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Ben Thompson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Employment Hero — one of Australia’s most successful tech companies, valued at over A$2 billion and used by more than 300,000 businesses worldwide. Before that, he bootstrapped multiple companies, blending legal expertise with product thinking to build tools for employers.
In this candid long-form public interview, Ben shares the lessons, missteps, and mindset behind one of the most enduring and quietly influential founder journeys in Australian tech.
Show notes
Published 21st May, 2025.
Ben Thompson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Employment Hero — a global leader in employment management platforms valued at over A$2 billion. From bootstrapping a law firm to building a suite of businesses, and ultimately scaling Employment Hero to serve over 300,000 SMEs and 2 million+ employees worldwide, Ben has become one of the most enduring and impactful founders and leaders in Tech.
This is a rare, in-depth interview with Ben — going well beyond the headlines.
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In this rare, long-form conversation, Ben opens up about:
- Growing up in Fairlight, moving to Armidale for boarding school at 15, and the hiking trips through Nepal and Tasmania that shaped his love of adventure.
- How watching his dad build a solo HR consulting firm inspired him to start a tech law practice instead of pursuing a corporate law career.
- Bootstrapping EI Legal and Employment Innovations, then founding Employment Hero — and what changed when he hit $1M ARR and realised he had to raise capital.
- Why Australia gets pay and performance wrong, and how he’s built equity-first incentive structures that favour long-term ownership over cash bonuses.
- The early days of Employment Hero: splitting it out from his other businesses and landing a pivotal distribution deal with ANZ Bank.
- The costly lessons from expanding into Southeast Asia, why cloning the Australian model failed, and how he’d now lead with product-led growth.
- How he defines product-market fit using CAC, churn, time-to-close and customer retention — and why PMF is never “done”.
- His views on founder-led sales in new markets, and how he adapted when he couldn’t travel due to his son’s rare disease — including scaling globally during COVID without boarding a single flight.
- How raising a child with complex medical needs reshaped his leadership, fuelled his belief in remote work, and led to launching the Hero Foundation.
- The role his wife plays as his closest advisor, sounding board and emotional anchor — and why he shares credit for everything with her.
- His use of “masterplans” and vision boards to stay grounded, set direction, and push through the hard days.
- Why he believes Australia lacks bold leadership — and how he’s thinking about company-building in a fast-moving, AI-first world.
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Timestamps
About us
The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most relatable role models in business, tech, finance, government and sport in the US, Australia, Singapore, India and New Zealand.
Launched over 6.5+ years ago - our 275+ guests come from various industries around the world including:
Investing and Finance (VC, PE, Pension Funds, Family Offices)
Our guests across venture capital, growth investing, institutional capital, banking, pension funds and family offices include: Keith Rabois (MD, Khosla Ventures), Jason Collins (CEO, BlackRock Asia Pacific), Ryan Beiermeister (Partner, Founders Fund), David Haber (General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz), Kevin Hartz (Managing Partner, A*), Mike Vernal (Partner, Conviction; Ex-Sequoia), David Schneider (Growth Fund Co-Lead Partner, Coatue), Venky Ganesan (Managing Partner, Menlo Ventures), Mark Suster (Managing Partner, Upfront Ventures), Kelland Reilly (Partner, Airtree; Ex General Atlantic, D1), Niki Scevak (Managing Partner, Blackbird), Paul Bassat (Managing Partner, Square Peg), David Neal (CEO, IFM Investors), Sam Sicilia (CIO, Hostplus), Michael Kim (Partner, Cendana Capital), Beezer Clarkson (Partner, Sapphire), Gautam Chari (Head of Capital Commitments, Bank of America), David Shein (Managing Partner, OIF), Vivek Bhatia (CEO, MUFG), Rowan Simpson (Founder, Hoku) and more.
Technology, AI and software (Startups, Big Tech, Publicly Listed)
Our technology, AI and software guests include Jodie Auster (Uber’s Global Head of Travel), Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (CEO, Xero), Rob Giglio (CCO, Canva), Mel Silva (MD, Google), Jean-Michel Lemieux (former CTO, Shopify and Atlassian), Anil Sabharwal (Global VP, Google Chrome, Photos and Drive), Shiv Rao (CEO, Abridge), Jesse Zhang (CEO, Decagon), Dylan Babbs (Co-Founder & CTO, Profound), John Willett (Co-Founder & COO, Rogo), David Eckstein (CFO, Legora), John Haddock (CBO, Harvey), Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta), Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel), Cristina Cordova (COO, Linear), Elena Verna (Head of Growth, Lovable), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Tim Doyle (CEO, Eucalyptus), Andrew Fraser (President, Halter), Bowen Pan (creator of Facebook Marketplace) and more.
CEOs, Boards and Major Company Senior Executives
Our guests leading some of the world's largest and most recognisable organisations include Brad Banducci (CEO, Woolworths Group), Michael Schneider (CEO, Bunnings), Paul Grosmann (CEO, R.M.Williams), Andrew Penn (CEO, Telstra), Vandita Pant (CFO, BHP), Sanjeev Gandhi (CEO, Orica), Craig Tiley (CEO, Tennis USA), Brendan Hargreaves (CFO, Officeworks), Andrew Fraser (Board Chair, Bank of Queensland), Jaddan Cummerford (CEO, Unified Music), Ed McManus (CEO, Deliveroo) and more.
Government and Policy Makers
Our government, diplomatic and public-policy guests include Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia), Amit Singh (Managing Partner, Mandala), Peter Varghese (Secretary of Australia's Foreign Service), Philip Green (Australia’s High Commissioner to India), Brendan Dowling (Deputy Secretary, Australia's Department of Home Affairs), Mukund Narayanamurti (General Manager for South Asia, Austrade) and Ryan Neelam (CEO, Centre for Australia-India Relations, Australian Government).
Professional Athletes
Steve Solomon (400m Olympic Sprinter), Ed Cowan (Former Test Cricketer), Trent Cotchin (3x Premiership Winning Captain, Richmond FC), Lisa Stahelakar (World Cup Winning Captain, Australian Womens Cricket Team).
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