She says one of her startup stuff-ups was taking ‘dumb money’.
“I took capital for my business from people who didn’t have the experience in startups like venture capitalists, prominent angel investors or syndicates do,” Emily says.
“With ‘dumb money’ you don’t get that additional experience and assistance and it can often be a hindrance for scaling.”
Know your radar for risk
Even when you hire well, and secure the right investment, external circumstances can disrupt your business
Nigel Fellowes-Freeman is founder and CEO of insuretech Kanopi.
Launched in Melbourne in 2019, with global indonesia telemarketing database aspirations, the startup hired several key staff who were foreign nationals. When COVID-19 hit and Australia’s borders closed, several of them had to leave the country and couldn’t return.
“The battle for talent is very real,” Nigel says. “Our mistake was that we probably took too much advantage of international staff. It’s great from a cultural perspective and for ideas, but it exposed us to risk when visa conditions changed.”
As Kanopi moves towards entering the
US market, Nigel says they’ll learn from their early mistakes, and hire core personnel with as little exposure to external influences as possible, so they can focus on growing the company.
They’ll also diversify their risk in partners, suppliers and customers.
“As an entrepreneur, sometimes you have to take calculated risk and believe things will work,” he says. “Early in our company life we put a lot of faith into a couple of key partners. We learned that when you’re working with large corporations their priorities can change quickly. Single dependencies of work or revenue expose you heavily, especially if you don’t have control of them.”
Keep your eye on the original ball
Moving into new markets can play havoc with a growing startup Tim Duggan, co-founder of Junkee Media, admits.
“One of the biggest mistakes we made was trying to launch into another country, without realising the resources and energy you need to tackle a bigger market,” Tim shares.
“We ended up splitting our focus too much, took our eye off the ball in Australia and almost came unstuck. Bigger is not always better in business.”
Stuff-ups that redefine the business
For Bruce Wren, his original mistake redefined the business.
And he’s delighted that 1WordFlow technology is now not only assisting large corporations but has also, recently, had a very tangible positive effect during the COVID pandemic in sectors that really need help.
Recently, 1WordFlow was asked to assist a client in the aged care sector, which was struggling to communicate new COVID protocols and procedures effectively to staff, patients and their families.
“In a matter of days we spun up a site in Azure, transformed their existing guidelines and process documents into accessible web pages,” he said.
Using existing Azure AI technology
the pages were instantly translatable into multiple, relevant languages.
Without Wren’s early mistake, this solution might never have been possible.
For more advice and stories from the startup coalface, download Microsoft Australia’s free Founder Essentials – Lessons on Launch, Market, and Scale eBook here.