Inside HEO: Australia’s Secret Space Camera Company | Hiranya Jayakody, Steve Baxter, Jessy Wu

Inside HEO: Australia’s Secret Space Camera Company | Hiranya Jayakody, Steve Baxter, Jessy Wu

HEO co-founder and CTO Dr Hiranya Jayakody (HJ) started out trying to mine asteroids. Instead, he and co-founder Will Crowe built a way to photograph satellites in space using other people's cameras, pointed one at the International Space Station during COVID lockdown, and got a call from US regulators asking what they'd done. Today HEO runs 7 cameras in orbit and sells space intelligence to governments across the US, Europe and Japan. That story opens up the bigger question this episode keeps returning to: do you have to be "damaged" to build something big? Encour founder Jessy Wu makes the case that investors quietly prefer founders who stay triggered and hungry for vindication. Beaten Zone Venture Partners and TEN13 founder Steve Baxter isn't having it, his view is that a lot of what gets called founder intensity is just people being arseholes and dressing it up. HJ, who grew up through war and a tsunami in Sri Lanka, offers a third answer none of them saw coming. Host Brendan Hill takes the Oversubscribed Season 1 finale through defence tech and why Steve calls it "irrationally unloved," the real difference between US and Australian hiring culture, ESG, AUKUS, and the story of how Steve actually landed his Shark Tank gig. Stay to the end for the asteroid still sitting on HEO's roadmap. Time Stamps 00:00 Intro 03:52 How HEO Began: Two PhDs Who Wanted to Mine Asteroids 05:00 What Non-Earth Imaging Actually Is 08:15 Steve's "Uber for Secret Space Cameras" Pitch 09:55 Sponsor: Vanta 10:23 Imaging the ISS & the Call From US Regulators 15:35 What You Actually See Up There 17:30 Australia's Sovereign Space Capability & AUKUS 22:29 Space Weapons & Why Orbital War Is Madness 24:50 The Department of War & the US Defence Market 29:55 Sponsor: TEN13 30:46 The Branding Problem of Defence Tech 36:00 Why Steve Hates ESG Investing 39:57 Steelmanning the Case Against Building Weapons 43:00 Arms Balance, Not Arms Control, Keeps the Peace 45:30 Dual-Use Tech: Debris Removal to Blood Delivery 48:37 How the New US Administration Changed Defence Investing 50:47 The "Damaged Founder" Debate Begins 54:28 "Arseholes Can Make Any Excuse to Be Arseholes" 1:00:04 Australia vs the US on Hiring & Firing Culture 1:03:32 HJ on Tunnel Vision & the Self-Checkout Story 1:09:43 Childhood, Trauma & Founders 1:10:30 HJ's Sri Lanka: War, Tsunami & Going Numb 1:14:00 Jessy Wu on Reinvention & Building Encour 1:19:45 Steve's Path: Army, Telecom, Google & Angel Investing 1:26:09 How Steve Landed the Shark Tank Gig 1:35:12 Launching TEN13 & Going Harder Through COVID 1:38:35 Why Join HEO (And the Asteroid Still on the Roadmap) 1:40:13 The Cliff From Canva Timer & Sign-Offs Oversubscribed is proudly supported by our sponsor Vanta 🦙 Vanta is the all-in-one solution for startups to become compliant quickly and build a security foundation with ease. Startup customers get $1000 off Vanta at vanta.com/oversubscribed The Day One Network Oversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rZ9SajGVXkO8oxuvEHAsk?si=I2yR92GgRZa-Fdqbp8T4bw Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oversubscribed/id1848789610 Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or financial product. Brendan Hill and Steve Baxter are investors in HEO. About the Host: Brendan Hill is a Venture Partner at TEN13 and an angel investor in Australia’s fastest-growing startups, including Everlab, Heidi Health, Relevance AI and Instant. If you are interested in finding out more about angel investing, connect with Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbrendanhill/

Autonomous Healthcare: How Everlab is Building AI Doctors

Marc Hermann's dad died of a heart attack in his mid-forties. Fit, healthy, no warning signs. Then a doctor told him 99% of heart disease is preventable. We just don't catch it in time. That conversation became Everlab. Twelve months ago, Everlab had one doctor. Today they have 66. They've built their own patient management system from scratch, landed Bain, BHP and the AFL as corporate clients, and closed one of Australia's biggest seed rounds, $10M USD led by a New York investor who flew to Sydney on Easter Sunday and didn't leave without a term sheet. This week Brendan sits down with Marc Hermann, Australia's leading COO Gillian Findlay, and investor Rohen Sood, all angel investors in Everlab, to get into the real story. How do you hire obsessives, not just smart people? Why did a US fund get it before Australian investors did? And is B2B SaaS actually cooked? Gillian just launched Third Room, a community for the operators who actually scale these companies. Rohen breaks down why the gradient beats the y-intercept every time. And Marc is brutally honest about what it actually looks like inside a fast-growing startup. It's a shitshow. That's the point. Time Stamps 00:00 Trailer, Intro & Guests 02:53 What Even Is Autonomous Healthcare 05:30 Jill & Rowan's Everlab Experience 07:36 Why Marc Built Everlab, The Personal Story 10:27 Sponsor: Vanta 12:05 Inside the Platform: 100 Biomarkers & Minus 8 Years Biological Age 13:14 Why They Built Their Own Patient Management System 17:05 Everything Is Breaking, How Do You Even Start 19:11 Hiring Obsessives, Not Just Smart People 22:54 Referral Hiring & Why Pedigree Is a Trap 24:34 Sponsor: Ten13 Ventures 25:50 Why Marc Quit His Post-Exit Life & Moved to Australia 29:53 Is B2B SaaS Cooked 37:57 How Leftlane Flew to Sydney on Easter Sunday & Left With a Deal 42:42 US vs Australia, Why Local Investors Didn't Get It First 49:27 Safety Culture's US Expansion & The Kansas City Lesson 51:51 Jill Launches Third Room, Community for Operators 55:24 Everlab Corporate: Bain, BHP, AFL & the B2B2C Flywheel 1:03:40 What Does Marc Actually Think of Bryan Johnson 1:05:23 Is AI Killing Junior Hiring 1:07:13 Why Every Founder Needs a Chief of Staff 1:10:54 What a Chief of Staff Actually Does vs a Glorified EA 1:13:35 Why You Should Work at Everlab Oversubscribed is proudly supported by our sponsor Vanta 🦙 Vanta is the all-in-one solution for startups to become compliant quickly and build a security foundation with ease. Startup customers get $1000 off Vanta at vanta.com/oversubscribed The Day One Network Oversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Guest Founders: Everlab: https://www.everlab.com.au/ Connect with Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-hermann-3132ab5b/ Third Room: https://thirdroom.au/ Connect with Gillian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillian-findlay-7a792429/ Enduring Investment Partners: https://www.enduringinvestments.com.au/ Connect with Rohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohen-s-b747a429/ Stay Updated: Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rZ9SajGVXkO8oxuvEHAsk?si=I2yR92GgRZa-Fdqbp8T4bw Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oversubscribed/id1848789610 Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or financial product. Brendan Hill is an investor in Everlab, Relevance AI and A1Base. About the Host: Brendan Hill is a Venture Partner at TEN13 and an angel investor in Australia’s fastest-growing startups, including Everlab, Heidi Health, Relevance AI and Instant. If you are interested in finding out more about angel investing, connect with Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbrendanhill/

Cracking AI Growth & Retention: How Instant & Relume scaled from $0 to $10m

How do AI companies scale this fast without breaking? Eight figure revenue in competitive markets. Products that double revenue in a single month. Customers who tattoo your logo on their body. Not growth hacks. Not hype. Real traction, earned the hard way. Brendan Hill sits down with Daniel Slater from Relume, Liam Millward from Instant, and Sally Yu from King River Capital to unpack what actually drives breakout AI companies in 2025. The answer is not building more features. It is obsession with distribution, ruthless focus on speed to value, and teams that move faster than their competitors think is possible. Relume did not start as an AI startup. It started as an agency. Building websites manually, feeling the pain firsthand, and removing the work that should never have existed. Instant did not find product market fit once. It found it three times, killing products, rebuilding teams, and learning the hard way that revenue without stickiness is a mirage. And from Silicon Valley, Sally Yu shares what she sees across the fastest growing AI companies in the world, why community is becoming the real moat, and why founders with unwavering conviction now win disproportionately. They talk candidly about churn, mistakes, hiring A players, monthly execution cycles, and why most AI products fail not because the tech is bad, but because the company moves too slowly. This is a conversation about momentum. About earning distribution. About building products people would fight to keep. If you want to understand how modern AI companies actually scale, and what it takes to stay ahead once you do, this episode is for you. Oversubscribed is proudly supported by our sponsor Vanta 🦙 Vanta is the all-in-one solution for startups to become compliant quickly and build a security foundation with ease. Startup customers get $1000 off Vanta at vanta.com/oversubscribed The Day One Network Oversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors. Guest Founders: Relume: relume.io Connect with Daniel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-james-slater-13079288/ Instant: instant.one Connect with Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liammillward/ King River Capital:http://www.kingriver.co/ Connect with Sally: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sally-tech/ Stay Updated: Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rZ9SajGVXkO8oxuvEHAsk?si=I2yR92GgRZa-Fdqbp8T4bw Listen to the Oversubscribed Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oversubscribed/id1848789610 Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or financial product. Brendan Hill is an investor in Everlab, Relevance AI and A1Base. About the Host: Brendan Hill is a Venture Partner at TEN13 and an angel investor in Australia’s fastest-growing startups, including Everlab, Heidi Health, Relevance AI and Instant. If you are interested in finding out more about angel investing, connect with Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsbrendanhill/

