Daniel Franco: [00:00:00] So welcome back to the Creating Synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco, and today on the show we have Anton Andreacchio. Thank you for coming on. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Your, um, your name has been thrown at me so many times and it, I reckon it's taken me a good six to 12 months to, uh, finally get the opportunity to get you in this room and speak to you.

You're elusive. Hard to, hard to get, get hold of. So thank you for coming on. Now I wanna start off really with, um, what you've been described to me as and why people have said you need to get Anton on and, and you, you need to speak to this guy. Okay. Hit me. You've been described to me as someone who specializes in the intersection of technology and human behavior.

What does it look [00:01:00] like in that space? And, and, and how, and how did

Anton Andreacchio: you get there? Well, firstly, am I a specialist in the intersection of technology and human behavior? Mm. Um, I don't know if I specialize. Uh, in many ways I'm a generalist. Okay. Um, I'm not a researcher in the middle of that intersection. It's just through the, I don't know, paths that I've found myself on.

I've found myself on a range of interfaces between technology and, and, uh, the human kind of intersection. And I don't mean user interface or user experience. Yeah. I mean, what's the role of virtual reality in training football players, or what's the role in animation in construction? These, these areas which, um, we've, we didn't think we.

We'd be doing, but we've just kind of gravitated towards it, so, Yeah. Yeah. And, and

Daniel Franco: what, what is, when [00:02:00] you talk about the intersection, so if we deep dive, let's like dive into that intersection straight off the bat. We're standing on one of the street corners and we're looking in at that intersection.

What's happening? Where does that interaction begin? What does it look like? What are you trying to communicate to the world or interact with from a human behavior point? Oh, look, I have no idea. . I have no idea. This is whatever the people want. No,

Anton Andreacchio: it's, it's, Look, I'll speak about the virtual reality one because it's, it's a funny one.

Yeah. We don't understand the technology. Um, when we first started working with her back in 2014 or so, there was a lot of, um, because we came at it from the filmmaker, uh, kind of vector mm-hmm. , it was all about how do you produce a VR film? You write this script, you film it, you edit it. Done. Yeah. , but Montage doesn't exist in vr.

It's a different film grammar. Mm. It's a completely different language. And then as we found these other intersections, we found, well, we don't actually understand what this is from a, a human perspective. Like I get what [00:03:00] the tech is. Mm-hmm. great. We know the platforms, we know all the Yeah. Cool whizbang components, but when you put it in the hands of different people, it means very different things.

And so we found that the way that we competed was not by cheerleading the tech mm-hmm. , it was by asking better questions of what we were trying to do. Yeah. And not just what works in vr, but why didn't it work in vr? Or why didn't things work in vr? Or why was it this promised technological land? And, and it just never came.

Mm-hmm. . Um, and so yeah, we, we tend to dance on that interface with some of our, uh, some of the works we do.

Daniel Franco: That's amazing.

Beautiful. So, Excellent. So let's, if we sort of, let's move back again and look at this from a, like a helicopter view. Sure. So we've gone down into that intersection. Let's move back. You're the founder of Convergent Jump Gate. Artisan group, Double Bishop GMT Consulting, some of the works that you've been involved in.

So you're heavily involved. Like you, you are also the [00:04:00] chair of the Adelaide Film Festival and Arts, like the arts guy here in South Australia. Arts, and, Well, let's, I'm gonna throw that at you anyway. Okay. Whether you accept it or not is another issue, but some of the works you've been involved in have featured at Sundance at, you know, Venice.

Is it bainali? Bainali. You've worked with the Symphony Orchestra here in Adelaide and created what is the first virtual reality, uh, symphony or orchestra in the world. Is that correct? Correct. So you've done some amazing things. Let's, can we understand your journey and how you've come about to build so many amazing and intuitive businesses?

Anton Andreacchio: Where should I start?

Daniel Franco: Let's start at the beginning. Where did it all begin?

Anton Andreacchio: I think an inflection point, which is probably appropriate to kick things off, was going to university. Mm-hmm. . Um, because I've thought a lot [00:05:00] about this. It's, it's hard to, when people ask, What do you do? I, I, I so much I shut down.

Daniel Franco: I don't know.

It's like asking What's your favorite book? It's just so many options.

Anton Andreacchio: Well, yes, but there is, there is something about our identity nowadays, which, and it's the Protestant work ethic thing. Yeah. It's, we're defined by what we do. You have a job, this is where you fit. Mm-hmm. . Um, I didn't really fit and I remember going to university with, and, and one of the pieces of advice I was given was not which career to go into, but this, it was a ti it was a trope at the time of you, people in your generation are gonna have seven different careers in their lifetime.

Seven different careers. Doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna be all over the place. Well, I listened to that. Um, it was wrong. Um, in many ways, um, the career pathways are still. Pretty similar to 20 years ago. What is the number? I dunno, you don't know. I dunno, these things. But I was told that, and so I thought, Okay, well what am I actually trying to do here?

That was the first point. The second point was, uh, I did [00:06:00] study abroad in America. I found it, uh, a transformative year being exposed to the college system, the American way of thinking, the entrepreneurial kind of impulse there that was. So you went to ucla, didn't you? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That was a really big impact on me.

And then the third, the third was, as a kid, I always did too much stuff. I never had one thing that I did. I was tried doing music and sport and math and all, all sorts of things. Um, I never really understood what I wanted to do, So I developed a different way of looking at things. Um, it wasn't by design.

Um, I, well, the next phase is, um, I started this company with my brother. Mm-hmm. , um, called Convergent. But then slowly over time, what we, what we did is we, we. Found different ways of operating, not build a company, sell the company, done. Mm-hmm. convergent in many ways and punctuate this if, if you need me to wrap things up, but, um, No, that's fine.

Convergent was really the first, the first epoch after, after university. Mm-hmm. . [00:07:00] So we built this company, visualization in infrastructure. We found it was a jail of our own creation. We couldn't explore other stuff. We were the visualization guys. And so we went, okay, well let's explore vr, not just because we like the tech, but to understand what it means to not be owned by the company that we have.

Yeah. And, you know, do we build one company that does everything or a series of targeted things that can operate in different, different domains and modes? Great. And that was an experience unto itself. Um, similarly with the film industry, um, and similarly with some of my other interests. So the way I describe it is there's five different domains.

There's obviously the personal personal life. Yeah. But then there's the. The professional life. That's the businesses in creative industries. Mm-hmm. There's the academic life, um, back at university. That's good fun. Mm-hmm. There's the governance life and then there's the arts life, which each of those are somewhat intention.

Mm-hmm. But it's a dynamic sort of tension. It's, it's something that allows me to be a generalist, not necessarily beholden to, uh, [00:08:00] one or one or another of the different, uh, kinda domains of interest. So, we'll,

Daniel Franco: we'll get into, Does that make sense? It does. And we'll get into your university and education piece soon, but I think about Elon Musk, right, who has created so many different businesses, all with a common purpose, right?

The common purpose is to create into planetary species that, you know, that's his ultimate vision. So he creates Tesla, build the electric. Battery and, and whatnot. He, he, uh, he, he builds Solar City, He builds SpaceX, he builds the boring company. He like, he builds these, which all have the ability to position ourselves to travel and travel planet, you know, planet systems and whatnot.

When you have set up your life and you say [00:09:00] you've got those five areas that you focus on, is it all with the same common goal? Is there a purpose in place? Is there something that you're trying to achieve? A, for humanity or for yourself

Anton Andreacchio: really? Starting with the, the light

Daniel Franco: stuff first thing. Yeah. I told you we'd jump straight in the deep end. Look, ,

Anton Andreacchio: I've, I've tried other ways and it hasn't worked for me. Yeah. Um, one thing that I've found that does work is not treating this as a linear pathway. It's not, I'm aiming at the goal. I'm going.

Just really push and push until we get to that. Mainly cuz I've been wrong about everything. It's just, it's not a mode I find I find helpful. Instead, what it is, is I have an acknowledgement that there are certain things that I find meaningful. Mm-hmm. and it's more of a winding, it's, it's more of a winding towards I'll never quite reach it if, if, if I could.

No, I'm being quite indulgent. Um, it's this idea that we are not defined by one thing and we usually not, I mean, people can say they're defined by their family [00:10:00] and their job and certain things they've done, but I've found essentially that level of resolution of five things is, is, is what's useful to me.

And then how I operate in those domains is I have different ways of doing that. Yeah. So let's, I'm not

Daniel Franco: Elon Musk. No, no, I, I understand that. But you've, like, from a, from the arts and you know, film industry and the creative industry's world that you play in, you're having a severely. Positive impact, especially within South Australia and Australia.

Well, hopefully, yeah, we'll see. So yes, Elon Musk is like a stretch, but you are definitely having an impact in your community, which is, you know, kudos. Well done. I'm,

Anton Andreacchio: I'm proud of the contributions we make.

Daniel Franco: Very good. So talk to us about the creation of Convergent and Jump Gate and let's go through that right.

As a linear, Okay.

Anton Andreacchio: Yeah. Um, Convergent look, part of the [00:11:00] motivation again was not necessarily, we have an idea we're gonna, we're gonna do this. It was, um, looking back on it, a a lot of uncertainty about what to do and I was very wary of getting a job. Cause I'm too competitive. I'll just compete at that for the sake of it.

And then 10 years has passed and it's all I know how to do. So, yeah. So how old were

Daniel Franco: you when you started?

Anton Andreacchio: 21. Okay. 21. Fresh Outta Uni. Well, originally it was in visual effects. Okay. And, uh, so a younger brother who's my business partner on all of these. Okay. Carlo shout out is probably one of the few that will watch these.

Yeah. , um, uh, I'm kidding. But, um, No, no. We've, uh, yeah. Convergent, we, we, we did that as a visual effects company. We very quickly found that the right time to start a visual effects company was in the nineties. Mm. Or because the industry was growing then it was, it's kind of been a race downwards with, you know, lowering costs, tax incentives, check all these things.

Mm-hmm. and who were we to start a, a visual effects company at that time, But the time to stuff things up is in year twentys, so that's fine. But what we did find is an intersection with [00:12:00] infrastructure, because I come from an engineering background. Yeah. And we happened to find our way onto this little project with Nico Soka called the Adelaide Riverbank Pedestrian Footbridge.

Oh, well done. And we helped with the tender on that. Yeah. And we were like, Wow, this is amazing. We've helped. Actually impact the outcomes in a small way. It's not all about either my design or this, but it was, we were part of the game that that ended up, well, there was a fork in the road of which 10 was gonna win, and we helped impact that and we found that really cool.

And so now Convergent, we've just plucked our thousandth project, Win Farm Farms, mine sites, certain hospitals. How big's the business? Uh, we've got about 15. Yeah. 15. Right? Don't need to get any bigger than that. No. That's enough to gimme headaches. But no, it's, it's, it's what we founded about projects, maybe 200 Yeah.

