Sunrise Island was held last week at Sydney’s iconic Cockatoo Island. Hosted by Blackbird Ventures, the event aimed to bring together ambitious hustlers who are creating something new and have something unique to share. The incredible list of guest speakers included the likes of; Cliff Obrecht, cofounder of Canva, Laurie Yoler from Zoox and Katherine McConnell, founder of Brighte 💡
Our founder & CEO, Ronen Heine, and Head of Legal, Tessa Hawthorn, attended the epic event and took part in various workshops run by industry experts. Don’t worry if you missed it, check out Ronen’s top 5 takeaways from the event below:
- Bringing the Australian startup ecosystem together is crucial
Nothing beats face-to-face time and the ecosystem is more driven than ever to create great Australian tech companies. Take time to meet with like-minded people; you never know what opportunities may arise from a conversation.
2. What’s holding Australian startups back?
The biggest thing stopping Australia going from a mining economy to a mind economy is the lack of direct funding of startups from the Government as well as a lack of corporate R&D.
3. Company values need to be more than just beautiful words
Business values need to be brought to life within the company, they need to be something that all employees and stakeholders embody in order for the business to be aligned with what it set out to do. Via Didier Elzinga, founder and CEO of Culture Amp.
4) “You need to go ALL IN” — Katherine McConnell from Brighte
Katherine raised $13.5M for her business after she extended her home loan to invest in her business, quit her job and then changed her family’s life (e.g. moved the kids from private to public school). These big sacrifices drove her to succeed!
5) It’s important to clear your head
As a founder, time away from the office and your hectic inbox is necessary for headspace to think, reflect and grow.
Our team were particularly blown away by the cofounder of Flow Hive, Cedar Anderson, who built one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns of all time. Another superstar to note was Didier Elzinga who ran a insightful workshop on Team and Values.
BIG thanks to Blackbird Ventures for hosting such a rad event and to all the other amazing peeps who participated!
If you would like to learn more about #CorporateAdvice and how we help startups launch and grow, get in touch hello@corporateadvice.co
