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/

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.

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

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.

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/



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.

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.