Ceremony: 2 May 2017, 10.30am
Speech
Distinguished guests, the graduates, your family and friends that have come to support you, congratulations on being here today. It was only 10 years ago that I graduated from my university degree, from the University of Sydney. And I remember sitting where you were, back in 2005. Since that time, in the last 10 years, I’ve co-founded six companies. Two were not-for-profits – Fishburners and Start-up Oz – and both of those not-for-profits have had a profound impact on entrepreneurship in Australia. My invitation today is a shining example of what you guys can achieve in the next 10 years yourselves. And I hope that many of you are invited to deliver the occasional address at UTS. When I sort of look back and remember to sitting in your seats, I could not possibly have imagined where I’ve come over the last 10 years, and I want to share a few pieces of advice and stories – just three – that have helped me, or as I reflect on, that I’ve learnt along the way.
As everyone here is aware, technology is significantly impacting, and has impacted, the landscape today that we all live in and operate in, and the pace of change continues to really sort of outpace our politicians and the CEOs of Australia’s largest businesses, and everyone, universities, we’re all trying to keep up. And that’s a great opportunity for you as you sit here today. You have significant opportunity to make the world a better place, in which to live and work and really to do what you love, and what you’re passionate about from a country that you love. In addition to the skills that you’ve learnt here at UTS, there’s never been a better time in history where people in their twenties have been respected for their vision and talents and ability and been included to sort of have a seat at the table. If you want to brush up on any extra skills, it’s also never been an easier time to do that. You can learn any skill you want online or in further education at any point. And I can sort of look at you all out there, thinking what are you going to do with all this opportunity? I know it keeps me up at night. And what I encourage you to do is, to do what you love, and that takes – it’s very difficult to do what you love; it takes a lot of courage and clarity of purpose and tenacity. So I’m going to share three stories with you today.
My first story is about Fishburners, which is a tech co-working space just down the road – it’s about 100 metres away – that I co-founded in 2011. Fishburners started from a problem where two start-ups were sharing an office. One start-up was called Grad Connections – you might know them; they place grads in graduate positions. And they shared an office with another start-up that was purchased or bought out, and that start-up moved out of the office, and Grad Connections was sat there with half an empty office. Grad Connections needed to decide if they were going to move out of the office, or what they could do, and they ended up inviting some of their entrepreneurial friends to come and join them. And that was sort of the seed of the first tech co-working space in Sydney. The decision was the genesis of Fishburners, which in the last six years has helped 700 tech start-ups get going. It’s also had 2,500 events, and 70,000 people have been to those events. When we started Fishburners, we were only trying to start a small space where I could, and my friends could sort of help each other as we went along our journeys, because as a young entrepreneur, it was very difficult. And from that point, that genesis point to today, I can trace a hundred things that needed to happen at exactly the time that they happened for Fishburners to be where it is today. And I can’t tell you exactly why they happened at the time they did, for us to achieve what we achieved, but I can tell you that you don’t need to know where you’re going to get started. You don’t need to know where you’re going to get started. And I encourage you to explore without the need to know where you’ll end up, and I’ll tell you a story about that a little bit later on. I was recently speaking with Rob Coleman, who’s the head of animation and Animal Logic – Animal Logic, they make films, feature films like Happy Feet. And he said a lot of people ask him how he gets a vision or a story through to an Academy Award-winning film? And he said it’s just like crossing a river, or a creek. You take the first step onto the first stone that looks like it might get you across the river, and from there you’ll have new information to work out which stone to jump onto next. If you get there and it wasn’t a great choice, you can just jump back and make the decision again. So stone by stone, move by move, you’ll work out how to get across the river. And although you didn’t know the path when you made the first jump, from each point, the information you have helps you make the next step along the way. And this was the decision-making style the board at Fishburners used to turn Fishburners into what it is today.
My second story is one from one of the Fishburners members around luck, and he coined the term – I think he coined the term – ‘surface area of luck’. And he said in order to be lucky, you need to stand where luck can find you. And so you need to have the largest surface area possible, and for him, that was moving from his house in Manly into Fishburners so he could increase his surface area of luck. He knew simply that the larger his surface area was, the more lucky he would be, and he ended up at the most prestigious corporate accelerator in the world, Y Combinator, where he continued to expand his surface area of luck again. Now you’ve completed your studies, I encourage you to talk to everyone about your values, about your dreams, and I guarantee that luck will find you. So I want you to talk to everyone about what you value and what you dream about, and people will help you along the way to achieve your dreams.
