Life After Launch.
Subscribe
All episodes
Episode 2 · 4 August 2026 · 49 min

Jodie Imam - sometimes you don't need a rocket ship. You need a tractor

SpotifyApple Podcasts

Episode 2 drops Tuesday 4 August - subscribe to get it first

Jodie Imam, guest on Life After Launch episode 2

About Jodie

Jodie Imam co-founded Occasional Butler, which was acquired by Airtasker, and opened depo8, one of Melbourne's first coworking spaces. Today she co-runs Tractor Ventures, the revenue-based funding company backing profitable, sustainable Founders - the tractors, not the rockets.

If you've ever felt like you're not a "real" Founder because you're not chasing unicorn status, this episode is your permission slip to build differently.

Jodie Imam has done almost everything you can do in the Australian startup ecosystem. She co-founded Occasional Butler and went head to head with Airtasker (who eventually acquired her), opened depo8, one of Melbourne's first coworking spaces, and now runs Tractor Ventures, the revenue-based funding company backing the Founders who don't want to ride the VC rocket. And it all started at age 12 with a business called The Ironing Lady.

You'll hear the moment at Ericsson that convinced Jodie she could never trust a corporation with her future, and the trade she made to escape it - her car space for a job with fashion designer Leona Edmiston, working weeks for free to prove herself. Then the Occasional Butler story, including the very first job posted on the platform (a $5 gig to eat a packet of Doritos, planted by a rival you might have heard of), the Gumtree hack that finally unlocked their flywheel, and the raise-or-sell decision she faced while pregnant with her third child. Plus the journal entry that led to Tractor Ventures, and why you can absolutely manage millions and pull tarot cards in the same week.

What's covered · 21 chapters
  1. 00:00Cold open - tractors, not rockets
  2. 01:05A couple of disclaimers from Megan
  3. 02:10Introducing Jodie Imam
  4. 03:11The Ironing Lady: entrepreneurship at age 12
  5. 04:00The Ericsson redundancies that broke corporate trust forever
  6. 05:13Trading a car space for a job with Leona Edmiston
  7. 07:44Why you can't change direction and expect a corporate wage
  8. 10:26Babies as the catalyst: leaving after nine years
  9. 11:20Occasional Butler: a house with eleven walls too many
  10. 14:30Launching a coworking space nobody was searching for
  11. 15:15The first job ever posted: a $5 Doritos prank from Airtasker
  12. 16:20Street teams, mascots, and the Gumtree hack that unlocked the flywheel
  13. 19:02Why launching feels like standing on a stage naked
  14. 20:09Raise or sell: the road to the Airtasker acquisition
  15. 24:51Innovation Bay, Melbourne and building the ecosystem
  16. 27:26Shutting depo8 overnight and starting Tractor from lockdown
  17. 31:58Tractors, not rockets: how revenue-based financing works
  18. 39:54EOS, visionaries, integrators and going from co-CEOs to one
  19. 44:42Divorce, spiritual awakening, and goddess rituals
  20. 47:41Quickfire: inspiration and the ecosystem shout out
  21. 49:16Outro

Never miss a launch.

Join the Aussie Founders Club newsletter - free, every Tuesday, with each new episode inside.

One email a week from Aussie Founders Club. Unsubscribe anytime.

Jodie Imam: We're called Tractor Ventures because we're not for the rockets, because sometimes the rockets land on the moon and that's great when they do, but most of the time they blow up and that's ugly.

Megan: Hey, I'm Megan Luttrell. I run Aussie Founders Club, a community for founders, operators, and investors. Largely we've been an events-first, in-person community for the startup ecosystem, but now we're podcasters. I also run Kairos Recruitment, a recruitment company which supports startups and scale-ups.

Geo: Hi, I'm Geo George, partner at Mayfly Ventures. We're a venture studio that builds industry-focused AI and software ventures. This is the Aussie Founders Club Life After Launch podcast.

Megan: We cut through the startup noise with unscripted stories and tactical advice from the founders who have built before us.

Geo: The show is all about what happens after you launch. The business lessons, the life lessons, and of course everything in between. That's Life After Launch.

Megan: Thanks for tuning back into episode two.

Geo: If you haven't already, go back and listen to episode one where we interview Dom Pym.

Megan: Before jumping into this episode, I need to make a couple of disclaimers. One, for my dignity, but two, to make sense of the episode for you. So I went out and bought a bunch of equipment. I was like, we're gonna produce this podcast by ourselves. That was not the case. We needed help. So some of these episodes have been recorded mid to late last year. So if there's some timing references, like the recent election, that is why. Also, something I've learned when listening back to the podcast is, as a host, you do not need to respond back to everything the podcast guest is saying. So we've cut out most of this, but when you do hear an abundance of yes from me, please ignore, we have trained ourselves out of this in the later episodes. Anyway, hope you enjoy. Today's guest is a core part of the Australian startup ecosystem. We're sitting down with Jodie Imam.

