Speeches
from the night

Good evening everyone. For those I haven't met yet, I'm Kathryn Foster, Head of People and Culture at Portable — and tonight I have the privilege of introducing Simon and Andrew for what is a genuinely remarkable occasion.

Twenty years. I don't know what you were doing 20 years ago but it wasn't creating the world's first portable film festival — because that's what Simon and Andrew were doing, and how they kicked off Portable. They've had two decades of turning up, of building, of caring, of trying, of failing sometimes, and of getting back up. And that's exactly what we are here to celebrate tonight.

I want to start by telling you about my first day at Portable. I arrived excited and ready to jump in and someone whispered in my ear just before 9am, "the last few weeks have been a little difficult." There had been multiple resignations and a fair bit of dissatisfaction shared amongst the team. And at my very first stand-up, something happened that I've never forgotten. Simon and Andrew stood up in front of the whole company — no spin, no defensiveness — and said: "We are really sorry. We have stuffed this up. And we are going to make it better." The primary thought that kicked in after a brief glance at the door was: these are people I want to work with. Because that kind of honesty and that kind of ownership are genuinely rare. And then they followed through. Which is even rarer.

Only a few months after that interesting first day, I asked Simon and Andrew to start leadership coaching, as a duo. The idea of couples coaching for founders is something to giggle at for sure, but what relationship of that length doesn't need work? Twenty years of building something together means navigating disagreement, managing immense pressure, working through the good times and the bad together. Any partnership of that depth and duration is going to have its complexities. What impresses me is that they've always been willing to do the work. To keep looking at each other and at themselves and asking: how do we get better at this?

The business and focus may have evolved over the last 20 years — and that beautiful book our team created tells that story in wonderful detail. But what is remarkable is that they chose to build a social impact business. A design and digital agency that exists not just to do good work, but to do good in the world. And what I admire the most is that they haven't wavered. Not when it was hard. Not when it would have been easier or more profitable to take a different path. The mission has always stayed front and centre. And that takes real conviction.

In preparing for tonight I asked our senior leaders what they most admire about Simon and Andrew, and a few themes surfaced. They spoke about how Simon and Andrew are never put off by hierarchy or title. In a public sector full of very important and senior people, they are focused on doing good and making a difference — and they set that tone for all of us. The team talk about how brave Simon and Andrew are — willing to make the hard calls, to step into uncomfortable territory, to back themselves even when the path isn't clear. And they talk about how deeply Simon and Andrew trust their people. They give us latitude. They let us make mistakes and learn from them. They'd far rather we back ourselves, try something, get it wrong, and carry on, than play it safe and never find out what was possible.

I sometimes describe Simon as the heart of Portable and Andrew as the head. And I think the rest of us are lucky enough to make up everything in between.

Together, they've built something genuinely special. Twenty years of building a place where people feel trusted, where purpose is real, where doing good and doing good work aren't in conflict — they're the same thing.

I have worked in and with a lot of organisations. I have seen a lot of leadership. And I can tell you with confidence that what Simon and Andrew have created here is not ordinary. It is something worth being proud of. And it is absolutely something worth celebrating.

So on behalf of all of us in the room — those who have worked with Portable, every client who has trusted us, every community we've had the privilege of serving — thank you Simon and Andrew. Thank you for building a place worth belonging to.

Congratulations. Please raise a glass to Simon and Andrew — and then let's hear from them both.

Thanks everyone for coming tonight. A business is not a person, but a collection of interactions and experiences. I've had many over these 20 and a bit years. This has been my job since I was 25. I am now 46. I feel very privileged to do this with many of you in the room.

At its foundation point is a partnership with Andrew and I. A shared desire of wanting to make change in the world around us. What started as working together in community radio has morphed into a range of things over the years.

I want to give a thank you to Kerrie Stevens and Tjerk Dusselsdorp who are in the audience tonight. Without Kerrie and Tjerk and John Spierings there is no Portable. In 2004, after working in the community radio sector in education, John introduced me to Kerrie and Tjerk, of the Dusseldorp Skills Forum, a leading NGO in Australia, who gave Andrew and I the opportunity to first really work together. And it showed us how to pay it forward.

To Paul and Colin, also here tonight, that Andrew and I set up our first company "Make It Happen" together in 2004 after our work together at SYN FM.

To Josh Crawford, Ceinwen Berry and Kate Dinon that worked alongside Andrew and I in the summer of 2005–06 to turn the excitement we had seen with the release of the video iPod, and the call Andrew made to me in November 2005, to ideate a concept. For Jeremy Wortsman for teaching us respect for design, something that we have taken throughout our journey.

To Peter Rubinstein who showed faith in the ideas of Andrew and I to open doors, we appreciate it, and are inspired by your generosity to do the same.

