Podcasts about tradegecko

Cameron Priest is the co-founder and former CEO of TradeGecko, an inventory and order management platform for e-commerce businesses that was acquired by Intuit in 2020 for around $100M. He's now building AMP, a company that acquires, rolls up, and scales Shopify apps - and incubating new ventures at the intersection of AI and vertical SaaS.In today's episode, we discuss:* Cam's journey from an NZ kiwifruit orchard to founding Trade Gecko, how they landed in Singapore.* Scaling a B2B product, including specific growth tools, frameworks they used along the way - so much of which is still relevant today, and eventual $80M+ acquisition by Intuit. * Building Amp and the strategy of acquiring "landing pad" businesses in the Shopify ecosystem, how - as acquirers - they assess, value, and execute an acquisition … including the use of debt, how to think about revenue multiples, etc.* The vision for a platform allowing businesses to build customized niche software* Reflections on ambition, the importance of a supportive ecosystem, and the potential for fostering innovation in New ZealandWhere to find Cam online:* https://x.com/cameronpriest* https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronpriest/Listen on:* Apple Podcasts* Spotify Subscribe for more expat stories every Friday! Think of someone who would enjoy this episode? Hit share and send it to them- or send them our way! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diaspora.nz

In the latest solo episode of the Happy Hustle Podcast, I dive into 24 AI tools that you can integrate into your business to streamline operations, enhance customer service, and boost productivity. Whether you're a small startup or a booming enterprise, these tools are game-changers. Here's a sneak peek of what you'll discover:Task Automation: Streamline your operations with tools like Zapier and IFTTT.Scheduling: Say goodbye to endless back-and-forth emails with Calendly and Acuity Scheduling.Inventory Management: Keep track of your stock effortlessly with TradeGecko and Fishbowl Inventory.Financial Management: Simplify your bookkeeping with QuickBooks and Expensify.Customer Service: Enhance your customer interactions with Drift, Intercom, and Zendesk.Market Research: Get ahead of trends with Crimson Hexagon and TalkWalker.And that's just the beginning! Listen to the full episode now and discover how all these AI tools can help you save time, reduce costs, and scale your business faster than ever before. Plus, I've included some awesome pro tips to ensure you make the most out of each tool.Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/cary__jack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured Get a free copy of his new book, The Happy Hustle, 10 Alignments to Avoid Burnout & Achieve Blissful Balance (https://www.thehappyhustlebook.com/)Sign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Course (http://www.thehappyhustle.com/Journey)Apply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventure (https://caryjack.com/montana)“It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!”Episode sponsor BIOptimizers Magnesium BreakthroughThis stuff is a game-changer! Magnesium Breakthrough packs all 7 forms of magnesium, designed to support stress management, promote muscle relaxation, regulate the nervous system, control stress hormones, boost brain function, increase energy, and enhance sleep.I take 2 capsules before bedtime, and it's been a game-changer for me. The best part is, BIOptimizers offer a risk-free.

Every CEO's journey is unique, but few are as eye-opening as moving from the structured world of corporate to the unpredictable realm of startups. This is the path William Gilchrist, CEO of Konsyg, shares on Sales Talk for CEOs with Alice Heiman. His experience unveils not just the challenges but also the vital strategies he learned for thriving in a startup environment.In this episode, you'll learn:Adaptability: Gilchrist's shift from corporate to startup highlights the need for flexibility and a diverse skill set.Honesty in Sales: A straightforward approach to client communication builds trust and long-term relationships.Networking: Effective networking is key to opening doors and driving growth.Team Building: The importance of assembling a team that shares your vision and commitment.Client Management: Strategies for successfully onboarding and managing clients to ensure continuous success.Episode Chapters:[00:01:22] From Corporate to Startup: Embracing New Challenges[00:05:24] Laying the Groundwork: Overcoming Early Hurdles[00:10:19] The Power of Connections: Networking for Success[00:24:49] The Trust Factor: Fostering Honest Client Relationships[00:29:33] Scaling New Heights: The Growth of KonsygCurious about how Gilchrist navigated these critical steps in his journey? Listen to the full podcast for an in-depth understanding of each chapter.About GuestWith an expansive career spanning over 15 years in technology sales across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, William stands as a global authority in the field. He possesses a B.A. in International Relations from Bowdoin College, a TEFL Certification from GLV Zhuhai / 平和英语学院, and dual Mandarin certifications from Cornell University and Beijing University / 北京大学.William's journey began in Shanghai's bustling corporate scene, serving as a Media Relations Manager for Wai White Dragon, a distinguished publication for the city's crème de la crème. Subsequently, he shifted gears, taking on the mantle of Director of Admissions and College Planning at Chicago's Hales Franciscan High School. Here, he was instrumental in rejuvenating the admissions department, crafting strategies to enhance enrollment from a specific demographic within the Chicago region. His next endeavor led him back to Asia, where he bolstered business development efforts in Singapore for TSL Marketing, orchestrating lead generation campaigns in both English and Mandarin for elite tech enterprises across J-APAC.William's prowess was soon recognized by tech giant, Google. As their Regional New Business Sales Manager for Asia-Pacific. He transitioned to the APAC Knowledge Manager role, emphasizing training and quality assurance for regional and international endeavors. William's sales spirit later propelled him to oversee Outbound Sales Teams for TradeGecko (acquired by QuickBooks) and MyDoc, both trailblazing startups based in Singapore.Currently, as the visionary Founder of Konsyg, William oversees comprehensive sales processes for Enterprises and SMEs on a global scale.Social Links Connect with William Gilchrist On Konsyg's official website:On-Demand Sales Solutions for Global Businesses | KonsygConnect with William on LinkedIn:(99+) William Gilchrist | LinkedInYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedIn:(99+) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice's website:Alice Heiman - Alice Heiman

Effective salesmanship is the cornerstone of success in the competitive business world, where understanding one's customers makes the difference between a pitch and a sale. By utilizing various tools and strategies, businesses can identify customer needs and position themselves as the ultimate solution to these problems. This process is critical to maintaining positive relationships with existing customers through improved services, communication channels, and customer appreciation initiatives Businesses should not avoid adopting unique strategies and leveraging technology to stay relevant, set trends, and ultimately achieve their primary goal - increasing sales. But getting there requires a top-notch sales team.How can a business spot effective salesmanship in a potential employee and avoid the inherent risks of hiring someone who isn't the right fit?On this episode of DisruptED, host Ron J Stefanski spoke once more with guest William Gilchrist, CEO and Founder of Konsyg, on tips for how to spot effective salesmanship, a valuable skill to have but a tricky one to learn. Previously, Stefanski and Gilchrist discussed how sales business founders can boost their numbers and strategies for selling and customer engagement.Stefanski and Gilchrist's conversation on effective salesmanship includes:• The unique background an employee should bring to a company• The value of being invested in present goals versus future goals• Why looking for sales employees in multiple fields is smartWilliam Gilchrist is the CEO and Founder of Konsyg, founded in 2017. Gilchrist has many years of experience in sales, including being the head of sales or sales manager for several companies, including Google and TradeGecko.

Intuit has announced that they will be retiring their inventory management system QuickBooks Commerce (previously known as TradeGecko) in June 2022. Here is what will happen and what the options are for their current user base. You can learn more about it from this episode or read the article here.

With unreasonable guest, Cameron Priest. SHOW NOTES: 0.42 Introducing Cameron Priest and TradeGecko 3.56 The early startup scene in 2012 7.11 Knowing you've got product-market fit and scaling 9.04 Hire fast, fire fast and working with family 10.54 Ups and downs of the exit process and growing pains 16.50 The hardest things about being a founder and choosing the right B2B customers 21.22 From being a founder to being a small cog in a big machine 24.10 The benefits of voracious reading 26.06 Web3 and why it is unreasonably positive 28.24 Supporting the TradeGecko mafia (or Ecko's) 31.27 The pressure of outperforming your first success 33.00 A singularly unnecessary post-exit purchase Follow Unreasonable: https://twitter.com/podunreasonable https://www.linkedin.com/company/83161544 Note: all perspectives shared in the Unreasonable Podcast belong to the individuals and are not representative of any firm. This is not investment advice.

With unreasonable guest, Cameron Priest. SHOW NOTES: 0.42 Introducing Cameron Priest and TradeGecko 3.56 The early startup scene in 2012 7.11 Knowing you've got product-market fit and scaling 9.04 Hire fast, fire fast and working with family 10.54 Ups and downs of the exit process and growing pains 16.50 The hardest things about being a founder and choosing the right B2B customers 21.22 From being a founder to being a small cog in a big machine 24.10 The benefits of voracious reading 26.06 Web3 and why it is unreasonably positive 28.24 Supporting the TradeGecko mafia (or Ecko's) 31.27 The pressure of outperforming your first success 33.00 A singularly unnecessary post-exit purchase Follow Unreasonable: https://twitter.com/podunreasonable https://www.linkedin.com/company/83161544 Note: all perspectives shared in the Unreasonable Podcast belong to the individuals and are not representative of any firm. This is not investment advice.

