The Changing Face of Entrepreneurship

welcome i've been beginning today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the dura or land on which we meet today i pay my respects to the elders past and present and i also extend that respect to aboriginal and torres strait islander people here today when i showed up for my first day of work here eight years ago i thought i knew what an entrepreneur was who was going to be the next unicorn who had the most interesting pitch deck who raised the most amount of money essentially what these entrepreneurs strive to do then and now remains the same to solve a problem but today's entrepreneurs the same as they were during covert pre-covered or five years ago i'm john kerr the program and community manager here at i accelerate um which is the university of wollongong's incubator and accelerator here at i accelerate we regularly get asked how's the face of entrepreneurship changing well today we'll hear from our panel of experts entrepreneurs and founders who have been along that journey like you and me entrepreneurs come from different industries and backgrounds i'm sure we'll answer some of your questions generate some more give insights but more most importantly show that someone who has an idea with determination a connection to the problem a lot of belief and plenty of support can invent share and make change what we're doing now is i'd like to introduce our panel but before we do we have a question and answer section uh below in the tab so as we go along the way we'd love to hear from you and throw out questions to our panel um we've got someone on the panel who will moderate for us and we'll ask those along the way so without further waiting i'd like to introduce our panel of josh beck nathan joel and tamanta i'll hand it over to them we'll start with you josh if you want to introduce yourself please uh yeah sure thanks john um yeah so my name is uh joshua allen um i'm the founder of a start-up business called mogwai labs so mogwai labs is a liquid yeast lab that uh caters to the brewing industry um so more specifically we um we we sell live liquid used pictures to both professional and home brewers and and other beverage makers and uh we we link that in with other associated uh lab services so um at the moment uh we have some lab space uh linked to the university of wollongong and uh being an early stage where we're sort of at a point where uh we've just generated our minimal viable products um and we're just sort of getting that out the door to a bunch of early adoption customers um so i guess sort of getting back to to wide yeast so for those who don't know too much about beer it is um one of those core one of the core ingredients uh responsible for creating beer and uh and at the in the current sort of a growing landscape particularly in australia um for uh for beverage makers in australia um they need to source their use from from overseas so that's sort of the idea for for my startup thanks josh over to you back thanks john my name is rebecca glover so together with april creed i'm one of the co-founders of excitu um we've got a cloud-based app that helps people to explore and communicate their core values we've come from the aged care sector and a lot of people become very vulnerable when they require care and they don't really get to advocate for who they are as a person and the unique values so we came up with a very um different sort of way of using an app with card sorting to help people really think about what it is that they value and how to communicate that effectively in documentation and actionable insights in the aged care sector and we work not just with the aged care sector but also with estate planners um medical professionals and a range of other people to help make sure people are seen as individuals and their values are respected in healthcare thanks beck how long have you been going for so we've been going since 2017 initially so we actually um spun out of irt group a local aged care provider and so we both came from the aged care sector with over 45 years experience and um we've been working in i think 2018 we came into our accelerate building and we've been going since then all right thank you nathan over to you yeah hi guys nathan harper a founder of finlert we make apps for the xero app store so xero is some accountings financial software that small businesses use and we make apps that make xero better by extending it and giving it additional functionality we've kind of been in and around our accelerate for quite a while back first came here back in 2013 with a different idea that um kind of went through its cycle and then ended up switching to this probably about 18 months two years ago thanks nathan welcome aboard good job thanks john i'm joel kotter the founder of alatrak we are a cloud-based transport management system so basically we provide software solutions to [Music] transport companies and manufacturers we were founded in 2014 moved to i accelerate in 2016. we've grown pretty much in that in that space from three people up to a total team of about 60 now um and basically what our software does is we basically provide automation solutions around a lot of old heavy paper-based processes and help companies perform stuff safer and visibly visibly uh nicer towards their customers as well thanks joel welcome aboard and samantha hi i'm samantha stachebre i'm one of the co-directors of i accelerate and my i have the best job in the world so my job is to help all these amazing bright people take their ideas and and help support and enable them to get it out to make real impact and changing the world so that's what i do thanks tam what we wanted to display today was the the early stage startup the early stage founder or entrepreneur as in josh who's just starting on his journey rebecca who has been on about a three-year journey and is starting to emerge out now as a scale-up company nathan who's one of our serial entrepreneurs who keeps creating and creating ideas and creating products and joel who's further along the journey with 60 employees and now looking at what's an exit strategy and what does entrepreneurship look like for him moving forward so welcome everyone to the panel and we'll kick off with just something to shake the nerves out a little bit when you started what did you call yourself was it a side hustler or a founder an entrepreneur um were you were you something else were you um over to you beck or joel nathan i can start off if you like i was we were actually entrepreneurs when we first started because we were working with irt group from within their organization um so yeah we since emerged as i more often used founder or co-founder um nowadays um sometimes executive director but yeah i think i found us a bit nicer and a bit less formal yeah i'm um i've stuck with the founder label myself and still sort of sit with it but uh i'm trying to embrace the ceo label now i still feel like a little bit uh still seems a little bit weird