Ep180 – Daniel Petre (Co-founder – Start Giving) on family, philanthropy and truth seeking

April 25, 2024
rohitbhargava
Podcast

My guest for Ep180 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Daniel Petre.

Daniel is the godfather of Australian tech and venture capital.

Back in 1988, Daniel joined Microsoft as their Managing Director for Australia before being promoted as one of the 5 VPs of product under Bill Gates.

He would then go on launch over 3 Venture Capital funds, most recently Co-founding AirTree, one of the 3 largest venture capital funds in Australia.

Any introduction I give to Daniel won’t do justice to everything he has achieved in his career to date, aside to say he’s been one of the most influential people in shaping the Australian startup ecosystem into what it is today.

He now spends his time on philanthropic efforts as the Founder of Start Giving, which helps to inspire tech founders and execs to start their philanthropic journey.

In this episode we covered everything from how to effectively manage your investors and boards to the importance of doing the right thing, family time and giving back.

I’ve been wanting to interview Daniel for a long time and excited to finally share this conversation with you!

Timestamps

4:27 Daniel’s background
6:04 Why Daniel chose to go down the computer science path
7:55 Daniel’s time at Microsoft
15:01 Commonalities of high performing founders
23:24 How investors should think about helping founders
29:24 Picking exceptional founders to invest in
33:58 Doing the right thing, addressing the power imbalance between founders and VCs
41:22 How founders can do due diligence on investors
47:04 surrounding yourself with the right people
50:21 Advice on finding mentors
55:47 The importance of having real personal relationships, not just business relationships
58:54 Daniel’s focus on philanthropy with StartGiving
1:07:17 How a personal tragedy shifted his perspective on life
1:12:09 Finding balance between work and life

Our partners

A big thank you to Mark Woodland, Anil Sabharwal and Alison Deans for their help with this interview.

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Get started with a Sydney-based Vanta team member today, or watch a 3-minute demo to learn more, at vanta.com/playbook.

Links mentioned

Daniel’s links

People mentioned

Companies mentioned

Podcasts & resources mentioned:

Feedback/connect/say hello:

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@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

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