EVENT // Join Us For A Free Info Session For Slingshot & NRMA’s JUMPSTART Initiative

mitchellake on October 2, 2014

This week Slingshot and NRMA announced their exciting new program Jumpstart, aimed at identifying, mentoring and jumpstarting startup and scale-up businesses. MitchelLake is proud to be an Event Partner and we invite our networks to engage in this great new program and attend the upcoming roadshow events.
NRMA is one of Australia’s most traditional and trusted brands, yet it continues to be increasingly innovative and forward thinking in its investment and growth strategy. The partnership with Slingshot is a great fit, and we look forward to seeing Jumpstart as a key player in the future strength of Australia’s rapidly evolving economy.
Jumpshot will be supporting 10 startups and four scale-up places in the program, with the accelerator offering:

• Potential to access more than 2.4 million NRMA members
• $30,000 seed funding
• Structured 12 week program
• Inspiring mentors
• Stimulating workspace at ‘hubs’ in Sydney or Newcastle

You’re invited to join Jumpstart and the panel to discuss what’s involved and to hear more about the initiative. There will be drinks and light finger food, followed by an opportunity to meet the panel and have an open discussion.
The panel speakers include some of the industry’s heavyweights from NRMA, Artesian Capital, Slingshot & MitchelLake. Reserve your free spot at the events now and get those ideas ready, with submissions closing on Friday 14 November.
For more information visit this website.

Sydney, Tuesday 14 October
Melbourne, Wednesday 15 October
Brisbane, Thursday 16 October
Newcastle, Friday 17 October

MBA or Startup?

mitchellake on August 20, 2014

Over the last few weeks I have been introduced to people that are looking to make the next step in their career. They are often-times working in a large business and weighing up their ‘what next’ options. The options are often:

• Get another job (possibly overseas)
• Do an MBA (or further study)
• Work in a startup

My first question is always the same. What made you come to this decision?

Unsurprisingly the answers are often a combination of the following:

• I want to work in a more dynamic business
• I feel like I have hit a ceiling and need new challenges
• I am passionate about disruptive technology
• I want to work with smart people
• I want a work culture that inspires me

As a specialist in building early stage technology businesses my counsel is always around the last option. My response to their answer is often the same: How much risk can you take on?
When you are used to a stable business and wage most people take on financial risk – unfortunately working in an early stage startup comes with high risk – high failure rate, pay cut etc. If you can take on this risk I would recommend working in an early stage business. This high risk high-reward option has more benefits above and beyond the potential monetary upside. Most entrepreneurs describe the experience as like doing an MBA …but on steroids.

What people are describing is a highly concentrated, highly accelerated learning experience where you are needing to adapt to rapid change and make decisions quickly. On top of this is often exposure to a broad variety of activities I call it “stacking the dishwasher” – this means you do whatever you have to do that is most important to the business at the time.

As a trend we are starting to see the corporate sector realise the benefit of this experience and ask for start-up experience. This is often within their ‘innovations’ or ‘emerging business’ areas. If you are interested in dipping your toes into this area check out the reading list below.

Reading List

ReWork – David Heinemeier Hansson
Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh
Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Melbourne’s Internet of Things

mitchellake on August 18, 2014

MitchelLake are proud to host Melbourne’s Internet of Things. This event aims to build a community around the internet, and educate people of how the internet affects business and business behaviours. With a special focus on WEARABLES and a panel of outstanding speakers, this event is certainly not to be missed: Danny Gorog, Director at Outware Mobile, Josh Guest, Founder of B2Cloud and Ben Glimmerveen, Senior Product Manager at Telstra.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/melbournes-internet-of-things-tickets-12597518517

Author

Jonathan Jeffries is a Managing Partner and leads the MitchelLake Group’s executive search practice. He brings over 10 years of global consulting experience, with a passion and focus across innovative technology.

Jonathan has successfully completed projects for global, fast growth organisations including Nitro, Yammer and Pandora Radio and has executed digital transformation programs within large corporations and innovative startups.

MitchelLake Group announced as finalists in Global Recruiter Awards

mitchellake on August 8, 2014

The team at MitchelLake Group are looking forward to the APAC Global Recruiter Awards after being nominated and named as finalists in two categories:

– Best Specialist Business (APAC)
– Best Overseas Operation (MitchelLake San Francisco office)

The winners will be announced at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on the 2nd of October.

