#fin15

“I believe it was a sudden of change attitude throughout the whole government including some managers in the public service who had thought it was sensible to hold back a startup that wants to disrupt the very core of capitalism”.

At the beginning of the week we had Fin15 had been waiting for our company to be registered by the government. Waiting is not really correct as we have been working on a lot but suffice to say it would be better if we didn’t have to wait 5 months.

FIVE MONTHS!

That is how long it can take to have a company (foreign subsidiary) registered in Australia.

But by the end of the week we had a new PM and our company was ‘miraculously’ registered (with the help of a big city law firm and, probably, many of the politicians like Bruce Billson and the new PM himself that I had tweeted to).

Many will say it’s a coincidence.

I believe it was a sudden of change attitude throughout the whole government including to some managers in the public service who had thought it was sensible to hold back a startup that wants to disrupt the very core of capitalism.

We make no apologies for this. We believe financial institutions are doing an awful job. We believe an Australian startup can change that and thereby deliver huge positive change to the world.

Our goal isn’t just to shakeup financial advice in Australia. that’s just phase 1. Phase 2 is about making capital work more efficiently on both ends - for both the investors (whose money it is) and the recipients (who should be those who can do alot with the funding).

These five months have forced us to work hard on optimizing our strategy and set out a driection to become not just a unicorn - but one of the top financial institutions worldwide and to set a new benchmark for how such a company should behave.

But here is the thing about government…

They can’t really help you (a democratic government at any rate) but they can massively hinder you. They can delay you.

On Thursday we were told the company would be registered overnight.

On Friday it was open.

On Sunday, yesterday, when Prime Minister Turnbull announced his cabinet we felt elation. It seemed clear that the PM had put people into those key positions to ensure startups like ours are not being held back.

What is the difference you may ask?

The difference is between policies that make it as easy as possible for businesses to achieve something in an area and policies that are negotiated with conservatives so that the result is slightly better than it was before.

The problem is of course that this resulted in policies that were well below those of our typical competitors. For example even France has better policies for startups than Australia.

Yes… FRANCE!

Anyone would think we had a socialist government.

We don’t want average… we especially don’t want well below average.

We should have policies that put us at least on the same level as New Zealand. We should aspire to have policies that allow for a startup environment like Israel.

Don’t hyperventilate… we don’t have to copy then - we don’t have to go all radical - we don’t even need to reform the taxation system for that to happen.

But before I tell you how let’s go through why I think we now have a better team, leading aside the Malcolm factor of pushing innovation from the position of PM.

The new Industry, Innovation and Science Minister Christopher Pyne

Mr Pyne probably has the biggest personality in parliament. He was also facing election defeat for his seat.

This is surely the most important Ministry in the new government. If we want the economy to transform so that we have future economic growth then it needs to be driven out of Mr Pyne’s office.

South Australia has always been a hotbed of innovation, producing several Nobel Prize winners and leading the way in industry innovation. Recently all that innovation, something we should build on, has been sucked out of the place.

South Australia should be Australia’s home of industrial innovation - it has the most fertile soil. If Pyne can simply sow the seeds he will save his seat as well as the seats of many of his colleagues.

Simply put Pyne was the most motivated senior Liberal politician in the Parliament. He has the political skills to get this done. Education and stupid restrictions place apon him once hang around his neck. Now he has a balloon filled with hydrogen.

He is the most motivated and has serious political skills. Therefore he is definitely the best person for the job. He just needs to be backed up by a team with talent.

The new Small Business and Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer

Having the Small Business Minister also be the Assistant Treasurer is a huge move as small business is the driver of the economy and startups (Australia’s future) start out small. Growing up under Costello is also hugely important. To me even more important is that we have a woman in this position.

Women have a harder path in business and so I’m hoping O’Dwyer brings perspective that government has to make it easier. The most crucial recommendations I have to help startups are simply about making it easier for everyone in small business.

A passing note on Bruce Billson - because a lot of people point out that he was a great Minister for Small Business and that he was connected with our startup community. This is true but his leader was not just holding us all back… he was trying to sling us into the past. By not backing a change he didn’t back what we were all screaming out for - he didn’t back small business. The change had to be made. But I hope he comes back into the ministry - his work ethic and energy is needed.

The new Communications Minister… Mitch Fifield

I don’t know anything about Mr Fifield. I hope he has the balls to take the NBN forward with FTTH. That may seem like a backtrack but the PM needs to get this monkey off his back and the best way to do this is to say we need the best possible internet infrastructure for the money. Everyone will then blame the last disatrous policy on the last cabinet.

But it’s bigger than political points… this is the most critical infrastructure to Australia’s future. If the Liberal government can’t prioritise this they are simply not prioritising the future.

I wish Mr Fifield the best of luck with this. (And before terrorists get their hands on that retained metadata that it seems just about anyone has access to he should urgently review and make changes).

The new Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy

Congratulations Mr Roy. This is the most exciting thing for me. That an MP goes off to Israel trying to find out what they are doing so well for startups and comes back and writes a paper on it.

This to me screams of excitement! It demostrates that someone says “I don’t care what the rest of you think… let’s do something… let’s try something… here are some great things I learned”.

