
Brilliant - Kogan are 'taxing' users of Internet Explorer 7 6.8% on all their purchases on kogan.com.au because of the time their web team wastes to ensure their site works correctly in the 6 year old IE7!
Brilliant - Kogan are 'taxing' users of Internet Explorer 7 6.8% on all their purchases on kogan.com.au because of the time their web team wastes to ensure their site works correctly in the 6 year old IE7!
Shoes of Prey is growing rapidly and as we expand we’re looking to hire someone to work in the combined role of Office Manager/Executive Assistant to the Founders, who can help make the founders more effective and the office an exciting, fun place to work.
Executive Assistant to the Founders Responsibilities
Office Manager Responsibilities
What we’re looking for:
Salary: $40k - $60k (based on experience) + bonus + generous stock options + lunch everyday + snacks + shoes. If we hit our goals over the next 5 years you'll do very well out of the stock options.
The role will report into Michael Fox and is based in Sydney. To apply please email a cover letter and resume to michael@shoesofprey.com
Please help us spread the word. We'd love for you to tweet or post this link to Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ (buttons below) and if you know of someone who the role would suit we'd love you to pass this post on to them. Thanks!
20 July 2012 Update: We've hired for this role. :)
A friend of a friend recently emailed the following question:
I'm currently undertaking my penultimate year of law, a degree so far disastrously unappealing. Much of this comes from my lack of interest in practicing/ pursuing work in law and partly from the disenchantment in the tertiary education process.
The past 3 months have been a mental debate on what the best decision is in regards to either finishing my degree or cutting my losses and pursuing something of interest. Obviously given the stigma that is a lack of a tertiary education, all those around me have suggested that I suck it up and just finish. Personally I feel as though I would achieve more if I discontinued my study and attempt to immerse myself in the real world and gain some real experience.
So my query for you is - Q. Did completing your Law degree substantially contribute to your success with Shoes of Prey or do you feel as though with your drive and entrepreneurial desires you would have achieved your goals regardless?
Here's my response:
It's a tricky question. There are some programs in Silicon Valley designed to help budding entrepreneurs head down that path without going to uni first and there are good arguments for getting stuck into what it is you love now as you'll learn faster. However I think overall in Australia I would suggest finishing uni, for a few reasons:
1. As an Australian business community we're still culturally quite unaccepting of people who haven't completed a uni degree.
2. There are lots of great jobs out there that require a uni degree, and high marks at that. For example, Google won't hire anyone who hasn't finished uni at a good university, and with high marks. Working at Google was hugely influential for us in starting Shoes of Prey and Sneaking Duck. I learnt a great deal about online marketing there and met lots of amazing people, including Mark Capps who we went on to co-found sneaking duck with.
3. I met my Shoes of Prey co-founders studying law. I met Mike in about 2nd or 3rd year uni. Then I met Jodie in final year uni when I get involved in the Australian Law Students' Association (ALSA). Without finishing my law degree and meeting Jodie and getting to know Mike more, I may well be working for a corporate rather than being an entrepreneur as finding great co-founders is probably the most critical thing you can do in starting the entrepreneurial process.
4. Working for other people is a great way to learn. Mike, Jodie and I experimented with some startups while finishing uni and in our first years of working. Looking back, our ideas and the way we executed them were terrible, there was so much we didn't know. 5 years working for other people taught us lots which has helped us be successful now. Sure, we could have learnt similar things doing startups full time, but that is an expensive way to learn when it's your own money and you're not earning a salary. Learning and making mistakes while working for someone else is much cheaper for you personally.
For those reasons I'd suggest finishing your degree, but find things that you're passionate about that will help with your future entrepreneurial career. Ideally start a startup part time! For me, I hated studying law with a passion, however I got involved in the UQ Law Society as social convenor in my second last year then president in my final year. I loved those roles and running The L Card and the finances of a pretty large voluntary society (we raised over $100k from law firm sponsorship and sales of The L Card in my final year) taught me lots about running a business and motivating people which has gone on to help in running Shoes of Prey and Sneaking Duck.
Also, when you cut it back, studying doesn't take up much time. I attended about 50% of my lectures and became pretty adept at cramming at the end of the semester. I probably wasted a lot of the extra time I had, but you could easily start a business part-time and see how things go before quitting uni. Even some of the most celebrated uni drop outs - Mark Zuckerberg and the Google co-founders started their businesses while studying full time, and only dropped out of uni when their businesses started to take off - that's a much safer approach.
Even when starting Shoes of Prey, Mike, Jodie and I did that part time while keeping our full time jobs and only quit our jobs once we were confident we were onto a winner and the business was getting to the point where we could no longer do it part time. I'd suggest taking the same approach to your study.
That was my two cents. I and the questioner are interested to hear what others think, what would your advice be?
