Startup Melbourne

Th amazing story of Melbourne success story - Boost Juice! 

In 100 cities across 42 countries, Startup Grind has made a huge contribution to burgeoning startup scenes around the world. To find out how they’re doing things across the pond, we caught up with London Chapter Director, Marian Gazdik.

 Slovakia-born Gazdik has been heading up Startup Grind’s London arm since 2013. A digital entrepreneur with strong international acquisition experience, Gazdik has worked across Europe, relocated to California, and then settled in London last year, organising business networking events. “I don’t like working hard, I like working smart”, says Gazdik. “When I came back to London, I didn’t know many people so thought, ‘What’s the most efficient way of meeting interesting people?’ I wanted to meet the kind of people I could learn from”.

 With 18 attendees at his first event, he’d recruited an impressive 320 by his third, by which point he’d been called by the Startup Grind’s CEO, saying “We’ve been to your events – let’s join forces”. He recruited Gazdik as the London Chapter Director, and he’s since landed one quality billionaire entrepreneur speaker after another.

Gazdik’s audience is comprised of a 40% share of startups in the early stages, looking for funding and those bootstrapped and trying to grow; 5-10 investors at each event; and the rest made up of SMEs and major companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

With two basic rules for organising events, Gazdik lives by repeating what works, and doing away with what doesn’t. What works, he says, are upmarket technology events. “There are 60 business networking events happening in London every day”, he explains. “That means there’s over 1000 a month. We’re doing one event a month, meaning we’re just one of 1000”. Competition to be the most engaging, constructive and unique is fierce, which is why Gazdik uses technology to push the limits and give his audience a whole new experience.

“We’re soon going to be the first event in the world using Google Glass on stage. The audience will see on the big screen, what I see through my Google Glass”, he says. People will interact with the event’s speaker by asking those questions via social media and projected through Google Glass, that they may not get a chance to ask in person.

“57% of my audience come to events because they want to listen to the speaker”, explains Gazdik, “and 43% are coming because they want to network and meet good quality people”. But being a natural networker doesn’t come easy to most. As an instructor and mentor for General Assembly (an international outfit offering courses, classes and workshops on the most relevant business skills of the 21st century), Gazdik offers astute and valuable suggestions to budding networkers looking to get the most out of events:

 1.  Break the ice.

If the prospect of networking makes you feel stressed or nervous, a straightforward tactic that always works is simply saying, “Hi”, with a smile. People at these events want to network and meet new contacts so a friendly demeanour will get the ball rolling. Ask questions and listen attentively. If there’s been a speech, ask them if they enjoyed it, what they thought about the speaker and what really stood out for them in the speech.

 2. Take an alternative approach.

For the unconventional amongst you, Gazdik suggests turning the usual introductory questions on their head. If you’re joining a conversation, people are often asking each other, ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do?’ His advice is simple – disrupt it. “They’re boring questions – I can steal the game and instead of asking people, I can guess their jobs. ‘Wait a minute’, I could say, ‘you’re a horse rider from Brazil, right?’”. Something out of the ordinary like this relaxes people, and makes them laugh – it’s an ice breaker.

 3.  Remember names.

A crucial part of networking is remembering names. Not only will it help you make introductions between people but remembering their names will endear you to others. For example, “If you meet a ‘Chris’, all you need to do is remember the first ‘Chris’ you ever met or the first ‘Chris’ you can think of who’s a celebrity”, explains Gazdik. “It just has to be anyone who has the same name. Now take the image you have of this person and imagine them standing next to the ‘Chris’ you’ve just met”. It’s a very simple visualisation that takes just a second – and it really works”.  

 4. Find the heavyweights in the room.

As humans we’re always building social circles”, explains Gazdik. “Each circle has a leader and anytime you go to a big networking event, you can immediately see by the body language who the leader is of that event. People subconsciously want to associate themselves with the leaders. In fact, anytime I go to a networking event I’ve not been to before, I find the organiser and introduce myself. I tell them something about the event that I like – it must be a genuine complement, and explain that I just want to say hi and it’s my first time here”. 

It should be a short, quick conversation – an introduction whereby you can succinctly explain what you’re looking for and ask if there’s anyone at the event that they think you should meet.