for me but yeah still still still uh like to stick with the founder name yeah and i um when i first kind of got into this world i didn't know what a founder was so um i was i guess calling myself a ceo or something until i worked out that i was actually a startup now you see um look i'd like to start the conversation really when it seems when you talk to people they talk about pre-covert and postcode so in the startup world and the ecosystem that we're all around i want to see if there's been some changes or how you found the pre to post covert so when we're looking at it what have you found i'll hand it over to josh what have you found that the last two years have been like during covert did it stop you did it speed you up how have you found that uh yeah i mean uh for me so like i essentially like gave up my uh my previous job and went sort of all in on this startup pretty much uh as soon as the covert outbreak happened um so i mean like i thought it was quite beneficial in regards to so uh me starting the business i was in that sort of business plan and sort of just trying to get organized sort of um part of the business so it really slowed down time for me and sort of meant that i had a lot more time just i guess like to to myself just to get organized plan more and then now the landscape seems to be sort of picking up speed a bit more um so i'm actually um yeah i thought it was a it didn't it benefited me i think on what i'm trying to say joel how did you find the the pre to post covered break yeah it was an interesting one for us i mean um the huge necessity for you know contactless delivery you know came into effect pretty quickly when covert sort of came around which our software caters for and catered for prior to the covet outbreak so we were in a very interesting situation where we picked up a lot of business um traditionally you know couriers and that type of stuff had something in place but our space that we plan is the really heavy vehicle space and the heavy machinery in heavy heavy material so it was always you know go seeing someone get something signed so we got this huge boost pretty much straight away the problem with that though is our traditional method of actually delivering our application where a high touch sas solution so we like to get out there and you know sit down with the users train them you know on their site so on one player and one part you know affected us we got a whole bunch more work and some really large contracts from you know some of australia's largest council companies sort of came on board but then we had no way to deliver them using a traditional method so we had to pretty much change our whole operational process to be able to deliver our product in a way in a new manner without actually physically being on site with the customers so yeah it benefited us you know hugely in regards to you know acquisition of customers but uh yeah made huge changes in the operational aspect part of our business so putting on your founder hat when you look at the the staff you had 60 staff they all get scattered to the ends of the ends of the state or the australia working from home did you find being an early stage entrepreneur putting on that hat of now i've got to be ceo how do i rely on people that i can't talk to um immediately walk around to the desk um what was the impact of that on your startup and your business yeah could we yeah we had it we had a uh well we had it happened to us twice so uh my engineering team we actually have an office in in pakistan and that's where uh 40 of our staff sit so it was very interesting over there especially because of you know the infrastructure in our office over there is great but the infrastructure at iran's houses aren't as great electricity is a problem these environments so that was the first big wave trying to understand how to go and change you know allow people to develop from home in these environments that you know may not have been suited to be able to sit there and have electricity the whole time it was it was a really really challenging one so um we got some external help over there i had to to try and provide generators and these type of things to our staff at home if then if they required them here it was interesting i think the biggest challenge was we're doing this big pivot we're changing the way we onboard customers we've got all this work we don't know how to do it and while that's happening you know not being able to get up and talk to someone and seeing the differences in the people's perceptions of how someone speaks and speaking to them solely because it's over text rather than you know because there were some really unique challenges that you know that that we had to overcome and probably you know we were hoping we didn't have to overcome them it was only a short thing but in the end you know with the multiple lockdowns and here there and everywhere just sort of coming to the office now we've got to go home and all that sort of stuff happened and we just ended up um really adapting and embracing it to probably a little bit of a detriment when we came back everyone was still in that hole it's been a tricky situation but it was it was pretty much just the get in get it done and deal with the cultural changes as they happen it was like we started all over again all the processes everything sort of went out the window it's brand new implement new processes and see how it goes and make changes where we need that's essentially what's happening what happens here yeah i suppose every i suppose your customers were dealing with the same issues how do we how do we talk to a company where we can't drop in or they can't come and train us face-to-face so double-sided rebecca you're in a more of a service face-to-face industry how did you find pre post that middle bit middle ground it was a little bit of everything for us um because we had the aged care sector obviously had a huge amount of challenges through the pandemic they've had challenges anyway but especially through the pandemic um for us i mean one thing we did used to joke about was being you know coming from a startup type environment you're pretty used to being agile and pivoting anyway so we did very much take the opportunity to when the world slowed down to focus on the tech build a new iteration of the product um and that kind of thing so the challenge in some ways was the grind of you know working with contractors and and keeping keeping progress happening when the world was slowing down so much um and we just tried to be very strategic about it and make the best use of the time we could when it was very difficult to have touch points you know we couldn't go out to facilities they were really limiting visitors as much as possible um they had too much on their plate to be taking on new initiatives um so we just really made the decision to be ready to go when the world opened up again and now that's where we find ourselves so you know there's been a lot of reflection we're a very