Helen comes to us after a very successful career in the advertising industry. She started her career in Auckland at the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, specialising in typography and design craft. From there she moved to Sydney to join The Campaign Palace where she worked with Jodie. She was there for the last 3 years, designing campaigns for the likes of Bonds, Berlei and Panasonic.
If you are interested in Helen's creative abilities you can check our her online portfolio here: http://www.behance.net/helensham
In her spare time she enjoys spotting kerning errors in books and magazines, a glass of vino after work and baking cupcakes.
Helen with be working closely with Jodie and Susie to make Shoes of Prey a world-class visual and tactile experience. Very exciting!
Natalie is currently in her 4th year at UNSW studying Computer Science and Engineering. She has a keen interest in low level programming and operating systems. Whilst at university she has worked and volunteered in a wide variety of positions, including being the Secretary of the Computer Science and Engineering Society.
When she's not studying she pursues her passion for animals by volunteering as a kennel handler at the Sydney Animal Hospital.
Natalie will be helping our CTO, Mike Knapp, with a number of super secret tech projects, so watch this space!
Welcome to the team Helen and Natalie!
via @alexnorth
1. There is very little beauracracy involved in starting a business in Australia
To start a tech business in Australia all you need to do is:
2. Research and Development (R&D) Grant
The Australian government provides an amazing benefit to tech startups undertaking R&D work in the form of the R&D Grant, and the program was improved starting from the 2011/2012 financial year. Under the recent changes, we now receive a cheque from the government at the end of the year giving us back 45 cents in the dollar for all the R&D expenditure we've undertaken during the year! In 2010/2011 we received back $20,661.51 this year the figure will be significantly higher.
The cashback component applies to businesses making a loss, which most tech startups will be. The benefit comes in the form of tax credits for business making a profit. To receive the 45 cents in the dollar back you forgo the future tax losses on your R&D spend, equivalent to 30 cents in the dollar but you're getting more than that back and more importantly you're receiving it back sooner and as cash, exactly what a startup needs to help get its business off the ground.
The R&D grant is designed to encourage investment by Australian businesses in R&D, and it works. Knowing the we'll receive this money back at the end of the year allows us to invest more in R&D than we would otherwise and has allowed us the luxury of hiring more software engineers to experiment with new projects than we could afford to otherwise.
3. Export Marketing Development Grant (EMDG)
Small to medium Australian businesses who export product overseas are able to claim the EMDG and receive 50 cents in the dollar back on their overseas marketing spend. 2/3 of Shoes of Prey's sales are to overseas customers, and we invest in AdWords, Facebook, PR and other marketing activities to promote our product to overseas consumers. Last year we received $38,825.40 back from the government as part of this grant and this year it will be significantly higher.
The EMDG is designed to encourage and assist Australian businesses to export their products and for us it works, we're able to make export marketing investments we would otherwise not be able to afford.
4. Commercialisation Australia
Commercialisation Australia is a program established by AusIndustry to assist early stage businesses develop and commercialise their products. 4 different programs are offered:
Commercialisation Australia funds a percentage of the money spent on each of these activities. For example, for the Early Stage Commercialisation Grant the program funds 50 cents in the dollar of the money the company spends on commercialisation activities.
Now that we've raised $3m we've applied for an Early Stage Commercialisation Grant to help us scale our operations and international distribution channels. We find out in late June whether we've been successful.
5. 66 Oxford St. Darlinghurst, Sydney
The Sydney City Council own a building at 66 Oxford St. that is apparently earmarked for renovation or demolition, so finding a long term tenant to lease the space wasn't going to be easy. Rather than leaving the building vacant, they opened it up for creative and technology businesses to use it as office space, for free! Numerous tech startups have based themselves out of there and the project has gone so well the council is looking into opening 2 more spaces on William St. Darlinghurst for the same purpose.
6. Support for Venture Capital
The Australian Government is aware that venture capital for startups in Australia lags behind other countries, particularly the United States. A number of government programs are designed to help encourage and grow the ventures capital industry in Australia. One of the best is the Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) where a venture capital firm can have the funds they raised matched dollar for dollar by the government. One of our investors, Southern Cross Venture Partners has an IIF backed fund (though this isn't the fund that invested in Shoes of Prey).
With these programs on offer a tech startup can quickly, cheaply and easily set itself up, gain free office space in inner city Sydney, raise capital from an IIF backed investment fund then have 45% of their R&D work funded, 50% of their overseas marketing costs funded, and have other parts of their business, like early stage commercialisation activities 50% funded by the government as well.
That's an incredible amount of support for Australian startups. What do you think?
There has been a lot of press lately discussing the state of tech entrepreneurship in Australia and where it's headed. My view is that we're in a pretty good place. The government is very supportive of startups and just in the 3 years we've been running Shoes of Prey we've seen a huge number of new startups begin their journey, some existing startups receive huge funding rounds (Atlassian, 99designs, OzForex, Catch of the Day, StyleTread), a number of startup incubators launch (StartMate, PushStart, AngelCube, Blue Chilli) and startup working spaces launch (FishBurners, 66 Oxford St).
