Notes from an Entrepreneur - Scott Farquhar

Two pieces of common entrepreneurial advice are, “Trust your intuition,” and “Believe in yourself,” which can often sound like throwaway lines – unless you were listening to Scott Farquhar, co-founder of Atlassian Software, during his occasional address at UNSW’s March 17 graduation ceremony. 

Atlassian is an Australian success story, redefining the development and distribution of enterprise software, and was announced as a Technology Pioneer for 2011 by the World Economic Forum. One of Atlassian’s key differentiators is that their products can be used by anyone, not just large companies with six-figure budgets for enterprise software systems.

Scott says, “We decided that we wanted every company to be able to afford our software. Everyone from a 20-person consulting company to the world’s largest corporations should be able to use Atlassian’s products.  

“So instead of selling our software for $100,000, we sold it for $1,000. Of course, you need to sell a lot of thousand dollar software to make a real business. And if you’re going to sell lots of software, you need to sell to more than just Australia. So we decided to market our products online, and buy ads on this quaint little search engine called Google. 

“There were a million reasons that people told us it wouldn’t work. ‘People won’t buy without talking to a sales person.’ ‘People don’t want to use their credit cards online.’ ‘You can’t sell to someone without calling them up!’… 

“Luckily, we didn’t have any money to hire expensive sales people, so we decided to keep doing what we were doing…We now have over 300 staff working for us, and still not one salesperson! 

“My point is that the conventional wisdom is often wrong! Don’t let others’ opinions drown out your own voice, and have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition.” 

This is exactly what Scott and his co-founder, Michael Cannon-Brookes, did although it wasn’t always easy, especially in the beginning. 

“In order to survive long enough to build our first product, Mike and I earned some money doing 3rd party support work. Having been impressed by the answers we gave, one of our customers called up and invited me to Amsterdam to see if I could help get a 50-person software project back on track.  

“We needed the money, and despite not having any previous experience at this - I said of course I could, not a problem! 

“I was completely out of my depth…And then - the day before I left to go over there - the client called and asked if I could flick them my resume. I said ‘Sure, not a problem – I’ll send it through straight away.’ I remember thinking – ‘I’m 22 years old, I haven’t graduated from university, the closest I had been to a software project was group assignment at university, and the last time I wrote a resume was to get a job at Woolworths when I was 14.’

“…As it turns out, in the first week I was there I was able to help them a huge amount. So much so, that they actually sat me down and asked me why I was doing such a better job than the previous consultants they’d had in. 

“On the 4th day, I was alone with the boss [and he] asked: ‘We noticed you didn’t have any dates on your resume - how old are you?’  

“At that moment, the question wasn’t whether I would tell the truth or not, but instead, how much was I going to lie? 

“I stammered – ‘Ah, ah, I’m 26.’ He looked completely unconvinced. At that point, I thought I’d be packing my bags for home. After what seemed like an eternity, he leaned forward again and said, ‘Scott - I thought you were much older than that.’ 

“Don’t ever let age be a barrier if you think you can do the job. Throw yourself in the deep end as soon as you can, and then learn to swim like crazy.” 

Scott finished his address with this memory;

“When I was studying for my HSC, part of my English course was to study poetry. I can’t say that it was my favourite subject, but there is one line from the 19th century poet – Robert Browning - that has stuck in my head since that time. 

“Browning said, ‘A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?’ It was his way of saying - you should always reach for the stars, always attempt challenges that are slightly beyond what you are capable of. 

“I’ve lived by that motto every day - that my reach should always exceed my grasp.”

Mentoring

There is a lot of interest in mentoring these days, both from people who want to be mentored and those who want to give back and be mentors. Mentoring isn’t exactly new, though. UNSW’s Chancellor, David Gonski, was mentored by the late Kim Santow in the 70’s. We should be able to learn lessons about mentoring from our past before reinventing the wheel.