Jeff Paine is a Co-founder and Managing Partner of Golden Gate Ventures, an early stage technology venture capital fund based in Singapore. Golden Gate Ventures currently has over US$175 million under management and has made investments in over 45 companies since 2012 across Southeast Asia. Jeff also started and manages the Founder Institute incubator in Singapore. Since 2010 the Founder Institute has graduated over 100 companies in Southeast Asia and Japan, and he received the Director Award for “Greatest Ecosystem Impact” Worldwide for his work there. He's currently an investor and advisor to Redmart, Tradegecko, Coda Payments, and mentor at JFDI Asia, Chinaccelerator and of course at the Founder Institute. Jeff is a Singapore native, but he spent the first eight years of his career in early stage venture and private equity in the US, and he graduated from USC, so he understands how things work in Silicon Valley and in Southeast Asia, and he's is an ideal person to help folks like me understand how to think about the region when taking technology from here to there. Below are the topics we cover during this hour-long conversation: How the investing and startup environment has evolved over the past 10 years in Southeast Asia, and since the pandemic began How to think about and prioritize the markets that make up Southeast Asia Where this region should fit in a global expansion timeline The types of businesses that are succeeding in the region The best places to find engineering talent, and what to look for The first wave of regional unicorns, and lessons being applied by the second generation of entrepreneurs in SEA Advice for founders and entrepreneurs on how to approach this region, and things to be cautious about

SponsorsPractice Ignition: https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/piOdoo: https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/odooClient Hub: https://cloudaccountingpodcast.promo/clienthubShow NotesComing soon! Get in TouchThanks for listening and for the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and, if you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on iTunes, or Podchaser. Interested in sponsoring the Cloud Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus, and NOW, you can see our smiling faces on Instagram! You can now call us and leave a voicemail, maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribe Apple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcasts Podchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaser Spotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/Spotify Google Play: http://cloudacctpod.link/GooglePlay Stitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/Stitcher Overcast: http://cloudacctpod.link/Overcast ClassifiedsFuture Firm: https://futurefirmaccelerate.com/Xero: A Comprehensive Guide for Accountants and BookkeepersAccounting Podcast Network: https://accountingpodcastnetwork.com/Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAd  Want to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of The Cloud Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad? Hit the show notes for the link to get more info.Full Transcript Available Upon Request - info@cloudaccountingpodcast.com

The goal of a sales mentor is to create an environment where team members feel self-motivated to grow, excel, and take greater responsibility for what they do. An effective sales mentor is the key to long-term performance improvement and organizational success. It is the most important job a sales leader has. Our first guest of Season Four is none other than Stephen Defina ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-defina/ ) ; Stephen is the VP of Revenue, GTM at Clearbanc. ( https://clearbanc.com/?amp%3Butm_campaign=2020-december-social-bio-global&%3Butm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin ) He joins us this week to discuss what it means to be a sales mentor, how to do it with a team and one-on-one. Stephen refers to himself as the pusher, and he isn't afraid to keep pushing his mentees to keep striving for more. Now more than ever, sales teams are struggling with unqualified leads, missed sales goals, and lost opportunities. Increasingly, company and sales leaders are turning to finding a sales mentor as a solution—that and more on this episode of the Conquer Local Sales Podcast. Stephen Defina is the VP of Revenue, GTM at Clearbanc, the world's biggest ecommerce investor. Clearbanc has invested $1 billion into 3,300+ ecommerce and software companies using data science to identify high-growth funding opportunities in less than 24 hours. This data-driven approach takes the bias out of decision making and has helped fund 8x more female founders than traditional VC. In his time at Clearbanc, Stephen has helped grow the sales team and revenue while funding some of the most exciting brands in ecommerce, including Haus, The Sill, and Untuckit. Prior to Clearbanc, Stephen has been the VP of Sales at 4 different startups, two of which, TradeGecko and Yodle, have been acquired for a total of over $430M. Stephen is also a founding member of the Toronto Revenue Collective, a private members-only organization consisting of top senior commercial leaders in the Ontario area. Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community ( https://www.conquerlocal.com/community/ ) and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. ( https://www.conquerlocal.com/academy/ )

What does a career in sales look like? What are the unique challenges of being a salesperson? This week, William Gilchrist joins me to discuss his career path and debunk some myths about sales. William has accumulated over 15 years of experience in technology sales throughout North America, Europe, Middle-East and Asia-Pacific. He holds a Bachelors of Arts (B.A.) in International Relations from Bowdoin College, TEFL Certification from GLV Zhuhai / 平和英语学院, Mandarin certification from Cornell University and another Mandarin certification from Beijing University / 北京大学. William began his career within the corporate sector of Shanghai as a Media Relations Manager for Wai White Dragon, a publication for Shanghai's elite. William then returned to the United States to work in school administration as Director of Admissions and College Planning at Hales Franciscan High School in Chicago Illinois. He was hired to rebuild the admissions department by devising a plan to increase enrollment numbers among a unique demographic within the Chicago-land area. William then returned to Asia and worked in Business Development in Singapore for TSL Marketing. At TSL, WIlliam ran multiple lead generation campaigns in both English and Mandarin for top-tier tech firms throughout J-APAC. He then moved to a position as Regional New Business Sales Manager for Google, Asia-Pacific. William has also founded and facilitated internal sales training courses for multiple departments. William transitioned to the APAC Knowledge Manager role where he focused on training and quality systems management for regional and global projects. William then ventured outside of Google to build and direct the Outbound Sales Teams for TradeGecko as Director, and then as Vice President for MyDoc, both Singapore-based startups. William is currently the Founder of Konsyg and runs an end to end sales operation for Enterprises and SMEs globally. Salesman, defined. Find him on Linkedin: William Gilchrist or https://www.konsyg.com/ or email him at william.g@konsyg.com Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/shake-the-cosmos-empower-your-vision/donations

On today's episode, we're talking about how cloud spending has reached record highs amidst the economic fallout of COVID. We'll cover industry news, such as Intuit's acquisition of TradeGecko for $80M, how Proper raised $4.8 million to become the 'Uber of property accounting,' and why Kabbage is in the market for a buyer, and how Rippling scored $145B in their Series B Round. In other news, Xero is going ‘On Air,' the U.S. is set to investigate Intuit’s Credit Karma takeover, and why scientists renamed human genes to prevent huge Microsoft Excel errors. We'll also talk more about remote work - the hours, the meetings, and the tax implications. All this and more! Grab snacks!

Welcome to Business Over Drinks, one of the most unique podcasts you will find anywhere in the world helmed by two people from different walks of life.The podcast is an extension of their real-life experiences as business owners, salaried employees and industry mavericks, who made mistakes along the way and lived to talk about it. THIS EPISODE This episode is about becoming a better at sales - which, to be honest, everyone needs to improve on. We speak to William Gilchrist, CEO of Konsyg. ABOUT WILLIAMWilliam has accumulated over a decade of experience in technology sales throughout North America and Asia-Pacific. Throughout his career, he became the Regional New Business Sales Manager for Google, Asia-Pacific. William has also founded and facilitated internal sales training courses for multiple departments. William transitioned to the APAC Knowledge Manager role where he focused on training and quality systems management for regional and global projects. William then ventured outside of Google to build and direct the Outbound Sales Teams for TradeGecko as Director, and then as Vice President for MyDoc, both Singapore-based startups. William is currently the Founder of Konsyg building out sales teams across all markets. GIVEAWAYSWe're giving away: - 3 first edition, signed copies of Dean Blake's latest book, Everyday A**holes. Listen to our podcast on how to enter.- 3 free, 30-minute consultations with William himselfCheck out our website for more info.ABOUT USTerng Shing Terng has his own PR and content agency based in Singapore. He tries not to be defined by his job, but gave up and has leaned into it pretty heavily.When he's not working or conducting business over drinks, he is recording an episode for Business Over Drinks. Learn more about his company SYNC and what they've been doing for the startup community in Southeast Asia. He also has another venture with a business partner in the travel industry, called Travel Wanderlust.Connect with him on LinkedInFind out more about his company and follow Travel Wanderlust on social media on Instagram and Facebook.David BobisDavid Bobis is an author who has written a few works under both his real name and pen name, Dean Blake. He is about to release a book of illustrations, Everyday A**holes. David was also the Head of Digital Marketing and Partner of Studio Culture – a leading digital marketing agency in Australia, before exiting to work on his books and private consultancy. David is a finalist of multiple awards, such as the Telstra Business Award, the Lord Mayor's Multicultural Business Award, The Optus Business Award, the Brisbane Business News Young Entrepreneur's Award, a Melbourne Age Short Story Award, a John Marsden Short Story Award and a Brisbane State Library Short Story Award.Follow David's InstagramConnect with him on LinkedInBuy David's Books

In this episode, Ben connects with Tradegecko in Singapore and talks to the CEO Cameron Priest. You'll get most value from this podcast if you are a small to medium sized ecommerce business owner who might be dealing with inventory challenges and integrations etc, or just looking for growth opportunities via improved management and oversight of your systems. Tradegecko are a progressive and innovative Shopify partner, committed to making it easier for ecommerce businesses to achieve bigger success. In short, Tradegecko is an inventory management software that exists to help businesses take control of their ecomm operations by managing products, orders, customers and insights all in one, central location. Tradegecko's focus is on SMEs and the company has been recognised as one of the most innovative business-to-business software providers. Cameron gives an interesting interview, from a position of leadership within a fast growing and expanding technology business with a laser focus on ecommerce and helping ecomm business owners grow. Tune in and enjoy.

TradeGecko VP of Global Sales, Stephen Defina | Great Sales Leaders Know presented by STA by Sales Talent Agency

Vinnie Lauria found his calling after backpacking around Asia. He had just sold a company. He had just gotten married. He feared that if he spent a year traveling, he'd run out of money, and he'd run out of momentum. He worried it would be career suicide. But his wife, Kristine, pushed him to seize the day. They sold everything, gave up their apartment in The Mission and hopped on a one way flight across the Pacific, planning to come back in a year. Throughout his travels, Vinnie kept doing what he does best. He was meeting entrepreneurs everywhere he went – Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, India, you name it – all over Asia. Along the way, he stumbled across a unique opportunity. He noticed there was a gap in funding for entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. All of the Venture Capital firms were risk averse, and didn't invest with a Silicon Valley mindset. Meanwhile, there was an explosion of early-stage startups hungry for funding. So, with no investment experience to speak of, Vinnie partnered up with some friends and started a Venture Capital firm. Golden Gate Ventures is an early-stage VC firm in Southeast Asia. They've invested $60 in over 30 companies in 7 countries, including TradeGecko and Redmart. He and Kristine now live in Singapore, with their two children. They never did move back to San Francisco. Vinnie is a really close friend of mine. A year after I moved to California, I was pretty lost. I didn't like living in San Jose, and I didn't like the direction my startup was going in. I couldn't bear to give up and move back to Nebraska. Meanwhile San Francisco was just up the road, if only I had the courage to make the move. Around that time, I met Vinnie, and spent a lot of time with him and his now wife, Kristine. They were both adventurous, and had a bold perspective on living life. I did move up to San Francisco, and fulfilled a life-long dream of living in a bustling city. Vinnie always offered inspiration when I needed it. You'll see he's not afraid to do things that many people consider risky. He values adventure, and he's a big advocate of putting yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to succeed. As Vinnie likes to say "when you jump, the net appears." Listen to this episode for inspiration on making big changes in your life. Vinnie will share his story of quitting a secure job at IBM and moving across the country with no plan. We'll talk about how he used to live and work with as many as 12 people in a 3-bedroom apartment. He'll share his unique methods for managing the roughly 1,000 new people he meets every year, and how best to connect them. Overall, you'll hear how a guy from Long Island ended up founding a VC firm in Singapore.   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/ac http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/vinnie-lauria-interview/    

This week we have the CEO and founder of Tradegecko, Cameron Priest. Tradegecko recently announced an 8 million SGD, Series A round of funding . On this show we go into everything from why he started Tradegecko to how he gained traction in selling to businesses. Show Notes: tradegecko.com hoiio.com xero.com Shopify.com Redmart Rotimatic Zopim Travelmob Viki