Geo: If you've spent any time in the Australian startup scene, you probably know Jodie. She co-founded this business called Occasional Butler, which was acquired by Airtasker. She then ran the depo8 coworking space and now is at Tractor Ventures.

Megan: But did you know her entrepreneurial journey started when she was 12 with a company called The Ironing Lady?

Geo: Yeah, that's pretty crazy that she went from ironing clothes to competing head to head with Airtasker and now is literally managing millions in funding for founders who don't want to ride the VC rocket.

Megan: Part of our mission with Life After Launch isn't just to talk about the learnings from the startup build, but also those that happen beyond the build and their personal life. That's exactly what we did with Jodie. We talked about the messy middles of exits, co-founding with a spouse and her recent spiritual awakening involving goddesses and witchcraft.

Geo: This is such an exciting episode. Let's get into it.

Megan: So Jodie, I think we want to start by taking it back to your childhood. Is there anything from that time you think shaped the path you have taken as an entrepreneur?

Jodie Imam: There might be. And I was thinking about this probably more recently, 'cause someone had put on LinkedIn actually, I think it was Sean Greeley, he said, what was your first job? And I put in there, my first job was at twelve, I became an ironing lady for my mum's friends. And then at thirteen I became a babysitter for, again, friends of my mum's who had kids. And so when I reflect back on that, like that was just a drive to start earning my own money and eventually getting my own independence, like getting out of my family home and just doing my own thing. So I moved out at 17 years old and had two jobs while I was at uni. And so I've always had this like strong drive for independence and making my own money. So I guess like there is a good link there. After I finished uni, I went and got a graduate program job at a big multinational company in tech, and then went to Ericsson. And so at Ericsson, it was back in about two thousand, two thousand and one, and they were selling flip phones like crazy, but still they made a whole lot of redundancies. And some of the people I was working with, like they were men who had been there for thirty years and suddenly didn't have a job and they were distraught. Like they actually didn't know what they would do with themselves. This was very late in their career in their minds and what would they do?

Megan: And it was back in the time when you would just sit and lunge all for a long time.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, that's right. Like their parents would have had a job for life and that's probably what they just expected. And that's when that seed was really planted for me that I can't trust even the biggest, most successful multinational companies to keep paying me. And so right then and there I decided I'm just gonna have to start my own business so that I've got control over my destiny.

Megan: Did you have the strong drive for independence to earn your own money because maybe you didn't have much when you were younger?

Jodie Imam: That's right. Yeah, that's right. And so my mum and dad got divorced when I was ten. We didn't have much money. Mum hadn't worked before, so she had to go off and get a job.

Geo: Did you know what that path looks like? Like did you have role models or like mentors that you can look up to? Help navigate that?

Jodie Imam: No. So I had a boyfriend at the time who, from uni, we were together since uni. We both did a marketing degree, but he was following his radio career and following that real passion for radio and that creative career he wanted. And so that really influenced me in where I wanted - I started thinking, what's my passion? What do I want to do? And I loved fashion at the time as a 23-year-old girl. And so I quit my job at Ericsson, sold my car, and it was just so lucky that at the same time Leona Edmiston, who's a fashion designer, put a letter in my mailbox saying that she was looking for a car space and 'cause I just sold the car, I had a car space. So I had a great excuse to meet her and her husband. And yeah, I asked them, I said, you can have my car space, but can I have a job? 'Cause I just didn't have my own idea yet. But I thought I want to explore my passion and a creative industry. And so I ended up with them for nine years as their general manager, like we grew the business quite a lot over that time. And I wasn't going to be there that long. That was just going to be because I didn't have my own idea yet. I just wanted to explore a passion area. But the company was growing so fast. And every year I was learning so much that I ended up there nine years. But it was after that that I went out and started my first actual business on my own.

Megan: I mean, like, you're like, if I can't trust this big company to keep me employed. So I'm going to question, I'm not actually sure what I'm going to do. What made you decide, like, was it just like young naivety being like, I'm going to figure this out?

Jodie Imam: Well it was also like I just found it soul destroying. Like it was killing me. And I had this boyfriend who was having this great time in radio. Like so this contrast of just this horrible soul destroying environment and him having all this fun. And it's like I just can't stand it. And he was quite supportive to say, yeah, just go do something else.

Geo: But it takes a whole nother type of courage to go like, okay, I'm totally gonna surrender and I'm gonna do this thing and I don't know where it's gonna land, but I trust myself enough to be able to like figure it out.

Jodie Imam: There would have been naivety for sure. And I volunteered. Like I worked for them for a couple of weeks with no money. Like they said, yeah, you can come work with us, we've got no money. So I've talked about this a lot over the years with people that want to change direction. Like you can't change direction and expect a corporate wage. Like sometimes you might just have to have zero salary or zero money and just prove that you can add value.

Megan: I work with people who have hated their job and like, I mean, I move jobs quite a bit and then obviously now I run my own stuff. And you're ready to take much bigger risks if you can't tolerate it. For like working not in alignment with your values.