Before looking at different types of mentors, let’s take a step back and compare mentoring to coaching. If you think of a coach, you probably get the image of a sports coach, running up and down the side-lines, yelling very specific instructions to the players about where they should be and what they should do, or who they should keep an eye on. Mentoring, on the other hand, isn’t so much about providing specific instructions, as it is about asking the right questions to get the mentee to draw their on conclusion about what course of action is best. For years I volunteered with the NVBC, and co-mentored start-ups in the competition alongside Peter Parrish. Back then there was not much structure to the program other than us asking the entrepreneurs a million questions and getting them to think about what they would say to judges in the competition who might ask the same questions. These days, the NVBC mentoring program is complemented by a very structured mentoring program, operated by the regional innovation council (NVBC's title sponsor), for which Peter is now training to be a “lead mentor”.

Even though some people prefer being part of a structured program and being assigned mentors, the reality is that you (yes, you) can go out and find your own mentors, too. Having one mentor doesn’t mean you can’t have another. You don’t even need to let the person know you consider them your mentor. David Lerner’s blog has an interesting post describing varying degrees of formality to mentorship, from free and informal, through to very structured for-fee programs. Another excellent source for what it means to have or be a mentor is Nature’s guide for mentors, which even includes a self-assessment tool, to see how good a mentor you are.

This past semester, I created the opportunity for 15 teams of 5-6 students to be mentored for their business idea as part of a course I teach, STRE2010. Part way through the course, students created short youtube clips of their business pitches (e.g. Detect to Protect, much like the recent TED talk on concussions), which I then sent out to about 30 entrepreneurs who had previously expressed interest in mentoring. Within a few short days (over a weekend!), mentors had signed up to all of the teams. Teams were mentored for another 5-6 weeks through to the final pitch, done in front of a live panel of judges, consisting of entrepreneurs and investors. The feedback from the mentoring program was great. Both students and mentors really enjoyed the opportunity and engagement.

This term, we are tweaking the mentoring program and probably increasing it, due to the fantastic uptake of the revised Diploma in Innovation Management and increased enrolment in my course. Rather than pairing teams up with mentors, we will get teams to find their own mentors. This will help students learn to step outside their comfort zone, network, and pitch their business ideas to real people outside the classroom. We will of course have our own list of people we miiiiiiiight be able to put them in touch with if they really are stuggling to find mentors on their own (please let us know if you want to be added to our list). And, there are also related organizations like TiE Sydney, through which students may find mentors. (SME mentors may be found through Enterprise Connect's ELM program)

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to read our recent B-HERT article on teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in high-school, subscribe to our news and events, and follow us on Twitter.

Dr. Martin Bliemel
Director, Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
School of Strategy & Entrepreneurship
Australian School of Business, UNSW

Peter Farrell Cup winners WIN AGAIN!

First-place Peter Farrell Cup Competition winner TaxiApps has won again, this time at the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge at the University of Adelaide (in partnership with Queensland University of Technology) on 9 & 10 December 2010. Taxi Apps is a mobile phone-based taxi booking and fare payment platform.
Team TaxiApps not only won First Runner-Up, which comes with over $7,000 in cash and prizes, but also the Outstanding Showcase Display Award, and the i.lab technology incubator Award. 

Team member Andrew Campbell says, "[We] embarked on this journey because we perceived it would be a great process to go through to refine the business plan. And you know what? It has been remarkable as a way of doing this. The prize money was perceived as a bonus...If we had just tried to write a plan and a model ourselves, I can imagine how crap it would be. 

"By going through the PF Cup and the JH Challenge we have received so much in-put, energy, critique and motivation. The TaxiApp plan is now really well refined and we believe that it now has a much greater chance of success as a business. In addition, we now also have some great contacts, we learned lots, we pitched and pitched and pitched this thing & we know it backwards." 

TaxiApps has developed a mobile phone-based taxi booking and payments platform. One of the application's main features is to connect passengers and taxi drivers directly by broadcasting their location using mobile phone technology: passengers save time and effort finding cabs, while drivers get more fares and revenues. 

In Australia, large taxi network operators and the highly monopolistic payments firm, Cabcharge, wield enormous influence and control over other players in the industry. The Taxi Apps business is founded on the principal of applying emerging technology to disrupt a highly monopolised market, redefining in the process how this market operates.

For more information on the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge, click through on the following link: http://www.johnheinechallenge.org/competitor/prizes.jsp