How the founders of three Aussie tech companies became worth more than $292,000,000

THEY took a huge gamble and it paid off big time. Here are their tips on what it takes to make money from your ideas.

A NEW documentary sharing the story of three Aussie tech companies highlights the ups and downs of trying to turn their passions and ideas into a multimillion-dollar company.

Directed by Emmy Award winner Patrick Moreau, The New Hustle shares raw anecdotes and eye-opening interviews from Aussie entrepreneurs Luke Anear, Justin Dry, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, who are all worth a combined $292 million.

News.com.au recently got to catch up with the founders of these companies to find out what skills are needed for with similar dreams of success.

SAFETY CULTURE

In addition to its home base in Australia, SafetyCulture now has offices in the U.S. and UK.

Luke Anear is worth $134 million after developing SafetyCulture — a workplace health and safety platform used to create smart checklists, conduct on-site inspections, analyse data and share insights in real-time.

Despite having been responsible for more than 30 million inspections around the world for clients like Qantas, Hilton and Coca-Cola, Mr Anear said his journey will never be smooth sailing.

“The hardest part about creating SafetyCulture has been to personally grow at the rate required by the opportunity in front of us. The pressure to be constantly better is intense, and it never stops. I haven’t overcome it and suspect I won’t until I stop,” he told news.com.au.

When it comes to dealing with the stress involved of running such a large project, Mr Anear believes the key is making time to have work/life balance.

“I try to give myself time to do the things I love like spend time with my family, friends or head out for a mountain bike ride,” he said.

He also admits to feeling passionate about the product he created as part of his drive.

“We’re fortunate to be working on a problem that saves lives and helps our customers maintain the highest standards,” he said.

The entrepreneur said finding the answer to a problem is also the key to making money in the business world.

“The most exciting part is that our best work is ahead of us. There are few opportunities in the world where you’re being pulled by a market that is so large,” he said.

“From the outside, safety and quality sounds boring, but whenever someone sees what we do, they want to be part of it.”

Mr Anear likes to be proof you can be successful from chasing your dreams, but admits the experience isn’t for everyone.

“You need to have an appetite for taking risks and pushing boundaries, and those qualities are not usually something that can be learnt,” he said.

“Surround yourself with people who complement your skill set. That’s when it becomes really enjoyable, when the people on your left and right are better than you in many ways and you all rely on each other to climb the mountain.”

CANVA

Canva co-founders Cameron Adams, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht. Source: Supplied.

How much money do you think you would be worth if you developed an amazingly simple tool for everyone to create professional quality graphic designs?

If you use Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht as an example, you could estimate somewhere around $128 million.

The company developed a drag-and-drop design tool that works with a library of more than one million photographs, graphics and fonts to create beautiful art for print or online.

Since launching, Canva has grown to more than 10 million users in 179 countries around the world and is now available in 25 different languages.

Melanie Perkins said the most valuable lesson she has learnt is that different stages of business require very different types of leadership.

“When we were just starting out, we’d be spread thin, working really hard to meet our goals and ensure our company stayed alive,” she told news.com.au.

“Today, we have a team of over 200 across various geographies, and it’s important for me to be able to plan my time to manage goals and empower everyone to make good business decisions.”

Ms Perkins said even though the rapid growth of her company was welcome, it hasn’t been without hardships.

“There’s a quote that I really like ‘the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel’. I think this is very true — every start-up takes a lot of hard work over many years and it’s always a rollercoaster with a lot of ups and downs along the way,” she said.

Ms Perkins feels the biggest key to success is finding something that you love and feel passionate about, and balancing that with purpose.

“It’s not just the extroverts that get ahead. As an introvert myself, the best piece of advice I can give is to just get started and keep learning,” she said.

“I truly believe sheer determination can propel everyone to reach their dreams. I was fortunate to learn the power of determination quite young in life and consequently have poured my heart and soul into almost everything I do.

“I learnt that if I worked really, really hard I would usually succeed or at least learn a lot along the way.”

VINOMOFO

André Eikmeier and Justin Dry created Vinomofo in 2011.

Online wine retailer Vinomofo was founded from an Adelaide garage and has made Justin Dry worth $30 million.

Similar to Melanie Perkins, Mr Dry said one of his biggest challenges has been adapting to his leadership role during the transition of the company from a garage to a global operation with more than 550,000 customers and 120 employees.

“At the start of our journey, it was things like having a strong enough business model to make money, making sure we could pay our bills,” he told news.com.au.

“As we grew slightly it was ensuring we had the buying power to compete with the big guys, hiring the right people quickly enough to not stifle growth but slow enough to get it right.

“Now that we’re six years in, my biggest fear at the moment is for us to get slow, clunky and operate like a large scale business, so one of the biggest challenges at the moment is keeping our 100 plus strong team agile, innovative, reactive and working like a start-up.”

When it comes to leading a company, Mr Dry agrees it might not be for everyone.

“You have to be willing to constantly push past your self-imposed boundaries and do things outside your comfort zone — a ridiculous amount of passion and a high tolerance to risk is essential,” he said.

“Once you have taken the lead to create something special from scratch, you’ll undoubtedly face cynics and people that just don’t like you for their own reasons. It gets worse the bigger and more successful you become — it’s up to the individual to turn this criticism into motivation.”

Mr Dry said it’s also important to not attach business failures to self-worth.

“It took a long time to get to this point, but I can now look at failures as an opportunity to learn. This means I can pick myself up, stand tall and continue pushing forward, stronger than before,” he said.

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