Dynamic Duos: ‘New baby, large mortgage, no clients, legal threats… What could go wrong?!’
This week in Dynamic Duos, we hear from 5D (Fifth Dimension)'s founder and CEO Lyndall Spooner and COO David Gemmola.
In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two colleagues with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.
Lyndall Spooner:
It was the late 1990s, I was still hanging onto my big hair from the 1980s and had just started working in the market research arm of a technology consultancy called Invetech. David worked in the suit-wearing and clean-cut strategy team.
At the time Invetech specialised in helping companies commercialise a wide range of emerging technologies, and the research and strategy teams came together regularly to work with a broad range of clients. It was a company filled with incredibly smart and quirky people, lots of scientists and engineers in Melbourne and researchers and data geeks in Sydney.
I spent a lot of time working with David on everything from sheep shearing and power distribution to agricultural pumps and food ingredients. It might not sound sexy, but it was exciting, challenging and demanding work and I got to know David very well over many take-away dinners and long hours writing reports (yes, back then we wrote, and people read, written reports!). We became a great team, and while we were obviously attracted to each other, we also developed a strong mutual respect and trust in each other.
Move forward a couple of years: we had both left Invetech, David had moved to Sydney, we had eloped in Italy, bought a house, had a baby and I was deeply unhappy in my job at a research agency.
David 100% supported me to leave my job and start our company Fifth Dimension (now rebranded to 5D). It was a big move, and I would never have done it without his unwavering support. To give it the best chance of success David gave up his job and we were all in. New baby, large mortgage, no clients, the threat of legal action from my previous employer if I went out on my own — what could go wrong?!
We knew we wanted to bring together the best of the research world and business consulting along with a passion for technology. We established 5D in 2006 with just a laptop, and in February 2026 we will have been going for 20 years and have over 50 staff across three countries.
It has not been easy. Anyone who starts a business from scratch knows it is unbelievably challenging to start and grow a company, and all successful start-ups are built on strong and respectful business partnerships. Luckily our skills sets are very complementary. I focus on the science and technology, and David brings the business consulting and runs the company.
That respect and trust that we developed in each other in the 1990s is still very much there. We have both grown as people, but I feel I have grown more than I ever would have as a result of the support I receive directly from David.
I really should nag him less.
David Gemmola:
I met Lyndall in an inauspicious location — the carpark of a Goodman Fielder factory in Lane Cove minutes before walking into a client startup meeting for a project we would be working on together. I was in the strategy team for a Melbourne-based company called Invetech and Lyndall had just joined the research team, which was located in Sydney.
Fortunately, we kept selling projects to Sydney-based clients which meant I spent much of my week in Sydney and, therefore, got to hang out often in the Sydney office with the research team. The occasional lunch led to the occasional dinner and, as they say, the rest is history.
Any parent of young children will know that spending meaningful time with them and working in a professional role is, well, impossible. So, after Lyndall ‘spat the dummy’ in 2006 and resigned from her job, we made a leap into the unknown and 5D was born. It sought to blend our respective research and consulting backgrounds since our collective view was that research companies did the consulting bit badly and consulting companies paid lip service to the importance of research. And almost 20 years later we’re still going.
The general response when you tell people you work with your spouse is “how on earth do you do that???” And the answer is: by staying in your respective lane. Lyndall is a brilliant researcher with a strong technical knowledge who can cut through problems (or bullshit) to frame an opportunity or thinking in a creative and commercially compelling way. And she’s absolute rubbish at process and admin. I’ll put my consultant hat on to help assess what she’s thinking and give an honest opinion (plus, I like process…).
Also, a successful business partnership needs one person with strong skills in the product, for example, what the business builds its offer around, and one person who brings a strong financial discipline. That’s what our respective skills are. Too many businesses flounder or fail because they’re good at the former but lack the latter.
We’re fortunate in that we share a vision of what makes a successful company, particularly in terms of what’s most important: the character of your staff, the trust you show them and the culture you create around them. And the need to be very good at what you do if you want to stand out; good enough just doesn’t cut it. Lyndall is extremely good at setting that standard.
Lyndall on David:
Most memorable moment with David: It has to be telling people we eloped — it was the only time David’s mother ever stopped talking.
Best word to describe him: Efficient.
We have such intertwined lives: we work together, run a business, have a family, he was the coach of our son and daughter’s AFL teams, and I was the team manager, etc. We have no close family to support us, so we have had to completely rely on each other no matter what challenges we have faced over the years, and there have been plenty!
If it wasn’t for David’s efficiency (and cooking), it would all turn to shit.
Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour he has: Look, no one is perfect, certainly I am not. But there are things you should know about someone before you get married. I am not saying it would have changed my mind or that life would be radically different to how it is now, but I feel I would have been more informed on what life would be like married to David and there was a bit of a false sense of security in the beginning.
But the truth is David really doesn’t like sci-fi, and he really didn’t love the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2001 as much as he made out. Hence, I recently watched Andor season two with the cat.
David on Lyndall:
Most memorable moment with Lyndall: Since a personal philosophy is ‘work is something that you do between holidays, and cycling’, the most memorable moments would have to involve travelling together. In a work context, Lyndall is known for her commitment to work and her clients, sometimes taking that commitment to an extreme level.
One memorable moment that reflected this was when Lyndall — fresh from having a wisdom tooth removed and complaining of an excruciatingly sore jaw — was asked to present by a certain wealth management company the next day when others (me, for example) would have declined and been happy to sit in bed eating yogurt. Despite being told not to open her mouth and tear the stitches, she did just that, swallowing blood as she talked. Afterwards she discovered that she also presented with a broken jaw which the dentist had to do to get the impacted tooth out. Dedication!
Best word to describe her: Astute. And passionate. Okay, two words.
Astute since Lyndall can take an issue, think it through and reframe it in a way others often haven’t thought of, that from a business perspective, just makes sense.
Passionate as she will research, discuss and continually challenge her own thinking to make sure it’s credible and interesting. Probably the most common words I’ve heard over the past 20 years are “can I run this past you?” Lyndall will call it being “an ideas woman!” Admittedly, that same trait has resulted in a lot of money being spent on home renovations.
These two words are what makes Lyndall (although she’d never admit it) one of Australia’s most respected researchers.
Most annoying habit or endearing behaviour she has: Only one? Linked to the above, that passion can spill over beyond the work environment. More than once, I’ve had to remind her that a client’s data issue doesn’t make compelling dinner conversation with teenage children. And it’s not necessarily something I’m looking to discuss at 10.30pm when I’m getting up the next day at 5am for a morning cycling ride. It’s a reflection that Lyndall’s brain is always on (often to her own detriment) but 5D wouldn’t be where it is today if that wasn’t the case.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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