values-based company and process that helps people think about all kinds of important things about you know their well-being and what sort of medical interventions they may or may not want and those kind of things so people have had a couple of years to think about that sort of thing a lot so it was very front of mind for people and we wanted to be ready to jump out of the gates when the world opened up and and that's what we we did so we're you know i think josh said as well the world has started to pick up pace again now and and we're very much running with it so nathan for you um being a pure tech company how did you find it uh yeah not a lot changed for us so we already had a hybrid work uh structure in place so we had people working from home where required and for us it i guess the main shift was that we just went 100 work from home and you know just like everybody else getting used to that concept and finding ways to make sure you still kind of got outside and get some sunshine and all that sort of stuff but yeah other than that pretty much the same if anything higher demand for services during that period especially software development services so as well our product our primary product in the xero app store really is about uh promoting awareness of of where your employees are and you know when they're going to be on leave so it was actually really good for us because we had some hybrid working functionality in that as well so um if anything it kind of helped our product a lot yeah keeping a track of um how everyone's coping at home is really important over to the group is it harder now as an entrepreneur or easier when you look at you're all different different parts of your journey but over the last sort of two three years do you find it's now easier to be an entrepreneur and a startup because there's so much opportunity out there people have got a side hustle there they're working from home and being able to to try something else and seeing i can work from remotely and and jump into a program or be educated like we've got at the i accelerate program while they're doing some other work at night so do you think it's easier now to be an entrepreneur from when you started or harder i can i can kick that one off if you want um i think at the moment it sort of probably forced some people's hands into jumping into it it's probably something they've always wanted to do and they never had the opportunity because of work and you know and i think covert may have pushed people in the direction maybe they may have lost their job may have just kicked off their side hustle so i think it's probably helped push people in a certain direction i think now it would be there probably a few more in the space when when we start talking about um you know becoming an entrepreneur the the issues about entrepreneurship in this in this time is essentially is especially once you start scaling and trying to find talent coverts absolutely killed that solely because of the uh a lot of the work from home type things that are happening now when we used to be able to get him on people traveling four hours a day to north sydney on crazy money wanting to take a little bit of a haircut coming down to women that's sort of gone away now there are no sydney money working from their balcony so that's probably a downside of that for trying to scale but i think in regards to um kicking it off now i think covert probably been a good uh good eye opener for some people that were sort of stuck in in something that they didn't want to be always wanting to go into entrepreneurship and covert show them that they are security is not really security in a lot of these times you know or everyone's a lot of you know scared to make that jump uh this has probably kicked him off that cliff if that made sense i completely agree with joel there i think that it's um the people's perception of risk it was a big eye-opener for people and remote delivery and remote workforces are a lot more you know people have seen possibilities like that and it's made it more i think the thing it would be easier for certain people who may have had accessibility issues to be able to access programs like i accelerate and because people have taken the opportunity to develop their offerings and you know that includes i accelerate as well you know they've done a lot of work and um the communities have grown i think the other thing that has changed since covet is the sense of community amongst businesses wanting to work together to solve problems for people so um there's definitely some positive things that have made it easier there's always challenges but there's some positive things that have made it easier too yeah it's a really good effect i think um looking back historically uh there was always that really competitive nature so i'm in a startup or i'm an entrepreneur and i'm not going to tell anyone i'm going to go out and become the unicorn or i'm going to go out and get all the money in this space um how have you all found um and being in lockdown still trying to talk to each other and and communicate with each other how's the community how's your community grown or have you reached out more i know joel's got a great story at the moment of um building he's in and some situations that are happening there and i'll hand it over to him but how's everyone found being staying connected as an entrepreneur it can be a lonely journey in a lonely life how have you found a way around that compared to pre-covert or two or three years ago yeah i've found it fairly the network that we've built i think i think this building and isi being a pivotal piece some of the networking and relationships we built here with other people in similar type of um type of situations you know it was hard going through without covert being here you know just having people around that i could pop out and ask and john there's been multiple times i used to walk into your office say hey this is just crazy i can't but like i'm the only one going through this you're like no no go speak to them they went through this last week and go speak to them they split them through this a year ago go and see you know these are the type of things that that definitely help you think you you think you're lonely you think it's hopeless but the network definitely helps just by having access during covert it was you know even harder you didn't have that we didn't have the building we did under people we still had the network we saw the connection so you know we were going through something that was especially the start we had no idea what was going to happen neither did anyone but just being able to bounce those ideas off the network of other people in the same situation as you is invaluable absolutely invaluable um and you know like for for us it wasn't so much a covert thing now that coverts uh sort of slowing down but that network is the reason why my office my team is still together right now you know two weeks ago nathan's in the same building