Maggie (00:01):

Welcome to the Hearts and Minds Podcast, conversations on Impact and investing. I'm Maggie O'Neill and I'm glad you're here. 

Hearts and Minds is a unique philanthropic organisation. It consists of an ASX listed investment company, HM1. And Sohn Hearts & Minds, an annual event that brings together global thought leaders for a day of exclusive insights. 

Together we provide a compelling investment opportunity for shareholders and proudly support leading Australian medical research organisations. Since 2016, we have donated nearly $70 million. 

In this podcast series, we are bringing you in on meaningful conversations, on impact and investing with some of the extraordinary people in our community. Today, I'm particularly excited to speak with Hearts and Minds Co-founders, Matthew Grounds and Guy Fowler.

Matthew and Guy are two of Australia's most experienced corporate advisors. They have been responsible for numerous landmark transactions for both Australian and global organisations over the past three decades. They've held significant leadership roles during their remarkable careers and have contributed profoundly to the financial services industry. Most recently as co-founders and co-executive Chairs of Barrenjoey.

Matthew, Guy, welcome to the Hearts and Minds podcast. Thank you for joining me today.

Matthew (01:10):

Love being here.

Maggie (01:12):

Well, I'm really excited for this conversation and to talk more about the founding story of Hearts and Minds. But before we get there, I'd like to take a step back to your early life and childhoods. What did you want to be when you grew up? Did you know? Were there any particular influences that led to your career in business? Guy, I might start with you.

Guy (01:28):

I was going to be an engineer when I grew up until one day I went into Westpac, which my father ran at the time and into the foreign exchange trading floor just after the Australian dollar had been floated, which is really ageing me and just thought, wow, this is a cool environment. Then it was finance.

Matthew (01:44):

I had no idea what I wanted to do through university. Really, no idea until near the end. My family was all in construction, architecture and so finance was probably a bit foreign. If I think back, maybe one of our neighbours used to work at Macquarie Bank and was a bullion trader back in the eighties. So that may have been an influence. I have no idea actually. Yeah.

Maggie (02:08):

So Matthew, you studied Comm Law here in Sydney and then did a short stint in law before switching to investment banking. What is it that you love most about investment banking?

Matthew (02:17):

That's easy. I love the people that you work with, both the client side and who you're working with in the firm, but also the constant challenge of trying to solve a problem and the more complex and interesting it is, the more fun it is and I think we're very lucky to be constantly challenged every day with a different problem.

Maggie (02:40):

Guy, you started out as an accountant before beginning your 30 year plus career in investment banking. What do you enjoy most? And perhaps do you have any advice for those wanting to start out?

Guy (02:49):

Look, I think we're very privileged in that we get to dip into, and get a great understanding and knowledge of a whole series of businesses and you get to get exposure to different sectors, different business models, and that's the most enjoyable thing. And so if that's what excites you, there's no better place.

Maggie (03:08):

You've both had very impressive careers, which was very evident in your introductions. Do you have a defining moment or sort of significant milestone in your career that sort of shaped your journey, your career journey that you're happy to share?

Matthew (03:19):

Many of them I've actually shared with Guy, which is quite interesting. If you think back to some of the companies that we've been involved in saving or helping save, when we did the capital raising for CommBank in the middle of the financial crisis, it was Guy, myself and our whole team. I mean, they were pretty crazy times. We could go on though. There's been so many of those situations.

Guy (03:43):

T3 was a highlight. That was a 15 and a half billion dollars sell down by the government when they were expecting eight. That was pretty cool. Matthew's right though it goes back to what I was saying before is that you get to see so many different opportunities, so many different companies, so many different situations. That's what's enjoyable about it. So it's very hard to pinpoint one.

Maggie (04:02):

I mean you've touched on it there, but you do have a very enviable partnership. It spanned decades, multiple ventures, lots of fun, plenty of complex problems I'm sure. So I'm curious, how did that all start? When did you first meet? What sort are the important lessons you've learned from each other? 

Matthew (04:17):

I should let Guy go first, but it is the odd couple and you can guess who's Oscar.

