My guest for Ep175 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Ed Hooper, the Co-founder & CEO of GXE.

Ed was previously the Co-founder & CEO of Omny Studio, which was an audio management platform used by media companies and podcasters to grow their audience, reduce production costs and monetize their platform. Omny was later acquired by Triton Digital.

Ed then went on to launch Cardinia Ventures, a Venture Capital fund that invests in hardware and software startups from pre-seed to Series A stage and counts companies such as Chornosphere, Edrolo and SpiceAi in its porfolio.

He is now the Co-founder & CEO of GXE, which is an all-in-one platform for Investment Funds, Family Offices and Syndicates.

It’s also the platform we use to manage my syndicate, Playbook Ventures.

In this episode, Ed shares the key lessons as an investor and founder including:

• Building & selling Omny Studio (acquired by Triton Digital)
• The frameworks Ed uses to make product feature decisions and assess trade offs
• How Ed approaches building professional relationships
• His approach to investing into startups
• & much more!

Ps stick around till the end of the interview for an announcement!

Timestamps

• 4:08 – Ed’s background
• 5:16 – SOAK (Ed’s first company)
• 8:57 – Learnings from Silicon Valley, advice to early stage founders
• 12:22 – Time at ANZ, Rome2Rio, Groupon
• 15:06 – Omny Studio origin story
• 19:02 – Launching SoundGecko
• 21:54 – How to think about product feature trade offs
• 25:27 – Things to consider when raising using SAFE notes
• 29:47 – Frameworks for solving business problems
• 32:09 – Raising from corporate VCs
• 35:03 – Omny Studio acquisition
• 39:07 – Building relationships and networks
• 42:27 – Strategically building relationships with investors
• 46:17 – How Cardinia Ventures started and what they invest in
• 50:05 – How to structure a fundraising round
• 53:27 – GXE journey
• 58:37 – How to prioritise product feature requests
• 1:00:48 – Playbook Ventures rolling fund

Our partners

A big thank you to Andrew Armstrong for his help with research for this interview!

Also a big thank you 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

Ed’s links

• Ed’s LinkedIn

Playbook Ventures Rolling Fund

• Website https://www.playbookventures.com.au/
• Email: fund@playbookventures.com.au

People mentioned

• Dan Lewin
• Bill Gates
• Book: Steve Jobs – Walter Isaccson
• Long Zheng
• Bernhard Tschirren
• Michael Cameron
• Clive Dickens
• Andrew Armstrong
• Rory McNeice
• Leigh Jasper
• Rachael Neumann
• James Harrisson
• Hamish & Andy

Companies mentioned

• GXE
• Cardinia Ventures
• Omny Studio
• SOAK
• Southern Cross Austereo (SCA)
• Triton
• Microsoft
• York Butter Factory
• StageLabel
• Rome2Rio
• Groupon
• ANZ
• TechCrunch
• Slack
• Flickr
• Atlassian
• Pandora
• Shazam
• Apple
• Twitter/X
• Spotify
• Mamamia
• iHeartMedia
• Playbook Ventures
• Scale Investors
• Flying Fox Ventures

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@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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