Jodie Imam: Yes, that's true. Yeah, like running a fashion business that's bootstrapped, effectively. There was no external funding except for government grants. And they both, Jeremy and Leona, gave me a lot of trust. And as we grew, my role grew and they were very happy for that. And so yeah, I was very much in the deep end learning. So there was, I don't know, three people at the start and then over a hundred by the time I left because we had twenty-five stores all around the world and you know each store needs a team of people and so yeah we sort of grew from very small into a hierarchy and you know it was so tight because we were growing so quickly and you know there's a lag with fashion. You sample the garment and then you have to produce it and then you have to get it into store and then you've got to wait for someone to buy. Like the way that the cash flow works in the fashion business is the hardest.

Geo: I had this concept that I try and instill in my team, which is like having an owner's mentality. You were almost like acting as an owner of the business.

Jodie Imam: That's so interesting you say that 'cause I did say that to them. I'm like, I'll work for you but I wanna run my own business one day. So if I work with you or for you, I have to feel like it's my business as well. Like that was a hundred percent my mindset the whole time and it wasn't until the last few years that I did have a joint venture where I had profit share in some of the online store and the vintage network of stores and so eventually I got to that ownership position with them but it was very much upfront straight away. I said, I just wanna run my own business so I have to feel that that's what I'm doing.

Megan: By now we can really start to see how Jodie's childhood, learning to stand on her own two feet, realising that she would have to build the life she wanted rather than work at a corporate job she hated, is what pushed the needle towards her startup journey.

Geo: Well, it certainly taught her to take more risk, like working for free at a fashion company, just so she can cut her teeth at running a business.

Megan: Why did you want to move on? Was it that you decided you're ready to go do something yourself or did you have an idea?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, well I always wanted to obviously. And then I started having babies and so that was the real catalyst for change, as I think it is for a lot of women. 'Cause you need to take that break from day-to-day working to have a baby. And also by this point, the business, the Leona Edmiston business, was my baby. And then when I had a baby as well, like I found that too much. That was too much. And I came straight back to work after twelve weeks of maternity leave, which wasn't even fully on leave, still doing some stuff from home. First baby, like it was a lot. And so when I got pregnant with our second baby, that's when I knew there was no way I could do the business, a baby and a toddler. And so that was a catalyst. So that's when my husband at the time and I decided to start our own thing.

Megan: And is this Occasional Butler? Where did you even get the idea?

Jodie Imam: It is. Yeah, so we just renovated this house in Annandale, which we bought, which had like eleven walls too many. It was this weird house, but the only way we could get into the market was to buy a weird house. So it was probably the worst house on the best street kind of thing. And so we needed to renovate it to make it livable, but we didn't have much money left after the auction. So it was just like how do we get small jobs done, because you can't get a tradie to come in without a minimum fee or without doing a big job, like they won't come and tile one wall or do one small thing. And so it was that idea of getting small jobs done around the home.

Megan: Crazy to hear you describe a concept because now it's so accessible.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, there wasn't. So then we're thinking about how do we do it. And we found TaskRabbit in the US already doing it. And so we just really learned as much as we could about how they were doing it. And that sort of led us into this whole - back then, this was 2012, the shared economy, collaborative consumption, all these big new terms, and we were like, this is awesome. Love this. Love that we can build something scalable. We can leverage community. We're like, let's be the TaskRabbit of Australia. That's our thing.

Geo: This next part of Jodie's journey is really fascinating. Especially when you consider how small the startup ecosystem was at that time. It begins with the first step she took alongside her husband to solve a problem that they had experienced themselves. So obviously the execution is a big part. Like, what was that like? So you mentioned you were starting this business with your partner at that time. Like what was the kind of co-founding dynamics? Did you guys identify as co-founders?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, so we both wanted to be all in on it. We were definitely co-founders. We spent time thinking about what our individual strengths were and we knew we didn't want to step on each other's toes too much. So we had to define boundaries of you're doing this stuff, I'm doing this stuff. And yeah, we were all in. So we sold our house, we moved to Melbourne.

Megan: The walls knocked down and then finally it's livable.

Jodie Imam: Pretty much, well, there was a four year gap, but yeah, it was actually quite beautiful by the end. And we made good money out of it. So that was good. And then yeah, that gave us the capital to go all in on it. And so we were both full time dedicated, as far as full time you can be with two babies. But so once we started Occasional Butler, we realised once we were into the model, we'd launched the marketplace, that it was going to take us a long time to actually get a salary out of this business because it's heavy, high transaction orientated. So we realised pretty quickly we needed some other form of income to support us personally. And that's when we found this warehouse and we found coworking and so we built that at the same time. So that was 2012 as well. So we had two businesses and two babies.

Megan: Were there many other coworking spaces at the time?

