On The First, Alex Rankin sits down with Rod Hamilton, Co-Founder of Culture Amp, to explore how four Australians built one of the world's leading workplace software platforms - growing from a 2009 startup to a $1.5 billion unicorn serving 25 million employees across 4,000+organizations including Salesforce, Unilever, and PwC.
Rod traces his journey from consulting at Accenture, where he identified a critical insight: in enterprise transformations, technology wasn't the barrier - people were. This revelation became the foundation for Culture Amp and shaped his approach to building at the intersection of technology, business, and human behavior.
His conversation with Alex dives into theco-founder dynamic with Didier Elzinga, Doug English, and Jon Williams - exploring how aligned values and complementary skills created the foundation for a lasting partnership. Rod discusses Culture Amp's early struggles, including failed products and the tough decisions that led to their breakthrough moment with employee engagement surveys.
Learn how Culture Amp achieved unexpected early traction in the U.S. market, turning customers like Square and Adobe into powerful advocates, and scaled from Melbourne to become a global leader. Rod shares his product philosophy on balancing vision with customer feedback, the evolving role of product managers in the AI era, and how Culture Amp embedded values like "learn faster through feedback" into its DNA.
Few founders have the perspective of building a company from zero to $1.5 billion. Hear firsthand what it really takes - the failed bets, the make-or-break moments, the leadership shifts, and the strategic decisions that separate companies that scale from those that stall. Watch the full episode for Rod's unfiltered lessons from 15 years at the helm of one of Australia's most successful tech companies.