“There are several things going on by saying hi to the organiser”, says Gazdik. “Other people have no idea I’ve never met him before so they might assume I’m a buddy or acquaintance – that gives me instant value by association. Secondly, important people tend to be around other important people, so chances are, they’ll come to say hi and he’ll introduce me. He can also tell me who the key people in the room are. That way, I don’t have to spend time meeting everybody; I can be more focused. More than 50% of the time, organisers will offer to personally introduce you to someone else – and that kind of introduction is invaluable”.

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 As for what’s in store next for the London Chapter, Gazdik hints at a potential Guinness World Record attempt and a partnership with renowned entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson. Lofty aspirations but not at all surprising from the man who’s made Startup Grind London the success it is today.

When your business starts out, it's all hands on deck - time and money are in short supply and people get things done, any way they can. But after a time, 'this is how we do things' starts to hold you back. 

So how do you know when to take the next step, and invest in some tools to make your team more efficient and effective?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application manages most of your critical customer information so you can see it all in one place.

We’ve pulled together 7 signs you really need a CRM:

1. No single source of information.

This one is probably familiar - post-it notes stuck on people's desks, paperwork around the office and important customer details sitting in one person's address book. Having information in different places or multiple systems wastes time for staff - but it also impacts on customer service, because no one has a 'single view' of their history. 

 2. Little to no visbility.

 As your business grows, do you still know exactly how your team is performing? Have you got visibility into every customer interaction - and the outcomes - or do you feel increasingly in the dark, as you become more hands-off?

3. Reporting = tedious and painful.

Pulling reports and getting business data - more painful than it's worth? You should be able to easily see sales forecasts and business data that's up-to-the minute; imagine that!

4. You're losing data.

If you don't have a single source of information (see #1!), then you're definitely losing information - which is annoying and potentially expensive. What happens when someone leaves your business - where does that important data go? Make sure it's kept within the business - and that you can easily find it.

5. It's hard to stay in touch when out of the office.

Do your staff have to be chained to their desks to get work done, or can they be effective on the road? Imagine if sales people could update details from their device and it was instantly updated back at the office - or updated on your smartphone, wherever you are. 

6. Every customer is treated the same.

Not every prospect or customer is equal - you probably generate 80% of business from only 20% of your customers, but are you treating them differently?  Do you have the ability to target your sales and marketing - or is it 'one size fits all'?

7. You don't have a plan to scale quickly.

How will your existing systems and processes scale as your business grows - without sacrificing productivity? Your time is better spent focused on the business as it grows, not on upgrading systems and 'growing pains'.

If any of these make you cringe, then it's time to start looking at a CRM solution. 

Download The Complete CRM Handbook here for more tips or watch a demo of our CRM solution, Sales Cloud.

 Author – Melissa Apte, salesforce.com

Husband and wife co-founders of Eventbrite, Kevin and Julia Hartz, run a successful online ticketing service, bringing people together through live experiences. Having launched the company in 2006 and with offices in San Francisco, London and Brazil, Eventbrite recently opened an Australian office in Melbourne in March of this year. 

From the late 1990s, Kevin Hartz worked as a Product Manager at tech company, Silicon Graphics. “It was the Google or Facebook of its era”, he explains. “You got to see what the web and computing would look like five years+ out. I became very passionate about the prospects for the internet in terms of commerce and communication”. 

On leaving the company, Kevin went to work on a startup with friends – offering high speed internet to hotels. “We incorporated the company in April 1998 and had a modest acquisition in October 1998. It got me excited and gave me a little financial backing to take some risk”, he says. 

He then turned his hand to angel investing, with PayPal being one of the key startups he worked with. “That was a tremendously impactful experience”, he reveals. “It was a remarkably talented team, the people went on to create LinkedIn, Yelp and YouTube”. His second company, Zoom (a money transfer business) followed and he’s since invested in Pinterest and Airbnb. 

Meanwhile Kevin’s wife Julia had a corporate background working in television and had never considered a career in the tech industry. After an introduction to the field by her husband, she says, “I found two things in Silicon Valley that were lacking in Hollywood. Number 1 - Velocity, how fast things move. And autocracy – valuing what you know and what you’ve done over who you know”.

The couple started working on Eventbrite in 2006. “We shared a passion for democratising an industry using technology”, Julia explains. At the time, international money transfers meant terrible customer service and high fees. Ticketing services presented the same problems – which is where the duo saw a gap in the market. 