Jodie Imam: No, there's about five in Melbourne. Yeah, it was really early days. So there was Inspire9, Electron Workshop I think it was called over on the north side. There weren't many. It was very new. Again, it was new and we were looking at the US and seeing, I think there was about two thousand coworking spaces in the US at the time. So it was very early days. So early that we had to pedal back and stop all our marketing saying coworking and change it back to shared office because no one was searching for coworking. So we announced that we're finally live and you know, you can post your job now. And the first job that actually was posted - I just posted something in this story - was to buy a packet of Doritos, eat it and take a photo. For five dollars.

Geo: Okay, come on. Do we know?

Jodie Imam: Well, yeah, I'm pacing around the lounge and going, what the hell? I'm trying to help young families get small jobs done. What the hell is this? Like I got really upset about it.

Geo: You open it up to the universe.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, and so my co-founder and ex-husband got searching and found out through the user ID that it was actually a user testing guy at Airtasker.

Geo: What a twist.

Jodie Imam: And then we were doing all these street things. So we'd go out with a mascot and we'd go and hand out like cupcakes and flyers and all that to give a physical presence to what was a hard to imagine marketplace kind of concept. And so Airtasker were always kind of nearby and yeah, so it started off quite personal. And Tim from Airtasker did talk to us very early on and suggested he despise us. And we were like, God, mate, what are you talking about? We just got started. Like we really wanted to do this thing. And so at the start, it took us a while to find our flywheel. Eventually we did. And so I posted on Gumtree that if you want to do a job as a butler, just sign up here. And like tens, twenties, hundreds of people would just sign up. And back then Gumtree was just like a really long number. And so who were these people? And suddenly they'd appear on our site with a face and a Facebook verification and like they were actually humans and actually really nice, cool people, but you didn't get that feeling from Gumtree. And then they started becoming customers. And then I realised, customers must be on Gumtree as well. And so we just started advertising on Gumtree for customers and that was it. And then eventually Gumtree kicked us off the site.

Geo: Interesting. Do you think that is a tactic of like, you know, trying to control for as many of the factors that you can, but then there's always these wildcard things that finally kicks that flywheel. Do you think there's a way of consistently discovering that flywheel for a new business?

Jodie Imam: I think you just have to keep trying different things. Like we were set on this street kind of marketing and we did that for six months and it didn't really ever work but we kept doing it. And it got me to a point where at one point I was just paralysed with anxiety and stress and like it was bad. I couldn't actually do anything. And then I had to find an unlock and that's when I was like, okay, I just gotta think of something else and that's when I tried Gumtree.

Megan: Even like you were trying to find your product market fit, it was like you were trying to find how to find the people for a product market fit that you already were really invested in.

Jodie Imam: I mean, yeah, we'd already built the - like it's not what I would advise any founder to do. But even still, even if you can spin up a tech platform overnight, I still would say just go easy. Because yeah, we built out too many features, had to run them back, had to put in other features, of course, all the MVP. We just spent way too much building trying to get the whole thing perfect before we even tested it.

Geo: This is a lesson that I keep hearing people having learned the hard way. Including myself, by the way. Like when we started Mayfly, we did exactly the same mistakes, right? And there's almost something about - there are some lessons that can only be learned by making the mistakes. But what do you think it is about this aspect of entrepreneurs wanting to chase that perfect vision come to life rather than building the business?

Jodie Imam: Well, I think what it is, it is that perfectionism, but what was the scariest thing for us back then is when you launch a business, it's such a vulnerable thing to do. You're saying this is what I've built. I just remember being terrified of that.

Megan: It becomes a part of your identity, so if people think it's bad, they're rejecting you.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, that's exactly right. So I think it's that. And so founders naturally just wanna make it as good as they possibly can before they go and, you know, basically stand on a stage naked. That's kind of how it feels.

Megan: So they're going head to head with Airtasker, they're trying everything, street teams, mascots, even Gumtree hacks to find their flywheel. But eventually they hit a wall. Airtasker raised big capital and so as founders they had to make a choice. Can you tell us the story to exit? Because I think that's something we don't really hear so much about, the exit stories, and also I know that it's not a light journey to go to exit as well.

Jodie Imam: Yeah. So I think we got to about the three year mark and we started to realise we're not going to be able to compete with Airtasker without extra capital. They were just growing at a much more rapid rate than us because they had all the funding. And so we started to think about how do we go and raise capital? And I've learned so much from that journey. So I was very nervous and I didn't want to ever have to personally ask anyone for money. So we found this agency who we just paid, and they said they'll do all of our decks and our IM and they'll introduce us through all their investor network and basically they would raise the money for us. And so we paid them quite a bit of money. It was that or equity, and I was like, no, I'm not giving away equity, so I'll pay you cash. And then we spent months on this one, literally a hundred page document that was like a pitch deck but an IM combined, like it just took forever because it was so detailed and complex and a waste of time. And then they didn't really introduce us to too many investors that were actually ready to invest or understood what we were doing or any of that. And then the last phase of that was to recruit a board and get those board members to invest. And then those board members help you then also go raise capital. And so we did that and we had ads for board members. And actually it was quite amazing. Like we had over a hundred people apply to be on our board and they were really amazing people. Like we interviewed at least 10 and I wanted, you know, mostly women, but we had one guy as well.