Was that we weren't making pretty pictures. Okay. We were engaging in a game. There is the engineering world, which is solution oriented, and then there is the communications [00:13:00] world, which is people oriented and political and game theoretical and perception oriented. And it's, it's very different worlds. And what we found is the value wasn't in our product.

It was how we navigated that interface. We weren't in one world, we weren't in the other. We were in the middle. Yeah. And we were able to speak both languages. So we actually acted almost like a translator through good spot to be in some ways. But the problem is we didn't fit. Okay. And so no one knew how to take us.

So we're never part of any entrepreneurial scene or anything like that. But we found a pocket of value, which I think is actually a real entrepreneurial thing, is, Oh, we found something here. What do we do? Absolutely. You find your niche. Yeah. And so then we grew that over time. We've, we work all around the country.

We've got it at any given time, about 40 projects on, um, in this profound space of what does the future of infrastructure look like? Be it in energy or hospitals or, or bridges or whatever. So, um, yeah, really proud of what we've, what we've built there. Um, yeah. What are

Daniel Franco: some of the, outside of the footbridge, what are some of the other projects that you've [00:14:00] worked on in that space?

In Adelaide? Yeah. Or Australia or landmarks that people would know. Well, this is an

Anton Andreacchio: Adelaide centric podcast, which I love by the way. It's. Finally we're having some conversations about it. Say, this is great. Brilliant. Uh, Oban, the Ivan s Project, Darlington to Tolerance, Um, Northern Connector, uh, regency to pi.

Um, uh, various stages of the proposed darlington to tolerance. Um, several hospitals. Um, uh, we working on, um, we've worked on roundabouts, we work on yes, some of the bigger councils. Um, there would be, but we actually work on the small ones too. Um, in terms of, we do a lot with those minerals. Yeah, they're fantastic.

Yeah, absolutely amazing. And their support is a South Australian company for small or South Australian companies. Has been, Yeah, it's been

Daniel Franco: fantastic. We've had their head of people in the culture on this show. They are doing some wonderful things and

Anton Andreacchio: we're really proud to be working with them. So, Oz, uh, we do a lot with JBS and g.

Um, obviously we know Andrew Nunn gave us a break back in the day too, but, um, uh, yeah, a lot with wind farms and [00:15:00] particularly renewable energy. Yeah. Great. So yeah, that's just in South Australia. Yeah. But. Logan enhancement projects. Uh, a lot with the LX ray in Melbourne. Yeah. Wow. Um, city metro stuff.

Melbourne airport rail things. Yeah. I, I keep going, but how long you got? Let's

Daniel Franco: jump into jump gates so that the move the movement then, Cause you thought we don't fit so we need to create ano something else

Anton Andreacchio: here. Well, we were just unreasonable. Yeah. It's like we had on age, but we're also shooting off with all these other ideas.

Mm-hmm. and part of it was the terror of being an entrepreneur. It was, I need to grow. Mm-hmm. , it's, I need to find other ways to bring value. Cuz we weren't certain about anything. Mm-hmm. , he was this tech and we tried doing other things as convergent, but we'd kind of clocked into this thing of there was a certain theater to startups.

If we convergent a visualization company doing vr mm-hmm. , we are not in the VR game. Yeah. So let's start a separate company and see what happens. Okay. And it's not that hard. You know, you get the abn, you get the brand, cost a little bit of money. Suddenly you're a VR company. Now [00:16:00] this was 2014 and we were really killed

It was. It was hilarious. Yeah. Um, we did these things like strap these GoPros together and ran through the banner with the Adelaide Crows and put it in Cro Romania and everyone put their headsets on. They're like, Oh, it's a bit average, isn't it? It's like, ah, that's okay. Cool. Fine. Yeah. And all of a sudden something happened.

All of a sudden there was a switch that was flicked and we were cool. I was like, Oh, this is the next big thing. I'm like, But you just told us we were ridiculous. Yeah. What are you, what are you talking about? Yeah. Um, but we saw that tech wave come and hit. And how,

Daniel Franco: how did you see it before it actually arrived?

Anton Andreacchio: Carlo, my brother. Yeah. So he was a Kickstarter for the Oculus DK one. Yeah. Wow. And he was a mining Bitcoin, I think back in 2012 or something like that. But like he, like, he's also a, a different sort of thinker that hasn't gone through the traditional pathways. So I've learned to listen to him on a lot of these things.

And also what's interesting and it's fun and so, yeah, the first things we did was football. Um, called up Vince Chiarello. [00:17:00] We got an introduction to Vince Chiarello, and he was like, Yeah, sure. Plunked it on stage and off we went and, um, amazing. Off it went. Yeah. So that led to a whole series of other adventures as the wave then caught us and kicked us all the way through.

Um, which has resulted in us working with the AFL umpires. You might see the GoPro on the chance. I won't say too much about that. Um, a defense projects, we work a lot with University of Newcastle and in the medical space, but on the other side there's high performance. Yeah. And then there's high concept, the contemporary art space.

Mm. Which we're really proud of how Jump Gates stayed away from the big, kind of the big show. Mm-hmm. , um, a lot of our compatriots from 20 15 16 did that and went under, um, and we've kind of gone, No, we are an Adelaide. We need to compete our own way. And so we've slowly gathered confidence in that and we keep plugging away.

So that's jump Gate.

Daniel Franco: But we, we could go into every single business. All day. But we've got a podcast that I wanna, [00:18:00] I'm in your capable. Yeah. I do wanna jump into a few other questions. Uh, and I really wanna deep dive into all of your work as we work our way through this podcast. But can we, um, can we just again, touch back on a who from, I know when I wrote you, I sent you a message last night saying, who is Anton?

And you just wrote back, Haha. So it's a big question, but I know that mathematics, data science, like your study and that, you know, you said one of your pillars was, was education and study and growth and learning. How is the mathematics element shaped your life? And I know you've done a lot of, uh, work in philosophy as well, or you're studying philosophy as well.

Can you.

Anton Andreacchio: Elaborate on this. How did, how do I, how did I end up from jump Gate over in, over at [00:19:00] University again?

Daniel Franco: Yeah, and man, and, and, and actually while we're on that, how do you manage so many hats? How do you put all these hats on? Cause you've got Convergent Jump Gate, Artisan Group, Double Bishop, G M T I.

Then on top of that, you're on six boards. , you're the chair of Adelaide Film, which is this beautiful brochure sitting in front of us. Your board member of Adelaide Symp Orchestra, your board member of South Austral Entrepreneurship Advisory Board. Since inception, which I know you said that earlier, the board member of ACE opened the Uni of Adela Creativity and Culture Board, Lot 14 Arts and Culture Board.

Adelaide Bio Me City Board, like and plus your five come. How do you, how. I, my brain cannot actually grapple. Okay, so

Anton Andreacchio: which one first? How do I manage it? Or how do, how did I end up back in

Daniel Franco: academia? Let, actually, let's go to the management first and then let's talk about academic.

Anton Andreacchio: Um, I [00:20:00] needed to move out of, there's, there's several reasons.

First of all, with convergence, um, the more I get involved with projects, the, like, it had doesn't always have a positive impact. Yeah. So to separate myself out, I signed up to other things and I created this pool effect to create the room for the company to actually evolve throwing. And that, that was a, um, a mechanical reason.

Mm-hmm. . Um, another reason why I can manage all this is I think it's Parkinson's law. The time to complete a task is proportional to that which is available or something. It's, it's like, you know, I think I waste a lot of time. I don't work that hard. third is my brother and the team at Convergent. Um, James Cameron, I could go through all of them.

They, we've really promoted the open source kind of philosophy in how we work, which is all about autonomy. Mm-hmm. . And so as I've moved away, they've actually stepped into a lot of these, these different areas. Um, and so I couldn't do any of this without them, but it's, it was one of the advantages of being an entrepreneur once we hit a stable kind of state.

We have time and space for other adventures. Mm-hmm. , [00:21:00] another reason is if I don't have kids yet. So I have all this time compared to a lot of my friends No. But also the 40 under 40 kind of hit me. Yeah. Um, I got acknowledged for the first time for what I was doing, um, when that was first launched. Mm-hmm.

and I, I, I was quite emotional about it cuz we are, we are not part of an industry that has ways of supporting people with career growth and transformation. We're out here often, no one wanting us to succeed cuz we're upending so many things and we were acknowledged and I found it kind of terrifying, not just.

Like, because it didn't sit well, but I was looking around and I was like, I'm not that young. Like I'm 35. Sure, we can say, Oh, that's young, but it's not. And you know, a best mathematician. A mathematician does his best work by 23 or not at all. But honestly, it's like from a, um, a leadership perspective, it's, this is the cohort that's gonna be leading the state in 10 years time.

What are we doing now? And [00:22:00] I kind of felt a sense of pressure with that. Not just a celebration of what I'd done, but an expectation of what I was going to do. So I was like, Oh, shoot, Okay, well I've got some opportunities. And I went with, with some of them, um, particularly joining the Adelaide Film Festival Board.

Mm-hmm. . Um, but then I found myself at an intersection where there is really a deficit, which is who is stepping forward in some of these domains? Who is the time and space to step onto these boards at 35? Not a lot of people. So because I've done this entrepreneurial thing, I actually do have the privilege to be able to spend my time running around championing the Adelaide Film Festival.

Or more importantly, I was able to stand up on some things. , which a lot of people didn't have the freedom to stand up on because it would've affected their livelihoods or things like that, so, mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a lot of factors in there. Um, I've tried getting off some boards, but, you know, I kind of love them too much.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's great fun. And I really enjoy con contributing to, to all of those boards at the moment. It's such an incredible, um, experience, um, particularly

Daniel Franco: this age when people say, [00:23:00] follow your passion. Yeah. Right. And that's definitely what entrepreneurs would do. They would follow their passion.

They would build something and create something. You seem to have many different types of passions. Is there anyone that you love the most? Like, is there, you know, you say you love all your babies. Is there anyone that you actually just, it makes you sing,

Anton Andreacchio: What did I say? You love your children all the same.

Yeah. Um, it's a different sort of affection, um, I guess, but. I'll reframe the question, what do I do when no one's watching? Yeah. Um, at the moment I'm very interested in data science, in, in storytelling. Yeah. So that, I mean, we talk about an intersection of Yeah. Of, of things. It's those two worlds colliding the creative impulse and, and mathematics, the language of mathematics, not from an analytical perspective.

And it, it's really interesting. I've, I've been curious about it for a long time, and it's only been in the past six months that things like Dali and Bloom [00:24:00] and all the natural language processing toolkits are now starting to enter the mainstream. And people are going, Oh, heck, we gotta grapple with this.

Mm-hmm. . So, um, that's something that I, I spend my weekends doing sometimes. Um, but um, that's not to say I don't love Convergent and what we're doing with Jump Gate, it's just, um, we do, I do 'em for different reasons and I'm not really following my passion, so to speak. It's, I'm on a series of adventures.

Once they start, we we're on them until they end. So,

Daniel Franco: well, let's dive into the data science and storytelling. Let's jump around there. Yeah. See if you're,

Anton Andreacchio: if I feel like I'm coming across as one of those lizards can look

Daniel Franco: at two , it's, Oh, I find your life amazing. I actually really do. I think there's, there's so many great things happening and you're at the forefront of so many things.