“We are thrilled to be recognised in such a competitive global context. Our team has invested the last 14 years developing international talent networks to build and grow digitally enabled ventures and propositions” says Luke Partridge, Director MitchelLake Asia. “We are bullish about current trends in technology, talent and business. Global demand for executives and skills in our category is spiking and we are finding both business and talent to be increasingly fluid between markets. With our latest operation in Singapore we are able to play an increased pivotal role in this business growth and global career transitions that accompany this and the fantastic opportunities these present”

Group co-founder Jon Tanner concludes “Our current view is that markets are increasingly borderless. The combination of globalisation and digital connectivity is driving unprecedented opportunity, but with these opportunities come unprecedented challenges. Our purpose is to provide the knowledge our clients require to navigate those challenges and realise their potential whether they be a Silicon Valley startup or a multinational corporation.”

About MLG:

Inspired to help innovators succeed the MitchelLake Group was founded in Sydney in 2001 (on an idea and under pressure) by Phaedon Stough and Jon Tanner. We now have a talented team of nearly 50 people and operations in cities across APAC, North America and Europe. We are proud to work with some of the world’s most exciting organisations including: Etsy, Square, Dropbox, Stripe, Pandora Radio, SurveyMonkey, Wikia, Signal, Thumbtack, 99Designs and Strong View.

When we are not busy being the world’s leading supplier of executive and specialist talent we focus on producing compelling events and introductions to activate sales, investment and partnerships. In between we pay it forward and give back as much as we can.

MitchelLake

Talent for innovation

MitchelLake Group expands operations in Asia

mitchellake on May 28, 2014

MitchelLake group has underlined its continued APAC expansion with the appointment of Luke Partridge as Director, Asia based in Singapore.

Luke joins MitchelLake with more than 15 years of experience in executive search and talent solutions across the region working for high profile brands and technology ventures. Luke has been based in Singapore for the past 5 years.

MitchelLake now has operations in Singapore (EA 14S7050), Sydney, San Francisco and Melbourne with Satellite offices in London, Paris and the Gold Coast.

MitchelLake Co-founder Jon Tanner indicated that we will see lot more International activity from the group this year.

“Our US business has experienced more than 100% growth this year and we have seen a sharp uplift in ventures launching into the Asia pacific region. Our teams have delivered on more than 100 executive and specialist projects across nine countries and four continents since January.”

“It is an exciting time as we are seeing hyper funded businesses look to expand and into new markets. Some of these businesses are raising rounds of growth capital in the early to mid hundreds of millions. We expect this trend to continue as digitally enabled businesses from mature markets look to establish and accelerate their presence in high growth and emerging economies”

For more information on our and commercial enquires call Jon Tanner on +61 419 650 350 or email jon@mitchellake.com

Author

Sophie Ford is Head of Marketing and Communications for the MitchelLake Group. Her 13 years of experience have been gained in Sydney, New York and London. She has been a passionate member of the global innovation community since 2001 when she helped set-up an e-business solutions company. She has been enjoying the people and the business ever since.

SophieFord

sophie@mitchellake.com

Recapping The HR2.0 Event with Evan Wittenberg of Box

mitchellake on May 28, 2014

The MitchelLake Group and Sequoia Benefits partnered to sponsor the HR2.0 event on May 14th, hosted at the One Medical Building in San Francisco. The open forum event featured guest speaker Evan Wittenberg, SVP of People and member of the Executive Team at Box. Prior to joining Box, Evan spent time as the Chief Talent Officer of HP, Head of Global Leadership Development for Google, and Director of the Graduate Leadership Program at Wharton.

HR 2.0 brings together over 400 HR professionals from High Growth Tech companies around the Bay Area. HR 2.0 has held six events since the beginning of 2013, bringing the top industry thought-leaders together to share their stories and offer the opportunity to network with peers.

All HR2.0 Events follow an open format, allowing the guest speaker to discuss topics of his or her choice. But, after 5 very successful events, we wanted to involve our attendees a bit more by asking what topics they were most interested in hearing Evan talk about. The four points that were most important to our audience were:

1) Cutting Edge Leadership Development
2) How to keep your culture as the company scales
3) How to gain credibility with Executives
4) New Approaches to Time Off

With over 150 people in attendance One Medical Group, the event was full of great conversation and networking. One of the biggest takeaways of the evening was when Evan was asked what are some of the competencies of great leaders that he felt are very important and how he develops those leaders when they come in. He responded, “ I believe you should spend the money and time on managers at all levels that they have a lot of experience/practice/training. We want leadership behaviours from everyone not just role related leadership – we hope everyone takes on leadership skills and then there are some roles where leadership skills are required. The number one thing I look for is learning agility; we can hire the best people today but they won’t be the best in 6 months if they’re not interested and curious. Secondly is authenticity; what’s their self-awareness, do they believe in who they are and what they do and lastly, we hire someone who’s highly collaborative since our product is highly collaborative.”