Geo: Yeah, talent at the table.

Jodie Imam: The women were stronger anyway. But yeah, so that is the thing that worked, like getting great board members to come on, invest and then help us sort of steer our way through that process. And that's when we got very disciplined and we had to be ready for board meetings and have to present all our numbers and all that sort of stuff. And so yeah, we became much more professional and disciplined and we were held to account from external people and all that was super helpful. And then we were like, okay, what are we gonna do? We can either niche down - like "waiter at my party" was very big for us as a job type because of the branding and everything. And it was actually quite viral. So you've got a waiter at a party, there's 80 people at the party, like, where did you come from? And so 80 other people then come to us for a waiter at their party. So it had this virality and matched the brand. So we could have gone down a niche path, or go out and try and do it with a raise, or we thought, why don't we talk to Airtasker again, because they were interested at the start and maybe now's a good time.

Megan: Will you give us money?

Jodie Imam: Well it was just really good timing for them because they were raising for the first time offshore as well. And so I think it was about a twenty million dollar raise they were up to. And I was also pregnant with our third baby at this point. And so having that big fight to raise capital, or actually having this good offer on the table, knowing that another baby was coming into our world.

Megan: Three kids, two businesses. I'm like thinking, gosh, how do I handle one?

Jodie Imam: If you're raising capital as a founder, you're the one raising. You cannot outsource that stuff at all. It will never work. But the board I think is an interesting one. Like if you're looking for a small amount of capital, potentially at the start as well, you can get some board members who are happy to chip in, you know, ten, twenty, fifty grand and actually be part of the team, the strategic team, to get you to an outcome. So I think depending on where you're at and what you're looking for, it could be a good option.

Geo: And with the Airtasker acquisition, the media aspect to it - was that purely to kind of cross this narrative of they're now doing acquisitions?

Jodie Imam: This major player. Major player in the market. Yeah. Strong growth, because absorbing all of our community gave them a big hit of growth.

Megan: So when you exited, were you putting more time into depo8? What were you doing? Did you start having another plan?

Jodie Imam: After we sold it, yeah, well then that was the main thing. And also I had the baby. So that was pretty much it for the first six months of her life. I was home just doing admin for depo8. He was at the coworking space. And then I got approached by Ian Gardiner actually at Innovation Bay to set up Innovation Bay in Melbourne. So they were just starting to think about having a bit of a footprint around, because they'd been in Sydney for years, but they were reaching into Perth and asked me if I wanted to have a licence agreement and set up Innovation Bay here. And I was like, yeah, sure. A few events, I can do that. And so I did. Like we had, I don't know, a couple of events a month.

Megan: How did that flow into depo8?

Jodie Imam: It was through sponsors usually. Like we had great partners, we'd have dinners at lawyers' offices and usually a pub for a big founder pitch night. We did big pitch nights that had about a hundred people there and that sort of thing. So I did that for a couple of years.

Geo: Yeah, because I've shared this story with Megan and a few others before, but we're all at this party and there was a bunch of friends that I've made through the ecosystem there and there was this feeling of building this thing together, but I often forget that there was people that came before this new generation, you know, like including yourself. So how has the ecosystem evolved in your eyes since the days that you were doing Innovation Bay?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, so that was twenty fifteen, setting up Innovation Bay. And it had been going for about five years, I think, in Sydney by then. And so there was a bit of a network, but it was definitely building it from scratch, like finding founders, finding angel investors to all come together. And even back when we were raising money for Occasional Butler, we went and saw the five VCs that were in the market.

Geo: We're headed in the right direction in terms of ecosystem growth.

Jodie Imam: I think so, yeah, for sure. It's great.

Megan: What about the ecosystem before COVID and then post COVID? Because some of the things didn't seem to correlate so well in this new world that we live in. And obviously there was so much time where people were at home, stuck in their houses, especially in Melbourne. Is there anything that you've noticed in terms of trends or things that you liked from beforehand and things you're loving now?

Jodie Imam: Definitely from a coworking perspective as well. So we had to shut down depo8. We did that very quickly at the start of the pandemic because it was a totally member revenue based company. Without the members and the revenue, we couldn't sustain it. So I think there was definitely this real growing movement of everyone being coworking, which did take a few years to establish. And then we all got locked down. But I think some of the great things that have come out of that is - we started Tractor Ventures in twenty twenty from our locked down houses in Melbourne. And so you could now launch a company from your own house.

Megan: And there was no better time to start a business.

Jodie Imam: Like it was so efficient. We raised capital from home. Then I was just like back to back Zoom calls with people wanting our funding for like years. So I think it's great now. And now at Tractor we've fully adopted a fully remote team and I think that's something because pre COVID, running a coworking space, if you weren't in a coworking space and you're working from home, it was very lonely. And a lot of our members came in just to be around people because there was no video. No one got on a video call. If you were going to talk to someone in the day, it would just be on the phone. So that whole new way of working where we all jump on video calls makes it much easier to be at home. But it seems coworking is now like a great option. It's booming, right? There's new spaces all the time.