“Live experiences are almost magical (and create) indelible memories. Through live experiences, people connect. The combination that we could use technology to disrupt an industry and do something worthwhile that would change people’s lives was a no-brainer”, explains Julia. 

Kevin adds, “We created a simple web form, where you enter your event information. We created ticket types - students as $10 and regular admissions as $30. It was a very simple service; rather than theorising or raising venture capital, we pushed it out to the world and saw it adopted. 

We’re in an age where you can push something out in the world and get customers – very inexpensively and very fast. You have to act in a pragmatic way with your first customers – be very customer centric and have the vision to scale it up. We talked to local customers on the phone and Skype to hear what problems they were having. We still do that” he says. 

“You can get to a meaningful customer base and get traction before you need capital” explains Julia. “We’ve learned it’s best to raise capital when you don’t need it. You can get the best terms, be the most competitive and get the best deal. We had the fortune of being able to bootstrap the company – we didn’t start growing the team until after 2008, after we’d raised money from friends and family. Results-based capital raising is best as it’s so important to have the upper hand when going into those negotiations. You should be focused on gaining traction and seeing results before you go looking for capital - otherwise it’s high risk”. 

And how did they achieve traction? 

“We didn’t have any big breakthrough”, says Kevin. “In businesses like Pinterest, WhatsApp or Snapchat, they have extremely steep S curves – 0% adoption to 100% adoption very quickly”. Growth can take place at breakneck paces and the success of apps like these are measured in weeks or months. “Our S curve is not steep”, says Kevin, “It takes a long time and is arduous to build a business – you need endurance and persistence. It’s a marathon, not a sprint”. 

The duo set out to build a business that was independent and long term. “When you start out, everyone tells you it’s not going to work and will fail, that what you’re doing is insignificant – we heard that”, explains Kevin. They persevered and built what they consider to be a multi-category e-commerce company – with one platform serving their different customers, whether it’s people taking part in Tough Mudder or attending music festivals. 

Operating across 36 countries and in 111 cities, Uber is a technology company which provides an on-demand service, connecting people looking for a ride with drivers that are nearby.

Melbourne’s General Manager, Simon Rossi, explains how the idea was born by US-based founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, when they were leaving Paris’ Le Web conference in 2009 and struggled to get a car to take them to their hotel. Wouldn’t it be great to just push a button and call a car? And with that, they went back to San Francisco and built the prototype for the Uber app.

 “It was in July 2010 when they put the first car on the streets of San Francisco”, explains Rossi. “It was made available to just a small group of friends, who could, at the press of a button, use the app to book a car. Travis was then getting emails from friends and friends of friends saying, “Hey this is great; how do we get access to it?” From there Uber spun off to where the company is today”.

Having worked with a number of startups in the past, Kalanick and Camp put the first round of seed funding in, and after six months did their first stint of capital raising. Six months later they did a second, and then a third. It culminated in 2013 with Google placing a large investment behind the brand.

 In Australia, Uber launched in Sydney in November 2012, with Melbourne following in March 2013 and Brisbane most recently in March of this year. Its products include Uber Black and Ridesharing. The former is “a luxury, on-demand service”, explains Rossi. “We partner with VHA registered vehicles or hire cars which have a driver certification and are registered with transport authorities in each state. These are luxury cars owned by small business owners that have their own clients and operate with Uber in their down time or in weekends when they don’t have a lot of work”.

‘We don’t employ drivers and we don’t own our own vehicles”, says Rossi, which is why stringent processes exist to vet potential drivers who wish to operate under the Uber platform. For its Ridesharing offering, all drivers must be at least 25 years old, have a full driver’s licence in the appropriate state they’re operating in and their vehicle must be built in 2005 or be newer. In addition, all drivers are background checked with Australian Federal Police and state road authorities.

“Providing the driver doesn’t have a criminal record or hasn’t lost their licence for drink driving or anything else, they’re given a test by Uber, to check their knowledge of the city they live in so we can assess whether they know their way around well enough to be a driver”, adds Rossi.

Once approved, drivers are required to have third party insurance and Uber provides liability insurance of $5m per incident for every car that comes on to the platform. “We also have mechanisms in place that provide the capability to do regular checks against criminal backgrounds as well as with state road authorities”, says Rossi.

