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  • The Carbon Fiber Armor Built For Elite Special Forces

    The Carbon Fiber Armor Built For Elite Special Forces
    2026/06/03
    In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with David Pysden, Co-Founder of Chiron Global Tech, the company behind a revolutionary full-body protective armor system called the Chiron X1. David shares the seven-year journey of bringing the X1 to life, including five grueling years of research, development, and testing with Tier 1 Special Forces, military units, and law enforcement. Inspired by a co-founder training with elite forces in Bangkok, the suit solves a massive training flaw, instead of slowing down strikes or avoiding vital areas like the head and throat, operators can train at full speed with real weapons strikes. David walks Steve through the incredible engineering behind the patented head and neck protection, which distributes concussive forces down into the chest cavity, allowing a user to take a full-force blow from a baseball bat or rifle butt to the head without injury. They discuss how a defense composite expert with a background in designing stunt and movie armor helped optimize the carbon fiber plate structure, balancing absolute mobility with total protection. From being invited onto classified military black sites to testing the gear against point-blank shotgun blasts, this episode gives you a look inside the future of protective defense tech. Timestamps Chapters 00:00:00 Shotguns and bats: Testing the extreme limits of the Chiron X1 armor 00:00:58 Intro and the relief of talking about a physical product instead of software 00:01:36 The five-year R&D journey and linking product branding back to Achilles 00:02:42 Gaps in traditional protective gear and training with real weapons in Bangkok 00:03:54 Eliminating bad muscle memory by allowing full-force head and throat strikes 00:04:12 The patented head and neck protection distributing concussive forces away from the spine 00:05:34 How a movie stunt armor designer helped optimize fluid plate movement 00:06:34 Redesigning the chest plate so law enforcement can draw pistols smoothly 00:07:25 The multi-layer material breakdown including Kevlar, elastomeric foam, and cooling tech 00:08:21 Carbon fiber strength-to-weight ratios and Formula One crash cage comparisons 00:09:17 Point-blank shotgun testing and shooting at the suit with training munitions 00:11:01 Weight distribution and moving freely enough to do a cartwheel in 14.5 kilos of gear 00:11:42 Pitching the U.S. Army Rangers and landing an paratrooper instructor to jump in the suit 00:12:10 Meeting a Vodafone executive at lunch and jumping into a massive market gap 00:13:09 Raising $2.5M to mass produce low-cost injection-molded training and riot control versions 00:14:32 Reducing officer panic, de-escalating threats, and lowering litigation risks in riots 00:16:08 Testing with the UK National Tactical Response Group during real prison riot training 00:18:10 Getting peppered with non-lethal rounds without a single bruise or cut skin 00:19:20 Using a 30x manufacturing capacity boost to target 400,000 U.S. corrections officers 00:21:19 Getting invited to test armor on classified, top-secret Special Forces bases 00:22:14 Navigating the fundraising roller coaster and building an optimal customer feedback loop 00:24:30 Flying on an empty plane during Covid to run an East Coast U.S. roadshow 00:25:51 Geopolitical tailwinds driving the global need for next-gen protective equipment #ChironX1 #MilitaryTechnology #BodyArmor #DefenseTechnology #SpecialForces #LawEnforcement #MilitaryTraining #TacticalGear #Innovation #DefenseIndustry #GiveItANudge #Podcast
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    26 分
  • Leaving Deloitte to Build A Tech Startup

