In this week's podcast episode, we speak to Bruce Buchanan who is one of Australia’s greatest business builders. As CEO, he scaled Jetstar to Asia’s largest low-cost carrier and then he co-founded ROKT, a global marketing technology business with over $100m in revenue that is powering the transaction moment. In this episode, Bruce shares his story from selling painted rocks on the side of the road, to Jetstar to Rokt.

Time Stamps

• 1:47 - Introducing Bruce Buchanan - early life
• 6:31 - Building his first business while at university
• 9:59 - Bruce's decision to upskill himself and go back to school
• 10:58 - How a recruitment night on campus turned into Bruce's next big opportunity
• 13:05 - 3 core lessons Bruce took from 5 years of consulting in BCG
• 14:57 - A brief history recap of the Australian airline industry
• 16:29 - The BCG business case that turned into 10 years at Jetstar
• 21:00 - Building Jetstar from the ground up had a similar culture to a startup
• 24:54 - Balancing high costs and low fares in the airline industry
• 28:15 - As Jetstar growth stabilised, Bruce craved more and decided to found Rokt
• 31:20 - The problem Rokt was set to solve
• 33:34 - Introducing Rokt
• 36:19 - Bruce's clear view on capital efficiency
• 41:16 - Philosophy on team building
• 45:06 - The impact of COVID-19
• 48:42 - Bruce's opinion on workplace culture

Bruce Buchanan Bio:

Bruce Buchanan is the co-founder, CEO and Chairperson of Rokt. Prior to Rokt, Bruce held the role of Group CEO, Jetstar. Jetstar is the leading low fares airline in Asia with international and domestic operations in 16 countries across Asia-Pacific. Bruce was instrumental in Jetstar’s Australian and global success, writing the original business case through to designing the world’s first long-haul low cost model, Jetstar international.

The seed idea for Rokt grew from Bruce’s time working as CEO for Jetstar. Bruce identified that taking a consumer on a purchase journey with a personally relevant checkout experience presented a significant opportunity being underserved by the technology community, and so he set about building the solution.

Podcast Notes:

Founded in 2012, and with over 250 employees, Rokt is the global leader in ecommerce marketing technology. When customers are buying online, they increasingly expect more personalized and relevant experiences. Rokt unlock the hidden potential in every single Transaction Moment. A global start up with some serious funding, Rokt continues to grow and evolve accelerating the continual development of its world-class team and market-leading technology. Their goal is to transform ecommerce one connection at a time. Rokt are determined to make customers' experience smarter, faster, and ultimately better by bringing the best of marketing tech to ecommerce.

‍