Amanda Price - KPMG High Growth Ventures
**About The Guest(s):**
Amanda is the Head of High Growth Ventures at KPMG, where she leads a team dedicated to working with startups. With a focus on deep tech and climate tech companies, Amanda helps founders navigate the challenges of scaling their businesses and provides them with the necessary support and services.**Summary:**Amanda discusses the importance of compliance and governance for startups, particularly in the deep tech and climate tech sectors. She emphasizes the need for founders to think about these aspects early on and to outsource them to experts, allowing them to focus on the core aspects of their business. Amanda also highlights the growing interest in impact-led companies and the availability of funding and support in the climate tech space. She concludes by emphasizing the need for founders to be intentional and prepared in order to achieve high growth and make a significant impact.
**Key Takeaways:**
Compliance and governance are essential for startups, but founders should outsource these aspects to experts to focus on their core business.- Impact-led companies need to measure and quantify their impact to attract investors and avoid greenwashing.- Climate tech companies have access to a wide range of funding sources, including impact investors and family offices.- Founders should be intentional and prepared, thinking ahead to future growth and expansion into new markets.
**Quotes:**
"The earlier we can start, then we can really start founders thinking about the sort of foundations that they need to have to ensure that the business is sustainable when it scales."- "If you want the business to scale, you cannot be doing everything yourself."- "Compliance is not the right word the whole time... It's more about intention and preparedness."- "We need to start thinking that way and be greater."
About The Guest(s):
Amanda is the Head of High Growth Ventures at KPMG, where she leads a team dedicated to working with startups. With a focus on deep tech and climate tech companies, Amanda helps founders navigate the challenges of scaling their businesses and provides them with the necessary support and services.
Summary:
Amanda discusses the importance of compliance and governance for startups, particularly in the deep tech and climate tech sectors. She emphasizes the need for founders to think about these aspects early on and to outsource them to experts, allowing them to focus on the core aspects of their business. Amanda also highlights the growing interest in impact-led companies and the availability of funding and support in the climate tech space. She concludes by emphasizing the need for founders to be intentional and prepared in order to achieve high growth and make a significant impact.
Key Takeaways:
Quotes:
[TRANSCRIPT]
**0:00:00** - (A): Hello and welcome to Shape The System, where we find and tell the stories that help people to rethink the way the world works. We interview people from all over the world who are helping to change our systems for the better. Shape The System is an independent podcast with support from KPMG High Growth Ventures who help ambitious founders and their teams scale up this seth. More about KPMG high growth ventures after the interview.
**0:00:29** - (A): We hope you enjoy this episode.
**0:00:33** - (Vincent Turner): Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Shape System. We're in person today, which I'm super pumped about. We haven't done an in person interview since before COVID I think. No, maybe in the middle of COVID in between the two COVID breaks. So we're doing our specialist interview format today and actually I'm stoked to welcome Amanda to the show. And Amanda is from KPMG High Growth Ventures and if you've been listening to us for the last year or so or even more, you'll know that they are supporter of the show and make it possible. So I'm just going to open with a thank you. I know there's a preamble that's pre recorded, but as an extra special thank you, it's actually not possible to put this show on without you guys. Thank you for being supportive. We're thrilled to be supportive and we'll dive straight in. So before we do though, just please introduce yourself where you are and just give us a bit about KPMG High Growth Ventures and then we can go into what we're going to talk about.
**0:01:21** - (Amanda Price): Sure. So. Yeah. Enterprise. Head of High Growth Ventures. So we're doing this for six years or a team within KPMG that's dedicated to working with startups. And I suppose over the last few years we've developed a range of services and offerings that are priced specifically and designed specifically for startups. Okay.
**0:01:38** - (Vincent Turner): And I'm going to just pick on one word there that I want to make sure we're clear on. The number of people who call their coffee shop a startup. No offense to the coffee shop owners. What are we talking about?
**0:01:49** - (Amanda Price): Yes, predominantly technology startups and we start working at Pre Series A. Everyone's surprised that we start that early, but we actually like to start very early. Pre Series A all the way through to IPO Exit, some sort of event sort of range of services across that.
**0:02:02** - (Vincent Turner): And is it like the funding thing is a way of denoting? That's interesting to me. We don't talk a lot about funding, but purely just to get us in the zone. If the company is never intending to raise capital, is it still stage based thing? Not necessarily a funding based it's a.
