Safeguarding & Streamlining Your Business Operations

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

Welcome back to the Forward Thinking Podcast, this special edition of the Coast and Commerce podcast recorded live at FWDFest 2025. I’m Ben Amos from Innovate Media. And I’m Craig Josic, co-founder and chair of FWDFest. In today’s episode, we’re going to hear from two businesses that were interviewed live at FWDFest 2025. And they’re both in the tech space, but kind of looking at it from different things. One of the businesses is fairly well established, working in enterprise level cybersecurity, which is something that I think everyone needs to be paying attention to.

whatever size of the business you’re in. And the other founder that we’re gonna hear from is someone who’s really starting from scratch and creating something that I think the world needs. So CJ, do you wanna add a bit more? I think the most important thing is stop and think about when you’re listening to these podcasts, how does it impact your business? Security, very important Ben, as you mentioned. And maybe an idea that you might have where we’re gonna hear about Zach and how he developed something quite unique.

in a traditional space. Yeah, and there’s some cool stuff with AI coming in this episode too. let’s first of all hear from Jared Cunningham from Ravinn. All right, guys, welcome to the Forward Thinking podcast, a special edition of the Coast and Commerce podcast filmed live here at FWDFest 2025. We are coming towards the end of the day here, so I hope my energy levels are keeping up. But if you’re watching or listening whenever you’re tuning into this episode, I hope you’ve caught many of the other episodes of the inspiring stories that we’ve caught here at FWDFest 2025.

And one of those inspiring stories I want to share with you here today is Jared Cunningham from Ravinn. And they’re in a really relevant space here for anyone in business, like whatever type of business you’re in on the coast here. So I’ll let Jared explain a little bit more. Jared, tell me about you, tell me about Ravinn. What do you do? Yeah, thanks. So we’re a cyber security company. So we have two areas of cyber security working. One is that

generalist professional services, so we help any organization uplift their cybersecurity. It’s all about raising the bar. So it’s harder for an attacker to attack them, basically. And the kind of more niche specialist area that we work in is what we call threat intelligence. And that’s like a proactive form of defense. We’re looking around the world for new threats, new vulnerabilities that could affect the organizations that we help protect so that we can warn them before it happens. And that all comes back to.

My background is the founder and a lot of my team, we all come from military backgrounds and backgrounds in national security where we worked in intelligence, electronic warfare, all that kind of thing. So that’s where we came from and that’s what we’re trying to do now. Working mostly with critical infrastructure, know, big organisations with big operational technology on the systems. But we tend to work with anyone really because everyone needs a bit of cyber security in some regard.

So many of the audience kind of tuning into this podcast would probably not be at that enterprise level, that big organisation. They’re probably more of that small medium business here on the coast. What would you say to those, those people in those businesses who may be thinking that cyber security is only really something that needs to be paid attention to at that enterprise level? What would you say to them? I’d say that they really need to.

have a quick look at what they’re doing and sort themselves out. There’s unfortunately small businesses, small and medium businesses in Australia, particularly are absolutely smashed by, we consider to be low level hackers. I think most people should have heard of ransomware and phishing and all those kind of cyber things that we hear of on the news. And small businesses are frequently attacked, they’re vulnerable because people don’t really know.

that they are a target. And the kind of good thing is there are some basic things that cost, in most cases, nothing that any organization can and should do to uplift their security, just make themselves that bit harder to do. And there’s loads of free advice out there from the Australian Cybersecurity Centre, places like that. But it’s something that everyone should be aware of at the very least because everyone is a target.

It’s certainly not something to be ignored. And look, we won’t go further into that specifically in this episode with the short time we’ve got today, because what I really want to explore is your journey in business. So you were describing yourself before we hit record here as really in that scale up stage of business now. So it’s been about five years of Ravinn, is that right? Yeah. So we’ve existed for five years. So I came out of the army, was British army, came over to the Australian army, left there and I was obviously the next soldier. You think you can do anything? And I thought, you know, I’ll start my own business.