There was no start up ecosystem, there was us. Within a few months Andrew's photo with a PSP in SMH and The Age. We were doing this work around the release of the video iPod — before the iPhone and just after the release of YouTube. Andrew and I joke often that we don't know anyone as silly as us to try half the stuff we do, but I'm glad we did.

Seeking to care and keep trying and being in the space of making a difference. We spoke of this Impossible Agency, being good for the world, not treating people like shit and knowing you don't need to win every argument.

Business is not static, it needs to change and the services we provide reflect that — the Portable of 2026 is vastly different to 2016 and 2006. It is the finely balanced range of different inputs that are constantly being tweaked.

I am proud of our management team at Portable — and thank the long standing relationship I have with Elly, Kathryn, Becky, Tone, Joanne, Joe and Andrew — working collectively 76 years with this team. We made a decision to focus on this from 2019, and I am glad we did. I think to continue as a business you need to make slightly more good decisions than bad ones, and this is one I am most proud of.

What have I learnt in 20 years?

Good stuff takes time — if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

People love a story, something to work towards — beyond the design, the bits, the narrative of why something is there, what it is important, or the world you're seeking to create.

You don't need to have it all — it's good to partner, bring people on this journey with you.

Paperwork matters — people shift and change, so get that right. New people mean a new organisation.

Always assume people are doing their best — just makes life less stressful.

One of the challenges of any founder is knowing how to get out of the way. You want to create the space for talented people to do what they do, be inspired, feel they can grow. Knowing how to create the space for others is key. I look at many long term Portable staff here tonight and people that worked with us, and I'm proud how we've worked to create opportunities and launch offs for their own work.

I have been thinking lately of the need to keep at stuff, perseverance. There is something about just being in the game. There is also the need to continually innovate — a film festival, swapping clothes, working on elements for New York Fashion Week. Portable TV, Amica, Hear Me Out, many things and probably will be many more. I say that Andrew and I are "ideas bros" — if we were older Portable would have a different origin story, maybe typewriters, who knows. It is the pursuit of the idea that drives us.

Work can be interesting, it can be an intellectual challenge, it can be pushing to do things people have not done before. It can be ideating a concept and then trying to scale it somewhere else. It can also be boring drudgery, but if you feel you are making that process easier, it is rewarding. I think without the intellectual challenge I would have stepped away from it many years ago.

What I am excited about

There is so much opportunity out there. It's a big world and how we bring our skills to drive change. Today, with AI everywhere, feels like the world of 20 years ago when we started Portable. We just have more networks and resources now, that's exciting.

I want to thank Sharon for being by my side through all of it — seeing the highs, the lows — supporting me to continue to do this. Portable is younger than our relationship, slightly older than our marriage, seen the arrival of both our kids, been through every brain and spinal surgery I've had, the drive to get Belzutifan on PBS, the death of Dad. Thanks Sharon, I love you and I couldn't have done this without you.

To my work husband, Andrew, thank you too. It's been fun. I enjoy working with you more each day, and I feel privileged to do that with you.

To everyone else, thanks. Work is a part of life and if through being involved with Portable in some degree it's made it more interesting for you, I'm happy.

Twenty years. On a cold Melbourne night, in a room full of people who helped build it. Thank you all so much for being here, for making the space to honour the time you've spent with us along the way.

Let there be no doubt — this is a celebration. We've created something truly unique over the past twenty years. Portable has been the gravity that has pulled together so many talented and inspirational people. The life expectancy of companies is low. We've pulled off something rare: a company that can translate the passion of a diverse group of people into real things that make a difference. Congratulations to you all. You're all part of the story.

Tonight I want to talk about three pillars that have made us who we are.

Pillar one — Imagining great things into existence

Everything starts with an idea. But what we've learnt through the years is that ideas are cheap — it's execution that differentiates the winners from the losers. And in the early days, our execution was, let's just say inconsistent. We sucked at pretty much everything we did. Interacting with clients, working with staff, deploying websites, running events, bookkeeping, accounting, transitions, people management — pretty much everything. But perseverance is necessary when you're at the frontier. That constant experimentation meant that after a while, we got good at things. We got confident. And eventually we brought in people better than us.

It all started with the Portable Film Festival — a film festival in your hand. It was truly novel. It put us on the world stage instantly. But the life of our business felt fleeting and precarious, and many told us it was a dumb idea and we'd never make a dime. Back in those days, the late David Lynch heard of our work and said — and I quote — "It's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on a fucking telephone. GET REAL."

The Portable Film Festival didn't have the audience of Mulholland Drive. But our films were viewed by millions of people around the world. A PFF viewing party was held in a yurt in Mongolia. We captured people's imagination, and it showed us something we've never forgotten: it doesn't matter what the status quo thinks. You can cut against the grain and find your own way.