Megan: Tractor Ventures. How did you even connect with Matt and April? Where did this come from?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, Innovation Bay actually. It was the first time I met Matt. So yeah, creating these events and Matt came along and I think that was it. I was also a director of startups at the Wade Institute. And so that was another sort of meeting place for a lot of people in the ecosystem. Matt was at AWS at the time, so he was going to all the events. That was his job. And so we just met many times and then we got to know each other that way. And when he had left AWS and had been couch surfing for six months and thinking about what do I want to do next, they decided to do it together, but they knew they needed someone who could run the business because that wasn't a skill set either of them had.

Geo: Isn't it funny, this thing that happens in the ecosystem where you do go to a lot of the same events? One of my closest friends now, Gil, that's exactly how we met. You know, we just kept running into each other at these startup events and over time we became really good friends.

Megan: I'm an extrovert, but when I first started going to events, I would just latch on. The first one that I went to, I latched on to a guy who ran a drone business and at one point he's like, anyway, I'm going to just keep going.

Jodie Imam: My one friend. It's horribly daunting to begin with.

Megan: Yeah, and I am not the most quietest person and I still find it awful.

Jodie Imam: Right, yeah, but it has a compounding effect over time.

Megan: You're listening to the Life After Launch podcast.

Geo: If you like the show, you got three things that you can do to show us some love. Follow the show, leave a review, and most importantly, share it with your friends.

Megan: We're going to do a bit of time travelling here, but after exiting, Jodie had a baby, a pandemic started, Melbourne went into lockdown and depo8, her coworking space, lost 100% of its revenue overnight. But rather than taking a break, as so many would have been right to, Jodie starts talking to another ecosystem icon that we all know and love now, Matt Allen, about a different kind of funding model for startups.

Geo: So, from the living rooms, Tractor Ventures was born. The philosophy behind Tractor is something every founder needs to hear. Why do we always assume, and I'm sure you've heard this saying before, that every startup needs to be a unicorn? Sometimes you don't need a rocket ship, you just need a tractor.

Megan: Who came up with the idea?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, so it was Matt's idea originally, after being at AWS, one of the early people in the credits team handing out credits to scaling companies and seeing all the struggle that they were having with the VC model. So some of them not getting funding, others getting funding, but then just struggling under the control and pressure of the growth. And, you know, we're called Tractor Ventures because we're not for the rockets, because sometimes the rockets land on the moon, that's great when they do, but most of the time they blow up and it's ugly. So he saw a lot of that carnage and that's when he was really inspired to create another type of funding for this ecosystem.

Geo: Okay, so you've kind of come up with this concept, you found a business partner. Did you meet both Matt and April?

Jodie Imam: So April wasn't at those events. I knew Matt for six years before I met April.

Geo: Really. What's the next step? Like did you guys kind of ideate and then allocate some tasks, or what was that like?

Jodie Imam: It was so funny. I was actually journaling and on this one day I was like, I really want to work with Matt Allen one day, in my journal. No joke. That same day he pinged me on WhatsApp and said, what are you doing?

Megan: That's crazy.

Jodie Imam: I know. But I just was thinking it and wrote it. I wasn't like plotting a plan of how it would happen at all. Literally in the same day, he just pinged me on WhatsApp saying, do you want to have a chat? I've got this idea. And so there was a few things. So then it was like meeting April and understanding, like if she liked me and if we would work well together and all that sort of stuff. And then a few things we wanted to make sure were in place, like were people going to invest in it, were people gonna take a loan. And so we wanted to test out a few things before we went all in. So that took about six months.

Geo: This is what a second time founder does, you know, like they just know the playbook, like focus on building the business, validating.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, testing, but being way more sure.

Geo: What was the point that you were like, okay, there is something serious here?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, well so it was the original capital. I think two million dollars was enough to get us started. And we had two companies that lent some money. So Teamgage and Creatively Squared, Matt knew already. I can't remember exactly how Matt met Noel, but they'd known each other a long time and they were friendly. So they were like, would you consider this type of funding? And that conversation kicked it off.

Megan: It just took me a while to wrap my head around it. So these were businesses that you lent to. It's quite a novel idea - obviously you guys need somebody else to get the loan itself.

Jodie Imam: Well, so this was Matt's money to begin with. So the first one was his money. The second one was with the equity that we raised. Matt was already socialising the story. Our early investors were actually a lot of the founders he had invested into, because he's been investing for ten years before this. And so a lot of those conversations were like, I invested in you, now it's your turn to invest in me. And I love that whole circular effect. And it was revenue based financing back then. So it was repaying your loan based on a percentage of your revenue. And so those early loans are still going. But we've changed our products. We've tweaked things to become more effective for both sides.