Pain is a Moat: How Australia’s Top AI Founders Are Building Global Giants

What does it take to build world class AI companies out of Australia, and why does San Francisco still move 6 to 9 months faster? In this episode, Brendan sits down with three of the most ambitious technical founders in the country: Pasha Rayan (CEO & Co-Founder at A1Base), Anshul Jain (Co-Founder at Everlab) and Jacky Koh (Founder at Relevance AI). They break down the rise of agentic AI, how engineering culture in SF accelerates innovation, and why the next generation of founders need to think in $100B outcomes. They dive into everything from 10 to 20 times engineering productivity gains, to building autonomous healthcare, to creating the communication layer for AI coworkers that everyday people will talk to like friends. They also unpack what Australia must do to stay competitive, how to build teams that love hard problems, and why ambition, pace and hands-on founders matter more than ever. It’s a rare inside look at the operators defining the next era of AI infrastructure, agent orchestration and human health. If you want to understand where AI agents are really going, and how Australia can catch up to the frontier, get subscribed. Oversubscribed is proudly supported by our sponsor Vanta 🦙 Vanta is the all-in-one solution for startups to become compliant quickly and build a security foundation with ease. Startup customers get $1000 off Vanta at vanta.com/oversubscribed The Day One Network Oversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors.

Inside the Startups Powering the Physical AI Revolution ($100 Trillion Opportunity)

EPISODE SUMMARY Is AI in the Physical World the next $100 Trillion Opportunity? In this episode of Oversubscribed, we go deep into the "Hard Tech" revolution. From defence-grade autonomy to data infrastructure for robots, we dive deep into the frontier of hard tech with the founders building it. Brendan Hill sits down with Michael Irwin (Co-Founder at Breaker), Joe Harris (Founder at Alloy), and returning guest Charlie Gearside (Co-Founder at Eucalyptus / Build Australia) for a wild conversation about robotics, physical AI, national ambition, and why Australia needs to start making things again. They talk building AI that lives on the edge, the ethics of defence, hiring A-players for impossible problems, and why the next industrial revolution might start right here. It’s an unfiltered look at the people shaping Australia’s place in the age of autonomy. TIME STAMPS 00:00 – Intro: Founders, frontier tech, and Australia’s new wave of builders 02:00 – Breaker’s origin story: building robots that act on human intent 05:00 – From drones to defense: autonomy, privacy, and life on the edge 08:20 – The hardest problems left to solve (and why easy ones are gone) 10:40 – Sponsor: Vanta – building trust and compliance for startups 12:00 – Alloy’s story: from Eucalyptus to building the data brain for robots 16:00 – Why Joe left a rocket ship to start from zero 19:30 – Building for the age of robotics: data, telemetry, and the next frontier 23:00 – Finding A-players: how ambitious missions attract ambitious people 25:00 – Culture, conviction, and what passion really looks like inside startups 27:00 – The defense dilemma: ethics, values, and the post-Ukraine mindset 30:00 – Going global: why Australia’s best founders build beyond its borders 34:00 – Build Australia: a new movement for ambition and national pride 38:00 – Manufacturing, energy, and why we stopped making things 43:00 – How robotics could solve Australia’s affordability crisis 46:00 – The humanoid debate: specialized vs. general intelligence 50:00 – Life in 2035: what robots at home might really look like 52:00 – Data, autonomy, and the next AI arms race 56:00 – How Breaker and Alloy could power each other’s missions 59:00 – Skynet, manipulation, and the ethics of AI power 1:03:00 – Competition, collaboration, and the Cambrian explosion of robotics 1:06:00 – Founder stories: from CB radios to humanoids in hack houses 1:09:00 – Building the next industrial revolution from Australia 1:10:00 – Final pitches: why you should join Breaker, Alloy, and Build Australia 1:11:00 – Outro: Vanta, Ten13, and building what comes next Oversubscribed is proudly supported by our sponsor Vanta 🦙 Vanta is the all-in-one solution for startups to become compliant quickly and build a security foundation with ease. Startup customers get $1000 off Vanta at vanta.com/oversubscribed The Day One Network Oversubscribed is part of Day One, the podcast network dedicated to founders, operators & investors.