Although unable to share revenue figures, Rossi explains that since 2010, Uber has grown a workforce of roughly 600 office-based staff members around the world and has covered millions of trips across their network, spanning the different services they offer. The majority of each fare goes to the driver, although Uber provides the lead and takes a small commission from every ride.  The company prides itself on providing choice to consumers for alternative transport options. “We’re one of the first organisations, certainly one of the biggest who are doing this on such a large scale”, says Rossi. Best of all, for Ridesharing, each trip is roughly half the cost of a regular taxi.

 Surprisingly, Uber hasn’t invested heavily in marketing; instead, much of its business comes from word of mouth endorsements and partnerships with a few carefully picked events. For example, at the Melbourne Grand Prix, Uber partnered with Johnnie Walker’s ‘I’m Not Driving’ campaign, encouraging Aussies not to drink and drive, by Uber providing free rides home from the Grand Prix. They also recently partnered with Virgin Australia Fashion Festival, providing free rides for patrons who signed up to Uber at the event.

Investor and adviser, Susan Wu, has worked on the early developments of some of the most revered consumer technology startups, including Twitter, Square, Findery, Canva and Jawbone, amongst others. Having recently relocated from San Francisco to Melbourne, she now heads up the Australian arm of Stripe – a service that makes it easier to process transactions online and through mobile apps. A venerated hacker and entrepreneur, Wu was named as one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and the "Most Influential Women in Technology” by Fast Company. The San Jose Mercury News also proclaimed her as one of the "10 Most Influential People in Silicon Valley". 

By her own admission, Wu confesses, “I got into tech accidentally. Someone in my high school introduced me to BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) and I thought it was super cool that I could start talking to people around the world”. A BBS is computer system software, accessed over a phone line, using a modem. Allowing users to connect and log into the system, BBSes would give people them the freedom to contact other users via email, public message boards and private chat. Having enrolled at Boston University, Wu “got a job at the computer lab at school. I taught myself how to program so that I could start building MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), which were text-based multi-player online games, like text-based versions of World of Warcraft or Minecraft”. 

With a keen in interest in philosophy and cognitive science, these games allowed Wu to experiment with the complexities of human relationships. For example, “If I take a group of people in an online community, give them ownership rights to the virtual land or voting rights to determine their governance structure – how does that impact their growth? And health of their community? How does it impact how they think of their citizenship in that world?”, she explains. Still very much the same issues she’s interested in today, Wu is curious about how people think and how the kind of ideas we hold in our minds (first principles – those ideas that we believe are fundamentally true) fare in relation to those ideas we inherit from our specific culture’s belief system. 

Thinking in this lateral way, Wu believes, is integral for startups. “If you’re trying to create something innovative, you want to be clear on what ideas you’re inheriting from other people’s belief systems and what you’re choosing to believe in yourself. The purpose is for startups to be clear on what they choose to build and who they choose to be. “When I think about creating products, I think what’s fundamental and what’s being socialised?” she adds. “All algorithms are essentially moral constructs. On the surface, Google seems to be a system about organising the world’s information – but according to what principles and priorities? Those are moral constructs they’re passing to us as users of the service. With Facebook, the information they show in your feed is heavily editorialised and prioritised according to their own algorithms, which adhere to Facebook’s beliefs as to what is proper and interesting about how people should organise themselves. And this may or may not agree with how you think about it. Being clear about these things is important to me”, she explains.

Wu prides herself on working with startups who are driven by creative energy to change the world around us and do something they believe in. When Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams pitched to her when she was an institutional venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures, she knew this was something different. “I had the sense it was going to be awesome immediately”, she says. After launching Twitter at SXSW, “there was a constant buzz of activity all around me; even at 3am my phone was buzzing with people from the conference talking about Twitter”. 

Two important traits she believes startup founders should have is curiosity and extreme patience. “Don’t think about products in terms of short term objectives. Think about what do I want to do to change this industry? What kind of products do I want to see in this industry in 10 years – and how do I get there?”, she explains. 

Roy Hui, an engineer and prolific entrepreneur, founded MMGN.com in 2006, creating the largest video games community in Australia. 

With millions of users each month, MMGN provides the latest social news, reviews, videos and discussions - encouraging communities of gamers to ‘learn, play and connect’. Learnings from MMGN feed directly into Roy’s digital agency, MyMedia, which generates bespoke creative marketing solutions for businesses including NovaFM, Sensis and Auspost. 

Prior to branching out on his own, Roy spent five years working for Telstra. “It was such a valuable experience for me”, he explains, “I worked across all different aspects of the business – development, testing, management, leading offshore teams and working with different people. If I’d have left university to pursue my own business, I wouldn’t have had the same experiences. Having that background helped give me the confidence to go to big businesses and be able to speak their language”. 

During his time at Telstra, Roy starting working on MMGN, building on his gaming passion. “I wanted to build an online community for users to talk about games, play with other people and learn the latest about games”. He then used the same platform for other businesses, creating online discussions amongst people for what they were interested in. “Everyone is passionate about something. As long as you provide them with a platform to vocalise their passion, traffic and people will follow”, he adds. 

When he founded MMGN, there weren’t easy ways to communicate with businesses, especially as Facebook and Twitter didn’t yet exist. He created user generated blogs and the facility to upload photos and comment on them - and that’s how his online communities were created. With the advent of social media sites, conversation generation became easier. Discussions are shared across these platforms, bringing friends into the mix to participate, as well as original users.

“Every business needs a community and a voice so that they can talk to their customers” says Roy, and MMGN developed systems to improve the communication in each community. For example, for every new photo uploaded of a video game, users are rewarded with points; they’re given more by interacting and commenting on a photo. In essence, users are rewarded for helping to create a community.

The more positive contributions to the community you have, the higher the points you have. “We take those leaders, the top 10% displayed by their points, and we give then an extra level of community – for us to communicate with them directly. Our culture is to be open, happy and friendly – and they in turn influence the rest of the community through their behaviour, which is really beneficial for us”. For other businesses, Roy implements the same technology – adding gamification and interesting content, which in turn creates a positive engaging message and investment for the brand. 

“We see a lot of businesses rewarding for the sake of rewarding, which I disagree with. It’s not a sustainable thing to do long-term. We like to echo with motivations that are valuable to the users of the system. They stay with us because they seek companionship, camaraderie, want to be validated for what they do and purchases they make. I don’t want to provide rewards for achievements, just for the sake of it”. 

Roy has largely implemented processes and technologies so that his gaming business is automated and requires little effort to run. He then uses the research and insights from MMGN to provide a better service for his MyMedia clients. 

Roy Hui, an engineer and prolific entrepreneur, founded MMGN.com in 2006, creating the largest video games community in Australia. 

With millions of users each month, MMGN provides the latest social news, reviews, videos and discussions - encouraging communities of gamers to ‘learn, play and connect’. Learnings from MMGN feed directly into Roy’s digital agency, MyMedia, which generates bespoke creative marketing solutions for businesses including NovaFM, Sensis and Auspost. 

Prior to branching out on his own, Roy spent five years working for Telstra. “It was such a valuable experience for me”, he explains, “I worked across all different aspects of the business – development, testing, management, leading offshore teams and working with different people. If I’d have left university to pursue my own business, I wouldn’t have had the same experiences. Having that background helped give me the confidence to go to big businesses and be able to speak their language”. 

During his time at Telstra, Roy starting working on MMGN, building on his gaming passion. “I wanted to build an online community for users to talk about games, play with other people and learn the latest about games”. He then used the same platform for other businesses, creating online discussions amongst people for what they were interested in. “Everyone is passionate about something. As long as you provide them with a platform to vocalise their passion, traffic and people will follow”, he adds. 

When he founded MMGN, there weren’t easy ways to communicate with businesses, especially as Facebook and Twitter didn’t yet exist. He created user generated blogs and the facility to upload photos and comment on them - and that’s how his online communities were created. With the advent of social media sites, conversation generation became easier. Discussions are shared across these platforms, bringing friends into the mix to participate, as well as original users.

“Every business needs a community and a voice so that they can talk to their customers” says Roy, and MMGN developed systems to improve the communication in each community. For example, for every new photo uploaded of a video game, users are rewarded with points; they’re given more by interacting and commenting on a photo. In essence, users are rewarded for helping to create a community.