Megan: And then, this is just me fascinated in the model, is the money that you lend all from raising, or do you have, I feel like I've heard that you've got someone upstream that sort of flows down?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, so we have a securitised warehouse now with institutional debt providers into that warehouse. And so there are senior lenders, there's mezzanine and there's junior lenders, and then there's an equity piece at the bottom of that which covers the first loss if there is a loss in that stack. So we use that money and it's a blended cost of capital then for us to then go and lend to founders.

Geo: So taking it right back to the storytelling element of it, did you feel like there was a gap in the market for something like this, or was there other players doing something similar but maybe not executing like you had envisioned?

Jodie Imam: So, I mean, again, Matt had a similar inspiration that we had had with Occasional Butler and depo8, like looking at the US. And there was a company called Indie.vc in the US that was doing revenue based finance and they had this unicorn on the home page that just blew up. Like it blew up into flames. And so we just loved that whole business and what they were doing. And yeah, similar story, like trying to just help companies that aren't going to get to the moon, you know.

Megan: There's a market for it now, so why not bring it in - you can see somebody else has actually done that. I know that when you started, you guys were quite intentional. You started with four day weeks. How long did it take you to get to your first hire?

Jodie Imam: So we had an ex KPMG guy, Raj, who helped us set up all of our structures and that sort of stuff, who still works with us today. And he was like, okay, you're gonna need a head of credit, you're gonna need this person, this person. So it actually didn't take us long and we had the funds. So we brought in a team pretty quick. These people came highly recommended from the lending world, they came from Prospa, and they're very experienced. We didn't know how to write a credit policy, we didn't know anything about it.

Megan: Somebody already knows the book, you guys can come join us.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, exactly. And that was fantastic. And we were growing so quickly as well. Our philosophy has always been hiring senior people. Because we've been growing so quickly from day one as well, we don't have time to unfortunately teach people and train them. Like we just need a team of leaders. That's definitely been our philosophy.

Geo: Yeah, I feel like that's a bit of a hack. Like if you can afford it, sometimes the ROI on hiring really senior people is much better than hiring the equivalent in junior talent.

Megan: The thing is for startups, I think that you can't really take that risk a lot of the time. And there are other places for more junior staff to learn. There's communities like HEX where they can get into entrepreneurship and be exposed to that space. There's bigger organisations, there's other ways, and you can't necessarily take that risk when you are a startup in the early stage.

Jodie Imam: And I think too a lot of these people, they also are having a soul destroying experience and they'll take a pay cut for something that's new and exciting that has ESOP and has, you know, a long term benefit.

Geo: Yeah. Which is crazy, right? Like you think money is a very big factor, but oftentimes in our own conversations you find out there's a lot of other things that take precedence over it. Like obviously money is a factor, but feeling like you can own a piece of something, like you can make a difference and an impact, that often rates way higher.

Jodie Imam: Yeah.

Geo: I'm curious if there's anything that you're kind of seeing now and you've learnt along the way, especially building Tractor over the years, that you wish you had known earlier.

Jodie Imam: Probably actually this EOS structure that I keep talking about.

Geo: Megan actually said she wanted to know, so you won't need a lot of prompting.

Megan: And I bumped into Geo because I got invited to an EOS thing and I'm like, what are you doing here? It seems like we've all had a little bit of a connection. But how did you even discover EOS?

Jodie Imam: Well a few people would say to Matt and I separately, you should read Rocket Fuel. And eventually Matt's like, I've just read Rocket Fuel, you have to read it. And I was like, okay. And it's actually a great easy read. I listen to books at four hours on Audible and it was just telling our story, as far as Matt being the visionary and me being the integrator.

Megan: Who's who? Yeah.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, so, you know, the visionary is the one that comes up with the idea and is good on all the big hairy problems and the big things and the blue sky, and then the integrator's the one that sort of contains some of that from the team and manages the team.

Megan: When you know about that psychology and you need a co-founding team, like a good co-founding team, you can always pick it, can't you?

Geo: But Megan, I don't think you know about this concept, but it's called seagulling. Do you know seagulling?

Jodie Imam: Like I know that seagull management theory where the boss comes in, like a seagull, shits all over the place and goes again.

Geo: Exactly, yeah. So that is a real thing in EOS, like you often get - the worst way of being a visionary is they come in at the top and flap their wings around.

Jodie Imam: Yeah. That's my thing.

Megan: Yeah, I mean that's the generic working style for me. Maybe I'm sitting on everyone and flying away.

Jodie Imam: But it is that, because they're very excited about their thing and it's like, this is what we're gonna do, but then they go off and they don't realise that people need continuous management and time and care and that sort of thing. That's just not their core skills.

Geo: What do you think makes a good leader? Like how would you define a good leader?

Jodie Imam: Being decisive, being clear, making sure you have alignment. I think inspiring people. Like, you know, if you can inspire people to what you are trying to achieve, and a dynamic that makes everyone feel really good, then that's a key thing.

Megan: What are your favourite things from EOS? Because we talk about them, we didn't really talk about the concept or what actually it is.

Geo: By the way, for those listening, we never actually defined what EOS stands for, so if you could just explain.

