Tim Boyle sees a bias towards digital technologies in the ecosystem

hi I'm Adam Spencer founder of the day one network which is bringing the history of the Australian startup ecosystem to you I believe in Founders it's why I do everything I do at day1 and our media company wwd1 media and that's why the day1 network exists to create helpful content for Founders we've got some great shows in development but a large part of what we do couldn't be done without support from our partners and sponsors and I couldn't be happier than to be working with NT P who get community better than any other technology recruitment company out there a Newcastle company like mine ntp are invested in seeing the growth of the local Tech Community in Newcastle Sydney and more broadly Australia so thank you ntp for helping us bring helpful content to Founders and the startup community in Australia back to the interview hi I'm Adam Spencer founder of the day one network which is bringing the history of the Australian startup ecosystem to you I believe in Founders it's why I do everything I do at day one and our media company wwd1 media and that's why the day1 network exists to create helpful content for Founders we've got some great shows in development but a large part of what we do couldn't be done without support from our partners and sponsors and I couldn't be happier than to be working with ntp who get community better than any other technology recruitment company out there a Newcastle company like mine and TP are invested in seeing the growth of the local Tech Community in Newcastle Sydney and more broadly Australia so thank you ntp for helping us bring helpful content to Founders and the startup community in Australia back to the interview hi I'm Adam Spencer and welcome to day one the podcast that spotlights Australian startups Founders and the organizations that Empower Australian entrepreneurship we go back to the beginning to tell a story of austral 's most inspiring Founders and how they built their companies you're listening to a special interview series as part of a documentary wwd1 is producing about the history of the Australian startup ecosystem on the episode today we have yeah hi I'm Dr Tim Bole I'm the director of innovation and commercialization at Anto uh Anto is a National Lab where similar to the CSO except we focus on nuclear science and techn Tech ology only we are the custodians of most of Australia's significant Landmark research infrastructure so these are things like the opor reactor the Australian syncron the Australian Center of neutron scattering the center of accelerator science National duration facility and several other National level facilities of interest and significance what's really cool is that these facilities are a convening point for innovators from industry and Academia so we attct the best people to come and work with us in collaboration with the an scientists I'm also the director and founder of nandon nandon is ano's Innovation Center and in short period of time of just under 3 years we've grown from a concept to having a thriving ecosystem of over 30 startups we also have a design Innovation program which connects our researchers and Technologies coming deep Technologies coming from our research with our smart people students ill career researchers and entrepreneurs to build products and services which you wouldn't normally think of and changing the way we do Tech transfer and commercialization we call an approach called systematizing Serendipity and it's fantastic nandon is uh just moved into a 1500 met redesigned building which was one of Australia's first Innovation centers uh the woods Innovation Center uh what's really cool about Nan is it's not just around startups we have a design Innovation program we're a member of the design Factory Global Network which is network of 32 Innovation centers globally that focus on using design methods to solve Wicked problems that face society and Humanity we also have a challenge based Innovation program within this where we take deep Technologies and intellectual property from research and we get smart people uh entrepreneurs students and other career researchers and we pull them together and a big ChalleNGe Program to buil develop Solutions based upon intellectual property to accelerate commercialization and Tech transfer um which is a really inter interesting initiative to solve a problem of how you commercialize platform technologies that arise from research why are you so passionate and interested in commercialization yes so this started a long time ago so throughout my whole career from when I did my first honors project in 2000 uh my I've worked this intersection of research in commercial the commercial world and Industry so my honest project was with an industry partner amrad they're a Melbourne based biopharmaceutical company and I was developing antibiotics I did a PhD with a company called aexa doing the same thing um then I worked with Johnson and Johnson as Johnson and Johnson fellow before U moving to the UK uh I took an academic position uh which I realized I didn't like so I wasn't an academic for very long and then moved back into industry but working with in licing in licensing Technologies from universities for product development so I've had this recurring trend of treating the line between academic or publicly funded research and business and I think I had a bit of a Eureka moment when I left research because I was sitting in a lecture theater and there was one of my contemporary peers presenting their work and in their work they put up a proton NMR which is nuc nuclear magnetic resonance which is a characterization technique for organic chemistry and I sat there thinking this is the only people that understand this globally are a handful of people it has no meaning there's no there's no reason to do this and it doesn't create any impact and I KN knew for all my my experience thus far to then that if you're going to do something unless someone's going to pay for the outcome it won't really be valued and you won't create impact other than through disseminating that knowledge to other academic peers so that took me on the path down career more on the commercial side of Academia and and publicly funded research and I moved into Tech transfer at that point but the whole Drive is around creating impact and impact isn't necessarily just the way it changes Our Lives the best way to measure impact from research is through Economic Development measures we hear at impact assessments and in terms of government policy space impact assessments generally tend to be uh a box ticking exercise in terms of what the government expects and the publicly funded research the government agencies that fund public research they're looking at impact as being something arbitrary that isn't through publication in the literature when you you go to the third force or the third stream that's how you take the outcomes of your research and put it into the hands of people who wouldn't normally consume that type of knowledge these are policy makers these are people in government this is society entrepreneurs and Industry these are people who can take their outcome comes that research apply it and translate it into products and services that can really move the dial on on society and the economy and that's something that I'm really passionate about because Australia spends $9 billion a year on research and development through public money the ecosystem as a whole is worth over 122 billion a year and yet whenever there's a discussion around the commercialization of publicly funded research we hear the same old stories we hear the Victor law mower the Hills ho the blackbox fight recorder the cckar implant uh WiFi and polymer Bank notes for the amount of investment that we've seen over the last 50 years into research and development I think we should have a few more examples of note and there are many of note but the stories aren't told in the same manner as these as big ones and we have this stick that we're fantastic at doing research uh and we're poor at doing commercialization but that's not necessarily true I think that where we punch above our weight we're doing commercialization except we have to often go offshore to make the impact that we need before I get into some of the questions for the documentary you know looking back when you first got involved in this space just a little kind of fun question just I'm just curious to know what you find most exciting about your role like and kind of maybe some context around that like bit of a day in the life of um and and what is the most rewarding part of your job yes so I think there's two facets to my role which I find really really fascinating and the first one is that I get to sneak a sneak peek of these future Technologies as they're being developed and by that I mean that I'm engaging with researchers actively and the projects are short and sharp um sometimes they can go for a lot longer but you know each project I'm is like almost like a mini course in a university I get to learn quite deep understanding of a technology that has the potential to change the way that we live if I do my job right and get to the hands of people who can build products and services and I think that's just absolutely amazing and that's the most privileged position that anyone could be in to be almost responsible for creating the future that's awesome the second part the second facet is that I get to help people I'm engaging with people I'm startup entrepreneurs and Founders and it's so rewarding to see them succeed and being part of their Journeys as well I find the giving back part almost as rewarding from a career perspective as the driving and doing and when you get the both of those together and all the other activities I do in the technology transfer research commercialization space you know I do really am so privileged to have the world's best job can you share any um or just one exciting technology that you've worked with recently yeah there's one that so I haven't done a li I haven't been doing doing licensing type commercialization for a few years and last year I had the opportunity to work with one of our researchers at Anto on a technology that's got very very U relevant environmental sampling so last year we had bush fires and we saw a lot of the air quality problems that came from bushes a lot of carbon particulares in the air when you go beyond bush fires as well we have lot of diesel trucks and cars driving around our streets now and these are heavy polluters and we have cold fire power stations so while we can't see carbon particulates in the air they have a a high impact on our health and we don't even realize it and one of our and the the the scientific equipment that you use to measure these carbon particulates in the air is quite expensive one of our researchers in antto developed a lowcost simple scientific instrument to detect carbon black and carbon particulates in the atmosphere so I did a a license to a local manufacturer to commercialize develop manufacture and distribute this scientific instrument that we developed at Ana it's called maybe and uh and it's now widely available and it's one way you can see the impact straight away normally when you commercialize intellectual property from a research organization you it may take years for the product to be developed and put into the hands of of customers and and users where this was one where we could do the development very very quickly got to the hands of our partner and you can go and ring up Thompson scientific instruments down the road here in Southerland Shire and buy one of these devices and they're now in over 30 countries around the world um having massive impact on the Metrology of air quality which I think is just fantastic so how long have you been like involved in the inverted Commerce startup ecosystem yes so my first exposure to the startup ecosystem was in 2009 when I I moved back to Australia and I was working at newth Innovations which is the tech transfer office at unsw so I was I was involved in the commercialization of research setting out spin out companies licensing Technologies and finding new technologies from our faculty and academics at unsw and the head of the school of computer science and engineering muray he invited me to along to a student startup event so and it was a bit of a trial and experiment where he observed that there were a number of students stain form startups and it was becoming quite trendy and he's asked me to come along and see if there's any commercial lens that we could put across this and whether unsw could gain benefit from it and I went to the startup pitch event there was 90 startups that turned up they from around the world and there was no ecosystem or formal organizational structure around this at all and we knew at that point that there was something special happening so I worked with Mori from usw at to put together a framework and from that he then appointed um the founders of atasan Scott Fara Mike hanon Brooks as adjunct professors to The Faculty at unw faculty of computer science engineering and from the NSI perspective we decided to start a student entrepreneur development program uh and we recruited Josh Flanery to coordinate and run that that student startup development program at um for us H that name sounds familiar Josh fer I think he's on my guest list yeah so Josh Flanery was a fantastic hire I didn't get too involved in the program after that I sort of sat on the periphery uh and watched him do some magical work where I think after the first 18 months of running the program they coached over 200 startup teams where there hadn't been any before and working with Ben Chong they put together program with the startup games and that flushed out whole new raft of entrepreneurs from the ecosystem some of them which a contacts that I still work with today and some of the the founders that went through that program are the founders within nandon at the moment wow so it's it's Great Links through and I've made managed to maintain relationships across that sort of 10e period since that program started and that program then led to investment in the Michael Crouch Innovation Center and then forly the program name changed from student entrepreneur development to the unsw founders program 2015 2016 I think and now it's gone Great Guns and they've got whole rafter programs and it's a very very well resourced program yeah yeah one of my guest um hosts just interviewed David Bert this morning and I think he's heading up that program now and I had a great chat with him you know a month or two ago and yeah they're doing amazing things what what are some of the biggest changes you've observed over the past 10 or so years since first coming into this this world of you startups either positive or negative changes well I think I think overwhelmingly it's positive I think this yeah we've seen we I think the first signs of sprouts that we saw were you HP Innovations which became SAR innovation wasn't the only incubator in town um we started to see startup Central we started to see hey Market HQ come on board uh as well as some of the the first accelerator programs start mate ignition Labs was the first deep technology accelerator program and there was mixed model programs like blue Chile um which opened in 2011 and also had unw connection with the founder Sebastian U being a former unsw student and I'd also commercialized I ized some research that he did when he was a student at unsw Cambra wow from there we start to see the corporate space started to come in so we started to see mura um the iag corporate accelerator program and then suddenly everyone had a corporate accelerator program at some point most of the big corporates in Sydney the ecosystem was exploding so much so that you the 2016 Crossroads report from startup Oz started to pull together a strong argument for Place based Innovation and I'm pretty sure that was the one recommendation that drove the development of the Sydney startup Hub at 11 York Street the the establishment of the Sydney startup Hub along with other things such as St conon um reinvestment back into the ecosystem by some of the more seasoned and successful Founders like Matt Barry into Starcon as well as well as the establishment of the spark festival and having some real leaders in the ecosystem start to stand up I think Josh flry I'd count him as one of those people and he became the founding director of the Sydney startup Hub that when cemented the ecosystem in my mind I think there was lots of activities happening and there was an ecosystem but having that big anchor at 11 York Street to changed the game in my mind that's definitely going into the documentary oh good uh What are some of the biggest gaps you've observed and you know I'm sorry to hammer on to find some negative points but part of this ser series I I really do want to look at both sides of the coin yeah I think the biggest gaps that we've seen is there's a massive bias in the ecosystem towards um digital Technologies and web mobile platforms and all the things that come with that fintech and other applications which are very specific to digital and net enabled infrastructure and you know this comes at sometimes the compromise with deep Technologies and Hardware which are what really Drive Economic Development that's what I'm pass about and if you look at the big disruptive digital startups um such as say Uber is the one I like it's great for consumers you know it provides more variety but it also um you know and it's a subtle disruption to taxi drivers I don't think it's as disruptive to the taxi industry now than a lot of people would make it out to be but it's created an underclass of an underclass of employees where there's people who work in these jobs as Uber drivers don't have the job security they don't have um some of the benefits and protections that come through regular employment and you look at Uber Eats and you start to see things like dark kitchens pop up in that environment as well the restaurants take a huge cut on their margins to access that service and I don't know if that's necessarily these things are necessarily good for our economy and the economy make up through jobs uh deep Technologies on the other hand um you have to manufacture something at the end and you based upon IP and Science and I think when you do that you start to create you know jobs and when you create the jobs to manufacture it could be Automation in those manufacturer process but there jobs to maintain the equipment that's used to manufacture you start to create value chains so all the suppliers start to get activated there's more sales coming from suppliers and you get that Ripple that Ripple down effect through the economy which drives you know a better economic outcome for everyone and I think that's more important as we shift from being a resources economy to a knowledge economy yeah we can certainly leverage the tools that digital Technologies bring but at the same time we we still need to build things and Building Things is important yeah what what's some of the what what is one thing that you think as a national Community we're doing really well I think we're starting to do really really well at the socialization of what we're here for and joining up you know it was very much a Melbourne scene a Sydney scene an Adelaide scene and I think we're seeing a bigger link up between these ecosystems now and we're seeing that some of the the bigger hubs uh opening in multiple regions and cities so we're getting our act together have a Consolidated you know more solid message that we are one and but by doing that we're also getting a better Advocate advocacy position I think that in October 2015 there's another Landmark point in time where the dial shifted when the national Innovation and science agenda Nissa was announced and at that point there's a massive amount of investment and Spotlight put on Innovation and start and the startup community and from that we've seen the green shoots grow into flowers that policy wasn't perfect and there was a lot of speculation around the second phase of that policy Nissa 2 was going to have a big place-based innovation slant then that never came to fruition I think place-based Innovation four startup ecosystems Innovation precincts is firmly entrenched in everything we do if you look at the New South Wales policy environment the economic development backbone is across three Lighthouse precincts the tech Central Precinct the West me Health the medical Precinct and the Bradfield ratropolis mixed use precinct which is innovation education and Manufacturing and these sorts of approaches to policy and economic development wouldn't have occurred prissa in October 2015 you probably given your position speak to a lot of Founders I would imagine a lot of entrepreneurs and you've probably seen a lot of them come and go and a lot succeed and a lot fail if you had to if a brand new founder came to you tomorrow what one piece of advice would you give to slightly increase their chances of success in the benefit of hindsight now I know exactly what the challenges are and I can think give one particular example of where a brilliant entrepreneur who's still active in the ecosystem and I won't name them because I don't want to embarrass them but they were very very green when they I first started to engage with them and they went off and they spoke to absolutely everyone and they got the complete gamut of advice and it wasn't always the best advice so I think my advice to those Next Generation startup Founders is to get the authority of find the authority of mentors to guide you in the early stages and take take counsel from them and listen to them and and don't get caught up in all the noise because it's the you having the experienced Mentor who you trust will serve you better than taking advice from everyone where we've got a a community where people are also looking out for their own interests including generating Consulting fees and enhancing the prospects of their own Investment Portfolio that's a really good advice and I feel like that's relevant to me in my early time jumping into this space I wanted to take advice from everyone and you end up going in so many different directions though and conflicting advice and that you just become more confused than anything yeah well a good one a good one I see at the moment is you know I I work a little bit in the radio pharmaceutical space and the thetic space and it's you some of the Venture Capital local Venture Capital players are starting to get interested in this space as well and we're seeing a delate push away from venture capital for this type of technology and we've got TX is as6 listed company they're 4 and a half years old their market cap is over $1.5 billion now we've got a company called Clarity Pharmaceuticals and they've just been been to the ASX and I think their valuation at Market at the ASX Market listing will be around 400 million or just below and they they're a 10-year-old company they've gone in with a $90 million raise from their ASX listing which is the biggest Australian biotech raise ever and there's another company coming on which you're going to list later in the year called radio Farm Theos discs and you know from a company that's only four or five months old they're they're raising $20 million and listing so there's a big push from Venture Capital to not to keep away from the ASX but for some technologies I think there's such a strong track record of listing on the ASX even though with all the challenges that come with that you know can be a lot more successful and get Market traction a lot quicker if you do so the last question I have is not really a question it's me just wanting to give you you know five minutes to talk about whatever is top of mind for you keeping in mind that what we're doing here today is we're getting a small part your perspective of a massive story which is the history of the Australian startup ecosystem keeping that in mind and and the fact that the audience we want to reach here are policy makers Founders investors um academics from every corner of the ecosystem what what do you want them to take away like what do you want them to hear about the Australian startup ecosystem either positive or negative yeah I think the Australian startup ecos system has so much promise and it's the the balance and diversity of our ecosystem which is a strength we should stop compar comping ourselves to Israel and Silicon Valley and other Innovation systems ecosystems of note and start to think about what's unique it makes us work very very well it's very easy to critique what we have is not being as good as somewhere else where there's no good or bad in this space and in some respects it's not even competition it's because we you the ideal scenari is where everyone prospers and everyone is successful and we will only get that through being positive and supporting each other and recognizing the significance that what we have is unique yeah I think that that sometimes lost on people because our as Australians I think we are innately competitive with each other and we we are in the entrepreneurial space we all want to win and that means we are have to have to win we have to be competing with someone so there's something in the Australian psyche that I think holds us back and I think it's very very different to what you find elsewhere in the US and you know in the US situation and I put that down to you know is an optimism Gene there you know when the the founders went to the US in the you know 250 years ago there were those that got there and thought there's snakes and spiders and it's un civilized and those people didn't you know they went back to Europe there were people that found Hope green spaces and a place where they could make their home and that sort of optimism has continued to spread as they embrac became the world's biggest capitalist culture and I think in Australia we need to work out how we can make our psyche unique to us and how we leverage that so we all win and we remove some of the you know the self depreciating parts of our our culture and the way the Australians do things um how we remove that so we we can we can be successful and uh or recognize the success that we already have one followup question to finish off the interview you mentioned this word many times just then unique if you had to pick something what would you say makes us a unique Community a unique ecosystem yeah I think we are unique cuz we are young and we don't do things the same way that we do over else uh you know I was talking about different funding modalities and the the way things are funded in the US or Israel may not necessarily be the best way to do things in Australia and we have other way other mechanisms of raising Capital we have different risk appetites and and that that's a unique environment I think the research the fact that we have such strong research here and we are the best at doing broad research in the world in some respects is is a unique proposition and we're starting to see sub ecosystems around Quantum Computing and advanced manufacturing uh and nuclear medicine even where we do have deep strength in the in the Deep science around these areas and then we're seeing value chains and clusters starting to form in L from the startup space not LED from traditional Big Industry which is how most other clusters start to form I think that's something that is very very unique to Australia especially Sydney I hope you enjoyed that interview more interviews are on the way follow the podcast wherever you're listening right now stay tuned for more interviews with many many more Amazing people from the Australian startup ecosystem thanks for listening and see you next time [Music] the startup retro is a new podcast from the team behind overnight success a weekly show where we help you level up on the Australian startup ecosystem by giving you an Insider's view on oy startups and Venture Capital I'm W Richards and I'm JMA Clancy at OS we curate the most important news and announcements across the ecosystem and explain a bit of useful context behind them the startup retro podcast will follow a format familiar to our readers of the week Weekly Newsletter but offer an opportunity for much more discussion so if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of all things happening Aussie startups and Venture Capital start your week by listening to the startup retro new episodes every Monday starting the 1st of July the startup retro is brought to you by day one the podcast Network for Founders operators and investors