The more positive contributions to the community you have, the higher the points you have. “We take those leaders, the top 10% displayed by their points, and we give then an extra level of community – for us to communicate with them directly. Our culture is to be open, happy and friendly – and they in turn influence the rest of the community through their behaviour, which is really beneficial for us”. For other businesses, Roy implements the same technology – adding gamification and interesting content, which in turn creates a positive engaging message and investment for the brand. 

“We see a lot of businesses rewarding for the sake of rewarding, which I disagree with. It’s not a sustainable thing to do long-term. We like to echo with motivations that are valuable to the users of the system. They stay with us because they seek companionship, camaraderie, want to be validated for what they do and purchases they make. I don’t want to provide rewards for achievements, just for the sake of it”. 

Roy has largely implemented processes and technologies so that his gaming business is automated and requires little effort to run. He then uses the research and insights from MMGN to provide a better service for his MyMedia clients. 

Earlier this year, we met with Tessa Court – CEO, Founder and Director of IntelligenceBank - an award-winning online information management company. The business allows clients to securely share documents and data with exactly who they want, and when they want to. It offers niche business apps including online board portals, virtual data rooms and digital asset management.

“The secret to our success is that we’ve got a single platform and we’re able to productize it”, explains Tessa. For example, one of our products is digital asset management so NAB use us to share and educate people about their brand guidelines and download marketing assets for various agencies. The reason they like our platform is because it looks and feels like NAB, but they can give ad-hoc access to people as required”. Another client is “a mid-tier consulting firm using us to manage their projects and intelligence around different engagements. Others use us as a board portal to streamline the online meeting process”. 

Before IntelligenceBank, Tessa spent nine years on the Executive team at Hitwise, an audience measurement firm which was an internet startup at the time. As Head of Sales and Marketing, Tessa altered the price point of the product significantly, changed the sales strategy and expanded into the US, UK and Asia - driving sales 270% year over year. 

After being with the company for nine years, she set up IntelligenceBank. At the time, her husband had a market research company with an extranet called IntelligenceBank. A few of his clients wanted all their market research on there so Tessa set to work, exploring what clients wanted from a marketing and market research perspective. “We built a platform which was good at managing documents and data in a really customisable way”, she says.

The company had a lot of early quick wins with big corporate clients like Suncorp and NAB – contacts that Tessa had built through her professional career. Having known and trusted friends to help build your product and give you feedback is crucial, but she insists, “It matters more when you sell to people you don’t know and who haven’t met you. That’s when you know you’ve got a good product”. Having a proven market fit earmarks you for success but being successful can come from following Tessa’s seven smart tips: 

 1. Optimise your website 

“Every lead that comes to your website is like a golden nugget”, advises Tessa, “so make 

sure your design, messaging and UI is optimised as best as it can”. 

 2. Be pitch perfect 

“When I was raising capital, I didn’t have my pitch down, it was a mess”, Tessa explains. 

To brush up her pitching skills, she took part in an investment enterprise program with 

Springboard Australia and says, “It changed my life and how I approached raising capital 

and thinking about the business”. 

 3. Don’t grow your business before you’re ready 

Expanding too early, before you have the fit right for your product could spell disaster. “When we raised our seed money, I opened an office in New York but we didn’t have our product right”, reveals Tessa. Trying to expand the business in those early stages proved to be her biggest hurdle. 

 4. Question everything you do

When it comes to deciding on new ideas, features or products, Tessa borrows Richard Branson’s concept, ‘Simple Rules’. It’s three or four criteria you create, which means an idea doesn’t even get off the ground unless it meets that criteria. For example,

• Does it differentiate us in the market? 

• Is anyone else doing it well? 

• Can we make more money out of it? 

“It’s a good way to weed out every idea and prioritise what’s most important”, says Tessa. 

 5. Find the right investor 

Having recently raised $2m in investment, Tessa firmly believes that raising money is all about finding the right partner. “It’s really important you share the same values” she says. As a CEO, how you operate has to fit with your venture capitalist (VC). Being aligned with your term sheets is critical so that “nobody feels like they’re getting badly done by the other party, and it works for everyone”. Aligning timeframes is also crucial so if you think your business could take five years to be successful, you need to meet with VCs who have the same idea and aren’t expecting huge wins within the first year. 

 6. Evaluate your business

Measure everything you can and get feedback. Listen to your clients and customers – not just at the initial stages when you’re launching your product but through every step of the way. 

