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Wild Hearts

Wild Hearts

By: Blackbird Ventures
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About this listen

 Wild Hearts is the podcast that reveals the real-time lessons from the founders and operators changing the world. Career Success Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Personal Finance
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Episodes
  • Launching Iconic Tech Companies in Australia with Kate Vale (ex-Google & Spotify)

    Launching Iconic Tech Companies in Australia with Kate Vale (ex-Google & Spotify)
    May 13 2025
    What’s it like to be employee number one at two of the most iconic tech companies of the past two decades? In this episode of Wild Hearts, guest host and investor at Blackbird, Maddy Guest sits down with Kate Vale; Google and Spotify’s first hire in Australia. From launching Google out of her lounge room to scaling Spotify into a household name, Kate shares behind-the-scenes stories of tech history in the making, the leadership lessons that stuck, and why her latest career act is all about investing in women. In this conversation, we cover: 📞 The cold call from Google that changed her life and brought her to the global tech world—and tech in APAC 🚀 What it was like to launch Google Australia from her lounge room 🌍 Why Spotify was a harder sell than Google—and how she got artists on board 💡 The cultural rituals that helped Kate build high-performance teams across two giants 🔥 The one mistake most startups make when scaling their teams globally 📈 Why she co-founded a VC fund to back female tech founders during the pandemic 🎯 What Kate looks for in a founder, and the red flags that kill the deal This episode is a fascinating look behind the scenes at some of the earliest experiences of bringing global tech companies to Australia, and how these experiences have shaped Steph’s career and investing approach.
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    42 mins
  • LIVE from Sunrise Australia: How Alex Zaccaria Reclaimed Linktree’s Vision and Culture

    LIVE from Sunrise Australia: How Alex Zaccaria Reclaimed Linktree’s Vision and Culture
    May 1 2025
    What happens when a side project becomes a platform used by over 75 million people—yet the founder feels like they’re losing control of it? In this special live episode of Wild Hearts , Linktree co-founder and CEO Alex Zaccaria joins Mason Yates on stage at Sunrise Australia to unpack the messy, inspiring story behind one of Australia’s most iconic tech exports. From unpacking Alex’s early creative instincts to the cultural tensions between Australia and the US, this is an unfiltered conversation on clarity, leadership, and staying close to the product that made it all possible. In this conversation, we cover: 🚀 How Linktree grew from a music industry side project into a global internet infrastructure tool 🔁 Why Alex Zaccaria scrapped traditional org charts and rebuilt the team from a “zero-based budget” approach 🧠 The internal mindset shift from people-pleasing to product-led, founder-first decision making 🔗 Why simplicity is one of the hardest product challenges—and how Linktree maintains it at massive scale 🗺️ What it means to build a business across two cultures—Australia and the US—and how the team navigates tall poppy syndrome 💸 How Linktree's new “Sponsored Links” marketplace is flipping influencer marketing into measurable performance 🎤 The evolution of leadership clarity and why Alex now operates in “mandate mode” 📈 What it takes to stay true to your product intuition—even when everyone around you tells you otherwise And of course, because this is a live episode, there’s some audience questions and banter along the way! Listen in for a conversation about reclaiming vision, rewriting culture, and building at global scale while staying grounded in creative instinct.
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    36 mins

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