Hadleigh Ford, founder and CEO of SwipedOn, shares his adventurous transformation from maritime to tech CEO in our latest episode. Discover the captivating journey of how a young New Zealander became one of the youngest harbour pilots and went on to work on some of the most luxurious vessels in the world.
Learn from the real-world challenges and triumphs Hadleigh. Hear about the early days filled with financial missteps and the critical role of customer feedback in pivoting to success. He also delves into the strategic decisions that shaped their growth, including outsourcing development, as well as the pivotal moment of bringing on a co-founder to enhance operational efficiency.
Lastly, Hadleigh opens up about SwipedOn's unexpected acquisition by a UK-listed company. He shares the pros and cons of being part of a public company and offers invaluable advice on perseverance, early customer engagement, and balancing work with personal life.
You can connect with Hadleigh here and go and check out SwipedOn.
Hadleigh Ford, founder and CEO of SwipedOn, shares his adventurous transformation from maritime to tech CEO in our latest episode. Discover the captivating journey of how a young New Zealander became one of the youngest harbour pilots and went on to work on some of the most luxurious vessels in the world.
Learn from the real-world challenges and triumphs Hadleigh. Hear about the early days filled with financial missteps and the critical role of customer feedback in pivoting to success. He also delves into the strategic decisions that shaped their growth, including outsourcing development, as well as the pivotal moment of bringing on a co-founder to enhance operational efficiency.
Lastly, Hadleigh opens up about SwipedOn's unexpected acquisition by a UK-listed company. He shares the pros and cons of being part of a public company and offers invaluable advice on perseverance, early customer engagement, and balancing work with personal life.
You can connect with Hadleigh here and go and check out SwipedOn.
I had the benefit of naivety, and if I probably knew too much, I may not have even gotten things going. I may have spent too long scoping things out. So I quite like that naivety to a point.
Speaker 2:Hadley is the founder and CEO of Swipe Gone. He will kind of shirk on this one. I think he's the nicest guy in the New Zealand tech ecosystem tech ecosystem.
Speaker 1:One thing I didn't have in the early days was mentors of people that had done it before, and that would probably be the biggest thing that could have saved me from making a few mistakes.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. I want to tell you a little bit about desk work. Desk work is your offshoring option. If you want to save around 50% of your total headcount cost for equivalent talent across accounting, marketing, sales, your operations or your admin, then check out Deskwork. Honestly, if I was looking to start an accounting firm again, it would be a no-brainer for me to use Deskwork. I've used offshoring teams before in the past. I got past my skepticism on being able to do it and it was so phenomenally successful. Go have a look at desk-workco backslash, greg, and book yourself a free discovery call to learn more about it. Better still, mention my name and get yourself some discounts. Check it out.
Speaker 2:Now back to the show. My guest today is Hadley Ford. Now Hadley is the founder and CEO of Swiped On, and I've known Hadley for well about a year now properly, he will kind of shirk on this one. I think he's the nicest guy in the New Zealand tech ecosystem. He is just a thoroughly good guy. You should see the smile on his face right now. He's embarrassed. Welcome to the podcast Adelaide.
Speaker 1:Thanks, greg, great to be here, and yeah, I don't know what to say to that. Maybe I'll just try and be a bit of an arsehole and balance the equation. Let's bring full arseholery to this podcast. I can do it. I can do it.
Speaker 2:No, I can do it. I can do it. No, no, thank you. Thanks for the kind words. Oh, that's very cool. Hey, I always start off every podcast talking about people's sort of journey to date. So not the Swiped On origin, but your origin. Tell us a little bit about you. Know where you grew up? Were you the entrepreneurial kid and how did you sort of make your way career-wise to ultimately then start Swiped On Cool?
Speaker 1:I grew up in Wworth our so north of auckland and yeah, I weirdly fell into the maritime world. So, yeah, I remember my mum's from advertisement in the paper and I'm kind of 17 year old that didn't know what they wanted to do and I ended up going for a cadetship working on merchant ships. So, yeah and yeah, I just went through that. So I started out as a cadet and worked my way through to being an officer on container ships and, following a bit of a pattern in my life of grass is greener in certain areas, I went from container ships through to cruise ships. That was awesome. Then had an opportunity to work on super yachts and all the while I was kind of progressing through the ranks as well, and then went from, yeah, cruise ships through to super yachts as well.