But this storytelling piece, I am obsessed with storytelling. I, it is something that I, um, believe fundamentally as a [00:25:00] way of influence or as a way of being able to capture an audience or being able to actually, uh, hold the room. Storytelling is the, is the foundation piece for that. And you on your website.

Convergent, your slogan is actually says, We, we tell stories about the future. So you've actually found a way to weave that into convergent, which is absolutely beautiful. You make movies as well, so you tell stories through there. Yeah. So it, it seems to me that you are positioning yourself from a passion point of view.

Can you tell me, as someone who's interested in learning about the art of storytelling, learning about becoming a master in storytelling, what you've learned about storytelling with the data science viewpoint? It,

Anton Andreacchio: I can, I might, [00:26:00] and jump around as much as you need to. There's a fellow at Adelaide University, um, Louis Mitchell. He, uh, collaborated on this paper, which did a big data analysis of story arcs. Mm-hmm. . So he mapped. Sentiment arcs of stories, the emotional arcs of stories, thousands of them. The Gutenberg fiction collection.

Yeah. And used a machine learning approach to distill it down to its fundamental arcs. There are six fundamental stories from a sentiment perspective. Mm-hmm. , and That's great. Yeah. How does that impact, like, the other work that I'm doing? Yeah. Like a lot, That's a frontier that I've actually done some work on.

Yeah. Lucky enough to be able to collaborate with Lewis in various domains. But on the other side, it's, it's the lens that I look at entrepreneurship. It's the lens that I look at learning. It's the lens that I look at everything. So the only thing that's made sense to me mm-hmm. , um, and if you'll indulge me, I'll kind of go through it.

So Absolutely. Stories are how we make sense of the world. It's how we pass down information, not from a [00:27:00] scientific perspective, but from a narrative perspective of how to act in the world when faced with certain, um, situations. What we do and, and, and the drama Toler kind of construction of these is deeply rooted in how we think.

So we codify how we think in terms of narrative and drama. And then everyone at the end of the day goes home and watches these stories and they think it's just for entertainment. It's not for entertainment, not just for entertainment, because we're actually trying to figure out how to make sense of the world.

Mm. That's what I get really passionate about. Now I'll jump to an area which you didn't mention, which is entrepreneurship. When I joined the entrepreneurship advisor that's coming, , that was what I could contribute. Everyone else knew about capital. Everyone else knew about all the important other factors.

Yeah. And I was looking at this going, I, that's not my experience at all. My experience is this traditional, um, mono myth, arc of the known world, the unknown world. And how do you [00:28:00] navigate that through a mode of transformation? And that's how we've constructed a lot of our adventures. It's, we, we consider them adventures.

It's how do we engage with unknown. in a way that's small enough that's, it doesn't kill us. You know, it's not an adventure of the dragon can't kill you. Yeah, sure. Um, but small enough that it doesn't kill us, but not so small that we don't change. So Jump gate was an adventure in, in certain ways. Yeah. It was like, well, we can cope.

If that doesn't work, we go into the unknown, we come back with this knowledge and now, okay, we've got something more to play with. And so we consider what we're doing, a series of iterative adventures in all of these different domains, which seems to make sense to me. I mean, that's how we learn. That's why I've gone back to uni that I consider that an adventure in, in many ways.

But, um, yeah, so storytelling, I'm less of a theorist and more of a pragmatist in that regard. Yeah. It's trying to figure out what I'm doing as an entrepreneur, you know, traumatic, being an entrepreneur is traumatic in, in so many ways, but that's what's given me a, a way of [00:29:00] grappling with what I was going through, and that's what's given me a model for how to continue on that domain.

Daniel Franco: I love, just make sense. I don't know. No, it does. And I love your thought process of entrepreneurship being like, I, I, I am an entrepreneur. I've started my own business here and podcast and all the above. I have never put it into the perspective of a hero's journey almost. Right? Like that's the, that's what you've just done, which is really amazing.

I think you're right. It is traumatic. There is, entrepreneurship is one of those things where you can have the worst day and best day in the same day. , like in the morning, it's every day. It's ridiculous, isn't it? In the morning you're crippled with this sense of anxiety on a decision that's pending or whatever, Right?

And we all know anxiety's thoughts on, on the future [00:30:00] and, and, and, and whatnot. But then, In the afternoon you're popping champagne cuz there's a big deal that's come through and everyone's happy and you know, all the hard work's paid off. Right. And in the same day, it's unbelievable. When we talk about entrepreneurship a lot, we have had your friend Andrew Nunn, the the chief, uh, entrepreneur on of South Australia on the show we've had David Fogarty right as well, who is the, the founder of ODI and they've just ticked over 400 million in sales.

Simon Haddock Hackett who bought, you know, um, the internet into Australia really was one of the first people and, and created into Node. So can we touch on the storytelling aspect and entrepreneurship? Um, and, and, and cuz you are on the advisory board for those who are looking to grow in this world, for those who are really interested in starting something, creating an impact, whether it's in the film, whether it's in tech, whether it's in services, whatever it might be, what's your advice to [00:31:00] those?

When trying to embark on that journey, what, what advice will you give to your 23 year old self now sitting in the position that you are saying these are the things that you can learn from. This is the ambiguity, this is how to deal with it. Is there any of that advice

Anton Andreacchio: that you have? I'm, well, I'm aware of getting advice cause I'm not sure I have it all figured out.

Um,

don't get caught up in the theater mm-hmm. so much of, Or maybe I'll just, just go through my pro my thought process with entrepreneurship and maybe some of the frustrations and Yeah. The things I like, the things I don't, So I was very nervous when I got onto the entrepreneurship advisory board is imposter syndrome sort of thing.

I'm not that impressed with the things I'm doing and, and we haven't raised capital and in a lot of ways we don't tick a lot of the Elon Musk, the Musky and the Yeah. And the check boxes. But we, um, I found this paper, this is [00:32:00] the most cited entrepreneurship paper at the time, and it was from the seventies.

And it spoke about entrepreneurship in terms of three things. You have an idea you believe it'll succeed and you're willing to go after it. And it's always stuck with me because so often we conflate social entrepreneurs with the high tech, 10 x entrepreneurs, with small business entrepreneurs, with people who aren't starting companies, but are practicing an entrepreneurial spirit.

And to me that that became kind of a way of framing what an entrepreneur actually is now. So what was it? So you have an idea. You have an idea, you believe it'll work, and yet you're willing to go after it. So it's that that act that I'm willing to actually pursue this, that, that to me is an entrepreneur that is an entrepre.

Um, but a lot of people aren't willing to go after it unless they get a grant or unless they. Some support from someone or unless they get certain cues and it's, it's like they're actually, there's a leap of faith there. There's a certain spirit [00:33:00] that goes along with that. Um, and, and faith. There's a final quote.

I think it was, it was that, uh, um, let's see if I can remember this. It's uh, science is the culture of doubt and religions. The culture of faith. Now I, Science is the culture of, And religion is the culture of faith. Yeah. Richard Fireman, Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and the reason I raised that is I, I became somewhat like the term entrepreneur doesn't sit well with me in a lot of ways because it's become euphemistic for other things.

It's all about the signaling, It's who's raising money, what incubator. It's almost become a structural game.

Daniel Franco: So it's almost like tech owns that word, doesn't it right now? Well,

Anton Andreacchio: it does feel that way. There's a natural gravitation towards high tech and entrepreneurship. Sure. But you know, my great grandfather started a bakery and Yeah.

And. It didn't work out, but I started

Daniel Franco: as services businesses, no tech at all. That's real endeavor. That's right. But

Anton Andreacchio: we tend to go towards high tech, I think for a variety of reasons. Over the past 20 [00:34:00] years, it's been shown to be, that's become the model, the archetype of entrepreneur, the one navigating the high tech unknown space as opposed to these other most.

But I think that's changing. We we're seeing a lot more social entrepreneurs too, but just going, just so I'm keeping a coherent line. It's, That was my definition for it. One of the frustrations I've found is that so much of the entrepreneurship world is based around signaling. It's, you raise money to signal you're at a phase or to, you know, get this incubated to signal this and it becomes so much this dance that it just, it excludes so much of that conversation.

So it becomes a bit of a cut before the horse in many ways. Mm-hmm. and so, yeah. Entrepreneurship. If, if I can give advice to anyone, It would be to stay away from the theater. It's like you can not stay away from it. You can participate in it, but don't let it own you because then you're left. Everyone loves it when they're at the theater, but when the, when the tide goes out, you're left with everyone.

Yeah. You're left withholden the bag. So it's, [00:35:00] you gotta be able to live with yourself and you choose your regrets in that regard. It's like, if you're gonna do it, you're accountable for what you're gonna do. And if it goes wrong, there'll be no one else around. So, yeah, that's, I'm, I'm very low to just encourage people blindly into entrepreneurship cuz of that.

Daniel Franco: When you talk about the theater, like the theater of running business, the pressure, the perceived pressure, right? Cause you, you set targets and they're your own targets. Right? I know that you, especially from a tech point of view, and you talk about investment and, and all the, all the above. You got shareholder, stakeholders, all the above that you need to work with.

What. Is the theater, Are you alluding to emotions of the entrepreneurship? Are you alluding to the politics, the governance? What are you alluding to? Is all the talk about the big show, the whole thing? These are,

Anton Andreacchio: uh, I I'm talking about the, the kind of, I won't talk [00:36:00] about Lot 14. Um, well, I will in many ways that this, there's, there's some, there's theater associated with that.

Now, I don't mean that in a derogatory way. Yeah. I mean it in terms of like, entrepreneurship plays out at a personal level. Sure. But it also plays out at the social level. We've got a certain subset of the population need to be out there on the edge playing with the new ideas, because we've certainly got this subset down here who don't want anything to change, and they're probably not high in openness, et cetera.

Yeah. So a lot of the signaling that goes along with, Oh, we've got Google here, we've got Amazon here. That, that to me is. Is theater in a lot of ways. Yeah. I call the signaling to be kinder. It's so much of things is about perception. Yeah. Of the entrepreneurship space. Now I'm not against kind of influencing from the level of perception.

I mean, reflexivity is everywhere. It's the way we perceive things, affects the world around us. But it can go too far. It can go too far. And one thing I'm curious about in South Australia is I love the high tech space and the space industry and all of [00:37:00] that, but when you look at entrepreneurship, we tend to focus on the high tech spaces.

Even in medical it's, we focus on bio. Yeah. There's so many other entrepreneurs going around and there's so many other problems to solve. Such as, oh I dunno. Hospital ramps. It's we, No, but we tend to focus on very abstract domains for our entrepreneurs at the moment. AI cyber space, very difficult for people to grapple with in a day to day life sense.

It's all the way out here. I actually think a lot of what we need to grapple with is a lot closer to home. So I'll, I'll pause there. No.