**0:02:15** - (Amanda Price): Really good point, actually, because about 30% of our companies are bootstrapped, so they dive really into it. But I use it because often it's an easy way for people to understand it. So I think we're looking for companies that if they haven't got funding, they're in market, they're starting to have customers and things like that. So I think there's some traction there. But we're certainly not looking for huge amounts of revenue or anything at the beginning because I think our lens on it is the earlier we can start, then we can really start founders thinking about the sort of foundations that they need to have to ensure that the business is sustainable when it scales.
**0:02:45** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah, perfect. And so if we relate that back to some other kind of startup jargon parallel, they probably have problem solution fit, they have customers who want what they've got and they might be getting toward product market fit where they've worked out some of the economics.
**0:02:58** - (Amanda Price): But absolutely, that's exactly right. So it's not an idea beyond an idea, and it's about that stage beyond the PowerPoint bit. Beyond the PowerPoint. Not much to work with there for us, but not our area of expertise. I don't see there's a lot of people that do that really well.
**0:03:10** - (Vincent Turner): Sure.
**0:03:10** - (Amanda Price): But yeah, so they're definitely in market.
**0:03:12** - (Vincent Turner): Okay. And just for the nature, I mean, we have, I think, 40% of people from outside of Australia listening. But your focus is on Australian startup.
**0:03:20** - (Amanda Price): Specifically and ones coming in. We've got startups coming in from India. We work with startups coming from New Zealand and things like that. So we've got quite a just as.
**0:03:27** - (Vincent Turner): An aside, why are they coming this way?
**0:03:30** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, there is a lot of Indian companies coming this way and New Zealand, obviously, they come here as well. So, yeah, we've got a real mix, actually.
**0:03:37** - (Vincent Turner): But what do you think is driving that macro? Is it just great regulatory environment?
**0:03:41** - (Amanda Price): It is, yeah, it is. And we've also got a very big Indian community here. So they come this way and we go that way. It's actually another side. Another project I'm working at the moment is to look at how we actually look at that diaspora and how we can help that.
**0:03:55** - (Vincent Turner): I don't know what that word means.
**0:03:58** - (Amanda Price): We had advance when we were in the States, so advance was basically the largest network of Australians living abroad. So it's really looking at when Australians like us went and lived in the States. How do you harness that knowledge and bring it back? So you've got this two way. Adamians are very good at doing that. Yeah. And that's what Jasper is. There you go.
**0:04:13** - (Vincent Turner): Thank you.
**0:04:14** - (Amanda Price): Can we finish now? I've taught you something.
**0:04:17** - (Vincent Turner): One thing to learn from the interview. That's definitely it. Hopefully not. There was something that I'm curious about, we spoke about just before as well. You said that the categories that you tend to operate in, deep tech and climate tech. I think people get climate tech as in to do with the climate sustainability more broadly. So it's not just CO2, but literally everything related to how we impact and how we consume.
**0:04:37** - (Vincent Turner): Help me understand deep tech and then just help me understand a little bit more about why these categories as well.
**0:04:41** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, sorry, just on that too. We do. We've got, obviously fintech, prop, tech, medtech, big for us, it's a lot of a range, but we've seen certainly over the last few years for us who started working more with deep tech companies. So there are ones that typically are working on things you don't understand, we don't understand that are quite technical, quite more scientific, the ones that might come out of sorrow or those sorts of things. So I'm trying to think of some examples. There's lots of them, like satellite companies or things that require actually, quite a lot of them are quite capital intensive. Take a lot of time to get revenue to get to a revenue point.
**0:05:17** - (Amanda Price): Just need a lot of investment and a lot of support. Because a lot of the founders in that space I'm talking very generally, are more from scientific backgrounds than commercial backgrounds. So it's sort of like how can we help them think about things like all the boring things, tax and Structuring and R and D and government grants and finance functions and things like that. So that's why we start working with them a lot. But also because in the firm, those categories are ones where people get very excited about working with those types of companies.
**0:05:43** - (Vincent Turner): Interesting, the firm more broadly says, hey, that's a category we're interested in and how we can learn from that.
**0:05:49** - (Amanda Price): Well, yeah, well, the high growth Ventures team, we don't deliver the work, so our role is to work with the startups themselves. We represent the founders within KPMG, but we find the right people to do the work. So with our network internally of people that deliver the work, if we bring a climate tech, like when we brought great Wrap is one of ours, so potato skins. Yeah, they have, of course, Julie and Jody, the firm, we could have got so many people working on that job.
