Founder Focus Ep 4: Luke Anear of Safety Culture

Today’s Founder Focus guest is Luke Anear of Safety Culture https://safetyculture.com/.

You know you’ve built an outlier business when investors are constantly knocking on your door to invest, including an offer of $500 Million at a $5 Billion valuation. But you’re probably also an outlier founder by knocking back that offer, and 99% of other offers too.

This is very much a story behind the story type episode where Luke shares how he and his team managed to go from $0 to $1 Million revenue, then $1 Million to $100 Million in just a few short years, with sights now firmly set on $1 Billion and $10 Billion in revenue. A big ambition, but believable given the confidence he demonstrates and the foundations built to support that growth.  

Luke shares how not only his role in Safety Culture has transitioned over time, but how he himself has grown, and shares experiences that helped cultivate humility, self-awareness and vulnerability.

There are a number of prescriptive examples that founders can use within their teams to challenge people to achieve results they never thought were possible, and how to build resilience to deal with the inevitable times of up and down.

We talk about the pros and cons of starting out in a regional area, and why their headquarters ultimately moved to Sydney. We also discuss journalism and the reporting of start-ups in general, along with ASIC’s rules around the reporting of private company information and the effect that can have on an ecosystem.

Now there’s a bonus bit included at the end that came out of the usual post podcast discussion thanking our guests for their time. We’ve included this as it’s an important message to remind founders they aren’t alone in a range of mental health experiences that can be par for the course in this chosen endeavour.  

We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed creating it, and as always we’d love to hear any thoughts and comments.  Go to www.tribeglobal.vc