So it’s been an extremely steep learning curve to learn how to do the business side of things the cyber security thing that came a lot easier But yeah first couple years of me on my own really working out what it is can do and we’ve been scaling up for the last kind of two and half three years where we’ve been growing the team And we’ve been doing fairly well. I got a lot of organic growth We get a lot of referrals and you know repeat business from existing customers, but now yeah, we’re trying to we’re just really looking at that scaling

strategically and thinking right, where do we go next? How do we achieve this? How can we make sure we’ve got that sustainable structure to enable that? So coming here today is great with the scaling stream because a lot of people with lessons of scaling and some whose advice would be really consider do you need to scale and really work it out before you push forward I think is the message there. So Ravinn based on the Sunshine Coast here? that the company started here?

Originally was in Brisbane, came up in 2022, literally flushed out of Brisbane in the floods down there. So we moved up to the coast. And now the business has kind of been relocated up here. So we operate out of the innovation centre up at the university. And serving clients all around Australia and further afield? Yeah, all around Australia. Just Australia right now. yeah, mostly Queensland and we try and focus in Queensland as much as we can. But we’ve got clients in the ACT.

I just came back from Perth the other week running a big exercise. Yeah, so we’ve operated in most states. So for you, Jared, that challenge of scaling a business from a Sunshine Coast-based, which is a regional center, officially, right? But there’s a lot going on here, obviously, on the Sunshine Coast. there’s obviously some challenges as well that you’re facing now with scaling. So can you give me the overlay of what some of those challenges are and how you’re potentially addressing them?

Where do we begin really? I think a lot of the challenges are internal I feel it’s having the structure that you can, having the right foundations to build on because if you don’t have the foundations you try and grow too quickly. I think your shortcomings will be found out pretty soon. So there’s that and also working out where you can work with partners to learn from them but also we don’t need to do everything.

ourselves so looking at where we can work with partners that can do things better than us more efficiently and work with them. actually part of the Sunshine Coast Tech Industry Alliance, so I’m on the board of Satechi and I found that really helpful to work with the Tech Industry Alliance because there’s so much experience within it that as a small and growing business we can learn from those bigger guys who’ve been around a lot longer and really pick up lessons from them but yeah like the challenges that we can pick out.

marketing, HR, it’s everything. Everything is actually a challenge when it comes to scaling. So I think one of the key things you touched on there, Jared, was the importance of that industry network that you build around you, right? Which I think is something that Sunshine Coast does well. Many other regions of Australia do that well as well, but it’s something I think we should be particularly proud of here on the Sunshine Coast with industry groups like the Sunshine Coast Tech Industry Alliance.

You know, on the Coast and Commerce podcast in the past, we’ve had some great interviews with the Food and Agribusiness Network, with Manufacturing Excellence Forum, and we had Chris Carver from Entag on the Coast and Commerce podcast as well. So it’s this network that you build around you that I think really allows you to achieve more than the individual, right? So can you speak to that and how that network has helped you as you’ve kind of scaled?

all started and scaled? Yeah, like I mean, I found since we moved here in 2022, instantly found it more kind of welcoming and collaborative. And we only came up from Brisbane. But I don’t really know why that is or what it is. Like culturally, there’s something different to be here in Brisbane. But yeah, I found, go with Satechia. And I’m aware of the other industry groups around here. And yeah, they all clearly work together, talk to each other. And I just generally find it genuinely more.

Collaborative people are willing to help, whether it’s with bit of advice and guidance or just kind of being sound in boards in some places, because I think that’s, it’s really helpful as a founder to have those who have done it before to bounce ideas off or have a rant too, just to let it all off from time to time and pick up from. But no, we just find it more collaborative here.

Excellent. So you’re here at, well, we’re now at the end of day one of FWDFest 2025 and you’ve been to a last couple of FWDFests, I believe as well. Is that right? Last couple of years? Yeah, this is my third one. yeah. Excellent. So what have you taken away here today that’s maybe, maybe helped Ravinn and the next stage of your journey as well? Yeah. So I’ve been going mostly to the kind of scale stream sessions and there’s some, it was interesting, we just went to a panel where there were people who

been in business for 30 years versus some of the startup kind of phase of things. And they’re just sharing their experiences in scaling and all that. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of little tidbits within all of that to understand. think a lot comes back to remembering what your values and your purpose is in the first place. I know Dave Clare would have spoke about that this morning, which I missed that.