as well our building uh had some structural damage in the high winds uh we got evacuated from our building and and i made one phone call and john you know spoke to whoever needed to and found us a space so our business was not interrupted we were out for a day you don't get that without a network you don't get that without a community like that um you can't you literally can't so yeah it's invaluable invaluable over during after any time yeah thank you oh nathan you don't yeah yeah we obviously had similar circumstances we're in the same building we went a slightly different way and ended up um uh sharing space with with another startup in wollongong who was just a couple of doors down the road and you know like joel it was awesome we could just kind of walk in there um plug our computers in and away we go um so there there's there is this real culture we find in mullendong where everybody wants to help everybody else out and they're always willing to kind of bend and stretch to make things work for other people um we we you know inside our accelerate we started this silicon valley sort of community probably about four years ago now maybe five years ago and um that has um has really helped as well so it's kind of a more of a technical focus and and the idea was to connect to people who were working in sydney so that as our startups grew we um we had good connection with people to to be able to hire in wollongong um and then covert just accelerated that right so that everybody who's working in sydney is um also working in wollongong now and um yeah it's presented heaps of really good opportunities to um connect to people in that way and you know in this particular circumstances uh you know find an office real fast when when yours starts falling down thanks nathan uh just a reminder to everyone as well if you've got a question pop it in the q a section down below and um samantha will open up to questions to the group um so i have one if that's okay john yeah jump in tam yeah so we've talked a lot about the connections between within wollongong and between wollongong and and sydney and you know we all are down here so we know how special it is what has changed not just with covert but over the last 10 years in regards to globally you know everyone has a dream of running a global company often from their favorite home what do you think's been the change in the the face of entrepreneurship globally as a result um over the last sort of five years i'm happy to keep that off is i really think that the the movement of innovation and technology and the methodology behind innovation that can have programs like i accelerate to support companies to grow is just better and better developed all the time and it allows people to come like april and myself come from different sectors with no entrepreneurial background and have a framework to be able to test things in small and fail and learn fast and grow and grow in a um you know so that you're taking risks in a very controlled way and i think that that really means that we can not just use technology but also use what we've learned from intermittent technology to solve some of the big challenges that we have in the world and that then you know it helps us to solve them a lot faster so i think it's opened and created a lot of opportunities for people that would never have considered being an entrepreneur i think in the in that in that um software space back a 100 agreement i think in that there was always that typical flow of a cloud-based company you know even last time there's always you know go over to go to san fran get your money from vcs and we're starting to see you know companies like atlassian doing crazy and even canva um you know with crazy evaluations and they're based here they're not there just seeing it open up to not just australia but every in the world now there's not that same old there are a lot more venture capital there's a lot more money in those areas but it's grown tenfold you know in other in other locations you don't have to make that um that journey over to try and start a software company anymore you know programs like this and and other ones and venture money being you know getting larger and larger funds getting larger and looking for more opportunities this wasn't available 10 years there was nothing and i think you know it opens your eyes when you start seeing companies in your backyard doing things and and doing the things that you never thought you'd be able to see unless you went that traditional route it's probably been the biggest change for me to be able to be seen in the last 10 for sure yeah thanks tam i i agree i think looking 10 years ago eight years ago a great spreadsheet and a great presentation can get you some great money now i think the vcs are quite comfortable and the companies are quite comfortable presenting like we are now over over zoom or virtually to to put a great pitch deck together looking now at the four of you as entrepreneurs founders startups i just want to look back at when you started it's always hard when you're a startup as self-doubt or impostor syndrome and am i really a an entrepreneur am i what do i tell my friends what do i tell my family that i'm going to work to do but i'm not making any money um how do you how do you deal with that scenario when does that change from well i'm not an imposter now or i don't think i'm a leader so we'll go josh is at the early stage so i'll hand it over to him to begin with when what do you call yourself now how is that doubt gone why do people look at you how do they look at you and talk to you uh yeah like um i still refer to myself just as a as a founder um and just like a small business owner i guess um in terms of like the what people refer to me as like i mean my my friends just think i'm this crazy yeast guy i guess but like um uh in terms of like uh like imposter syndrome and that stuff it's definitely something that i experience um and i probably will continue to do so and it's uh sort of coming about more and more where like uh i guess for me like i'm interacting with uh you know like important people in the in the brewing industry big brewing companies where uh you know you're having interactions uh with these people and companies and you're like oh my god like they they [Music] want me to to fix this problem for them they want my my my inputs you know um and it's something where it's like it's it's still quite mind-blowing i'll say but like um it's sort of [Music] it's something that i'm trying to just to embrace like um i mean having a bit of nerves about you know like doing doing a job properly um just embracing it and uh you know like i like to think that it'll be something like you know like say in five years time where you know like uh fingers crossed uh the business ends up being successful where you can look back on those sort of early stage deals where you you're like oh god i really thought i had imposter syndrome back then but like um yeah just just embracing it and being trying to be as comfortable in the situation as possible i'll move over to you now rebecca because uh like i hear from josh i'm just done i'm just and this is a that comes around i'm just a founder i'm just uh um doing this i'm just uh and then that's one thing we try and say stop saying i'm just up when did you stop thinking you're just uh an entrepreneur and now you've won awards the companies won awards how does how has your face changed as an entrepreneur going from where josh is at to a few years down the track yeah so really especially when you talk about imposter syndrome i totally relate to josh's comment about you kind of find yourself in situations where you're you know in boardrooms or whatever talking to people and people are very hungry for your opinion you think really like wow okay like they do have something to offer and it's that balance of imposter syndrome and for me um you know we're two women in technology space so um it's it's an interesting journey some people you know we quite often get asked to speak to other people in the company and things like that and it's kind of trying to say no what questions have you got we can answer those for you and um i find that one of the big things that really motivates us is when you look at what is currently out there in business as usual and that really grounds me a lot we quite often tell ourselves you know to back ourselves we've got the cookie we understand the problem we understand and those awards that we won we're really proud of because if you look at imposter syndrome in the text space a lot of people will ask very detailed kind of questions about you know things to do with code and html to sometimes even fluster you like sometimes it's not on purpose but sometimes it does feel a bit as if it is um and you know trying to back yourself and say we've got the confidence we understand this we have the right team around us and we can tap into the knowledge of the local community i mean nathan's an awesome example of he'll get phone calls from us asking us to help with things so um but you know technology is a really broad space and understanding how to create the user experience and do things like the product ownership and there's a lot more to technology than just coding it um you need to understand the use case and the business behind it and how it's going to be integrated with the systems and how the human beings are going to be impacted by it and how they're going to use it um and so you know i think it's really important to have that self-belief and know that you know you understand what you're trying to achieve and why you're trying to achieve it and how you're going to go about it and over time your confidence grows i mean it was it was very validating winning those awards especially because it's around user experience which is something that is really important to us in the aged care space but um yeah i think self-belief has to be one of the most important things there thanks beck uh i'll hand it over to nathan because it was interesting when we started the conversation he came in as the ceo and realized he was founder so he probably had reverse imposter syndrome where he he came in saying hey i'm all this and i've got to step back what's your take on it nathan uh yeah it's it's it's kind of interesting and i think in a way it's kind of um it's a bit um freeing as well um so i i kind of got into this space in in 2013 and and really one of the main reasons i did that was to was to get away from the corporate world where i felt very restricted and so for me it was like discovering how this whole space worked and working out that i you know what if you call yourself a founder you can just do anything all right it doesn't matter there's no rules that it's like there's no job description so it actually gives you a lot of freedom and for me it was all about trying to get some sort of work-life balance because i was in a in a in a like a c-suite role where it required a lot of travel and and a lot of reports and all that sort of stuff and to kind of get away from that and get work-life balance back work with people in the local community you know provide jobs for people and that sort of stuff is just kind of you know that was the motivation that got me here and then that founder thing kind of released me as well to be able to do whatever i wanted i think it's interesting um back in april uh are like such a good example of um a lot of times people come into i accelerate or they've got this startup idea and you know they need to build this app or this you know whatever it is that ends up you know the tech is is kind of a fundamental part of their offering and it's like oh but i'm not a technology person so you know i can't do it or i need to find a tech co-founder otherwise i can't possibly start this business and it's one of the things i'm particularly passionate about and deliver some content for i accelerate on it which is about it doesn't have to be about the technology you know the technology is kind of the the tip of the iceberg that really the the fundamental part is all of the other stuff around it and there's so many tools these days lots of no code tools and and other utilities that you can use in order to kind of fake it till you make it and sometimes you can even get to that minimum viable product stage just by using these off-the-shelf tools without cutting any code it's a really inexpensive way to do it and it allows you to kind of progress your idea prove it pitch it some people are raising money using these techniques as well without ever having to pay for a code to be created by software developers and i think beck's got really good experience in that and and she she kind of took this approach of no i'm going to do a deep dive and i'm going to become technical and and she did that for a while and then she kind of worked out hold on actually i'm just going to embrace the right sort of resources so has that kind of where's that journey got you at today beck like kind of where are you in that cycle now i've learnt so much because i think the you know like you mentioned about the tools that are available if you even when you are going to cut code and you've got a development team you still have that development cycle of you know testing implementations and how how the user is going to respond to it so it's such an important part of the development cycle to kind of do those really basic wireframes and then look at the okay now let's get you know work with a graphic designer and start to test that out before you're going to do the code on any new implementation so i think it's a really crucial piece to understand you know and that's why i say there's so much more to technology than just the code as well and you've taught us a lot about that nathan if you know um if you try and just look at a bet from how you start with the end in mind then you're pretty much going to develop something that's got a lot of problems so um i think it's been a huge