    Leaving Deloitte to Build A Tech Startup
    2026/05/21
    We’ve got a fantastic episode of Give It A Nudge today as Steve sits down with Brittany, the founder of Nevam. Brittany has had an incredible trajectory over the last two years, moving from a comfortable corporate consulting career to launching a highly scalable customer experience platform. Brittany shares her journey of leaving Deloitte while on maternity leave to pursue a vision she had been treading on for a decade. She opens up about the realities of corporate life, noting that becoming a partner often just makes you a baby partner all over again, and contrasts that with the un-fast-trackable lessons of the founder journey. Steve and Brittany discuss the massive validation of pitching at a Propeller event and walking away with 72 direct warm referrals to Chief Marketing Officers at major enterprises. The conversation gets highly entertaining as Brittany shares her unconventional personal operating systems. She explains why she programed a male-voiced AI to give her confidence boosts in the morning, how she runs a strict, post-it note family strategy session on New Year’s Eve for her three and six-year-old kids, and why there is a non-negotiable bottle of Fireball in her house for parenting emergencies. They also tackle the mental side of being a founder, navigating loneliness, and what happens when winning a major innovation award doesn't change your daily reality of needing to get back to work. Timestamps Chapters 00:00:00 Intro and the Malcolm Gladwell inspiration behind naming Nevam 00:01:43 Digital transformation and the frustration of corporate consulting at Deloitte 00:05:21 Turning mirror boards and screen grabs into an automated tech platform 00:09:33 Google mapping Deloitte and entering a massive corporate ecosystem 00:12:18 The myth of making it and the reality of the baby partner concept 00:13:23 Tinkering with a startup idea on maternity leave and budgeting a one-year runway 00:14:54 Moving from the Stride program to Techstars and closing an investment round 00:17:21 Scoring 72 direct enterprise referrals through the Propeller community 00:21:05 Building custom crawlers and automating live journey maps for marketers 00:25:54 The isolation of leadership and preserving a small circle of transparency 00:29:46 Using Claude for goal tracking and programing a male AI voice for confidence boosts 00:33:30 Switching off your brain by watching reality TV and learning Swedish on Duolingo 00:38:34 Why Nevam targets messy global enterprises instead of simple websites 00:42:07 The future of customer experience tracking and moving past reactive metrics 00:45:30 Winning an innovation award and realizing you still have to go make money 00:47:19 Steve's daily phone notes ritual for keeping a positive mindset 00:49:51 Running corporate style strategy sessions for toddlers on New Year’s Eve 00:51:52 Banning Fireball from the office and keeping a stash for tough parenting days
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    57 分
  • Fired Twice to Building a $7 Million Real Estate Empire

    Fired Twice to Building a $7 Million Real Estate Empire
    2026/05/07
    We’ve got a great episode of Give It A Nudge today as Steve sits down with Nima Kermani, the founder of Kermani Capital. Nima’s business has seen exponential growth over the last year, but the road to building a $7 million property portfolio wasn't exactly a straight line. Nima shares the story of how getting fired from his last job was the final push he needed to go all-in on his own business. We dive into his history as a hyper-productive paperboy at age 13, and the brutal life lesson he learned at 17 when he lost $10,000, his entire life savings at the time, to an online scam. The conversation also touches on the patterns in Nima's career, including the time he tried to work two full-time finance jobs simultaneously, his brief stint as a model, and the terrifying transition from being a solo operator to hiring his first staff members. To wrap things up, Nima puts Steve in the hot seat to talk about the hardest lessons he’s learned about ego and leadership. Timestamps Chapters 00:00:00 Intro and the exponential growth of Kermani Capital 00:01:14 Getting fired and why Nima finally decided to give it a shot 00:05:24 The wealthy parents banter and the guarantor loan shortcut 00:07:15 The 13-year-old paperboy hustle and losing his savings to a scam 00:14:53 The secret to landing jobs: Applying for 1,000 positions at a time 00:16:46 The pattern of getting fired and working two jobs at once 00:18:54 Addressing the rumors: Nima’s history in modeling 00:23:18 The fear of the first hire and the reality of founder responsibility 00:27:02 Future plans for Kermani Capital and launching a property fund 00:30:35 Renting by the room: Solving the housing shortage while boosting yield 00:32:29 Steve's hardest lesson: Dealing with internal turmoil and ego
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    37 分
  • How Mary Technology Is Killing Fact Chaos In The Courtroom