But I feel that’s extremely important. Understanding your values, understanding why you’re doing this in the first place, because it’s very easy to be distracted by something that you can jump on and make some money out of that may not align with why you’re there in the first place. I purpose and values are absolutely critical to that. I think that’s something that’s come out in different ways from the different speakers and panels that I’ve listened to today. Yeah. And one of the…

Key things with FWDFest is the connections and collaborative conversations that happen, often those opportunistic connections that happen around the events. So have you experienced any of that yourself, whether it be in previous years or this year, today, that maybe these connections that you’ve made that have helped you in ways that were unexpected? Yeah, I think it was at FWD Fest that I first heard of and met people from the Tech Industry Alliance and that’s been real.

helpful platform for us to kind of build a network here on the coast. And there’s been some interesting people in various places, from digital marketing to a bit of health tech and all that kind of stuff that I’ve met today. And looking forward to the drinks, because that’s usually a good place to meet new people that I’ve never met before. So yeah, it’s good for that. It’s also nice to see people that haven’t seen for a few months. Everyone comes back together at places like this, so it’s good to have a catch up as well. Yeah, excellent.

So Jared, if people are interested in maybe learning more about Ravinn or connecting, maybe even using your services to help them with their cyber security, where’s the best place for people to find out more about Ravinn? Yeah, go to our website. That’s the best place. So I have to spell out Ravinn because it doesn’t sound how it’s spelled, but it’s r-a-v-i-n-n dot com. So yeah, find us there. Yeah, otherwise look me up, Jared Cunningham, and connect with me and I’ll be more than happy to.

to work with anyone on their security or yeah, if anyone else is trying to scale up, then let’s share our challenges. Beautiful. All right, Jared, thanks for being here and joining me on the Forward Thinking podcast. As we wrap up here on day one of FWD Fest 2025, so reach out to Jared Cunningham, I guess on LinkedIn is a great place to connect and to Ravinn.com. There’s no dot au on there, just ravinn.com, R-A-V-I-Double N dot com.

And thanks for joining us for this episode of the Forward Thinking Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss other episodes that we’ve recorded here live at FWDFest 2025 or the other episodes of the Coast and Commerce podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode you choose to watch. Take care, bye. Now we’re gonna hear from Zach and looking at images. Great story and how he’s using AI to develop a business. I hope this inspires you.

G’day and welcome back to the Forward Thinking podcast, a special edition of the Coast and Commerce podcast recorded here at FWDFest 2025. Our mission today is to unpack and find some really interesting stories of innovation and entrepreneurship here on the Sunshine Coast. And I’m excited right now to be joined by Zach Cole from Picseo.ai. Has it got the dot in there today? It does have a dot. Picseo.ai. another one of these stories of really innovative stuff coming out of the Sunshine Coast. So tell me.

Zach, what is Picseo? What do you do? Yeah, so unfortunately, the images online are genuinely invisible. If we go online and Google search stuff, a lot of those images unfortunately come up with IMG112 or just random names that don’t actually show what’s in that image. And the problem is that Google doesn’t see our designs, doesn’t see our images, what it reads is metadata. So Picseo AI essentially takes that image.

and auto renames it with an SEO optimised file name. It will also compress that image because we want that to load quickly. Google’s gonna start penalizing websites that actually load slower starting this year. And if you’ve got a lot of photos for your content and your products, you don’t want that to slow your site down. Finally, it’ll also put in alt text. if it’s for WordPress or specific SEO cases, you can take that alt text. Ultimately, you’re gonna save a lot of time. You’re gonna retain the creative flow and…

not be as focused on the admin, which does really need to be done. And ultimately you’re gonna hopefully have more results from your website or give your clients better content. Amazing, cool. So I think SEO is one of those things that so many business owners overlook and put it in the too hard basket or they outsource it to an agency. And typically that costs a lot of money as well, right? You go to an SEO agency and it’s kind of like this black magic that they’re potentially doing. You don’t know what they’re doing, right? So I know it is a pain point for a lot of businesses. So when it comes to images,

that’s the area that you’re kind of solving for, Is specifically the images and optimisation of images. Yeah, correct. And it’s incredible that myself included, most of us don’t actually prioritise it. But when you speak to SEO specialists, the guys who actually in the trenches, it is the bane of their existence. And they have so much reverence for it because it actually does bring results. And so this tool is there to simply automate that process so that ultimately you as a business owner, if you’ve got a great portfolio,