Highlights of my conversation with Saul Colt Ruffling feathers by being interesting, original and fun: the story behind the cloud writing about a cloud company and the levitating man Word of Mouth marketing insights Marketing advice for accountants and bookkeepers wanting to attract the right type of client How exhibitors can maximise their investment at the Denver Xerocon conference and beyond Denver Xerocon 2015 Social media tools for professionals. Subscribe to Episode14 of Cloud Stories on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/cloud-stories-heather-smith/id908333807 Transcript Heather:        Hello, this is Heather Smith here and you’re listening to Episode 14 of Cloud Stories. I’m very excited today because I interviewed Saul Colt who is the Chief Evangelist for Xero, so we have that interview coming up. I just wanted to quickly touch base with you about some of the things I’ve been doing since the last episode. I think I went down with a sore throat again which stops me recording the podcasts. I have just got back from Auckland Xerocon and it was in a stunning location on the wharf of Auckland. Kind of interestingly, over Christmas I was on one of those massive cruise ships, The Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Sea, and we actually cruised right into Auckland and docked there which is kind of amazing to be able to dock right beside a main city. The conference was held at something called a Viaduct which was just to the left of the wharf, which was actually on the wharf just a bit left from where we were. I actually stayed at an airbnb accommodation, so that was wonderful, sort of a lady letting out her studio apartment for a few days, and was able to walk to the viaduct for the event. It was massive, so much going on, the weather was wonderful and crisp and clear and beautiful skies, and there were so many things going on for the time I was there. It was really interesting for me to see Xero in the Xero community as an Australian girl, the sort of New Zealand take on it, and not knowing New Zealand perhaps as well as people do, I did get confused by a few of the little things that happened. I think the Kiwibank had a dance video constantly playing, and on the first day of the conference was International Dance Day. I went up and asked them why they had the dance video playing and they couldn’t explain to me why they had the dance video playing. I said, “Well, maybe it’s for International Dance Day, and them and we agreed that it was for International Dance Day. But it turned out that Kiwibank have something known as the Independence Dance which is a YouTube video sensation that is going viral. New Zealanders will know about that and maybe you want to go and check that out on YouTube. Anyway, if you’re interested in sort of my synopsis of what happened at Auckland Xerocon, you can go and read about it on Digital First. It’s called “An Aussie Girl’s Perspective of Auckland Xerocon 2015”. You can just Google that. The other thing that has happened is I’m not guest blogging on the TradeGecko blog. TradeGecko are an inventory cloud software solution. I wrote an article for them on “Xero Inventory Management Versus TradeGecko Inventory Software”, which is very topical now that Xero has tracked inventory as a feature within their solution. I talk about what does this mean for the inventory add-on solutions out there? Does it mean they’ve got tumbleweeds blowing through their office? Actually, my take on it, was this is actually a good thing, this is actually going to take people … step people up to the next level and they will use Xero tracked inventory but then they’ll sort of grow their business to actually need these inventory add-on solutions, and there’s a lot that they have to offer. So please go and visit my blog there. It’s titled “Xero Inventory Management Versus TradeGecko Inventory Software”, and I shall be blogging with them on a monthly basis which I’m quite excited about. Of course, if any other person in the Xero ecosystem is interested in me blogging for them, please get in contact. Finally, my other thing that I wanted to share with you is I’ve just uploaded two hours of free training on Australian Xero Payroll for Australia users. The level is basic. It’s all about setting up your payroll, and then I run through three pay runs. So please go to my YouTube channel which is called ANISE Consulting and you’ll see it labelled there, “Free Training in Xero Payroll”, which is subscribe to the channel and you can learn about Australian payroll if that’s something that you’ve not sort of dived into. But anyway, let’s get back to my interview, my guest today, I’m very, very excited, today I’m speaking with Saul Colt. He is the chief evangelist for Xero, the co-host for the Xero Hour podcast, North America’s best word-of-mouth marketeer, and the smartest man in the world. I started by asking him …

