UTS Startups Confessions - Learn and network every Friday

okay hello

and welcome to the most stressful part

of my week

uh trying to juggle

janky recording gear and some wonderful

patient people in the audience

the most common question that i get

asked

from different people is how do i start

this startup that i'm trying to start

and

i think the reason that is the most

common question i get asked is because

people don't talk enough about how they

actually started something so these

sessions are about getting people to

actually talk about how they started

and particularly people that i respect a

lot in what they did so

man i'm so happy that you're willing to

subject yourself to this uh round of

applause for nittan please for joining

us tonight

cool

an applause at home thank you as well

um

let's dive

in in 10 seconds

what is maslow

so maza's a mobile app for people living

with disabilities complex conditions who

have large care teams and therapy teams

what these individuals and families can

do is structure a weekly routine in the

mobile application

share it with their entire care team as

well as connect with all their

therapists and clinicians in the one

place

okay so for everyone that kind of

skipped that and wasn't paying enough

attention yet uh pay attention

for anyone that is going through rehab

uh or this needs care plans for them and

anyone that yeah then anyone that has

essentially a complex disability so

someone with a traumatic brain injury a

stroke they might be an elderly

individual and they have daily care

needs where support workers are coming

into the home clinicians are coming into

the home

mobile

maslow addresses supporting this

community

okay

i am just checking i actually set up the

mic right thank you very much i did

who were you before you started masley i

was a occupational therapist

with no clue around the startup

ecosystem

but i was working in public public

hospitals public tertiary hospitals and

in rehab hospitals as well so

that's my background and i came in with

i guess a bit of clinical experience

okay yeah

but

where did the idea come from so that's

nice as a background but where did you

start to engage with this as a problem

so um all the founders were all mates

uh so

we had a friend of a friend of ours who

we you know we've known for over you

know 10 years

and he'd had a traumatic injury

and

we he had challenges with managing a

care team and explaining you know his

daily life to his support team and

we saw and understood his experience as

mates not as professionals

and then uh years later you know we're

all in our in our we're all working i'm

a therapist andrew is a product designer

uh ilya is an engineer and we're just

talking and we're like

you know we could solve

some of his experience purely no nothing

not thinking about anything else just

his story his challenges

and uh that was a spark of hey you know

maybe we should look into this

um

you're making me feel guilty for not

solving other problems that i see around

myself

but i think it's not an unusual

experience everyone sees problems around

them but why did you actually start

doing something about this

i think

you know

he was quite young when he had his

particular you know traumatic injury

and you know for a young person who's

meant to be going to university going to

school you know hanging out with his

mates having a beer

he didn't get to have a lot of that he

had a lot of that taken away from him

because he was too busy every day trying

to explain to his care team or going to

therapy or trying to remember what had

to do for therapy

and so it was like oh cool you know this

this would be really worth solving for a

mate of ours

but

looking further into it the the common

um

age group that had traumatic injury at

the time was 18 to 35

and so it being a young cohort it was

like you know this is something we would

like to solve for and that was kind of

the spark and

after

diving into this poster spark we started

connecting with

young people across australia

who'd also had a traumatic injury and

you know there's there's apsey and

there's fifi and you know we started

creating this community

all of a sudden who helped drive us

getting deeper into this problem space

and co-designing um maslow with and

uh

progresses forward and continuing on

okay

so

did you start to think about how many

people have this problem and what the

opportunity is yeah how well did you

think it would go as a company

i don't know how well it'll do as a

company

but uh we we

we first you know our spark was a mate

the next piece was for us was really

understanding you know potentially

was this problem

big enough work to be solved and we

found out there was you know

you know thousands of people living with

a traumatic injury in australia there's

you know 100 million globally okay you

know there's potentially a community

worth solving

that's scalable

we dived very superficially into the

clinical literature as well and some of

what you know our mate was talking about

also matched in the clinical literacy

literature as well so we're like okay

now there's potentially a wide array

problem domestically and globally

our mates experiencing this problem

we're seeing somewhat of a trend in the

literature as well

maybe we should dive into this

okay

so

i know you're a smart man andrew is a

smart man everyone on the team are very

capable people

this is a scary area to get into

i start to get into med tech and how

hospital systems work and everything

else

did that make you

pause and think should we really start

to try and address this problem yeah

huge anxiety attacks to be very frank um

you know i think when we we started it

you know we we

we started with the intentions to solve

for from mate who told us a story

and

as we

dived deeper

realizing there's actually a more

systematic issue happening here around

the healthcare system around how

processed processes are conducted in the

healthcare system

as a clinician that was employed by

those institutions

that became a very scary thing for me

because i was like i'm going to have to

advocate to the institutions to the

clinical leaders to the academics and

say yes to answer your question it was

very fearful for me

but what made it easier for me was

you know when we had a group of 15 young

people who were who had traumatic

injuries sharing their stories and the

story was consistent

and they were like could you solve this

for us

hypothetically from a technology point

of view yes

and so for me

my confidence didn't come from myself

but from the community saying hey i'd

like this to be solved and

we felt it was a worthy cause to give it

a go

i like that like

the idea that

you understand the problem really well

but you don't understand yet how hard

it's going to be to solve but that's

okay because that motivates you to try

and solve it it's a problem for and that

you know if it's if it's going to create

you know where we're we're impact

focused you know organization business

and

you know that that's at the forefront of

our minds and

and if that's the opportunity we get to

create not just for the team but for the

community and that's going to be amazing

okay

so

take me back that first year of activity

what did it look like day to day

we very initially

dived very very deep into

clinical medical literature only because

we didn't know where to start

we didn't know what to do i've never

done a research piece or started a

business so

we dive into reading as much content as

we can around the problem space

the next piece was to find someone

living with a disability we could talk

to

and uh

you can't just

go out in the street and say hey can we

talk to you you know what was that we

didn't know where to find the community

so we'll go to conferences

we'll go on to facebook groups and would

start conversations with people who had

maybe potentially similar experiences

and we built a community of you know 15

plus

that was our starting group and the the

most important thing for us was

understanding was this problem

uh

actually a consistent problem amongst

people living with disabilities so

and then once we kind of communicated

and researched with this cohort

it was

designing a product product getting a

prototype together

putting it into the hands of them and

and getting them to test that product

and give feedback

and then creating an mvp that they

thought would be the best solution to to

fit their needs

do you remember the first customer

yeah so our first customer was someone

we i wouldn't call him a customer i'd

probably be a user to start

um and we met him at a at a uh

accessibility conference

and um he was

27 28 years old you know he just had a

traumatic injury he's talking about his

experience

and we're like you know this is the

bloke we gotta have a chat with

he was fully ready on board to join into

the project and

he became the fourth team member of

maslow

and yeah so he was uh he was our first

user customer and team member for maslow

as well beautiful yeah it's nice to have

that kind of expertise on the team

first-hand experience i think he was

just super passionate he's like whatever

i can you know do to be involved and

we're like whatever you want to do we'll

let you we'll have you on board do you

see that a lot do you see other people

see the problem you're solving and say

yes i need to actually get involved in

this yeah i think

that's also partly how the growth of our

business has occurred

where we've had people living with

disabilities their families sign up and

say

we have the same problem

and as a result of what the platform

does someone living with a complex

disability

they sign up to the platform and they

invite their care teams and their

therapy teams

all of a sudden now we have a community

of people with disabilities joining the

platform but also

institutions because their therapists

and their support workers are joining

into the platform as well

and now as a result we have a community

signed up but also

institutions coming to us to say hey

our

patients our clients are using your

platform what's maslow this is one of

the beautiful things about maslow that

every time someone is being helped by it

they're signing up 10 of their care

providers and 10 of their therapists

yeah yes wonderful uh how that can

spread to other people that then care

about other people yeah and how this can

grow yep yep and so the so the the

organic um

the organic growth for maslow has

allowed us to start partnering with

clinics and institutions

okay

i love technology-enabled

entrepreneurship it's what we do

startups you can see

what were they kind of enabling

technologies that make maslow uh worth

doing now instead of before

i can definitely imagine uh covid might

have helped

in terms of yeah okay the enablers yeah

i think it's quite interesting because

when we

were doing the research piece and just

the co-design it wasn't as big a

conversation around digital health and

virtual care

but then the narrative changed for the

healthcare system when all of a sudden

all their patients got locked out of the

clinics and the institutions and people

were stuck at home and not having access

to support

and so the narrative changed for remote

care and all of a sudden what we done

became a viable solution uh so that was

the first piece in terms of like trends

in the ecosystem

the second piece was it was how we

launched um

the the community we were designing with

was quite close it was closed we hadn't

launched publicly and they'd said to us

hey we're locked out of our therapist

we're looked out of our clinicians we

need to have access in the home to

support to to recommendations to

communicate with our clinicians

can you give us access publicly so we

can connect with all our clinicians in

the one place so they can see how we're

managing at home so kobit was an enabler

for people to connect remotely in the

home digitally with their with their

specialists

okay so

uh

that sounds like one of the ingredients

to early success that you had if you

said

there is a particular recipe for the

early success you had what are the other

ingredients that were critical

but my i'm sure everyone's going to have

a slightly different answer i'm i'm my

role as kind of customer lead

clinical lead so i'm very in deep in

with the with the users and

communicating with them and hearing

their stories

um

we were super targeted and specific

initially with the cohort that we spoke

with and it was traumatic injury

and we just learned the ins and outs of

