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Startup 360

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Startup 360: StrongRoom AI latest and lessons, the teen suspended from school for being a viral founder and what makes a good cofounder

Debra Benita Shaw
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Simon Thomsen, Liam Fuller, Kayla Medica and Richard Savoie
Simon Thomsen, Liam Fuller, Kayla Medica and Richard Savoie
Teenage entrepreneur Liam Fuller thought it would be funny to take a photo of him taking a client call and working on his laptop sitting in a toilet cubicle at school.

The world did too, with more than 1.5 million viewed his posts on LinkedIn six months ago.

The school principal was less impressed and the 17-year-old was suspended for two days.

Now he’s wagging school in Ireland and currently visiting Australia, the birthplace of his equally entrepreneurial dad, and meeting with Australian VCs to raise money for his second startup.

And they’re backing him. Liam already has around $400,000 in commitments.

Startup 360 hosts Simon Thomsen and Kayla Medica talked to Liam about his ambitions and adventures, including a wild summer in 2024 when they built a Shopify app and now his cofounder works at Shopify.

It’s a great chat with an inspiring young man who explains why pitch decks are not a must have when you’re looking for people to back an idea.

Listen to it here:

Simon and Kayla take listeners through the biggest news of the week – no, not Trumps tariffs, but the Federal Court fight between Sydney VC EVP, which invested $10.4 million in Melbourne startup StrongRoom AI, only to discover a few weeks later that a claimed profit was actually a loss of around $800,000 a month.

The VC alleges the cofounder and CEO admitted fraud.

EVP wants their money back, and had StrongRoom’s assets frozen after the company went into administration. Startup 360 takes you through the story so far and the lessons for all.

Our guest for 10x is American-born Richard Savoie, cofounder of delivery fleet optimisation platform Adiona Tech, talking about what makes a good cofounder, being a dad, great bands, magic tricks and why he loves founder life.

Startup 360 is about founder fun more than founder mode. It’s all about staying human.It’s a weekly show, talking startups and tech, published every Friday.

You can watch here:

Startup 360 is supported by Vanta, helping startups unlock market opportunities through automated compliance.

Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on Spotify

Watch previous episodes here.

Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and don’t forget to read StartupDaily.net for all the ANZ tech news for free!

Startup 360

Explore the series

Startup 360

Every Friday, Startup 360 hosts Simon Thomsen and Majella Campbell, dissect the news of the week in ANZ startups, before they’re joined by two guests to explore what makes them tick.

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About the author

Debra Benita Shaw

Debra Benita Shaw is a Reader in Cultural Theory at the University of East London. She is a critical posthumanist interested in the relationship between technology, architecture and what it means to be human. She is also a literary critic specialising in science fiction. Her most recent monographs are Posthuman Urbanism (2018) and Women, Science & Fiction Revisited (2023).

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