Speaker 1:I spent the last probably seven or eight years of my maritime career working on super yachts too, which is pretty awesome. It was a little bit. After that as well, I had started to have a family, so it wasn't really great being away for months at a time working at sea. So I started to work as a harbour pilot in New Zealand. So by that stage I was 29. I pilot in New Zealand. So by that stage I was 29. I was actually one of the youngest harbour pilots ever and that job in itself you guide the ships and you speak to the tugs and park them and take them out to sea. So I did that and that's kind of building into Swiped On World from that point.
Speaker 2:The difference I can imagine between being a super yacht skipper and being a pilot bringing container ships into ports is quite a different experience. The super yacht sounds really glamorous, was it?
Speaker 1:it was actually like I'm not really gonna. I mean, of course, there was a bit of you know, someone has to clean this and that and there's a lot of hard work. But you're going to beautiful places with beautiful people with a lot of money, like it is pretty glamorous and I don't know if you've seen the show below deck, but, yeah, a lot of money, it is pretty glamorous, and I don't know if you've seen the show Below Deck, but yeah, a lot of that does happen. It is quite reflective, but probably what happens in a whole season happens in a 30-minute episode there. Yeah, that was cool. The first Super Bowl I went to, I didn't really do it by halves, it was the largest Super Bowl in the world at the time, so it was like 160 meters, 520 feet, 20 feet and we had 60 crew and that was based in Dubai working for the shake there, and then I did probably a good five years there and then thereafter went to one for a Russian oligarch that was being built, built in Germany.
Speaker 2:I bet there are so many stories that probably you don't feel the liberty to be able to tell like, lots of stories, yeah, a lot, because nobody's listening to this. Don't worry, it's fine, you can share it in your life. I won't go there Unless you do have a story, okay. You know, is there something I feel like there might be, one that you kind of might be looking to share.
Speaker 1:No, it's a bit of NSFW in there, but it was a great time and I guess it's part of working for those donors. So I didn't work in a charter yacht, they were private, I guess you kind of, in turn, respect that privacy and I've tried to carry it through. But maybe grab me for a beer later and I'll disclose a bit more. It was wild and look, in the end of the day, it taught me a lot that while these people may have had impressive, I guess, careers or lives to date, they're actually just no different to you and I as well, and saw a lot of, I guess, humanity in it. And that was quite cool to have that exposure at a relatively young age to some pretty impressive people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how did that ultimately lead into the sort of origin behind Swiped On?
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah. So the last year I was on, which was for this oligarch that was being built in Germany. It was like 90 meters long, cost 100 million euros to build and I was the chief officer getting it set up. I was also the relief captain, but anyway, we were setting it up. So everything from helicopter spheres to cleaning equipment it's almost a shell of a vessel and you're filling it up with everything it needs. And one of those things we were looking to set up was the visitor book and also like a board to sign the crew in and out, because in an emergency you need to know who's on board and who the contractors are.
Speaker 1:And yeah, the ipad had come out a year or two prior and I was like, oh okay, weird, you could tuck an ipad on the wall. It would look a hell of a lot cooler than a dog head visit a log and it would kind of be a bit more befitting of a hundred million euro yacht. So it was where the idea came from and it's what most people do when they have these really cool ideas at quite a formative time with an open market. I did absolutely nothing with it. I remember I told a mate it was a dive instructor on board. I was like, oh, I've got this idea. And he said, oh, that. But yeah, I just went on with my day and it kind of popped out of my head and even to this day I get you know things kind of fluttering through my brain and I don't act on them. But that was slumber.
