Something ventured, something gained

Casey Flint Associate at private equity firm Square Peg; aged 26; lives in Sydney’s Kirribilli As a young girl, Casey loved mixing “potions” with mud, thinking one day she might be a scientist; grew up in the outback Queensland town of Winton; studied biochemistry and molecular biology at University of Queensland; studied economics after joining Uber; is a keen sailor, an avid reader and follower of podcasts; a devoted video gamer and interested in virtual reality.

- ALAN DEANS

It doesn’t come much better for a young, entrepreneurial minded person than to snare a job with perhaps Australia’s best-known backer of start-ups, Square Peg. Casey Flint is living a dream. Her role includes helping entrepreneurs to shake up entrenched cultural norms between senior business managers and their employees. Square Peg’s co-founder, Paul Bassat, made his first fortune by starting one of Australia’s best-known disrupters, the online jobs site SEEK. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, therefore, that he is now bankrolling new ideas that give bosses the means to turbocharge their employees’ worth.

“This is quite a new space,” says Flint, “and our investments are all in early-stage companies. They are either just developing or putting out their products now.”

How does it fit with the many other strands of endeavour that Square Peg is chasing? “It’s definitely up there,” she says. “The themes we are interested in are artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, education technology and culture-as-a-service (CaaS).” She came up with the name culture-as-a-service to describe the slew of new employee workplace initiatives, and sparked an eager response from around the world after writing a blog about it for Square Peg.

“It is the most well-read post on our website,” she says. “It has been written about by CNBC. I have spoken to executives and founders at billion-dollar tech companies and with professional services firm PWC. They all reached out because it resonates. ‘This is a problem we are trying to solve,’ they say. ‘We want to hear what you are hearing from the startups that you speak to.’ ”