S01E03: Airtasker's CFO Nathan Chadwick on how to pivot, cut your burn rate & IPO your startup during a market downsturn

Ryan Edwards-Pritchard
Ryan Edwards-Pritchard
September 3, 2021

Background

Nathan grew up in Brisbane, which felt like the world’s biggest country town when he was young. He credits those small town origins and the influence of his parents for his strong work ethic, something that makes up for rarely being the smartest person in the room - his words, not ours :)

AFL to Airtasker

With a focus on everything sports in his younger years, Nathan credits the skills learned in navigating sporting team environments as an important springboard for life in the corporate arena.

Nathan’s (non-football) career kicked off in the wonderful world of investment banking, spending more than a decade with Credit Suisse, ABN AMRO and RBS, working across Australia, Europe and the Middle East. He credits this as a great grounding to develop the financial literacy, communication and project management skills that have served him well as a CFO.

Nathan and Ryan discuss some of the inflection points of the global financial crisis, its impact on the financial services industry and how it set the scene for the fintech boom globally. And how it led to Nathan’s first “start-up” experience, establishing the equity capital markets business for RBS in the Middle East.

Airtasker to IPO

Nathan and Ryan discuss Airtasker’s journey over the past 3 years since he joined, covering capital raising, knowing when to cut your burn, life in a pandemic and the fabric of teamwork that’s needed to navigate everything that gets thrown at you in a high growth tech company.

And that’s before we even come to the IPO, shortly followed by Airtasker’s first international acquisition!

It’s a wild journey by any measure, with trust in your team critical to its success.

Listen to how he did it. Click the link to listen to the full podcast now.

Listen on Spotify

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Ryan Edwards-Pritchard
Ryan Edwards-Pritchard
September 3, 2021

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