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Published 10th June, 2026.
Episode #260 features Maxine Minter — Founder and General Partner of the Pre-Seed Venture Capital Fund, Co Ventures.
Maxine reflects on growing up between Australia, Japan and Europe, speaking Japanese before English, and raised by a fiercely entrepreneurial single mother.
Vidit and Maxine explore her childhood, the influence of her grandparents, executive coaching, the idea of “generative ambition”, and the lessons learned from building companies, backing founders and how and why she started her own VC fund, Co Ventures.
They also discuss the specifics of how the best Aussie founders go global, the realities of venture capital, AI, partnership, importance of play, and why the biggest opportunities often come from stepping outside the boxes others expect you to fit into.
Please enjoy exploring your curiosity.
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About us
The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most relatable role models in business, tech, finance, government and sport in the US, Australia, Singapore, India and New Zealand.
Launched over 6.5+ years ago - our 275+ guests come from various industries around the world including:
Investing and Finance (VC, PE, Pension Funds, Family Offices)
Our guests across venture capital, growth investing, institutional capital, banking, pension funds and family offices include: Keith Rabois (MD, Khosla Ventures), Jason Collins (CEO, BlackRock Asia Pacific), Ryan Beiermeister (Partner, Founders Fund), David Haber (General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz), Kevin Hartz (Managing Partner, A*), Mike Vernal (Partner, Conviction; Ex-Sequoia), David Schneider (Growth Fund Co-Lead Partner, Coatue), Venky Ganesan (Managing Partner, Menlo Ventures), Mark Suster (Managing Partner, Upfront Ventures), Kelland Reilly (Partner, Airtree; Ex General Atlantic, D1), Niki Scevak (Managing Partner, Blackbird), Paul Bassat (Managing Partner, Square Peg), David Neal (CEO, IFM Investors), Sam Sicilia (CIO, Hostplus), Michael Kim (Partner, Cendana Capital), Beezer Clarkson (Partner, Sapphire), Gautam Chari (Head of Capital Commitments, Bank of America), David Shein (Managing Partner, OIF), Vivek Bhatia (CEO, MUFG), Rowan Simpson (Founder, Hoku) and more.
Technology, AI and software (Startups, Big Tech, Publicly Listed)
Our technology, AI and software guests include Jodie Auster (Uber’s Global Head of Travel), Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Xero), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Mel Silva (MD, Google), Jean-Michel Lemieux (former CTO, Shopify and Atlassian), Anil Sabharwal (Global VP, Google Chrome, Photos and Drive), Shiv Rao (CEO, Abridge), Jesse Zhang (CEO, Decagon), Dylan Babbs (Co-Founder & CTO, Profound), John Willett (Co-Founder & COO, Rogo), David Eckstein (CFO, Legora), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta), Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel), Cristina Cordova (COO, Linear), Elena Verna (Head of Growth, Lovable), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Tim Doyle (CEO, Eucalyptus), Andrew Fraser (President, Halter), Bowen Pan (creator of Facebook Marketplace) and more.
CEOs, Boards and Major Company Senior Executives
Our guests leading some of the world's largest and most recognisable organisations include Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths Group), Aleks Spaseska (CEO, Kmart) Michael Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), Paul Grosmann (CEO, R.M.Williams), Andrew Penn (CEO, Telstra), Vandita Pant (CFO, BHP), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica), Craig Tiley (CEO, Tennis USA), Brendan Hargreaves (CFO, Officeworks), Andrew Fraser (Board Chair, Bank of Queensland), Jaddan Cummerford (CEO, Unified Music), Ed McManus (CEO, Deliveroo) and more.
Government and Policy Makers
Our government, diplomatic and public-policy guests include Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Amit Singh (Managing Partner, Mandala), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Australia's Foreign Service), Philip Green (Australia’s High Commissioner to India), Brendan Dowling (Deputy Secretary, Australia's Department of Home Affairs), Mukund Narayanamurti (General Manager for South Asia, Austrade) and Ryan Neelam (CEO, Centre for Australia-India Relations, Australian Government).
Professional Athletes
Steve Solomon (400m Olympic Sprinter), Ed Cowan (Former Test Cricketer), Trent Cotchin (3x Premiership Winning Captain, Richmond FC), Lisa Stahelakar (World Cup Winning Captain, Australian Womens Cricket Team).
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