their day-to-day life their challenges

and what actual solution would be

valuable to them you know we let them

kind of lead us with what they think

they'll be

and as a result we designed a platform

for people living with traumatic injury

essentially

but when we launched um

you know all of a sudden we had people

living with mental health

autism elderly signing up to the

platform

or saying they had the same problem

and so i think one of the biggest

catalysts for us was really

honing in on a problem space and a

particular cohort

really listening to them

and as a result

we found that other people also share

the same experience because we designed

a problem fit for purpose a product fit

for purpose

okay so

realizing that the same problem actually

occurs across a much larger group of

people and a similar solution is still

what they need exactly

okay

uh would you say that the team that you

were able to build early on was critical

as well

yeah so um

i think

partly for me you know i came from a

clinical background so i actually had

some exposure

to

talking and communicating with families

and people living with complex

conditions

andrew was essentially a product

designer a strategic thinker elia was an

engineer

so i think a lot of the foundational

components of building a mobile app a

website was there

and we were able to kind of

bring in

our skills

between

customer

design and commercialization

technology

to build the fundamentals of starting a

business and a startup

i know there's people watching down the

camera that uh would kill for that kind

of team i have to say yeah i want to

solve this uh without necessarily being

paid

um

do you think solving this particular

problem was a way of motivating that

kind of broad skill set from a bunch of

people really good skills

to

start work on this

in terms of the founding team or the new

team members that came on board both

uh yeah i i think that they the problem

had to be worth solving for for the

individuals as founders and

um

you know ili is an engineer and he's

just really good at just like building

products and building technology

but he's just super

like keen to build

products and technology that's impactful

so that's how he's driven

andrew

was working in the social impact space

doing strategic rollouts of of

technology or in his space so he was

already oriented to doing solving social

problems so i think the the the passion

to solve an impactful problem was

definitely an enabler for us

but also an enabler for like the rest of

the team you know we've had designers

engineers marketers

join our team and they're super

passionate about leveraging their skills

to solve a problem that's worth

addressing okay yeah

there's a couple more but

everyone has things they want to solve

uh but people need to afford to live in

sydney and like this is hard how did you

afford to dive into this in the early

days

yeah well i don't know fully rec

how do i answer this everyone has a

different journey as a founder

everyone has

a different way of trying to start their

business

personally may i just quit my job

so but i was i think happy to do so um

the reason why i did it was you know i'd

been a clinician for six or seven years

or whatever it may be

and i was comfortable with you know my

knowledge i had there and i was super

interested in in testing myself and

learning a new skill and and potentially

getting more into digital care uh

digital health virtual virtual virtual

care

so for me i i just quit my job and dive

straight into this and say how i

supported myself was working an extra

job

to get some cash coming through the door

but that's me you know some people use

savings

some people work a full-time job and

they use that money to fund their

startup

some people compete for grants there's

no there's no one way about it

i um

i think for me you know

i'm more focused on actually

experiencing and developing as a

professional and getting to try new

things and and i was happy to give that

a go and just quit my job and go for it

well

tell me about that because

what has two and a half years of

maslow done to you as a person

i feel like i've gained like

10 years of experience in two and a half

years

i've developed a fair bit because you

just you just do so much

as a founder

and it's the worst

because like

you know you you dive real deep for

three to six months into design or maybe

you know

partnership development or whatever and

you get really good at it and then a new

problem comes along which you've never

done and you've got to start the process

of learning again

so the development piece has been really

fascinating um i think also just the

confidence piece

um i was definitely not a confident i'm

always i'm confident now but

wouldn't wouldn't have been of

confidence to try any of the things i do

now i'm willing to fail

very quickly we have this saying in our

team

we've got to learn faster than the rate

of change

and so

any new information provided to us we've

got to respond to it but also in order

to find that information we've got to

get get out there and give it a go

so

i think another thing i've learned is

failing is okay

give it a go get out there learn as

quickly as possible from it

and then progress forward okay

i know maslow's doing really well at the

moment but uh if it wasn't and you had

to go back into the workforce in

whatever thing you thought you wanted to

do now do you think it would have

benefited you during the last two and a

half years of this massively

okay massively um you know i'm super

interested in working with

impactful organizations progressive

innovative organizations also

understanding the mechanics

of how

i guess innovation or or technology is

designed developed and scaled

and i wouldn't have had that exposure to

this level

even if i was working at an organization

so a startup has really developed me

understanding those mechanics of the

building blocks of what that looks like

but also all the other little things

like pitching

i hated talking publicly i couldn't like

do a minute in front of a crowd

and then last year i had to pitch i

don't know if you've heard of the optus

future makers program yes and there was

like

200 people and you know

i was terrified and

and never did any public speaking at

university and was successful to get the

top spot for that one and and get a bit

of money for the team

yeah beautiful yeah and that's the thing

like you probably don't care too much

what optus thinks of you but like the

what maybe you do but it's nice to go

through that exercise so that when you

are telling other people about what

you're doing that talented person or

that partner or that other person that's

important you're actually able to

present convincingly too so i think like

the pitching contest by themselves not

so great but being able to pitch useful

well i think how you learn those things

whether it be like

a startup pitching

you know whatever the skill set may be

we didn't learn that on our own you know

like we're part of the uts startups

community we have mentors some of which

are sitting in this room

and we've just leveraged um

people have done it better than us

to learn hey how did you pitch how did

you commercialize how did you build a

partnership we don't know how to do that

someone taught us how to do that and

then we gave it a go

um

okay i want to ask it's two and a half

years in

what does maslow look like today

yeah

busy

we have we know we started with a cohort

of maybe

15 people with traumatic injuries we now

have a backlog of thousands of

individuals with disabilities their

families their their care teams their

therapists all signed up to our website

you know trying to access our platform

um we've progressed you know we've got a

a product in the market you know people

are signing up onto the platform

they're inviting their care teams

independently they're inviting their

therapist teams independently they're

creating care routines and following

along

i think there's been a couple of

thousand

routines and workouts completed in the

last few months

so you know the products in market

people are using the product but we've

also now partnered with clinics

who are leveraging

a portal

to connect with their clients connect

the teams together

and to streamline sharing of information

with the family and the care teams

uh

and then and an institutional

partnership along the way

like there's a lot of people if you ask

how's your startup gone through the last

two years of covert i

you wouldn't want to put the answer on

this video

but to see the kind of growth you've had

over those years is ridiculous

a question without notice

but what's coming up for maslow and for

anyone out there that's watching this

what might they be able to get involved

in

yeah so really you know

our two biggest focuses is growth you

know we

we kind of just launched the product out

there into the wild last year and

you know falling apart and building it

and falling apart again and getting it

to a point where we you know we we think

we've hit the mark

now we've just got this this backlog of

people trying to sign on board and we're

trying to streamline that to make it as

easy as possible to use the

the the application itself so

um

doubling down on streamlining the

self-service we're partnering with

clinics

um to give them access to a portal

where

and we did some uh

pre-seed funding late last year and

we'll be going for some

seed funding later this year as well so

those are the things in our works

okay so

for the right kind of investor that sees

the opportunity in this they should

reach out yes for sure okay if they if

they care about impact if they skip if

they care about

you know scalable scalable um you know

support and care for those with a a

disability or a condition

we like to think we're going to try to

be the

atlassian to the care and rehab place or

care and rehab environment okay yeah all

right you're in stock mate at the moment

as well yeah yeah uh recommended

highly recommend it startmates are such

a good ecosystem it's

the biggest

value startmate has is their mentor

network and just incredible mentors so

um that's that's probably some of the

biggest value you're going to get out of

it if you go for start mate and so

every team gets allocated certain

mentors and we're focusing on certain

problem spaces in our business

and they're helping us support us

progress forward in reaching those goals

yeah and they're incredibly competitive

to get into incredibly good in their

selection i don't think you're gonna

have any problem finding investors

um

uh one last question uh before throwing

to the audience

and uh we will throw to the audience

with the camera off

but i'll explain why in a second uh

looking back um

imagine yourself before you started out

with maslow watching through the camera

because i know there's thousands of

people that are going to watch this

video

who are aspiring entrepreneurs what

advice would you have for yourself

before you started

it's a hard one

i'd say

i think i think just have a bit of just

be have a bit of not confidence but just

have the

context that's going to be okay

you really you are going to develop out

of this you are going to benefit out of

this if you really want to start a

startup if that's actually what you

really want to do

go for it it's going to be scary you

know you're going to make a lot of

mistakes

but you're going to be okay

and

potentially likely

unlikely whatever it may be potentially

might build a business out of this so my

main thing is just give it a go and now

whether it's maslow if i leave mazda

whatever it is like my i'll always

office learning give anything a go

okay yeah uh but maybe don't quit your

job straight away it's up to you

it's what you're what you have the

appetite for what you know your

circumstances you know

um

take your time or just go for it it's

okay there's no there's no right or

wrong

okay awesome thank you very much for

that man uh that is it's a beautiful

company of beautiful people beautiful

story uh we're going to put the url in

the bottom of this video uh and i'm

going to turn off the camera or stop the

stream because we're going to throw to

audience questions for the really juicy

part

if you're watching this stream and you

want to check out the juicy parts or

just come and hang out with really good

people we've got a great audience of

people tonight come down at 3 30

each friday afternoon in uts startup

central

and we'll see you here but thank you

very much nidon thanks bye

[Applause]