Highlights of my conversation with Tejasawi Raghurama Growth Save 300 administrative hours per month Automates accounting for ecommerce stores Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India Increasing monthly recurring revenue and reducing churn Transcript Heather:    Hello. It’s Heather Smith here. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you are doing well. Today I speak with Tejasawi Raghurama which I’ve probably pronounce incorrectly but I refer to him as Tej. Tej is a growth hacker at ZapStitch. ZapStitch is a data integration platform for small business to automate data flow across cloud business solutions. They are automating accounting for a thousand plus e-commerce business from North America, Australasia, Europe by integrating Shopify, Bigcommerce with Xero. ZapStitch automatically imports sales orders into your accounting application’s invoices. Discounts, taxes and shipping rates are sync’d seamlessly which is something he emphasises in the show. An average business using ZapStitch saves 300 plus hours every month spent in manual accounting, freeing up their time so they can spend it with the customer and family. ZapStitch is the number one ranked and rated accounting add-on in the Shopify app store. Tej believes no human should do a machine’s job and small businesses can grow huge with automation. He places part by educating and working with customers. When not learning from business, you’ll find him watching South Park. He joined ZapStitch in February 2014 as one of the first employees there. He was inspired by the vision of the founders, the fundamental impact the way businesses manage tedious processes. I started by asking Tej who was his favourite South Park character and why. Tejasawi:       Awesome. That’s a great question to start with. I think Cartman because I’m fascinated by climatic and realistic people. I always look at the world around me, “That is good.” “That is bad.” But there are people who actually recognise it and live through it. I would see Cartman in South Park as being the most pragmatic and he is who he is. He doesn’t mould himself according to the people around him and he has his originality intact. Yes, he is cruel, I don’t recognise that spirit but I think he’s on his own. Heather:        Sensational. I don’t watch South Park so I don’t know the character but I thought that our listeners might find that interesting. I know that my son watches South Park but I don’t. Tejasawi:       Okay. So Tej, can you tell me a little about ZapStitch. Tejasawi:       Sure. ZapStitch automates accounting in commerce stores. In simple English, what we do is we create platforms like Shopify and Bigcommerce with accounting apps like Xero, right? Heather:        Yes. Tejasawi:       ZapStitch enables seamless data syncing between those apps. We sync data for all the customers and anything related to the invoice and sales tax automation. What we enable at the end of the day is exponentially faster reporting in accounting and accurate data and peace of mind. I mean the most common feedback we get from our accountants and from business owners who use ZapStitch is peace of mind. At the end of the day, accounting shouldn’t be an intimidating step in the process, right? Heather:        Yes. Tejasawi:       That is one feedback we often get. At the company level, our vision is to automate business apps across verticals. When we were founded … we are a cloud integration platform, so our long term two year or three year future is to integrate at least 300-500 business apps on the cloud. Heather:        Oh okay. Tejasawi:       We are starting with e-commerce and accounting because we believe there are immediate gaps in between them, and we want to solve as many problems in accounting as possible, and go in depth in accounting automation. Who are your typical customers? Tejasawi:       Typical customers are twofold. One is an e-commerce business owner or the business team of a 10-man or 15-man e-commerce team. The second end user is the accountant who has multiple e-commerce tools as clients or is working part time as the bookkeeper. Those are two end users but our business is somebody that’s doing let’s say a $2 million dollar revenue per year and who actually feels the pain of data entry, right? A typical business of where we work with spends at least 500 hours in accounting per month. If we can solve that pain point, I think that’s where our end customer is. Heather:        That certainly makes … if you can resolve 500 hours at your price point, then that certainly is of benefit to the client. Tejasawi:       Exactly. Where about are you actually based? Tejasawi:       We are based out of Bangalore in India. It’s called the Silicon Valley of India, so it’s the Bangalore start-up hub in India, yes. Where about are your servers based? Where are the data for your company based … for the client data based? Tejasawi:       We are based … we built it on EWS, the server side across EWS in Singapore if I’m not wrong but I need to get some technical knowledge there. The servers are on EWS and we don’t locally store data. Heather:        Okay, so it’s not locally stored. It’s always a question that people ask us. Tejasawi:       Yes indeed. Heather:        It’s an unpleasant question I guess but the customer is always going, “Well, where is my data?” “Is it in the clouds?” “Where is it?” So it’s important to know. Tejasawi:       Yes, just to add to that point, ZapStitch believes in transparency, so we don’t store any local data on any server for that matter. We only move data from A to B. there will be apps and I’m sure you’ve interviewed and talked to some where they’re stored locally and in the app they show the data, right? We enable seamless syncing of data and not storing of data. Yes, that’s a belief we are in right now. Maybe going forward when we add features like reporting inside the app we will look at storing data but right now we are only moving data and storing metadata like number of orders … Heather:        I thought it might be like that. What’s your internet connection like in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India? Tejasawi:       Internet connection is a problem maybe sporadically but we have good broadband speeds in Bangalore. We have a speed of let’s say 22/30mps. That serves our purpose and we haven’t felt the pain of internet speed at all. But sometimes the sporadic connection is due to the team load rather than the internet speed. When we grew as a start-up, there were logistical issues which were solved of course but yes, there is no problem with the internet. We are not consciously aware of the speed, yes. Heather:        Tej, you describe yourself as a Growth Hacker.  What does that mean? Tejasawi:       I mean that’s something I’m figuring out. Heather:        It sounds very impressive. I actually like that title, ‘The Growth Hacker’. Tejasawi:       Right, so how growth hacking works, it’s a term by an accounting marketer called Sean Ellis who is inbound marketeer and he has a start-up. What he says is like when you build a start-up, that is a predictable good … you can achieve. You can draw a straight line which is not a hockey stick but is like a 45 degree angle, right? What a growth hacker does or growth marketing is like it recognises certain bursts in the marketing cycle and exponentially recreates it. If the growth hacking is successful, you find an unconventional way of growing and you make it repeatable success. So that’s how you differentiate your start-up from the rest of the competition. You actually blow the competition off because you have tested and repeated success with an unconventional method. That’s what growth hacking, the term is coming from. Heather:        That’s interesting. I should mention in there … I’m guessing I’m right, you’re referring to grass hockey rather than ice hockey for our North American listeners which is … actually would he be referring to ice hockey rather than grass hockey? Tejasawi:       He’s an Australian guy so I don’t know. Heather:        Because they’re two very differently shaped sticks, I know that. Tejasawi:       Indeed. I think I get your point now because … Heather:        So I think it’s actually the ice hockey stick he’s referring to isn’t it because that’s the one with the 45 degree angle, whereas the grass hockey stick is actually quite … very, very short. Tejasawi:       I know it looked like that. Heather:        I’ll go and Google it and see if I can work it out afterward. You have, in the first year of launch, you managed to attain 250 paying customers with inbound marketing. How did you go about doing this? Tejasawi:       We have an install base of 1,000 stores but when the free trial ends, that’s how the paying customer starts. We are a SASS based B2B company, product company. At the beginning we were very clear that we were targeting certain markets where these platforms have good penetration. For example, US, Canada, Australia and UK, right, where the amalgamation or the integration can serve a purpose immediately. We targeted those and we founded the channels which were the app stores. As a company, we didn’t invest in a sales asset team. We didn’t hire any sales persons. We only invested in customer success. When I joined as a third team member in February of last year, I was straight away sent to customer support as a role. I didn’t go to marketing for the first four months. So what we learned from that is if you actually delight your customers from day one, they sell the app themselves. They write reviews. They talk about you. They recommend you to users and the Shopify system is pretty vital in that sense. People talk about their issues. So we actually focused on two things. One was the forums, community forums, across the business apps and the second is to actually get good reviews on the platform. People read reviews before they read features actually, often. Heather:        I completely agree with that, yes. Okay, let’s examine that a bit further. In terms of the forums you were looking at, what forums were you looking at? Was there a specific Spotify forum? Tejasawi:       Shopify and Bigcommerce … Heather:        Shopify sorry. I said Spotify. Shopify, yes. Tejasawi:       No, they’re very similar. Shopify has a very active business forum which is Shopify.comforums. Even we actually got the business idea thanks to those forums because customers were talking about specific data, manual data problems, manual accounting problems. When you go to the forums, there will be these customers who talk about, “How do I move my data from Shopify to Xero?” “How do I manage accounting?” “What are the best practises of accounting?”                         We position ZapStitch as a thought leader in those forums saying, “We know your pain point and we know how accounting can be a pain sometimes and how our solution solves it.” So rather than out-selling, we out-educated our competition in the forum. That’s a philosophy we believe in is that if you related the pain point, we talked about how you can move data seamlessly between Shopify and Xero, and automate the reporting and just focus on business reports rather than actually entering data. The forums were a great place where people were actually talking about the problems and we just plugged in ourselves as somebody who knows what they’re talking about and we can solve it. Heather:        I think going on the forums is very smart. Also as well as it being authentic, I think it also probably gives you really good SEO because people go … I know I personally, I go in and search there, and I know people who have a high level of credibility and if they’re supporting a particular product I’ll go, “Okay, I don’t need to do extensive research on it because this person has said it’s okay, so I’m sure it will be okay.” Tejasawi:       Right. How did you encourage your clients to give you reviews? Tejasawi:       Yes, that’s a good question. Many companies, product companies especially, have a way of irritating the customer in terms of reviews. They keep bugging the customer saying, “Why don’t you write a review?” “Give a link,” all those things. What we did innately or subtly was have a live chat support in our app. When the on-boarding happens, and TradeGecko is a great example where the onboarding is seamless, but when we started as a company we didn’t have that leverage of a beautiful design, an amazing out of the box design. We focused on simple and subtle design, and when the onboarding happened, the user got delighted and our automatic chat would plugin, “How did you find the experience?” “Do you need any help?” “What is the next setting you want?” All those things. As the engagement happened in the live chat, we started to see the customers delighted and we can actually ask for review. It’s about instant gratification rather than sending them mail or calling them and saying, “How did you like the app?” The live chat client helped us a lot. I would recommend it to any product company starting out because that’s a great way to learn from customers on the spot and also solve the problems instantly and also, of course, write a review if the user is delighted. Heather:        Yes, it sometimes amazes me that some of the companies are not as receptive to talk to an individual person. They’re like, “If you’re not a partner, I’m not going to talk to you,” and you’re like going, “Well, I need to talk to you before I consider becoming a partner.” Now, in terms of reviews, it sounds like you’re not focused on getting reviews on other sites. I know that Xero has an add-on marketplace and actually encourages people to review there. Are you directing people to go and review there? Tejasawi:       Yes, so with Xero, we just launched that Heather. We want to get as many reviews there but it’s just two to three weeks old and we actually started getting paying customers as well from Xero. I mean review becomes a natural … Heather:        Progression in the cycle. Tejasawi:       Yes, by-product of success. We want to ensure product success with Xero first and then the review I’m sure will be there but we are not biased in any platform as such. Heather:        So for our listeners, we’ll just share with them that ZapStitch is now on the US Xero marketplace but you’re