**0:06:13** - (Amanda Price): We're all excited for that. They're really excited about it because you've got average age in the firm's, 27, so you got all these people who are very aware of that space and really want to get involved with it. So it makes sense for us as well. I think these days, much hate to say it, if we had a sort of more of a non impact client, it's not as easy. Yeah, people really want to work with a climate tech impact.
**0:06:38** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah, that's super interesting. I was going to try and understand where that was coming, but it sounds like that's happened organically yes.
**0:06:42** - (Amanda Price): Since you've been here, there has it absolutely has, yeah.
**0:06:45** - (Vincent Turner): I want to come back to both climate tech, I think, but deep tech for sure. My guess is that not only is there in general terms, very technical people working deep in technical and then they're having to think commercially or about things like boring stuff. I think you just called it. But my guess is as well in deep tech and definitely in climate tech, to a degree, that bar is probably higher as well. Heavily regulated industries, large multinationals defense corporations buying this stuff.
**0:07:11** - (Vincent Turner): Like you can't do that stuff. You're not a Facebook or an Instagram, right?
**0:07:15** - (Amanda Price): No. And there's a lot of compliance. It's just one of the things in being a climate tech company, I'm again speaking broadly, I want to go a lot of their customers are going to be big energy companies or corporate. And so with that comes a level of compliance that's required from that startup. And often it's a level of compliance that's required before the starts really ready to pay for it and to put that in place. And so it's working with them and also on the other side, trying to get that information from our corporates around what is really required, because often what they'll say is absolutely required, there might be some leniency around that. So it's really actually helping people understand that before they go before they go and put it in place.
**0:07:52** - (Vincent Turner): You can't tell because we're audio only show but I'm grinning because when I was like in my early twenty s and I sold a bit of software to Westpac as it was and they had to do a security audit or something. And we were a three person organization at this point. And they asked me a question. I can't remember what it was, but it was what's your environmental policy? Or something. I'm like, yeah, how are we supposed to even have any of this? And how is this relevant?
**0:08:15** - (Vincent Turner): Providing software to do you think the founders who come up with the amazing innovation, the amazing idea I'm kind of working out, at what point do they realize there's a whole bunch of other stuff I'm going to have to deal with, and it's not at all related to the actual innovation that I'm working on. Where does that decision land or when.
**0:08:36** - (Amanda Price): Does that I think it starts from when we're saying what's your run rate and what's your cash flow? I think there's all elements of that along the way because those people, a lot of them just haven't actually thought to have to have any experience in that. So even how do you establish a proper finance function? How do you hire the right CFO? Because startups need a specific set, especially if you're a highly capital intensive business, you don't do a lot of capital raise well. How do you actually check and how do you qualify the person you're about to hire as your CFO as a startup expert when you don't know what to ask? So that's really that's like me trying to hire engineer. How would I hire Engineer? I wouldn't know.
**0:09:14** - (Vincent Turner): Can you code?
**0:09:15** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, no, that's why I'm not going to hire engineers. But I think that starts early finance. And then even if you get into R and d, all of the R and D reports and the government grants, writing the submissions, and then it goes into all of the other stuff. You got to think about cyber now, another really big thing. You've got to think about early ESG compliance. All of those things are compliance led.
**0:09:34** - (Vincent Turner): Knowing how to capture data, report on.
**0:09:36** - (Amanda Price): Data, write the data privacy laws, all of that, like really making sure and now you've seen over the last few years and you know, you work in regulated environments. Well, it's not going away. It's getting more and more regulated. People want us and we've got systems that allow transparency so you can't get away. There's not really a way you can hide because people can ask for the data and ask for the systems. And so you've got to have a really strong eye over that and it's typically not what founders want to do. Is that what you want to do with your time?
**0:10:04** - (Vincent Turner): No. I have three buckets of things. The things that I love doing and I'm good at, and I actually have this as a job interview thing. If I meet someone and they're thinking of coming on, I get them to write this down. What are the things that you love that you're good at, that you just absolutely crush? What are the bucket of things that you don't love but you are very good at it and you can do? And what are the things that you hate? You're going to do a shit job.