Guy (04:28):

So we met at UBS, we worked together for, dunno, 25, 30 years. It's a bit cheesy, but in an industry that is renowned for self-interest over everything else. I think we've got a relationship of complete trust and I think each of us know, well, I certainly know that he's got my back and hopefully vice versa. And actually in an industry, which is pretty rare to say, I'm in trouble here or I need your help or I haven't got this or what do you think? It's great to actually have that relationship.

Matthew (04:57):

Yeah, I think we're very lucky. Guy's got brothers and sisters, I've only got brothers, but Guy’s just like a brother, there’s complete trust. I don't think we would be where we are today if it wasn't for, well, certainly I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. And you can ask Felix what he thinks.

Guy (05:13):

There's no chance.

Matthew (05:15):

Yeah, certainly in Barrenjoey, let's just be really clear. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him.

Maggie (05:22):

And what I've loved watching is the amount of fun that you have along the way. You run very fast paced in what you do, but you still manage to do it with a smile. So that's been really fun to witness from my seat. 

Matthew, I suppose if we move to Hearts and Minds now, our founding story really begins when you took on your Board chairmanship of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, and I believe that was your first sort of formal appointment outside of UBS, but also foray into not-for-profit. How did you get involved with The Chang? Plenty of causes you could get behind, so why medical research?

Matthew (05:51):

Well, I'd love to tell the story that somehow or another it was my idea, but just about everything else in my career, it was somebody else's. I had a meeting in my diary, which was to meet with Steven Lowey and we'd done a lot of work for the family over the years so I thought, okay, I'm meeting with Steven, maybe there's a mandate. Although he was coming down to our office, which was very unusual. He came down and basically said, I've got a really good idea and that is you should take over from me as Chairman of Victor Chang. And I spent the next half an hour explaining why I was too busy, couldn't do it, I was on aeroplanes and so forth. I had sort of a global role then at UBS and he just said, why don't you just meet with Bob Graham, who was the executive director of the Chang. And I thought, okay, well I'll allocate some time and I'll do that. And then I met Bob and I think that meeting was meant to go for 20 minutes and it went for an hour and a half. And Bob is just an amazing individual, quite extraordinary what his achievements were.

Maggie (06:47):

Medical research I suppose, I mean I've been surprised countless times just how much we can learn when we enter into the sector. And so what was the most surprising thing that you learned when you first started out? Something that you wish people knew more about?

Matthew (06:58):

The first thing I should say is that there's actually quite a lot of impact you can have in an organisation like The Chang and it really had high performance scientists that were so passionate about their work and were working weekends to try and make their discoveries and really with just the sole purpose of having an impact. Some of these discoveries, they take 10 years and obviously AI and where technology is at the moment that hopefully will make things quicker. But just the perseverance of the researchers, their willingness to sort of dedicate their life to maybe three or four major discoveries. But just that quest and that continual commitment is really, I've never seen anything like it before. And obviously then the stories about the impact and what that translates. I mean that's amazing. In 10 years I think I've become, I don't think you'd let me on the tools in a cath lab, but I do give out free cardiovascular research advice. I tell everybody to have a CT scan. Yeah, don't get me on that.

Maggie (08:03):

So moving on then. Naturally with a not-for-profit organisation, you rely very heavily on fundraising and philanthropy. Take me back to that boardroom decision when you were discussing or looking for ways to find sustainable funding for the Institute, where did the idea come from for Hearts and Minds? What was that first seed?

Matthew (08:21):

When I took over, it was sort of an interesting time whereby government funding was sort of flatlining for medical research institutes. They have to make submissions for their research and it gets peer reviewed and then it gets granted or not. And the Chang's always been high performing in that regard, but essentially government funding went from 80% down to 50%. And so there was a big funding hole. The Chang really had back then as its main funding source was a ball that Princess Diana famously danced at. And I didn't want to be the devil to axe the ball, but at the end of the day we needed a better idea. And Gary, who was also on the board, had just come back from New York and he'd been at the Sohn Conference and in Gary's sort of typical style sort of said what we should do here, I'm not going to impersonate Gary, but what we should do here is a Sohn Australia. And I sort of thought to myself, oh my goodness, that means I don't have to put a tuxedo on, but we should have a crack at this. And so we did. We went to work very quickly thereafter and as usual, I went straight to Guy, and said, hey mate, we're in this together.

