#163 Grant Dooley: Joining Navy at 16, Diplomat in China + Indonesia (and painful learnings); Inside the $2B fund, Breakthrough Victoria!

Vidit Agarwal
What if we could reimagine the traditional notion of a high flyer? Hey friends, welcome back. Or welcome to the High Flyers podcast where we do reimagine a high flyer showcase the brightest and most relatable role models and companies and their journey from sunrise to today as one of the premier products in our Curiosity centre lineup, providing on demand intelligence featuring Olympic athletes, business and cultural leaders, students, journalists, investors, founders and more from around the world to help you be 1% better every single day. I'm your host, Vidi Tagawal, and let's have some fun. Thanks to you, this podcast continues to rank in the global top ten podcasts by both Spotify and Apple podcasts for the past two years running.

And we hope you're enjoying our catalog of 150 episodes featuring guests from twelve countries across nearly 30 industries. Before we get to today's episode, I want to share two really special announcements with you. First, a big congrats to Luke Morton, the winner of our competition to win a free ticket to the Sunrise Festival happening this week in Sydney. We had over 40 entries and Luke stood out for his proactiveness and can do attitude. And secondly, I've organized two special live and in person events in Melbourne in May.

1 is focused on climate tech and it features the head of public policy at Tesla, Sam McLean, and the founder of Climate 200, Simon Holmes, a court on the 16 May neither of these guests do public events often, so this one's really special. It's free and it's quickly filling up all details on how to register in our show notes and we have another event featuring 60 founders and 60 investors. Again, all details in the show notes. So I'd recommend pausing this episode, reading our show notes and getting involved and then pressing play to hear this conversation. My guest this week is Grant Dooley.

In this episode 163 grant is an experienced international funds manager and the CEO of Breakthrough Victoria. He commenced in the role in November 2021, returning to Melbourne from Singapore, where he was a former head of the ARA infrastructure, managing their public and private investments across the Asia Pacific region, and previously he was an executive director and head of Asia for Hastings funds management. Prior to working in funds management, Grant had a distinguished career as a foreign affairs and diplomatic trade official for the australian government, including two years as the Australian Consul general in southern China and previously in Jakarta, Indonesia. Grant was born in Williamstown, near Melbourne and now lives in inner city Melbourne. In this conversation, learn about Grant's sunrise, his early years coming from a working class family, losing his dad at an early age, his love for the AFL, the origins of his nickname, Tom, and the story behind how he left high school at age 16 and joined the Navy for 16 years in the role his mum played.

This conversation can be best described as a two part audiobook of Grant's story and impact to date. The first part is focused on his time in the navy and then his diplomatic career, which took him to Indonesia and China. And the second part he's on his transition to investing in funds management with his roles at Hastings, Ara and now as CEO of Breakthrough Victoria. The $2 billion fund focused on making the state of Victoria a global innovation leader. In this conversation, the key highlights we cover include grant learning the Morse code when he was in the navy and how that helped him prove his ability to learn Chinese and Indonesian.

Fun fact, Grant can speak fluent Mandarin. We uncover his transition from the navy to the Department of Foreign affairs, and how he learned to work with the Chinese in the nineties and the early two thousands meeting his wife at the maritime headquarters in Sydney and she was his boss, and how their birth moved from China to Indonesia and she was posted there, and his reflections on a very traumatic time in Indonesia. For example, the embassy got bombed in September 2004 within months of Grant and his wife arriving there. And then the following three year period included those bombings, a tsunami, a plane crash, and personal threats, and then how they came back to Australia and realize the importance of what's truly important in life. I loved asking Grant about the raw ingredients of a successful embassy, what made him a stickler for good grammar and writing?

What, in his view, separates world class politicians? As in, what do they do that others don't? And how his speech in 2012 in China led to his transition to the investment and funds management world and how he made the adjustment. And we, of course, dive into his current role leading breakthrough Victoria, including how the role came about and what interested him about the opportunity. Demystifying various myths what should founders know are the benefits of having breakthrough Victoria as an investor?

And we jointly share our positive reflections on some of their portfolio founders that I've spent time with, including Richard at kite Magnetics, Lewis and Baijen, and Evelyn at smileyscope. Plus, to help you really get to know Grant, listen in to learn the role his friends have played in keeping him grounded, his writing of his upcoming book, and how that's helped him deal with some of the experiences in his life. And his favorite interview question to ask prospective candidates. It's now time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy.

Grant Ui, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me on here. Bitter. I am excited.

I was trying to figure out what I should call you at the start of this. Whether Grant or Thomas, I've come to learn. So we'll unpack where that name nickname comes from. Why don't we set the scene for our audience? Tell us, where were you born and where do you live now?

Grant Dooley
I was born in Williamstown, in Victoria in Australia, and I now live in Glen Iris, across the bay. I've been trying to find my way back to Williamstown for a lot of years, but my wife's needs a suburbs girl, so not quite back there yet. Interesting. And from a work perspective, what was your first job and what do you do now? I joined the Navy at 16 back in 1982.

And now I'm a CEO of a tech fund, an innovation and tech fund that's funded by the victorian government. So it's been a bit of a journey. And as you know, the purpose of this show is to reimagine a high flyer. I wonder, is there a high flyer, you know, who you feel hasn't got the recognition they deserve? It's a really good question, Bennett, and maybe others have said this before, but if I was to, you know, high flyers can be defined in very different ways.

And definitely the biggest high flyer of my life has been my mother, who my father died when I was quite young. And she is stoic in the old sense of stoicism and raised three kids and really never complained about anything in her life and worked for 65 consecutive years at the Williamstown football club. And if that doesn't get your name on the kiosk at the club, I don't know what else you can do. So. But she.

Look, it might sound a bit. Maybe not the high flyer in the sense that you. Maybe the people coming to your show, but mum has definitely been the biggest high flyer in my life. Oh, that's absolutely a high flyer. I generally define high flyer as the impact they've had rather than the position they hold.

Vidit Agarwal
And I think she fits that. What was she doing at the football club for so long? Yeah, she just ran the kiosk. So she's part of the ladies committee in the fifties. And, you know, she just met so many people.

Grant Dooley
Anyone that's been to the Williamstown football Club, which is in the BFA and now in the BFL, and that runs from Shane Warne to Steve Brax to anyone who's been down there for a pie, has been served by my mum. And you truly understand the influence of someone when you get pulled up by the police as I did in Williamstown Road in Williamstown, for speeding. And when I showed her my license, the guy said, oh, grant duly, you're not related to Janet D'Oulier. And I said, yeah, that's my mum. He said, well, she gives us free meat pies on the weekend, so I'll give you a coffee.

That's so good. Is that where your love for footy started? Because a lot of people said Carleton Football Club and Williamstown Football Club are two of your greatest loves. Yeah, that's right. And you can throw in the Jakarta Bintangs and Hong Kong Dragons and the Harmon Footy club as well.

But no, very much. As a kid growing up, we spent a lot of time at the Williamstown Football Club. My father was heavily involved, secretary Mum was in the kiosk. Great memories as a kid, running around collecting the balls, being in the change rooms with these giant men around me, all shiny and they're ready to go out and play with their oil and their arms and stuff. Yeah, just a love of community and camaraderie were the three things I took away from that period of my life.

And football has been very good to me all the way through the journey, notwithstanding the five plates and 20 screws in my head and the four knee operations. Oh, wow. Is that right? That many operations? Geez.

Vidit Agarwal
Can you still play? Well, mate, I'm very rusty. Let's just say that. Oh, wow, that's incredible. So was the dream to make it professional?

Did you want to be a professional footy player? No, I never had that. So my brother played to a very high standard. I just was, as my coach once said, I'm a very good competitor.

And tell me, I said, at the top, tom, where did that nickname come from? How did that start? Yeah, well, it was one of those nicknames you're given and you've got no idea the context, but you soon find out later. But I actually was given that nickname on the day I joined the Navy as a young 16 year old. I was shuffled onto a plane alongside 30 other guys flying to Perth where we would start our basic training.

Grant Dooley
And I was what was called a junior recruit. And the scheme stopped in, I think, 1984, and I landed at Perth airport and we got shuffled onto a bus and we got taken to HMO's Lewin, which is where I was going to live for the next nine months of my training. And as we got off the bus, we got put in a line and this very scary man called Chief Petty Officer Greaver was going down the line and you had your name badge on and mine had Dooley. And he got to me and he goes, tom. I said, no, it's Grant.

He goes, tom. I said, no, it's Grant. And he said, tom. I said, yes, it's Tom. My name is Tom.