All of that said, it's still difficult to do a Series A round of funding here in Australia.
There's money to be found at the angel investment end of the market, and US VCs are willing to invest large amounts in larger Australian startups (see Atlassian and co. mentioned above) but there aren't many investors in Australia willing to make investments at the $1.5m-$3m Series A level.
So how did we do it? We put together a group of 9 different investors who all contributed to our $3m round, with the largest investing $900k. That was no easy task.
We first started contemplating the idea of raising capital in December 2010. We did our first pitch about 16 months ago in early 2011. I estimate I pitched ~80 different investors. We signed one term sheet then decided not to go ahead with that investor. We came very close - to the point of draft term sheet stage with another 3 investors at various points throughout the process, then signed a term sheet with our final investor group in February. It took another 4 months to put the legal documentation together and close the round.
A turning point in the process was getting Mike Cannon-Brookes on board. We'd had a huge amount of support from Richard Baker as well as Bill Bartee and Tristen Langley from Southern Cross but we couldn't quite cobble together enough people to do the full round. Mike Cannon-Brookes has a huge amount of respect in the tech community from what he and his co-founder Scott Farquher have achieved at Atlassian, and once Mike came on board the investors that were close but not quite over the line came on board too. Mike also introduced us to Michael Arrington and CrunchFund who didn't need much of a pitch beyond the fact Mike Cannon-Brookes was investing.
I spent ~30% of my time over the last 18 months pitching investors and managing this process. That's a huge amount of work and the second largest project of my career behind launching Shoes of Prey. That time has a significant opportunity cost, it could have been spent working on the business. That said, pitching our business to a lot of smart people and hearing their feedback helped us clarify what our strategy should be to grow the business going forward. And we now have $3m to invest in the growth of the business and a fantastic group of investors who will be able to offer advice and support as we go forward.
One interesting learning that came out of the process was pitching US and European firms. We pitched about 30 US and European firms and without fail, every one of them (except CrunchFund!) concluded,
"We love the mass customised fashion space, we love the success you're having there, but a $2m-$3m round is just too small for us to do when you're based in Sydney. Time zones and geography mean it's not worth our time. Either move to the US/Europe so you're nearby or come back to us when you're raising $10m+ in your Series B."Fortunately we were able to get a mostly Australian group of investors over the line.
While raising a $3m Series A round in Australia was challenging, it's not impossible. Based on our experience there's a massive gap in the market for investors to invest in Australian startups doing Series A rounds. With the number of incubators that have recently launched, and the media coverage the tech startup is getting we're going to see some great startups coming out of Sydney over the coming years.
I'd encourage Australian investors to look at moving into the tech startup Series A investment space. And I'd encourage US and European firms that are already in the space to think about spending some time in Sydney and perhaps even setting up an office here. Based on our experience you'll have very little competition!
Some big news at Shoes of Prey, we've closed a $3m Series A funding round.
Coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald and on TechCrunch.
It's been a huge project to put the funding together, we have lots of people to thank and lots of plans going forward. More blog posts to follow over the coming weeks.
My key take outs from the presentation:
via @nickcrocker
Mens clothing site Mr Porter gives an advanced example of the new retail and media trend. Take this beautiful fashion magazine styled like a 1950′s newspaper:
The magazine contains fantastic articles on topics like coloured chinos, sports jackets and how to put outfits together and 'nail it at the office'. It's exactly the sort of content I might previously have purchased magazines like GQ or Men's Vogue to read. It's content like Mr Porter's that's contributing to the decline in readership of magazines. And rather than having to sell advertising, a magazine like Mr Porter's has a clear revenue model - all the product in the magazine is available for purchase in the Mr Porter store.
To assist with linking the physical magazine to the Mr Porter store, they've created a phone app that allows you to hold the phone camera over an article, then directly purchase the products from that article from the Mr Porter store on your phone!
I had being blatantly sold to, and Mr Porter have done a brilliant job to avoid this. The content in the magazine is not salesy, in fact, despite the whole magazine effectively being an advertorial for Mr Porter, then content is far more engaging and less salesy than a traditional magazine advertorial. The Mr Porter app also has benefits beyond just buying product from the magazine. Hover over certain articles and you can watch videos related to the article such as interviews with people profiled in the articles talking about their approach to style. Here are some screenshots from my phone using the app:
And here's the Mr Porter store page that the coloured chinos article took me to, perfect!
Which other retailers have you seen creating great media content?
Cross posted to Power Retail.
A diary of our adventures, successes, failures and everything we learn as we attempt to start a business or two.
Our first project: Shoes of Prey - design your own custom women's shoes.
Our latest project: Sneaking Duck - new prescription glasses, everyday.