What We Learned

Takeaways from the event

(Some) Australian startups are thinking globally from day 1

“We founded the business in 2014 here in Sydney. Within 6 months we recognized that the Australian market just wasn’t going to move fast enough, didn’t understand how to engage with startups and we decided that we would be global from day 1 so we moved the business to the U.S.,” said Dr. Catriona Wallace, Founder, Flamingo, adding that her recent trip to the U.S. “just confirmed that we will double down and continue to build out our business in North America and on the back of that will probably be China our next market.”

“We started in Singapore. And I’m sure every traditional business plan would not start with a founder in one country and another founder in another country. In fact, my business partner and I have never shared an office together. We’ve lived overseas – we’ve lived in the cloud – we live with global markets. I’ve been back in Australia the last couple of years, but all of our business is done overseas. I’m trying to excite a bit of manufacturing here, so that is in the pipeline” – Graham Ross, Founder and CEO, Kusaga

“We are firmly global in that all our customers are overseas and will probably stay that way for some time. That doesn’t bother us because ultimately we have the dream that our device will be on every car on the street. We make what’s called LIDAR – it’s the primary laser sensor for driverless cars and we are racing for these things to be on cars as soon as 2021.” – Cibby Pulikkaseril, Co-Founder and CTO, Baraja

Technology allows entrepreneurs to focus on their business & grow globally

“Communication is everything, particularly when you have distributed teams, so we heavily rely on communication platforms. Probably the best one we use is Slack to communicate. We’ve got slack channels for all our teams and we have slack channels for all our clients. It’s a fantastic tool for doing global business.” – Dr. Catriona Wallace, Founder, Flamingo

“We have all our files in the cloud – so we have no paper in the office, which is pretty cool.” – Cibby Pulikkaseril, Co-Founder and CTO, Baraja

“From a retail perspective, we have a Shopify store. It’s really simple, it’s solid and there are more and more apps coming online. Importantly, there’s access from any currency coming in,” said Graham Ross, Founder and CEO, Kusaga, adding that “A lot of our customers use PayPal. It’s trusted in the marketplace. When you’re at that point where you’ve got them to the checkout – and people do still drop off – if they can choose PayPal, especially if they’re looking at where it’s being shipped from – that converts for us.”

“We’re [an Intuit Customer]… We have an office here in Australia, one in Singapore and one in London. From an accounting point of view with it all lives in the cloud and it all kind of talks to itself and makes sense. We’re about trying to make really cool clothing – not count numbers – so the quicker I can do that the better.” – Graham Ross, Founder and CEO, Kusaga

“Quickbooks online is a global accounting software solution. We find that a lot of small businesses really struggle with understanding the financial side to their business. You start the business because you are passionate, you have a dream about launching a product or a service or you’re frustrated with something and want to do it better than the next person. So in that case you don’t care about the financial side of your business. It’s about leveraging global cloud-based solutions that enable you to grow and scale globally…” – Bianca Bowron-Cuthill, Customer Care Manager, Intuit

Operating internationally brings shipping, procurement, communications and other challenges

“If you look at a map of the world, Australia is really far away. It is so hard to get from here to other places. When we buy stuff it takes a long time to get here and when we want to go places it takes a long time to get there.” – Cibby Pulikkaseril, Co-Founder and CTO, Baraja

“Communication in different languages – all of our suppliers spoke English as their second language. So learning to communicate and dealing with cultural challenges…You need to get them to believe what you believe.” – Graham Ross, Founder and CEO, Kusaga

“For us the challenge of selling into the large US corporates is the procurement processes…it can often be 6 to 9 months of just getting through security and contract negotiations – and it’s far too long. We now have a full time attorney who’s on our team in New York, which is crazy for a young company.” – Dr. Catriona Wallace, Founder, Flamingo

“We also spend a lot of time figuring out our [intellectual property strategy] – whether we are going to patent our things or trademark. We decided to do a full IP strategy, so we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on getting trademarks and patents in place.” – Dr. Catriona Wallace, Founder, Flamingo

Public & private sector resources can support small and early stage ventures going global

“Last year there were 423 million e-commerce shoppers [in China]…when I talk to the businesses I say you have to think global straight away. Platforms like Shopify, like Intuit, like PayPal help you go global straightaway. You’re not going to have the scale or capability to do everything and build everything for yourself, so leverage what is truly an equalizing force in the economy.” – Brian McDonnell, Director of mid-market and small business, PayPal Australia

“In terms of the global context, what we try and do is encourage organizations, founders in particular, to really focus on in the initial stages of their life stage of their business around the local market…You’ve really got to start with the end in mind and the end in mind should really be to be a global business.” – Alex Scandurra, CEO, Stone & Chalk

“The Entrepreneurs’ Programme is a suite of services that’s really aimed at helping businesses grow…We have a network of 130 advisors and facilitators around Australia that work with small or medium businesses to essentially help them solve problems.” – Jennifer Kay, General Manager, Entrepreneurs’ Programme

“I work with the applicant through the [commercialization application] process to really help ascertain the competitiveness of the company and the plan. And if we both agree it’s worth it, then we go for it. If that company is successful – the reason this program is so powerful – is that you actually get one of me for the course of the grant. I have 22 colleagues across Australia that do the same thing.” – Topaz Conway, Commercialisation Adviser, Entrepreneurs’ Programme