learning curve to us that you know there's a lot we can do and it's actually more important for us to do as a grown-up company so that when we're developing new products or new features we know how to include that in development process yeah and and i think the other the other thing this kind of reminds me of is that whole um uh this idea that you can kind of like some startups really can kind of scrap it out bootstrap their business they can get revenue early especially some early recurring revenue and kind of grind away and produce and a really good outcome and there's kind of pluses and minuses to going that way and it's kind of always been my school of thought and it's certainly the way i build businesses versus that other approach which is like uh i've got to raise all the money up front i need uh x 100 000 x million dollars in order to just get myself to minimum viable product or get myself to to prove that i've got product market fit and i i was kind of always of the opinion that no this is the way you do it you do it this way you grind away but the downside of that is it can be slow and other people can beat you to market but the the the good side of that is that it's really low at potentially pretty low risk versus the other way which is like now i'm doubling down i'm throwing all my eggs in one basket and and going bananas the good thing is you can potentially do stuff faster and get to market faster and and win the market and all that sort of stuff but at the same time it can go horribly wrong as well and the more i think about it these days i start to consider that you know maybe some startup ideas do need to take that path um there's some that you just can't grind out as a small incremental improvement sort of product and you've really really got to go big bang right from the start um i don't know how you found that i think beck you've probably gone more on the um on the incremental improvement sort of path i don't know where you're at joel with with your business yeah we we bootstrapped pretty much we got a couple of small little bit of funding but that small little bit of funding was to get us out of trouble uh that the bootstrap didn't got us it was never growth funds right it was always to repay debts um it is not easy bootstrapping uh in the matter that you are grinding you are trying to come up with the money while you're trying to get revenue and all that type of stuff if you're trying to do a business where you you're trying to get more money and you want to see use acquisition not so much revenue as a thing that there has to be money behind it you cannot not bootstrap something like that and that's where you get these crazy things out there like like you get these crazy social apps that are valued at crazy money but are making nothing the amount of money it takes you can't bootstrap something like that for us though we were lucky and i agree with you that whole you know slowness to market that type of stuff um you know i was i look back on our first product and i'm embarrassed about what hit the market and that means for me that means that we release at the right time you know we got something done quick we released it we tested in the market we found fit and we iterated on that and made that better and better to try and get the perfect fit never going to work from our side though we got lucky i'm in a lucky situation solely because we i have resources in another country where the employment costs aren't as crazy so one of our you know one of our shareholders he's in pakistan he runs the pakistan operation so we were able to get five six seven heads on it with that without a crazy crazy crazy overhead so though we were still bootstrapping and we didn't have the cash to go big bang we were going into a market um transport and transport management specifically where the incumbents are very old don't like to change fixed process we found holes in the way they do things and thought how can we get what they have but provide more so we were able to bootstrap up with the larger team solely because we had that you know resource in pakistan at the time so we were we were lucky we sort of had it both ways still very hard if we had money behind us though i was thinking about that the other day and so if we went and backed what would i have changed and it would have been for me it would have been a disaster i'd say because i would have gone five times larger over there i would have 50 i would have the team i have now from day one uh revenue would have came probably at the same time um because the sales process for us we're dealing with small to mediums that are one to five trucks 10 trucks 20 trucks that could be a six to eight week sales cycle but then we've got enterprise and enterprise is a huge part of our business you know we've got bluescope using our platform down is using our platform brickwork's using our platform nationally so those cycles though are one two years so i could have seen for sure the little bit of money we needed to raise to help us get out a little bit of debt would have been would have been me giving up 85 percent of my company to cover the debt because we couldn't get the revenue so there's definitely um cases for and against but i'm i'm glad i went through the grind and it was very very hard but i'm glad i went down that bootstrap path for sure for sure but now i think i'm back and it would be nice to have money with what i know now so it's catch 22. if i know what i know now and i had the money back then i reckon we put it in right but if i just got the money back then without knowing what i know now we would have spent it pretty quickly i'd say yeah great point um it's like old head if i had that old head when i started i'd be fine um you can't really change that uh here's i've got a pocket full of cash and i want to spend it and is it going in the right space looking at i'd like to pull on that thread a little bit further looking back at when you started and you had um you're thinking of the success and what are we going to be and how is it going to look what did you think as an exit that i'm going to get 10 times 20 times what i put in or i'm going to get this bigger chunk of money what did you think you were going to spend it on what was the face of entrepreneurship for you i'm going to buy a house i'm going to buy boat i'm going to have 20 million 100 million a billion dollars i'm going to sit back i'm going to invest what was it then and what do you see now as you're going through the journey as this is what an entrepreneur face looks like for me my values have changed i've grown up a little bit the world's changed along the way it's more sustainable is it a canon brooks thing that we're going to stop um this we're going to create this what's your thoughts on that has anyone had an aha moment i'm happy to jump in on that one um i feel like we from the from the start we put a lot of focus on values so as much as we have a running joke about buying yachts and things like that um