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Luke Anear is the Founder and CEO of Mitti, the global technology company formerly known as SafetyCulture. Founded in 2004, Mitti has grown into a US$1.6 billion company with 850+ employees, helping tens of thousands of organisations improve how work gets done. Today, it is expanding across AI, computer vision and insurance, building on more than 3.5 billion workplace images and an insurance business that has already written US$115 million+ in premiums.
After more than 20 years building the company, Luke stepped away from the CEO role completely exhausted. Eighteen months later, he’s back in the chair, has made more changes in five months than he says he did in the previous decade, and is rebuilding the business for the AI era.
In this candid conversation, Luke shares how dropping out of school and cycling through 18 jobs and businesses shaped him, including living in his car before making $42,000 in a single night, and why he regrets selling 28% of SafetyCulture for just $2 million. Vidit and Luke unpack the chaos of scaling from 25 to 300+ employees, why stepping away became “one of the best things that ever happened” to him, what he’s doing differently in his second stint as CEO, and his ambition to build Mitti into a $10 billion revenue business.
They also explore why AI is pushing software from horizontal to vertical, Mitti’s expansion beyond traditional SaaS, the surprising lesson Luke learned on a job site in Nepal, and the more personal side of a founder who flies helicopters, makes films and once took his children out of school to travel the world making documentaries together.
Please enjoy exploring your curiosity.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Why SafetyCulture became Mitti
02:10 Introduction
07:00 Xero
10:15 Living in his car to making $42K overnight
20:30 How SafetyCulture really started
25:30 Selling 28% for $2 million
31:30 Stepping away and returning as CEO
36:00 The mistakes of scaling too fast
44:15 Why AI is making software more vertical
46:30 What Nepal taught Luke about global expansion
54:00 From SaaS to insurance
1:03:00 “I was cooked”: burnout and becoming a different CEO
1:15:00 Documentaries, his kids and flying helicopters
1:23:00 Rapid fire
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The High Flyers Podcast features in-depth interviews with the world’s most influential figures in business, tech, finance, government and sport. Launched in 2020, it has ranked in the global top ten for past three years, with listeners in 27 countries and over 200+ episodes released, and featured in Forbes, Daily Telegraph, and at SXSW.
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