And from that moment onwards, I was Tom Dooley for all my friends and everyone else in the navy. But, yeah, it's cheap peace agreement that they joined the Navy. You were kind enough to put me in touch with a lot of people leading up to this and a lot of them said, you have three Personas. They said, there's Grant the diplomat, grant the friend or the husband, and Tom the Larrikin. So.

That's right. I should note that the Tom reference, though, comes from a song called hang down your head. Tom. That's right, from the 1950s. So I'd never heard it, but it was a big hit for the officer griever.

But, yeah, no. So once I got that nickname, Tom, people largely didn't realize I had a real name called Grant or Grant. And then I went through my life's journey. My mum hated Tom, so she always called me Grant. When I joined foreign affairs, people in Canberra tended to say Grant.

And my wife then very much picked up on this and she put me my 50th birthday. She stood up and roasted me and said, when I married my husband, I didn't realize I was marrying three people. And she explained that Grant was the husband, the father of her children. Grant was the diplomat and funds manager. And Tom, who was the guy she never wanted to see.

We want Tom because, yes, he's the larrikin. He's the navy boy who loves playing football. A common theme that came up in the research is people said you have this ability to relate to all kinds of people and also you have this to just pack everything into your day and your life. Do you know where that comes from? Like, does that come from that childhood change with the navy and your dad passing away early?

Yeah, I think from a very young age, we were in a working class family and I had paper rounds. I worked at mini Valley Racecourse from when I was twelve or 13, and we didn't have a lot. So if I wanted something, I had to work for it and I had to save my pennies. But it also meant that from a very young age, I was connecting with people and meeting various different people at the races or through my paper around. So, yeah, I think I learned some skills at that very early stage of my life.

The other thing, too, credit to my mum and something I've tried with my kids. When we had people at our house, my mum had a large circle of friends and so did my dad and my stepfather, Rex. So we always had people in our house and it was always. The kids were always part of that discussion. You were never shuffled off into a corner.

You always were part of that discussion. I think also that exposure to these big discussions and older people and older ideas taught me at a very young age how to communicate with various different people, older and younger. And was there ever a conversation like, you're now in the finance world and talking about money? Was that ever talked about growing up in Williamstown? Well, we didn't have a lot of it.

Vidit Agarwal
Your mum sits you down and go, this is how you should manage it, or the importance of it. Well, it was always about counting your pennies. Mum was very good. And I still have this habit now that you always. Whatever you got, it didn't matter what you paid for it, you always got the best value for that particular item.

Grant Dooley
So if you had a pair of shoes, they're out of fashion. So I quickly go off and buy a new pair. You always wore those pairs of shoes until such time as you needed a new pair of shoes. Clothing is the same. So you kind of got into a habit of actually making sure that nothing was wasted.

And I know my mum was very keen on that and to the point where, you know, we would always. Mum worked at the grocer's, so she'd always bring home fresh vegetables. So you always. Yeah, nothing was ever takeaway. It was always, you know, we had to split the beans and shell the peas, and it was all very much about doing what we could with what we had at home.

So money for me was something I never took for granted. And one of the challenges you have when you're a father and I've got five kids and they've had a very different life and they have a different view of the. Of the value of money, so you're trying to impart upon them. But they've grown up in different worlds, so that's one of the challenges, actually. And what about the people aspect?

Vidit Agarwal
So I really, if I just speak for myself for a moment, I, like, enjoy talking to people now, but growing up, I was really shy, whereas people said, with you, and you've been a diplomat, we'll get to that shortly. Were you always able to connect with people from a young age or did that come with time? Interestingly, I went to my high school reunion 30th year anniversary. And I'd seen a lot of these people, obviously, for 30 odd years, and one comment from a lot of them was, I was so quiet as a kid, they were all surprised with my career trajectory and they were saying they were a quiet kid in the corner, quite studious, and I actually never remember being studious, but apparently I was. But, yeah, they all said I was quite quiet, I was quite small, I kind of had my growth spurt.

Grant Dooley
But they all noted that I was quite a quiet kid. Now, of course, you ask anyone that now and they'll find that hard to even consider, particularly my wife, who quite often says, can you just go out there for a while to get the pace? But, yeah, I think one of the things about communication, and again, it's all about your environment, and I learned a lot. So you talked earlier before about communicating with different people as a young sailor, I was on a ship on the HMO's Derwent, in a space, a very confined space, with 30 people, and you're living in that space for two odd years now. You're not going to get on with everyone in that space, but they're your shipmates.

You'll get on with some, you'll get on with others, but you have to have to live and work with all of them. So very early you realize that in a confined space, you have to be very respectful of other people's space. You want them to be respectful of yours. But every day is about managing that, about managing those relationships in that very tight confines of a warship. So I think I learned a lot of skills in that period of time, which I've been able to utilize later on in my life.

Vidit Agarwal
Take us inside. I believe you dropped out of high school in year ten and joined the Navy. You said you were 16. What was the goal like when you joined the Navy? Do you.

Did you go in with an aspiration or was it take it as it comes? This is a story. Bit it mum. So I wasn't say I was in trouble, but I did get into a bit of truant like behavior, dare I say working class Williamstown, Newport. And I think my mum was a little bit worried about, potentially, my trajectory.

Grant Dooley
So one day she came home. I came home from school, actually, and she used to work at a spanner factory in Port Melbourne and she put me on the train with her. We went into the city and she literally dropped me out the front of the defence force recruiting and said, I want you to go in there and get some ideas about a potential career. And I was like, oh, okay. I went and spoke to the army and he said, well, you're too young, you're 15, three quarters.

Come back in a couple of years. And the air force guy said the same thing, but the Navy guy said, yeah, you can join in three months time. So I came back with the ambition then, I'm going to join the navy. And I remember telling my mum the next morning and she was horrified, the fact that I was going to go up and join the navy. And I said, well, mum, you're the one that took me there and dropped me out the front.

So it wasn't really a. It was not really like I had this dream of being in the navy. I did enjoy the water. I grew up around the water. I was a sea scout, I sailed.

So if there was a natural entry point in the defence force, the Navy was always going to be it for me. And I was also attracted at the time. They had this advert on television which was, you'll be wet, you'll be homesick and frightened, but the part of the free, the pride of the fleet will be you. And when you think about, it's not really a very attractive slogan, but for some reason it really resonated with me. And you were a radio operator, is that right?

Is that how you started? Yeah, I learned Morse code, which was such a great school. Oh, did you really? Oh, wow. How does that work?

Vidit Agarwal
Do they sit you down and you do a course and you learn it? Or is it just. Yeah, kind of. You start off with the. Learning the Alphabet.

Grant Dooley
Dit. Da is a, da. Dit is b. Da dit is C. D.

Sorry, da dit is d and so on. And you learn it and then you learn at a quicker speed. At a quicker speed and a quicker speed. And I think my aptitude for language is very much. It's a very.

It's a low language. So the fact that I was able to pick up Morse pretty well, I think there's a reason I was able then to learn Chinese and Indonesian and other languages, because that part of my brain is obviously quite attuned to it. And how long were you in the navy? All up? 16 years.

Vidit Agarwal
Yeah, right. So did you. Did you move up the ranks and go internationally and do different postings? Yeah. So I joined as a sailor.

Grant Dooley
As a sailor, I was on a couple of ships as a radio operator, then I became. I then basically became a chinese linguist. And you'd ask, well, how's that happen? Well, I was on a ship that went to a similar moment in my life, actually. I went on a.

I went to China and Shanghai on HMO Derwent in 1986 and people were wearing mouse suits and it was so different to Australia and to where I'd grown up that it just grabbed my imagination. And one of the people that was following us around, we had these people following us where we went because we were in navy uniform and we were the second western warship to visit Shanghai since 1949. This guy grabbed me and he had a newspaper article which had. It was in Chinese, obviously, and he was pointing to it. And I thought, well, one day I'd love to be able to read this.

I mean, it was so bewildering, this sheet of paper. So I tucked it away and decided when I got off the ship I'd go to night school. And I learnt Chinese at night school and then found out I could do it in the navy and applied to become a chinese linguist and was accepted. Then I became a chinese linguist in 1989, studied at Point Cook at the raft school of languages. On the back of that I went to Hong Kong where I did another year's language training and I was a leading seaman by then, like a corporal.

I was then promoted to a petty officer, funnily enough, because I was so far away they forgot to tell me. So I only found out accidentally that I've been promoted, which was, these are day before Internet and things like that. And then I went to back to school. I was in Hong Kong to do my own a levels, like year twelve in math and English. And then I became an officer.

I did successfully pass those, which meant I could become an officer. So when I came back from Hong Kong, I was a sub lieutenant when I went to Anu to study Chinese. So I went to Hong Kong as a leading seaman and by the time I came back nearly five years later, I was a sub lieutenant and then went to Anu, where I got my degree in asian studies in Mandarin Chinese. So it sounds like you weren't always at sea. You'd come back home and do stints back and forth.

Yes, I was at sea mainly on the Derwent, did short stints on the Stuart stints on the Perth. But as a chinese linguist, I was flown onto ships when the ships were sailing close to China and we would try to listen to various communications emanating from China as part of the ship, collecting intelligence and those type of things. And then when I was back ashore, I was literally working in various different parts of the Defence Force Defence Intelligence Organization, or the DSD as it was known. There is now called ASD, the Australian Signals Directorate. When I think of the navy, and I'm sure a lot of other people, the perception is you're this fit, healthy boot camp life.

Vidit Agarwal
You're eating spam noodles and all that. What was life like day to day like, were you just exercising and on the ship and that was life, or did you have time to. Exactly like that. Vintage. Exactly like that.

Grant Dooley
Not. I was actually told you put me in touch with your friend Mark. He said you used to paint a lot because you'd have a lot of spare time. Yeah, chipping and painting. You do a lot of chipping and painting because I got to keep you occupied.

So you're always chipping steel and repainting it to make it look nice and shiny and new, but always it was one of those things. I might have had a similar view when I joined. That would all be fit young people. We largely all were fit and young, but there were some pretty big boys on the ship as well, who, but largely everyone is. Well, particularly these days, I think is a big focus on being fit and healthy and being able to get around the ship.

Sport was a very big part of my time in the navy. I played a lot of football in the navy, including representative football Mark Dobson, who just mentioned Dobbo, and I played a lot of football together in the navy and shared a lot of memories. So I didn't leave the navy because I didn't like it. I just got to a point that as a chinese linguist, I wanted to test my boundaries. And having worked in Hong Kong for the british, I came back.

I didn't really want to go back to sea. I had this interest in, by now, a very large interest in foreign affairs and international diplomacy from my time in Hong Kong. And fortunately enough, a phone went one day and a friend of mine who was in DFAT, who I've met in Hong Kong, said, look, we're looking for chinese linguists. Would you be interested in joining DFAT? So that's how I then joined DFat early.

Two thousands, if I'm correct, 1998. Yeah. Right. So this was when China was a very different country. Right.

Vidit Agarwal
It didn't have the focus that it has now. Yeah. I was mentioning this the other day when I was talking to a bunch of people out China that when I joined foreign affairs, if I remember, is correct, the bilateral trade relationship was in the tens of billions, I think about ten or 15 billion. Of course, now it's in the hundreds of billions, you know, 200 plus billion dollars. So the trajectory of the relationship yes.

Grant Dooley
Really took off and people say, oh, you had great vision to learn Chinese and not learn other languages. But it was literally that trip to Shanghai on the warship that sparked that interest. And I just pursued something that I actually had an interest in, the fact that China took off. I was a little bit lucky, I suppose, in that sense. How does one start?

Vidit Agarwal
I think what's fascinating about that is you've transitioned from a very, I'm assuming, a structured environment in the navy where they tell you what to do. You're the same group of people, people. You're inside a ship and then you're out in this world. It's a new country, new culture, different time zone. What were those first twelve months like?

Give me an insight. How did you adjust to the new role in a new culture? Because were you based out of China by this point? Yeah. So when I joined foreign affairs about a year and a bit after I joined, I was given the opportunity to go to Shanghai to be the australian APEC representative.

Grant Dooley
The Australian. So Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization, Shanghai, was hosting the big meetings that year in 2001. So I was given the job. Given my navy background, I think they thought I was probably good with logistics, who knows? But I was given the opportunity of doing that.

That was great. I got to live in Shanghai with my wife for a year. We lived in Beijing for a period as well. I was traveling around China, organizing hotels and organizing all the logistics for the minister's visits. I got to meet some amazing people.

Martin Parkinson, actually, who a lot of people would know. Martin was the advisor to Peter Costello when they came to Suzhou. And I was fortunate enough to reconnect with Martin about a couple of months ago when we were just talking about this, and he remembered me and how life changes. You meet these amazing people, do these amazing things. So that opportunity to live and work in China was the single greatest thing for my Chinese.

It was also a number little opportunity for me to learn as a diplomat. And really, I. It really sparked an interest in China and the desire to keep learning and to keep engaged on China as well. Give us an insight into how does one build deep, meaningful relationships in China. I think there's a lot of perceptions about it and a lot of articles online, and I've been told by a lot of people that you really did that well.

Vidit Agarwal
And then when the Chinese would come to Australia towards the latter part of your career, they would always ask for you. Give us some of the fundamentals. What's important in China about building a meaningful relationship? I think that the key one is you have to break down the barrier of the formality. China, chinese love formality.

Grant Dooley
You need to take it to a personal level. So how do you find a personal connection? How do you find something that connects you with that person? And one of the things I did in Shanghai is that my chinese surname is Mister Dou. And the chinese character Du is quite well known.

It's not like a li or it's actually pretty well known. But there's a famous Shanghai gangster, Du Yusheng. And when I landed in Shanghai, I read my history of Shanghai and I learned about the Du Yasheng, who was this leader of the green gang. And so when I met the deputy mayor in Shanghai, I was able to say to him and speaking Chinese that I was related to this famous gangster. And I think he thought I was joking.

But then I kind of would, took a bit further and, you know, and then after a while actually started thinking, he's thinking, you know, maybe he's related to this gang because I knew so much about his history, but straight away, and of course, at the end of this discussion, I said, well, look, I'm not, but I do have a fascination. And because I'd taken the effort to learn that history and find a way in that particular vice mayor, then whenever we went everywhere, he wanted me to come and say hello. And I did the same thing with all the very senior chinese officials that I dealt with. I was fortunate enough to look after the vice president of China, Mister Zeng Qing Hung, when he visited Australia in 99. I was given the task of being his liaison officer.

And again, the same thing, I spoke Chinese. You know, take it back to the personal level and really end up having six days with the vice president of China, where he signed a photo for me of him together. And so to me, the way to build those relationships in China is to show a, an interest in their culture. They're very proud of their culture, interest in their culture, interest in the language. I learned a bit of poetry, chinese poetry.

So those types of things, which are more than just the superficial, they're more at the personal level. And once you, you show that you've taken the effort to do that, then very quickly they can very warm towards you and show, they said you respect them, they respect their culture. Because I'm assuming that's rare for a western diplomat to make the effort of learning the language, right. You'd probably be one of those handful of people that could speak the language. Well, the great thing about our foreign service is that, well, particularly when I was in it anyway.

You had to do language training and learn a language of wherever you went. Not all countries do that. And when I was consul general in Guangzhou, again, being able to speak the language put me in a very select few of consul generals that spoke Chinese, along with, I think, the american, the. I can't remember that. I think the italian one did as well.

But what it meant, though, is we got sat next to the senior officials at every major function because we could converse. So the Australian Foreign Service is very good at investing into the language skills of its diplomats for that very reason. And largely, I hope it's still the case that when we do send diplomats overseas, you do learn the language so you can have those communications. And then you went to Indonesia next, is that right? Yeah.

Well, I met my wife in the navy. She was my last boss. She was your boss? Oh, I didn't know that. Yep.

Yep. She still is the boss. Nothing's really important. So you met in China, did you? No, we met in maritime headquarters in Sydney, and she was.

You know, we did. To be honest, we did not get on for the first three months. Just a little bit annoying and asking too many questions. But. But I joined the foreign affairs, and then she wanted to leave the navy and asked me about how I did it, and I gave her some contacts, and then she joined foreign affairs, and then we became good friends outside the navy, and in the end, it became.

We got married and we've had three kids. So she's an amazing lady. So I was a China specialist. She wasn't a specialist in any one particular area, but she did have. She wasn't southeast asian analyst.

So she applied for the role in the embassy in Jakarta in 2003 and was successful. So that meant that I went as the attached spouse to accompany her to Jakarta. That was a bit of a challenge for me because I was a China guy, and here I am in Southeast Asia. What am I doing here? But very quickly, I came to love Indonesia.

I was able to get a job in the embassy as well, which was a great opportunity. Tell me about what were the changes from a personal perspective that you had to make? Like, we talk a lot about it in the business world, where you've got to go in, understand the culture, understand the people, and then you can set your strategy. How does that work in the diplomatic world the first three, six months? Is there a lot of adjustment?

When you arrive at post? You tend to replace someone who's been there before you, who has a book, contacts, and there'll be an overlap so usually there's an overlap, so you get the opportunity to meet the key contacts of that person, and so you can get your head around the key issues. And so you're really handing over those contacts to the next person that comes along. But then usually issues change. So over the journey, you actually have to then build your own set of contacts.