it's we out we would measure our success by the difference that we make to people's quality of life um and that's always been really important to us so um yeah and i think that that's um you know we put a lot of time into thinking about and articulating our values as co-founders together in the really early days because we knew that that's what drove us so you know money is important and it's a tool and it can be a tool to make change but a bit like joel said before you know you could also waste a lot of money and not do the right things so we prefer um to measure other things and um yeah i just think that we you know it's it can be really difficult to think about success in terms of how much money you made and what exit you had and i think one other thing that i i was only talking about this yesterday or the day before to a family member who is talking about the stress of this kind of job and um you know and what is he doing but every single day that you're in this job you are learning so so much and that knowledge that you build when you talk about old heads and what you would have done differently knowing now what you do know it's that in itself is such a huge resource and i think it's really important to count the success of every day and the knowledge that you're building as well rather than just that big picture of i'm gonna go buy your or you know those things that probably don't actually make that much difference because money comes and money goes yeah i definitely agree with that i think for me from my point when i was looking at this it's always and it's been always been the same for me if i had a if i had a something i couldn't see the future five years ago and see where we were today as a company i'm gonna be super excited but now that i'm in it what's the next you know what i mean and the the way it looked like the way i look at it was yeah stability is one thing you know i started this business i didn't have children i didn't have a wife you know it's it was it was young i was young back then i'm still 30 but still uh just going at it and just trying to get something done it was all about the opportunity you know i looked at something said why isn't there something here that does this um i was lucky enough to have a co-founder dave who's you know had four generations of transport and and the industry that i was in and he said i'd need this and or everything in the market doesn't exist so like okay that's a cool thing to fix we fix that and then okay well then there's this vertical then there's this vertical it's always that opportunity aspect and i think that's the motivator for me um with fixing problems and getting great product to market will come the money will come the big exits when you're ready if you can do that i think for me though that end comes when the opportunities start to get slimmer and slower i don't want to be in a business that is maintaining an application or building features that just don't that it just features features sake to try and upsell or add value because there's continual growth and continue opportunity to build more product and make things even better that's what excites me that's what motivates me from day one the money will come the money will come 100 if you're passionate about what you do and you're excited about what you do and you're building something that people enjoy it's going to come um so like i said when you're in it today yeah there's more there's always more five years ago doing like like at the moment it's scary to think that some of the things that we we used to be really excited about we used to get a deal and everyone used to go this this and that that we're getting large deals now it's like okay how do we get to the next one how do we get now we're always looking for the next thing um which is it's all about opportunity for me from day one it always has been opportunity to solve things that's it yeah great point joel of what does it look like um what's a win and does the wind make you thirsty for more wins and i just want to ask five years ago when you didn't have a wife and you met your wife what did you tell her you did and did she go oh here we go someone who's not earning any money what did you say yeah i um i didn't have a wife but she was my she was my partner or girlfriend before that for a long long time since we're 19 i was just one of those guys that just let it drag on way too long but it's probably one of the reasons that i've been lucky is to have someone like that to support me like you the the the journey of an entrepreneurship is hard right you have detractors everywhere in your life from and not not by them trying to detract but you always get the whole oh well you know you are doing but with your skill set you could probably go to sydney and earn yourself 150 000 well you could do this and you could do that it's hard to hear that from everyone in your life and still do that i was lucky enough to have someone next to me that's like no we'll give it a crack like we don't have kids we've got this we're not that even even if we did have kids it wouldn't be a problem it'd be like if you don't do this you're going to regret it give it a go and for i was lucky in that in that in that space for sure so we're coming to the end so we've only got a couple more questions left or a couple more statements and i'm going to pull on that thread again joel of what you're just talking about these are ecosystems that are being created so you've got your home ecosystem you've got ecosystems like i accelerate you've got the bigger tech communities that are in wong long and sydney and around australia and and everyone's creating their ecosystems which are supporting the growth of startup scale-ups entrepreneurs within universities outside of universities and in regional areas and in cities and there's the government's still putting a lot of money into that space when you look at say our ecosystem that we're talking about here i just want a a statement or a little thing from all of you of how you found that ecosystems supported you or what were you really surprised when you came in and thought wow um these people really do care about they're they're six months in front of me or 12 months or five years in front of me and they really helped me so just a quick this is what i've learned from my accelerator this is what someone helped me with or a great story yeah i think from i think from um from my perspective just knowing that other people have gone through and having access to people that that have gone through what you're going through at that particular time is the biggest thing here just having that network um it's a huge huge piece i mean you can't think you don't actually know what you're going through but you think you're alone you think that you like no one's ever going to be everyone goes through anything you think you're doing that you're the you know you're the only one if you have the right ecosystem and have the right network you'll find someone who's done