Field notes
Evidence-based insights on startup success, business excellence, and why most failures are preventable.
Three independent professional assessments over nine years said the same thing: a systems thinker who distils messy complexity into something humans can use. Nearly twenty years rebuilding broken systems inside hospitals, law firms and professional services taught me one thing. Prevention is cheaper than cure. That's what Sova is built to do.
Read full post: Who The Fuck Am I? (And Why You Can Trust Sova)AI redundancies are sending more Australians into founding than at any point this decade. They are walking into a system where most new ventures fail within their first three years. Australia has spent the last decade adding programs. The failure rate hasn't moved. The answer isn't more. It's one evidence-based starting point in every founder's hands.
Read full post: AI Is Creating More Founders. The Ecosystem Is Already Struggling.Three 2025 reports agree: Australia had a record VC year, deal count fell 20%, and the top 20 deals captured 58% of all capital. Two startups across just four rounds took nearly a third. Here's what the combined data from Cut Through Venture, LaunchVic and Dealroom means for everyone else.
Read full post: Australia Raised $5.4 Billion in 2025. Twenty Companies Got 58% of It.TRL measures product readiness. IRL measures commercial viability. KTH assesses six dimensions in parallel. All useful. None built on what actually causes startups to fail. Here is what existing frameworks were not designed to see.
Read full post: Beyond TRL and IRL: What Startup Assessment Has Been MissingHarvard research shows 65% of high-potential startups fail due to cofounder conflict. 35% of funded founders leave within two years. Governance is not a Series B problem. It is a day one problem.
Read full post: When Does a Startup Need Formal Governance?ASIC imposed $32.2 million in civil penalties in H1 2024. Over 11,000 companies entered external administration in 2023-24. Here is what Australian startups are actually required to do, and what it costs to ignore it.
Read full post: Australian Startup Governance: What ASIC, ASX and AusIndustry Actually RequireIn 2011, a team of researchers built a self-assessment tool that could identify whether a startup was on track to fail. It had 34,000 users and Steve Blank's endorsement. Then it disappeared. Here's what happened, and why it matters.
Read full post: The Tool That Proved Startups Need DiagnosisThe 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Report studied more than 5 million companies across 350+ ecosystems. Early-stage deal counts have fallen roughly 70% from their 2021 peak, and Australian founders are raising significantly less than the global average. Here's what it means.
Read full post: The Global Startup Report Australia Can't IgnoreIn 2024-25, 437,150 new businesses entered the Australian market. 60% will fail within three years. Most of these failures are preventable. Here's why I built Sova to democratise access to the tools that prevent them.
Read full post: Why I Built Sova