Or if what you guys do, deliver content, those clients are gonna get better performing assets for relatively no or low cost. It’s just using an asset and giving it more value. So who’s your core target audience for your app? Is it the SEO agencies or those web design agencies who are tasked with improving performance of the sites? Or is it the business owner themselves? Great question, Ben. I’d say it’s a diverse range between the business owners who actually have, like yourself, the photographers, the content creators.

that are creating this stuff for the marketing, you can use this tool to charge an extra service fee because you’re taking something and giving it more value. Additionally though, if you’re an SEO specialist and you have 10 different websites, all of which have images, instead of taking hours writing out all of that, you can throw it through the tool, run it through a batch automation, and just like that, you’ve created a lot more value for the website. So our target demographic to answer your question is photographers, content creators.

but also SEO specialists and digital marketers. So where does the AI factor into this? Yep, yep. Great question too. So the element of AI is infused within the scanning and the generation process. So AI is basically taking this image that you’ve uploaded, it’s looking into it. One of the coolest examples I’ve seen of that was when I uploaded a photo of a boat. We were at a shoot in the Maldives last year and I gave it this photo.

And somehow it knew this photo was taken in the Maldives and it came back with the name. basically scanned the image and then generated that name. And I was like, how does it know that? And I’d never even caught on to the fact that on the side of one of these boats was the word Maldives Four Seasons. And I’d never even caught that. it’s taking the image very much in depth, taking all those details and then going through a process to have an SEO focused name where it’s condensed because Google will actually penalize you if you have too many words going into this.

It chooses a select right amount of words, batches them together, and then it goes through a couple of other pieces of black magic as you called it before to basically compress the file and give it a new image file name that you can straight away take away. So it’s effectively one click or you just give it a batch of files, of raw files, and it does the work from there. Correct. Like for us writers, because you know, I’ve run a production company as well the last few years, and you take these images,

you take them into your computer, you’ve edited them, then you give them to a client, usually through a Google Drive. This process is you take the photo, you edit it, you upload it to Picseo, you click analyze, done. You can then share that folder directly with clients. You don’t even need to re-download them and put them on a Google Drive. You can just share it directly through a link and those clients are getting folders and like, know, for today, say, FWDfest 2025 podcast. So yeah, it’s trying to streamline those little nitty gritty parts and essentially give a better result.

So I’m interested for anyone working in the AI space and app development space. One of the big challenges I believe is how fast AI is moving, right? So what risks or threats do you see to Picseo with the development of AI and how are you working to address that? man. It’s a big one. Drinking? Whatever gets through. Nah, it’s anxiety at the end of the day to see something you’ve made potentially go to waste.

right we are living in a very very fast period in time where your tool you could have spent months on it and tens of thousands of dollars and overnight it’s just useless or you’ve got this other guy who’s done it better than you and so look that’s definitely sign that does keep me up at night however from from my fundamentals it comes down to is it easy to use is it useful is it fun doesn’t create a sense of vibe i remember the first time i’ve used chat gpt

and I genuinely got excited. And so with me creating this tool, there’s a million other things like Adobe Photoshop versus Canva. There’s tools there that anyone can choose to use, but usually there’s an emotional correspondence. And so I’m trying to make a tool that’s easy to use. It’s not trying to be anything more than it is. And hopefully that’ll bolster it in a marketplace that is rapidly evolving, but will keep it in a position where those who enjoy it will continue to use it.

And those who don’t can, you know, they’ll find another solution, but it will hopefully continue to exist. Yeah, a hundred percent. Look, it sounds like you’re going at it with the right kind of foundation of approach here as well. So FWDfest 2025, is this your first time at this event? Yeah. So what brought you here today and what sort of connections are you hoping to make that might help you go to that next level with Picseo?

