Episodes

7 Sep 2025 / Ep. 44 / 45:32

Until AI replaces the need for humans completely, building a team remains a crucial part of building a startup, and the need for other humans to help get things off the ground often comes before the budget to hire them, so some clever thinking is required. Megan Luttrell – founder of Kairos Recruitment and Aussie Founders Club – joins Scotty this week for a conversation to work out what’s smart, and what’s not, when it comes to startup recruitment.

About Megan Luttrell:

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/meganluttrell

Website: https://www.kairosrecruitment.com.au/

Aussie Founders Club: https://www.aussiefoundersclub.com/

4 Sep 2025 / Ep. 43 / 30:32

In this Founder Friday episode, we’re talking to Nicole Bouchier, founder of SklChat

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic.

In this chat, we talk about Nicole’s experience of building and exiting her first company and the steps that led her to jumping back on the startup rollercoaster to develop SklChat. She shares a number of great learnings as a second time founder and the things she’s doing differently this time around thanks to her previous experience.

31 Aug 2025 / Ep. 42 / 49:10

Fractional leadership roles are becoming more common in startups and scaleups. We’re more familiar with a fractional CFO or CTO – but what about business development?

In this discussion with experienced enterprise leader Andrew Sharpe, we look at the ways that larger companies are embracing fractional leadership in the growth arena – be is sales, product, etc, how it applies to the startup world, and what mindset is required both the founder and the fractional leader when approaching this strategy in the startup space.

About Andrew Shape:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-sharpe/

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sharpepts

28 Aug 2025 / Ep. 41 / 45:58

In this Founder Friday episode, we’re talking to Mari Robert, founder of Inflamed.

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic.

In this chat, we talk about the very personal experience that led Mari to the creation of Inflamed, the challenges of generalising a solution to a problem you’ve experienced to make it a commercially viable product, and all of Mari’s learnings from the Inflamed journey to date.

24 Aug 2025 / Ep. 40 / 55:46

AI is everywhere. Depending on where you are at on the continuum, it’s probably the thing that is either exciting you the most, confusing you the most, or scaring you the most at the moment – maybe a combination of all three.

The market is struggling with its own confusion, concerns, and fear around AI, and that makes it critical that founders challenge their own biases and misconceptions in order to effectively position products for customers in this current landscape.

Our guest for this episode is Dr Sam Donegan. Sam is the co-founder of Support Sorted and the Vice President of MLAI. You can learn more at:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samueldonegan/

MLAI: https://mlai.au/

Support Sorted: https://www.supportsorted.com/



21 Aug 2025 / Ep. 39 / 1:02:07

In our first Founder Friday episode, we’re talking to Andrew Murphy, founder of Tech Leaders Launchpad.

Founder Friday is about works still in progress. Learning from success stories is important, but learning from founders still in the thick of getting to market is just as useful – and sometimes much more realistic.

In this chat, we talk about what inspired Andrew to create TLL, his learnings along the way, and the advice he’d give brand new founders based on the experience.

18 Aug 2025 / Ep. 38 / 53:09

The Bootstrap is back for 2025, and we’re kicking off with a great conversation with Brenton Anderson from Lovable about the learnings and success stories from the recent Lovable Shipped program.

We also have a wider discussion about the impact of AI tools like Lovable on validation and commercialisation – it’s definitely worth a listen!

Also, we now have a website! You can check out thebootstrap.tech for all current and past episodes of the show – watch this space as we take some of our most impactful episodes and turn them in to resources you’ll love.

Brenton Andersen looks after Community Engagement for startup rocketship Lovable. He started as a Lovable user and now heads up community outreach, including the recent Loveable Shipped program.

9 Sep 2024 / Ep. 37 / 41:30

If you work in tech and or with startups and you haven’t heard a dozen people say a version of “we need to add AI” or “I’m building an AI product”, then we’ve been in different meetings. It can feel like a mess of talk and buzzwords, and honestly a lot of it is, so how does the average founder navigate all the noise and work out what we really should be focusing on when it comes to AI?

Gavin Reddrop is here to help try to answer that question. Gavin is the founder of Tactic AI and the developer of the Airtok AI Token.

30 Aug 2024 / Ep. 36 / 39:53

What influences the decision to bootstrap a startup as opposed to going down the fundeaising route, and if you decide to go that waty, how do you do it? My guest for this episode, Tom Bruining, stepped out of a long histopry of working in funded startups and decided to do just that. Along with his co-founders, Tom started HowdyGo, a product that allows you to easyilu Capture real, interactive product demos

To share that journey and help us learn from it, Tom joins us now.

21 Aug 2024 / Ep. 35 / 48:23

Most founders don’t see themselves as sales people, and many either try to avoid taking on that role altogether, or offloading it as soon as possible. What is the best way for founders to approach sales when its not a comfortable pair of shoes, how do you know when it’s time to transition away from founder-led sales, and how do you do it?

To help me unpack this host Scotty Allen is joined by Gavin Tye. Gavin is the founder of sales market fit where he helps founders, and their teams create a repeatable sales framework that delivers real results for their business.

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