Have a suggestion for a future topic or speaker? Please let us know. We’d love to hear from you! Be sure to follow us and HR2.0 on LinkedIn and Twitter to be informed of future event dates.

Sydney’s Lakers Cook up an Indian Feast at Ronald McDonald House

mitchellake on May 26, 2014

Childhood illness can have a devastating effect on families. As well as all the fear and uncertainty, there are the practicalities of managing the family when a child is away in hospital, often for extended periods of time.

On Wednesday 9th April this year, seven Lakers from our Sydney office left work early, donned aprons and got to work in Sydney’s Ronald McDonald House kitchen in Randwick to cook up a storm for the 80+ residents that evening. Ronald McDonald’s House Charities have been making life easier for seriously ill children and their families in Australia since 1981.

Sophie Cohen, our delightful French hen, contributed a tried and tested family chicken curry recipe and cooked up a tornado, whirring across all four stove tops simultaneously, pots, pans, wooden spoons and baby bump blurring together as she went. Robbo and Chop (alias Simon Robinson and Jamie Finnegan) had conducted a commando-style sweep of the local Woolworths earlier in the day to provide supplies for the project and swung into action chopping (Jamie of course) and stirring (Robbo always) for their lives. Lucas Partington launched himself into preparing entrees and added sparkle and aplomb to all he touched, relishing each and every “ding” of the microwave. Kevin Griffiths applied himself with gusto to the fruit salad, offering deep throated Northern British quips to the melee as he navigated pineapple chunks and grapes with an unwieldy meat cleaver. Johanna Peirce, our newbie, got stuck into the role of ‘all things to all people’, slicing, dicing, stirring, rinsing and generally getting a finger into every metaphorical pie in the room. I stuck to my role of chief fruitier and timekeeper, in readiness for my piece de resistance as chief washer-upper later on.

What transpired was a fantastical three course Indian inspired meal of gargantuan proportions that appeared to go down a treat with the families, many coming back for seconds. The House residents came down to eat in fits and starts throughout the evening. We spread ourselves out and sat to eat with them and provide some light relief and a change in conversation for these strung out families who spend most if not all of their days and nights talking, thinking, living and breathing their loved ones illnesses and medical procedures. Some of the stories we heard were heart and gut wrenching, but just to put a smile on the face of the shy little boy I sat next to and have him giggle with me as I let some chutney dribble down my chin and pretend not to notice, taking his and his young Mum’s mind off his strife for a little while, made it worthwhile for me.

We were all touched deeply by the people we met, the strength they have to find to keep going for their children, was humbling beyond words. We left exhausted but grateful for the opportunity to help. And I know I wasn’t the only one who got home and looked in on my healthy, sleeping family that night with a renewed sense of gratitude.

What Ronald McDonald House provides is a safe, warm and utterly homely place for these families to stay, some for days, some months, where they can live as normally as possibly while their kids receive treatment. It’s an amazing provision and done with love and commitment from all involved. We loved stepping in for a night to help out and will definitely be back to do it again.

If your company would like to participate in the evening meal programme, get in touch with Ronald McDonald House via http://www.rmhc.org.au/ I highly recommend it!

EVENT: Like to know more about SurveyMonkey? Meet the CEO, David Goldberg in Sydney

mitchellake on May 23, 2014

EVENT: Join Paul Colgan, Editor of Business Insider Australia, when he sits down with Dave Goldberg for a fireside chat about his entrepreneurial journey.

Dave has had the rare experience of being an entrepreneur, founder and CEO, and will share his insights into the differences of each job, the skills sets needed for each, and the unique lessons he learned in each role.

Click here for event details and registration.

Read about the worlds largest survey provider, SurveyMonkey on Crunch base.

Attend this Q&A event with the CEO David Goldberg next Wednesday.

Author

Kevin Griffiths leads MitchelLake Executive for the ANZ Practice. Based in Sydney, he is focused on supporting startups, NewCo’s, scale-ups, and established tech companies with C-suite and board requirements, in addition to working with Australian SME’s and enterprises undergoing digital/technology transformations.

Since joining MLE in 2012, Kevin has led over 100 searches. His time has been divided into three key areas – CEO searches for scale-ups or tech companies going through transformation; CTO/CPO searches for tech companies with a global requirement to bring talent to Australia with technology and/or product leadership at scale; and consulting to and leading searches with clients looking to innovate, who are seeking advice from the MLE practice on the question of build, buy, or partner.

Prior to joining MLE, Kevin was a Partner at BMS where he built and led the Midlands commercial practice in the UK, before moving to Australia to help scale the business in Sydney and Melbourne.