Daniel Franco: So when you, How am I going

Anton Andreacchio: Daniel? No, you, I feel like I'm swimming in multiple directions sometimes.

Daniel Franco: This is the, the beauty of having these in depth podcasts, right?

We'll, we'll end up at one point somewhere. The idea of going after it and being willing to go after it though, you know, going back to your quote, having an idea, thinking and believing that it'll work and then going after it. And you said, [00:38:00] use the words leap of faith. I remember the day I walked, I remember the day I walked out of my previous job to start this.

I actually remember I'm an Indiana Jones fan. Are you an Indiana Jones fan by any chance? I'm acquainted, Yeah. Movies, but not, Yeah. So there's a, there's a, there's a part, I think it's in the Temple of Doom, or, or one of the, The last crusades. The last crusade, right? Where he takes the leap of faith. He takes a step onto the invisible bridge, and that's kind of how I felt.

I had to believe that there was a bridge there. I had to believe that there was something that I could step on. I had to believe in myself. I had to believe in my ability that if something was to go wrong, I would have the skill set and now's to be able to handle it. So when we, when you talk about having the willingness to head out and take that leap of faith, why do we see so many people have the [00:39:00] willingness to take that step, but then stop at the first sign of issues or hurdles or problems?

And what do you believe as a leader in this space that these entrepreneurs can do to overcome those hurdles?

Anton Andreacchio: First of all, I love that when you wanted to explain a turning point in your life, you went to a movie record. Yeah. ,

Daniel Franco: when it row, Right. You see what I'm Yeah, that's,

Anton Andreacchio: You see what I mean? It's, it's, um,

I remember watching the FY Festival document. In the fire festival? I don't, no. It's this fellow who, um, uh, I think it was with Ja Rule. They, um, uh, they started a music festival on island. Yeah. On bought tickets. And it was a, it was a shambles. Yeah. It's fantastic documentary. I know they, they do the now on like Theranos and Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We work and whatnot. But I remember watching this and it was kind of an exercise in dealing with trauma, um, looking at someone who was in too deep mm-hmm. and there was a fellow in it. He, um, he should have [00:40:00] been as angry as anyone of, of what happened, but he said he was kind in his appraisal. He said desperate people do desperate things.

I am not against people stopping. I think that's often the best decision rather than just commit until it works. Yeah. Um, cuz we often don't see the wreckages that are left by entrepreneurs that can't let go. On the other hand, there is a certain. You need to have that certain, or sense of faith with, you know, confidence that you can actually adapt and, and overcome the challenges at hand.

So I'm disagreeing with myself. I'm putting two things forward because I actually think it's something in the middle, uh, called the zone of proximal development. Mm-hmm. , it's, you need to have an understanding if you're reaching too far or too shallow. If you reach too shallow, you don't get anywhere. If you reach too far, it all falls apart.

So what is that? There tends to be a, as there's a curve associated with this mm-hmm. What is the right [00:41:00] point for you? And if I could, if, if, to make it relevant cuz you said people might be watching. I mean, it's, that's something that I found with entrepreneurship. It was finding what was right for me. Not trying to run anyone else's race.

But if you're not good at public speak, Try public speaking, or maybe that's, that's too much. Maybe try speaking to your friends about, it may maybe aim smaller. Um, and it's not about just reaching ones. It's reaching over and over and over and over again. And slowly your terrain gets mapped a little more.

Mm-hmm. or you develop, you know, the ability to reach a bit further each time. And it becomes a skill set that then starts to grow and you can nurture. And, and in any, in any walk of life, it's like if you wished you went back and studied well, it doesn't mean you've gotta sign up to do a PhD, maybe buy a book of the domain you were interested in and take a look at that.

So that, that's, that's kind of how I'd consider it. Um, that zone of proximal development. [00:42:00] Um, careful of reaching too far. If you reach too Shelly, you're never gonna make, make the change. So

Daniel Franco: I listened to a podcast recently, uh, very recently, and they were talking about, um, entrepreneurship and all the above.

And then they got into the word trauma, right? Which you used. He said, Entrepreneurship and starting a business is traumatic. And the study, so the, the podcast was with a guy by the name of Mo Goad, who was, I think he was the COO of, um, of Google. And now he has written a book on happiness and, and all the above.

And he talks about, um, he talks about trauma and he talks about the experience of trauma. And he interviewed 12,000 people about their traumatic experiences and said, If you could, would you erase that traumatic experience from your [00:43:00] life? Take into the consideration that if you erase that traumatic experience from your life, you lose everything that came after it.

You lose the friendships, you lose the learnings, you lose the experiences, you lose everything that follows. 99.9% of the people said they wouldn't erase it, that they would still go through the trauma. And we're talking about extreme trauma, right? That some of these people went through. One thing that I've learned, and I would love for you to elaborate it on, on, on it as well, is that, yes, entrepreneurship is traumatic, but every single time you have that gut wrenching feeling, every single time you have that popping of the champagne you, you're building, like it almost feels like this piece of fabric that is, like you said, it's iterating, it's growing every single.

Why when we are in these situations, do we give [00:44:00] up when 99% of us are saying, Actually I wouldn't, I wouldn't change that.

Anton Andreacchio: I, I believe there's a limit. Mm-hmm. , Um, I'm, I'm very wary of romanticizing failure. Um, we can, I hear a lot of, of statements like, um, we just need to embrace failure more and things like that.

Mm. I actually don't agree with that. Mm-hmm. at all. Uh, I think it's too low resolution and it can be taken in the wrong way. Mm-hmm. , Um, it's, I do get that, you know, my life has been defined, but certain dark times and that's resulted in preparing me for other ones that came. But I have seen people that have been knocked out completely.

Yeah. And it's un wary of glamorizing that too much. Mm-hmm. now, part of why I have multiple companies is I can walk away from any of them at any time. Mm. And if you can't walk away, you, you're captured by it. And sometimes you can have the strength to be able to. Find a way out. Sometimes you can't. And if you, if you can't walk away from it, [00:45:00] because it's all tied up in personality.

And also is the personal, the professional, the even families are tied up in a lot of these things. It's, if you can't walk away from it, then you gotta be very careful of the consequences of your actions. Now I get that, that's, this is often why I'm not really part of the entrepreneurial kind of narrative.

Mm-hmm. . Because archetypally, it's like, No, you gotta go after it. Everything's great. Fabulous. Cool. There is a limit. There is a limit. And I'm just wary of not having that in the conversation. Um, and yeah, maybe I'll just pause there.

Daniel Franco: I do love the idea though. I mean, you said you, you, what was the word you used?

You, you're trapped by it almost. If you can't walk away. I run a business that I love. Um, I put a lot of time and effort into countless amount of hours. Then you throw in a podcast on the top of it, and of course, and you do too much. And I, and like, so for me, I [00:46:00] almost have two things going on at once. Um, really want this to succeed, really want it to grow, really want it to scale, Really want to become a household brand and a name, especially within South Australia, and let alone Australia and grow that, that model.

But I feel like, and maybe this is something I can learn from you, when you say, if you're not walking you around, I feel like if I'm not putting in the time and effort, then I reduce the opportunity for this business to grow. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. You obviously don't have that attitude given the scope of what you've.

You're doing.

Anton Andreacchio: I have had that opportu, that attitude in the past and there's a tremendous pressure on, on the individual in so many ways. Mm-hmm. . So, And you're not alone. In fact, most entrepreneurs that I know that get up and give the big keynotes, you get one and [00:47:00] a half classes of wine until after the backgrounds a very different story,

But

we tend to think about entrepreneurship just from that human individual lens as well. So much of this is not in your control. What happens if there's a financial crisis tomorrow? Like I'm a really big one. Yeah. It doesn't matter how strong your vision is about we are gonna be the best in the world and Yeah.

All like obviously speaking, you can get sides. A pandemic comes in play like a pandemic comes into play. It's, and it's those feelings I've found to be really interesting. I actually think that's the good stuff. Um, Yes, we have our visions, but we're also aiming lower as well. We're playing chess. One move at a time rather than trying to play 20 moves at a time.

And we're acknowledging that even be it tech waves, be it economic waves, be it social waves, be it cultural waves, be it demographic waves. We are in the middle of some very complex systems and there's a certain arrogance that comes with, Oh, I'm gonna have a vision and impose that on the [00:48:00] world. It's, we're as much listening as we are trying to, like, again, I'm, I talk in, in these things that might appear to be, um, antithetical, but it's that tension that allows us to find our way.

We feel it's, I mean, even from South Australia, there are inherent challenges here. It doesn't matter how confident I am, I'm not in Silicon Valley. Mm-hmm. . So either I can pretend like I am and just off we go. Or we can play our terrain and go, well, what is right for us at this stage? What's right for South Australia at this stage?

What's right for Australia at this stage and at this time, at this, this point in time as well. So yeah, we try to, Balance out those sorts of ways of thinking to figure out what we do, because we're always faced with decisions day to day. And that's, to me, where the battle is one and lost. How do you

Daniel Franco: know what's right?

Well, how do you know what's right for this terrain? Like you say, I'm not in Silicon Valley, I'm here in Adelaide. I need to understand what's right for this terrain, what's right for this community, what's right for this, my potential customer here. What, [00:49:00] how do you do that research? Like what, where does that information come from?

Well, and every, every, every business is gonna have its differences. Right? But of course, of course. What is the general makeup of that understanding the terrain? Um,

Anton Andreacchio: I'm still learning about the trainer. Mm-hmm. , I loved Adrian Temple's podcast that we did with him the other day. Cause that that is context we don't talk about.

Yeah. That's part of the train. But for us it's like, rather than trying to solve it, it's how do we navigate it? Again, that's why we aim for, we don't over promise, We don't try to change the world on every single project we do. It's as much what's our role to play? How can we bring value in the immediate term?

And then over time, how does that build? Um, because we don't have an ecosystem that has a huge amount of capital and gentrification being poured in to allow for big successes and failures. It's, we've learned over time about that propensity Well, that, that propensity for adaptation. Yep. Um, that proximal kind of zone.

It's how much can we [00:50:00] push things and then when are we over pushing them? Um, because we have critical limitations across the, across everything. Um, the other way I'll approach it is, um, one of my supervisors at uni, um, I was very nervous about going back. You mature age student. My brain's turned to much, whatever.

Yeah. Um,

Daniel Franco: and you're studying now the masters? They're finishing that at the moment of

Anton Andreacchio: philosophy. It's an MFI in mathematical and computer sciences. Oh, okay. Great. So great. Um, Anton, there's two toolboxes. One, which is the set of tools that you can use safely. Mm-hmm. , call it machine learning. I, I call it specific tools within machine learning.

You can use those safely. I've, I've, I've been trained on them. The other is the toolbox of domains you can navigate safely. And that's, that's, that's a question of experience, That's a question of like, we've been around football, for instance, for 10 years now, and we've tried and failed at things. We've succeeded at others.

Great. That, to me is as important as that. [00:51:00] And so it's, it's having this sense of patience if we are going to be changing things, of how quickly we can actually build that experience through the adventures we're having. So that's kind of how we look at it.

