Max Bausher & Brian Swift: Co-Founders @ Twine

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Our guests this week are Max Bausher and Brian Swift in episode #198—co-founders of Twine, a company turning customer conversations into company-wide action.

Learn about Max and Brian’s successful careers in tech in the US before moving to Australia in 2016. Fun fact: they didn’t meet each other until almost 6 years after moving to Sydney, despite both growing up in the US.

Max, a former sales engineer at New Relic and CrowdStrike, shares his key learnings from his time bridging the gap between go-to-market and product teams. Brian reflects on his highlights and learnings from being a product and Go-to-market leader at Twitter, Atlassian, SafetyCulture, and Dovetail and saw firsthand how companies struggled to capture customer insights at scale.

Our host, Vidit loved learning about how Twine was born from their shared frustration: too many critical insights from sales and customer teams never made it back to product. They saw AI as the missing link, and in 2023, they teamed up to build Twine—and secured venture backing from Airtree.

In this episode, we also dive into:

• Their biggest career lessons, from hyper growth companies to painful failures
• Differences between Aus v US; and how did they manage the difficult transition when they started working in Australia?
• How Twine went from an idea to a venture-backed company with Airtree
• Their opposite personalities and how that makes them stronger leaders
• The power of AI in reshaping work, and why distribution—is their biggest focus right now
• Why they believe in building a small, highly efficient team instead of hiring fast
  

And so much more—including the one unexpected question about the relationship with his wife that changed how Max thought about starting Twine.

It’s now time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy!