Long Story Short with Dan Fleming: Recent Episodes
Dan Fleming
Long Story Short is a podcast that provides tactical insight on common challenges faced when building a company or career.
Today’s episode is Part 2 of my conversation with Josh Vernon, CEO and Co-founder of Earnd, Australia’s first earned wage access provider and a deeply mission-driven company focused on improving the financial wellbeing of employees. In today’s episode, we focus the conversation on international expansion and Josh shares his insights on the strategies and lessons from expanding across multiple markets including the US. We specifically hone in on the power of a decentralised launch team, who to hire and the signals they look for in new target markets.
You can find Part 1 here: https://longstoryshortwithdan.buzzsprout.com/1870217/9693332-josh-vernon-part-1-life-as-a-first-mover-educating-customers-and-competition
My guest today is Josh Vernon, CEO, and Co-founder at Earnd, Australia’s first earned wage access provider. Earnd is a mission-driven fintech that aims to make money simple not stressful for employees through innovative tools like real-time pay tracking, earned wage access, and 1:1 money coaching. They were acquired at the start of the year by Wagestream, UK and Europe's leading financial wellbeing platform providing over half a million employees with financial control and power over their pay. In today’s episode, we focus on winning the Aussie market and dealing with competition. Specifically looking at lessons from Earnd being a first mover in Australia, the challenges of educating and acquiring flagship customers, and navigating competition in the constantly growing and heated Aussie fintech market.
My guest today is Tom Gallop, a Product Manager at Spriggy, one of Australia’s fastest-growing start-ups. Tom started his career as an M&A lawyer at MinterEllison before joining Spriggy in 2020 to carve out a career in product management. Spriggy’s aim is to improve financial literacy in kids by empowering them to manage their money as they grow up. Their flagship pocket money app, allows parents to transfer pocket money, oversee savings goals, and track spending whilst kids learn by earning, saving, and spending. In this conversation, I chat with Tom about how he navigated his move from law into startups, why product management was his landing pad, and the considerations and misconceptions along the way. As people reassess their paths in a post-COVID environment, I hope this conversation can provide some insight on why startups could be a great next step.
Tom Brunskill is a co-founder and CEO at Forage. Forage is transforming career discovery, learning, and recruitment. Their free open-access platform allows students to complete Virtual Experience Programs created by top employers such as JPMorgan and General Electric. Forage recently raised a US$25M Series B led by Blackbird and have over 100 programs live with nearly 2M candidates enrolled across 200 countries. In this conversation, we narrow in on what Tom describes as the need for Aussie companies to Americanise. Tom speaks candidly on his experience of moving Forage to the US and shares his insight on the challenges in doing so. You can find Tom's Medium article here: https://medium.com/@tom_34193/a-logistical-guide-to-moving-your-start-up-from-australia-to-the-us-4a295f2d279d