Unconventional Business - The Pet Ownership Boom: From Start-Up to IPO, the Qantas Partnership and What One Million New Dogs in Australia Means for Mad Paws

The Pet Ownership Boom: From Start-Up to IPO, the Qantas Partnership and What One Million New Dogs in Australia Means for Mad Paws

10/12/21 • 31 min

From pet-sitting a Labrador named Honey for a friend, to establishing a game-changing partnership with Qantas, going public in the middle of a global pandemic and the acquisition of Waggly Club - Mad Paws' co-founder, Alexis Soulopoulos, joins us on Unconventional Business this week.

How did Mad Paws, a business founded on pet-sitting services, increase both bookings and new customer acquisition during a global pandemic, when the vast majority of Australia was grounded? What was the catalyst for the company to buck the trend and go public so early into their journey? How did Alexis and the team overcome the vast challenges that exist in building marketplace business models? And with 69% of Aussie households owning a pet, what does the future look like for Mad Paws and the pet industry?

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Bonus Episode: Unconventional Business live at GROW ANZ with Sweat's Tobi Pearce

Tobi Pearce and co-founder Kayla Itsines grew Sweat, now a globally recognised fitness brand and one of Apple’s most downloaded health apps, from what was, in 2015, an e-book called the ‘Bikini Body Guide’' (or 'BBG', for those in the know).

Tobi joins us in a bonus episode of Unconventional Business, live from GROW, to talk about the brand’s explosive growth over the last seven years and how he and Kayla took the brand from e-book to app, and where they drew inspiration from.

Kat and Tobi dig into the critical role of customers in subscription business models, how Tobi thinks about driving value for customers, how the Sweat team harnesses the feedback and insights from their global community of more than 50M, where Tobi goes for innovation and what’s coming next for the homegrown success story.

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Australia's Billion Dollar Problem: Clinical Trials, The Impact on Human Life and How HealthMatch is Changing the Future of Medicine

Manuri Gunawardena was 24 and in her final years of medical school, working on a brain cancer drug trial, when she witnessed the inequities in the clinical trial industry and the impact on human life. One patient in the trial was able to navigate the complex system and access a clinical trial and drug that was successful in curing their disease, another was not and sadly passed away.

Manuri made her own life-changing decision and, instead of becoming a clinician, founded HealthMatch. HealthMatch is a platform that empowers patients to identify and access clinical trials, changing the lives of people who need to access clinical trials and the future of medicine in Australia and across the world.

Clinical trials are worth $1 billion to Australia’s economy, yet 80% of trials are delayed or abandoned, impacting on the lives of the tens of thousands of people who need access to these often life-saving drugs. Why?

There are fundamental issues with the clinical trial model. It’s inefficient and inequitable, archaic and broken, the very opposite of customer-centric. We see data and technology used to drive innovation and create personalised experiences in almost every other industry, so why not this one? Why has the clinical trial industry fallen so far behind?