    How Mary Technology Is Killing Fact Chaos In The Courtroom
    2026/04/23
    Steve sits down with Rowan McNamee, co-founder of Mary Technology, the legal AI startup that just closed a $7M funding round led by OIF Ventures to completely disrupt how litigation teams handle evidence. Rowan’s journey started where all great business ideas do: pitching his mate on the way home from a bucks party. As a former family lawyer, Rowan intimately understood the absolute misery of taking hours of handwritten notes and spending weeks manually digging through thousands of case documents. So, he helped build a solution to eliminate the "fact chaos." Mary Technology is a Fact Management System (FMS) that can ingest thousands of pages of complex, unstructured legal documents and spit out a fully organized, actionable fact record in just 10 to 20 minutes. We dive into the origin of the company's unique name (yes, it’s named after his actual Aunt Mary), and how they hit 10x ARR growth in 2025 with over 2,000 lawyers globally—including heavyweights like Shine Lawyers and Maurice Blackburn—now using the platform. Rowan also opens up about the "delusional optimism" it takes to get an AI startup off the ground, opening their new San Francisco office, and launching a self-serve model so small-to-mid-sized firms can get the exact same fact management power as the global giants. Hit play and get the inside scoop on one of Australia’s fastest-growing legal tech startups. What We Cover: Chapters 00:00:00 Intro and the elevator pitch for Mary Technology 00:02:50 Founding the company and pitching the idea at a bucks party 00:03:32 Why they named a highly advanced AI after his Aunt Mary 00:07:24 The original product idea and the misery of manual legal work 00:11:49 Eliminating "fact chaos" and turning weeks of document review into 20 minutes 00:13:42 Raising $7M with OIF Ventures, launching in SF, and scaling the team 00:21:50 Navigating the exploded Legal Tech market and standing out 00:23:56 Co-founder dynamics and the heavy weight of founder responsibility 00:30:19 How the platform handles everything from foreign languages to GIFs 00:35:00 The 59% time-saving pitch and their new self-serve model for smaller firms 00:37:45 Team offsites, guest speakers, and getting way too competitive at lawn bowls
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    41 分
  • Meet the Operator Who Helped Nexl Reach Escape Velocity

    Meet the Operator Who Helped Nexl Reach Escape Velocity
    2025/12/22

    In this episode, Steve Grace sits down with Albert Patajo, VP Strategy & Operations at Nexl, to unpack one of the rarest outcomes in Australian tech right now: a local startup hitting Series B, and what it actually takes to get there.


    Albert shares his non-founder path into the operator seat, from Deloitte to early-stage startups to capital raise advisory, before joining Nexl with one urgent mandate: raise money and build a more capital-efficient business in a market that had tightened overnight. He breaks down why focus beats ambition, how Nexl went deep in the US Northeast instead of trying to launch everywhere, and what changed when top US investors started coming inbound with term sheets.


    They also dig into the founder-operator partnership: trust, low ego, and working like co-founders without the title. Plus why Albert thinks AI’s biggest immediate impact in legal won’t be the practice of law, but everything around it, relationships, BD, and operations.


    Timestamps:

    0:00 – Intro: Nexl and the Series B milestone

    0:40 – Darwin to Canberra to Sydney (and the culture shock)

    3:20 – Why consulting is startup training in disguise

    6:30 – First startup lessons: being employee #6 and doing everything

    9:15 – Capital raise advisory in the 2020–21 boom

    10:45 – How Albert met Phil (Nexl’s founder) and why the role existed

    12:25 – Why Series B is "escape velocity"

    13:55 – The first six months: raising with limited runway

    15:30 – Capital efficiency: small bets, incremental hires

    16:20 – The focus move: winning the US Northeast (not launching the US)

    18:45 – What Nexl does: relationship-first CRM for law firms

    20:35 – Inbound term sheets and testing the waters for Series B

    22:00 – Bringing in the "dream" investor and why it was worth it

    23:05 – Founder-operator dynamic: low ego, high trust

    26:55 – Australia as the timezone bridge for US and Europe teams

    28:50 – Post-Series B: hiring leaders who’ve "seen the movie"

    33:25 – The big ambition: category leadership and deep penetration

    35:10 – AI in legal: where it actually changes firms first


    Links:

    Connect with Albert → https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertpatajo/

    Connect with Steve → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/

    The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/

    Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/

    The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/
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    39 分
  • Why This VC Quit to Become a Founder

    Why This VC Quit to Become a Founder
    2025/12/10

    In this episode, Steve Grace sits down with Kevin Lu, founder of Atrium, to unpack the "reverse journey" of leaving a prestigious career in Venture Capital to enter the trenches as a founder.

    Kevin reveals why he walked away from investing in some of Australia's most successful tech companies to solve a problem that haunted him for years, which was the absolute chaos of managing professional relationships.

    Kevin breaks down the "Founder Hierarchy" used by top VCs to spot unicorns (and why having a "chip on your shoulder" is the ultimate competitive advantage), the 100-year-old secret from Rockefeller’s Rolodex that inspired his new AI startup, and why he believes constraints rather than massive funding rounds are the true drivers of innovation.

    Timestamps:

    0:00 – The “Reverse Journey”: Investor to Founder

    1:47 – Escaping the “Lawyer Trap” into Tech

    6:11 – Corporate VC (Reinventure) vs. Pure Play (AirTree)

    10:07 – The 2021 Funding Craze: “It was nuts”

    14:10 – The Founder Hierarchy: Why you need a chip on your shoulder

    22:42 – REVEAL: What is Atrium?