 7. Take time off 

“I have a one day weekend where I don’t do work. I used to think if things are tough, you just power through but you’re exhausted and of no use to anyone”, admits Tessa. Taking time to regularly recharge your batteries is absolutely critical for those running their own business. 

Guest speaker for the next Startup Grind event is Managing Director of AussieCommerce,

Adam Schwab.

In just three years, Adam and business partner, Jeremy Same, have created 

an impressive e-commerce empire, boasting more than 300 employees worldwide and an estimated FY2014 turnover of $160 million. 

We caught up with Adam to find out he built Australia’s fastest growing startup business. 

 Tell us a little about how AussieCommerce started? 

The original founders were myself and Jeremy; we went to school together and had already 

been working on a corporate accommodation business before AussieCommerce came up. 

Whilst the accommodation business was profitable, we wanted something more scale-able 

so used our capital to bootstrap a new venture. 

 In hindsight, that initial business was a great learning experience and equipped us for our 

next project.  We learnt everything from building websites to dealing well with customers – 

which is essential for any brand. 

 In January 2010, Jeremy had just come back from the US where he saw a thriving business 

called Groupon, which didn’t exist in Australia. Seeing as how well it was doing in the States, 

we thought we’d give something similar a try over here, so our site, Zoupon, was born. With 

just a handful of staff working on the site, Zoupon offered basic service and activity type 

deals – restaurants, hairdressers, spas and the odd bit of travel. It started as small offers 

from small clients but at the end of 2010, after six months of operation, revenue was growing 

quickly; we now employed 25 staff and changed the URL to DEALS.com.au. From there, 

we gradually progressed from local businesses to working with bigger clients and skewing 

towards as many bigger named brands as possible. 

 How did you build on the success of DEALS.com.au? 

The site was profitable from the beginning, which made growth inevitable. In June 2012 

we merged with Ouffer – and subsequently doubled the size of our team to form the 

AussieCommerce Group. Literally a week later, we had the opportunity to buy two ailing 

businesses from Rocket – Dalani and Bamarang. We retained a third of their 50 staff and 

turned their revenue around from $200,000 to $1.5 million a month. 

 What plans did you have for the business next? 

We never actually had growth plans mapped out; opportunities just cropped up, and still do – 

so we’ve learnt to stay nimble. In 2013, we had the opportunity to buy Cudo – a very similar 

business to DEALS.com.au. At the same time we acquired the travel site, Getaway Lounge 

and Meat Merchant, selling quality meats. We folded Getaway and created a site for high- end travel, Luxury Escapes. We also rebranded Meat Merchant to The Gourmet. 

 What sites do you now own? 

We own nine sites altogether; our most recent acquisitions were of brandsExclusive, selling 

premium fashion brands, and TheActive, which is Australia’s first dedicated flash sale site for 

sports apparel as well as fitness and outdoor adventure products. 

 You’re one of Startup Melbourne’s new sponsors – why did you get involved? 

We went to a meet up last year and had a great time. It’s a great forum for talent and I 

met some really interesting people. I loved the success stories, the drive and the passion 

everyone had so felt if there was any way that AussieCommerce can help out, we’d like to. 

 It’s definitely a scene we’re still interested in; although we’re past the startup stage itself, we 

still have businesses within our company that would be considered startups. We’re lucky 

enough to have the infrastructure to build our businesses well and operate in a very lean 

way – which is a very startup way of doing things. 

 What advice could you give to other startups? 

If you’re running a startup, you’re obviously working for yourself but don’t forget you’re 

working for others too – you have clients and customers. You’re liable; if anything, as a 

startup, you’re more on the hook. 

 One of the key things to being successful is being super lean. Keep expenses down and 

don’t pay for stuff you don’t really need. Also, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. I used 

to regularly answer support calls and emails – and still do occasionally. It’s important to know 

first-hand what your customers really think about your product or service. E-commerce isn’t 

easy so when we hire people, we’re not looking for managers – we’re looking for do-ers.

Be it me, co-Executives or the newest person through the door, we expect everyone to get stuck in and do the work – and for your startup, so should you. 

Tomorrow night Kevin and Julia Hartz take centre stage in one of Startup Grind Melbourne's most anticipated events. 