(09:31):

And look in terms of what happened, I got to say with a blank sheet of paper, went and saw Ian Narev, Gary and I went down to see Ian. He was CEO of CBA. And we literally said, we've got this idea, blank sheet of paper. We do need half a million dollars that we will allocate to medical research, but we need to get some underwriting for this. And I mean for Ian to do that, if you think about the fact that we've raised nearly $70 million, Ian made a decision to support us and to this day, very grateful to him and CBA for doing that. And Len Ainsworth the same. We went and saw Len and again, blank sheet of paper and he said, this is a really good idea. And Ian spoke at the first conference and Len was sitting in the front row. They gave us multi-year commitments, which was extraordinary. So we had the funding. I guess the next part is we needed the speakers

Maggie (10:22):

And we'll get to that. But I’m curious Guy, when Matthew did come to you with this idea, what was your initial reaction? Was it an immediate yes, do you just go along with every idea this guy has or?

Guy (10:30):

Well, we laugh about that a lot. The rule of thumb with Matthew and Matthew's ideas is one in 10, nine are complete crap. Most people in business environments are scared of Matthew and they sort of, I'm not, I say nine times out of 10, I say that is the worst idea anyone's ever had. This one was actually a goodie, so it wasn't hard to get on board 

 

Maggie (10:49):

And the rest is history as they say.

Matthew (10:50):

Yeah, I'm improving one out of 10.

Maggie (10:54):

So as we've just heard, we have our initial supporters in Commonwealth Bank and the Ainsworth Foundation and others are starting to come on board. We've got our media partners committing their support in both the AFR and NewsCorp, and now we've got to find a venue. Matthew, you had a rather iconic venue in mind. Tell me more.

Matthew (11:10):

That's right, Maggie. We thought, okay, well how do we make sure that we get the internationals to say, yeah, I want to present there. And we thought, what better way to do that than to say you can be a speaker in the Sydney Opera House. Then we needed to work out, well, how do we get a theatre in there? And thankfully the Sydney Theatre Company have the Drama Theatre and we sort of had been a long-term sponsor of the Sydney Theatre Company. They were very kind and supportive of us and donated the Theatre to us for FriDay. But part of the deal was that they had a play that night. So we needed to make sure that we could get everybody off the stage and literally off the set I think by about four 30. And we did, which was pretty amazing. We had an incredible production team to do that.

Maggie (12:00):

And we've had some pretty extraordinary people present at Sohn Hearts & Minds over the years. I suppose one of the questions I get asked all the time is how do we secure those big names? So I thought I'd throw it to both of you. Matthew, perhaps you can start. Are there any stories you want to share or any kind of really surreal moments that you've had over the years?

Matthew (12:17):

Well, the first one we really were sort of trying to work out how do we make a success of this? And so we needed a big anchor and through a family friend Ed Hartman, Keith Hartman had delivered our kids, and Ed was a close family friend. Ed had a relationship with Howard Marks. And so we were very grateful to get through that introduction to get Howard to commit to come down and speak. That was a wonderful start. And then one of the funny stories, I guess we then needed to go around to see the Australian fund managers and we weren't quite sure of what the funding model was. We thought we would be able to charge two and a half, 3,000 dollars for people to come. We thought we could do that, but only if we had good speakers. But then we thought, well, we should try and get the local fund managers to speak.

(13:09):

And so we went down and saw David Paradice and David, who's just a beautiful man, is always writing checks for philanthropy, always. We sat down and said, we've got this idea. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, come on, come on. Yeah, and how much do you want? I was thinking to myself, oh my God, he's going to pay to speak. I quickly said, it's a hundred thousand to speak. And then David goes, how much is it not to speak? Because David really doesn't like public speaking. I said, 200. And he goes, I'll not speak. And I said, okay, well we'll put your branding in the Hearts & Minds package and brochures and all that sort of stuff. And then we were off and then we'd set the benchmark that it was a hundred thousand dollars to speak. And I've got to say all the Australian fund managers have just been hugely supportive of the concept. And now the conference and the event. And we've got the likes of Michael Walsh, who Michael's one of UBS's, I think he's probably the longest standing employee of UBS Australia,

Maggie (14:09):

38 years I think he's been there

Matthew (14:11):

Yeah. And Walshie, he's great. He finds ways to connect to these managers all around the world. And he basically just all year tries to work out who we can get. And I think he's actually at the moment on a global tour as we speak, trying to bring some fun managers. And then of course we love to have a bit of music at the end. And I think about Darryl Braithwaite singing horses in the Opera House, which is a bit of fun. 

