you want
to get there quickly?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I love your aspiration that you want to be
Canberra's biggest employer andthe Canberran answer to
Atlassian.
Do you think Canberra is theplace where businesses really
can grow and scale?
There's a lot of chatter aboutpayroll tax and business
settings and so forth.
Will you grow here or will youlook to put teams elsewhere?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I think we'll have.
Yes, we will have internationallike we'll have, you know.
I think you know we'll haveinterstate teams and we'll
probably have internationalteams.
Actually, we'll have to haveinternational teams absolutely.
But I think Canberra is a goodplace to build a business.
We have, you know, access to alot of good universities, uh,
and there's a lot of opportunityhere, and I think one of those
(30:15):
opportunities is that it is a, a, a market where you can have
influence.
You know, I think if atlassianmoved here tomorrow, they would
have such an impact on who this,what this city is, um, I think
if an organization of that sizecame here, it would really
change who we are.
And I know we had aconversation, um, earlier this
(30:37):
year when we're over inwellington.
We were talking with the peoplefrom the convention center
about, you know, building abigger canberra, and I think the
the question that I would askus is, you know if,
hypothetically, if we were thenext atlassian, if we were to
build this here and we wanted tohave, you know, an
international conference here,uh, similar to to teams conf,
which atlassian runs over invegas, which is like I think
(31:00):
it's 10 000 people, we wouldn'tbe prepared to run that, and and
we don't need to do thattomorrow, but for Aristotle to
grow here, we need that.
In five years' time, like,we're going to have to find a
venue that can support, you know, 10,000 international users to
launch our next product and tolaunch the next, you know, the
(31:22):
IPO, because this is the townthat I want to do it in, because
I think nobody else has done it, and that makes it a really fun
challenge and that's what weneed to start thinking about
from a Canberra perspective is,if we don't think about how
we're going to build thesethings, we're not going to have
the support to do it, we're notgoing to have a reason to do it.
So you know what I'd say to you,and you know what I'd say to
(31:42):
you and what I'd say to theChief Minister is we need to
build that convention centre,because in five years' time, I'm
going to bring a 10,000-personconference here and if it's not
us, it's going to be someoneelse.
It doesn't necessarily need tobe the Aristotle Convention
Centre, though I hope it will,but we have to prepare for that
future.
We have two, three universities, um, probably what?
(32:05):
Six universities, I think.
Uh, here we have, you know,some of the most educated people
, and I think the bigpossibility is in in gov.
Tech is to take the expertiseof the public service and build
software products, like we'vedone, and ship them
internationally.
We have some of the smartest,well-educated, most resourced
people.
If it's not us, it's going tobe someone, and I think Canberra
(32:29):
needs to be ready for when thathappens.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Well, I love your ambition, and it's certainly one
that the Chamber's reallysupportive of.
We want Canberra to be thegreatest place in Australia to
do business Well.
Canberra is the greatest placein Australia and we need
companies to get in behind usand really sort of drive for
growth.
So it's really good to hearthat that's the plan.
Sam Spencer from AristotleMetadata, thank you so much for
(32:53):
joining me here on the CanberraBusiness Podcast.
It's been really great having achat.
Really enjoyed it.
Hope our listeners have enjoyedthat as well and if you are
tuning in, don't forget tofollow us on your favourite
podcast platform for futureepisodes of the Canberra
Business Podcast.
Sam Spencer, thank you so muchfor your time.
We'll catch you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.