hello uh i'm murray herbst director of

entrepreneurship for uts

we have a video series called uts

startups confessions that you're

watching today

and we talk to entrepreneurs that i

respect a lot about what they actually

did what they actually got

and how you person watching might be

able to follow in their footsteps

angie thank you very much for joining

today thank you for having me it's it's

only entrepreneurs that i respect a lot

that we're having on

these videos you're definitely one of

those and you watching you're gonna

figure out why through the course of

this video

i'm also gonna say i've got a little

daughter

i love audrey to death

and

what you're working on and what you're

actually delivering at scale now is

something that

uh i can't imagine her not having and

the whole concept this terrifies me so

i'll meander through this but uh thank

you for what you're doing uh to kick off

could you tell me who you were before

you started consent labs

so i was a second year university

student i was 19

and i was studying and living on campus

at uts at the time which was

an amazing new experience you're

independent you're meeting new people

you're going out for the first time all

of which was really cool

but also

extremely eye-opening you're

i think really having to

reckon with

sexual harassment and it's

like incredible prevalence in society

for the first time on your own and

i was having a lot of conversations with

friends with peers at the time

about sexual assault as well and

how common that was on campus

um

and all of those conversations then led

into consent labs

wow okay so there's an opening

so i was going to lead into what are you

your earliest memories of the idea about

this

so

obviously a large problem

and a lot of people have seen the data

and the surveys around how prevalent it

is i don't think that needs to be

established

but

how did you think you could solve it

yeah so consent labs was really

born out of a conversation between

myself and my really good friend at the

time joyce who's now my co-founder

and we were

reflecting on our experiences and our

friends experiences as i was saying

dealing with

sexual harassment and also

realizations of sexual assault

experiences of sexual assault

um

just as two young women you know going

through university living on campus

and asking ourselves

why

why is this so common why do we just

have to put up with this like shouldn't

we live in a world where this is not

acceptable especially the prevalence

that it currently is um

and it all leads back to consent

education like that's where it all stems

from and the absolute lack of consent

education that joyce and i personally

received um was also echoed by a lot of

our friends consent wasn't introduced it

wasn't touched on at school at all and i

think that is

a huge injustice to young people

um and so as i sort of started looking

into okay what exactly is consent how

does it relate to me

i was like wow you know young people

really deserve this education

proactively so before they start

exploring

um

i can't believe that schools aren't

delivering this already

okay

but most people would think that and go

yeah that kind of sucks

[Music]