Maggie (14:39):

I think that was his first sober audience, he was telling me backstage. He was actually quite nervous.

Matthew (14:44):

My favourite was probably Mark Seymour in Hobart. That was pretty cool. But more to come in that space.

Maggie (14:51):

Stay tuned. 

So you touched on it before, but I think it's pretty remarkable when we stop and look at the community, the ecosystem that we have around us at Hearts and Minds. It's been a real collaborative whole of industry effort, which is quite rare. Has that surprised you? And then I guess how does that make you feel?

 

Guy (15:12):

Enormous pride. Look, you're right, it's wonderful to see the industry all generously giving their time. And the hit rate and acceptance locally is almost a hundred percent, which is amazing. One of the things Matthew did early on actually was get Jonathan, JP, involved because if we'd put on a finance conference, it would've been really boring. JP makes it a really fun day and makes it a show. And so it’s got a reputation of that. So I think people like being there. I think the fact that you had Howard Marks, you had Charlie Munger, if you sort of run through the roll call of who's presented and you've been asked to present, you feel pretty good. There's not that many that you sort of sit there and say, wow, I wish we'd had them. The hit rate has been almost a hundred percent. 

Matthew (15:57):

I also think if you think back to the first conference that we had at the Opera House, we had Phil King from Regal. He’s been a huge supporter of the conference and the fund, Peter Cooper, all those traditional fund managers, the guys from Caledonia, all the longstanding firms have just been dedicated the whole time. And with Nick Griffin from Munro, Tribeca, and also more recently, the team from TDM. And they love it. And I think they enjoy the sort of eight minute TED Talk part, which is, they're under the pump. I won't tell you the sort of what goes on just before people go out on stage. I won't tell the Rob Luciano story, but Rob was unreal. Rob was amazing, but I would struggle to go out there and pitch for eight minutes 

Maggie (16:47):

In front of your peers, media

Matthew (16:48):

And Jun Bei does it so well. And then you think of all the people that have flown down and try to make it funny. And JP’s a big part of that. Maggie, you're a big part of that. We wouldn't have been able to sell tickets. There's a great story there whereby how do you sell tickets to 600 people? You apparently need a website.

Guy (17:09):

You and I aren't that good at that.

Matthew (17:11):

No, that was funny. Where on a Friday we said, how are we going to do this? And I think you, Maggie said, I'll go on YouTube and try and learn how to build a website and on Monday you built it and then we had a ticket machine and were up and going. Yeah. So look, I think it's just good, what's not to like about it. Obviously the fund managers are great, but also the audience, and a large part of the audience is through the wealth management channels, whether it's from Crestone, Dave Evans and Evans and Co. They bring a crew. Shaws with Earl and they're going to be big in Adelaide, Wilson's as well. And obviously Morgan's, we get everybody to come and we're very grateful for their support.

Maggie (17:57):

So we've now had two successful conferences at the Sydney Opera House. We then decide to hit the road, so to speak. Why leave Sydney? How did that come about?

Matthew (18:06):

Well, one of our founding partners and philanthropists that supported the conference right from the get go was Sol, he supported the fund as well. And Sol said, what's it going to take to get the conference to Melbourne? We came up with a number and I think it was half a million dollars. And Sol said, done. And then we went to Melbourne. Yeah,

Maggie (18:27):

Well we're on the road. We're heading to Melbourne, as you say. A thousand people are joining us down at the Art Centre. The Conference is now firmly part of the financial calendar. The stocks that have been pitched at the event are performing really well. Guy, that led to a great idea of yours. Tell us what happens next.

Guy (18:41):

So the stocks were, I mean, are very good. You've got some of the best fund managers around giving their best ideas, their highest conviction pick, and the friction with actually then going, leaving the conference, going and buying them. They're on different exchanges, et cetera, et cetera, was reasonably high. And we thought, well, why don't we make it simpler for people? And so we put our toe in the water and we set up a small fund for family and friends and some Crestone clients and so forth. And for one year tracked the picks from the conference and it performed really, really well. And then we thought, well, hang on, maybe there really is something here. So we then hit on the idea of HM1, which was we went and sat down with Hamish at Magellan and we said, we should do a LIC, we should do it around the conference ideas.

