Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

The quest to solve students’ problems

In the quest to solve students’ problems, Fluid Education’s Giorgio Doueihi set out on a winding path to provide solutions.

17 year old Giorgio Doueihi had a problem, his school had just rolled out a student diary app that was unusable. So Doueihi, who’d started coding at 13, decided he’d write a new one.

“I’d been dabbling with a bunch of projects at high school and I’d taught myself how to code,” Giorgio told Decoding the New Economy at Telstra’s Sydney Muru-D incubator.

That app was quickly adopted by his high school which had spent $100,000 developing the unusable system. Giorgio finished school, started university and Backpack, as his app became known, was accepted into Sydney University’s student INCUBATE startup program.

“I found out about INCUBATE and thought ‘I might just pitch this idea I had at high school’ then it kind of took a turn.”

Backpack became Fluid Education and Giorgio was accepted onto the Muru-D program, the product was doing well in the market and gaining customers when he decided to shut it down and move to a new product.

“Sales cycle was a large part of the pivot,” he explains. “Another part was that it had changed from a student orientated app to something more enterprise focused, something we were uncomfortable doing.”

So Fluid Education pivoted and is now a service for matching tutors to students and managing their appointment with the new platform about to come out of beta, “We’ve gone back to our roots,” Giorgio explains.

In many ways Giorgio Doueihi story is straight out of the startup textbook, he’s passionate, has identified a problem to solve and was agile enough to change the business’ course when he was unhappy with the direction.

Fluid education and Giorgio will be a very interesting story to follow over the next few years.

The challenges of an open organisation

Social media management service Buffer has been open about its management journey. Their latest story illustrates a common business challenge.

“We moved into a house we couldn’t afford” writes Buffer founder and CEO Joel Gascoigne on his company’s decision to fire ten of their 94 staff as revenues miss targets and the venture’s cash burn accelerates.

A few years ago we wrote about Gascoigne’s commitment to being an open company and his post today is a brutal, but honest, reflection of that.

Buffer’s problem is one familiar to many business owners when revenue projections aren’t being met and the tough reality of making unexpected cuts becomes apparent.

Making Buffer even more unusual among tech and social media startups is how the company doesn’t depend up venture capital funding – an advantage for its owners but also a downside in situations like this where being able to raise more money for equity would give the business room to move.

At present however companies following the VC model are in trouble as they are finding investors aren’t so willing to write cheques to loss making ventures unless there’s a clear path to profits.

That reluctance to fund businesses is going to see more layoffs for companies dependent upon VC funding, some startups will fail because of it. The really fascinating part is how many of the tech unicorns will be amongst the failed business.

One hopes though Buffer won’t be among the casualties, Gascoigne and his team deserve to be rewarded for their candour.

Entering an era of surpluses

Negative interest rates are part of a period of surplus resources that will test many businesses

With the global Zero Interest Rate Policy experiment failing, we’re now entering the era of negative interest rates with a quarter of the world’s central banks charging savers.

The world is flooded with money, but we also have surpluses in manufacturing, a surplus in most commodities, of energy and an increasing surplus of labor.

From Shanghai to Barcelona, the surplus of labor is beginning to be felt as industries become increasingly mechanised and the consequences of short sighted economic policies over the last thirty years begins to be felt.

That labor surplus is also driving the political shifts in Europe and North America as workforces are finding their living standards being pressured and their economic prospects dwindling. As a consequence, voters are looking for scapegoats – immigrants in Europe, the EU in Britain and Mexicans in the US.

Regardless of which scapegoat you choose to blame for the global economy’s uncertainty, the fact remains we are in a time where scarcity can’t be assumed.

This means business models that are based upon restricted supply are, in most sectors, under threat. The whole economics of scarcity becomes irrelevant when there are no shortage of suppliers around the globe.

In some fields, such as energy, technological change is seeing the dominant positions of oil companies, electricity generators and distributors being challenged in ways that wouldn’t have been thought possible a few years ago.

Even regulated industries where government licenses artificially controlled supply – like taxis, broadcasting and telecommunications – increasingly new distribution methods are changing the economics of those industries. No longer is buying a government license a sure fire way to big profits.

Right now, the imperative for businesses to find the areas where there is scarcity and supply constraints. For many industries that may be too difficult a transition.

Negative interest rates though take us into uncharted territory. How the global economy responds to virtually free and unlimited money is going to be an interesting experiment.

Don’t follow the normal route

It’s a good time to startup a business says Technology One’s Adrian DiMarco, just don’t follow the normal route.

Two years ago I interviewed Technology One founder and CEO Adrian DiMarco about his company’s pivot to the cloud and the gold rush among consultants and services providers looking at making money out of cloud computing services.

DiMarco’s founded Technology One in 1987 to compete in the enterprise software space with the likes of SAS and Oracle. At the peak of the dot com boom in 1999, DiMarco listed the company on the Australian stock exchange where it is one of the few genuine tech stocks on the nation’s finance and mining dominated bourse.

Given the focus on listed companies at the moment, DiMarco’s views are worth noting. “if I were to do it again, I’d don’t think I’d go that path,” he says about listing the business. “I have a real issue with how public companies run in Australia.”

DiMarco’s view is at odds with Netsuite’s Zach Nelson who told Decoding the New Economy last month how being on the stock exchange forces management to focus. “Managing a public company is a great discipline and in some ways gives us an advantage over non-public company who don’t have to have discipline and make good investments,” Nelson said.

In DiMarco’s opinion, the regulatory and ‘box ticketing’ requirements of a listed company don’t reflect the true performance of a corporation’s management. “There are mediocre CEOs walking away with millions,” he says.

While listing made sense for Technology One in 1999 those looking at starting a business today shouldn’t necessarily follow his path warns DiMarco, “tor startups these days, don’t follow up normal route.,” he says.

“I think the world’s your oyster to do want you want. Don’t let anyone talk you out of anything,” DiMarco says. “When we started out we were told ‘don’t build enterprise software’. We did and we succeeded.”

“Don’t be scared,” he advices. “It really is a great time to startup a business. The technology is redefining business. It’s a good time.”

The smell of social media defeat

While Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn is a triumph for the Silicon Valley greater fool model, it shows social media is largely an investor’s graveyard.

“There’s a shared sense of alignment,” says LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner during his video with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to announce Microsoft’s $26 billion dollar acquisition of LinkedIn.

Weiner has been trying to reinvent LinkedIn’s business model for three years and Microsoft’s acquisition is an admission of defeat with the company’s market capitalisation half of what it was a year ago and profits proving hard to find.

The fact revenues were slowing in the face of anemic returns is probably the reason why LinkedIn’s board was happy to accept Microsoft’s deal that’s 46% more than the social media site’s $17.5bn market capitalisation on Friday.

LinkedIn’s capitulation shows what a graveyard social media sites have been for investors. With the exception of Facebook, almost all have failed to deliver the profits or promise hoped for by those making big bets on the platforms.

Both LinkedIn’s and Twitter’s managements have been distracted by the search for revenue streams to justify their huge stockmarket valuations which in turn has alienated core users. LinkedIn’s surrender means Twitter’s acquisition is only a matter of time.

Microsoft now has to show how it is going to derive twenty-six billion dollars worth of value out of LinkedIn. The company’s track record of acquisitions is execrable as we’ve seen with Nokia, Yammer and Skype and there’s little to indicate this deal will fare any better.

Commentary that LinkedIn as a ‘cloud company’ will help Microsoft Azure against an already rampant AWS is downright silly, Nadella himself in a Bloomberg interview with LinkedIn’s Weiner was at pains to point out the networking service’s fit with the Dynamics product.

Plugging LinkedIn’s ‘social graph’ with Microsoft Dynamics might give the Nadella’s team better tools to compete with Salesforce in the CRM market, it seems a high price to pay and almost justifies Salesforce’s Marc Benioff rejecting Microsoft’s overtures last year.

LinkedIn’s capitulation marks the end of social media’s growth phase. Now, as Facebook becomes the platform that rules all, the others have to find their niches in a market dominated by one services. For Twitter the race is now on to find a buyer.

Lenovo and the hunt for profitable smartphone markets

Lenovo’s smartphone announcements are part of an industry desperately trying to find new profit centres and markets.