how does that turn into i'm going to do

something about that um

i actually don't really know like

looking back now i'm amazed that

joyce and i have created

a product a program an organization that

actually makes impact in the world but i

think it really does stem from that

personal passion like knowing very

clearly

what the need is the need being

evidence-based engaging inclusive

consent education for young people and

knowing that

it's not being delivered it's not being

delivered in the school curriculum it's

not being delivered by

any anyone else on the market

and

knowing that

if we did it we could do it really well

so sort of starting to like very slowly

work towards this

big dream that we have which was

delivering inclusive consent education

around australia just very slowly like

baby stepping our way up towards that

big dream okay okay cool

um

so again it's one thing to think okay

we think we can do better and and

knowing that you can do better

how well did you think this would go

i always had a really clear vision of

consent labs succeeding like there was

no doubt in my mind that there was a

need for consent education and that

if we were able to get in front of young

people

that that would be it like they would

see the value in our program and

it would sort of snowball from there

so

i always felt like consent labs could

succeed and could be national it could

be really big

um i think there was a little bit of

personal challenge

in terms of self-belief like seeing

myself get consent labs there but

i always knew that the idea had um

or could work and could work really well

tell me more about that

feeling that you had and why did you

have that feeling of of not feeling like

you could do it

i think i had always seen myself on

a very traditional career path i'm a

quite a risk-averse person and

you know i went straight from high

school to university i did finance

accounting which was like a very

traditional

you know safe degree

and got into a grad program at a bank

and so like i sort of knew where my life

was going i thought i was just going to

progress you know up through that bank

and

um yeah my life was sort of set and like

being a risk-averse person

that was fine for me

um and so i think the scary part was

sort of

taking myself from the life path that i

thought i would follow into like a

completely new

quite risky

um

role or job

and yeah believing that i would be able

to make it work that was yeah probably

the biggest challenge

well you say risk-averse i think every

human is risk-averse at least the ones

that are still living

you know it's

i think it's natural

but somehow you manage to maintain the

work you're doing and consent labs at

the same time yeah how were you doing

that in terms of everyone has kind of

ideas but how did you find the time to

actually do this

um

i think

probably because i was risk averse like

having a

full-time stable job and also being able

to do consent labs and progress that was

really best of both worlds for me

um

like i don't know if i would have had

the guts to be able to launch straight

into consent labs full time without full

like a

a grad job

um

i probably wasn't

ready to take the leap of faith back

then

but i think

we had that really clear vision of where

we wanted consent labs to go and so it

was just making those small steps

to get to that vision that sort of kept

me going

i love this as a pathway though like i

think more people should do it

you see people

i've seen people kind of quit their job

and go full time into something before

they have anything developed or any

customers or anything else or

people mortgaging their house and like

doing like really like

extreme risk yeah

it's so much easier for me

and me too and and not with great

results

all the time

so uh i think it makes a lot of sense to

step into something slowly and then

build as you grow confident yeah um

tell me more about the journey at the

start so say the first year of consent

labs what did the work look like for

yourself yeah

so the first year joyce and i really

spent

making sure that there was a need for

our product so

we had an idea that consent education

was really important but

you know acknowledging that joyce and i

went to the same high school we

um had similar friends we both identify

as asian like we sort of fit a similar

mold and that

you know the population of australia is

incredibly diverse

just establishing that there was

actually a need for better consent

education

and taking a look at what the market

looked like at that time so

was consent education already being

delivered by someone were they doing it

really well and maybe that meant that um

you know we wouldn't have to start

something from scratch maybe we could

support someone or let them do their own

thing

but the answer

to that research was yes consent

education is needed and no there's no

one else currently doing it so that

really established okay this is

why we exist and that's why we're going

to dedicate our time to this

um

and apart from that like the first year

was

networking

meeting people who

worked in education or who worked in

sexual health so experts that sort of

like had some sort of degree of

knowledge or

relation to

the field that we wanted to work in

um

and just getting their thoughts like

do you think this is needed

how would you best approach this who

else should we talk to

how should we go about this

yeah

um

in looking around

when you didn't see other providers of

this

i've seen some people say that not

seeing other people work in a certain

market is a sign that you shouldn't

enter that market

that

other people are not paying for

something already so how how are you

generating that demand at the start yeah

um was there any concern in your mind

that okay this doesn't exist maybe i

can't do this

i mean a little bit um

to a certain degree

i mean external providers exist in the

high school space you get external

providers for

every single niche whether it's like

career advisors or a speaker on

um bullying or cyber bullying so it's

not like

that adjacent space doesn't exist there

just wasn't anyone working directly in

the field of consent education

and the reason for that was because

it was taboo it was risky like schools

didn't want to be engaging in these

risky conversations with high school

students and so

that was definitely

a bit of

a leap of faith or we had to take a leap

of faith to

you know hope that schools would want to

have those conversations one day um

but

the need in terms of from young people

was so clear we hoped that schools

couldn't ignore that and so we decided

to continue on

well that's the thing i think if you are

if you are the target market in some

ways for

for this to the extent that you can

represent the demographics that you are

yeah um

and you see okay there's a changing kind

of social desire for this kind of

training it's more acceptable to be done

inside of schools where previously it

might have been taboo yeah and there's

providers out there this is a proven

model of getting something needed

quickly into schools that can't be done

through curriculum

that sounds

pretty perfect

yeah like there was a relative framework

there um and that was i think good

enough for us at the time okay

um again uh i'd be terrified to try and

develop this kind of

program how did you go about developing

what you ended up offering i mean i was

terrified as well to be honest um it is

a really big topic and so we spent a lot

of time

researching and educating ourselves

acknowledging that i also didn't get

consent education when i was in high

school so i also had to start from

scratch

but we place a lot of stock in being

evidence-based and being grouded in

research

so you know doing that research

ourselves making sure that we have

connections to people who have expertise

in these fields so whether they have

you know a relevant legal degree or

whether they work in education or they

work in sexual assault services making

sure that

we had those relationships

with the relevant experts that was

really important to us

um

but also leveraging

our lived experience as you were saying

we represent this demographic that we

want to be speaking to so we know really

intimately we are best placed to answer

the questions that they have and know

what questions they have

so that's where we sort of started what

are the questions that we had when we

were in high school what would we want

answered um

and then

building on that with

tons of evidence and research

okay

that's a nice way to develop that of

just finding a lot of people and then

using your own filters to figure out

who's worth paying attention to and not

yeah

did you find

of sorting through all the advice and

guidance from different people difficult

in any way

definitely i mean especially initially

we were reaching out to so many people

to get their thoughts on

our approach to this program and we even

had one person

um say to us

don't do this this is going to be

harmful like you'll do more harm than

good i hope you're watching

which honestly really shook us because

our intent was

never to do harm and we were always

really conscious that you know this is a

really sensitive field this is a really

sensitive topic and there is

opportunity to do harm as opposed to

doing good um but i think

that caution was

actually really good because it just

meant that

everything we put out into the market we

backed 100 because

we had done the research we'd had

experts look over it as well and given

their endorsement or vetted it um so

we're more than comfortable for it to go

out but i think in terms of

knowing

what advice to take

i think it always comes back to

knowing your values and knowing your why

so

we consent labs exists for the

empowerment of young people and

that's why we exist so whenever we get a

piece of advice and we wonder

do we take this into account or do we

not

it's always

measuring it against that why like will

it help us

achieve our mission and our purpose or

will it lead us further away from it

like that's the sort of question that we

always ask ourselves

and

it must have been hard like the first

time someone says something like that

and this

over time you figure out or i figured

out in the thing that i did that if you

reach enough people you reach all the

idiots and sooner or later there's a

couple that you learn to deal with but

um if you're if that person was here

today how would you respond to their

concern

because that must be something you run

into in dealing with a lot of schools

every now and then there's someone that

just thinks oh that's a bit too scary

yeah definitely i mean i again it comes

back to the research and the evidence

base like there is so much

research done globally around respect

for relationships education that

clearly shows that there's a need for it

if you teach a child

consent and respectful relationships

education they're actually going to

engage in sex at a later age as compared

to if you don't give them sex ed and

when they do they won't take as many

risks because they're better informed

and so it's always coming back to that

research which you can't really argue

with whenever someone

um

is misinformed or they don't believe in

your product so yeah that's sort of how

we tackle that okay yeah that's uh i'm

seeing your sales process now that's

covering all the bases yeah

um okay so we'll get to how it's going

at the moment but i'm looking forward to

that if there was a secret recipe to the

early success of consent labs

uh what would the ingredients be

i would say

having a

co-founder is

definitely helpful i

can't have imagined doing this without

joyce or doing this without myself

having someone as

that sounding board someone that you can

bounce ideas around with someone that

you can

check your values against or your

decisions against is

like incredibly helpful as well it's

just from a motivation point of view um

as we were saying before i was working

full-time for

like three years bef while we were

developing consent labs and

the last thing that you want to do at

the end of the day is come home and

write content or respond to emails but

being able to do that alongside someone

who makes it fun um

is the secret source i would say okay so

start a company with joyce yep started

exactly

exactly

joyce can do it all

but no that's

it's a lonely kind of thing to do like

when you're trying to figure out a lot

of different things and like you're

figuring out literally everything you

need to do what you're trying to do yeah

to have someone else to keep the

motivation up and to share those kind of

jobs yeah exactly i think sharing the

jobs is a really big help like joyce and

i have very complementary skill sets um

we have different strengths different

weaknesses so something that i like

doing she doesn't like doing and that

works for us which is really really

handy

so yeah having someone that

you work well with and that you can be

honest with you share the same values is

really important and

yeah that was incredibly helpful okay

uh i know you're a not-for-profit yes uh

why did you choose that model

it just made sense for us the way that

we operated as a business as an

organization was

always very values driven it was always

wanting to ensure that consent education

was accessible for

every single australian whether you're

in a government school whether you are

regional or rural

it was always about ensuring that

consent education was accessible it

wasn't about making money

and so

we fit

the the purpose the definition of a

not-for-profit and i think it comes with

a lot of

prestige good reputation um and so we

thought um

that we would register yeah and it's

nice to keep things on track as well

yeah

yeah um what do you mean by that oh

that's not sorry that probably didn't

make sense on the side today uh because

by saying we are a not-for-profit that's

doing x and we exist these objects that

um

the permanence that that can give

something because while you're there and

while choice is there it's going to keep

doing what it's doing yeah but in a

company structure that says we are going

to do this hopefully that persists as

well

and other people can know they're

joining something that's just trying to

solve this problem exactly i think it

gives

everyone a really clear

purpose a really clear mission and as i

was saying before

that is really important to us like

whenever we are making a decision about

you know what

market do we want to go after what

decision do we want to make it's always

measured against our mission um so yeah

it felt really natural for us to be a

not-for-profit we weren't really

changing our mode of operations or the

way that we worked

okay makes sense

okay uh it's been five years uh since

you started uh what does consent labs

look like today

consent labs

has reached over 10 000 students in

australia in 2021

across six different states and

territories which was

way more of an impact than i

ever really let myself believe like 10

000 is a lot of people

and

we are now a team of about 50 or 60

people which is honestly mind-blowing i

can't believe that

this many young people

care about consent and want to work with

me it's just crazy

gracie's is the wrong word

but it's just nice to see it hitting

that kind of scale that's incredible um

it's uh and in five years as well that

might sound like a decent amount of time

but like to grow to that scale in a

education market like australia that's

incredible yeah and i mean i think the

craziest thing about it is that growth

really only happened

over the last year and a half um

we grew

really fast it was like very slow and

just joyce in myself for a very long

time and then it sort of

just spiked um

but

i only see that continuing really like

10 000 students is nowhere near the

amount of students in australia and

every single one of them need consent

education so

um

onwards and upwards

i was going to ask what the future looks

like but it sounds pretty clear yeah so

being able to reach more students is

our overarching goal but like i was

saying before being able to make sure

that consent education is accessible and

it's also really tailored so right now

we deliver to

you know mainstream high schools but

our goal for the next few years is being

able to reach more regional and

real-world students who don't get this

sort of education

being able to deliver education programs

that are tailored to

at-risk groups so for example people

with intellectual disabilities making

sure that a program that is

really relevant and tailored to them

is really important so

yeah ensuring that consent education is

accessible for every single group in

australia is

our goal

current

okay so everyone everyone watching this

video needs uh i think to think about

how they can help that to happen

um what are the helpful things that

people can do

or might be able to do at home

i mean as i was saying we're always

looking to reach more students but we

also deliver to parents and to teachers

they're really important stakeholders in

a young person's life and how they

understand you know relationships in the

world and i think they also really need

to be empowered in consent education so

if you

fit in that bill so if you're a young

person if you're a parent or if you're a

teacher um

come to consent labs you can receive

some consent education um

but yeah i think it's really about you

know being able to reach more young

people that's ultimately what we want to

do okay so this search for consent labs

or hit the link in the bottom of this

video yeah um

tell

your school yep tell teachers you know

tell

your uni

yeah yeah

uh we'll tell uts i'm sure uts is

already doing it but we'll make sure we

spread it around too i think it's

compared to that person

the idiot from four years ago that was

saying oh what what if this or what if

that when you have 10 000 people a year

going through this and having great

experiences that's a much easier thing

to spread around yeah yeah definitely

i think your next couple of years are

gonna be ridiculous i hope so

which brings me to uh my last couple of

questions

um

that is incredible uh but what does it

look like for yourself uh as an

entrepreneur now what is the last five

years as an entrepreneur done to you

i think it's taught me a lot about

self-belief and being able to value

myself

you know being able to

[Music]