I learned a little bit of Indonesian as well while I was there. So then you built out that skill set. Indonesia was. I'm not quite sure what my friends told you about. It was a pretty traumatic time for us as a family.

Yeah. I was going to ask, would you say that was one of those periods in your life that was a crucible asterisk moment that you learned a lot from it? Yeah, I mean, it's. We. The embassy got bombed on on September 9, 2004, and my wife and I were inside the embassy at the time of the bombing, and both very lucky.

She was just walking back in, or had just walked back into the building before the bomb went off. I was walking out of a room and got knocked over and still suffered a little bit of deafness in my left ear. But, you know, it was a pretty horrific thing to happen. It was chaos. Eleven people died.

But you're not one to dwell. And I think the one thing I learned through that is that it gives a great perspective, because when I face challenges now that my staff will say there's a breakthrough, you know, has anyone died today? No. Okay, well, that's the perspective. Okay.

It also gave me the freedom to probably do things I might not have done, because once you've seen carnage, and in that three year period in Jakarta, we had the bombing, we had the tsunami, we had a lot of. We had a bomb threat against our house. We got caught in a riot out the front of the embassy. We had lots of different things, including. I believe you had a plane crash as well, right?

Yeah. The plane crash at the end, which was, I was supposed to be on the plane, changed my flight. And then the person who took my seat, we believe, well, he died. We think he had my seat. So it was one of those moments in time where I could have quite easily, except for a split decision to change my flight, could be dead.

And to top it off, I was. I was on the scene of the plane crash and had to try and help with the. Trying to try to identify and find a lot of my colleagues who perished. So that three year period really was quite challenging, as you can imagine. But also, when you come back from something like that, first thing we did we came back to Canberra.

We sold our house and bought a beach house. So you're starting to make decisions more about lifestyle and more about how do you enjoy what you have instead of dwelling on the things that you can't have. And so for my wife and I, the beach house was a big decision, but also the freedom then to look at life differently. So I'd been in the department by that stage a number of years. I'd enjoyed it, but I still didn't feel fulfilled.

I had this yearning to try and do something in the private sector. And whereas I might not have ever tried that, you kind of have. Well, you know what? I'm going to give it a crack. And so really, that sliding door moment of all those things that happened in Indonesia, really, I came out the other end as a quite a different person, as you'd expect, but also with the attitude of, you don't know whether you're going to be around tomorrow, so don't.

Well, if an opportunity presents, don't say, well, maybe next time. Don't have any regrets. There's a Chinese saying, grab the opportunity. And that was something that really became a bit of a mantra for me. After all that, what happened in Jakarta.

Vidit Agarwal
Back to the episode in a moment. If you're new to the High Flies podcast and enjoying this episode with Grant Dooley, you might enjoy episode 80 with Bill Barti, the co founder of main sequence Ventures and Blackbird, or episode 114 with Marcus Thompson, the former australian army major general, and access all 160 plus episodes@thehighfliespodcast.com. That's the highflyerspodcast.com. Now back to the episode. I appreciate you sharing that because, yeah, this is really raw and vulnerable in it.

I mean, it reminds me of, I had a car accident, which compared to this is baby stuff, but where my car actually flipped in 2016. And similar to you, I should have perished that day, but walked away with nothing, with just a cut on my finger. And it made me appreciate a lot of things, but I think it took me a good six, eight months to process it. I was very quick to. And I was in a job at a company and they wanted me back at work and I was back in three days.

Was there, were there people along the that period, I know your wife, but were there other people that you leaned on that really helped you? Because I think one other aspect that the navy and politics creates this sense of be tough and be bulletproof and just don't talk about it. Yeah, look, that's true. I think a couple of things stemmed from that, and that is that the people I shared those experiences with to this very day are now very strong friends of mine. A guy who's now the current australian consul general in Shanghai, John Williams.

Grant Dooley
We met out the front of the embassy on that very fateful day, and we're shared. We share a bond around those experiences now. And he has a beach house not far from where mine is, on the south coast. And we're obviously very good friends, but otherwise, when you're in that type of environment and people understand and it does bond you for life, there is a tendency to only really talk about it with those people. I can be an externalised.

But even certain things that happened over that journey, I couldn't really talk about. And I think that was to my detriment, a bit like yourself. I came back from Jakarta and I was made director of the Indonesia section and I was managing or setting up the scholarship for one of my colleagues that died on the plane. So you couldn't really quite escape from it. And in hindsight, I need to escape from it.

And, of course, what happens when you bury things is at a point in time in the future, they bubble to the surface. And for that was me in 2019 in Singapore, where all of a sudden I start having some quite bad nightmares and associated flashbacks. And that resulted in me speaking to someone and speaking to a counsellor about how to manage this. It was in lockdowns, so I couldn't meet anyone in person, which made it a little bit difficult. But the counsellor suggested I start writing a journal and I started writing down these stories.

And the greatest thing I've ever done, to be honest, was that writing process, writing the journal, those journals. I then started cobbling together into a book, and I'm now in the process of hopefully getting that published. I stopped writing about last year, I think, 100,000 words later, and had this story about my time in Indonesia, which, if there's any publishers out there, drop me a line, because I'm keen to get it published. Yeah, I think this might be one of the first few public times you've shared these stories, so I appreciate you opening up like this. So, yes, you mentioned coming back to Australia and you bought the beach house.

Vidit Agarwal
And then, I guess one question there, someone might wonder, is you could have left the diplomatic world at that point, right, and gone, this is a chapter that's closed. I'm going to go into the business world and you have the contacts. What kept you wanting to stay in the diplomatic world? I think I wanted to go back. Initially, I wanted to go back to China and I came.

Grant Dooley
I wanted to move out of Indonesia. And it's funny, I knew Indonesia for three or four years and all of a sudden everyone forgot that I spoke Chinese and I was a China specialist. Interesting. I was really keen to reconnect on China and foreign affairs is very good about that. But they still knew I was a China expert.

So I was put back in the China area where I looked after the China trade area. And then this opportunity, great opportunity came up to be the consul general. And I'd always, you know, as a diplomat, you always want to be an ambassador, a consul general. You want to. You actually want to manage a mission overseas.

And once that opportunity arose, that was for me a great opportunity to prove that I could manage at a very high level. I could not just manage a mission and the people, but I could also manage complex relationships. And South China, you know, is our 9th largest trading partner. That part of China, just that part of China. And.

And that had its challenges. We had a lot of really high profile consular cases. I had a, you know, had to look after a man called Matthew Ng who was thrown in jail since become a good friend of mine. He's now back in Australia. We sat through every day of his trial, visited him when he was in the remand centre every month.

And now he's become a friend. And those things really, they're actually high flyers in a different way. Can you talk about what does a successful embassy look like? What are the royal ingredients of a successful embassy? I think there's a few.

There's the internal bit, which is how you operate. You know, generally speaking, the bigger the embassies are, the bigger the missions are, the more complex you've got, you know, multitude of different agencies all working together belongs. There's harmony, okay? If you've got an ambassador or a consul general that understands the need for harmony and understands the need, everyone's there doing their best quite often in trying circumstances. I think one of the reasons I want to get my book published is that we quite often acknowledge and dare I say, celebrate our defence people overseas as we should, working in very difficult circumstances.

But at any given point in time there's a diplomat overseas in a very difficult circumstance as well. But somehow we tend to forget that there's old colleagues of mine working in various parts of the Middle east. I've been in Afghanistan, Iraq, in very trying circumstances in Africa. And every day they get up, they do their job, they live in those communities and they work hard to deliver on Australia's strategic interests. And one of the things I think we don't recognize is those.

It's not all about knaps and champagne flutes in Paris, so that's one reason I want to get the book published. But really, a successful embassy is one that functions and has a sense of community. I think one thing we had in Jakarta, which I really, really embraced and missed a little bit, was a sense of community. We're a large embassy, but we had a strong sense of community. We're there for each other, so that sense of community, a sense of interaction, but really, in the end, it's being able to do the job in a way that delivers on the results for the australian people.

And in Jakarta, our biggest embassy in the world, by the way, people don't realize that it's our biggest embassy in the world. In the world. It's bigger than Washington or Shanghai. It was then. I'm not sure what head counts are now, but I dare say.

And every day you felt like you were doing something which meant something, every day you got up and went, whether you're working in the trade area or in the politics or that the australian Federal police or defence, this relationship matters. And once you've got that feeling that every single day you're doing something that matters, it's very easy to get out of bed and you get, you know, very proud of what you're doing. One thing a few of your breakthrough colleagues said to me is you're a stickler for good grammar. You're often the last reviewer for a document and you love your grammar. Did you learn that in the foreign service?