A decade later we were up against it again — but this time in a very different setting. The Magistrates Court of Victoria. We had imagined and built something called YourCase, a product to help victim survivors of family violence navigate the court system. We were older. We had better contacts. We had the Premier of Victoria behind us, Malcolm Turnbull's office, Victoria Police. But it turned out David Lynch was a softer opponent than the magistrates of Victoria. We'd go from judge to judge, thoroughly convincing them to come on board with our pilot — only to be quietly shut down by the powers that be within days, sometimes within hours, of leaving the building. It was disillusioning. It was heartbreaking. Because the product was needed, and could have helped so many people.

But we learnt an enormous amount about the justice system through that experience. And it by no means stopped us from imagining, and trying to create things that make a difference in people's lives. We know now that to be successful you need the right combination of partners, timing, determination and luck.

Pillar two — The people

There are currently 68 of us, across Australia, the UK and the Philippines. But this current crop sits on the shoulders of so many people who came before — solving different problems, pulling off truly incredible achievements. So many Portable people have left behind words, idioms and relics that have survived well into the lexicon of the modern Portable. You may think it's a miracle that we're somehow still operating. But every person who's worked here is a kind of mini-miracle that has kept us going.

Portable attracts people who are curious, passionate, and who care deeply about the world around them. The more superficial types tend to stay for a few months before realising that our way of making space to hear multiple voices, of slowing down to talk about the things that matter, is frustrating and not for them. But to all of you here tonight who come from different periods of Portable's history — it's an honour to have you with us. We don't forget you. We think and talk about you often. You're etched into our processes, our language, our history.

To the current team — those who've been here over the past decade, some close to and beyond it — thank you for all of your work. As this experiment we call Portable grows, I am extremely proud to see good people forge their careers here.

We're not only good — we're increasingly number one, and we're recognised externally for it. We're known internationally for our work in justice. Our work in family violence was cited by the Victorian Royal Commission as best practice. Our original film festival work now sits in the National Library in Canberra. We support core services that matter across the country — the tram network of Victoria, court infrastructure, the mental health sector, multiple governments. It's the people in this room who make all of that possible. Thank you.

A few personal thank-yous

To my dad, Paul Apostola, and my mum, Judy Apostola — for putting the confidence in me to start something like Portable when I was young, and for putting up the mortgage to help get us started. Thank you.

To my family — Jade, Pavie and Silvia — for supporting and being part of the story. You know, when we started one of our businesses, Swappler, it meant heavily engaging the fashion industry. It was said at the time I'd either be a millionaire or I'd find a wife. Jade, thank you — clearly I went for the better option.

I also want to thank Sharon, Bella, Ruby, and Simon's parents Michelle and Alan for being my other family. Good business is built on trust, and you'd be hard pressed to meet a more genuine, honest bunch of people.

And thank you to the team that helped put tonight together — Joe Sciglitano, Rachael Karpman, Cristiano Fantasia, Elly Beard — and to Molly Rose for being our hosts.

Pillar three — Simon & I

The final pillar is the relationship I have with Simon, and how that has shaped Portable.

I first remember seeing Simon in the offices at SYN FM, before the station launched, talking to Joe Curtin, the station manager. I was struck by how articulate he was, his proficiency — and also by a level of self-deprecation that softened the other two factors. Simon was famously the deciding factor for me on a job that came up at the radio station. He decided to go with another candidate. But he only ever made that mistake once.

Since then, we've had a close to 25-year working relationship, forged from blind enthusiasm, naivety, and a drive to do work that matters — to make a difference.

That drive isn't an accident. Simon has a Jewish background. My father grew up as a peasant in a Greek village before moving to Australia and facing all the economic and social disadvantages of the 1960s, without the safety net that exists today. We were once profiled in the Jewish News — a photographer came out and took a photo of us together. The next day we got three separate phone calls to confirm who, exactly, was the Jewish one. You wouldn't look at us today and think that migrant ideology drives us. But I believe that's where Simon and I meet from a values perspective — and it's what has given Portable its sense of social justice. An element that distinguishes us from other agencies globally. Even when we were screwing things up, it was always there. And I'm proud that it's come to define us.

Long-term partnerships are rare. When I returned from New York in 2015, we were 10 years into this company, and Simon had a choice to make. It was the perfect time to call it quits. But in the weeks and months we spent discussing our potential futures — either as individuals or as a team — it became very clear that we had something rare. The ability to work together. To create energy that drives us, and others, forward.

I believe that words are the most powerful things in the universe. But there is one word that is more powerful than any other. That word is WE.

WE is where the magic starts. Ten years ago, Simon and I rolled the dice and said: WE have a chance to create something unique. And that WE has evolved into all of you.

I love correcting newbies at Portable. When they say "oh, with Portable you should do this or that," I always stop them. No — it's we. WE is where the magic starts. WE is the beginning of something great.

So raise your glasses. To Portable. Happy birthday.