build something from scratch being able

to

pitch and sell to customers was a really

steep learning curve i'm not naturally

someone who likes to put myself out

there

and

joyce and i really struggled with being

able to

value or to price our program i think we

started

um

at something ridiculous like two dollars

a student or something like that which

is not feasible at all um

but it was a learning curve like you you

learn from

every single experience every single

meeting you have or every single pitch

you have

um

and

like as a result i think your

self-belief sort of improves or

increases

yeah

i always used to feel like

i didn't know what i was trying to do at

every single point as an entrepreneur

definitely definitely there were so many

points where yeah you question yourself

like am i the right person to do this

are we making the right move

is this the right decision

but i think

again having that co-founder there is

always really helpful to be able to

like be your cheerleading squad when you

need that or be able to go into

big pitch meetings together and tackle

that um

with someone else is really really

helpful mm-hmm well you're obviously the

right person to run this company

but it takes a while to realize it does

it's been interesting in what you've

done that everything has been consistent

yeah like you started for a reason yeah

you've grown being consistent with that

reason and now you can look around and

see that reason being achieved

all over the place

do you think that was uh if you could go

back and talk to yourself from five

years ago

um

maybe you don't need to reinforce that

maybe that's something that

was already

in you as a person but

um for other entrepreneurs out there do

you think that's advice they need to

take

yeah i think knowing your why is

the most important piece it's

what is going to sustain you when there

are challenging times or when you're not

sure or when you're not sure of the

decision that you're making i think

always coming back to your why and being

really clear on that is your saving

grace that is what is going to

like lead you through all of that doubt

or even all of that self-doubt um

and also surrounding yourself with a

team who

also really believe in that why and

being able to lean on um a really

diverse team of diverse skill sets but

also diverse people who yeah like i said

all believe in that same why and are

working towards that mission with you

okay sounds pretty good

and

like not to rubbish banks or anything

but a a career stuck in a bank kind of

working up the things compared to

learning everything yeah proving you can

do everything

uh

being driven by a mission that you care

about a lot and now seeing 10 000 people

last year and god knows how many this

year and in the years ahead have what

you didn't have and what i didn't have

that sounds pretty good yeah it's pretty

surreal it is honestly pretty surreal

that i find myself

sitting here with you and talking about

all the achievements that we've had with

consent labs and the growth that we see

with consent labs

but yeah it all really does come back to

that why and

you know wanting something better for

the next generation of young people

okay cool

so think about your why well a person

watching this video after you tell

everyone you know about consent labs uh

let's google it it will follow the link

below uh angie thank you so much for

joining me today uh that's been

incredible and i look forward to seeing

everything that consent labs does from

here it's going to be amazing um

because it's been amazing every step of

the way along uh for the last five years

so uh thank you for doing it and i look

forward to seeing what's coming up

thanks so much murray it's been so much

fun thank you

okay and

we are live

okay uh welcome to the first live stream

from uts startup central uh

i'm scared

uh

i'm nervous uh i'm checking that my

microphone is on okay

we're all lined up this has been years

in the making to actually have an event

space where you can have good stuff

happening and people can actually see it

i've run a lot of event spaces and it's

nice to have 50 people in a room 100

people in a room

but seeing really good content in those

things and then thinking okay this could

help a whole lot more people that it

doesn't get to

is what this space is meant to fix so if

you're watching at home thank you very

much you're part of that uh hopefully

you can hear me okay uh we'll see how we

go so

uh i'm murray hubs director of

entrepreneurship for uts uh

this session is about entrepreneurial

confessions so entrepreneurs that i

respect a lot uh that's talking about

what they actually did what they

actually got uh so that other people

starting out have a chance of actually

starting out well as well

um

crypto spend

yes it's freaking amazing

okay so

it genuinely is um

you look at banks in australia maybe

especially in australia but all around

the world and you think okay these are

things that have to exist uh we have to

and have always existed

and then i see crypto spend and think

maybe they don't have to exist um and

obviously crypto by itself is an enabler

of that but you've managed to make that

something i can use every single day

in a way that blows my mind so

i've kind of spoiled your introduction

but do you want to talk for a second

about what crypto spend actually is yeah

absolutely so crypto spend is the bridge

between traditional finance and

cryptocurrencies

so what my co-founder andrew and i set

out to do is make cryptocurrencies easy

to understand uh to make them spendable

crypto spend and really just kind of

make this a one-stop shop for all things

crypto

okay beautiful

so that sounds good but uh so you

started in 2018 yup who were you both

before starting cryptospan so

we were both uni students um

i was working at the iconic in a

warehouse

and i was doing a double degree here at

uts

and

i was working at westpac as an i.t

trainer and i was studying it

in business and data analytics

hang on so working studying

launching a startup

the joys of life at the same time is

sleeping

[Laughter]

what are your earliest memories of the

crypto spend idea

so it basically started when

during the 2017 bull run so krypto in

2017 had had a bit of a ball run

um

and i was sort of playing around with

her trading

trading different coins

and it sort of just occurred to me that

crypto is like more of a commodity

rather than the currency right and

because

i'm sort of sort of tech

bit tech savvy right so it came sort of

naturally to me but then a lot of people

it doesn't really come natural too right

so

i thought there's nothing really out

there that makes this

easy

and usable and brings it to the real

world because then a lot of people

well at that time even now actually

people were like oh it's just fake

internet money right but then now

fast forward to now you're able to use

it on a card just like you are normal

money

okay

so

it's it's one thing to have that as an

idea like raise your hand if you had

crypto at any point

okay raise your hand if you wish you had

crypto in like 2013 yeah

yeah

but everyone thinks okay

it would be nice to spend that what

triggers you both to start thinking i'm

actually going to do something about

this

um

well

i've always been

oh actually we both have been people

that just like to

do things and sort of make things and

make things happen right so then

i just kept thinking about it and you

know it was always in the back of my

mind i just just thought to myself

why don't i do anything why don't i do

something about this

and

this was actually when uts startups was

just sort of just at the beginning

um and then shortly after i got this

idea and started networking a bit i met

richard actually at uni in the uni class

in an i.t class yeah and we hit it off

really well we became good friends

and um

i think the teacher actually asked does

anyone have any startup part of the

startup idea yeah

this is yeah back in 2018.