also looking for approval on the other country marketplaces. Is that correct? Tejasawi:       Yes. I should give credit to Xero because they are one of the most active developer support forums out there. They’re very transparent in how they deal with partners like us. Heather:        That’s sensational. Tejasawi:       So unless customers actually say that sales type automation works with ZapStitch, they will not approve it. We have seen other apps which you are aware of, where community is like … you like your app, the customers like your app, okay you’re globally approved. Here it’s more like every country has a specific use case and unless you actually meet them practically and the customer talks about it, you are not approved. We had beta customers from the US and UK, so we got approved and UK should be very soon right now, and we want beta customers from Australia and New Zealand which is the biggest Xero user base, to approve it as soon as possible. That’s our main focus in February. Heather:        Yes, sensational. How many customers does ZapStitch need to be successful? Tejasawi:       As a B2B company we are focused on two metrics, right? One is MRR  monthly recurring revenue, and second is to reduce churn. Rather than talking about the number of customers, we’re talking MMR in at least our philosophy, so we want to get to at least 100,000 MMR by end of year or by next year, early next year. That’s how we are growing and our month on month, at least to reach that, would be 35, we are at 38 this moment. We are going at a good speed but that’s how we look at our growth. Heather:        Excellent. You’ve targeted multiple markets to penetrate the cloud based software specifically in e-commerce and accounting, what have you observed through that and what have you learnt through that targeting of the different markets? Tejasawi:       Right, so when we actually launched the beta product in 2013 end which is like December or November if I’m not wrong, I was not onboard. The founding team had tested it with Indian customers. The problem with Indian cloud or cloud eco system is they’re not very progressive or they haven’t understood the impact a cloud app can bring to their business. We still are believing in manual bookkeeping or CD based software of accounting, Excel sheets. The penetration was getting harder and harder so we naturally went to the most progressive marketplace which is the US. They already know the pain points they have and they do actually look to build a multi-million dollar business within one or two years. The e-commerce stores there are built on Shopify or Bigcommerce were looking at, “How do I grow faster?” Accounting needs to be fast, needs to be painless. “How do I find the solution?” “Okay, ZapStitch is there.” We got our first paying customers from the US, then Canada, so we started progressing in those geographies first and then UK and then Australia. So in terms of progressive eco systems for cloud software, we thought and we have analysed that US is by far the leader. Heather:        Oh really? Tejasawi:       Yes. In terms of multiple processes … they don’t look at one process to automate, they actually want to automate the whole business and focus on customer success, focus on sales, marketing, and the data is a burden to them. Right? They look at multiple apps to automate multiple sites of their business. Australia was a close second to that and Canada is very close to Australia. Heather:        I would have thought from speaking to people, and I don’t have any stats behind me, it would have been New Zealand. Tejasawi:       Yes, in terms of user base I’m talking. Heather:        Okay, so in terms of user base, I completely agree because they’ve got such a bigger number. Tejasawi:       Indeed, yes. I appreciate that because I was talking not in philosophy of approach to the business but in terms … I meant that, yes. Heather:        The user base number, yes. As soon as you get the US buying into anything, you expand exponentially don’t you. Tejasawi:       Yes, and I’m sure with Xero, we would test the New Zealand market much better because with Shopify and the other accounting app, we didn’t have much user base in New Zealand so we couldn’t get real data measured with that. But I’m sure Xero … I have seen the data that Xero is more in Australia and New Zealand already so that should be good data to work with. Heather:        Yes. How can customer service be a differentiator for start-ups in a competitive market? Tejasawi:       When you look at cloud based business, there’s no geographical limitation. For example: we are an Indian company but working seamlessly for a US audience, right? We work in their time zones. Our support team works at US and UK time zones. When you come to a company … company to a marketplace, you have to find a differentiator. It cannot be price always. You can’t be the cheapest solution out there. That’s not a good business model to work with. Heather:        Absolutely. Tejasawi:       What you want to do is you want to delight your customers and if your app is not at the self-serving mode in the initial days, customer success or customer support is the easiest way to get that because as I said, businesses want to talk to a human at the end of the day. They don’t want to just write them email and get a response. They want to talk to a human. They want to relate to their problems. They want to talk about their problems. Our initial days or initial growth has to be credited to seamless customer support and of course a great product which enables delight.                         I think from our learnings we can safely say that if you actually put in place tools to automate customer support, to have things like live chat, email automation, and then actually have a product which is centric to the user and not to a developer. You don’t need to be a scientist to use an app. If you look at those three verticals as customer success, you are already in a good path to grow outwardly so that would be our learning in that space. What tool do you use for your live chat? Tejasawi:       We use Olark. We have been a huge fan of Olark. Heather:        Olark, okay. What email automation do you use? Tejasawi:       For customer support we have two things. One is the support which is on Freshdesk and for customer interactions we use Intercom. What Intercom does is it gives you the app usage of every user, you know, “Has he done a sync? What type of data did he sync? Is he actually happy with the product?” All those customer analytics. We use Intercom and we send trigger emails based on the actions inside the app. That’s how our customer support cycle works, onboarding works. If you’re dealing with people during business hours in the US, it sounds like you’re not getting much sleep over there. Tejasawi:       No, we don’t work 18 hours a day. How we divide this is like the marketing and product team works in Indian hours and the support and the customer success team works in US hours. Heather:        Okay. Tejasawi:       As we expand into markets, I’m sure the whole team will find a challenge in the one or two weeks but we are a global company so we should act like one. Heather:        Yes. Do you have staff outside of India? Tejasawi:       No, we are a 15 member team in Bangalore in India. Heather:        That’s really large. That’s a really large team. Do you attend any of the Xero roadshows or Xerocon events, the big Xero conferences? Tejasawi:       Yes, we would love to because there are these industry specific events. I know as you mentioned people like you hang out there but right now we are not focused on that. That’s one differentiator we have … Heather:        Your support is online rather than showing up at those events. Tejasawi:       Exactly, we don’t have a sales team. Yes. Heather:        Sensational. Can you share with us some of the businesses using your solution? Tejasawi:       Sure. One of the most successful businesses who was an early adopter of Zapstitch  is Bolder Band. They won the Shopify build a business competition last year. Do you know about the build a business competition? Heather:        No I don’t. Tejasawi:       Okay, sorry. I’ll give a brief … what they do is Shopify promotes businesses who grow to a million dollar business every year. Heather:        Oh, and of course they’d know wouldn’t they. Tejasawi:       Exactly. It’s like a cross promotional activity. Heather:        Yes. Tejasawi:       What the build a business does is like you need to sell as much as you can in year one of your business, after launching your business. So whoever sells the most in that calendar year becomes the winner. Bolder Band is a Shopify store who launched in late 2013. When they adopted us, we were just one month old. Heather:        Wow. Tejasawi:       They had at least 200 orders per day, right? We were like blown away. Okay, this is a great store. This is a large store. They also became our product evangelist and they gave active feedback how to make our product better. How they function is like they have a very niche segment of customers. They sell head bands for people, you know, gyming and sports personalities? Heather:        Okay, yes. Tejasawi:       Who like anything – jogging, hiking and everything. They sell headbands and they grew to a million … I think they are now $3-$5 million dollar business within one and a half years. Heather:        Wow, I didn’t know headbands had come back in … had made a comeback. Tejasawi:       Yes, so they were one of the most successful lead customers and then Pop Chart Lab is one of the most creative businesses we have. They create charts on any topic. For example: how did Nike involve their shoes? How did [Wine? 00:27:15] evolve from 1800 to 2000. Heather:        So people then buy the chart from them? Tejasawi:       Exactly. Heather:        Oh okay, that’s interesting. Tejasawi:       So these two were the most [ugliest? 00:27:29] and biggest customers. There are many but as customer successes, these are the first two that come up to my mind. Heather:        Did you find yourself in the developer stage reacting to their needs? Tejasawi:       No. Heather:        They said, “Okay, we need this,” and you were able to implement something like that? Tejasawi:       Yes, that’s a good question. As a product company building a cloud app, we necessarily don’t go by feedback from just customers. What we go by is data and market need. When we talk to let’s say five or six customers and they want sales tech automation, we build sales tech automation. But it’s not like building a customer solution for big clients or working with them over time to see what do they want and going in depth to their needs. We want to serve collectively as an ecosystem for Shopify users, Xero users rather than just a multi-million dollar business. Heather:        Yes. So if someone has your product in place, they’ve got Shopify, they’ve got Xero and they’ve got ZapStitch in place, what additional financial information can they attain through having that integration? Tejasawi:       Good question. How ZapStitch works is we don’t store any local data. We don’t generate reports in the app but what we do for example is let’s say … I think this is one of our differentiators is that the sales tax, the other apps, don’t go to specific sales tax and invoices. What these apps do is they have one sales tax rate and they apply it to all the invoices they sync. What ZapStitch does is it actually breaks down the taxes as is from the invoice and maps it to the Xero accounts for those sales taxes. That is automated and an accountant or a business owner just needs to go to the sales tax or account in Xero and just generate a report within a second. If you go to the manual side of things or non-automation, it would take at least five minutes to do for every invoice: entering the sales tax, mapping it to the right account and everything. So maybe one or two minutes is saved on every order. If you look at a growing business like let’s say Bolder Bands, they get 300 orders per day that would be 6,000 minutes, right? If you click a button, we can automate the data sync in ZapStitch, so they don’t even have to login sometimes. That happens seamlessly and the accountant just focuses on generating reports and accurate data and non-duplicated data. Heather:        Excellent. Tell me what the start-up scene is like in Bangalore. Tejasawi:       Bangalore is a hub of start-ups in India. It’s maybe the most popular city in India in terms of start-ups and of our national capital New Delhi is a close second if I’m not wrong. Heather:        Yes. Tejasawi:       How Bangalore works is a lot of product companies exist here. Product companies need investment early on, right? There’s a huge oversea and [internal? 