With Google’s Project Ara seemingly stalled, it was interesting to see Lenovo announce the Moto Z modular phone this week.

The question remains though whether this concept is a solution looking for a problem however if Lenovo open the device up to third party accessory makers, we could see a surge of innovation similar to the ‘plug compatible’ IBM days which may drive consumer interest.

Lenovo is still struggling to find its feet in the mobile phone market, so finding a compelling product to drive sales and improve margins in a largely unprofitable industry is a priority.

It may be the other smartphone announced by Lenovo in San Francisco, the clumsily named Phab 2 Pro, could be where the manufacturer finds its niche with Google’s Project Tango 3D sensing technologies.

The Phab 2 Pro’s 3D capability may be the beginning of accessible virtual and augmented reality systems however hands on reviews of the device indicate it may be some way from being ready for public release.

Lenovo’s announcements show how the smartphone markets is currently in a state of transition as vendors try to find the next new profit and growth centres. To complicate matters, all the Android manufacturers are waiting to see what Apple’s next move will be.

Uber opens its APIs

Uber makes its APIs available to the general community

Ride service Uber has raised the game for logistics and delivery services in opening a group of Application Program Interfaces for third party developers.

The four functions available in the Uber Rush package cover delivery tracking, quotes and history. They make starting a logistics service or adding functions to a business far easier.

While there is a downside in the risk of being locked into Uber’s service this move will give a lot of developers the opportunity to develop delivery tracking products, for incumbent postal and courier services, this API is bad news on a number of levels.

Can innovation save Australia?

Keeping the lucky country lucky

This is the prepared version of my speech at the Cloud Crowd “Can Innovation Save Australia” debate. I was on the affirmative team, even though in truth I’m probably close to the negative side.

Australia truly is the lucky country. We entered the Twentieth Century as one of the richest countries on earth and at the turn of millennium we remained so.

The first fifteen years of this century have been equally kind, however that prosperity has been built on a mining boom and an ever growing property bubble.

Now those foundations are slipping – the mining boom is over and Australians have became the most indebted people on the planet as housing loans put an increasing burden on Australian families, a situation that is not sustainable.

The three Bs of Australian Business

Making matters worse, the good years of the last three decades have seen Australia’s business community become inward looking and complacent, as one of my colleagues recently wrote Australian managers are obsessed with their “Three Bs” – Bonuses, BMWs and their Balmoral Beach Club memberships.

Australia though has a fine history of invention and innovation, we’ve seen ideas ranging from the stump jump plough and Hills hoist through to the flight data recorder and Cochlear ear implants change the world.

Cochlear itself forms the centre of an Australian hearing technology hub at Macquarie University which brings together university researchers, private sector R&D and some of the world’s best medical specialists to form a globally competitive centre of excellence. We can do great things.

Starting from behind

However we are starting a long way behind the rest of the world. Not only is Silicon Valley speeding ahead but so too are countries as diverse as the UK, Israel and Singapore. One of the understated stories in Australian media is just how heavily China is investing in its pivot into a knowledge and innovation based economy. Others in our region like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia are already well down the path of moving to economies based on 21st Century technologies.

All of these countries – their governments, their business leaders and the communities – have recognised success in the Twenty-First Century will depend upon investment in education, research, development and businesses that harness the great powers being unleashed by today’s technologies.

This is where Australia’s opportunity also lies. In the 19th and 20th Centuries the country was the beneficiary of technologies like the steam ship, the telegraph, refrigeration, electrification and, at the end of the Twentieth century, the great global financial deregulations. We truly were the lucky country.

Staying lucky

Remaining lucky in the 21st Century is going to take more than riding on the back of sheep, the end of coal train or surfing the wave of easy credit that crashed over our economy in the 25 years after 1990. We are going to have to be smart, canny and adventurous.

Australians though have shown they can grasp opportunities and with government policies that favour innovation over speculation, investment over ticket clipping, a business community that pulls its weight in research and a community that values education at all levels we can do it.

So yes, Innovation can save Australia but we as a nation have to be prepared to work at it and change many of our current ways of thinking.

Fearlessness and starting a business

Fearlessness is a key trait for business founders in any industry. It’s a quality that shouldn’t be overlooked.

“Just do it!” Almost every startup founder I interviewed for The Australian’s series on expat entrepreneurs had the same advice for budding entrepreneurs wanting to go global – don’t wait, just do it.

Peter Grant of Brisbane founded Safesite did though inject a slightly different view when he pointed out that it may not make sense for a company with a good domestic business to make the move, “If it’s going to be too complex or you already have a profitable business in Australia you may not need to come to the US, you have to be realistic about it. It might make sense to find a local partner.”

In Peter’s case though that move made sense. “We have a year on our competitors,” he notes.

Not being scared of making the move was part of a discussion I had with TechnologyOne founder Adrian DiMarco today, I’d previously interviewed Adrian for Business Spectator a few years back and it was good to hear his views on the current startup mania and the Australian innovation push.

One of the points DiMarco made was about not being scared when launching a venture, whether it’s the competition, the marketplace or the overall daunting task of running a business, being fearless is a key attribute to making the first steps, not just success.

That fearlessness is something that should be acknowledged about business founders, whether it’s a tech startup, dog walking service or donut franchise. Every single proprietor is taking a great leap.

The revenge of the open web

The UK government saved £4bn by banning smartphone apps. That’s a small win for the open internet.

Ben Terrett, the former head of design at the UK Government’s Digital Service, tells GovInsider why the agency banned mobile phone apps with the British taxpayers saving £4.1bn over the following four years.

Instead the GDS insisted agencies built responsive web sites so pages would adapt to the devices they were being read upon, saving time and money being devoted to developing and maintaining individual apps for different platforms.

Apps are “very expensive to produce, and they’re very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes,” GovInsider quotes Terrett.

For those of us who worry about the increasingly siloed and proprietary nature of the internet, Terret’s story is very good news. Apps are particularly problematic as they stunt innovation, lock users into platforms and give those who control the App stores – mainly Apple and Google – massive market power.

It’s no co-incidence Facebook are currently in the process of restricting web access to their messenger service. Locking users into their app gives them far more power over users and much more control over their data.

On the other hand, the open web means sites are more accessible and not subject to the corporate whims of whoever controls a given silo. It also means that any data collected is far more likely to be commoditised, something Facebook hates.

That government agencies and large corporations are realising the costs, risks and value they are handing over the gatekeepers by developing apps is encouraging. It would be good if they considered the other downsides of giving the web over to a small clique of companies.

Employment and business in an era of ubiquitous robotics

McDonald’s former CEO inadvertently highlights the future of work in his comments about robot fast food kitchens

While robots threaten to take our jobs, they also promise to change the agricultural industry. That paradox describes how both the risks and opportunities in our increasingly automated word.

Brian Halweil, an ag-tech writer, describes how small farmers are using specialist robots to automate their operations. He lays out how the miniaturization of farm machinery will help encourage small, diverse farms.

The available of cheap, adaptable robots driven by almost ubiquitous and build in artificial intelligence is going to drive automation across most industries.

Ubiquitous robotics though means we have to rethink employment and social security as the workforce adjusts to new methods of working. Inadvertently former McDonalds chief executive Ed Rensi touched upon this in his somewhat hysterical response to the campaign to increase the minimum wage across the United States.

Rensi is right to point out that fast food restaurants will replace workers with robots where they can, indeed McDonalds led the way through the 1970s and 80s in introducing production line techniques to the food industry and the company will automate their kitchens and ordering systems regardless of minimum wage levels.

That relentless automation of existing jobs is why there is now a world wide push to explore the concept of a guaranteed minimum wage. We seem to be at the same point we were almost a century ago where the ravages of the Great Depression meant societies had to create a social security safety net.

As we saw with the Great Depression, the jobs eventually came back but in a very different form in a much changed economy. We’re almost certainly going to see the same process this century, hopefully without the massive dislocation and misery.

For businesses and industry, Halwell’s point about much smaller and adaptable robots giving rise to more nimble businesses is almost certainly true. For investors, managers and business owners adapting to that world will be key to avoiding being on the minimum wage themselves.