My advice to Mr Roy is don’t worry about the mistakes - just try stuff - iterate. If it works keep it… if it fails move on. My other piece of advice is that it will be very easy if Australia doesn’t have to lead in every area of innovation.

In other words talk to Founders… try to work out areas we have potential in and focus on them.

More specific advice in a bit.

The new Cities and the Built Environment Minister Jamie Briggs

Mr Briggs always struck me as someone frustrated by being held back. If this is true I understand. To many that I include this Ministry may be a surprise. For me I get the feeling that this is something of the area Mr Briggs is most passionate about. I hope he pushes Mr Fifield on dramatically improving the NBN.

But more than that we have such great cities and should use them more to attract great entrepreneurs. We should use efficient innovations to make our cities leaders in technology. You can tell that State Premiers like Palaszczuk and Baird are desperate to work with the Federal Government on this.

Briggs can work with politicians in all areas of government to get home grown technology in our cities and to make our cities a leading destination for the smartest entrepreneurs from overseas.

Also Fierravanti-Wells, Andrew Robb, Simon Birmingham, Arthur Sinodinos, Michaelia Cash and Barnaby Joyce

I think it’s super smart to have a conservative female Minister for Mulitcultural Affairs and there are many ways for someone in this position to get more of the best and brightest coming to our shores. On trade it’s more critical than ever we get the industries of the future going or those trade agreements will be one way traffic in the wrong direction. Mr Robb has been the most impressive Abbott backer in my view - he’s got us the deals… now we have to make sure we can take advantage of them (this requires a lot of work).

Arthur Sinodinos will be crucial in making cabinet effective in moving Australia forward. He will set the agenda and the focus on moving Australia into the future. Sure this may be Turnbull’s leadership but if you don’t have that number 2 following (as he is doing in his interviews) individuals will start setting their own agendas as they did under the last PM.

Michaelia Cash, in her capacity for Women has a massive job. I live in Europe (and have worked in both the Netherlands and Czech) and have followed closely the US debate on women in tech. Australia has a MUCH BETTER environement for women in business. Cash should work closely with Roy on taking advantage of this. It really is a key advantage that we have and we MUST exploit. Cash also has public service portfolio where she can help to get more innovators and supporters of innovation into government departments.

Barnaby Joyce could really help drive innovation in Agriculture. This is a huge area of focus for tech right now in the US but in the past Australian farming has been the leader. Barnaby could give his public persona a massive facelift by being a massive advocate for this. He can also push innovation in rural areas. Switzerland is trialing mail delivery by drones in remote areas for example.

I have 3 recommendations:

1 - Make Australia a stepping stone into Silicon Valley

The strategy for our startup is to start in Australia and then expand overseas through San Francisco. Australia has all the conditions necessary to test, trial and scale before launching into the US.

We have a great diplomatic relationship and can help US firms into Asia too. We should have a program where Founders from around the world can be assisted to setup in Australia with a program designed to then launch them into the US.

Imagine to talent we would attract? Imagine the amount of tech businesses that would have substantial operations based in Australia. These companies would use those operations, with our mulitcultural workforce, to launch into Asia.

This would also require easier access to capital and a simple system for setting up companies - such as incorporation in US with subsidiary set up in Australia or something. It is SO difficult right now. Our US incorporation took a week - the Australian subsidiary took 5 months. It would also require fastracked entrepreneur and tech worker visas (temporary). Plus an automated system to get the appropriate visa into the US. Australia should be the first to set this up. Get this happening Minister Roy.

2 - Focus Australia on being the best in just a couple of areas

Instead of trying to do everything pick a few things that we can be best in the world at. Being a launchpad into the US could be one. Being a centre for startup Asian operations could be another (I worked at Citibank where they had Asian foreign exchange and money market operations centralized in Sydney).

Whatever it is there is no point having policies like with the startup options policy - something that is average in comparison with other countries.

Mr Roy may want to copy Israel on their incubator strategy - if so it should be the best in the world & therefore better than Israel’s. If not take a different angle like helping startups make that leap from seed to series A & B (which is SUPER difficult in Australia and would make a MASSIVE difference because you would then be helping startups scale that have already proven themselves).

In other words if you can’t make a policy that is world leading don’t bother. Just start with the easiest ones.

3 - Startup and SME Government Contacts

This is one Kelly O’Dwyer should work on with you Roy. There are lot’s of government assistant programs but to use them you have to hire a consultant who specialises in them. Everything is difficult. Step 1 is for Government to have an office in each capital city where entrepreneurs can go to and have someone assist us with all the paperwork and maybe point us in the direction of using programs that we may benefit from.

Do you realise how much of a boost that would give to small business in Australia?

Also have some standardised legal documents authorized by the government for startups to use. Like shareholder agreements and tax stuff.

I’m sick of the excuses from the government on this - oh it’s too hard to make a standardised one… well if it’s too hard for the government to do it once then it’s obvious it’s difficult for every startup and SME to do it everythime.