Yeah, that's foreign affairs. I had a boss lady called Penny Burt and big shout out to Penny because she really molded my writing. And a lady called Michelle Chan as well, who's still in foreign affairs, I think, at Dep sec. But, yeah, there was very much a stickler for writing and, to be honest, great skills, because being able to convey a message in the written word in a concise way is, I think, a skill that sometimes people take a long time to grasp. And in foreign affairs, you have very coded, you know, ten line paragraphs for a summary of a ministerial submission.

You can't write one letter more than that. So you very quickly learn to be able to convey a message in a very short space. And to be honest, grammar as a pet, it is a pet peeve of mine, including my kids, because everyone, these kids, they grow up on a text, you know, everything's about texting, so they drop the thes. They drop the a's, the conjunctions and the joining words and the ands. And so I go back and that work might have told you a big whiteboard.

And one day I just got the texture out and drill on the whiteboard. This one grammar lesson to all the staff, you know, guys, I'm sick of changing this stuff, you know, take note. I want to move to the next stage of your career in a second. But before that, you've clearly worked with a lot of different politicians in different cultures, different environments. What have you found separates the world class politicians?

Vidit Agarwal
Like, what do they do unique that the others don't? Good question. What a good question. So I was fortunate enough to work with some truly inspirational people, and I've been at, I would call, historical events. And one of the things that really sticks in my mind was when, and I think this example here is John Howard I'm about to talk about is, I think, an example of someone who showed great foresight and intuition around that.

Grant Dooley
That was when the tsunami hit Aceh, and we had devastation in that part of the world at that point in time. In late 2004, the Australian Indonesia bilateral relationship had been a bit rocky since Timor, since 1999. And we're trying to put it on the right level balance. And really we'd been. The Bali bombings and all these things were causing quite big Russians in the relationship.

And I think the r cha tsunami, while it was an absolutely terrible event, and I did fly to Archai and see the aftermath, it provided an opportunity which I go back to my chinese Chenjo, Jaga Jihui. John Howard grabbed that opportunity. And when he landed, he had the idea on the plane or whoever, about helping the Indonesians rebuild. And when I was there, I was his liaison officer. We went into the palace, the Istana, he met Yudiono, he walked up to him and he said, we're going to invest a billion dollars in rebuilding your country.

Now, that just changed everything like that. Yudiono got very emotional. He said, I'll never forget this. I'll never forget this. And in 1 second, the relationship went from being this problematic, rocky thing to, you are a partner, you're going to help me, you're a friend.

And that to me is that's the politicians who can grab those moments for those type of an outcome. They're the ones who actually jump head and shoulder above the rest. And it's just an example of when I was actually there to witness it. Yeah. So, interesting, let's go into 2012, because I think this is when your next identity started and you went into the finance world.

Vidit Agarwal
And I've been told the story is quite interesting about how you came back to Melbourne and the role was not what you expected it to be. So give us a story about how you left the foreign service and came back to Australia. Yeah, well, I guess I wouldn't have done it except for what had happened in Indonesia. So I go back to that point. Right.

Grant Dooley
I suppose my risk tolerance level was somewhat higher than what it mean when I was a junior diplomat. But I did a speech, and this was me joining the company. Hastings funds management, which was a fund manager, stemmed from. I did a speech in Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong. Again, slow indoor moment.

Jeff Raby, the ambassador, was supposed to do the speech, but in the end, he couldn't come down. So I stood in for him. And the speech largely was written. I can't remember possibly input by myself, but probably, maybe people in Beijing, but it talked about capital flows, if you probably remember, at that point, a lot of the chinese money was going into resources. And what the speech pretty much said was that apart from resources, chinese money will now start flowing into protein because of the growth of the middle class, but also start looking for portfolio investment.

So we had large sums of money now accruing in the insurance companies in China, who would now look to start putting it into fixed assets like infrastructure and real estate. And we all saw what happened subsequent to that. So for the guys behind Hastings funds management, the infrastructure fund manager, that was like music to their ears. How can we get some of that capital and invest into our infrastructure projects? So I had a conversation afterwards with.

With a couple of guys from Hastings, and then, basically they said, next time you're in Melbourne, we'd like to introduce you to our CEO. And six months later, I was back doing my midterm consultations. I was halfway through my posting, and I lunch with Andrew Day, who, to this day is still a very good friend of mine and a bit of a mentor. And Andrew, at the end of the lunch, said, would you like a job? And I fell off the back of the seat.

I said, I've got no background in finance. And he goes, I've got 120 of those, but I've got no one who understands Asia. And again, that's the foresight of someone who understood that you need the right people on the journey if you're going to deliver the right result. So, another discussion of Andrew and with a couple other guys from Hastings, and we worked out that there was an opportunity for me to help create something. So, yeah, remember going off and speaking to Frances Adamson, who was the ambassador at the time, who's now the governor of South Australia.

And I said to Frances, what do you think? And she said something to me, which really, to this day, I should thank her for whenever I see her, and that is, if it doesn't work out, I'll have you back. You know, which gave me the freedom then to say, well, you know what? I'll give it a crack. It wasn't quite what I thought.

I thought I was getting a job. I got a three day a week contract for one year. So it was a lot of risk involved. A lot of people probably wouldn't have done it. But I thought, you know what?

I see an opportunity. I'm going to go for it. Three day a week contract, whatever. I set my own little consulting firm, started doing big consulting work on China to Westpac and others. And by the end of that first year, I'd got enough traction that Andrew came back to me and said, look, you brought in all these potential clients.

We've got the port of Newcastle coming up for sale. Why don't you go and try and raise some chinese money? You could see in the near term that there would be some success. So he then made me a permanent member of the business. I got equity in the company, then grew the Asia business, ended up setting up an office in Singapore, an office in Seoul, and over the course of that journey, we raised about $1.5 billion out of Asia into our funds, which we then invested.

It was a great journey. It was learning as you go. My first transaction was the port of Newcastle, which Hastings partnered with the China Merchants Group, who was a party that I knew in China that I brought into the transaction. We acquired the port for $1.75 billion. That was my first transaction I worked on.

It was heavy stuff. Like, it really was. I mean, compared to diplomacy, this was go. It was exciting, super exciting. And I think I realized at that time that I really found my niche, that I.

The entrepreneurial spirit that I had was really being allowed to blossom in the Hastings environment. I'm curious, on the surface, it seems like two very different worlds, going from diplomacy to finance. But I'm sure your toolkit, there'd be certain aspects of that toolkit that you could transfer across. Can you reflect on what were those skills that you could transfer and what were the skills that you couldn't? I'll just.

Before I answer that, I'll tell you one story, and this is when I realized I had a long way to go. I'd been on the job about three months and I'm still working out how do I value? And the guy called Peter Taylor, who's head of our investments team, who's big queenslander coming across the. The office towards me. And I hardly spoken to the guy, you know, and he walks up to my desk and I think finally he sees me.

I can add value to what we're doing. I said, yes, Peter, how can I help? And he goes, I'm off to Beijing in a couple of weeks. I need a hotel. You got anything you can suggest?

I thought, okay, adding value by being a tour guide, advice on hotels. So I knew I had a. Had to build out my, you know, my value more broad. Anyway, that's just a short story, but yeah. How did you do that?

Vidit Agarwal
How did you prove to them that you could learn the craft? Well, in the end there was two ways. One was by actually delivering on what I was hired to do. And that was actually starting to get traction amongst investors. We got, our first investor was a japanese investor, not a chinese one, into our debt funds.

Grant Dooley
And then once I started getting those, basically raising capital is like being a diplomat. Similar skills. It's a different product. As a diplomat. You're selling Australia the product of Australia.

Great country, this ideas. And when you're selling a product like a debt fund or an equity fund, it's just, it's a pitch. You learn your pitch. So in that regard, there's similar skills, but really the number one skill is this piece around connecting with people and the port of Newcastle. I've got China merchants group to partner with us.

They were really the only party we could partner with. They were the big chinese port company. We needed a port operating partner. They were going to go Macquarie bank, who was our Macquarie group competitor. I had half an hour with Richard Lee, who was the head guy at China Merchants Group.

I walked in that meeting with half an hour. One opportunity to pitch and I was with the Westpac guy. He didn't speak Chinese. I just went straight into Mandarin. I didn't say a word of English for the whole meeting.

Explained to the guy how he could be a great partner. He was blown away. Half hour meeting, then slipped into an hour. He goes, where'd your interest in Chinese come from? And I said, well, you know, my background.