My third story is a piece of advice that changed my life, and it was from a very successful entrepreneur that came into Fishburners, and he told us that young people were terrible at making decisions. I don’t think it’s just about young people. He said the problem with young people is they don’t know how to make decisions. They spend too much time on reversible decisions, and it paralyses them. He gave an example of someone wanting to buy a house. He said the initial decision to buy a house is to spend some time on a website looking for a house, or visiting, reading newspapers or visiting real estate agents. At any point, you can decide that you don’t really want to be spending your time doing that. When you find the perfect house, the decision to buy it won’t be as difficult as you first thought. So he sort of chunks decisions down into the number of things you need to do to get to the end point, and then what he decides to do is, you start along that journey and at any point, you can make the decision not to do it anymore. So he essentially says if a decision’s reversible, you should just do it, and not spend too much time thinking about doing it, because if it’s the wrong decision, you can just jump backwards. If the decision isn’t reversible, talk to your family and your friends and sleep on it overnight. He said each morning when you get up, and make your decision for the day, it’s often not that very easy to retrace your steps if you’ve made the wrong decision. So living in this way, where you can just make decisions more quickly, will give you a lot more freedom to make the decisions you want to live. So if you’re considering moving overseas, or you’re considering taking an internship in a not-for-profit, or you’re considering doing something that maybe you didn’t think was the right thing for you to be doing, I’d encourage you just to do it, and if it’s not the right decision, it’s quite easy just to take the step back and take the next step. I’ve got a couple of pieces of advice for you to leave with that have really helped me along the way. One is be a giver not a taker – always lead with value first, and give your time and knowledge freely. People’s skills are your most important asset, so I’d suggest being obsessed with how you can attract and lead amazing team of people, and how you can get along with other suppliers and co-workers as well. Spend time each week making sure that you’re living according to your values. If you’re not, make sure that you take a leap of faith in how you’re living, and step by step, you’ll end up leading the life that you deserve, and that again takes courage. Sometimes you need to be lost to find your own way. You won’t always know where you’ll end up, but from each step along the journey, you’ll have that new perspective that will allow you to make the right decision. So if you’re along a journey and you feel lost, that’s okay – just keep moving forward.
My last piece of advice is around sharing your passion liberally. So if you share your passion liberally with everyone that you meet, those people will help you achieve them. If you keep them to yourselves, you won’t achieve half as much, so I want you to share your passions with everyone you meet, and hopefully you’ll be twice as successful as I have been in half the time. In closing, I’d like to congratulate you on getting to this point, and I look forward to many of you celebrating many more significant achievements, and I hope the stories that have helped me achieve so much in the last 10 years for me help you achieve just as much. Thank you.
About the Speaker
Peter is the Co-founder and CEO of the innovation consultancy, The Beanstalk Factory. He is also a founding Director of the non-for-profit organisation, StartupAUS and Australia’s largest tech co-working space, Fishburners. Peter lead Fishburners for two and a half years, which is now home to over 175 Tech Startups and has coordinated over 2,500 events with over 70,000 attendees. Peter has become well-known for his work shaping the Sydney and Australian technology startup community. He has been recently recognised as one of Australia’s top 10 most influential people in technology.
As an active pioneer, Peter has extensive experience in Corporate Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship. His experience includes: Technology Startup Founder of Qantas Postcards in 2007; Founding Director and Initial CEO of the co-working space Fishburners Limited in 2011, the technology entrepreneurship advocacy group StartupAUS Limited in 2013, as well as Founder and CEO of The Beanstalk Factory in 2016. His focus at The Beanstalk Factory is coaching individuals within corporations to innovate faster and with greater confidence. The Beanstalk Factory operates throughout Australia and works primarily with large ASX listed companies and government departments.
As Initial CEO of StartupAUS, Peter and the board worked alongside Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to shape what is now the government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA). Many of StartupAUS’ policy recommendations, as outlined in the organisation’s 2015 Crossroads Report, were instrumental to the development of NISA.
Peter graduated from the University of Sydney in 2005 after completing a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics with Honours.