The 90s

Starting out as a tech entrepreneur in 1998, I knew nothing about tech, but as a pioneer in a young internet industry everyone assumed I knew what I was doing.

I launched the first major eCommerce business in Australia (BuyQuick), and was able to raise funding quickly, receiving a lot of awareness at the time. In less than 2 years I obtained an underwriting for an IPO. This was during a time when web-developers were rare commodities, Angel investors were few and far between, and the world was not as connected as it is today. There was no LinkedIn that could give you access to professionals in your industry or a list of experts that could support the growth of an eCommerce business.

I remember my first investor meeting like it was yesterday. I walked in wearing flip-flops, shorts, t-shirt and a hat. Within 2 hours, I had an offer for full underwriting to go to IPO. Looking back, whilst I had a start-up with some good early traction, I had no experience running a business, no completed tertiary education, and a very small network.

Despite what would be challenges in today’s world, after the IPO it was easy to approach major companies for strategic partnerships which enabled me to grow my online store’s product range from 300 products to over 50,000. By the third year, we could deliver most products within three working days to anywhere in Australia, and started expanding distribution to several countries in Asia.

Less Competition 

There was very little competition, and although it was challenging to find experienced tech talent or digital marketing staff, we had a rapidly growing business. After the tech bust, the consolidation in the market meant that with a solid foundation we were able to ride out the dark days while any competitors were shutting down.

During 1998 to 2004, company revenues grew by over 300% annually, mainly driven by the following partnerships we were able to seal:

1. Met with PC Magazine — one of the top IT magazines at the time — and in less than half hour we struck a strategic partnership where we received free advertising in their publication for 1 year. This included 5,000 copies per month to distribute to our customers for free, content (reviews) of all their products to place on our website, and in exchange we simply had to mention their brand and encourage our shoppers to try (with the free copy) and consider subscribing.

2. Met with Telstra — Australia’s largest telco — and in a single meeting we reached agreement for our company to become their preferred shopping destination for their 3 million internet subscribers. They added a link to our website, and received a commission on any purchases their members made at our website. Within weeks, 50% of our new traffic came from this partnership, and revenue doubled.

3. Struck a deal with IBM to deliver to their employees in 9 countries in Asia. As this removed the risk of online fraud from other countries (before 3D security), we were able to start shipping products by expanding to 10 markets internationally, at zero risk. This achieved over $2m in sales in the first year alone.

Present Day 

Our lives are fully integrated with technology, where on average we all check our phones an average of 85 times a day; that’s 2h 30mins spent looking at your phone, daily!

Now, it seems there are tech entrepreneurs everywhere. ‘Start-up’ doesn’t carry the same charm it once use to. Why? Anybody can start a business, with cloud hosting available for as little as $X a month, easier access to funding and multiple ways of creating, building and testing a product.

Harder to Stand Out 

What would take you several weeks to achieve in the 90s, now can be achieved in a few days. Agencies have experience in creating credible websites, offering expertise and marketing experience. The speed and ease, however, has made it increasingly difficult in getting the markets attention.

The Google, Facebook and Apples of this world are poaching top talent very early on, in some cases even before they graduate from university. Finding and holding the right talent has now become one of the toughest challenges for many start-ups. With everybody trying to make noise, digital marketing has become continuously expensive and often less effective, making it harder to acquire customers. This ties in with funding, which has become easier to access, attracting more competitors to a very crowded space.

Comparison to Today

When I compare such deals with today, because there is so much competition from ‘disruptive’ start-ups, partnerships aren’t so easy to assess. Start-ups are tackling more complicated problems and as a result have become much more sophisticated. This results in more time spent measuring the risk of a partnership, greatly reducing the chance of deals going live. For example, when dealing with user privacy or data issues, and complex systems, companies are much more reluctant to invest in a partnership because of the higher amount of due diligence.

In other words, start-ups have a harder time striking the right partnerships, because they are unproven, and carry a lot more risk than established companies.

As a result:

1. Partnerships are less straight-forward and a lot more time needs to be invested on both sides before reaching agreement

2. Marketing is a lot more expensive, because all established companies now compete for the same space on Google or Facebook.

3. Finding and maintaining the right talent is hard than ever, as established tech giants offer lucrative packages which start-ups can’t really compete with.

4. Funding is undoubtedly easier than ever. In the UK alone, there were 608k new start-ups in 2015. (http://techcitynews.com/2016/01/13/number-of-new-uk-startups-increased-4-6-in-2015/)

Conclusion

With technology integrated into our daily lives and our smartphones spoilt with a portfolio of apps, we have information coming at us like never before. As a consequence, though prioritising what is more useful and how to stand out of the pack is harder than ever before. 

Everything we do fits into a time slot and we soon find ourselves scheduling everything. Believe it or not, on average we spend 4.5 hours scheduling per week, needing 10+ messages to schedule a meeting. This is time that we could use on something else.

That is how I came up with the idea of my latest venture CatchApp; an app that enables you to schedule your free time in a matter of seconds, like never before. With CatchApp you can share your availability with others and allow them to book time in your calendar.

Our goal is to reduce the hassle. Save time. Meet more.