Things To Watch
Things To Read
Things To Do
- First Pivot YouTube Channel - You'll find some great content here and we are continually adding more.
- Young Entrepreneurs Forum, Hear 3 young student entrepreneurs talk about their journeys!
- Marc Randolph Interview - Hear our interview with the Co-Founder of Netflix where he shares his earliest memories of being an entrepreneur and his advice for young entrepreneurs.
- Why does Australia need more entrepreneurs? - Murray Hurps from the University of Technology Sydney
- Online Safety - Microsoft course and certification for online safety risks and responsibility
- From Idea To Business Animated Series
- The Business Model Canvas - 9 Steps to Creating a Successful Business Model - Startup Tips
- The Mentor Mindset
Things To Read
- That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea
- From an Idea to Lego: The Building Bricks Behind the World's Biggest Toy Company and more books by Lowey Bundy Sichol
Things To Do
- Entrepreneurs Journal - start yours by downloading one HERE
- Check out Banqer. They are a New Zealand based startup that has designed a great online, financial literacy offering. It is FREE, that is right, free for primary schools. It's never to early for students to learn about the amazing value of compounding interest and savings.
- The Ecstra Foundation offers FREE, interactive Talk Money workshops delivered in class or online by trained facilitators. You can register your school here.
- How To Teach Kids About Money - Teaching kids about money when they’re young lays the foundation for responsible money management later in life.
Startup Resources
Online Classes
- LaunchVic Resources launchvic.org/general/resources-to-assist-startups
- $20 Boss Information youngchangeagents.com/programs/20-boss
- Kauffman Foundation: www.kauffman.org/entrepreneurship
- Babson Entrepreneur Toolkit www.babson.edu/academics/ executive-education/open- enrollment-programs/the- entrepreneurs-bootcamp-a-deep- dive-for-new- ventures/entrepreneur-toolkit/
Online Classes
- Yale University's FREE new course for teenagers is finally here! The Science of Well-being for Teens is a 6-wk course on @coursera that has been designed to give teens science-based strategies for reducing stress/feeling happier.
- Harvard 35-minute leadership lesson from HBS Professor Nancy Koehn about leading in turbulent times
2020 First Pitch Final Replay. www.firstpitch.com.au/grand-final.html
Weekly Musings Newsletter 29/08/2025
The Complementary Skills Formula: Lessons from Airbnb's Founding Team
What is the billion-dollar lesson most entrepreneurs miss? Brian Chesky discovered it when building Airbnb: breakthrough companies require founders whose skills perfectly complement each other.
If you're reading this on August 29th, today marks the birthday of Brian Chesky. He brought the design thinking, having spent his teens reimagining everything from toys to shoes, inspired by masters like Leonardo da Vinci. Joe Gebbia added entrepreneurial instinct, demonstrated early when he sold Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drawings to third-grade classmates for two dollars each until parents shut him down.
But creative vision and business hustle weren't enough. Enter Nathan Blecharczyk, who started a software business in high school that funded his Harvard education. When Chesky and Gebbia's "Air Bed-and-Breakfast" concept needed a website and technical execution, Blecharczyk completed their trinity: creative vision, entrepreneurial drive, and technical mastery.
When Complementary Skills Collide
At Rhode Island School of Design, the duo of Chesky and Gebbia discovered their creative partnership. While Chesky explored industrial design, Gebbia designed "CritBuns"—rear-end-shaped seat cushions for art students enduring long critiques. When his invention won a prestigious award and landed in the Museum of Modern Art Design Store, Gebbia proved something crucial to his hesitant friend.
After graduation, Gebbia moved to San Francisco and persistently called Chesky with the same pitch: "Let's start a company." Chesky, designing everything from medical equipment to toilet seats for reality TV shows, always refused citing health insurance concerns. Then Gebbia mailed him a package containing his commercially successful CritBuns—proof that their combined talents could create market success.
From Desperation to Innovation
When Chesky finally relocated in 2007, their partnership immediately proved its worth. Facing unpaid rent, they transformed their apartment into an air bed-and-breakfast during a design conference, offering air mattresses and Pop-Tarts to strangers. Their initial website generated just two bookings—one was Chesky himself.
To help pay their bills, they leveraged their combined design expertise to create an election-themed cereal: "Obama O's" and "Cap'n McCain's." This audacious move generated $20,000-$30,000, enough to pay debts and continue building. When they pitched Y Combinator's Paul Graham, he initially questioned their concept. But seeing those custom cereal boxes, he recognized their partnership's power: "If you can convince people to pay $40 for $4 boxes of cereal, maybe you can convince strangers to live with each other."