**0:10:22** - (Vincent Turner): Jeez my French. If you do it risk and compliance.
**0:10:26** - (Amanda Price): Is in that third bucket and it is from most. Yeah, it is. And actually, I don't know if you've ever used Fingerprints for Success. No, there's a tool out there. We use it for the team. It's really good. Michelle Deval's, the founder, she's excellent. It's fingerprints for success. Do it with your team and it allows you to aggregate the data and have a look at it. But what it tells you is not what you are good at, but what you like to do. It's where you're really detailed and it shows you in a team and if you've got a team, which at one point mine was like we were all I think I was hiring all me.
**0:10:55** - (Amanda Price): No one wanted to complain, no one had any ideas. So we've even that out over the years, thank God. And yeah, my two I see we've worked out now is the exact opposite of me, which is very helpful and needed. But yeah, I think that's right. And I think that awareness, I think that tool allows you to have a little bit more awareness of these things. And I think these days it's not good enough to think, I'm okay at it. You can't be okay at it.
**0:11:21** - (Amanda Price): And it is the boring side of it. But that's why I think I said to you before, like, in setting high growth ventures up, I've probably done it in all the services that I would have wanted someone else to do, and I had done it as well.
**0:11:31** - (Vincent Turner): I'm the perfect customer.
**0:11:33** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, exactly.
**0:11:33** - (Vincent Turner): So you don't have to deal with what I had to do.
**0:11:35** - (Amanda Price): Exactly.
**0:11:36** - (Vincent Turner): I want to come back to kind of a point you've made. It's adjacent to a point that you made and it was about the level of governance and oversight in some of these lenses. Financial services or ESG, I think was the example that you used. Is there a bit of a challenge here at a macro level that the people, the very people we want to innovate, least equipped and least able to deal with this level of governance and oversight because of their scale or because of the lack of skill set that they have?
**0:12:03** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, that's a complete mismatch. And that's why you do partner with externals or find people in your higher risk person. Also, it's probably not the best hire, but get people that are good at it to have a lens over that so you don't have to do it. And I think, and you would see this with founders and the founders that are listening, there is a very high percentage of people that want to do everything themselves. It's really around if you want the business to scale, that won't allow it. You cannot scale when you're doing everything right. So work out that stuff. It is easy to get that outsourced because it is compliance. So it's not something you really have to be involved. You have to be across it. You have to understand what's happening with it. You've got to talk to it when you're doing raising capital, board meetings, all of that, it's very important that you do. And that's one of the things we say as well when we do outsourced finance function, it's not taking that off you. It's actually working with the founders to make sure they understand it. We do the work.
**0:12:51** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah.
**0:12:52** - (Amanda Price): So I think that the thing is we want founders to be the founder, to keep in that mindset of growth and ideas and moving forward. So I think this is something to really think carefully about is how do you outsource that and do it early, get the right system set and it won't be a problem. It's a problem when it's left too late and it's a problem or done wrong or done wrong but too late. It's expensive and we hate it because it's expensive. We've got to say it's going to be really expensive and it wouldn't have cost anything like that if it was done at the beginning.
**0:13:22** - (Amanda Price): But it's also about I think the other point to make is it's about the right level of compliance and governance for startups. So a red flag. Is too much governance in a startup.
**0:13:32** - (Vincent Turner): Really good at that stuff?
**0:13:33** - (Amanda Price): It's actually product. Yeah, great. Has anyone seen a customer? No. But hey, I like your dashboard so I think it's a very light touch governance for early stage starts. Just to say we're not coming with heavy hands that scales the business scales too.
**0:13:46** - (Vincent Turner): Sure.
**0:13:46** - (Amanda Price): But I think just starting with a little bit of knowledge and a framework from the beginning is such a good thing you got in your mind as a founder should grow.
**0:13:54** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah, it's funny, I've last five years with you, which is an online mortgage broker for people who may not be familiar with that and had to get I was always a tech founder, was never financial services found, it was always tech influence. But you had to do any of the regulation. That was your problem. We just gave you the software. But as an actual broker, we had to be regulated. We had an ACL, we had a credit license, and I had an incredibly good risk person for a period of the time that we were there and learned a huge amount about the I don't know, the lever, the leverage that you could get from doing it well and how to do it efficiently. That's a really good point.
**0:14:27** - (Amanda Price): That's exactly right. And I think if we look at that through the lens of, let's say like ESG right. So ESG can be painful, really hard to work out different elements of it, but it doesn't actually have to be. But it's just around ESG is just something that you can start off very in a very light way and then really ease into as well. But I don't think it has to be do you need a person internally to do it? I was actually thinking about for that.