00:30:58] investors community here that is eco systems like incubators and accelerators. We are still learning in the entrepreneurial eco system globally but in India at least, Bangalore is very progressive for start-ups and there are lesser challenges I would say. I’ll put it like that. Are venture capitalists coming from India or are they coming from overseas? Tejasawi:       Venture capital firm is mostly Indian who invest in Indian start-ups. They have global investors who are in contact with them and they actually scout talent but they don’t actually actively invest in Indian start-ups directly. As in an early investor but if a huge Indian venture capitalist has invested, then they see the talent, they scout it and the foreign investors come in. Heather:        Yes. I think you’ve told me this but I’ve forgotten. How old is your company? Tejasawi:       We launched our product of February 2014 and we launched our company in December or November if I’m not wrong. Heather:        So you’re coming up to your one year anniversary. Tejasawi:       Yes, my own and companies as well. Heather:        That’s amazing growth for a company that’s been around for a year. What have you learnt in that time of growing the start-up in India? Tejasawi:       One of the central things is if you want to build a fast growing or any growing start-up which doesn’t die in the first year, you need to focus on customers. One skewed emotion any start-ups have is they want to build a perfect product, right? What we had learned very early on thankfully is that if you actually build a minimum viable product for, let’s say, our market, actually the customer will do the rest of the thing. They will give it the requirements. The market will drive your product rather than you building the perfect solution. If you focus on customer success and actually giving a damn about them basically, they actually give you back and more than you actually ask for: so in terms of advocacy of the product, advocacy of your customer success, giving active feedback in terms of their product needs. I think that is one major learning and second challenge and learning is the marketing side of things. You want to build a repeatable engine of bringing customers, bringing progressive e-commerce businesses who want to try automation, who want to solve this problem. That has been one major challenge, you know, where do these guys hang out? Where do these guys talk about their problems? So building an inbound channel of customers is a challenge and we are still figuring it out but I think if we do our thing right, it’s just another start-up challenge. Heather:        That’s certainly interesting. I totally agree with you in what you’re saying in the focus on the customer. It does seem to be what a lot of people are saying these days is, “Focus on the customer.” I know sometimes I’m speaking with people, like I’m going into the start-up places and I’m like, “Have you sold this? Is anyone using this?” “No, no, I can’t show it to them until it’s perfect.” It’s like, “Aww, that looks like you’re putting a lot of money in that.” Tejasawi:       Also one thing is like no assumptions. We don’t assume that your customer is happy. You need data. You need customer interviews. You need everything to consolidate and, you know, actually generate actionable data rather than assuming you know customers are happy or you know they like this feature. Tools are important to measure everything actually inside the app. Heather:        Can you explain what some of those tools are that you’re using? Tejasawi:       Sure. For example, a classic case is Intercom. Intercom helps us analyse the product functionality: What is the customer actually doing inside the app? For example, let’s say our early customers came into the app, they set up the sync settings but they never ran the sync. If we see that the data shows that there is a time of login, there is a time of sync, and if their time between those two events is let’s say 15 minutes, we are on the wrong side of things. We want it to be less than 3 minutes or 4 minutes. He sets up that account and runs the sync.                         So the product team looks at the data and wants to change the design, and then the design team comes along and says, “Okay, this is the button that’s not very inherently …” Heather:        Intuitive. Tejasawi:       Yes. “So let’s make it intuitive. Let’s iterate on the design and make the onboarding time less than 3 minutes.” Heather:        That’s really smart. Tejasawi:       Also one thing it allows you to do … any such tool like Intercom, it triggers emails or contact touch points with events inside the app. For example, let’s say you have an error in the app, a chat will automatically come and say, “Okay, I saw you had an error in the app, how can I solve it? I am your customer success manager.” So rather than relying on the customer to get back to you, you have to be proactive in customer support. These apps let you do that because they can trigger events based on customer actions. Do the customers freak out that they think big brother is now watching them? You know, “Oh, I’ve made a mistake and then you’ve sent me an email telling me I’ve made a mistake.” Do they freak out about that? Tejasawi:       No. I mean it’s complete contrary. The most successful of our customers actually understand that we are thinking for them, right? Heather:        Yes. Tejasawi:       Because when you deal with data integration, it’s sensitive data. If something goes wrong, you have to fix it immediately. So they are happy to let us fix it immediately rather than worrying about transparency or how did they know about it? Our customers are actually surprised in a pleasant way that as soon as they get an error, they are figuring things out and we are right there the solution. Are you able to actually jump in to actual individual accounts and sort things out if necessary? Tejasawi:       No. we don’t log into any accounts. What we do is we look at the metadata. For example, let’s say in an order case, the order didn’t sync. The development team looks at the metadata and sees okay, this is the date the order came from, this is the shop the order came from, so let’s read on that sync. That’s all we do from the backend. Heather:        Sensational. That’s really interesting. I think people will find that really interesting to listen to. I completely agree that it’s good to have the automated identifying of errors. I just know that some people are like, “Oh my goodness, they’re in my data, they’re in my data,” and their freaking out. So it’s good to have that conversation and be open with them but like I say to a lot of my clients, I just say as part of the sign up, “I’m letting the company automatically access your data.” But it’s not accessing your data, it’s accessing … if there’s a problem it will get sorted out a lot quicker than if we actually have to go through that manual process of getting it out there. Tejasawi:       Yes, but the more ideal case would be like … and that is a very common case. An ideal case is, for example, let’s say you are selling in multi-channels. You have multiple sales taxes across different regions, so you don’t know which setting to have in the app. What you want to do is like you are figuring out settings and you can ask the live chat support saying, “Okay, how do I solve this business problem with integration?” That’s the automation we have built in rather than just error resolution because that’s a very common case. The support is more proactive in business cases, how to integrate for your business rather than just broadly integrate to apps. Heather:        Yes, sensational. What does the future hold for ZapStitch? Tejasawi:       We were born as an integration platform. Our vision is to build a cloud integration platform across business verticals. For example, the next logical would be CRM or marketplace automation, for example: Amazon and EBAY. We want to logically progress through the verticals and integrate the most progressive apps and the most popular apps in those verticals. In a two year, three year time line, we see integrating 200-300 business apps across email marketing, CRM accounting, e-commerce. Heather:        It would be interesting to see because I know some of them … like I know I’ve worked with Amazon and it kind of works in an interesting way in that 10 of the transactions are normal and then one kind of like is a summary transaction and it never comes across properly and you’re going … and the client sets it up themselves perhaps and they come to you and they’re like, “Wow, 90% of it looks fine but then 10% of it looks like it’s going to take me hours to fix up.” Tejasawi:       Exactly. You know, you’re coming to the exact problem which ZapStitch is solving, is the reconciling of data. When you have different types of invoices, reconciling becomes a pain. What ZapStitch wants to do with Xero is become one of the very few solution providers which actually enable faster reconciliation and not just data automation. When we talk to one of our biggest customers, he had an Amazon store as well. This was the first point that he brought out that, “Bring support for summary invoice when you build integration because that is one of the major use cases in Amazon.” Heather:        Yes, absolutely. As soon as you have something in place that makes it easy to sell, it means you can sell so much more. Tejasawi:       Exactly. Heather:        Like when I was dealing with this client, I was just like, “Stop selling stuff because this is a nightmare.” It was just like creating this bigger and bigger and bigger mess. Definitely installing a solution that simplifies the accounting process means you have the capacity to sell more which is exciting for the business. Tejasawi:       Yes, and we know one of the … I followed the name of the customer once, this guy sells iPhone batteries. Most of the successful businesses we have are niche businesses: iPhone batteries, headbands, wine collections. Heather:        That’s the joy of the internet, isn’t it, that someone can go out and go, “I think headbands should be brought back into fashion and I’m going to sell them.” Tejasawi:       Yes, so this guy told us that his accounting team is spending money on watching Netflix movies more than accounting. He was very happy that we solved this problem but he was pleasantly not happy that his accounting team is now having a lot of fun which is good but … Heather:        Oh okay, so they’re under capacity now. Tejasawi:       Yes, he was saying, “I don’t want to fire people but this is how our team is, they’re having fun, I’m spending more time with my family.” I think the data is just a part of the business end. It shouldn’t become the business. When you actually integrate well, your customer should do what he likes doing, selling, customer success, or spending time with the family. Heather:        I think this is part of the integration process when it goes in. I’m not sure whether … do you have cloud integrators come in and assist with the integration process or are you doing that yourself? Tejasawi:       We have partnered with Shopify and Xero, so their APIs allow us to pull in and integrate any data we want for our customers. There are limitations of course. There are API limitations in terms of business use cases. Heather:        But would a consultant like me come in and do the integration or would a consultant like me come in and watch you do the integration and just sort of sit in the background? Tejasawi:       Yes, that’s a good point actually. As a strategy of building the right product, we want to onboard experts and consultants but when you actually run the thing, use the app, it’s like the click of a button. But in the backend when we build features, for example summary invoice, we can’t know about the requirement unless I talk to somebody like you. We bring experts when building the product but not when using the product. The using is like click a button . Heather:        And they should be able to do it on their own. Yes, fair enough. Tejasawi:       Yes. Heather:        Thank you very much for speaking with me today Tej. I really appreciate it. Tejasawi:       My pleasure. Heather:        I’m sure our listeners have gained a lot from hearing you talk, especially if they have a Shopify client or are considering a Shopify client as something they’ll definitely look at. Now, I need to ask you before you go to see whether you know, what are the birds making all the noise in the background? Do you know what bird types they are? Tejasawi:       No, actually not. My mum is a bird enthusiast but I’m not. Heather:        They sound like seagulls but I didn’t want to be that bland and suggest that they would be seagulls. Are you near the water? Tejasawi:       No, so how Bangalore works, it’s a bustling city. Heather:        Okay, so it’s not going to be seagulls. You can send me an email sometime and let me know what the birds are. Tejasawi:       Sure. Heather:        It’s normally when I have these sessions my birds are noisier than anyone else’s birds. Tejasawi:       Yes, I think I heard in one part, yes. Heather:        My birds stayed quiet today and your birds went off on a racket. Thank you so very much for speaking with me today and I’ll leave links for how to get in contact with you in the show notes. I really appreciate it. Tejasawi:       My pleasure Heather. If I’m not pronouncing correct – Heather? Heather:        Heather. Tejasawi:       Great. I mean you are an inspiration. I want you to know that because when you maybe record and publish the podcast, very few people actually talk to you about it, right, I mean physically. So I wanted to thank you that you’re an inspiration to all of us and our team actually looks up to experts like you, your stories and the podcast is an inspiration. I wanted to make that very clear. Thanks a lot of taking the time out. Heather:        Thank you very much and hopefully it gives you an opportunity to hear the other add-ons and perhaps connect with them and learn from them and to move you from sort of cold to warm with these guys. Tejasawi:       Indeed. Heather:        Because we’re all in it together. Tejasawi:       Thanks a lot Heather. Heather:        Thank you. Cheers. Tejasawi:       I hope the seagulls were not too noisy. Heather:        No they weren’t. I like birds. They weren’t too noisy, I just wondered if you knew what they were. Tejasawi:       No, I’m sorry. I’ll get that. Thanks a lot Heather. Bye. Heather:        Thank you. Tejasawi:       Have a good day. Heather:        Same to you. Cheers Tej. End of Transcript Mentions ·        ZapStitch - http://www.ZapStitch.com ·        Bigcommerce - https://www.Bigcommerce.com ·        Xero - https://www.Xero.com ·        Shopify - https://www.Shopify.com ·        TradeGecko - http://www.TradeGecko.com ·        Sean Ellis http://www.startup-marketing.com/ ·        Emera ·        Olark - https://www.Olark.com ·        Freshdesk - http://Freshdesk.com ·        Intercom - https://www.Intercom.io ·        Bolder Band - http://www.bbolder.com   Contact Heather Smith Click here to sign up to my newsletter http://bit.ly/SignUp4Newsletter Listen to my podcast : http://cloud-stories.com/   Read my latest blog post : http://www.heathersmithsmallbusiness.com/blog/ Visit my website : www.heathersmithsmallbusiness.com  Book time with me heathersmithau.gettimely.com/book    Subscribe to XU Magazine : http://www.xumagazine.com/ Subscribe to my YouTube channel : https://www.YouTube.com/ANISEConsulting Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU Join my FaceBook page : https://www.facebook.com/HeatherSmithAU  Connect with me on LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU    