    25:18 – Rockefeller’s 120,000-card secret

    30:17 – The joy of co-founding with a sibling

    33:17 – Why constraints create value (Bootstrapping vs. VC)

    37:47 – US vs. Australia: Risk appetite and hiring bias

    40:47 – Where have all the young founders gone?

    Links:

    Connect with Kevin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-lu-514420112/

    Connect with Steve → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/

    The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/

    Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/

    The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/
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    46 分
  • His Father Lost His Life Savings. Now He’s Fixing Finance.

    His Father Lost His Life Savings. Now He’s Fixing Finance.
    2025/12/03

    In this episode, Steve Grace sits down with Arjun — founder of inaam — to unpack how a tragic loss of his father's life savings fueled a mission to disrupt the Australian financial system, and why he believes the local VC ecosystem is fundamentally broken due to a crippling lack of risk tolerance.


    Arjun breaks down the dangerous myth that "impact investing" means sacrificing returns (proving it with a portfolio that outperformed the market), why he famously believes the tagline for Australian venture firms should be "F*ck off," and how he is gamifying financial literacy to help young Australians build wealth without compromising their values.


    They also dive into:

    • The "Oligopoly" problem: Why having only three major VCs is stifling Australian innovation
    • The reality of building a fintech as a migrant founder and facing racism on the streets of Melbourne
    • The irony of being an award-winning innovator who still doesn't qualify for a National Innovation Visa
    • How inaam combines education with execution to bridge the wealth gap
    • Why email is a terrible leadership tool and the power of the "Communication Triangle"
    • The "Non-Linear" career path: From investment banking to losing it all, to building a unicorn contender


    Timestamps:

    • 0:00 From investment banking to startup founder
    • 6:45 Arriving in Melbourne 3 weeks before lockdown
    • 10:27 The "F*ck Off" critique of Australian VCs
    • 11:04 Why Australia has capital but zero risk tolerance
    • 15:22 The Origin Story: Losing his father's life savings
    • 17:20 Debunking the myth: Impact Investing vs. High Returns
    • 23:30 The reality of racism and the migrant founder experience
    • 28:16 The struggle to get a National Innovation Visa
    • 36:00 Why email kills culture: The Communication Triangle
    • 43:10 How to start investing with just $10


    Links:

    • inaam → https://www.inaam.me/
    • Connect with Arjun → https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunagarwal1996/
    • The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/
    • Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/
    • Steve on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/
    • The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/
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    48 分
  • "800 Billion Little Behaviour Changes": Mick Liubinskas on Commercialising Climate Tech

    "800 Billion Little Behaviour Changes": Mick Liubinskas on Commercialising Climate Tech
    2025/11/27

    In this episode, Steve Grace sits down with Mick Liubinskas — founder of Climate Salad — to unpack how a simple newsletter turned into an industry body representing over 800 companies, and why Australia is world-class at inventing technology but historically terrible at commercialising it.


    Mick breaks down the massive difference between scaling software and industrial hardware, why the real funding gap isn't at the start but in the messy middle, and why he predicts a massive economic tipping point for climate tech in 2027 driven by policy and profit, not just goodwill.


    They also dive into:

    - Why Australian corporations refuse to be the "first customer" for local tech

    - The "Valley of Death" for funding physical infrastructure

    - Real examples of deep tech: Jet engines running on sewage and infinite thermal batteries

    - The generational shift from "doing less bad" to "nature first"

    - How Wright’s Law is driving down the cost of batteries and solar

    - Why capitalist business models are the fastest way to solve climate problems


    Timestamps:

    0:00 From newsletter to industry body

    1:20 The accidental founding of Climate Salad

    5:33 Australia’s commercialization crisis

    6:37 Why hardware is harder than software

    12:14 Capitalism vs. Climate Change

    15:53 The investment "Valley of Death"

    17:54 Jet engines running on sewage

    19:33 The Generational Divide: Nature First

    26:19 The 2027 Tipping Point Prediction

    35:43 Antarctica and the fragility of nature


    Links:

    Climate Salad → https://www.climatesalad.com/

    Connect with Mick → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mliubinskas/

    The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/

    Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/

    Steve on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/

    The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/
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    46 分