And I started quoting Song dynasty poetry and he was sold, yeah. He goes, leave with me. I'll get back to you two days later. Yeah, we're going to have Hastings. We're not going with Macquarie, and again, the ability to connect at the personal level, very similar to being in diplomacy, that's the key.

If people are going to partner with you, if they're going to trust you with their money, you need to have that connection. So that was the work bit. The other bit where I'd argue, and I think Andrew would agree. Andrew Day, the CEO at the time, was I didn't look at things like all the finance guys, so when we looked at opportunities, I kind of looked at a different angle. Whether it was they look at the figures and the numbers, I'd look more at the strategic context.

So understanding that we're going to buy the port of Newcastle while most of the coal goes to Japan and Korea, at some point a lot of it's going to go to China. Understanding the underlying drivers of that demand, how it's going to work, and then introducing them to people in Canberra who understood that, who could provide advice. So when we did our assumptions, we could get up the right business case for the investment. So I found other ways to add value, not just purely through bringing capital, but thinking strategically about the opportunities and ways in which the investment guys didn't normally think. I'm conscious we haven't spoken about present day yet.

Vidit Agarwal
We've given everyone a history lesson on your career, so maybe we should move to present day and you can connect it back to COVID in Singapore is breakthrough. Victoria. So tell us about how that role came about and what interested you about the opportunity. Yes, I was sitting in Singapore. So after Hastings, I then worked for a company in Singapore called Ara Asset Management, where I was the CEO of the infrastructure business.

Grant Dooley
And that was we created two funds and that was all going swimmingly until COVID hit. And one of the funds we had had a lot of chinese investment. My nationality became a bit of a sticking point, to be honest. So the Australia China relationship was not going very well. So it was at that point I'm thinking, you know, and I hadn't seen two of my kids for two years, I hadn't seen my mum for two years.

We're separated from our families and I'll start to contemplate how do I get home? And as fate would have it, the phone rings. I pick it up and say, it's a good friend who I knew, who's a headhunter, a couple, Tom Mutch. And he just said, grant, I'm looking for someone who's got background in finance and government. Do you know someone?

And I went, what, like me? And he goes, yeah, you and I said, okay, what's the job? And he described this opportunity, and from the moment he described it, I got very excited because one thing that two things actually I could see as a growth opportunity, I really wanted to into the more early stage investment space. I like the idea of innovation. It's exciting what we're hoping to do with this fund, but also, I'm a proud victorian and a proud australian, and one of the reasons I was in the navy and diplomatic in Deepat was always there representing my country in a way that's always been in my blood.

So to be able to combine the skills I'd learned in finance and to go back and combine them with my love to do things in the more, dare I say, the community sense, that was a yeah. And no one had done this in Australia before. There was nothing like breakthrough to try and create something where the utilization of capital can be used in a way that hasn't been used before, where we could actually invest into things with patient capital and not just give grants. The grant system is very important from a translation perspective, but to really grow the future industries, we need to invest into companies. How do we keep them in the state, how do we keep them in Australia, and how do we actually give them the capital they need, meet those funding gaps to grow those future businesses and create jobs and wealth and wellbeing.

So that all really resonated. I met John Brumby, my chair, on a call. He sold it very well, too. It was, you know, it's super exciting to come back. And I think the final piece, I like building things.

My previous two roles, I built new businesses, one at Hastings, one at Ara, and this is just another, using those skills around building teams and building businesses. So it ticked a lot of boxes for me. Well, firstly, I think the transition from diplomacy to the finance world is successful. I think that's a big tick, given all the work you've done over the last many years. One of the things that came up in my research that I didn't know was the mandate you were given is actually to invest straight away.

Vidit Agarwal
Whereas I know a lot of venture capital or traditional private equity firms set up shop, they spend time with investors, they hire a team, and they might make one investment in the first year. Talk about that. How did you balance that between building a team and your brand and doing investments straight away? Yeah, these things are always challenging. You're quite correct.

Grant Dooley
What made it a little bit easier is that the business had actually been around for a year before I arrived. So there was a team of second Eastman government, you know, who were pretty solid, who understood the mission. Some of them are still with me. There was a board that had already put in place a lot of the building blocks for the business to be created. So when I arrived, there was already the foundations.

What it really needed was the addition of more skills from the finance world and Brett, Mitch and others I've been able to recruit who brought that, plus an overlay of a more detailed strategy. So a portfolio of how do we build this from a point portfolio perspective? Because if you're going to invest capital, you just can't go heavy into one sector or into one stage of investing and our mandate is quite large, which is a challenge. So it's really building that strategy around the portfolio investment. We're going to have a blend of later stage bigger investments with smaller stage earlier investments and they've got quite different risk profiles but if you blend the portfolio together you can try and balance that risk with the later stage stuff and really, and everyone, this is the challenge.

Everyone in the venture capital growth capital area will tell you nothing is given, you're making investments to the best of your ability, but there's no 100% guarantees and I think that's the reality. We do our diligence, we understand the tech, we have quite high thresholds for innovation. We can't just invest into something that's a different coloured widget it actually has to be quite innovative and that's a subjective to a point, but it's also something that's very important for us. We're creating future industries. How do we look at quantum?

How do we look at things like the various medtechs? How do we look at things like circular economy using enzymes to break down plastics? It's all super exciting, by the way every day I go to work and I go I can't believe I'm seeing all this stuff there are so many smart people out there. So is that really trying to find a balance and in the end we're able to actually build a pipeline and with board at the time had a lot of skill sets which are complimentary, able to get some investments away. Yeah, well one of the things I think the general public might not know about is your process to make investments actually very robust so I'm an investor in Smiley Scope and I know yeah, I'm a personal investor in Smiley scope, I know Evelyn and she's fantastic and then I know Lewis at Baijin relatively well and Richard at Kite Magnetics and a number of your portfolio companies and one of the things that we always joke about is they go, the number of board meetings, they say, like, to get an investment approved, they've got to present every month for five, six times.

Vidit Agarwal
Maybe unpack that for us, like. Cause I think the general public and I think that's very unique to a traditional venture capital firm, where often they'll meet a founder and invest next week, because they want to be fast and they want to be seen as founder friendly. How did you get confidence that five board meetings is the right approach? It's not five board meetings, but it's a few. No.

Grant Dooley
So what you're trying to balance here is the need for the needs of the founders, but with the overarching principle of governance, and that is as taxpayers money. So we have to be a bit more cautious in that sense. And it does have us challenges, because we're trying to balance that due diligence, the fiduciary responsibility we have towards the victorian taxpayer. Nothing is done lightly, nothing is done flippantly. We have to follow a process.

It took us a while also to fine tune that process, because you're trying to build capability, and I don't have the ability to provide carried interest, say, in my fund. So I've got to find. How do I find the talent? And really, people have to be purpose driven to work a breakthrough, because that's what we are. We're a purpose driven organization trying to make impact for victorians.

So it takes a while to build out those skill sets. And I think the journey to date has been very much the board being on that journey with us, because while I'm building out that skill set, I needed the board to provide a lot of. Because I had some of those capabilities, a lot of advice back to management. I think we're at a point in time now, and we talk about this, actually quite a lot about the business itself, has got the process and the people, and there's still learnings on our behalf. Don't go wrong.

We're not perfect. We're still every day finding a way we can do things better. But I think we're getting to a point where those processes, we've learned to find ways that we can actually fast track things a lot quicker with the board. We've got processes internally now. We've got quick nose, which we didn't have early.

That's the other thing. Unlike other VC's or private equity companies, we just can't say no. We have to give a reason. We're going to say, because we're dealing with people who, they see this as government. So it's just not a.

So you gotta. We can tie ourselves in knots sometimes. And try to explain the worst part of the job. Right. It's the worst part of the job.

Vidit Agarwal
Saying no to someone's life's work, where they're putting all their life into it. And the truth is, if we could invest in everything, we would, for one of us, a finite pool of capital. We don't have $2 billion, it's a $2 billion fund, but we get an allocation of that every year. So I don't have $2 billion in the bank, even so. So we gotta balance what's coming in with what.

Grant Dooley
And we can't be overweight. Quite often now we're saying no because we're overweight the particular sector, and we have five sectors. So we're trying to balance the sectors and also the portfolio construction around later stage and early stage companies. So it's quite technical in that sense. So quite often now, we might love the company and love the tech, but we just can't do it because it doesn't fit the portfolio.

Vidit Agarwal
Yeah. I think one of the jokes in the investment world always is what is the value add post investment? And I think this is where you're unique, is a lot of VC's candle. That's all they do is they provide money and they attend a board meeting once a month and that's it. Whereas you're providing.