Highlights of my conversation with Cameron Priest ·        Singaporean Government fostering a technology hub ·        Global adoption of add-ons ·        Setting up a start-up in Singapore ·        Growing a business with a multi-lingual support ·        Giving clients the “wow factor” during the on-boarding process ·        The Smart Enterprise Software Wave ·        Choosing a currency to price in ·        Blk 71 Ayer Rajah Cr– the hub for start-ups in Singapore Subscribe to Episode 9 of Cloud Stories on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/cloud-stories-heather-smith/id908333807 Read about it here: http://cloud-stories.com/ep-9-cameron-priest-tradegecko-kiwi-cloud-inventory-solution-calling-singapore-home/ TradeGecko is a world-class Inventory, Order and Supply Chain Management platform with a comprehensive suite of functionalities – packaged together in an intuitive, cloud-based interface, designed and structured ‘user-first’ from the ground-up. Expertly manage your inventory as you save time, eliminate errors and streamline your sales channels, synchronized across all your stakeholders in real-time. Transcript Heather:        Welcome, Cameron, to the show. Thank you very much for being here. Cameron, the first question I’d like to ask you is what did you like to do when you were twelve years old? Cameron:      Well, I grew up on a kiwifruit orchard in New Zealand, so a big part of my life was exploring and building go-carts with my brothers, building things with my father, so kind of creating things was a big part of being twelve and kind of exploring the property. Heather:        Wow. That’s amazing, growing up in a kiwifruit orchard. That sounds like the quintessential New Zealand dream doesn’t it? Cameron:      I feel like it’s the butt of every New Zealand joke because we had kiwifruit and we had sheep. Heather:        Did you? Oh, you mentioned the sheep. But that’s sensational. Was it like a big orchard? Cameron:      It was a large kiwifruit producing orchard. It’s not massive but my father’s full time job was managing the orchard, so it wasn’t insubstantial but he is still doing that today.   Heather:        Wow. That’s amazing. You have come so far from kiwifruits to this. I’m surprised your businesses name is not Kiwi Gecko or something like that or Kiwifruit Gecko. How did a guy from Auckland end up in Singapore as a CEO of TradeGecko? Cameron:      Yeah, well previously I’d had a business doing development of iPhone and web applications for third parties, so client based kind of web design agency, and we had some customers who were kind of having the issue that we now are trying to solve with TradeGecko which is managing the entire backend of their businesses, be they wholesale or retail businesses. I’d been searching and looking and kind of struggling to start a business that kind of ... I guess the theory was always a business that made money while you sleep. That’s always the end goal for everyone isn’t it? Heather:        Yes. Cameron:      So this to me was a great opportunity and the more I looked, the bigger the opportunity seemed. Yeah, I mean for us the move from Auckland to Singapore was just access to capital, access to international markets, and I guess just a shake-up. I mean it’s very easy to be very complacent in New Zealand. It’s beautiful and it’s slow and it’s easy to have a really good lifestyle but it kind of … a way to kick my own butt was getting out of my comfort zone. Heather:        That’s interesting. Are you the founder of TradeGecko? Cameron:      Yes, so there are three co-founders. There’s myself and Carl Thompson who moved over to Singapore, and then I actually poached my older brother who is a great engineer a couple of months later to head up our product team. Heather:        I did notice some other Priests on the ... Cameron:      We’ve actually recently hired the youngest Priest as well. He’s a great engineer. Heather:        Sensational, another ... it does seems a lot of the add-on solutions are a family entity or exercise, so that’s interesting. Cameron:      Yeah. How many staff do you have based in your Singaporean office? Cameron:      In Singapore, we’ve got 29. Heather:        Wow. That’s a lot. Do you have staff based elsewhere? Cameron:      Yes, we have a team in Manilla in the Philippines and we’ve just opened an office in San Francisco as well. Heather:        Wow, so you’re growing rapidly because the ... How old is the business? It’s only about two years old isn’t it? Cameron:      Yeah, just over two years. We’ve quadrupled since last November which is scary to be perfectly honest. Heather:        Yeah, it’s amazing. That’s amazing growth you’ve got there. So based on what you’re saying there, let me ask you ... let me just jump ahead and ask you another question. On your LinkedIn profile, you used the phrase, “We give the power of Walmart supply chain management to SME’s.” Where are your customers coming from and are you targeting the US market because obviously Australians don’t know Walmart. I’m presuming New Zealand doesn’t have Walmart, so it was a very American phrase for me sitting there in LinkedIn. Cameron:      You make a very good point. I hadn’t thought about that point of view. Yeah, we do target the US. To be honest, the US and Australia are our two largest markets. In terms of the Walmart phrase, there’s actually kind of a positioning statement we’ve used when raising fund raising. I guess I kind of internalise it and have been using it in market materials, and perhaps isn’t the most targeted for the Australian or New Zealand markets, but that was kind of theory. Yeah, Australia is a big market but US is now overtaking them as our largest market nowadays. Heather:        That’s sensational. How are you approaching the American markets because it’s such a huge market to crack? How you approaching that? Cameron:      With trepidation. I mean effectively … I mean with us and obviously part of this conversation is the partnership with Xero and Shopify were the first real partnerships that started getting us customers. So in Australia and New Zealand, we’ve really been able to grow to kind of ride the coat tails of Xero, and Xero obviously isn’t dominant in the US, although I’m sure we all hope and I’m sure Rod really hopes that it does become so in the future. Heather:        Yes. Cameron:      But it does mean that we’re kind of facing an uphill battle in terms of the way we kind of inch that market. Completely honestly, we don’t know everything about what our strategy is going to be to enter that market because it is such a different kettle of fish. It’s a work in progress. Heather:        Yes, it is. So are you seeing movement into the UK market? Cameron:      UK is our seventh biggest country. US is big, Australia, Canada, New Zealand of course, Singapore is surprisingly large for us being based here but it’s still it’s a surprisingly small country and surprisingly large number of customers. I guess your classic western English speaking markets are large markets but then we’re everywhere to the Republic of Congo, Mexico, South Africa, some very, very … you know, 86 countries. It’s crazy the places that are using our software. Heather:        It’s sensational. I imagine that … you have an inventory based software, I imagine, and correct me if I’m wrong, that compliance and legislation doesn’t necessarily affect you in that it would be same for inventory based software no matter where you are. Cameron:      Exactly. I mean there are always going to be little things. I mean the Alcohol Tax in Australia, the Wet Tax, is actually another difficult issue we’ve had to tackle and we’ve had other issues in other countries. To your point, the US still has very complicated sales tax regime that we need to kind of work with. Heather:        Okay, so that comes from within your solution rather than within the point of sales solution? Cameron:      Exactly. Heather:        Okay, that’s interesting. How would you describe the Asia Pacific, Singapore, South East Asia start-up seem? Cameron:      It’s burgeoning. I mean Singapore has had a lot of money inject into from the Singaporean government. In fact our first round of financing, our investors put in $89,000 and the government put half a million in. Heather:        Wow. Cameron:      You just don’t get that sort of thing in New Zealand and you have some similar schemes in Australia but they’re actually getting phased out not in. So we had this opportunity here which the Singaporean government has grasped to really invest, not ... I mean not substantial money but we’re still talking kind of $30-50 million dollars which to a government is very little but that’s a hundred different start-ups that can come to Singapore and start in Singapore. They’re really, really trying to foster a technology economy in Singapore. South-East Asia is growing as well but Singapore is definitely the hub. Are any of your founders, and excuse me you may have mentioned this, are any of your founders Singaporean nationals? Cameron:      We are all Kiwis. Heather:        Yes, you’re all Kiwis. Okay, that’s really interesting. Isn’t it? “I’m actually prepared to fund you so much coming over there.” That’s amazing. But I guess you have employed a lot of people there in Singapore. Cameron:      Definitely a lot of Singaporeans here as well. Heather:        Yeah. I know when I lived in Singapore, I was on a very nice salary there, and I never used to get taxed. I remember going down to the Singaporean Tax office and putting all my stuff out and I just said, “You’ve just got to tax me, there’s something wrong. You’ve got to tax me.” They looked at it and they said, “No, you don’t earn enough money.” Cameron:      It’s great. Isn’t it? Heather:        Yeah. I was just like going, “What’s going on here? This is crazy.” Yeah, but it’s an amazing place, amazing eco-system to live, so that’s really interesting. Do you think Asia is a market that other add-on solutions should be looking to move to and to base themselves there? Cameron:      I think it’s a premature step to take it too early. I mean effectively, the western markets: Australia, US, Canada, they adopt a lot faster. We see that. I mean we are here and we obviously have a big story about Asia, even saying that we’re still seeing the fastest adoption from the western markets.                         We are probably getting customers in the Philippines and Malaysia that we wouldn’t have otherwise and we have some very large customers, multi-thousand dollar a month clients that we wouldn’t have been able to capture if we weren’t here but I do not think that you need to be here for your first 10,000 customers. Heather:        Yeah but it’s something perhaps they can look at down the line because it wouldn’t be the first place I would have thought of setting up a head office there, unless I wanted some great food and great travel access points, which is what Singapore is very well known for. Cameron:      For us ... sorry, the one thing I would say is that Singapore and Hong Kong especially are just logistic hubs. For us, we’re very focused on the industries we work with. It’s got its own … we’ve got our own reasons for being here and those wouldn’t be true for a lot of other add-ons but they are true for us. Heather:        Fair enough. So Singapore has four official languages, English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, how do you deal with so many different languages in Asia both from a business perspective and from a software solution perspective? Cameron:      Well, firstly, we’re very luck that everyone in Singapore’s first language is English, so that’s never been an issue for us in that regard but obviously as you exist Singapore, there’s a lot less of that, there’s a lot of local languages. So to kind of work with that, we do have a very multi-cultural and a very ... what you’d think of as a melting pot in terms of our teams and in terms of the different languages. We Aussies and Kiwis are the odd ones out with our one language of English. Most countries in the world, they have 3, 4, 5 languages if they’re lucky. A lot of our team do speak multiple languages and as we’re growing our support our sales team around the region and around the globe, we are looking for multi-lingual support and sales people. I think that’s kind of the only way you can tackle it because while some of the people can speak English, they still like to spend their time, their days with what they’re comfortable with which is the language they grew up in. Heather:        Yeah, absolutely. How difficult is it for a software solution to overlay a different language across the solution? Cameron:      Technically not that difficult. The difficult part is the supporting and the documentation, it’s converting everything. But actually if you look at a piece of software like TradeGecko or Xero or any other add-on, we’re probably talking of a dictionary of less than a couple thousand words that need to be translated into a dozen different languages, and there are third party providers that will do that and maintain and keep that up to date for you for quite a low cost.                         But for us, that’s not the issue, it’s the selling, it’s the marketing, it’s the positioning, it’s the different brand images, it’s the different cultural disconnects that become quite difficult. Heather:        Okay, that’s interesting. TradeGecko has one of the best on-boarding platforms that I’ve ever used or seen. For the people listening, I’ve tried a lot of them out there. So what is it? How did you develop it? What are you using? Maybe just share with our audience what you’re happy to share about your on-boarding training. Cameron:      I think the one thing we really think about and we probably don’t think about enough is trying to really understand what is the “wow moment” for a new user. What we want to do is we want to get our customers to wow as soon as possible. I’m sure we don’t get that for everyone but we’re trying to get as many people to understand and see how good their business could be with our solution as fast as possible. That’s kind of driven our focus on really developing a really smooth on boarding, hopefully showing them the different pieces of what we do and how we can help them. I guess that’s just a really big focus of mine, and because it’s so important to me that obviously affects everyone in the organisation and we have some great designers who spend a lot of time thinking, interviewing customers, going out to visit customers, seeing what their day-to-day looks like, and really understanding and making sure that we are building the right thing effectively. Heather:        Yeah, so what I really liked was when I went into TradeGecko and started up, it seemed like sort of a slither or a pane came across and it told me to go in and setup a customer and suggested I went here and clicked on this and did that. Then another pane came across and they were all quite colourful, beautiful panes, and they came across and they just kept telling me how to do it. Was that something you inbuilt into the solution? Cameron:      Yeah, we developed that in-house. I mean effectively we believe the wow is important. The other thing is you want people to understand what we do and don’t do as fast possible just to … otherwise … so they can identify, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” That’s kind of why we built the beautiful kind of show them as much the product but not too much as fast as possible. Heather:        Yeah, absolutely. I always say to people, “Look, if you’ve got 90 minutes spare, go and sit down and go through that introduction process on TradeGecko because you just get a real good understanding on A) how an inventory solution should work and B) how your particular inventory solution works because for us as advisors, it’s so difficult to learn all these new solutions out there, especially I think we’re sort of hitting 300 out there and we don’t have the time to sit down. But when there’s something fast, easy, beautiful, and you could almost probably watch House of Cards while you’re doing it, like at the same time, it’s so simple to go through. It’s like a game I guess. I know that seems to be one of the things that some of the software developers are doing is building that sort of gaming type of thing into the solution. Cameron:      Yeah. What were the biggest challenges a Kiwi guys faces doing business in Singapore? Cameron:      The biggest issue that we’ve had is probably not being a Kiwi guy in Singapore. It’s being anyone that’s running a company that’s growing so fast. It’s kind of being introspective and being able to learn to work with a huge array of cultures, huge array of personalities and learning how to work with ... I mean it’s just something that you don’t get taught. I think unless you’ve had experience, you kind of have to