For $25 you can come along to hear about their personal journey of a business that is now valued over $1B with over 2 Billion ticket sales to date and how they raised over $150m in venture capital along the way...Incredible. This is the startup dream personified!

As usual I will be hosting the event and hope to see you there.

An amazing event with Susan Wu from Stripe. Thanks to 99designs for the space, and all of our other sponsors for there continued support.

An amazing event with Susan Wu from Stripe. Thanks to 99designs for the space, and all of our other sponsors for there continued support.

Have you ever tried to visit your favourite venue on a different night only to find it's not at all what your were expecting? The atmosphere has changed, the vibe is off, it doesn't feel like the same friendly place you've spent your Friday nights. So what's happened? It could be uni night, trivia night, gay or lesbian night or even a sporting event. Whatever the reason, this is not the place you want to spend tonight.

It's the same story around the world, whether you're a local or a tourist the nightlife scene in every city changes night by night, venue to venue. Sure there are plenty of websites and travel guides that list venues with a short synopsis usually describing the decor, but they all seem to fail to provide that one crucial piece of information, where to tonight?

You could do a Google search for venues around your location with a specific feature, use listing sites to find the most popular, then cross reference the venues with their social media content and work out if they were a good place to visit tonight. But who has time for that, especially knowing it is not easy to perform while out on the town, and most of the time still doesn't provide the information you need.

Avid nightlife seekers and entrepreneurs Ryan Chartres and Keir McHarg put their heads together and came up with a solution. The idea was to build a nightlife search engine that made every aspect of a venue searchable on a nightly basis. This included features, food and drinks, facilities, and entertainment. The information would be provided by the venues giving them the power to promote all their nightly activities to potential customers. The model would bring together all venues from the raging nightclubs, to quiet hidden bars and regional pubs, making a one stop source of information for tourists and locals alike.

 Over the past two years the small four person team that makes up Where To Tonight have worked tirelessly on weekends, after hours, and through Christmas holidays to turn the concept into a start up. Taking the final plunge the team quit their jobs earlier this year and wheretotonight.com beta went live on October 17.  With an official launch date of January 2014 accompanied by a native app for both IOS and Android, Where To Tonight is poised to become a recognized resource for venues and customers both in Australia and globally.

Discovering the kind of business you want to build isn't an easy task for anyone, nor is it something that you can really create a step-by-step guide for. That said, when you're not really sure of what you want to do, just keep in mind that everyone has the ability to create something and break out of the daily grind. Curiosity, creativity, and growth can be generated by following a program, and there are heaps out there, but I think that before choosing a program you first need to know one thing.  What do you want to build?  Once you know that one thing, you are on your way.

 Here are my four tips to help you figure out what business you want to build.

 1 – Note where you are spending most of your time and/or money. The amount of money and time you deliberately spend doing something is a clear indicator of what you like. You could look for ways to improve the services you are using, or unlock a new value proposition for an existing product.

 2 – Write down where you stand on ideas related to work. Pick a few topics to concentrate on such as “the hours I want to work,” “what motivates me” or “how many people I want to work with.”  The idea is that if you can figure out where you stand on certain aspects of work-life balance, you might be able to flesh out a possible business path that fits the lifestyle you want to live.

 3 – Set your principles straight. Writing down your beliefs and intentions may sound a bit over the top, but your notes can then act as a filter for the kinds of businesses you may or may not want to do. You don’t want to end up doing something not quite right with your inner compass just because it seemed like a quick way to make some money.

 4 – Be honest with yourself. Are you willing to continually learn, and discover more often than not that you were wrong? Running your own business can be a tough gig, and life will teach you that no matter how well you have prepared yourself, you many not end up exactly where you originally planned.

Use the tips above to map out a few thoughts and refine your ideas for your Startup.  Being able to review your ideas critically and being flexible with your plan will help you along the way.  But above all, make sure your ideas are aligned with your long-term goals and values. In the next blog post we will discus some ways to check the viability of your ideas.  We will also discuss how to avoid self-confirmation bias, something very common that blinds many wannabes and seasoned entrepreneurs alike, and causes people to waste a lot of time and resources. In the following series of blog posts I will write about the rocky road of the Startup world.  I will break down the steps towards building a successful Start-Up from idea validation through to first paying customers.