(19:28):

He had the idea, which was a good one of, there should be a second angle to it, which is some core managers that have some longer term picks shouldn't all be with a sort of 12 month horizon. And so that's what we constructed. And then we went to, I remember, we thought, okay, who would be the best possible person to chair this? Matt came up with the idea of Chris Cuffe. So we went and spoke to Chris and Chris said, I'll do it, but on one condition, you're not playing around. We're doing half a billion. And we were thinking 50 million or a hundred. And we sort of thought, okay, well that's a challenge, I mean, and we were lucky we got half a billion dollars. And that then feeds an enormous amount of money to medical research.

Maggie (20:05):

It was a game changer. I mean, when you look at that graph around how the conference was going, which in and of itself is a single day fundraising event, remarkable what it achieves. But then as soon as the fund came along, that uptick, I mean it's a seriously exponential curve now that we've got the fund up and running 

Matthew (20:21):

And a lot of the families supported that. 50 families came and gave their commitments and were happy to be published in the prospectus. And so we've got to be grateful for that. And they've had an enormous impact. We sort of just created the vehicle for them to do it.

Maggie (20:34):

So Guy, you touched on it there a little briefly with the fund, HM1, we have a group of fund managers that we call our core fund managers, and they also recommend their highest conviction picks for the portfolio. Matthew, what's sort of the selection process for that? Or how did that come about? Tell me more. 

Matthew (20:49):

We've greatly benefited by the board of HM1 and with Chris Cuffe and his experience, investment experience. And David Wright who founded Zenith we're in pretty safe hands in terms of how those decisions get made. Independently I might add. They brought on Magellan as a core manager, Paradice Caledonia, Regal and Coopers and all of those firms have been great supporters of the conference as well and have great track records. And more recently they've brought on TDM, Tribeca and Munro with some rotations happening. And look, it works really well. They're held to account on their performance and they're really engaged

Maggie (21:32):

And I suppose an element that not everyone perhaps understands, but these core fund managers also get to nominate beneficiaries and where some of the funding goes. So really aligned on that front and getting them involved on the philanthropic side. 

So you've both been involved in various capital raisings over the years, what was it like listing your own, take me back to the feeling of ringing the bell down at the ASX.

Guy (21:53):

Matt and I over the years, have done 200 IPOs and we sent management teams off around the world and around Go and do your roadshow, blah, blah. And we were doing exactly the same thing. So a lot more sympathy for management teams that go with the same pitch for six weeks. It was fun and clearly ringing the bell, but what it represents, and as you said, what it can do, game changing for fundraising, that's clearly the exciting part.

Matthew (22:16):

And it took us to Tasmania. Guy was down pitching, pitching the LIC to raise the money in Evans & Partners down in Melbourne. There was an advisor there, Ed, Ed Kemp, who sort of came up to Guy right afterwards. 

Guy (22:30):

That's right. It was in a pub. 

Maggie (22:33):

It was a suburban pub, I believe. 

Guy (22:34:

A suburban pub. That's right. And he came up and said, oh, you came into our office today and pitched HM1, Hey, we love it, we're going to give you some money, but would you go to Tasmania? And he said, I'm very close to the Premier and I think this would be a fantastic conference to get down to Tasmania. And what, two years later we were in Tasmania.

Maggie (22:51):

As we've sort of touched on, obviously the fund is a game changing sort of vehicle in helping us donate and meet our philanthropic purpose. We've now donated well over 65 million. That's a pretty phenomenal number, and I just don't think we stop and recognise that a lot. So I firstly just want to congratulate you both on what you have built,

Matthew (23:08):

What we've all built

Maggie (23:09):

When it started, did you ever think it would become this impactful or did you have a vision for what it would become?