Daniel Franco: It's

Anton Andreacchio: brilliant if it, I don't know if it is, It

Daniel Franco: just works for us to be honest.

Well, and that I think is probably the main point that we need to take out of this, is that you actually need to figure out what works for you and for your situation and for your life and your family, and. , whatever it might be. I,

Anton Andreacchio: it, it is very easy to figure out when you're wrong though. You run outta money.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or you oversell something. Well, is the, a relationship, this is the fear of, it's like, it's not just this internal kind of, I'm, I'm self developing. It's No, no, no, no. It's being, we're in games and we're forced to actually deal with these things. Yeah. And

Daniel Franco: I forget, Well, one thing that's not spoken about a lot, and I'll get vulnerable here if I have to, the, the fear of running out of [00:52:00] money, the fear of cash flow is huge from an entrepreneurial point of view, or even just any business point of view, isn't it?

It it, and, and a leadership point of view of understanding, how do I keep these lights on? Well, how do you deal with. , Will you just push harder? I think. Oh, will you just find another way or figure it out? You, I don't know. I don't know. There's one answer to that.

Anton Andreacchio: But how do you feel, how do you deal with that fear?

Oh,

Daniel Franco: I'm gonna ask Paul over. And with, I, I play into the theater sometimes. Like I do, I get emotional. I get caught up in the, in the fact that, you know, everything we are working hard for could fall over. At any one point, someone could pull the rug out, the pandemic could come along. Like, I, I, and like, I understand there's a matter of mindset here and bringing it back and, and, and concentrating on what you can control.

Do I have control over this situation? You do that diagram, but it, it, it, you, you, that flurry goes out and then you bring it in, Right? So

Anton Andreacchio: [00:53:00] when people talk about entrepreneurs need to be fearless, what do you, what do you say to that? That your fear isn't warranted? You should just be. That's what entrepreneurs should

Daniel Franco: be, right?

Yeah. Well, that's what, that's what's often said, but I don't know that that is something that can actually be practiced and, and delivered

Anton Andreacchio: upon. Oh. But this is part of the problem. Yeah. When we have these things that are said, and I don't, I think it sets people up to fail, but it does, then they feel a sense of guilt that they're terrified.

Mm. I, Yeah. So look, I mean,

Daniel Franco: so you say, you, you, you are saying that I'm buying the wrong story. Well, I'm

Anton Andreacchio: saying the lived experience is often very different than the narrative. Yeah. And we can lean into the narrative, but I, I get, I, I find it hard when I see the narrative and then I talk to entrepreneurs who are actually not living that.

And it's, it's almost misrepresented they're forced to do the theater, but then the fact is down here, so they're living two lives in many ways. Mm. I find that fascinating. I find it fascinating. I don't, I'm not criticizing it. No, it's, it's a necessity in a lot of ways. But look, the way we think it, [00:54:00] we think about it is, um, uh, fear, fear's a useful thing.

Um, But it's, it's useful to be afraid of the right things. I mean, are you more afraid of running out of money? Are you more afraid of not continuing on the journey you're on? And that's actually a calculus, which is, I know it's a negative calculus, but it's a lot easier to define pain than it is joy. Yeah.

So it's which one are you more afraid of? And then the next question we go to is, Well, just because you're afraid doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It's like, if it's meaningful enough, that's a question of courage. I mean, there is no courage without fear, right? Mm-hmm. If it's just easy, well just go ahead and do it.

Off we go. And it's like, No, no, no. I've got more respect for someone that's terrified, but finds it meaningful enough to actually go ahead and do it, despite that, not because they have to do it, but because they find it meaningful enough to overcome that. Mm. Sorry, I'm getting really talked about.

Daniel Franco: No, but it's, I think what's really interesting is like, as you were saying that, then [00:55:00] what was going through my mind is about what is it that I'm actually fearful of?

Am I fearful of running outta money? No, actually, it's probably not. , the story that I'm telling myself. Am I fearful of not continuing the journey? Not really, because I believe I've got the mindset and ability to pick up anything and carry on, right, and start something new. Or I'll just knock on Anton's door and say, Hey, can I come work with you, , Whatever, Right?

Like I've got a network that can help me pick myself back up again. Right As you were talking then I,

Anton Andreacchio: Now you understand why I have

Daniel Franco: multiple things going. Yeah, and as you were talking then I was literally asking myself or thinking to myself, is the fear ego based? Is the fear based on the simple fact that I do not want to fail or be seen as a failure, even though the entrepreneurial world idolizes fail?

You need a failure. You need this, you need that. I don't want to fail. I don't want to be [00:56:00] seen to fail. I don't want to. Let people down in that process as well. The people that work with us, the people that we support, the customers that we work with. Sure. That's probably more what would sit in my gut more than anything else.

And letting people down. Yeah. Yeah.

Anton Andreacchio: That deeply agree. Yeah. Well, look, one of the things I found most meaningful about entrepreneurship is if you want to know all of your hopeless inadequacy, start a business . That's right. Because you will project it everywhere. Yeah. And then you've gotta deal with it.

Yeah. Then you've gotta deal with it. And that's part of why I talk like this is because I, I'm not perfect by any stretch. I've got all sorts of, you know, things that I'm trying to grapple with, but it's why I've gone back to university. I have to sort that out. I mean, here's another one. I am, I find it hard to be confident all the time, particularly in these domains that I'm very unconfident.

I've got a lot of doubt about, [00:57:00] So I go to university. Because that's a way of having a space I can grapple with doubt rather than projecting that onto a company that requires me to be confident. Mm. It just separates it. And that's worked for me. That's worked for me. But it's, you know, family can play this role having, you know, a partner that's going with you through those moments of crisis.

There's all sorts of different strategies and tactics you can do, but it's, it's, you will project it on your business and it's either face it or you let it just become part of what the business

Daniel Franco: is. I mean, university you are doing the, the field in data science and mathematics do, which is obviously a, a learning.

Right. But to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, it seems very a tactical type of learning more than a behavioral type of learning. What do you think, Well, in data science and mathematics, are you learning about self. [00:58:00] Uh, absolutely. You are absolutely. Okay. Can you elaborate?

Anton Andreacchio: I, I see the world through the models that I have of it.

Ah, okay. Uh, there is a running joke with my supervisors. Whenever I do a course, I'd end up consulting in it shortly after . No, but like, Okay, so there's one fabulous course on networks, on network analytics. Yeah. And understanding how to grapple with what social networks are, um, be them hierarchies in businesses or business networks.

And whilst it was a theoretical, um, language, suddenly I was looking at my world through those lenses. Yeah. And I was looking at all of the hierarchies around Adelaide and how there aren't many weak links between them. And so then I'm mapping the startup ecosystem with the AAB using a social network analysis.

And suddenly it's like, Oh. This is helping me understand something that I hadn't put my finger on. Look, there's an aha. There's an aha moment.

Daniel Franco: Well, it's given you a new

Anton Andreacchio: perspective. Yeah. And I believe that that's part of the, I don't wanna call it self development, but it's [00:59:00] like, that's part of what I found really rewarding in this, that aha moment when, And sometimes it's in literature, sometimes it's in mathematics when you understand it and it's like, ah.

It was like a truth that was always waiting for you. Yeah. The light bulb goes off. Yeah. But it was just waiting for you to catch up on that. Mm. And so that's, that's what I find really rewarding in this and and cool me romantic about academia. That's honestly, where I think a lot of the value is? But

Daniel Franco: are you learning, I think where my question come from, you talked about projecting emotions, projecting doubt onto businesses.

Yeah. Are you learning how to not project that doubt? Absolutely. Is that through the confidence that you're building and the perspectives that you're gaining through your education?

Anton Andreacchio: Again, sometimes. But also sometimes doubt's a healthy thing. Mm-hmm. Here's an example. I go on to a footie club, I say I've got a VR headset.

You know, you play are fast. Mm-hmm. , you play as a fit. Your players are skillful. It's the above the shoulders training. They, you know, they've got limited time on the park. We can simulate that in vr. They go, [01:00:00] Great. Fantastic. It's a good start, sell problem is none of the players have ever learned how to play football using a headset.

And the coaches have ever done that either. You've got some that love it, some that hate it. We don't know anything about the technology. We, um, from a language perspective, we also don't know how it fits in a week to week coaching perspective. What's relevant? Maybe the coach are struggling with clarity of narrative messaging.

Um, maybe there are some technical issues. I think the list goes on. We found a million different ways it could go wrong. Mm. So now when we go to clubs, we wear that doubt on our sleeve cuz it's a healthy sort of doubt. It's like, I'm not gonna claim that this is gonna solve every problem, but I'm confident that we are enough experience to be able to navigate it for what you are trying to do.

Or if they're trying to do too much, we'll just say, Look guys. Maybe we'll recommend something else. So like, I'm wary of, of saying doubt is a bad thing. I think doubt can be a healthy thing and it can be an unhealthy thing. And it's all situational dependent. Mm. Sorry, I'm putting all RAs

Daniel Franco: [01:01:00] now. No, no, no. I, I love it.

I think when you are going into those football clubs though, and there's that element of doubt, there is also an element of certainty of what benefit they're gonna get from this, isn't there? Ah, there isn't. Oh, no, no, no. So what are you selling ?

Anton Andreacchio: Like, and how do you That's why we don't sell to clubs. In fact, the last few tons, we've actually done it for

Daniel Franco: free.

Okay. So it's now about gathering of information and data. Yeah.

Anton Andreacchio: But look, it's not just about, I'm gonna do X service to bring value. You might want to do X dollars worth of service to have a 50% chance of bringing some value. Okay. There is a, there's other ways to do business. Well, there's a probabilistic component of this, and that's what startups are.

A lot of the time. Money's going into these. Startups to diversify against everything else. It's like something, a Netflix might come along and knock out our blockbuster in investments. Yeah. So we've gotta bet on the, the curve balls out here. Mm-hmm. . So, Yeah. And that's, [01:02:00] that's why, I dunno, it's, it's, it's tough to talk about cause VR is still considered to be in the, in the box of Hightech mm-hmm.

and really open. We've gotta really try everything there, but we now know more than enough about it to know what the problems are. And that's where my frustration kicks in. It's when we're still talking about those conversations and clients are signing up to that when it's like, but we've already, we've already tried that.

Like, Yeah. What's next? So, yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: Where does the innovation keep coming from? And, and you know, you, you're obviously working in so many areas. Um, does innovation come from the point of just being able to think about something or the other perspectives that you're learning from all these other companies that you're able to bring in?

So say with conversion artists and group, double bishop, whatever, all those businesses that you do run, and then you go, Okay, something I learned here I could bring to conversion. Is that where the innovation comes from? Like,

Anton Andreacchio: we are exposed to some pretty incredible walks of life. Yeah. And I'm very lucky to have had that.

Um, we meet different [01:03:00] people, we have different influences, we see different challenges. Um, and that gives us a, um, it gives us an exposure to a lot of, a lot of unknowns to navigate the where does it come from? We've stopped looking for solutions. We've started looking for better problems. Okay. This is another, I'm flipping the table again on something.