and i put my hand up and told her about

it and that really got rich's attention

and talked to andrew after class yeah um

and then we caught up a few times and

i asked andrew how's it going he said

yeah just networking around at the

moment and i said i want in that's it it

wasn't as simple as that but that's the

long story short long story short that's

that's sort of how it went but it's

interesting like just talking about an

idea

like everyone the first time they talk

about an idea is like i have this like

bad idea don't tell anyone blah blah

blah but then you talk about it some

more other people give you a response

some feedback you kind of tweak the idea

a little bit you get more confident if

people are responding well

do you think talking to other people

about it was part of that commitment you

ended up making

um

yes but looking back on it

people aren't

going to tell you to your face that it's

a bad idea right especially if you tell

them it's your idea and it's family

and close friends family

feelings yeah or even someone that

you've just met right if you just ask

them the idea that

what's in it for them to get on like

make you upset right there's there's

nothing really in it for them right even

back in 2018 they didn't have people

saying no you're nuts

we did right

then you're gonna get a skewed response

right because especially if you're going

to people telling them it's your idea

right yeah but then

looking back right you're probably

better off saying to someone oh this is

this is someone i know's idea what do

you think of it right don't tell me it's

your idea because they're not scared to

tell you how they really think yeah i

like that right that's a

a way of getting true opinions that's

that's good

um

the

why did you think this was worth

pursuing like it's one thing to think

okay

i know this is a need but did you think

it was going to be something big or did

you just want to solve your own problems

i think

having something for yourself having

something for your own

is really fulfilling

um i think andrew and i both like to

innovate we both like to create and we

both like to

um

you know

kind of work on something that is our

own

uh i think that's something that really

started it for us is that you know we

had a vision we had a goal and

it's a matter of okay where do we start

with this how do we make this happen and

then just based off our personalities

and how well we got along with each

other um you know

it was like dominoes and as the dominoes

fell you might run into roadblocks but

you know as long as you can have that

perseverance and that resilience to keep

going um yeah you just you find your way

okay well take me back there so the

first year of crypto spend

what were you actually doing

it was a lot of finding out what we

needed to do to execute on the vision

yeah yeah uh rich rich was the only one

with

uh

sort of

he had a bit of a

banking background right works he worked

at westpac

and i did it so richard richard had a

few connections that turned out to be

quite useful

um

and

i suppose

what would you say it's more about

building the foundations of the business

really discovering and getting an idea

of what it's going to be about

um

because you know you have to set up an

abn you have to set up a logo a company

name you've got to do all these things

which actually take a lot more time than

you think especially if you've never

done it before then you have to think

about you know certain

legal things particularly for us

um you had to go into the legal side you

had to go into what do i actually need

to make this work

do i need money or can i just bootstrap

the idea until it's profitable so you

know it's figuring out all these things

in that first year that are really

crucial for the business

so yeah it's the business side and then

the tech side as well so

um

richard moore works on sort of the

business operations side

and i sort of work more around the tech

side so

implementing skills yeah complementing

skills pretty much um we've got we've

got a couple people in the team that

have you know have really helped us

achieve that

um

particularly in the early stages as well

and

yeah just getting the right people

together and the right team is really

integral okay so

did you feel like you knew what you were

doing

or did it feel like every time you're

figuring out the next thing and just

constantly learning as you do i feel

like there were times where we pretended

to know what we were doing when we had

no idea what we were doing

like you just you head into a head first

and then suddenly you go i actually have

no idea what to do here so there's been

a lot of late nights staying up really

researching and discovering what we

needed to know to execute on the idea

yeah yeah so figuring out

know your customer anti-money laundering

yeah yeah a lot of compliance a lot in

regulation a lot in

yeah kyc

we've had front and back um we've got a

good legal team behind us as well that's

done a uh it's done our policy so we

make sure we're compliant

um

but yeah back in the early stages just

as starting up i feel like a lot of it

is feeling your way

but a lot of people that look at this

kind of company and say

i need people with a banking background

or whatever to get this done do you

think like having a smaller banking

background was a useful thing in

pursuing this

so you were less kind of scared of what

you didn't know or couldn't do

not necessarily i'd say

it was more my age you know i was still

very young and naive

so you know i had i was a lot more risky

with what i did and and what i kind of

wanted to do

which is kind of the perfect opportunity

to get into a startup in general never

mind a startup like this which was in

that finance sector

yeah okay yeah i think being younger is

a wonderful thing

um because you just figure out a whole

bunch of reasons not to do stuff as you

get older for your given reasons yeah um

that's uh

and

we see this in uts startups all the time

that like the gender ratio is a lot

better in the people that we're

supporting um the diversity of people

that we support is a lot better than the

general population of people it's

a wonderful thing to start these

companies when you're younger and

fearless and able to do things that

people older find reasons not to do um

yeah yeah definitely agree especially

when

there's it's not just the age factor as

well but

as in when you get older you become you

take less risks there's a reason for

that when you're younger right you don't

generally

um

you're still under your parents roof

you don't have a mortgage to take care

of so you can sort of

live with not much money

you're probably not married or have any

kids right so then

when you're older

and you go and take these risks and you

quit your day job and you start working

on you know you're also risking your

your partner your kids

your house your house that's but then

we're breathing down each other's necks

all the time for him and we are back

okay

uh we will

download and re-upload this with that

part cut out but

uh thank you people watching we still

have people watching uh hang in there

for that drop out okay where was i

um

i'm going to ask a couple of questions

to start to finish up and then we'll

throw to audience questions properly but

thank you very much for hanging in there

um

enabling technologies uh like i like

entrepreneurship but i like tech enabled

entrepreneurship more

like this because of what it enables and

like exhibit a

what kind of technologies have enabled

what you're doing now

and and why therefore is it the right

time to be doing this

so

uh enabling tech is obviously

um

cryptocurrency itself so we actually are

based on chain so then

people can deposit funds from external

they don't have to buy crypto from us so

they can deposit bitcoin for example

onto crypto spend so then we are

basically plugged into the blockchain

ourselves

um

for the cryptos that we support

and we can basically see on train when

someone's deposited right and sends

crypto out as well so it's basically a

full functioning

crypto wallet

and

that's just basically what links to the

card in terms of other enabling

technologies cloud we're based on aws um

everything's everything's serverless

so we've got very high ability

very high availability

and a really good ability to

make a modular so every everything

part of the app and the platform has a

component

so

if we need to work on something

we can we don't have to take the whole

system offline right we can just change

that part quickly

without taking the rest of the platform

down that's

a lot of older companies are you know

monoliths right so then whenever they

have maintenance they take down the

whole platform but with us we don't need

to do that yeah okay i think it's also

with third-party uh technologies as well

so

you know recent advancements in kyc and

or know your customer

uh certainly allow us to build a more

robust

easy

product

for customers to use well like for

example um

facial recognition we use that with one

of our partners

for kyc

and fraud prevention so then basically

when you kyc for the app it will make

you uh take a selfie and then it matches

that selfie with your

id

and then it does that to make sure that

you haven't stolen someone else's id and

try to pretend as them

and it'll also detect if you're taking a

photo of a screen if you're taking a

photo of

um

of actually a photo of someone or trying

to upload a photo from the camera you

can't do that either right so then it's

got like a liveness test

so then that sort of reduces our fraud

as well because that's the thing like

crypto's been around for as long as it

has but it's things like that that

enable you to do this more easily now

when before it would be a nightmare yeah

and and of course we have to remain

compliant right so then these are the

sort of things that's why you're you're

mainly seeing

these sort of cards come out now because

the court the the tech behind crypto

uh has just caught up to

what you needed to be to be regular uh

to be regulated by off track with uh

anti-money laundering and counter

terrorism financing okay interesting so

the regulatory side of things the timing

is kind of good in terms of them being

open to this kind of thing and the

technology side to address the

regulation particularly in australia but

also all around the world correct we

started this in 2018 the tech the

regulation and the compliance has all

kind of moved in conjunction

to allow us to kind of both pivot but

also launch the products that we have

the way that we have

so you know when we initially set out

with the initial vision of having this

crypto card program

we couldn't do it based on

you know the tech that was available to

us but also the regulation and

compliance behind it all

uh you know we couldn't find anyone to

help us with this so the more that

that's evolved and grown

and the fact that we've been able to

grow and adapt with it has given us the

opportunities that we needed to to come

out with our cryptocurrency okay

beautiful so

on that point

uh you're four years in

uh what does crypto spend look like

today

so where we started two kids in the

university class

uh where we are today we are a

functioning crypto app which allow our

users to buy crypto

um

send crypto in and out so it functions

as a crypto wallet

uh we're plugged into the new payments

platform or npp so it allows our users

to cash out to their psp and account

number pay id or pay their bpay bills

instantly

and as well as that we have our crypto

spend visa card

so we launched this late last year which

we're very happy about

this kind of means a lot to us because

this was our initial vision

so yeah that's where we are today um and

you know we got lots of lots of plans

for the future as well

and like crazy adoption

like the numbers of new people signing

up and getting their own credit cards

with yourself um in the short time

they've actually been live with it has

been kind of ridiculous yeah in the in

the thousands for sure and and it's

really great to see this adoption um

from not only people who own crypto but

people who are curious about crypto

people who want to get involved with

crypto and that's another thing that

we've really wanted to position

ourselves as is being able to educate

those who don't know much about crypto

and kind of make them more comfortable

with crypto uh get more involved with

crypto uh and you know just the

education piece around it as well

yeah

uh can i throw a curveball at you

because crypto means a lot of things to

a lot of people yep and

if you just say crypto people might

think of positive things or negative

things yeah definitely

how do you talk about this to people

like that that think about the negative

sides of crypto

i mean it depends on what they're

talking about in terms of negative right

you know a lot of people will come out

and say oh cryptos used by

uh drug dealers on the dark net right

but in actual reality it's not i think

there was less than uh it was a 0.1

i'm not sure the exact number but it's a

very low amount of transactions that

uh happen with that right cash is

actually

a higher proportion than actually

yeah right

so um

that's what i would say back to that you

know that's one of the negatives that i

could think of just off the top of my

head what else energy consumption

yeah again i think it comes into

how educated people are around not only

crypto in general but the different

types of cryptocurrencies that there are

you know different cryptocurrencies

serve different purposes

so you know you'll find something like

ethereum serves a completely different

purpose to bitcoin and xrp serves a

completely different purpose to solana

for example so it's being educated

around not only crypto in general but

what these cryptocurrencies can do and

the sorts of things that they can

facilitate which you know when people do

get educated about this

you know you'll find that a lot of

people

first will become more open to it

uh but also kind of like

what this kind of technology is doing

and and how it's coming into a

kind of everyday market but

it's it's it's still it's still an

emerging emerging industry it's emerging

technology there's no doubt about it

it's only 11 years old pretty much

um

just to talk about what you said before

about electricity

um

f 2.0 that coming out so it's moving

from a proof of work model to a

proof-of-stake model

which basically means it's going to use

a lot less power than it's using now and

it's going to become a whole lot more

efficient we're talking about

many times more efficient and faster

than what it actually is which means the

transactions are actually end up being

cheaper

and using less power so rather than

getting

computers to solve complex algorithms to

actually

verify that

that transaction

it's using people that are staking

ethereum right to actually become

validators so that they don't have to

show proof of work but then they can

still validate those transactions for

much less power and then it ends up

being much cheaper much faster more

efficient that's the thing i think you

and you know this you have an education

part to play in showing people like this

is a new technology relatively there's

going to be good and bad things to it

you might have heard this or this but

the real truth is this and this

and for me when i see like every second

uh uts student with a crypto wallet

uh it makes me think okay there's

something to this that they want

something different uh the banks need

competition um you are able to do things

with this you just can't do in

traditional uh kind of transactions so

that's exciting to me and people just

need to understand that a bit better

yeah that's right yeah

okay last question um

entrepreneurship and its impact on you

so that's crypto has been today but for

yourselves as entrepreneurs uh what's

changed in you over the last four years

i think

well i can speak for the both of us i

know for a fact

resilience right

as as you

um

move along your startup journey you're

going to get knocked down there's no

doubt about it absolutely no doubt about

it

you're going to get naysayers

not that i'm saying you shouldn't listen

to some constructive feedback but you're

gonna get knocked back many times and

sometimes hard right

but then it's the resilience that keeps

you going

and

the actual um

not being scared of failing as well

you're going to fail you're going to

fail

no matter which way

i mean this that card was our original

plan to come out with but then

we

when we started doing it in 2018 yeah it

it failed right so we thought let's get

back to this but for now let's pivot to

do something else and that's part of our

product offering today that's the

uh payout to mpp that richard spoke

about before yeah so

yeah we pivoted to that

um we got some users based on that

scale that up a little bit and then

released this out when the sort of

technology caught up with it

okay so

kind of starting something before you

knew all the stuff that was involved hit

the hurdles along the way

uh have a few chances to give up but

decide not to and then learn that okay

if i persist

in a sensible fashion

this can happen correct and now today

you're in a position no one else i know

is in in terms of rapidly growing

fintech user base uh and valuable user

base as well yeah

as how old are you now 20 24

24.