Matthew (23:14):

I think we wanted to put proper infrastructure in because we thought that at the end of the day, we're going to be the custodians of other people's money. So that's why we put the Board together in a way which was independent of us and Guy and I are proud about that because it just has longevity and we're absolutely focused on trying to drive the performance for the fund, and that's what will drive the funding for medical research. We want to create better performance, grow the fund, deliver more money, and hopefully we'll get through a hundred in terms of the impact soon. That's the intent. And there's a lot of good people working alongside to achieve that goal. You being one of them, Maggie and Paul, Charlie and Chris and Lorraine and the rest of the Board.

Maggie (23:58):

So Matthew, you are on a number of medical research advisory panels, chair of a leading medical research organisation and then also wear the fundraising hat through Hearts and Minds. What do you see as the biggest opportunities and perhaps challenges too for the future of medical research funding? 

Matthew (24:11):

Well a lot of the medical research that gets done in this country is at our universities, and then it's within a small group of medical research institutes. And you really have to have scale because there's a certain amount of overhead to run it. I think being a scientist, I don't think people understand how much work has to go into getting a grant, whether it's from a government or from a foundation. There's just so much work that that scientist has to do. And the hit rate generally is about one in 10. Every bit of money that you can provide to medical research, which is not involving a grant pitch is just a massive productivity win. Australia without a doubt, bats above its weight in terms of the competency and the capability of the science. There's been many studies done in that regard, but we sit pretty much at the bottom in terms of OECD funding for research, but it's a function of, I guess a small population, but it's a challenge. So we've got to keep the weights on it and I think governments do see the importance of it, and they do see the economic impact of it, and they do see the patient care impact of it, but we want to keep it top of mind.

Maggie (25:29):

So switching to some more personal questions to finish off, you've taken numerous big swings, we've heard about quite a few through this conversation, not least to mention founding Hearts & Minds, Barrenjoey, what motivates you to keep taking on these big audacious projects?

Guy (25:45):

What motivates us? Sitting at home playing golf is pretty boring and I'm pretty bad at it.

Matthew (25:50):

I'm worse at golf, Guy (25:53):

So that's not an alternative. Look, Matt touched on it before, why investment banking? The opportunity to work in an office with 300 insanely smart people, challenging yourself and debating things every day is selfish, right? It's a unique thing. Legacy? Hearts & Minds and Barrenjoey. It would be great if they're here for 20 years and then we just had a laugh, had fun. 

Matthew (26:16):

I'd only add to that, I hope it's more than 20 years, I hope it's a hundred years. I think Hearts and Minds can be permanent as obviously Barrenjoey. And look, I think hopefully we have impact. We already have had impact. We'd had a positive impact on people with Hearts and Minds, both who've been part of the journey and who've received funds and it's a fun thing to do.

Maggie (26:38):

And speaking of fun things to do, we're off to Adelaide this year thanks to the help of Dave Prescott of Lanyon Asset Management,

Matthew (26:44):

Adelaide is going to be nuts. It will be, both the music, I can't reveal that here, but also the wine and what's planned there and all sorts of things. And then we've got the speakers, and so it's going to be three days of huge fun.

Maggie (27:02):

In the introduction, we heard just how many hats you both wear. It's an impressive number of plates you're spinning at any one time. So it begs the question, how do you balance your responsibilities? How do you relax? Clearly it's not golf. Do you have any interests outside of work? 

Guy (27:15):

Oh, bad golf, cycling, a few other things. Look, one thing that Matthew's taught me actually, and everyone always says it, if you surround yourself with the best people and you're not threatened by the best people, that takes a lot of load. And ultimately your value is in ideas. It's not in FaceTime, it's not in sitting at a desk. It's just in ideas. And that can be done across lots of things. 

Matthew (27:36):

And we're not operating on surgery tables, so we can't take ourselves too seriously. So you've got to try and have fun. So I can relax at work by having fun. As long as everybody sees the ball clearly, work can be relaxing. I think that's the, I know that sounds weird, but actually I find Hearts and Minds relaxing.

Maggie (27:57):

You've touched on high performing teams, whether that's at Victor Chang or in UBS, Barrenjoey, and just the sheer importance of working with really great people. You've attracted and assembled a great extended team here at Hearts and Minds. Many of us have been working together since the very start. In your experience, what are the keys to building a great team and what do you look for?