The Team Multiplier Effect
Adding Blecharczyk as their technical co-founder completed the equation. Each founder brought irreplaceable expertise: Chesky's user-centered design thinking, Gebbia's entrepreneurial creativity, and Blecharczyk's technical execution capability. No single founder could have built Airbnb alone.
Since their humble beginnings in 2008, Airbnb has become the largest brand in hospitality. They generate almost $10 billion in annual revenue, and offer about 4.6 times as many rooms for rent as their closest competitor, Marriott International.
What complementary partnership will unlock your next breakthrough—in business, friendship, or life?
Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay curious.
Weekly Musings Newsletter 15/12/2023
"I learned to use my brain in different ways." That was what a Year 5 student said about our Inspire Entrepreneurship program.
We are constantly bombarded with social media posts about the live your best life gurus; the sale gurus; the management gurus; the posting pictures of their cars gurus; the cold plunge gurus; and on, and on, and on.
The basics aren’t sexy. They don’t sell. They aren’t a quick fix. They are simple to understand but difficult to practice consistently. It’s why so many people buy supplements to improve their strength, but so few exercise three times a week for months, if not years, on end. It's why so many people skim twitter threads and serially subscribe to short-form newsletters but don’t read anything over 300 words, let alone actual books.
One of the basics is understanding that our brain is the most powerful tool we have. And too often we allow our brain to be our Inner Critic instead of our Inner Coach.
Our inner critic judges ourselves, criticises ourselves, blames ourselves, and makes us feel deficient. This may have had some evolutionary value for our ancestors. Having a brain that focused on the negatives helped our ancestors survive harsh conditions. Having a brain that was constantly scanning our environment for threats and that was strongly invested in not having us mess up (because it could cost us our lives) made a lot of sense for our Stone Age ancestors. Not so much today.
What can you do? Imagine that you have a magic wand, and with one swoop, you can lower the volume of your inner critic and raise the volume of your “inner coach.” This inner coach speaks only words of encouragement and support. It says things like, “It’s OK, I’ve got this. Mistakes happen - they’re a part of life. I can handle this setback.” Be kind to yourself. We are good at being kind for others, but it is often much harder to do this for ourselves.
Excellence is an inside job.
Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay curious.
From Our Weekly Musings Newsletter 17/03/2023
"Raising the bar."
For over 50 years high jumpers used the straddle technique to clear the bar. This technique involved jumping face down over the bar and rolling over it. This was how high jumpers jumped. They used what everyone considered was the most effective way to jump over the bar.
Until it wasn't.
In the 1968 Olympics an unknown American athlete changed the sport forever. Dick Fosbury realised that the old technique had limitations and was not sustainable for him. He believed that there must be a better way to jump higher and more efficiently. So he came up with a new approach that would allow him to clear the bar without having to straddle it. And it won him a Gold medal.
When a journalist asked him what his technique was called, he borrowed the terminology that his hometown newspaper had used in a picture caption, which read: ‘Fosbury flops over the bar’. “It was alliterative, it was descriptive, and I liked the contradiction – a flop that could be a success.”
Dick Fosbury passed away earlier this week at the age of 76. In a 2012 interview, he said: “I guess it did look kind of weird at first but it felt so natural that, like all good ideas, you just wonder why no one had thought of it before me.”
Fosbury's story is a reminder that sometimes the best ideas come from challenging the way things have always been done. It's about how persistence and grit in pursuit of new ideas can disrupt the status quo.
And how one person with an idea can raise the bar to new heights.
Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay curious.
The Complementary Skills Formula: Lessons from Airbnb's Founding Team
What is the billion-dollar lesson most entrepreneurs miss? Brian Chesky discovered it when building Airbnb: breakthrough companies require founders whose skills perfectly complement each other.
If you're reading this on August 29th, today marks the birthday of Brian Chesky. He brought the design thinking, having spent his teens reimagining everything from toys to shoes, inspired by masters like Leonardo da Vinci. Joe Gebbia added entrepreneurial instinct, demonstrated early when he sold Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drawings to third-grade classmates for two dollars each until parents shut him down.
But creative vision and business hustle weren't enough. Enter Nathan Blecharczyk, who started a software business in high school that funded his Harvard education. When Chesky and Gebbia's "Air Bed-and-Breakfast" concept needed a website and technical execution, Blecharczyk completed their trinity: creative vision, entrepreneurial drive, and technical mastery.
When Complementary Skills Collide
At Rhode Island School of Design, the duo of Chesky and Gebbia discovered their creative partnership. While Chesky explored industrial design, Gebbia designed "CritBuns"—rear-end-shaped seat cushions for art students enduring long critiques. When his invention won a prestigious award and landed in the Museum of Modern Art Design Store, Gebbia proved something crucial to his hesitant friend.
After graduation, Gebbia moved to San Francisco and persistently called Chesky with the same pitch: "Let's start a company." Chesky, designing everything from medical equipment to toilet seats for reality TV shows, always refused citing health insurance concerns. Then Gebbia mailed him a package containing his commercially successful CritBuns—proof that their combined talents could create market success.
From Desperation to Innovation
When Chesky finally relocated in 2007, their partnership immediately proved its worth. Facing unpaid rent, they transformed their apartment into an air bed-and-breakfast during a design conference, offering air mattresses and Pop-Tarts to strangers. Their initial website generated just two bookings—one was Chesky himself.
To help pay their bills, they leveraged their combined design expertise to create an election-themed cereal: "Obama O's" and "Cap'n McCain's." This audacious move generated $20,000-$30,000, enough to pay debts and continue building. When they pitched Y Combinator's Paul Graham, he initially questioned their concept. But seeing those custom cereal boxes, he recognized their partnership's power: "If you can convince people to pay $40 for $4 boxes of cereal, maybe you can convince strangers to live with each other."
The Team Multiplier Effect
Adding Blecharczyk as their technical co-founder completed the equation. Each founder brought irreplaceable expertise: Chesky's user-centered design thinking, Gebbia's entrepreneurial creativity, and Blecharczyk's technical execution capability. No single founder could have built Airbnb alone.
Since their humble beginnings in 2008, Airbnb has become the largest brand in hospitality. They generate almost $10 billion in annual revenue, and offer about 4.6 times as many rooms for rent as their closest competitor, Marriott International.
What complementary partnership will unlock your next breakthrough—in business, friendship, or life?
Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay curious.
Weekly Musings Newsletter 15/12/2023
"I learned to use my brain in different ways." That was what a Year 5 student said about our Inspire Entrepreneurship program.
We are constantly bombarded with social media posts about the live your best life gurus; the sale gurus; the management gurus; the posting pictures of their cars gurus; the cold plunge gurus; and on, and on, and on.
The basics aren’t sexy. They don’t sell. They aren’t a quick fix. They are simple to understand but difficult to practice consistently. It’s why so many people buy supplements to improve their strength, but so few exercise three times a week for months, if not years, on end. It's why so many people skim twitter threads and serially subscribe to short-form newsletters but don’t read anything over 300 words, let alone actual books.
One of the basics is understanding that our brain is the most powerful tool we have. And too often we allow our brain to be our Inner Critic instead of our Inner Coach.
Our inner critic judges ourselves, criticises ourselves, blames ourselves, and makes us feel deficient. This may have had some evolutionary value for our ancestors. Having a brain that focused on the negatives helped our ancestors survive harsh conditions. Having a brain that was constantly scanning our environment for threats and that was strongly invested in not having us mess up (because it could cost us our lives) made a lot of sense for our Stone Age ancestors. Not so much today.
What can you do? Imagine that you have a magic wand, and with one swoop, you can lower the volume of your inner critic and raise the volume of your “inner coach.” This inner coach speaks only words of encouragement and support. It says things like, “It’s OK, I’ve got this. Mistakes happen - they’re a part of life. I can handle this setback.” Be kind to yourself. We are good at being kind for others, but it is often much harder to do this for ourselves.
Excellence is an inside job.
Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay curious.
From Our Weekly Musings Newsletter 17/03/2023
"Raising the bar."
For over 50 years high jumpers used the straddle technique to clear the bar. This technique involved jumping face down over the bar and rolling over it. This was how high jumpers jumped. They used what everyone considered was the most effective way to jump over the bar.
Until it wasn't.
In the 1968 Olympics an unknown American athlete changed the sport forever. Dick Fosbury realised that the old technique had limitations and was not sustainable for him. He believed that there must be a better way to jump higher and more efficiently. So he came up with a new approach that would allow him to clear the bar without having to straddle it. And it won him a Gold medal.
When a journalist asked him what his technique was called, he borrowed the terminology that his hometown newspaper had used in a picture caption, which read: ‘Fosbury flops over the bar’. “It was alliterative, it was descriptive, and I liked the contradiction – a flop that could be a success.”
Dick Fosbury passed away earlier this week at the age of 76. In a 2012 interview, he said: “I guess it did look kind of weird at first but it felt so natural that, like all good ideas, you just wonder why no one had thought of it before me.”
Fosbury's story is a reminder that sometimes the best ideas come from challenging the way things have always been done. It's about how persistence and grit in pursuit of new ideas can disrupt the status quo.
And how one person with an idea can raise the bar to new heights.
Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay curious.
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