The top 5 operational mistakes founders make - with Techstars' Kirstin Hunter
Focusing on the unsexy stuff 🎯; term sheet transparency 🔎; and mind-boggling methane 😤.
“Everything yields to diligence.”
- Antiphanes
Kick start
⭐ Kirstin Hunter, Managing Director of Techstars Tech Central Sydney, knows how it feels to navigate the chaos and ambiguity of running a startup. As co-founder and former CEO of Future Super, former Chief People, Risk and Legal Officer at Brighte, and former Chief of Staff at Human, she has lived it from the inside, several times over.
We recently asked Kirstin for her advice on what early-stage founders should focus on to set themselves up for long term success. Her experience has taught her that getting the unsexy, operational elements of your business right is the real, and often overlooked, secret.
Here are Kirstin’s top operational mistakes that she sees founders make, and her advice on how to avoid them.
What we’re thinking about
📝 Term sheet transparency. Pale Blue Dot, a Swedish climate VC fund investing in the EU and US, has kindly shared its standard term sheet in the interests of transparency and efficiency for founders. Check it out here for succinct, non-legalese explanations of key clauses to help you with your next raise.
A friendly legal reminder that this is just a template, and not all deals should follow this exact setup - keep this in mind and always seek independent advice!
🤯 Mind-boggling methane. Satellite data has revealed that methane leaking from Turkmenistan’s two key fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK. Methane emissions are responsible for about half of all short-term climate warming, leading to renewed calls for investors and policymakers to crack down on super-emitters - particularly as methane cuts are among the cheapest ways to curb global warming, according to the Head of the International Energy Agency.
New paths
🎧 Mindset Health is hiring a Head of Product and an Operations & Security Engineer in Melbourne.
👨💻 Future Super is seeking a Copywriter and a Social Media Producer (location flexible).
📫 Sendle is searching for a US-based Senior Product Marketing Manager.
🧻 Who Gives A Crap needs a Director of Marketing Analytics in Melbourne (remote).
🥗 Climate Salad is looking for its next Company Secretary and Governance and Risk Board Committee Member. Check out their job board as well for roles helping make an impact on climate change!
✈️ Swoop Aero is taking expressions of interest.
🧑💼 LUNA is hiring a Senior Lawyer - Startups in Melbourne, Sydney or Byron.
🔥 Also, check out our Giant Leap Fund jobs board for over 80+ available positions or fill out our expression of interest form. There’s even more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Giant leaps
🙌 WORK180 has released its list of the top 101 workplaces for women in Australia. The best workplace? EY Australia. We’re also chuffed that Giant Leap made the cut!
🎉 Congrats to Great Wrap on being selected for LaunchVic’s latest 30x30 program cohort! The program takes Victorian scaleups on the path to becoming unicorns and helps them boost their growth trajectory.
🎤 Giant Leap partner Adam Milgrom appeared on a StartUps&Angels panel on aligning business with the Sustainable Development Goals.
💰 Partner Adam Milgrom also shared his thoughts in Startup Daily on seeing impact investing included in the Federal Budget and his optimism that subsequent budgets will increasingly prioritise the sector.
✈️ Swoop Aero has released its latest batch of seven Kite Drones, and we have to say they’re looking pretty nice.
For the road
⚠️ More warnings on AI… When AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton quit his job at Google to speak out on AI, the world listened. But another former senior Google AI researcher turned activist, Meredith Whittaker, questions why Hinton didn’t speak out sooner. In an interview with FastCompany, Whittaker outlines how staff at companies like Google will play a foundational role in preventing this technology from getting out of hand.
⚖️ Weighing up the good and the bad. It’s enough to make your head spin. As the world debates the merit of AI and the harm it could cause, stories of its benefits continue to emerge, especially in health. A new AI tool developed by the Royal Marsden NHS can read CT scans and detect cancers. Amazon and 3M have also partnered to create an AI tool to ease the process of patient documentation.
🏥 What’s next for health tech? No prizes for guessing that AI will play a part. But WhatTheHealth’s assembled panel of experts also predict a surge in research outcomes and resulting investment. Fun fact: Australia ranks 23 out of 131 countries in terms of its research-backed success stories.
🐘 Animals saving the climate. We mentioned this research in our last edition, but it's worth saying it again. The bottom line - as presented by Mighty Earth CEO Glen Hurowitz - restoring the world’s wild animal populations can get us 95% of the way to the global target of extracting 500 gigatons tons of carbon from the atmosphere. This should evolve our thinking about rewilding and conservation as a climate strategy, and shift our thinking away from believing that just planting more trees is the solution.
🚀 Hit the accelerator. Top Australian accelerator Startmate is now taking applications for its next cohort! Applications close 21 May 2023 and the program runs from 10 July to mid-October 2023. Need a reason to apply? Look no further than Startmate alumni and Giant Leap portfolio companies Great Wrap, WORK180, Mindset Health, Swoop Aero and Perx Health.
🔋 Budgeting for energy. The Federal budget, announced on Tuesday night, will offer Australian households $1b assistance to install energy saving measures in homes, including low-cost loans for double glazing and solar panels. There’s also another $2b set aside for hydrogen projects and $310m worth of tax savings for businesses that invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.
🧠 Mind reading AI. In a lighter AI-related news story, researchers can now non-invasively read your mind. The system, using fMRI scans and an AI-based decoder trained on a precursor to ChatGPT, reconstructs brain activity to interpret a story someone is listening to or watching. This could lead to exciting new developments in helping people with severe neurological conditions regain the ability to communicate - check out this episode of The Guardian Science Weekly podcast for the details.
🎟️ On purpose. A fun reminder that the Purpose Conference went OFF last year, and we can’t wait for it to come around again! Celebrating impact-driven and responsible business, it’s on again in November - sign up to the waitlist now.