make it up as you go. I think I’m very honest in saying that I don’t really know what I’m doing. I hope I know a little bit more than I did in a month ago and I definitely know a lot more than I did 12 months ago but I’m sure I’ll know a lot more in 12 months than I do right now. I think that’s probably the most important thing and the hardest thing for me has been understanding different temperaments, different cultures, different people. Heather:        That probably is more because you’re situated in Singapore perhaps then being in other places. Cameron:      Definitely. Heather:        When I was there, I found them, the Singaporeans, very welcoming of the expats. Do you find yourself very welcomed there? Cameron:      Very much so. I mean some of our best employees are obviously local guys and girls, and they’re just fantastic. They have a really good work ethic and they have a great education system here, so that really helps us obviously with our hires. Heather:        Yeah absolutely, completely agree. Five major trends have dominated the Silicon Valley recently in the last hundred years: electronic tools, semiconductors, enterprise, telecom and consumer. A sixth trend is emerging which venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale of Formation 8 has coined The Smart Enterprise. How would you describe the Smart Enterprise Software Wave that Lonsdale is referring to? Cameron:      Yeah. I guess this is exactly what we are trying to tackle and a lot of other cloud based solution providers are trying to tackle, and that’s the … today you can build online management software and that’s fine and that’s good and that’s pretty and that’s easy to use but what we really want to do is we want not to just give you tool to run your business, we want to give you the ability to make decisions and have insights. The Smart Enterprise Software Wave is kind of this discussion that as we kind of move everything online, there’s this huge amount of data. We don’t just process sales and manage inventory, we can also see things in our business and within our industries that can make us ... we can make decisions that can affect things like not just forecasting but global trends. That’s what the Smart Enterprise Software Wave gives us, it’s that big data access, the ability to make decisions to kind of couple, really easy to use, analytical software with smart people, to do things that previously could only have been done by team of scientists probably working in Excel for quite a few months, being able to bring that data and those insights to fray very easily at a click of a button. We’re not there yet globally but I think that in the next five to ten years, just the decision making power that a small business owner will have which previously you’d have to pay SAP a hundred million dollars to get, is just going to be fascinating. That’s really what we’re trying to help do. I think you’ve answered this but how can the other software development companies, listening in, leverage off this Smart Enterprise Software Wave. Should they be looking towards this analytical dashboard that you suggest? Cameron:      It’s very easy to think about as a dashboard but the way I try and think about is if you can imagine the life of your user, and in our case you probably have some guys in a warehouse, some guys in an office, maybe some sales rep on the road, the guy and the CEO and maybe the financial controller, there are all these different people and they have all these really important decisions to make every day.                         Instead of them having to think, “What do I need to do to do my job?” As a software provider, we can actually bring to the surface the right information that they need to make a decision and to actually tell them … maybe not make the decision for them but to at least kind of really point them in the right direction. I think you can only work that out by really understanding the day-to-day life of each of your products users and really thinking about what really impacts their day-to-day, their weeks, their months, their planning for the year. I guess that’s kind of what we really try and do. I’m not saying we’re perfect at that but really thinking holistically about your customers. I mean best case scenario you go and work in a customer’s work for a couple of days, immerse yourself in their life, truly understand where you can help them with data. Heather:        Yeah, it’s very difficult I imagine because your solution, while is inventory, is probably being used by so many vastly different bespoke companies, trying to adapt to everything that’s out there that’s using you. Cameron:      Exactly but you can probably think no company wants to sell this product. No company wants to have worse relationships with their suppliers. You can kind of go, “Okay, every company in the world would like more customers, would like better relationships, they’d like more advanced forecasting, they’d like to know more clearly what their profit margins are.” So I think there are some kind of general rules you can probably make which you can really help these guys answer in a way that the CEO that used to have to sit down for two weeks to do kind of Excel spreadsheets to understand the last 12 months of his business, he doesn’t have to do that anymore. He can press a button. As long as we understand what the right questions those people should be asking, I think we can really help these guys grow their businesses and of course grow our own businesses by doing that for them. Heather:        That’s really interesting. Thank you for that Cameron. So TradeGecko’s pricing is in US dollars, why did you make this decision? Cameron:      Again, it’s the Singapore thing. Being in Singapore, we had to choose a currency, it didn’t make sense to do it in Singapore dollars. Ultimately there was also a bit of technical decision there because we couldn’t do it in too many currencies, and so US dollars was just kind of the same default and the global software as a service space, in the future we may do regional pricing. To be honest, to do that, we will need to change the way that we bill but at this stage, again, I was just thinking globally, US dollar is identifiable by everyone, yeah, that was the thought. Heather:        Fair enough. So how many customers do you need to look at or do you need to on-board to generate one million dollars US a year? What sort of you looking at for that? Cameron:      Each additional million dollars … so we would be looking at ... if we look at our current revenue, every kind of 600 customers would give us US dollars a million in revenue at this stage. We’re actually in very nice position at stage. We’re actually reducing the number of customers we need as we start to bring on larger and larger clients. Heather:        That’s interesting. That’s exciting for you. Cameron:      Yes, very much so. If you’re bringing on these larger clients, how many transactions, maximum transactions, can you deal with a month? Cameron:      In terms of these, so we work with some very interesting clients, so the biggest automotive parts supplier in Europe, Oscar, and they’re doing somewhere upwards of 1800 sales a day through our systems. Heather:        Oh okay, that’s amazing. Cameron:      Admittedly they have done some customer integration into their customer e-commerce store, so they’re not taking advantage of every piece of what we do but nothing really limits us there. I think in our opinion, the limitations then becomes the workflow, it becomes very difficult to pack 1800 items. You’re talking about having a proper warehouse management system. That’s something we’re really trying to improve at all times is to cater to these bigger guys doing these larger numbers. Heather:        Excellent. That’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing that. So what are of being some of the key successes of TradeGecko? Cameron:      So really important, that first customer that wasn’t a friend or family member, so that was really, really good for us. I don’t know why, there’s just something about that first order. How many friends and family members did you have that needed an inventory solution? Cameron:      Well, because one of our co-founders was in the fashion industry, it wasn’t insignificant. I think we had our first kind of 11 customers, seven of which were friends and family, but that’s kind of changed now obviously. So what other significant milestones? I mean getting to where we are today, I don’t know why but each ... how we make it, it’s significant to us because this is another person who is depending on you for their livelihood. Heather:        Absolutely. Cameron:      So that’s a big one. Opening up the team in Philippines was big because we hired some really high quality people there to help us with products and sales. When you’re hiring people that have kids and you have got stable jobs and they’re joining you, you realise the responsibility, so that was a big one personally for myself. Heather:        Yeah, amazing. So one of the things that you released, probably maybe it was about six or eight weeks ago, was a beautiful infographic of inventory workflow, how was that received? Cameron:      Surprisingly well. To be completely honest, I wasn’t that involved with it. We have a great ... one of our marketing team members, Clara, was kind of running the show on that one. Heather:        Clara Lu, was that right? Clara Lu. Cameron:      Yes, surprisingly well. So it’s been picked up by a lot of different people and it’s kind of formented some really interesting discussions especially with some of our customers. It’s great when you have a customer come on board who says they saw that inventory thing, they finally understood something, and then they started to think, “Well, if this is what you can do to help us, then I want him,” which I’ll be honest, I was little bit sceptical about but they proved me wrong which I’m always happy to be proven wrong. Heather:        Yeah, some people only think visually. It’s interesting because some people are like, “I didn’t get that until you drew a picture of it.” I’ll include the infographic in the show notes for people to have a look at and the concept is you actually share it, isn’t it? That’s the concept? Cameron:      Of course, that’s the concept, yeah. Heather:        I noticed that when you shared it … so other people whom I have seen having infographics, they actually have it all linking back to your site and I noticed you didn’t have a direct link back to your site with the sharing of it but maybe that was just because it was for the first time. Cameron:      We’ve had some people linking back to it. I know some people can be very aggressive about that. I mean end of the day, if someone doesn’t want to link back to us and they want to share, I don’t have any problem with that. If we were doing everything just to get link backs, we’d be kind of probably creating quite sad material and output. Heather:        No, I certainly think an infographic as a marketing tool is very … can be very useful, and for business advisors being able to say, “Hey, have a look at this. This is what TradeGecko does.” Again, it makes our life a little bit easier and it is an infographic out there for anyone to use. I actually ... because you know I’m involved with XU Magazine, I told Wes we need to put in the next edition. So if you were 17 years old again, I don’t think you’re actually very old because from looking at your LinkedIn profile, but if you were 17 years old again and wanted to become the next Cameron Priest, what’s the quickest route to get there? Cameron:      Well firstly, I’m 27, so ten years ago. I think the biggest thing for me was just starting. I know it sounds very trite but it’s very ... I mean I can remember when I first learnt how to build software. The way I learned was finally ... I oversold my abilities and I got a project from a client, and then I had to quickly learn, I actually roped my older brother because he’s lot smarter than I am, to help me build something. I guess it’s very easy to talk about wanting to do something and very easy to kind of read everything and watch all the videos, but actually kind of committing yourself. There’s a very famous quote about this but I won’t quote it now because it’s quite long but it’s about just starting and when you start, providence moves, everything just kind of falls into pieces, everyone starts to help you, things just align. Things don’t always align in the right way but nothing helps you learn how to start except starting. Heather:        Absolutely. Do you think that your university qualification helped you to get to that position? Cameron:      Not at all. If you were 17 years old again, would you do that again? Cameron:      At 17, I still needed to grow up a bit, so probably yes. But I mean I tried to start businesses when I was 17, they weren’t in the technology space. I tried all sorts of different things, so I don’t begrudge that but I feel like starting is one thing and then also being exposed to people who have done it because some people are very lucky in which their parents are quite successful. Hence, they understand that the ability to create a business is not that hard. You don’t need to be super smart. You don’t need a 160 IQ. You just need to do it but I think for a lot of us, being exposed to people just like us who are successful makes you realise that it’s just about hard work. Again, that sounds very trite but being exposed to those sorts of people as young as possible, I think is very valuable. Where were you exposed to these sorts of people? Cameron:      So definitely after I moved to Singapore but before this my father is an entrepreneur. I can’t say he was a super successful one. He was a great Kiwi inventor, not a great businessman. I think that definitely exposed me to the ups and the downs of business but I do see friends who were kind of exposed to very successful business people, very young, and to them the idea of starting business has always been an obvious and relatively easy endeavour, whereas I think that majority of the population, it’s kind of something that’s always been a bit out of reach but it doesn’t need to be. Heather:        Okay, thank you. I’m just throwing one more question out there because you might have the answer, if you don’t know, no worries. If a business person was to go over to Singapore, are there any start-up hubs that they should visit that you know of? Cameron:      Yes, there’s one big one. Again, another government organisation has put it together which is a place called Blk 71 and there are probably 400-500 different start-ups there now and a bunch of investor capitalists. So it’s just Blk 71, and that’s just the name of the area and that’s the name of the building, it’s blk 71. That’s where all the technology companies, especially the younger ones, that’s where you start in Singapore. Heather:        Oh okay, that’s good. I’ll search that up and put that up in show notes. What suburb is that based in? Cameron:      That’s in Ayer Rajah, I can bring you the actual address for it afterwards. Heather:        Sensational. So, thank you so much for speaking with us today Cameron. I really enjoyed listening to you and hearing all of your insights about Asia and about TradeGecko, and I’m sure the listeners gained a lot of information from hearing from you as well. Cameron:      It was my pleasure Heather. Thank you very much. Mentions ·         TradeGeckohttp://www.TradeGecko.com    ·         https://www.facebook.com/cameronpriest ·         https://twitter.com/cameronpriest ·         http://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronpriest ·         http://cameronpriest.com/ ·         Xerohttps://www.Xero.com ·         Shopifyhttp://www.Shopify.com ·         Joe Lonsdale http://formation8.com/team/joe-lonsdale ·         Formation 8 http://www.formation8.com ·         Smart Enterprise Software Wave http://formation8.com/resources/the-smart-enterprise-wave ·         SAP http://www.sap.com/index.html ·         XU Magazine http://xumagazine.com ·         Block 71 http://www2.blk71.com Contact Details for Heather Smith ·         Click here to sign up to my newsletter http://bit.ly/SignUp4Newsletter ·         Listen to my podcast : http://cloud-stories.com/   ·         Read my latest blog post : http://www.heathersmithsmallbusiness.com/blog/ ·         Visit my website : www.heathersmithsmallbusiness.com  ·         Book time with me heathersmithau.gettimely.com/book    ·         Subscribe to XU Magazine : http://www.xumagazine.com/ ·         Subscribe to my YouTube channel : https://www.YouTube.com/ANISEConsulting ·         Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU ·         Join my FaceBook page : https://www.facebook.com/HeatherSmithAU  ·         Connect with me on LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU