Experience compounds, just like capital does

Yesterday I joined Chris Rolls, Shaun Bassett Shelly K. and the PieLab team and investors at their 2026 Investor Day in Brisbane.

The slide in this photo stayed with me: experience compounds, just like capital does.

Nine years into Propel Ventures, we are seeing exactly that. Every engagement leaves something behind - a playbook, a reusable asset, sharper scoping, a team that has already seen the failure mode. Early on, that investment feels like pushing a heavy rock up a hill. Now it's a flywheel that turns with minimal effort.

When AI forced us to rebuild how we deliver software, those foundations are why we could transform ourselves in months rather than years, and why we can now take clients through the same shift.

Chris is one of the wisest people I have had the pleasure to be friends with and his other messages belong on every board agenda:

Two engines create 100-baggers.

The first is earnings per share growth. The second is the market PE re-rating you because you deliver that growth consistently.

Grow earnings 5x and the shareholder return can be 15x. Most leadership teams only work on the first engine.

Tax now rewards owners who never sell.

$1 compounding at 15% for 20 years is worth $16.37 if you hold. Force four taxing events along the way, as the traditional PE fund cycle does, and you end with about $12.76, or $11.95 under the new 30% minimum CGT rate from July 2027. Permanent capital just became structurally more efficient than fund-cycle capital.

The runway is in the private market.

The number of US listed companies have more than halved since the late 1990s, while Australia has tens of thousands of mid-sized private businesses, many founder-run and under-invested in technology.