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The Contrarians catchup
Adam ran the Melbourne Half Marathon in brutal conditions. The race was pushed to a 9:45am start, and the clouds cleared exactly when runners set off. Adam: “I’ve never seen so many people walking. Like usually you see the one person walking. There would have been a thousand people walking. People collapsing everywhere, like a heat stroke. They ran out of water.” The culprit: IMG, which owns the marathon franchise globally. “All they want to do is maximise profit. And this is where capitalism falls down. When you’ve got a monopoly provider, there’s only one marathon in every city per year. And the councils just willingly hand it over to these guys.”
Adir surveyed retail on Church Street, Richmond, on a warm Sunday afternoon. The verdict: catastrophic. “King Living had the most customers. I think they’re the most well-known brand. They probably had four groups though in that whole store. Nick Scali had like two groups in that enormous store. Almost every other store was devoid of a customer.” Victoria is the worst state for retail sales data he sees across his businesses. “My prediction is that February next year, there will be a wave of retail bankruptcies, especially in Victoria.”
Adir’s bank sent him an email announcing his savings account interest rate had gone up. The increase: 0.01%. “After this massive interest rate rise I might have to reconsider my options.”
A banker lunch with eight attendees and not a single alcoholic drink ordered. Adam: “10 years ago, you’d have four or five beers or a couple of wines. This was eight people. It was unbelievable. These are 40-year-old dudes.”
Over the last decade, population growth has run at 1.6% per year while growth in government payroll has run at 3.3%. Adam: “250,000 new public servants working from home on $100K+ a year. That is 100% why it’s a productivity problem.”
The ATO credit card backflip
The ATO was forced into an embarrassing reversal after removing credit card payments, with Jim Chalmers announcing taxpayers would now fund the $200M annual cost of card processing fees to allow the ATO to continue accepting credit cards. The ATO had tried to negotiate lower fees with card providers before pulling out, but couldn’t get the rates low enough.
Adir: “The sheer idiocy of a concept that says there are users and they’ve all been fine with the idea of a user pays system. And now we’re gonna move from a user pay system to a non-user pay system. So five percent of people have their fees removed and the other ninety-five percent fund it.”
Adam: “We had hard data that people were very happy to pay this fee because they thought they were getting great value in return. They were. And now we don’t have that and everybody’s losing out.”
Adir: “Another cafe I walked into and I said, what have you done about the surcharge? They said the coffee’s gone from $5.50 to $6. We’ve got no choice because everyone pays with Amex around here. And I said, guess what? I just paid with Amex. And instead of paying $5.50 plus what, a 1.5%, 2% surcharge, $5.60, let’s call it, I paid $6.”
Adir: “I don’t understand where this is coming from. And like it was Albanese that put pressure on Chalmers for the backflip. I doubt he understood necessarily what was going on. I just think someone said politically this is starting to become a catastrophe.”
John Stensholt on Firmus, Oliver Curtis, and Swipejobs
John Stensholt, journalist and co-author of Tech Bros, joins to debrief on the Firmus IPO collapse and the Swipejobs float.
On how the Firmus story unravelled:
John: “If you didn’t believe the story at these tightly held investor meetings or roadshows or pre-IPO chats, you were quickly ostracised. In the media’s case, if you didn’t write positively enough about it, you were shut out.”
John: “You’ve got a person with a past, and that’s okay, there’s a redemption story there. But it’s also a story of something that was meant to be the biggest thing since Telstra, and was held so tightly. There was no access to the protagonist. There was no access to the information that was held by a few banks and Morgans. And if you didn’t believe it, you were shut out.”
Adir: “He should have got out in front of the insider trading thing and owned it. And crafted a narrative that was better than what felt like a tack-on narrative afterwards. I think he probably thinks that whole thing is irrelevant, judging by the way he generally carries himself.”
On the Singapore video:
Adir: “I don’t think this is an evil guy. I think there’s a self-awareness issue, but that is not unique to him. The criticism of Australia is a good headline. It’s a bit of the Donald Trump approach, which is never show weakness, never take a step backwards.”
Adir: “The fundamental problem with Firmus is they took $7B of equity, put it in a box, and said abracadabra, and then try to convince people actually this is worth $43B now. And no one could give an answer to what just happened inside that box.”
John: “He was actually pretty conciliatory about the media coverage when I met him. I actually came out of that in general terms pretty impressed with him. I thought, who is this guy, he’s gonna be full of himself. I actually thought, you know, he was a nice guy to chat to.”
On where Firmus ends up:
Adam: “My valuation now is about $5B.”
Adir: “I think the data centers will be here. There won’t be as many as we think there are going to be. And the data centers will be owned by infrastructure players, providing the same yield as every other type of infrastructure. That is not a logical asset for a razzle-dazzle company to own.”
Adir: “I think the whole industry is dead in two years. Like basically what’s gonna happen, the data centers will be here, they just won’t be owned by Firmus.”
On Maas Group:
Adam: “We basically said $1.5B is the legacy stuff. And the $1.1B on top of that, the Firmus option, went away. That was the obvious short.”
Adir: “I don’t know, three weeks ago when we talked about Maas Group, I mean I think this was largely our prediction. But you can’t show these things that are so unpredictable. Like it is actually crazy.”
On SwipeJobs:
Swipejobs, founded by Katrina Leslie, is rumoured to be eyeing an ASX IPO at up to a $2B valuation. The business delivered $178M in net revenue and $71M in EBITDA in 2025, and is almost entirely US-based.
Adam: “Katrina should be feted as one of Australia’s greatest entrepreneurs, let alone female or male founders.”
John: “She just does not like publicity. She’s just one of these people that’s under the radar and gets it done. It’s incredible.”
Adir: “When you sales pitch it and say it connects people to LinkedIn and does blah blah, that sounds like you can do that with vibe coding. There must be some more special source to this.”
John: “I think there’s a chance it gets away, but at the moment it feels pretty hard ASX-wise. I think people will be a bit shy about this now after the experiences of Firmus, and there’s a few others that have been a little bit reluctant to go on here.”
Five other stories worth following:
Cartoon Network suffered a massive leak exposing 200 gigabytes of material from over 30 classic shows, including unreleased storyboards, character rigs and production guides. The perpetrators and their motives remain unknown.
The NBA plans to introduce microchips into basketballs next year, helping referees track ball movement and improve decisions. The technology could also help everyday players analyse shooting mechanics and performance in detail.
Apple is preparing a major smart home product launch, reportedly including a new Apple TV and home hub display. Partnerships with LG could introduce smart locks, thermostats and other connected household devices soon.
Space technology startup Fortastra raised $30M to develop manoeuvrable spacecraft designed to protect US and allied satellites. Founded by a former SpaceX engineer, the company aims to intercept threats in orbit.
Nineteen-year-old entrepreneur Zach Yadegari raised $10M for Persona, a $180 privacy-focused wearable. His previous startup, calorie-tracking app Cal AI, generated over $30M annually before being acquired by MyFitnessPal earlier this year.