From The Archive: Art Meets Science - Bruce Buchanan, Rokt CEO and Co-Founder
episodePreviously titled “From the Archive: Art meets Science - Bruce Buchanan, Rokt CEO and Co-Founder” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 6, 2026
Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders
45 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 18 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the background of Bruce Buchanan and how did he start Rokt?
I'm Ed Cowan and this is Scaling Up.
We're reaching back into the archive for the second time this season to revisit a conversation I had in 2019 with Bruce Buchanan, the co-founder and CEO of Rocked. I'll be sitting down with Bruce again soon for a follow-up episode covering everything that's happened since. Whether you've listened to this first conversation before or are new to scaling up, this episode's a must-listen. It serves not only as a great primer on Bruce and Rocked as a business, but also shines with insights drawn from Bruce's intellectual curiosity about consumer behaviour and psychology, as well as his clear leadership principles that guided ROC through its early hyper-growth phase. At the time of recording this in 2019, Rocked was generating around $100 million in revenue, was scaling quickly and it had offices in Sydney and New York, and the company was laser focused on the transaction moment, working to unlock its full potential for merchants, advertisers, and consumers alike.
Since then, the ride has been nothing short of extraordinary. Sitting here now in 2025, Rocked is valued at US$3.5 US billion dollars, with exponential growth in both revenue and transactions, and is now a trusted partner to many of the world's largest brands and e-commerce platforms. But that part of the story, and how Rockta's scaled to become a true global technology powerhouse, has to wait for our next conversation. In the meantime, enjoy this re-release of one of our most loved early episodes with Bruce Buchanan, co-founder and CEO of Rocked. Bruce Buchanan, welcome to Scaling Up. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on this show. You're a hard man to to research, I must admit, you've you've stayed out of the limelight.
So thanks for for coming in.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Uh the purpose of this podcast is to inspire entrepreneurs, but to be fair, once they hear your story they they might feel slightly insecure or intimidated. I'm gonna give a quick sort of snapshot For context around your corporate career and how it's led you to this point, feel free to jump in, correct me, but I think it's good to try and pull a few of these threads together. You started your career at uh Boston Consulting, running their consumer practice essentially worldwide, so you weren't just a consultant. You got pushed over to Qantas as a consultant, helped uh bring their Frequent Flyer program to life. One thing led to another. Another moved over to Jet Star essentially when it was a thought bubble uh and and helped scale that business initially and then as CEO to the the biggest low cost carrier in Asia, just a a phenomenal story in itself, and we c we could have a whole podcast there.
Um you decide New horizons, beckon, leave Jet Star, when many are touting you maybe to to take over Alan Joyce's job as the CEO of Qantas. To look for new opportunities and y you'd always been an entrepreneur at heart and Rocked, which was in in a different form, came to you and essentially founded that business. And I'm not gonna do rocked justice. This is a a lo-fi pitch and and you can give the next layer. But Rocked is essentially a transaction marketing platform. And I think a great example is I was buying President's Cup tickets for the golf in Melbourne uh last week. I was on Ticketmaster, bought my tickets, pumped up to see the golfers. Right at that transaction moment, I buy my tickets, up pops an offer for a hotel for parking at the golf, and that is your software that's doing that.
Yep, that's that's what we do. I mean that's a visible part of what we do. So we're we're, you know, at the end of the transaction you see a lot of the marketplace or distributed commerce offers, but a lot of the secret source we do is actually helping uh those e commerce companies actually power their own products and services as well.
Of course. We'll we'll get into more what Rock does, but I think the common thread that is really interesting to follow up front is you've basically dedicated your corporate career to understanding consumers and and specifically the consumer psyche at that transaction moment.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the background of Bruce Buchanan and how did he start Rokt?
0:04–13:05
2
How does Bruce explain the psychology behind the transaction moment and consumer behavior?
13:05–21:46
3
What leadership principles and cultural practices does Bruce use to scale high‑growth teams?
21:46–41:47
4
How does Bruce approach founder transitions and co‑founder dynamics at Rokt?
41:47–45:13
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders
Mission Zero - Global Money Movement Reimagined: Kristo Käärmann, co-Founder and CEO Wise (LON:WISE) [S10:E1]
From Olympic Gold to ASX 200 - Grant Hackett, CEO Generation Development Group (ASX: GDG) [S9:E8]
The Next Chapter: Relevancy and Reinvention - Bruce Buchanan, CEO and Co-Founder, Rokt [S9:E7]
Block by Block: Building the Future of Money - Owen Jennings, Head of Product, Block [S9.E6]