Conclusion

I am so excited by this. For too long government has worked against us. We just want government to get out of the way and make it easier for us. The new PM has made it clear he wants to help Australia be more innovative. If you want to do that then pick those areas you think we have a key advantage in and just try it. We won’t care if you help our focus (FinTech) or if you decide others are better such as AgTech. Just as long as you get out of the way.

Honestly we don’t have time or energy to waste it on a government obstacle course. I know you will find there are a lot of people who have been waiting for an opportunity like this. If you just let us go and then focus on a few key areas you will make our policy environment the best in the world at then we will do a huge amount of the work of speeding up the economy for you.

By Wence Peraza, CWO

Not long ago our CEO said “we need to focus on client engagement and client satisfaction to make Fin15 stand out from other advisors”. Giving a thought to these wise words, I started to think what really could make us the “different ones”. At the end I put together a list of what should be the steps for Fin15 to try to reach our “north start”.

First, we want to understand each client’s needs. Each person has their own personality, their own way to do things, and even when they come from a similar background or from the same home, they all end up needing different things in order to be happy. This is why Fin15 will not use a generic advice model for everyone. We want to build a strong relationship with each one of our customers and the way to do so is to understand each person’s situation.

Second, Fin15 will focus on personal interaction even though we are a startup delivering services online. We believe that in order to build up this relationship we need to trust each other. So, our advisors need to be communicating effectively with each one of our clients. We will show our clients what they gain by working with us. By demonstrating our knowledge we can articulate the benefits of choosing us and the solutions we provide to the problems people encounter by trying to manage their finances themselves.

Third, Fin15 focuses on the main impacts on improving our clients’ financial position as opposed to marketing benefits which, sound good, but provide have small benefits to people just starting out in their careers.  

Fourth, Fin15 has to be proactive and provide the best long-term options instead of options that are optimized for a 1-year time horizon as is the only focus for the industry. That not only requires looking forward long-term but also considering an individual clients future goals and prospective career path.

Lastly, Fin15 will ensure that every single client is well informed of his/her charges and fees. We will make it easier to understand, point out the entire fees and charges whilst explaining the benefits. So above and beyond providing the typical pages and pages of complex written documentation and fine print we will provide a info-graphic that summarizes this so you can understand the comparison immediately and see the benefits and costs.

In meeting Ed Husic MP last night he asked me to keep him updated on progress… so I will do a bit more of a full summary of where we are at this morning (and some further explanations for Ed at the bottom).

Fin15 is about giving advice online in 15 minutes to under 30′s especially students, women, apprentices, casual workers… These are the communities we want to help and we see a huge opportunity to make the world better by doing so.

We plan on getting 50,000 clients in Australia first and then launching in the US. We want to change the world by giving these people better opportunities to be able to do the things they love.

The first step is to pre-launch in May* and get 400 people to sign up and do plans for each of them by June. To get there we need to do the following:

Work out the process for giving the advice, how to get our costs down to be economical - Done (the majority of it - some of it we need to do after authorisation).

Company values, what we are all about, how we are going to work as a team, who are our preferred customers, what are their values and how do we hold true to that - the glue that holds us together - our 15 core beliefs - Done.

Company name, tagline, design the logo, cards, build the website - Done (Ok the website will be improved over time - all the important stuff is there including being able to pre-register).

Incorporate in the US - Done - short explanation on this for Ed & others at the end.

Setup a subsidiary of foreign co in Australia - Sent off to ASIC.

Become a Corp Auth Rep - Arranged - need Aus subsidiary first.

(All of the time you are seeking / getting feedback from everywhere)

Everything takes longer than you expect it to. Some things we know how to do like the processes, company strategy… Some things we don’t like design, how / where to incorporate - and we have to do it ALL ourselves (this is why we love feedback - because we are going to be wrong a lot - like the first colors on the cards were too bright for students - we are onto our second website…)

All of this is exciting, draining, fun and scary.

We are now praying that ASIC processes our company quickly and there is nothing we have to clarify (like that Articles of Association are our Constitution) -   yeah I know… even the end of May is not going to happen and every day is a day we could be getting clients we can help.

Note on the incorporation - we have a strategy on how we want to grow our community and that is contingent on the structure of the corporation and what we can and can’t do - like creating shares and giving them to customers, cofounders, team members and partners. When we have 50,000 customers here and launch into the US we will want to raise capital there. Plus with my history of building a successful startup and then what happened - I know it would be foolish for our shareholders and community to setup our company in that system.

Are there things that could be done? Yes but really beneficial things would be politically impossible even if the public would love it.

For startups it would be great to be able to arrange a meeting in some government department in a captial city with someone who understands the system. Help us fast track setting up the company - this is who to see about grants - this is other help...

I mean I hear all about stuff the government does to help startups but how does anyone access that? It seems to me like the policies are there so government can say “look what we are doing” but hidden so there isn’t a big take up.

Anyhow for us we are past all of that. Our focus is on helping young people become more successful and so our hearts are on ways to do that and how we are going to advocate for better opportunities for them.

We have massive plans in Australia and as we achieve scale we will be in a position where we can - and therefore must - advocate for better policies for the communities we want to help.