their been there and will help you out of it it's a massive thing there's probably half i would say that half the people that have probably have failed that don't have this environment probably wouldn't have if they had the environment because they don't have the right direction just by having the ecosystem you've got you've got direction huge huge amounts yeah i think um uh you know i've got a really specific example we went to um as part of uh austrade we're launching like these um i don't know whether it's survive covert but this idea of like launch pads around the world for australian businesses for australian startups and in 2018 they invited i accelerate to send some startups over for the launch of one in berlin so i was lucky enough to go along think about five businesses when and we got to like do this pitch night to a bunch of people who got um uh expats and and others that got invited to this night in in berlin and then this guy comes up to me afterwards and starts talking about uh what i've been talking about at the time and we made this amazing connection which turned into a really significant piece of business for us so there's like all of these um you know really kind of bizarre connections that um happen and it all comes out of this cycle like joel was saying of um not only of being able to get support from people who've been through it before but also there's all of these requirements that people have that you may be able to fulfill or your business may slot into it into a piece of their business or there's some opportunity to do a deal so there's there's heaps of opportunities that like that commercial opportunities that come out of it as well yeah i think having those networks you just never know when they're going to come through with something amazing and you know i accelerate particularly what i love when you look at a lot of the other programs that are out there they're often funded by vcs and have very i mean a bit like joel was talking about with going the traditional path um you know years ago was to go over to the states and things like that there's a very traditional checkbox path of growth through some of the incubators and i think what we really value a lot particularly with you know being in the aged care space and linked to healthcare is the connection to university of wollongong as well because it's not just about the money and in fact the money as we were talking about before is very much a tool to get the outcome so it's looking at it with this lens of you know you've got the wider community of the university that um looks at things from a different lens to the commercial lens which can balance it out nicely and focus on outcomes but also inside the building and having people like john and tim and people in the accelerate office that you can sometimes just go to with this pressing thing that's just happened or this i need this or and you know you just pull a rabbit out of a hat and go oh here's this person to talk to or here's that person and you know those kind of things that you just can't foresee a bit like nathan's example where people will fit in your story but they just do as well as having that support of people who believe in you uh yeah just agreeing with rebecca nathan and joel just like connection is key like i mean it that's like being essentially like a sole founder um it's quite easy to just get in your head and then just try to work and solve everything yourself where all it takes is a it could just be a five minute conversation with you know like whoever who's someone linked to to accelerate so yeah just connection is key makes things so much more efficient and then i guess for me personally just uh i accelerated link uh to the university of wollongong where like john cena team would be like an amazing help uh we would come to the end before we hand over back over to tam to to wrap us up just very quickly for 10 seconds what's the next step in the the evolution of the journey of your startup as an entrepreneur as well um josh where where are you heading next uh right so a very short term focus for me so the next three to six months that i'm looking to so i've got a minimum viable products products out at the moment but i'm looking to launch properly in about three months time um so yeah just launching and then sort of then investigating sort of the next stage of business growth rebecca yeah for us we're really um expanding into different channels and broadening what we do in different channels outside of the aged care sector and it's all about having more people with the ability to advocate for what it is that they value um so that care plans and things like that aren't just about their clinical needs and so for us that's how we what we're charging towards is having more people with documents in here that advocate for what they want over to unite yeah i think um we've kind of just hit the point where we've we're really confident that we've got product market fit uh for our product we're starting to get really good traction in the market we're having um we're picking up new subscribers every single day at the moment so for us it's about doubling down and then working out that next stage of how do we grow this thing effectively and and balance resources and costs and income and all that sort of stuff because we're we're a bootstrap business joel yeah it's um about scale for us now so we launched in new zealand um and that's gone really well in the past six seven months and now we're modifying the application to suit the european markets and in global markets we're about to launch a different variant of our application um globally probably within the next six to 12 months we should be out there so that's the next big big jump for us yeah look i personally want to thank uh the four of you for jumping on and giving us some great insights and some new new thoughts some old thoughts but really talking about your journey what you've explored what you've learned great conversations hopefully one step back i'd like to thank everyone who's jumped on the webinar today to listen to us and listen to the stories that we've got hopefully that they've triggered you to become an entrepreneur or if you're thinking about a journey or what is a journey what is it to be an entrepreneur where do i go to find the first step where do i go to find the next step how do i get involved in a community that we've answered some of those questions along the way as well um we'll hand over to tampa who's going to wrap us up and thank you very much for joining us today yeah and i just wanted to echo john's thanks and and thank john for doing an amazing job of steering this conversation um the region is an amazing region it's got amazing people in it so please if you're interested at all connect to us and it could be i accelerate coming to one of our events or it could be a siligon event or just reaching out to one of us um we really are

2022-06-30 07:24

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