I know you're going to announce one soon, where there's international company coming to Victoria and you're helping them expand their presence. Maybe talk about that grant from a founder perspective is what should there no other benefits of having BV on the cap table beyond just capital? Yeah. And given the process we go through, you have to say this to them when we get there. We're patient money be there to.

Grant Dooley
And we're not passive. We're going to be active. And by way of an example, is one of the quantum companies we've invested into. They're about to start a fundraise. We can help them on that process.

We know some people, they haven't really done it before, so we can actually point them in the right direction so we can work with the founders. Richard at Kite Magnetics is about to enter that phase. We help him set up his data room. How can we help him? Give him the advice he needs to talk to the right people.

Richard actually went to the Zhuhai air show and was talking to a chinese party. Just happens to be one of the biggest drone manufacturers in the world who sanctioned, by the way, by the US governments. And of course they were after a piece of his material to have a look at. I'm saying, Richard, maybe not a good idea. So that advice where we work with the founders to steer them to where we've got a whole bunch of people that break through, got various different backgrounds where we can work with the founders.

So, yeah, so we're there for the journey. We want them to be successful, we're going to be active, whether it's as an observer, whether it's on the board. And probably the other bit is we understand government, so there's other ways you can tap funding, whether it's other grant money. We've got the NRF coming now, so we think there's a bit of a halo there around how we crowd capital in, because we're also on the journey. Well, I think particularly in climate tech biotech, where I know from a bit of experience they're often selling into government and corporate as their first customers.

Vidit Agarwal
They're not selling to a small startup as their first customer. So that credibility, I mean it's similar with launch vic or having them on your cap table. I know they're grant focused, they're different to you, but having them brings a lot of credibility, even if it's a small check. Yeah, and we're complimentary. I mean, the great thing about Kate and her team is that we understand very clearly the complementary nature of what we do.

Grant Dooley
I mean, Launchpik can help provide some of the portfolio companies that we may look at later on. We go to their 30. By 30 we see that the companies they've supported and we've already invested into a bunch of companies that they've supported. So really, if you're a victorian taxpayer, it's a great ecosystem we're building here. You've got launchpic stimulating the very early stage space that they give grants to the accelerators and other organizations supporting that space.

And then we come along later with our money. But the real thing, vid, is that the market is trying to cast us as purely vc. We are so not just purely vc. My mandate is way beyond that. We're ecosystem builders.

We've done one grant and we can do grants, but we've only done one today. And it's not our preferred way of investing. But that grant helped create the Jumo incubator, which created wet labs, which are now being used by 16 companies to develop their tech. And we've invested with the universities through our university innovation platform to create pre seed funds. Now that's VC's aren't going to do that, but we're trying to stimulate and solve that problem commercializing tech coming out of university.

So yes, we're doing more than just the direct investment piece. Yeah. Your team made a nice joke the other day saying that you often joke there's only one grant in the business and that's you, I think Bijen, which you just announced so we can probably talk about this is a good example. I spent a lot of time with Lewis last year and I think a lot of traditional VC's didn't want to touch that and he needs, as you know, it's a very capex intensive business model today, but there's a huge potential tomorrow and I love that business model. But they came to, I think a few of us introduced Luis to your team and managed to make the investment and it just got announced recently and that's a great example of.

Vidit Agarwal
There's business models where traditional VC doesn't have the appetite for. But you can actually support that. Yeah. And one thing we are careful to do is we don't want to crowd out money. So if traditional VC's are there, then really that's not for us to play.

Grant Dooley
There may be some opportunistic reasons why we might, but generally speaking, if you've got Blackbird and Ertree and others on the cap table, you're not going to need us. So what we're exactly what you're saying about Biogen and others is that where we see we can invest our patient capital, that's a key thing for us. We don't want to take more usually than more than a third of around, we want to crowd money in around us. So quite often us indicating our interest in investing can help bring in other money and that's the way we want to play. We don't want to.

We want to be a partner with others who have very like minded views of the world around patient capital and really I think, yeah, people like yourself. I didn't realize you're in Biogen. That's quite a. Actually, I'll ask you a question here. So why did you invest in Biogen?

Vidit Agarwal
I actually did not. So my check size was too small, candidly, and this is now public knowledge, I think it was an evolution. I think initially when I met Lewis, which is a while ago, I struggled to understand the opportunity because there's a lot of tentacles to it. But once I understood that agricultural feed conversion to activate a carbon to be used for all the use cases with water and electricity. It was just incredible.

I think there's still unknowns with the capex intensity with the suppliers, and they need funding. And I know you were looking at that quite a bit to break pv, whether you give them debt funding or not, but, and even then, the traction, I think they signed a deal last year with a big german supplier while we were doing diligence on them, which is always a great signal when a founder can keep building the business as they're raising money. And I think Lewis is just a good guy, and I've said this to him, he should probably get a bit tougher and put his foot down a bit when he needs to, but I think he's a fantastic person. And that trust and open conversation I really enjoyed. I spoke to him a lot last year on the phone and those are probably the.

To me, those are the raw ingredients of a potential good investment. Yeah, the founder piece is key. Okay, you got the best tech in the world, but if you don't have the right person, you know, sometimes a founder will be the CEO at two point, and they may need to take a different role, but at the very beginning, you need the right founder. You're investing into people as much as you're investing into technology. And that's where it's quite different to my previous shop, you know, where you invest in large infrastructure projects.

Grant Dooley
But really the, the people piece is the key. And we know as a team, that's a very big, the key things for us, the people, the founding, the team, who else is there? Who else is interested? Are they credible? You've got credible co investors.

We don't want to be the funder of last choice, so we're looking for partners that we can invest alongside. It's no surprise that we've invested alongside made secrets ventures. The CSIRO's venture fund invested alongside the CEFC, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. These are the like minded bodies that have a very patient view of, you know, how do we invest into these areas, which the time horizon are not going to be one or two years, they are going to be a bit of a longer burn from an impact perspective. And one thing we're going to be doing a lot more over the next few months is describing the impact of our investments, because it's not just about the financial return.

Quite often our investment, Aerovax, for instance, which is a peanut allergy, peptides for peanut allergy. To be able to extend the clinical trials to more people who can get access to this potentially life changing drug is a great thing. And when you meet the people who, when we did the announcement, you meet the lady who's had to suffer from peanut allergy fits for her whole life. They're the things that I get really excited about. I think at breakthrough we need to really be a bit more on the front foot about being able to talk about the impact we're having through our investments as much as just the financial piece.

Vidit Agarwal
I want to zoom out and go back to some of your habits and routines, but was there anything else on breakthrough that you want to share that do you think people don't know about? No. We've had a bit of media of late and we're a disruptor in a sense that I probably would say is that organizations like breakthrough exist in Israel, in Singapore, in the US. What we're doing is not. It's new in the australian context, but it's not globally.

Grant Dooley
But I just hope that people can have a bit of patience. I think they have. We are improving, particularly from the founder perspective, and we do want to really, people say, what's success for me when there's breakthrough New South Wales, breakthrough Western Australia, breakthrough Queensland, when we understand that taxpayers money can be invested in a way that can have a lasting impact, rather than just giving a grant, which, while important, the taxpayer gets nothing in return. Maybe when the business is successful, if it is, there's a job for people, whatever, but there's no financial return. So I think if people understand that we're trying to make money for the taxpayers, boys get the impact and that's a good story.

Vidit Agarwal
Yeah, yeah. Let's zoom out and talk. Spend a few minutes on your routines and habits and then we'll close with a quick rapid fire sprint is one question I love asking because you've done so many different reinventions and you've met so many people, is if you imagine a metaphorical hall of fame room and you've got one seat and there's four other seats, who are those four people you'd love to invite? Ideally, people you know and you've met. Who would be those four people that you've been inspired by over your career, that you're just like, wow, I'd love to spend more time with them.

Grant Dooley
Look, I'm inspired by a very. By a very diverse group of people. So I love one of those seats being my father, because I. Because he died when I was eleven. So there's a whole retinue of questions I'd like to ask him.

He was a man who grew up in Weemstown, basically went from being on the tools to being a senior union rep and died at 44 from a brain tumour. But everyone I've spoken about, my father talks very highly of him and so I'd love to be able to have him there, just to be able to delve into what he was like as a young man and learn from him. Another person who was a very good friend of mine who passed away not that long ago, a guy called Kenny Mellowship. And Ken was. You have mentors in your life.

He truly was a mentor. He was the physical training instructor when I was a 16 year old sailor when I first joined the Navy. And I'm not going to play football. He could see that. But not only was he a football coach, he became a life coach.

And then every big decision I had to make after that, including when I was thinking of joining Hastings, I'd ring Ken. And Ken had a very straight, you know, no, dare I say bullshit kind of mate. If you thought about this and this, you know, and really he was a great source of knowledge and wisdom for me. So they're two people from my own personal journey that I'd love to have in that room. And then there's the people who've inspired me more broadly and they're people I haven't met, but.

And I'm going to put my footy hat on here and that's. I'm a Carlton man, Patrick Cripps. I look at that guy every day. He just leads, he puts the club on his shoulders. He is, I think, one of the most outstanding leaders that I've ever seen.

He really does inspire me every day or every game I watch him play. And if I flip that into the female side of things, I actually love my cricket. And Meg Laning is, I'm a huge fan of, again, a very similar type approach. She goes out there, doesn't blink an eyelid, a great leader. I think she speaks unbelievably well.

I'd love to meet her one day. So, yeah, there's four people. I like it. Thanks for answering that on the spot. That was great.

Vidit Agarwal
And I think one other thing that's consistent through your story is you've been in very stressful jobs and very jobs that you've had the spotlight on you, including your current job, in many ways. What are some habits and routines you've had to put in place to? Because I think one thing that came up a lot in the conversations leading up to this is people said your feet are still on the ground. Like, even though you had all this success. You're still that boy from Williamstown at heart and you want to just go to the footy and you want to just hang out and have a beer.

How have you managed to maintain that, that groundedness? Because you don't lose sight of who you are. So I've got an eclectic bunch of friends. That's true. But the friends, one of my closest friends, Paul Malthouse, we were four days separators.

Grant Dooley
We were in cots next to each other at Williamshown Hospital when we were born. Kindergarten, primary school, high school. I joined the navy, he joined the navy. He slept in Queensland. He's a landscape gardener.

You know, and I can, might not speak to Paul for six months to a year. Then we pick up the phone and we throw. 5 hours later the phone goes down and so just be on. You know, I've been lucky that I haven't had to compromise who I am as a person to get to where I've got. I've always been open and honest about who I am.

I wear my heart on my sleeve. That can have its pluses and minuses. I'm not a good poker player as a result, but I'm also just genuine. I actually, one of my other good friends at my beach house I've had for 16 years is Wayne O'Rourke. And Wayne and sue, lovely people from Camden.

He's a glazier. His kids and my kids are growing up together. You think about what would we have in common? Well, we have a lot of things in common. We both like to fish, for a start, but we both have strong families.

We love our kids. We both had strong values around. How do you raise those children? We enjoy each other's company. It's not about talking about what I've done this week or not done that week.

It's just about who you are as a person. I'm interested in what he does sometimes finds a bit weird that I'm interested in how his company's going, but, yeah. So for me, every single person I meet is interesting. And I think if you. If I walk in a room and I walk up to you and speak to you, I'm not gonna look over your shoulder for the next guy to come in and make you more important when I'm talking to you, you are the most important person in that room.

Vidit Agarwal
The irony of your answer actually is, and I've done this for 163 episodes now. And you mentioned the NRF. We had mate Wilder on a few months ago and he also said something similar and I spoke to a few of his friends who play golf with him and surf with him, and they're like, we've got no idea what he does at work, but we like him as a bloke. That seems to be a pattern between people that sustain success, is their friends are outside the industry they're in because they're not transactional friends. They're friends for who they are, and they probably give you a hard time.

I think. I spoke to some of your friends. They seem like they would tell you if you're being too arrogant. They'd probably kick it out of you, pretty much. You don't get.

Grant Dooley
Yeah. I mean, the great thing about my 50th birthday, I brought all these groups of people together and they all got on well. Even though friends from the beach, friends, my Navy days, diplomat, friends from Hastings, everyone in that room, surprisingly enough, we're all good people. So they all got on well. You know, I think you have to make an effort.

Like, I still make it ever with all my friends. I. They're important to me, and I want them to understand that they're important to me. Yeah. And you, you know, you don't want to let good people go.

That's the reality. As you get older, I think you do start to shrink your circle of friends. But I think, yeah. The underlying piece, I've got five kids, two for my first marriage, three for my second. And those five kids themselves are all different parts of my personality and.

But they all have the underlying DNA about what it means to be able to communicate and be good. And they love each other's company as well. So life's too short. That's. We're coming short in time, so love to move into the final sprint, rapid fire round.

Vidit Agarwal
Is there one non work investment of time or energy that you consider the best in your life? Oh, writing my book, you told me before about how do I manage. I'm happy to share. I've shared with a lot of people that I had a panic attack in 2019. The pressures of everything just kind of got too much for me.

Grant Dooley
And I had to deal with a bunch of issues from Indonesia in my past life that I hadn't dealt with. And the three years it took me to write my book, I didn't write it, really for anyone but myself, to be honest. It was just a story. I loved the process of writing. I'd go across the pub after work for an hour and get a beer and write for an hour.

Sometimes I write 20 words. Someone's all right, 300 words, but it gave me that ability to disconnect my brain. It really gave me that ability to put away the stress of the job when I was both at Ara and a breakthrough and really just devote myself to something I enjoy. So that's been easily the best investment I've ever made, was taking the time and giving myself that time every night to actually do it, go and do it. And actually, it was my time to write that book.

Vidit Agarwal
We spoke earlier about grammar. I'm really excited to read that book. When it comes out, the grammar better be perfect. The other, I could fix that up. Is there one thing you want to learn in the next six months?

Grant Dooley
Oh, I want to learn how to ocean sail. I love sailing around the bay. I want to get a. I actually want to go out the heads and, yeah, one of my ambitions in life is to do the city of the Hobart. I do love sailing.

I try and sail most weekends, but I really want to get it. I want to do some blue water sailing, get out there and really test myself on the ocean. That excites me. Yeah. Nice.

Vidit Agarwal
Is there one interview question you like asking prospective candidates? Yeah, I always. So when I interview people, they always come prepared and you always want to know what they can do, but I always ask what they. The question I ask is what truly makes them happy. So if you are to define happiness to me, what does that look like?

Grant Dooley
And you get some quite interesting answers. Usually it's not work, which is great. If it is work, then you've got to start thinking, is this the right person? But understanding what makes people happy and what motivates people, I think is really important when they're going to come to work for me. And I have a good team, a good Zec team, and I largely know what makes them happy.

But at the moment, I think it's pay rises. But, yeah, I'd like to know what makes me feel happy. So hopefully I can actually play a part in that journey to make. Yeah, that probably breaks their script as well during the interview. Right.

Vidit Agarwal
It makes you human. Absolutely. And last one, is there a person or quote that inspires you today? Actually, yeah. This one I've got across the back wall at breakthrough, Victoria.

Grant Dooley
But it's. Yes, it's an old Winston Churchill quote that success is not final, failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts. And that's always, I've had through, I've read it. I think when I was quite young, maybe I've been at school, but that piece, that success is not final and failure is not fatal, you know, to get up every day and keep having a crack.

I also like the man Murina, that connotation that you just could keep getting up every day and going and doing it, you know, that's really that. And I do like poetry. I'm a big fan of if by Rudyard Kipling. Oh, yeah, yeah. Messages in these words, and particularly an if, which I think can be good steerage for a young man growing up.

Vidit Agarwal
Yeah. So good. So good. Well, that's a good note to end on. Grant or Tom Dooley, thank you so much for.

Thank you for joining me and thank you for opening up. I really enjoyed this and wish you all the best. Yeah, cheers. Appreciate that, mate. And thank you for having me on show.

Grant Dooley
Really enjoyed it as well. Well, there you have it. That's the end of my conversation. Grant Dooley in this episode 163 this was really fun. A mutual friend recommended inviting Grant on the show, and I must admit I wasn't sure how he would respond given the focus on breakthrough Victoria recently.

Vidit Agarwal
But as I learned more about his story, I could not share this interview opportunity with him and with you. I think the various transitions in his journey from the navy to becoming a diplomat and adjusting to China and Indonesia, to dealing with a really traumatic experience to then making another transition into investing and funds management, I felt we were able to do a really good deep dive, but also go wide on a lot of topics, and Grant was open and candid throughout, so I hope you really enjoyed this one. As always, all my details are in the show notes. If you want to get in touch with feedback or if you want to partner with us as a sponsor brand and if you want to come to our upcoming events, they're live and in Melbourne. Make sure to register all details in the show notes.

Catch you soon.

#163 Grant Dooley: Joining Navy at 16, Diplomat in China + Indonesia (and painful learnings); Inside the $2B fund, Breakthrough Victoria!

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1: Early Life and Navy Career

2: Diplomatic Career in China and Indonesia

3: Transition to Financial Management

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