The Startup Playbook Podcast

Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors

Ep195 – Leigh Jasper (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Firmable) on jumping back in the founder seat after a $1.6B exit

My guest for Ep195 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Leigh Jasper.

This is a special edition of the podcast.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated hitting 8 years of the podcast. To celebrate the milestone, we hosted an in-person event with our community which included a “live” podcast recording with returning guest Leigh Jasper.

I first interviewed Leigh for the show in November 2016. Back then he was the Co-founder & CEO of Aconex, a construction tech company that had publicly listed 2 years prior and had a market cap of $1B.

Since that interview, Aconex was acquired by Oracle for $1.6B and Leigh has and continues to hold several positions such as Chair of LaunchVic, Victorian governments startup agency, Co-founder and Chair of SecondQuarter Ventures, the first secondaries fund in Australia and NZ among several other board roles.

If that isn’t enough, Leigh decided to jump back into the founder seat as the Co-founder & Co-CEO of Firmable, which helps companies drive smarter decisions and outperform by allowing them to know more about their leads, customers and candidates. Firmable recently raised a $9M funding round led by AirTree.

We covered a lot of ground in this live interview including:

  • Lessons from launching, growing and eventually exiting a $1B+ startup
  • Leigh’s journey post Aconex (given he didn’t want to sell the company)
  • Why founders should take chips off the table via secondaries
  • What’s changed for Leigh as a second time founder
  • & much more!

Timestamps:

  • 3:12 What Leigh has been working on since the last interview in 2016
  • 4:43 What it was like going from CEO of a private company to a public company
  • 7:21 The decision to sell Aconex to Oracle for $1.6B
  • 10:25 Navigating significant changes in a company as the founder/CEO
  • 12:34 What Leigh did after the Aconex acquisition, losing that identity
  • 18:40 Getting involved with LaunchVic
  • 20:53 Founding SecondQuarter Ventures
  • 22:15 When founders should take money off the table via secondaries
  • 25:49 Effective boards for startups
  • 32:56 The decision to start a new company (Firmable)
  • 34:41 Lessons from Aconex he’s applying to Firmable
  • 38:59 Finding the right investment partners for Firmable
  • 42:21 What drives Leigh today?
  • 44:26 How he stays calm under intense pressure
  • 47:27 How to balance being open/transparent with the team on everything happening in the business
  • 49:48 Thoughts on the current state of technology and the Australian startup ecosystem
  • 51:44 Audience Q&A

Our partners:

A big thank you to Paul Perrett and Andrew Sypkes 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.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

Leigh’s links:

People mentioned:

Audience questions:

Companies mentioned:

Feedback/connect/say hello:

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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