Jodie Imam: Entrepreneurial operating system. I think that's what it was. Yeah. So we did this whole piece around, okay, well, Matt's clearly the visionary, I'm clearly the integrator. We kind of knew that at the start anyway, but then it just became so clear. And the way the book lays it out makes it very easy on the ego to understand your strengths and weaknesses on both sides. So it's a nice gentle way to say, okay, I need to be here and you need to be there. And then everything stems from there. So then it was a new org chart, how does that all work? What's helped for us as well, 'cause we were co-CEOs before this - having one CEO makes it so much clearer and easier.

Megan: Is that why you guys made the change?

Jodie Imam: Came from that, yeah. Which makes it so much easier for everyone. Like all the team know who they report to, stakeholders know who's responsible for what thing. And then we sort of started that last year. And then this year we had a few team changes and April moved on out of the business. And so at the start of this year, I wanted to really do something different and new. And I thought about the book and I thought, well, I know there's some tools in there. I remember there being tools, but I hadn't in the first read dug into them. And so it's this 90-day scorecard and a level ten meeting that I was like, okay, we're starting the year fresh, we're starting with these tools. We're nearly at the end of our second ninety-day scorecard, and it's just amazing. Like it's changed everything.

Megan: So by now Jodie, along with her co-founders, has the business up and running. While the business was thriving, her personal life though was going through a bit of a restructure. After years of running businesses and raising babies with her husband, they separated. And in this new chapter, Jodie went on a journey to really look after and connect with the more personal parts of Jodie. The bits that are often ignored when you are managing businesses and P&L and people and babies. And so we were also talking about how you had things that you've learned about yourself and exploring different methodologies around life and looking into witchcraft. Could you tell us a little bit more about it?

Jodie Imam: Yeah, so I think when you have a major life event like a divorce, it's hectic. Like it's really hard. And often I think spiritual awakenings happen at big times like divorce. And so I've experienced a spiritual awakening and I have a new concept of the spiritual world around me. And that has been quite prolific, like it's undeniable. And so that's I guess encouraged me to explore further. And so I've gone from normal psychologists through to energy healers through to all types of different spiritual healers. And then that's led me to witchcraft. I stumbled across this shop in Melbourne called the Spellbox. And I was just drawn to go in there. And yeah, so I'm following a lot of just what I'm drawn to do when I can. And so these goddess rituals - this book that I have been led to recently, in every chapter there's a new ritual to do. And I've been doing these rituals. And witchcraft is really just having tools. So it might be a tarot card or it might be a wand or it might be a spell, or maybe it's an intention, or there might be a crystal. Like all of these things are part of witchcraft. And it's all just amplifying, I guess, a meditation or intention or a communication. And I've found these rituals to be incredibly powerful in healing old wounds.

Megan: Like freeing, and a bit of manifestation almost happening, letting things go.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, yeah. Like there's some purging of stuff as well, but it's hard to know how that's gonna show up. But I'm starting to see now that I've been doing it for a while, it shows up in feeling more empowered, feeling more confident, less second guessing of myself, feeling more supported.

Geo: I think there is more and more of a recognition these days that these spiritual tools or practices, in whatever shape they come in, they have benefits on your everyday life. Sometimes people can be a little bit closed minded with these things. But all of these things have such interesting perspectives that add to your life.

Jodie Imam: Yeah, I think it's really just connecting back to your actual higher self. That's where the power and the magic is. And I used to think that too. I used to think with tarot cards, I don't want someone telling me what my future's gonna be because then I'm just gonna start going that way. But now I do tarot cards as more of a reflection of my current state, more so than where I'm going.

Megan: What is something or someone who inspires you at the moment?

Jodie Imam: Well, as far as we've covered it, I think it's definitely this mythology that is inspiring me to think much bigger than I've ever thought before.

Megan: Who is someone in the startup ecosystem that you don't think gets enough recognition that deserves a shout out?

Jodie Imam: Gosh, it's hard. There's so many. Francesca springs straight to mind. She's always doing so much behind the scenes.

Megan: She's incredible.

Geo: It is very behind the scenes as well. Like she's always got a few things in motion that people just don't know, you know?

Megan: Well, thank you so much for your time. Being so generous with it. We've really enjoyed that.

Jodie Imam: Well thanks for having me. It's been very fun.

Geo: In this episode we went from spreadsheets and revenue based financing to goddess rituals and tarot. It just shows that founders are whole humans and you can be both a CEO and explore witchcraft in your downtime.

Megan: I personally loved hearing the story that the work ethic that showed up when she was 12 and running The Ironing Lady never left, and it is the kind of pattern we see in so many founders. From ironing shirts at 12 to managing millions at Tractor, Jodie is a force of human nature. Huge thank you to Jodie for her time and generous sharing of both her business and personal journey.

Geo: If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share it with a founder friend who might be tired of trying to build a rocket ship, because sometimes a tractor is all you need. We've got another incredible founder story coming your way very soon. And I'm Geo George. See you in the next one.

Megan: And I'm Megan Luttrell.