**0:14:52** - (Vincent Turner): Well, we had 60 people at the time, tens of millions of dollars of investment, and the source of that investment was required, I think lens in it. I just think coming back to something that you sort of said before was that if you know how to do this stuff, it's not actually that difficult. No, you need to know how to do it. You need to know how it needs to be done, presented, recorded.
**0:15:11** - (Amanda Price): That's right.
**0:15:12** - (Vincent Turner): And I think part of this is also you're not doing it. And by not doing it, you're creating a problem for your future self or even your current self. You want to go and raise money or you want to get that R and D grant you don't even have.
**0:15:25** - (Amanda Price): Well, if you think about again, I don't want to come across the big compliant I'm the worst of it, to be honest, but I'm aware of it and I need to be aware of it in the environment. I'm in KPMG as well and things like that. But I do think where we know the markets turned and we know because anyone who's a founder will be reading that VC investment is taking longer. And one of the reasons, the key reasons for is increased due diligence. So the due diligence that we're seeing now is hugely financially focused and with the VCs we're speaking to and the Q and A's we run, we have VCs and they're all saying that we're right in really in there where the last couple of years it was pretty much on the surface. But it's not only that they are looking now they're looking at again I'll mention it, what have you got with ESG? What are you actually measuring? Where are you getting the data from, how you're tracking it, how you're reporting on it? So these are things that are new and have come in but they are very certainly looking at board structures which we haven't seen that for ages. And so now we're sort of working with some of the companies, the pre series B type companies and that's sort of where it's really going to show up is actually really looking through things, the taxes, how are you structured.
**0:16:25** - (Amanda Price): We also look at things which is really overlooked and I'm going to point it out, found it how you structure your own personal finances because now we're seeing a few acquisitions happen which we haven't really seen a lot of in Australia. And the M and A activities certainly start increasing through from what we see. And the founders, because they haven't actually taken sort of the time to set their own finances up properly and set it up separately in certain ways and make sure it's set up in a way to minimize their taxes and optimize sort of any liquidity event.
**0:16:56** - (Amanda Price): It's actually pretty easy to do and they just don't do it. And so the amount of tax they're paying when they've actually got very minimal equity at some of them at the end, it actually is really it makes me angry actually because I'm just like it's actually quite simple. So those sorts of things and ESG now we're about to see a lot of companies go into capital raise. So it's going to be quite competitive, it's going to take longer.
**0:17:18** - (Vincent Turner): Why are we seeing a lot of companies going?
**0:17:19** - (Amanda Price): Because a lot raised a year and a half ago. So just at the beginning when the VCs were very much and smartly, so saw what was happening overseas, advised everyone to raise before and they did. So every a lot of it went out and raised a lot of money and then last two years make it last and so that comes out. So we're seeing we're working with a lot of companies right now that we're going to raise. So it's going to be really competitive, more due diligence.
**0:17:40** - (Amanda Price): So you want to make sure everything's in place. So you're closing all the doors to the objections along the way and I don't think the increased regulation separate from the downturn in the economy is going to go away. It's just not we just live in an increased unfortunately regulatory in some ways a regulatory world.
**0:17:58** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah. But I think there's also and I'm doing it even on this call thinking or this in person interview, which I shouldn't call it.
**0:18:04** - (Amanda Price): I'm here, you're here.
**0:18:09** - (Vincent Turner): I'm thinking about the word compliance is a bit of a misnomer here because this is really about, hey, there's a whole bunch of stuff that you need to record and play back. And some of those things are in the context of being compliant. But in a lot of the examples that you just provided, it's actually more about, I don't know, visibility to how well the company is run, which is going to enable you to raise capital.
**0:18:31** - (Amanda Price): That's right. And it's also around like the more granularity you have in, let's say, pipeline, sales pipeline, right. You don't have systems in place. So you're right, compliance is not the right word the whole time for you to approach too much. But it's think about processes and systems which is just as boring as operations. Operations, let's think about operations in sales. So let's think about things like CRM and something that will manage pipeline. So HubSpot, so in HubSpot you can customize it so there's certain granularity around your sales cycle so that you can really see in the pipeline how things are moving through it. You can see upsell, resell, all of this sort of stuff that's really thinking through your narrative, that helps you tell a narrative to a VC much more than going, well, I've got just two stages in the sales cycle. I'm tracking it on a spreadsheet.
**0:19:18** - (Amanda Price): It's thinking about what great looks like. What great looks like when you're going into a VC and you're talking a pipeline is the ability to show them dashboards in HubSpot. Yeah, and show them that and show them that you're actually tracking, show them you understand conversion rates from MQL to SQL all the way through to close and things like that. And I think to your point too, that speaks to the operations piece, how is the engine of the business running?
**0:19:41** - (Amanda Price): And the more you're involved with that and the more you've got the systems and processes, the more you can speak to it in a very clear way and I think that gives people confidence.
**0:19:51** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah, we're using funding as a kind of a proxy for a bunch of these things, but a bunch of these companies are self funded. I want to come back also to a lot of the founders that we talk to. I've given them this label of impact led. But I think the definition is important because everything has an impact.
**0:20:06** - (Amanda Price): Yes, it does, good and bad, being.
**0:20:09** - (Vincent Turner): Late for a meeting. But anyway, so the definition I'm going to use here specifically is these are founders that are trying to impact the world in the lens of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Now, that's not specifically just the lens that you have, but by the nature of the types of companies that are being started now and are at early stage, a lot of them have impact either part of or core to what they're doing.
**0:20:32** - (Vincent Turner): I'm curious with regards to the companies that you're working with or even the ones that you're observing, maybe you're not working with yet, does it happen differently when they're impact Led? Are they sitting in a different stream? Is capital coming from different places? They having to answer to different stakeholders and bosses meaning that they have to do this stuff differently or do they need to just do it?
**0:20:53** - (Amanda Price): Do they have to do it differently? Look, I think when you're if you're an impact company you've got to be able to measure it such your first thing, which no one's asking a SaaS market tech company, how do you actually measure that and how do you track impact? Because that whole greenwashing thing, that's where you get into that danger. If you're not measuring, you're talking about it. If you can't quantify it, that's of a problem. So I think that is something that if you want to play in that space and you want to raise money from an impact investor then that you definitely have to have that. So that would be a difference I think in that sort of thing. I think in terms of climate tech, let's say more specifically, which goes across nine sectors from renewables to Agtech to so it's it's huge right there's.
**0:21:32** - (Amanda Price): I think this is just my view. There's probably more avenues for funding, right? Because right now everyone's thinking we're going to drown or burn like you know, this has both or both at once. This whole even the market going down. Although we've seen a slight turn decrease in climate tech investment or impact investment, it hasn't gone like the other, it hasn't gone as low, it decreased as much as it dropped off as much as the others. So people are still investing in this and I think there were people saying it's recession, it's a recession proof asset sort of class in a way but I don't know climate tech. Yeah and also it's broader family offices. Some of them have huge impact. They're very impact focused and they'll only invest in those types of companies seeing more and more family offices in that space. Be really? So you've got that they're not going to invest in a I don't know, I don't want to say it's category in case I offend anyone, but I think you really have to be in that.
**0:22:24** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, definitely not. But I think there's some categories that are very attractive to them and so now you've got funds like Giant Leap who are just impact and just announced another fund. They've raised main sequence just amazing in the deep tech impact space. So I think it's a really exciting growth space. I think the work that Mick has done around climate Salad and Bring networks, they've got communities, the greenhouse is about to launch.
**0:22:50** - (Amanda Price): There's a lot of people behind it and a lot of people want. To support it. So I think, yes, you might have. It's a hard thing to do. What they're trying to do, changing the world is hard. There is more compliance. They're in environments that are highly regulated, most of them, and they are trying to change the world. So they're going up against big energy like all of these sorts of things. But as I said, there's just a lot of eyes on a lot of people wanting this to work and wanting to support and fund the right solutions problems.
**0:23:17** - (Vincent Turner): And the nature of trying to change industries, if you call it that shape system steel monica is you mentioned before it is inherently capital intensive. And so I kind of pointedly asked a question up front about how many of these companies are bootstrapped. And your response is some of them are, but I think ultimately for them to get to any degree of scale to the impact that ganner need a.
**0:23:38** - (Amanda Price): Lot of and a lot of them are manufacturing again, it's a great rap.
**0:23:45** - (Vincent Turner): Set up the facility.
**0:23:46** - (Amanda Price): Right. So you've got that you've got hardware is quite big in this space as well. So hardware has really come back as well. And we're seeing that being funded, which hasn't been for quite a while, been really hard. So that's interesting. Yeah, so that's really good. But yeah, it's a really interesting space and we've seen this happen before. Fintech was the biggest thing ever and then Prop Tech years ago became really big and then this is bigger than.