It's, it. Um, a lot of the orthodox thinking amongst some entrepreneurship is we've just gotta solve this problem with a new solution. The argument I've got is, well, why doesn't that solution already exist? Why has no one thought of that? Are we suddenly smarter than everyone that's come before us, or is there a better problem we can solve?

And money Bill's a really funny example of this, you know, Moneyball that, Oh, I love it. Yeah. People think it's about they introduced data science into baseball. No, that's not what they did. He actually asked a deeper, a deeper question, which is, um, there's a scene where, um, [01:04:00] uh, he asks, What's the problem?

And they say, Well, we're trying to replace this player who has these incredible stats. And he goes, No, what's the problem? They came up with another thing. He said, Nah, the problem is that there's rich teams, there's poor teams, there's 50 layers of crap, and then there's us. And he aimed at solving that rather than trying to play the game that everyone else was playing.

So he went, What's a deeper problem that we can start to look at? And then what are the obvious solutions there? And that to me is how we can compete rather than chasing after Sydney firms or Melbourne firms, or our competitors internationally. It's like how with the time and space that we have in Adelaide, can we look at problems that no one's even ready to grapple with yet?

That to me is, is is what, That's what's exciting. That's where a lot of the innovation comes from. Um,

Daniel Franco: finding better problems. How, how do you, I know you do a bit of work in mental models and in that space, I know you love that world. How do you position yourself to ask those questions about [01:05:00] finding the, the bigger problems like it, It seems like a, a rabbit hole that could be hard to find.

Anton Andreacchio: Um, it's pretty easy. It is. It's really easy. Explain Daniel, what are you frustrated with at the moment? Oh, .

Daniel Franco: I don't reckon we've got enough time on this. No. Give me, um, My health.

Anton Andreacchio: Your health. Yeah. Maybe your model's

Daniel Franco: wrong. Yeah. In what way? So

Anton Andreacchio: funny thing to say about your health. No, it's like . There's this idea that if you're frustrated by something, then your model's off mm-hmm.

and

Daniel Franco: rather than as in the model that you're working to or

Anton Andreacchio: working Yeah. Because you're expecting something to happen and something different happens. Yeah. Or you want something to

Daniel Franco: Well, that's the, that's the, So it goes definition of frustration, isn't it? Well, exactly. Yeah.

Anton Andreacchio: So what's going on there? And I found that's really useful in listening to how I'm reacting to things and I'm temperamentally not great sometimes, particularly when I've got, [01:06:00] you know, a million things I'm trying to deal with and suddenly a model starts breaking down.

I'm like, well, well maybe I'm thinking about that wrong. Maybe I need to flip that on its head. And, and I've, that's tended to be what's, what's been most useful for me going, Okay, what's frustrating? Let's flip. , let's play with it and, and, and why is it happening? And then let's explore. Okay, maybe I need to rethink that.

Um, rethink my expectations. Um, like for instance, the entrepreneurial side of things. They used to get really frustrated at the theater. Mm-hmm. . And I was like, well, okay, maybe it's just a two dimensional thing. We've got what's actually happening and then the theater and we need to exist in a two dimensional domain.

Ah, okay. It's not frustrating anymore. They're now, it's now sophisticated enough to deal with that as it is. But the problem is then it compounds and I start selling like this with all this compet, oracle complex . No, but like that, that's where I've found is a really healthy place to look as I'm on these adventures.

What's frustrating And then, okay, well what's that revealing? Let's start thinking about things differently and start to look into that

Daniel Franco: more. So for [01:07:00] example, can we put this into a practical terms? If I'm saying I'm frustrated by my health, That's a hard one. Let's go, let's go. Wait, let's not do that. Oh, wait, wait is the other one.

So why are you frustrated by it? Well, I'm cut a few extra kilos. Don't have enough time to, uh, put into my own personal training why you have enough time on. Well, this is the thing. I ask these questions every single day and I think it's actually recently that I have discovered that unless this vessel is working, this business hasn't got anything to to do.

You know what I mean? Like Right. So I poked at you

Anton Andreacchio: a little bit. Yeah. And what's it

Daniel Franco: revealed? Well, it's revealed exactly where I've landed, I think, which is, you know, put the, you know, using the airplane analogy, put the mask on your face first before anyone

Anton Andreacchio: else. Well, look, I'll poke at you a little bit more.

Is it because you're self-conscious about it or because you're worried about what happens if you go down cause of the pressure that's on you? Are you fit? Like, I mean, I, I don't wanna get too into it on a podcast, but like, No,

Daniel Franco: I am happy to talk about it. I, and cause I think I'm [01:08:00] not the only one going through this if I can share my experience and I want other people to learn from it as well.

I think it's because I'm not in peak condition to perform in the role that I play. It's like you think about football, you know, you want your, you want your midfielders to be in peak condition. You want 'em to be able to run all day. You want 'em to be eating right. You want them to be, have their fitness at a certain level.

You want their skin folds at a certain level. You want their mindset to be in a certain way. They're high performing, they're elite athletes. The best in the world. I feel footballers are the best in the world at what they do, and it's because of the training, the effort, and the sacrifice that they make, right?

So I put a lot of time, effort, and sacrifice into the business and, but I don't actually really concentrate on what is the most important part of that, which is managing myself, [01:09:00] Managing my I it's a, it's a time and priorities. . Right. I think at the moment I have got my priorities confused. Okay. And I think it's just a matter of spinning that, and I think, but I, this is something that I've come to conclusion.

Do you agree or do, How are you gonna spin that? Well, I mean, I've, now that everyone's heard this on the podcast, I dare say there's gonna be a few people holding me account, but I think it is an area where I need to start reviewing my models and reviewing my, There we are. Yeah. Reviewing my part of the first I

Anton Andreacchio: habit I've found with a lot of these things is speaking it into existence.

Mm. Um, being able to talk about it, being able to be vulnerable at it. But even as poking a little bit, it's like we all know that we've got our things we need to deal with. Yeah. But at what stage do you deal with them? Is the question, particularly when everyone's drowning, and particularly as an entrepreneur, where you're drowning on a daily basis on things.

Yeah. Correct. Like if the priorities are wrong, it's easy to say, I'll just change your priorities. It's like, No, no, no. How are you gonna. Build [01:10:00] enough of a foundation to make that pivot easy. Yeah. Better than easy. Something that actually becomes a strength. Mm. And that's what I've tried to do, is I've gone, Okay, well, rather than treating it as a, um, as a burden, it becomes something that's a feature.

Mm. And then that becomes something I can grapple with, but I need to externalize that. I need to find other institutions or communities that'll hold me accountable to it. Because the pressure you're under, you just get sucked back in. Yeah. You know, you might try for a few weeks, but Yeah. You

Daniel Franco: Yeah. Habits kick back in.

Absolutely.

Anton Andreacchio: It's easier path of least resistance. It's not just developing new habits, is developing new structures. Mm. And that's what I've found has helped me with that.

Daniel Franco: Do you go on a course correction? Like do, do you look at your life from a point of view of every three months I'm gonna review my mental models?

Or do you just take it as, Oh, that's starting to feel pain, or, I'm starting to feel the frustrations there that now I'm gonna review. Are you proactively reviewing

Anton Andreacchio: even that model of. Those five domains. I started doing that every Christmas about five years ago. That was very healthy. Personal [01:11:00] life had gone out the window.

All sorts of things were a mess. Yeah. And I started a new way of kind of thinking about that. Um, it used to be more rigid. Now I'm a bit more fluid with it. Mm-hmm. , just because life is changing so quickly. It's like, you know, you've gotta be, It's kind of become a habit now in certain ways. So I think about it, um, whether I'm writing stuff down or setting goals and things like that, that just tends to be three months.

But specifically at the end of the year when there's a hard punctuation, mark and I can go, Okay, well what just happened? Yeah. What am I aiming at next? Um, so,

Daniel Franco: well, what model do you work on from a wellbeing point of view? And, and from your own? Like, if you are, you're talking about not ob, not projecting doubt or projecting the wrong, uh, message or.

Behaviors to these businesses and boards. I mean, you are right here. We're sitting with this, you know, beautiful program of the Adelaide Film Festival, which you chair mm-hmm. . How do you [01:12:00] bring your best self as the chair to that company and business and organization and community every single day. Yep. Is there something that you do personally?

Is there something that you, you know, do you practice spiritually? What, what is it that you do? It's

Anton Andreacchio: not, We've went down several rabbit holes. This is not rabbit hole that would go down. Um, uh, travel's always helped, helped me just to get a sense of space and time away. Just change the environment. Mm-hmm.

I found this really useful. Reading helps a lot. Mm-hmm. . Um, I don't do enough. No one ever does enough. Right. Yeah. But I often find that's helpful. And with, with regards to af like I've, I'll be very frank, when I was first appointed the chair, I was very nervous about that. Terrified, like Hugo weaving on the board.

I've got these incredible filmmakers on the board. That's amazing. Josh Fanning amazing. Like, who am I to share that? And so I channeled that for you to say, Well, I've gotta do the work. I've actually gotta put in the work here. If I'm gonna take the responsibility of leading [01:13:00] this and I'm sufficiently terrified, I've gotta put in the work to make sure that I'm ready to do this and make sure that if I'm doing things, I'm doing it with a level of authority that I can live with.

So we started a philanthropy program, so I had to become a donor. I'm not asking people for money if, if, you know, I'm not willing to become a donor myself. Um, whether it be aic, c d or whether it be finding mentors of have gone, okay, well what's it, what do I need to do to, to make sure that I don't look back and regret this?

Um, it's, yeah, I feel a sense of pressure, not, not just on a selfish perspective. So I don't wanna let everyone down as well. So what do I need to do if I'm gonna take that responsibility? And that helps kind of pull me through. So,

Daniel Franco: Is there a limit to the amount of responsibility

Anton Andreacchio: that you can take home?

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Have you found that limit? Uh, at times, yes. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. What does

it

Daniel Franco: look like and feel like when you're at that limit?

Anton Andreacchio: Nah, no, no. Too big question. I would work that , that's, [01:14:00] you know, everyone's got the limit. Everyone's got the limit. Um, and it's, it's a function of, of a lot of things.

A lot of things. So, yeah. I, maybe that's a bit too

Daniel Franco: vulnerable for this. Okay. Not worry. We'll ask that in podcast number two. Um, , let's talk about the Adelaide Film Festival and everything that you're doing in, in that world. Sure. It's exciting space. It's, um, I, I wanna ask you though, do you gets a lot of support in this space?

It seems as if government, um, especially recently, the new government that's in place and we're. Spec specifically from a south, a Australian point of view here for this comment alone, that their, their focus has moved away from potentially arts, but more into health and, and stuff like that. Is that something that'll disrupt the industry?

Is it, are you, are you optimistic about the film industry in Australia or here in South Australia? Where does it sit for someone? And I'm speaking from someone who doesn't know that much. So from a [01:15:00] layman's point of view.

