The Foundry was built in Adelaide, by operators who have built and run real ventures, for the senior-school cohort the rest of Australia tends to underestimate. The goal is simple: a generation of South Australian students who leave school knowing what it feels like to build something from zero and pitch it to a real panel and defend it.
We believe senior school is the right time to put the operator's posture into a student's hands. Not as enrichment, not as a one-off, but as a structured discipline taught with the same rigour as any other senior subject. The Foundry is the program that does that.
The companion ambition is regional: The Founder's Cup, an inter-school championship we're building toward in South Australia, where Foundry schools will compete once enough are running the program. We're upfront that it's being built, starting from a founding group of schools. Naming it now gives the program somewhere to go, and a reason for every student to take the work seriously.
The Foundry is built and led by people who have started, run, and backed real companies, not by a publisher or a curriculum house. That's the whole point: students learn entrepreneurship from operators.
An Adelaide-based operator whose career has run across Australia, China, and the United States, in financial services, media and entertainment, venture studios, and fintech. He launched the South Australian chapter of the Founder Institute and founded The Founder's Cup. The Foundry's curriculum draws on two decades of building ventures and mentoring founders, written for the classroom from the operator's side of the desk.
Co-founder and chairman of Nova Systems, the Australian engineering and professional-services firm, and the inaugural Chief Entrepreneur for South Australia (2018–2021). Jim brings hard-won perspective on building enterprises at scale and on the South Australian innovation ecosystem the program is rooted in.
Alongside them sits the program's mentor network, industry specialists who drop in by module, and the school partners delivering The Foundry on the ground.