um feeling old

uh

but uh also excited for what you can do

uh over the rest of this it's going to

be ridiculous yeah awesome thanks martin

i appreciate it thanks murray no thank

you uh a little call out for people

watching at home uh if you had to ask

for anything uh would there be anything

that they might be able to help with uh

yeah look if you're interested in crypto

uh or you know you're looking for

another crypto app please give us a go

we're more than open to feedback we are

building this product for our customers

uh we want to build a great product for

our customers so if you download the app

give us a go

if you like it you like it if you don't

tell us how we can make it better

okay

beautiful

piece of cake uh cryptospend.com

or the search for crypto spend which

everyone does now

now

thanks for hanging in there on the

stream uh

what we're going to do now we're going

to pause the stream here for the really

juicy bit of this we'll do audience q a

you can ask like the really hard

questions that you guys don't want to

have recorded um if you're watching at

home want to see that part of these

recordings is come and join us each

friday afternoon at 3 30 at uts startup

central um and you get to see the really

juicy parts of what we do but

thank you very much guys for joining us

thanks for having us thanks cool

hello

i'm murray herbs uh director of

entrepreneurship for uts

at uts we have a program called uts

startups which is about inspiring and

supporting technology enabled

entrepreneurs

on this channel you will see

entrepreneurial confessions so people

that are talking about what actually

enabled them what they actually did what

they actually got

you'll see tips from people that have

worked with a lot of entrepreneurs about

what uh was helpful uh what might be

helpful to you

uh you'll see workshops from different

parts of uts about uh entrepreneurial

topics

so basically

if you're thinking about being an

entrepreneur hit subscribe uh and i

think you'll like what you see

but

today i'm so excited

you're excited yeah really excited okay

let's see how we go

vanuji

is one of my favorite people uh and

honestly

with a company called kindershare

which i'm not gonna explain in too much

detail because i think the story uh

makes it interesting over time

i'll start with background

who were you before starting kindershed

so i was always someone who was

interested in technology but

had always only ever considered a hobby

you know we had a computer when i was

quite young i think

in the 80s we might have had a computer

at home

you had to type in your little code into

dos to get things working

but it was never something that i took

seriously because numbers was always my

thing i loved numbers in every form um

studied to be an actuary for a few years

but realized i liked talking to people

so i sort of converted to a finance

degree spent many years in corporate

restructuring which was a lot of fun

until i didn't like it anymore and

worked for a charity for many many years

in their finance team so helping

counsellors and social workers

understand numbers so i liked teaching

people things i loved analyzing numbers

that was me um got to a stage in my life

where i couldn't quite figure out if the

next move was going to be ceo or cfo

and so i enrolled in the social impact

degree here at uts

to try to figure out um what was going

sorry social enterprise degree um to

figure out what was going to be the next

step and hopefully have that

lead my journey somewhat okay cool

so

that sounds

wonderful

what

literally wonderful it's it's hard to

and i think this is something a lot of

people get into you get on a career path

and it gets better and better and better

what are your first memories of the

kinder share idea

i it wasn't conscious at the time but

when lori my oldest was four or five

months old we were traveling to

melbourne to meet

um to do a test trip before we went

overseas with her for the first time and

we needed a way to take her pram with us

down to melbourne and i was looking on

gumtree for a secondhand pram bag or

something we could

buy found someone renting a um pram bag

on there so i drove over picked it up

and

got that and i thought okay that was

cool nice and easy sorted don't have to

worry about prime bags anymore there's

one there to rent whenever i need one

that was

and at the time i remember thinking oh i

wonder how much money this guy makes um

you know accountant brain always goes to

utilizing under

under utilized assets monetizing them

things like that

but i think i just parked that and

didn't really think about it until i was

doing a subject here at uts called

business models and part of that was to

do a business model canvas the

assignment was do a business model

canvas on a business idea that you've

come up with which is a problem in your

own life

um

and that was really the

start point of kindershare we had a

house full of stuff

as anyone with parent anyone with young

kids knows you just

keep accumulating stuff and at the time

we couldn't figure out are we gonna have

number three or are we gonna just stay

with two kids

um

and so i thought okay let's figure out

okay take that guy's idea from gumtree

and try to figure out how i could

make use of it okay beautiful

the events are my next question which

was

about understanding the opportunity and

how you saw this to be worth pursuing i

think the accounting background sounded

wonderful

in understanding okay there's this

market

looks like this in terms of how you

could realize it

uh the accounting background yeah useful

but

is sometimes the opposite of useful

you're so used to overthinking over

justifying every single decision you

make before you actually make the

decision

there's a bias towards

analysis rather than action when you're

an accountant um so that i think

hindered me rather than helping me in

the early days

um

the opportunity was possibly a lot

bigger than i

sorry was possibly a lot smaller than i

thought it was

i i can't even remember what number i

put on my assignment but i thought you

know market opportunity is some massive

number actually the more and more we got

into it we realized no there's only

certain types of people that want to

rent and there's psychological barriers

um that we weren't necessarily

aware of when we were putting

this whole big plan together in the

early days

do you think not realising those things

was helpful in motivating you to start

good question um

yes i think if i knew how difficult it

was going to be it probably might have

stopped me um if i knew how long it was

going to take before we broke even

my accountant brain would have said

definitely no whereas now i know no

business makes money for a very long

time

um

and that's the new reality it's not the

old reality of you open a shop front and

you're making money on the second day so

yeah i feel like i'm sure your kids are

wonderful and my kids are wonderful but

uh if i knew what i was getting into uh

that might give me a second thoughts but

once you're committed to something they

turn out to be incredible

i think entrepreneurship ends up being

very similar that uh people uh maybe

don't need to know everything before

they start or they might get scared out

of it

yeah but you know taking your kids

example

um someone said to us before our first

one was born you know it's the highest

of highs but it's the lowest of lows and

so you accept the lows because you know

that those highs are something you don't

get anywhere else so

yeah true

there are good ideas everywhere yep uh

what enabled you to

put the effort in that was needed for

kindergarten start to develop

uh technology enabled or do you mean

other supports around me uh

in terms of your own time and

what enabled you to put the effort in

okay so um i guess step one credit where

it's due husband who said yeah i think

you should give this a go

i tend to give him we both actually tend

to swap our reports or assignments or

anything else just to do a final clean

read and he read the fine final version

of the assignment he said oh i actually

think you should give this a go um and

that sort of encouragement and no

questions asked i guess

um support good in a way bad

boys

very useful having support a family so

that when there were pitch events and

things like that to go to that people

would step in with babysitting

they're very base level supports that

you don't think about but are absolutely

necessary to be able to start a business

definitely

um

so

what did that journey look like at the

start what are your earliest memories of

starting to actually say i'm going to do

this

what did you do

um

trying to figure out how to do it

was really

a

really difficult first step we um again

this accounting mindset really did not

help

and so working with one of the lecturers

here who at the time was running a

program similar to the d-school program

from the u.s

really helped to change my mindset

around it's like don't worry about the

technology don't worry about a website

working or not working just go out there

and try to make your first sale i was

like no no i can't make a sale i don't

have anything pretty to show them it

doesn't matter this i think that was

that in itself was such a big enabler to

just change my mindset and then of

course we launched with a um

off-the-shelf uh marketplace software

that we're still using now we've

upgraded versions a few times but um

just trying to find that technology

trying to figure out okay how do we

accept credit card payments is that

something that we have to go to the bank

for looked around found stripe which you

know is everywhere now but at the time

was still

fairly new trying to figure out all

these other technologies that were i

guess well known in the tech sector but

not well known outside of the tech

sector um yeah

i love that kind of stuff that enabling

technologies that

people don't know about until there's a

lot of people using them and to be early

adopters of things is a massive

advantage yeah for sure i mean even

things like you know we were thinking

okay we've got to build this software

from scratch about connecting

marketplaces and things like that you

know how do you connect two sides get

money from one person to another and you

think okay that must be so

easy because they'll just pay into your

bank account and then

you'll pay the money out of their bank

account but then that takes time and

effort to do that every single day no

one's going to do that you need to have

these automated technologies ready to go

and chargebacks and

people disputing things and all the

again things you probably

wouldn't have wanted to think about

before i started i had some awareness of

those issues and again this is like the

curse of knowledge right i knew that

chargebacks are an issue so i was about

how do we over engineer our terms and

conditions so that we can minimize the

risk of chargebacks and all of these

sorts of things so yeah

okay so

i'm getting kind of marketplace

software and as an enabler they're kind

of payment processing as an enabler uh

your background

can i ask this a different way if there

was a kind of recipe for your early

success

what would the critical critical

ingredients be critical ingredients was

talking to people that was absolutely

number one i'm not a marketer i'm not

someone that likes to go out there and

show myself off too much

so that was

but i do love talking to people and

someone said to me okay i need you to go

back again this lecturer said to me i

would need you to go and walk around to

some of the playgrounds in your area

look for parents with prams and have a

chat to them about the idea find out why

they'd use and find out why they

wouldn't use it

listening to people outside of my own

friends and family because your friends

and family always going to tell you what

you're doing is fantastic and it sounds

so interesting

talking to people that didn't know me

were

socially different to me and by socially

different i mean maybe income levels

lifestyle political views environmental

views all of these things were were

massive enablers for me um yeah talking

talking to people as much as possible

were there specific people that ended up

being very useful

yeah

the most useful were angry customers

angry customers were the most useful

people and you think i really you know

why would you talk to them they're so

angry at you but one of them said look

i'm going to take you to coffee and i'm

going to tell you everything that's

wrong with your website and we're

actually really good friends now you

know

we still catch up for lunch it was start

of a nice friendship and she did she

said this is what happened i was really

upset when this happened you didn't tell

me in advance that this was going to

happen

when i clicked here this didn't work and

that was frustrating and i'm just trying

to make a few dollars here to be a bit

of pocket money for me why can't you

just make it work and it was like oh

yeah okay

talk to your angry customers

this is the thing i remember losing so

much sleep sleep about uh particular

unhappy customers and because one really

unhappy person can ruin your life

so how did you balance that into the

opening yourself to a lot but not

ruining your life through this

taking it on yeah uh talk to anyone that

was sitting at uts startups in those

early days and they'll tell you how many

times i was sitting in the corner crying

[Laughter]