Anton Andreacchio: Right. Okay. This is where I could get into real trouble. , no. Um, I'm very passionate about film.

Mm-hmm. very passionate about storytelling. I also think South Australians need to have a voice. Mm-hmm. . I also think South Australian needs to grapple with the issues of its day. This is the role of contemporary cinema. Mm-hmm. or contemporary storytelling. Um, this ranges from stolen generation stories.

Mm-hmm. , there's a fabulous one called the Last Order Premiering here. Mm-hmm. in the program. Um, I could wax philosophical about that. . Yeah. For hours. Yeah. But, um, whether it's that, whether it's migrant stories, whether it's our identity, we're at the intersections of so many things. Where are we actually playing these cultural issues out?

So I believe in, I really believe in this intersection. I do it cause it's meaningful. And this is not my company. I'm not No, no. It's the governments. Yeah. I own it and I'm a volunteer to be very frank, so, Okay. ROI for my time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good for the government. So look, I'm very wary about [01:16:00] talking about government priorities.

Um, they are faced with challenges that I can't, I can't claim to understand. Mm-hmm. , um, uh, we were very lucky in that the current government had an election commitment to annualize the Adela Film Festival. Okay. Now I'll talk about that for a moment. Adelaide Film Festival is, has been a biennial event, just like the Adelaide Festival used to be, just like the fringe used to be.

And typically when festivals become annual, they take off because suddenly they're not scaling up and then shutting down, scaling up and shutting down audiences and losing people and all that. and a has received some money from the state government to help with Annualization. It has not been the only factor.

We've gone out and raised the money. Yep. Ira Swain has been absolutely fantastic in building a sponsorship program and helping us get our house in order in that regard. Mm-hmm. , we've set up philanthropy to help. Yep. Bridge this gap. Ticket sales. Amazing. We've gone, let's go back to fundamentals and let's really fight to make this relevant to South Australians.

So we're activating not just the cbd, [01:17:00] but the Oon and Seoul, Dr. Capri. Brilliant. You know, Cape Blanchette, uh, Australian Premiere of of Tara is going to be there, but we're really focusing on going back to basics with that. Now, I'm not critical of past leaders. They've been dealt challenging hands and done the best with what they could, But Matt Casting and the whole team and the board have really focused on getting our house in order so that we can grow well.

Mm-hmm. , and it's been an entrepreneurial endeavor. I'm really proud of it. So, um, the program is as, I think it's seven South Australian. First time filmmakers. Brilliant. So we actually have a generation of filmmakers in South Australia. I mean Maddy per on opening night, the r Acker Boys on closing night.

Yep. Um, uh, Matt Vestly with Monolith, Sean Lah with with Car Effects. It, This is a, this is a cultural moment. Yeah. This is for the film industry. Now, to pivot away from that, there is tension within the film industry. It's complicated. On one hand, we love being a services economy in Australia, which is Hollywood comes here, it's great, Creates jobs, they go home.[01:18:00]

On the other hand, we've got our own ip. How do those worlds coexist together? And what's been fascinating in South Australia is this concept of creative industries. So creative industries is not just about arts plus commercialization, it's all about IP generation and IP commercialization. It is, for the first time that I've seen actually focused on seeing our storytellers as cultural commodities that we actually need them there, creating that IP rather using all of our resources.

Creating and commercializing other people's ip. Yeah. So I'm really, really excited about where things are at the moment. Look, government support, I will be grateful for in all shapes and forms. Mm-hmm. . However, there's also more private investment happening nowadays. Right. Um, there's a lot of other factors and we're just getting more competitive.

It's like, I'm trying to be optimistic about the situation, so I'll stop there. I'm getting all ra. And

Daniel Franco: what is the, what is the a F um, what does it look like in context from an Australian point of view? Where does South Australia sit as a, like, are we a leader in this space?

Anton Andreacchio: Absolutely. We are. Absolutely.

People [01:19:00] don't realize the reputation F has at Can Film Festival and Sundance. It's, Yeah. Wow. The work of Amanda Duffy and Katrina Sedwick before that, and Matt Casting now is being, it's, it's a soft diplomacy exercise as much as anything. It, it gives local filmmakers a platform on the world stage. Mm-hmm.

South Australians don't know. No. A lot of people don't even know that

Daniel Franco: F exists. No. Well, I knew it existed. I, I don't know much about it. I think this is what's really interesting is that, you know, when we talk about. . Um, the industry is in, we had, like we said, had Adrian Timber. We're talking about all these different industries and everyone's focusing on tech and lot 14 and all the above.

Yep. What can we do to put more emphasis and onus on this industry? Is there some, is it something that could really take off here? Could, and this is a really naive question, but could Adelaide become like another Hollywood type scenario? Is that a possibility?

Anton Andreacchio: I don't want it to be a Hollywood type scenario.

I think we could. I don't want to be like south by Southwest. I wanna be like what we are here. Yeah. [01:20:00] Okay. And to me, that doesn't start with ne, I mean, some people will say, we've gotta get the brand association that gives us the credibility to do X, Y, and Z. Yep. I believe it's time to try something a little different.

Mm-hmm. tried that. Good. I'm a big fan of supporting the local entrepreneurs and in the film space. Those are the film producers. Those are the film directors. Those are the writers. It's hard because you've gotta get a critical mass for an industry, and I get that. But we have a critical mass. And to me it's like what could we be if we fulfilled our potential?

And that means not just being a services economy, which has been crushed by automation. Mm-hmm. It's how do we focus on our product going back to product. Mm-hmm. Going back to, and the product is really, who are the filmmakers grappling with the stories of the day. Mm-hmm. and we've, Yeah. We focus on them. I think we could be something very special.

Um, and a already is. Mm-hmm. , it's, it's already been happening in South Australia. We've got a tremendous culture and history of this. Um, Ralph here's got a project in this fund as well. So it's like, it's, it's, there is a, [01:21:00] um, we, we are negotiating from a position like strong foundations, but it's also what is a gonna be in an era of Netflix.

Okay. We're fighting againts. Programming algorithms that are beamed into the homes of every South Australian bar Aeu that. Um, and we need things that are not just driven by entertainment and American sensibilities. We, we need this.

Daniel Franco: Well, that was gonna be my next question. If you think in taking social media a algorithms right?

Like you're on Instagram, you like, uh, you're like this, this person playing guitar, they're playing a Metallica song, all of a sudden you're gonna see a whole bunch of Metallica music and people playing guitars come up on your feed. Right? That's just the way the algorithm works. The algorithm of Netflix puts these big blockbuster, uh, films in front of us and, and does, does Money, is, is the aa fair four of these films and these, like, you think about the amazing stories and the ability of these people to tell stories through film that may never see the, the light of day in some people's eyes [01:22:00] because they've just got this algorithm that, of course, corporate world is putting in front of, and I'm not

Anton Andreacchio: seeing it as part of a community as well.

Mm-hmm. , like, why are you doing this?

Daniel Franco: To help spread good positive stories and learnings. But, But why is it just South

Anton Andreacchio: Australian?

Daniel Franco: Well, it's got a bit of Australian. I have interviewed some overseas people as well, but it, it, it has a South Australian focus because I don't believe there is, uh, I'm passionate about this state and I am passionate about, um, you know, when I ask questions about could FF become the next Hollywood is, I'm always looking for what could set South Australia apart.

I ask cuz you are

Anton Andreacchio: speaking largely to South Australian audiences, Right. And with the tech revolution things got global very quickly. Mm-hmm. and we've lost senses of community. There's been a whole bunch of challenges that have come with that. But some conversations should be at the level of state and city.

Um, and we have [01:23:00] big challenges to navigate both in our history and in our future. And Netflix isn't gonna do that for us. It's how are we able to. engage with this. And look, there's a fascinating thing we do with the program. There's always gonna be controversy with film festivals. Mm-hmm. , we actually need some controversy, otherwise we're not grappling with any Yeah.

Difficult terrain. And it's, it's something that,

considering that storytelling in a community is such a part of who we are and biologically wired up to, um, to experience, to come together, to experience one of these movies. If we can impact one person, that becomes a ripple effect. Just like the Indiana Jones moment that you described earlier. If you come to a and see triangle of sadness or a film that you wouldn't have otherwise seen, and you have that moment, suddenly there's a ripple effect in South Australia.

And that over time, the exponential function kicks in. It's not about bed stays necessarily. That's important too. But it's about culture. And every [01:24:00] company, every industry, they talk about how culture's Important. This isn't just about film. This is about the subject matters that we are navigating, which is relevant to so many walks of life.

So that is, that is why I get so passionate about this. Maybe I'll simmer down a bit.

Daniel Franco: No, I do like it. I think this, my daughter came home and I can't, um, for the life of me trying to remember it, she came home the other, probably last week or so, and she said to me, Dad, I'm like, They, um, they have this, uh, thing called spectacular, where at the end of the, every year, the whole school performs like an act in front of the, the community, all, all the parents and whatnot.

Sure. It's a big thing that they have at the entertainment center, which is really exciting. And this year my daughter comes home and she says, Dad, we're dancing to this song. And it's a song, um, written by a Torres Strait Islander and an aboriginal man. And the, the dance that they're doing, um, [01:25:00] is, you know, a traditional, um, indigenous dance, which is, you know, to pay tributes and all, all the above.

And I, and I, apologies, I can't remember the name of the song, but I remember listening to the song and thinking to myself, This is actually amazing. Like, it's actually a song that I want to hear. So I added it to my playlist and I've got, and it got me thinking, what are, what about, what is this, all this stuff that I could be missing out on?

Because I like, it's just not part of the algorithms. So I think what I'm asking in this question is how do we get more involved in this space? How do we see more of it? Is it just by like, without, like, not, not everyone's gonna listen to this podcast, right? But how do we spread the message of the great work that's happening here in South Australia and how do we get it out there More like for those who are listening and those who want to connect in.

Anton Andreacchio: Hmm. I can share what we have been doing. Mm-hmm. do

Daniel Franco: it. I'm [01:26:00] asking more from the point of what can we do, What can I do as someone

Anton Andreacchio: who, I need a champion for the Adelaide Film Festival. You need someone, you've got a platform. I need, I need someone to champion this. And to be honest, we have champions. Yeah.

But it's fun championing. This is something I learned with the 4,040 stuff. It's, it's great fun to advocate for something just because it's meaningful, not because you get something out of it. Yeah. Correct. It's like, and we're starting to see more of that. It's mm-hmm. , I have tremendous empathy for a lot of arts organizations in particularly in this state.

Yeah. Um, it's, they're doing so much with so little, and it's a lifestyle for so many of these people just getting up every day and pouring their heart and soul souls into it, but with no time off in lieu and wages that would make it. Oh my God. But it's like, to me it's, it's less about just going to the government for money.

That's part of the conversation. We need the state to own its film, sense of affection for it. And what I'm trying to do is go, I'm willing to stand up on this. Over to you. Yeah. Let's do something about it. Will you as well? It's, it's, I'm trying to, I'm trying to take [01:27:00] initiative in that regard and it's not just talking about it.

