00:00 Background and the non-linear path

Arjun describes himself as the “bad brown child” of his family: not a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. He has a double degree in economics and finance, came to Melbourne for a Masters in Entrepreneurship, and arrived three weeks before the world’s first lockdown city locked down. He spent those three months before the city closed going to every pitch night he could find, meeting everyone in the ecosystem, and ultimately winning the Startup Victoria fintech pitch night on both people’s choice and judges.

His career before inaam ran through Straight Bat Private Equity, a blockchain ESG fund that worked with early Ethereum developers, the NDIA (the body that runs the NDIS), and eventually KPMG High Growth Ventures, where Amanda and the team helped him understand how to connect founders with capital in the Australian market. All of it fed into inaam.

10:27 Australia’s VC problem

Arjun spent years watching how capital gets allocated in Australia compared to what he had seen in structured finance globally. His conclusion is direct: Australia has never had a lack of capital. It has a lack of risk-tolerant capital. Three major VCs dominate the market. Capital goes in bubbles, following narratives rather than fundamentals. And the networks are closed, operating more like friendship circles than open markets. “That should be the tagline for Australian venture firms,” he tells Steve.

He contrasts this with Southeast Asia, Europe, and the US, where VC ecosystems are genuinely diverse in their fund structures and investment theses. Australia’s concentration leaves entire categories of founders unfunded not because their businesses are bad but because they do not know the right people.

15:22 The origin story

Arjun’s father was one of South Africa’s leading entrepreneurs in pharmaceuticals, Ayurveda, and nutraceuticals. He built an industry from scratch. And then got taken advantage of while trying to invest and make a difference. He lost his entire life savings. Five years later, he died. “Not knowing how and where to invest cost us everything,” Arjun tells Steve. “As a young person, I had to take care of mom. I found myself in the same position. I was like, I cannot let any other family go through this ever again.”

That grief is the origin of inaam. Not a gap in the market identified in a spreadsheet but a personal wound that turned into a mission.

17:20 Impact investing and the myth of the trade-off

One of the most useful parts of this conversation is Arjun dismantling the idea that values-aligned investing requires accepting lower returns. He walks Steve through the data from a portfolio that screened heavily for impact criteria and outperformed the broader market. The trade-off narrative serves the incumbents. It keeps people’s money in conventional investment vehicles and prevents capital from flowing to the places it would create the most change.

23:30 The migrant founder experience

Arjun describes racism he experienced on the streets of Melbourne and the irony of being an award-winning innovator who still cannot get a National Innovation Visa because of a system designed for a different kind of applicant. He is direct about it without being victimised by it. The point is practical: if the system excludes founders who look like him, Australia loses access to the ideas and the work ethic they bring. That is an economic argument, not just a moral one.

36:00 Communication and how to invest from $10

Arjun’s Communication Triangle maps communication type to medium. Email kills culture because it is the default for things that need to be said face to face. The framework is simple: the more sensitive or complex the communication, the richer the medium needs to be. He applies the same simplicity logic to inaam: start investing with $10, learn through doing, build the habit before the wealth arrives. Compound interest works on knowledge as well as capital.