Today, let’s move out of the mire of Canberra, tax and the post office to an inspiring story that illustrates the opportunities skilled Australians have to take on the world in new technology.
You will enjoy what is a remarkable Australian global innovation and marketing story. Indeed, many of us may soon be personally using the technology.
Across my desk on Wednesday flashed an announcement from a small company I had barely heard of — Dubber — which had just linked up with the US giant Zoom group, which has a market capitalisation of about $US100bn ($130bn). The market capitalisation of the Melbourne-based minnow is just $500m.
We are all familiar with the global software developments of Atlassian and the achievements of Airwallex to convert strategies embraced in a Docklands, Melbourne coffee shop into transforming global foreign exchange transactions. Both companies are valued in the billions of dollars.
Around 2009, Steve McGovern (current Dubber CEO), James Slaney and Adrian Di Pietrantonio were marketing various services to smaller telecommunications companies. They began to realise that a vast number of companies were telling customers that their conversations were being recorded, but in fact trying to retrieve the recorded data was incredibly labour-intensive and the massive storage space required for what was close to useless material was monumental.
The whole process was very expensive. McGovern and his partners saw this as a technology development opportunity, but realised that any solution would need to be based on a global platform. The biggest and the best available was Amazon Web Services, which said it was coming to Australia in 2012.
McGovern and co began developing a recording service that would achieve what everyone wanted — the ability to transcribe the material; to be able to access conversations via searching words and to locate quickly sales conversations. And it had to be secure and compliant with rules and regulations.
When AWS was fully established, Dubber based its fledgling system on the AWS platform and its access to the cloud.
Then it was off to market to very nervous telcos. Telstra had struggled with its own hardware-based system so was open to an already developed cloud-based operation. Optus was also keen.
It was a good start and telcos around the world knew there was a gap in their repertoire of services.
Just as Airwallex discovered, sometimes Australian technology can succeed in a restricted area where no one else is competing. Dubber had a series of important wins on the global stage, led by AT&T. The large US telco spent more than a year stress-testing the Dubber system. When the Dubber system stood up to that test, AT&T signed up. And that sign-up encouraged many other telcos to join. They were also encouraged when offshoots of Cisco and then Microsoft and IBM also signed up.
Most of the work of Dubber in recent times has been to link with as many telcos as it can to establish global leadership. Naturally that has involved establishment losses, which by December 31 had totalled $76m, but Dubber still had $42m in cash. At this stage Dubber has only 350,000 users worldwide, but it has now signed up 150 telcos around the world, so the number of users is set to explode. With more and more transactions taking place verbally in the COVID-19 environment, telcos want to offer their customers a recording service that is secure and can be accessed.
The next stage is for users to access the data contained in these conversations and to use that data for new products and to improve marketing and customer service.
And of course the link with Zoom means that all Zoom conversations can be recorded and the data accessed. This will make a huge difference to board meetings and other complex conferences. Of course, companies may continue to rely on Minute Keeper but if there’s any doubt about what was said they can go back to the recorded service and access the material quickly.
The great risk any Australian company operating on the world stage faces is that others will come in and eat their lunch.
McGovern believes this will be difficult because of the effort telcos need to undertake to embed the Dubber service into their billing and other systems. It means that, as long as Dubber’s products are world class, it will be difficult for a rival to displace the Australian company.
Dubber backdoor-listed around 2015 through Crucible Gold. The shares have, of course, been rising sharply. The biggest shareholder is Thorney, which is a major supporter of Australian new technology.
In past times, exporting Australian technology around the world was almost impossible. We usually sold out. But now global companies have an open mind to new technologies and the concept that one might come from Australia does not frighten them — particularly in the light of Atlassian and Airwallex.
An interesting feature of the Dubber service is that the copyright in the data is not owned by the telcos but rather the companies interfacing with their customers and pressing the record button.
Dubber recorded material that can go back many years, so over time companies will begin to make greater use of the data. That’s when the really big rewards for Dubber will arrive.
Meanwhile the company is expecting to be cashflow positive later this year.
But that’s not the name of the current game — it’s all about market penetration, attracting new users and teaching them how to access the data.
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