We've been putting in the work, building the organization, building the team, building that the CEO and creative director Yeah. To help him fulfill his potential. So I take tremendous joy in that. Tremendous joy. So, Well,

Daniel Franco: too much. No, I'm gonna call out if look, Cause there's only so much I can do as well.

But if anyone listening to this Come along. Yeah. Come along exactly. I,

Anton Andreacchio: I'll circle some, come along. I'd love to see what you think. See the community happen. Brilliant. I'll be there two weeks. October

Daniel Franco: 19th to 30th. Excellent. Um, I know Paula is in love with this space. I told her you went. Yeah. She's like, Oh my god.

Literally that's as she said it. Look

Anton Andreacchio: here, here's a proposition. Have some of the filmmakers on your podcast Yeah. Have some of the new voices that are stepping through in the creative industries. Happy to, happy to share. And more

Daniel Franco: interesting than I am. . Happy to share, Happy to share their stories. We'll get talking of off air about that.

Sure. What we might be able to do. I'm giving you, I'm

Anton Andreacchio: giving you tasks. There you go. You asked. Done.

Daniel Franco: Perfect. But it's those who are listening in too, right? Cause we do have a [01:28:00] large corporate following. Um, and these corporate people, these corporate leaders have influence. So, you know, anyone wants to get in contact with Anton and figure out how we can make this, uh, make this grow.

I am very conscious of your time. We've, um, we've, uh, embarked, embarked on a journey, our own journey within this podcast. I wanna wrap up, uh, quickly, just before I get it. We have a tradition where we ask some quick fire questions, uh, for a bit of fun at the end of the show, just to leave a little bit of a, a smile.

But before I do that, I wanna ask one last question is, what, what does the future look like for Anton? Where are you, uh, where have you got your sight set and. Is there a limit? Is there something that you're really passionate about that you, you have thought about that maybe you want to traverse into that, that world as well?

Adelaide Film Festival. That's your, I'm,

Anton Andreacchio: I'm focused on that for the moment. Yeah, it was two years away. Two years ago, and now it's here. [01:29:00] So I'm, I'm quite focused on this as an inflection point, and that's something that Brilliant. I

Daniel Franco: won't add other things to the mix right now. Is this an area that you feel could, you could create something great in, like, as in you've got these businesses who are doing this amazing work, Adelaide Field and Festival for you, chairing.

Is this something that you feel like there is some innovation to have in this industry that I could really champion? I think I

Anton Andreacchio: already have. Yeah, I think I've, I've,

Daniel Franco: yeah. Yeah. Excellent. All right, we'll leave that there. Yeah, maybe cut that out . So quick fire questions to round off the show. What are you reading right now?

Um,

Anton Andreacchio: the rise and fall of the neoliberal order. Ooh, talk

Daniel Franco: to me about that real quick. I thought this was quick fire . I know, but I, We can elaborate. . Um,

Anton Andreacchio: it is a book that, um, talks about the rise of nationalism, um, the history of the neoliberal order from the [01:30:00] nineties to today after the fall of the Soviet Empire.

Um, some of these macro trends around why are we seeing all these new political moments spring up and what the hell is going on? So,

Daniel Franco: yeah. Very relevant to what's currently happening. What is, I know you don't like the term self development, but what is a book that you feel that stands out from the crowd when looking to embark on improve self-improvement?

Thinking fast and slow. Right. Daniel? Daniel Canman. I enjoyed that. It's a ripper. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any other podcasts that you listen to other than this one? Of course, . I've

Anton Andreacchio: listened to a lot of your

Daniel Franco: podcasts. I know. Yeah. I said, other than this one, of course.

Anton Andreacchio: Depends. It's as much about the guests as is about the podcast.

Um, le I have an affection for the Lex Friedman podcast. Oh, Lex

Daniel Franco: Friedman is by far one of my favorites. Wild. Yeah. Have you Um, so Lex is brilliant cuz he has a mind that just, you could just listen to him half the time, let alone the [01:31:00] people that he gets on. Have you listened to another one that I love called The Diary of a CEO by Stephen Barrett?

I think you really like that one too. They go into some pretty amazing

Anton Andreacchio: topics as well. There's another great local podcast. The song is yours, guy called Simon Fink Comes from a real place of passion. He's a good man.

Daniel Franco: Yeah. What are they talk about

Anton Andreacchio: on their show? He interviews musicians. Ah, brilliant. But he's not trying to make a big podcast.

He's, he was, he's always, I've known him for a very long time. Yeah. He's always been so passionate about music. He's always impacted him at this level. Yeah. So when he interviews it very much comes through. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: Brilliant. Excellent. This is so much a shout out. Yeah. Perfect. What's one lesson that's taking the longest to learn?

Um, ,

Anton Andreacchio: you choose your regrets. Ooh, that's Christopher Hitchens thing. He said, um, kind of hit me. I was like, all right. Right. You choose the regrets you can live with.

Daniel Franco: So at the point in time of making the decision and what you're gonna do is when you're choosing a potential regret as well. Yeah. Oh, that's [01:32:00] go down that rabbit hole.

Uh, but we won't. Three people. If you can have, you'll ask. I know. I love it. What do you me to do? Do you know? Sometimes I think about opening with these questions cuz I'm like, this could just set up. Sure. But I like finishing up anyway. That's a strong, Here you go. . If you could have three people for dinner, who would they be?

Oh, I'm assuming your partners there. Living or dead? Three people, human beings that have ever existed.

Anton Andreacchio: Christopher Hitchens. Mm-hmm. , Um, Steven Fry. Oh yes. Who do you pair with? Those two?

Daniel Franco: Be interesting.

Anton Andreacchio: Naomi Wolf. Oh, yes. I remember seeing a, an interview, I think it was Charlie Rose with Hitchens and Nomi Wolf, and just the repe was divine.

So yeah, just for that banter. Yeah. Brilliant. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I could come up with better answers than that, but that'll do. But it's one

Daniel Franco: dinner you got, You could have multiple , [01:33:00] invite other people to other dinners. What is some of the best advice that you've ever received?

Anton Andreacchio: Oh, I don't know. Probably that la Oh, that I've received, probably the toolbox thing I said earlier. Mm-hmm. . It's not just about having good tools to wield, it's also about having an understanding of the domain that, to navigate it safely. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I really like that point, particularly with the startup world where there are all these solutions looking for problems.

It's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. There's a humility in listening to what's going on on the ground too, so,

Daniel Franco: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. If you had access to a time machine, , Where would you go? I don't know.

Anton Andreacchio: You don't

Daniel Franco: know? I don't know. Someone who's so observant. You wouldn't, I I always pictured you as someone who would go back to when, I don't know, go back

Anton Andreacchio: to all sorts of places.

Like what?

Daniel Franco: So there's no point in time that's in history.

Anton Andreacchio: I'd love to see R [01:34:00] Madoff play. Um, Oh yeah. One of his piano concerts. I would've loved that. Yeah. Because you're a, I don't know, like a go back time and like kill Hitler. Isn't that the main thing you're meant to do? Oh, yeah. But if that's

Daniel Franco: on the table, But we, but we learn lots from that.

I think this

Anton Andreacchio: goes, I'm not gonna morally justify any of that, so I'm just gonna go to the next question. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: No, I, No, no. I don't endorse what what happened, but I always come back to that point of what couldn't be learned. Of course. Uh, if you could, uh, sorry if, if your house was on fire and where your family, your pets, everyone was safe.

You had to go back inside for one thing, what would that one thing be? Slide

Anton Andreacchio: rule for my grandpa. Hey, what a slide rule that my grandpa gave me. Ah.

Daniel Franco: Is he like, that? Is is he still alive? He still with us? Yeah. What's the, is that, what's the sentimental value behind

Anton Andreacchio: that? He just gave it to me and I love him, so.

Okay. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: That is good. He don't often. Yeah. It's not something that you would have normally, Is it

Anton Andreacchio: really? Well, you know, that would be weird. Yeah. [01:35:00] Have you not figured that out yet?

Daniel Franco: I got asked this question the other day. It's not on this list, but I got asked that yesterday. What's something that you ha you don't know enough about?

Oh,

Anton Andreacchio: maths . Yeah. Okay. The more I dig, the less I know it's, uh, and you know a lot

Daniel Franco: that's not well compared to me, . Well, I

Anton Andreacchio: feel a sense of revulsion even talking about it compared to those that have actually stayed on the path. It's like, my God, I'll never catch up. It's uh,

Daniel Franco: There's something about math though, isn't it?

Like, it's just this universal language. No matter where you go in the world, everyone speaks the same language in the universe. Everyone's senses

Anton Andreacchio: of truth. Anything. I mean, the question is, does it exist or is it, what's the quote? God made the intes or the rest is the work of man. It's, ah, yeah, there's a certain purity in, in it, but doesn't mean that the world's not messy.

Daniel Franco: If you had one superhero power, what would it be?

Anton Andreacchio: Oh, I don't know. Better podcast performances. ,

Daniel Franco: [01:36:00] Come on. There's gotta, You're in movies. You, you should have a superhero power.

Anton Andreacchio: I, I haven't thought about that question. I'm sorry. No,

Daniel Franco: the power of knowledge, Right? Surely that's gotta be up there. Everyone goes with flying, everyone

Anton Andreacchio: goes with and be careful about that, you know is bliss, right?

Uh,

Daniel Franco: yeah, good point. But then if you have the knowledge to get over whatever situation. Yeah, I dunno. now I flicked you a text last night saying that I want you to make sure you have a good shit joke that you can provide us. Did you bring

Anton Andreacchio: one or not? Look, I didn't, I didn't. I mean, I was asked my girlfriend and and she said, I've got a terrible sense of direction.

So I packed up my stuff and just write .

Daniel Franco: Well, I love it. You played that very, very well. Thank you so much for your time today, Anton. Thank you. We went I'll, I'll interview you

Anton Andreacchio: next.

Daniel Franco: Uh, that, that, I don't know, give the people what they want. There won't be that much depth, I don't think. [01:37:00] Oh, come on . Thank you.

For, for all you are doing. Right. I think I, and I, I sincerely mean that you are having an impact in more ways than one, not only on the entrepreneurial world and the Adelaide Film Festival, and, but you are, I know the work that you're doing is contributing positively to both South Australia, Australia, and the world.

So thank you for all that you're doing, and I'm really keen to continue watching this path and watching your journey and watching all the changes and positive changes that you're gonna make. I appreciate that. Thank you. Excellent. That wraps up the show. Thank you everyone. Um, where can we catch you and connect with you if we need to or want to?

Don't

Anton Andreacchio: message me on LinkedIn. Don't message me on, uh, social media service. Come to the Adelaide Film Festival from 19th of October to the

Daniel Franco: 30, so I'll be at everything. So, And that's where you'll find him. Excellent. Thanks everyone. Catch you next time. Great.[01:38:00]

Anton Andreacchio: Beautiful.