Matthew (28:15):

Look, I think it's a bit of self-selection, I think if people want to donate their time because they believe in the purpose, then you've got their passion. There's quite a lot of us, and we all challenge each other, but we're all bringing something different. I couldn't build a website and I certainly couldn't make the conference entertaining like JP and the team does. And obviously Lauren does an amazing job with the media and I think we're just all having fun. Right.

Maggie (28:42):

What's grabbed your attention of late? I'm curious, is there anything that's grabbed your curiosity, piqued your interest?

Guy (28:46):

So I guess since we started Barrenjoey, we started to see a lot more early stage companies, entrepreneurs, having now set up our own business. You got no idea. I now have a slightly better appreciation for how hard it is, and I have a higher admiration for people who started their own businesses. So that I'm really enjoying because we sort of see more than we did before. I've got a couple of kids in the medical field and studying and trying to do research. I echo what Matthew says they're the heroes or people who put effort in for 10 years to try and achieve something. Not knowing at any stage through that journey, whether it's going to come off or not, always scraping for funding, et cetera, et cetera. Which just puts into perspective what we do. What we do is a double. Unending admiration.

Matthew (29:28):

And I think, and Guy, you've done this with schools, but I would just echo that it's actually, there's a lot of impact that you can, if you've got business training, finance training, whatever, there's just a lot of impact you can have in the not-for for-profit sector. And I just wouldn't underestimate that. And then there's a lot of joy that comes from that. So trying to make sure that we create pathways for others to be able to do that, I think that they'll get dividends from that.

Maggie (29:54):

We've covered lots in this conversation, but before we finish off, was there anything that you were hoping I'd ask or anything that you want to add? Final thoughts,

Matthew (30:01):

Question back to you, Maggie. You started in Hearts and Minds in 2016, which was the start, and you were in UBS Asset Management at the time and had, I think you were sort of, or had just started as a grad and you had your career in front of you. And then Guy and I sort of redirected that

Maggie (30:28):

Understatement.

Guy (30:28):

Hijacked.

Matthew (30:28):

And now eight years on, you've just had a huge impact on Hearts and Minds. You've basically made Hearts and Minds what it is today. I think we can all collectively say that you've done that. So how do you feel about that?

Maggie (30:45):

Enormous pride, to be honest, very grateful that our paths crossed. I often get asked, how did you get involved with Hearts and Minds? It was sort of a, it's a bit weird of a career sort of journey, I suppose. And it really was right place, right time. I just happened to be in that room when you'd just come back from your meeting with Ian, you'd suddenly said, okay, this is happening. We've got to do something. And it just seemed exciting. I had time and capacity and I was just curious. And I'd always wanted to learn to build a website. So that's just, I thought it would end there to be honest. And then getting the opportunity to work on something that was so creative and different to the day job and just working and learning from you guys and everyone else involved. And just seeing something come from nothing was pretty extraordinary in those early days.

(31:23):

And then I suppose when the question came about Hearts and Minds, like HM1, when you were setting that up, it was one of those things where everyone around me was like, what are you doing? You've got this trajectory. This company's not even set up, not even guaranteed to raise money. We hadn't even started, the IPO at that point, but I just believed in it. It was one of those things where you just knew the people involved, your energy was contagious, but it just seemed like a no brainer. And I figured what was the worst that could happen? And I'm forever grateful for that moment to say yes because it's just been the most phenomenal ride. And so much of what you've said throughout this conversation, just around exposure to medical research and the scientists doing their best, working with the best minds, the whole of industry coming together, I think how lucky am I to be getting a front row seat to all of that? 

Matthew (32:07):

We've been nervous about this, Maggie, but could we get some control over how it's edited?

Maggie (32:14):

No.

Matthew (32:16):

Alright.

Maggie (32:17):

Well, thank you very much for the conversation. I've had a lot of fun and it's been great to tell the story. So thanks for joining me. 

And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with co-founders, Matthew Grounds and Guy Fowler, and gained some fun insights into the history of Hearts and Minds, as well as some behind the scenes stories. I look forward to bringing you a win in our next conversation. Don't forget to subscribe to the Hearts and Minds podcast wherever you listen, so you never miss an episode. 

Hearts and Minds acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and record this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, we pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. 

And finally, a quick reminder that the content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Please consult the professional advisor before making any investment decisions. 

Thanks again for joining us today.