**0:24:08** - (Vincent Turner): If we don't get this one right.
**0:24:09** - (Amanda Price): We'Re kind of well, we are.
**0:24:14** - (Vincent Turner): Keep.
**0:24:14** - (Amanda Price): Thinking of these solutions with the founders.
**0:24:17** - (Vincent Turner): Who are super strong in a technical sense. They've been out the back to developing the protocol or I think about Gotera I think it's one of your absolutely, Olivia. So they've been producing the thing with the maggots I'm bringing up. So if you haven't heard that interview, go and listen.
**0:24:36** - (Amanda Price): Awesome.
**0:24:38** - (Vincent Turner): There was about six goes to get that interview because it was some problem with a farm and a storm and an ships in the night for a while. But I guess the question I'm asking is how far down the road can a founder who's having to solve a pretty high technical bar go before these types of issues around reporting, governance, stakeholders, even accounting and structure become non negotiable? A lot of the time as a founder, especially when you're not aware of those ideas, but even if you are, these things need to happen. You'll be like, I haven't even worked out how to get the maggots to eat the thing yet.
**0:25:14** - (Vincent Turner): Why are we caring about company structure?
**0:25:16** - (Amanda Price): I wouldn't worry well, that's the thing. I think you've got to get it to there's only a structure if you're so I think it's really that all the idea and the thinking comes first. And I'm the wrong person because I'm not an expert in any way in compliance. But I would think if you've got a compliance lens too early, you're probably starting to think too small almost, because in some industries they wouldn't even things are going to be created.
**0:25:36** - (Vincent Turner): Well, she had to start the insect foundation, right?
**0:25:39** - (Amanda Price): That's what I mean. Like, there's going to be or we might have a rule in place that just get totally relevant. We don't know. So I think people, these people are just thinking so far ahead and so out there that I don't know whether you'd want them to and I don't think you would want them to start going, oh, I've got to think about my tax structure. I mean, leave that to the experts. And also, I'm sure the VCs or investors would have a view on that as well. Around when it's too early is too early. And interesting, we see companies that are quite, for a product point, quite progressed without having a lot of structure or.
**0:26:11** - (Vincent Turner): Anything around it, which is two people who shook hands.
**0:26:14** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, they might be putting a creative everything over here while they work it out and all that sort of stuff, and we can help them think through that later. But again, there's a real danger in wanting too much governance and compliance in too early. Yeah, but I don't know. As I said, I'm not an expert in that, but I just think let founders, we need them to really think of these well, you need to have.
**0:26:36** - (Vincent Turner): Their head in that kitchen, not in.
**0:26:38** - (Amanda Price): Whatever that's exactly right. Not think too far ahead. I suppose in some ways and just.
**0:26:42** - (Vincent Turner): With your focus in Australia, in terms of Australian founders companies, word for it, ventures, probably growth ventures, we're 2% of the population with 6% of the land mass or whatever the right number is. I guess that I don't know what that is, but obviously we're not everywhere. The journey that they're going on ultimately to have a massive impact and achieve high growth is off our shores. How does that play out?
**0:27:11** - (Vincent Turner): Because obviously, as soon as you decide to go to Europe, you're in a different governance structure, what happens there?
**0:27:16** - (Amanda Price): Well, that's when I can speak from our experience with our clients. The customers that we work with starts with where connect. So our sort of role in a way is we're trying to help them think ahead. So a little bit so it's not when you're a founder, we've both been that you're thinking milestone, so next milestone focused. And so just for us, because we can see a bit further ahead and we've been our portfolio management, we work with them pretty closely so we understand what they want. In the next year, two years, three years it is. If, say, you're going to the US, it's starting to help them think a bit earlier on around what they need to think about. Where is the majority of your sales going to be? Where is where are you going to locate all of it has tax implications, transfer price, you're going to have set up island.
**0:27:55** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, do all that and what's allowed now because things are changing. It's making sure that we're having those conversations. And I think you can have that in a very inexpensive once we're working that out with them and then they've got to make decisions around that, but making sure they're informed. But that is one of the challenges of being in Australia. We get lots of opportunities to sort of test and start things here. But going up into those other markets that I know it's a lot to think about when you go, this might.