Well, I got a shout out to traditional media, good old print media. I saw a magazine literally last week and CJ was on the front cover with somebody else I knew. Matters Magazine. Yep. And I was, yep, Matters Magazine. Shout out to Luke. And I saw that and I was like, like I’m launching this app. The ethos I’ve had is tell everyone about it. So I called up CJ. I’ve known him for a couple of years and just said, Hey, look, I’m doing this app. If you want to try it out, let me know. And he said, well, how would you feel about actually launching the app? Cause today was launch day.

He said, how do you feel about coming and launching it live and coming to potentially even pitch? And I was like, I’ve never pitched, but let’s give it a go. So being here today was the goal of pitching, but also just connecting with others. I think the entrepreneurial journey can be quite isolating at times, not only from a social perspective, but even just your ideas and the setbacks and the hours of blood, sweat and tears you put into something that no one really says. And to connect with other creatives, connect with other businesses.

And honestly, the cherry on top was this morning session with one of the leads at Leonardo AI. So Leonardo is an Australian based AI company that’s recently been acquired with Canva. And I was literally one of the first users on Leonardo AI. I was like a total fanboy. And going to his presentation, Ivan’s presentation this morning, I learned so much. It’s really cool to see those big successful companies and their very humble beginnings.

you know, top that off. I had a chat with one of the other marketing directors there, told him about the tool I developed. He then just casually says, yeah, I’m an SEO specialist. So he totally understands the tool, gives me his card. We’re going to see where that goes. That’s it. You don’t know where these connections are going to lead to. That’s exactly right. I think, you can do everything. say luck is when opportunity meets preparation. And I think when you’re in the right headspace, you’ve worked hard, you have a good functional product and you meet the right people.

That truly is the X factor and it’s very exciting to see what can come from this. Yeah, 100%. So one good connection made for those listening to the podcast or watching the podcast, which will be published after the event here in 2025. Who are those people that you’re wanting to make more connections with? And maybe there’s someone listening who might be that connection for you or be able to make that connection.

for sure, like I want to connect with other young entrepreneurs like myself that either are looking for advice and support or doing cool stuff and just want to connect because I think there is there’s a real harmony when you have like-minded individuals. I’d say beyond that just photographers, creatives, digital marketers, SEO people, people who could see the value in this service and this app that want to either you know charge more for their work or save time or make their workplace better and more functional.

I love to connect with them. And I guess finally more, more people who are doing cool shit. Sorry. More people are doing cool shit. I feel like we need to have that normalised, you know, like go and do something big. Like I want to get a thousand users in 90 days. Can I do it? Probably not. Do I have every intention of achieving that? Yes. Like I think you got to have big goals. And when you’re around other people who don’t settle, it kind of makes you get like a kind of G’d up.

And yeah, anyone who’s listening to this and wants to come to next year’s event, I’d highly encourage it. Cause you guys being here, a lot of other people are here who are proactive and have made something genuinely out of nothing. And I think that’s a really amazing thing. It inspires me a lot. And yeah, I want to connect with more, more people like that. Well, that’s what FWDFest is about. And that’s what the Sunshine Coast innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem is all about. So Zach Cole from Picseo AI, what the website is PICSEO.AI

That’s it. Easy as that. Easy as that. So go and check it out and become one of those first 1000 users or one of the first 10,000 users if you’d be on that goal already. Let’s go. Beautiful. Zach, thanks for joining me on the show. It’s been fun. And for you guys watching and listening, make sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss another episode of the Forward Thinking Podcast, this special edition of the Coast and Commerce podcast here at FWD Fest 2025. We’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.

What an episode, two great stories, you know, coming from different angles, but using technology and innovation to make a difference. Very inspiring. Yeah, absolutely. And I know, you know, whether you’re at the startup phase of your business like Zach or whether well established like Jared and the team at Ravinn, I think, you know, the ability to attend something like FWDFest 2025 or 2026, if you’re going to be there, is the ability to connect with businesses that are doing different things in different ways to inspire.

what’s next for your business. So I hope that’s what you’re getting from this season of the podcast as well as inspiration to take your business to a new place. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of the Forward Thinking Podcast. And why not share this episode with someone in business you know. We’ll see you in the next episode. Keep moving forward.