MEET THE COACH

Competing at the elite level in triathlon and swimming, my vision was to represent my country at a professional level.

But early in my twenties that dream felt out of reach, burnout set in, my training habits changed and I began questioning how my development as an athlete could have been different.

I studied sports science and management at Federation University where I spent half a decade working alongside Australia’s top sports scientists, coaches, athletes and administrators.

Eventually, my career shifted from sport to retail, then to digital businesses and startups.

🔶 By 2010, I was winning hackathons and building startups.

🔶 By 2014, I built a VC-backed tech startup.

🔶 By 2016, I moved to Berlin as one of the first Australian’s to go to Techstars, a tier-1 accelerator.

Four years into the journey of founder I had exhausted my resources, my team and my mental health. I really had no idea what great looked like at the level of the game I was playing.

I had no choice but to stop. And it took 6 months to move customers off the platform because they had nowhere else to go.

The frustration was immense and the cost of failure was prolific. I lost my company, my stability, and my identity - life went to 0 in all areas.

In the aftermath of my experience as I was searching for my next role in life, I spoke to hundreds of founders.

It became obvious to me that on some level all founders were injured (to use a sport metaphor).

In sport, injuries are part of the process, but you address them. Every athlete knows this when you are injured.

In the startup world however everyone wants to avoid the tough conversations with founders and share some form of “just run faster” advice.

Once I saw this I felt stupid for not trusting what sport taught me. I was completely blinded by the silicon valley mindset of grow at all costs.

If you are a certified sports coach you have a fiduciary responsibility to prevent your athlete’s from injury.

In the startup ecosystems I realised nobody held that level of accountability for the founder, not because people didn’t care, but because the systematic infrastructure of support needed innovation - the same way athlete development has been innovated over the last 3 decades.