sorry sorry murray um but i mean that's

that's it the good thing was that being

in that environment

the people around you had experienced

that at different points are they say

like oh yeah we had this happen to us

once and it was the worst thing in the

world that happened and

this is what i did and you know

sometimes the answer is just go out and

have a few drinks and just don't work

for the rest of the day and then come

back fresh the next day yeah um

yeah so it's i mean that support around

me really did help

we've had some fantastic customers have

given us some wonderful praise

the problems we've managed to help

people with you know someone's

been you know had a newborn early

premature baby they've come home and are

looking for a breast pump or something

we've been able to get one to them

within two hours you know little stories

like that which have just been fantastic

have really really

helped with the buzz of running a

business

i want to hear more of those good

stories in a second yep

um

but i also want to get a couple of

confessions out of you to help other

people in what they're doing um

are there things about the early kind of

implementation or growth of kinder share

that you would not have have shared with

people at the time but looking back now

uh five years um you're okay with

sharing now yeah i mean absolutely that

gumtree story someone said okay stop

trying to sell your

brand stop trying to sell what you're

doing go down to the base problem what

is it

people need stuff but they don't can't

afford necessarily to pay

full price or they don't want to buy

brand new where are they looking they're

looking on gumtree

why aren't you on gumtree it was like

actually yeah that's where i first

experienced a rental was on gumtree so

why aren't i on gumtree and that was

that was it we listed every single

product we had

on gumtree

um and through that generated leads we

managed to over time set up a zap so

that it would auto respond and redirect

people to our website which saved us a

lot of time and money and you know

sitting there replying to each one one

by one but yeah little hacks go back to

the base problem where are they looking

for a solution to that problem today

that's where you need to be

okay i like that yeah

um

so it's been five years uh since kinder

share launched what does kinder share

look like today

kinder show almost entirely takes care

of itself now we have a wonderful

customer support team that deals with

99 of the issues that come up on a

day-to-day basis things like i can't

figure out how to do

x i can't someone wants to extend the

rental how do we do it helps them solve

those problems of course we try to

design that stuff

as easy as possible now but you know not

always the case our website is actually

up at 99 of the time whereas

there were weeks where um the website

would go down in the early days or

there was at one point i

bad accountant did not reconcile her

bank account for a month and realized no

payments had processed for a month and

so we had to call up people one by one

and say um do you mind transferring

money to

this debate

so um it looks very different um the

amount of time that we spend is

obviously all that i spend is obviously

a lot less um marketing we used to just

do a um

spray advertising and just

you know i've wasted so much money on

bad marketing that we should never have

done

um but at the time everyone was saying

oh you need to do this you need to do

this we don't like we we know which

channels work for us we focus our

attention on those channels and

um go through there and you know it's uh

yeah it's all of those things

having good partners having good advice

it's incredible to get it to that point

where it's able to be self-sustaining

um and you can work on the incremental

improvements rather than

buried in customer complaints

especially over a five-year time frame

that's uh it's incredible to get to this

point yeah um

so so that's the journey of kindershare

what's the journey for yourself

what do you look like today compared to

five years ago as a result of being an

entrepreneur

i've always been a confident person

that's not been an issue for me it's

just been more about oh actually

my a recognition or an understanding

that my skill set isn't limited to this

very

small layer of things i used to do it's

a broad skill set that can be applied

across

many businesses at many different stages

and things like that so

um

that's it someone who realizes that work

doesn't have to be

you know nine to five in a suit in the

office um

[Laughter]

now you can be on a street corner in

ultimo talking to a widow about uh

or you know i mean um

i sort of used that to then

kinship was getting to a stage where it

was taking care of itself

we had started looking at another

startup last year

just as covert hit so it really just

impacted our

ability to concentrate on

on anything really so that

startup sort of fizzled out but i now

work to um facilitate commercialization

for other entrepreneurs so i'm not

saying that the kinder share experience

was anything

um

amazing or that i was the world's best

entrepreneur or anything like that

um but it gave me just a little bit of

knowledge

together with all of the skills i built

before that to really come into this

commercialization role which i'm loving

loving

okay

this is the thing like

how much success would have made you

happy

like how much would you

need to see coming in and out and how

much kind of benefit to people would you

need to create for you to look at that

and not describe it in that way where it

could have been more successful

that kind of a passive genuine passive

income

that is helping yeah tens of thousands

of people to not have to buy

equipment for their children and then

throw it away or like this this kind of

treadmill of stuff that people get on

that's incredible

and only you would describe it in that

way

but i think also a lot of people out

there think the same way and they set

themselves up for either

this is going to be the next incredible

big thing and it's going to be worth the

risk that i'm taking or it's going to be

nothing

and they end up with nothing but there's

a middle ground yeah it's wonderful and

i'm more than happy to be sitting in

that middle ground um

you know early on lots of people saying

oh get out there and raise get out there

and raise and

the reality for me was that no that

imposed a level of

i don't want to say the word burden but

compliance

goals metrics

and i wasn't certain that i could

dedicate the time that was necessary to

get this to a multi-million dollar

business

and so i didn't want that and i didn't

take that path and i consciously chose

the path where

it's the passive income

that is helping people all across

australia

um rather than internationally you know

we're not there yet i'm not sure we will

um branch out but that's okay and i'm

perfectly happy with that decision we've

made

but

to a hundred percent of that as well

yeah uh to

like vcs will want either that massive

thing or nothing uh and if it gets to an

interesting exit level that they don't

want you to have that's not gonna end

well

um you have complete control now and it

every day you're continuing to learn

about the market and new opportunities

are coming along 100

um like our business was never going to

be a vc business we don't have the

metrics we don't have that

um uh

tam is not high enough for a vc

um

i don't know that's my back of the

envelope numbers uh so it wasn't

you know it's not like that was uh

opportunities lost that's not for me i

don't see it as that at all yeah that's

the kind of thing where i think early

stage vc definitely because they need

the moon shots or nothing but later

stage kind of private equity and other

ways of funding that further growth

definitely make more sense yeah so

it's a wonderful thing yeah

last question okay so looking back uh

yourself in 2016

what advice would you give yourself

before starting

don't overthink things

don't overthink things that's the number

one advice

i spent so much time overthinking

should this button be here or should it

be there should this logo be this shade

of red or that shade of red should this

be over here or over it doesn't matter

none of that matters the only thing that

matters is that we connect owners and

renters of baby equipment as long as

you're doing that connection that's all

that people care about

no one cares about what colors you have

or any of that other stuff so

yeah

that's that's my number one advice from

for day one later on that's a very

different story but for day one don't

overthink things get

let go of perfect

um

nothing is ever going to be perfect

sorry i said that was the last question

i'm gonna

like where did that come from for

yourself

why

what were the reasons for putting that

much work into getting the design

perfect and other parts perfect at the

start i'm an hd student murray

i did my second postgraduate degree with

a newborn um husband constantly overseas

and i still got an hd average that's

just me

i like everything to be perfect if i'm

doing it i like to do it right

it's um yeah that's where and it's i've

always been like that so it would make

me angry when things didn't work because

i just wasn't used to that

would you say there's a difference

between what you need from yourself and

what customers need to pay for something

yeah for sure

and customers don't care

they don't care this is

the thing that i realize more and more

every day people don't care

okay they care

about the important stuff and what you

consider is the important stuff is not

what your customers consider the

important stuff i see these people

agonizing over their logo or their

company name for months i just think who

cares don't care just do it just do it

okay except for that one person that's

going to be complaining on the forum

that person can care a lot and buy you

coffees and help along the way which was

yeah i mean that was worth its weight in

gold i was really happy she did that

okay

thank you very much thank you

that's incredible check out

kindershare.com

yep uh for all your baby needs uh

everyone knows someone that's having

babies or is dealing with children

themselves or something else this uh

kindershere.com

thank you so much for joining us today

and uh for people watching hit subscribe

uh to see more content like this hit

like if this has helped you

and join me in thanking vanuki thank you

thanks thank you thank you