Episode overview

Kate Murray joins Steve Grace on Give It A Nudge during the COVID-19 lockdown period to talk about her career journey from Nielsen and Google into high-growth SaaS startups, what drew her to FullStory, and how the pandemic reshaped the way she thinks about work-life balance. The conversation covers hiring in a tight market, remote team culture, the future of flexible work, and the daily rituals that keep her productive.

From Google to growth-stage SaaS

Kate’s career path took her from Nielsen and Google through a series of Series C startup roles in digital advertising and customer data platforms, before landing at FullStory as the company’s first sales hire in Australia. She explains that Series C was her sweet spot: the product-market fit was established, the pain point was proven, but the blueprint for scaling was still being written. FullStory had just raised a Series D of $171 million at a $1.6 billion valuation when Kate came on board.

Doing due diligence on the companies you join

Kate is candid about the career mistakes she has made, and traces most of them back to not doing enough due diligence on senior leadership and culture before accepting a role. She now approaches job searches the same way she expects her salespeople to research prospects: with a consistent framework and genuine curiosity. Her observation that people do more research on the TV they buy than on the company they will spend five days a week working for struck a chord with Steve.

Work-life balance and business-critical rituals

Recorded during Melbourne’s extended lockdown, the episode explores how Kate adapted to a world of all-day Zoom calls. She describes a morning routine that starts with either a walk, a swim, or a meditation before opening her laptop. Without it, she says, the days blur into each other and performance suffers. The quote that became this episode’s title captures the shift from treating wellness as optional to treating it as a genuine business input.

The remote work debate

At the time of recording, Google had floated pay cuts for employees who chose to stay remote, while Atlassian had gone fully remote with optional travel stipends to visit the office. Kate unpacks both approaches and lands in the middle: flexible arrangements work well if the team builds a regular cadence of in-person social time. Without deliberate moments of connection, remote teams stay productive but relationships never deepen into long-term networks.