**0:28:21** - (Vincent Turner): Sound like a funny question, but work with me. I've got a clarity on a start, but is there a point where someone leaves the flock in that regard? In terms of we're perfect from X to Y, but beyond why you start to move, you get out of the high growth stage and you start to become into a more stable that's obviously tomorrow's.
**0:28:40** - (Amanda Price): Like in terms of the ones we work with?
**0:28:42** - (Vincent Turner): Yeah, the ones you work with, if they end up getting to a stage where they're like, we're now to be self contained.
**0:28:48** - (Amanda Price): Oh, that's right. What we do, for example, we've got some of the bigger big ones we do audits for, so we do all that now. I'm not meeting with the Falcons of Unicorns going, hey, what about you? They go and then they have a journey. They go on a journey and then they've got their own people. So a lot of the things we're doing is more out there outsourcing finance riskies to us. So we're doing all of that. And as they get bigger, they get their own people and then we help pirates help with all of that so that we want we're here to support them. And then when they start to grow, they still use our services, but they've got their own people in there. And also then the services they need are very different. So they're using other areas of the firm.
**0:29:21** - (Amanda Price): Like for example, think about everything about Web Three, revenue recognition tax, global revenue recognition for Web three. Oh my gosh, you're working with some Web three. Yeah, we've got quite a lot actually, because of that problem. We wouldn't have known that. And then all of a sudden the firm had to develop.
**0:29:38** - (Vincent Turner): Someone had to work it out.
**0:29:39** - (Amanda Price): Someone has to and between the ATO and talking to things, it's really fascinating. All that stuff.
**0:29:45** - (Vincent Turner): Never imagine I'd say that about compliance tax.
**0:29:49** - (Amanda Price): When I went down this rabbit hole of construction prop tech, I was like, how am I finding construction tax? I don't even know. But yeah, it is the tech side of all of that is like mind blowing.
**0:29:59** - (Vincent Turner): That's wonderful. Well, look, I think we'll leave it there today.
**0:30:01** - (Amanda Price): Yeah.
**0:30:01** - (Vincent Turner): I'm always curious as to believers that the founder, the venture isn't thinking of and I'd never sort of thought about compliance, use that word broadly, as we have been today, as being a lever. But I think ultimately, if you come up with the most amazing solution and 0.1% of the population get access to it, then how much impact could you possibly have running everything?
**0:30:22** - (Amanda Price): Well, yeah, and I think maybe the word we should think about is there's a couple that come to mind, is probably more around intention and preparedness is probably the rather than compliance to me is a bit like I don't want to do it. That's what I feel. But I think being really intentional about your business, if you want your business to be in the number 1% of all businesses, then you're going to have to run it.
**0:30:42** - (Amanda Price): It has to be great. You have to be great. The operations have to be great. Not good great. So I just think it's above good. And I think a lot of founders we see. Just think of it's. Okay? It can be good. It can't be.
**0:30:55** - (Vincent Turner): I've got a friend who's an accountant. They're doing the book. We haven't been fined.
**0:30:59** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, we'll get away with it. There's a lack of understanding what great looks like and I think that's the real thing. And I think we are fortunate to work with some founders who are truly great. And I can tell you they're thinking about all these things.
**0:31:12** - (Vincent Turner): A lot of what you're doing is if you're thinking about at least take care of it so it gets done and you can think about the actual stuff.
**0:31:18** - (Amanda Price): Yeah, if that's the way that they want to go, they'll do it in house or whatever. But really, I just think for Australians here, we have to compete against we're here and we're doing things well. But when you go overseas and everything, sometimes it's a different level and a different bar. The other bar gets high and we need to start that way and think that way.
**0:31:35** - (Vincent Turner): I think we've come full circle because you and I first met was when over in the US. You were repping Australia.
**0:31:42** - (Amanda Price): Yes. You're still repping Australia. We could be greater. Let's just.
**0:31:53** - (Vincent Turner): Thank you again. Thank you again for your support of the show.
**0:31:56** - (Amanda Price): Thank you. Love it.
**0:32:00** - (A): We hope you enjoyed this episode of Shape the System. As usual, if you'd like to suggest a guest, someone that you know who's helped change a system for the better, please go to www.shakethesystem.org. Click on the top right hand corner, then click Suggest Guest. Make sure that you click subscribe so that you get the new episode. Shapes The System is an independent podcast with support from KPMG. High Growth ventures connect founders to the services they need along their journey.
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