Speaker 2:And so at that point what you start to, sort of build a little bit of a product, or are you just riffing about the idea of a product?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I genuinely did nothing for about two years. So I left the yacht when we started to have children and I was actually I'd gone from, you know, walking the pier in Monaco and Antibes and all these lovely places to working as a pilot in Timaru, which is pretty grounding but pretty cool. And you know, I kind of love the kind of down-to-earth nature of you know rural South Island and that pilot's role is quite unique. It's quite specialised and I mean there's probably only 100 in New Zealand and the role itself is generally it's week on, week off. It's one of those type of roles and I don't sit idle particularly well and in my time off I thought I'd better do something and I've always had a bit of a bent for business and growing things and I thought, oh, look, I'll start to study some extramural papers through Massey and I started, you know, did marketing and kind of finance papers and all of that, and I realized it would take me about 27 years to get a degree if I was doing it paper by paper.
Speaker 1:And also as I was doing it, I was like, oh, this is a little bit of common sense, I'm probably pushing 30 at this stage. And I thought, well, bugger, I'll probably get off spending my money doing something myself, making my own mistakes. And that's when the idea from a couple of years before popped back into my head and I was like, oh yeah, no, that still tracks, I'll give it a go. And from there I was like straight on to Google. I didn't really want to mess around to, probably to my detriment, and, on the positive side too, didn't want to mess around, so just decided to get Googling, found a company in Auckland and said, right, can we build this? So you know, certainly didn't have a business basis or a tech background to get started and within probably six months or so the first version was live on the App Store as an iPad only app in probably six months or so.
Speaker 2:The first version was live on the app store as an ipad only app and at this point you had a sense that the customer was a reception in a building, in an office. So that's, it had morphed to that as opposed to ships yeah, a great one.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I built it for myself. I was the person with that problem and when I first started out, it was definitely, definitely for ships and I would say a couple months and once I started speaking with people about it I remember chatting with my sister she was like, oh, hold up, you can just chuck this in reception, like everyone has this problem. It was more actually for the crew in and out, like more of an outboard that also did visitors, whereas I know today the market massively, so it's more for that visitor management and time inside. So yeah, as we were building it, I kind of learned the market. I didn't speak to potential customers. I did so many things wrong. I mean I probably paid the price financially and time wise as well, not to realize the opportunity and just to kind of dick around myself. But you know there's always to learn and that was one of them.
Speaker 2:So and so at this point, it's just you and a company that built the product for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, correct.
Speaker 1:Mobile company up in Auckland. I think the original spec was 30K and probably all up. I spent, you know, closer to 50 back then and this is 2012, 13 times. And I remember thinking I could use that because I'd saved a bit of money for working overseas and I could buy a rental property in Ponsonby or somewhere, you know somewhere that's reasonably priced in Auckland. And yeah, for a while there the smart money would have been on the rental property, but we persevered.
Speaker 2:And so how long did you persevere for before the shape of the business started to change?
Speaker 1:Probably only 12 to 18 months in market with that first app range. Probably only 12 to 18 months in market with that first app, and this looks well, certainly in my head. It was the day when apps like a dollar, 99 or 99 cents and you only buy it and app subscriptions had come out, so there was no payment gateway or anything like that. So I thought I'll use apple's kind of built-in and app subscriptions and I think the most you could pay back then was like 15 for our app it was. It was like $9.99. You had unlimited employees and unlimited visitors. So I would say I probably didn't financially model it particularly well and that first year at best it was probably making $1,000 a month, something like that. And then, once it was live, I started speaking to customers and they're like, oh, this is cool, but I want to be able to interrogate the information from a web dashboard, I want to be able to sync multiple devices for different entrances. And I just built an iPad app that didn't speak to anything. It was really quite dumb. And then I was like, okay, well, scope creep If I was to go and build another version of it again, learning from all those mistakes. I'm just you know I'm six figures now and is it even worth continuing.
Speaker 1:But what I did for the second version of SwapDom is outsourced it and found some developers just through, like you know, upwork kind of website and built a second version. Through all the mistakes that I've made, that probably cost something like 10 grand. So for the price, I was just a little bit smarter and a bit savvier at that stage and made the price a lot higher. I mean I'm talking 20, 30 bucks per month here and I actually called it visitor book at the time, just really boring name, but it was by swiped on. I just wanted to be really clear for that value, prop and yeah, like within two or three months it was probably bringing in close to 10 grand a month. It just it all kicked off from that stuff up at the start and then really scaled the business from there.
Speaker 2:Was there something that were kind of providing tailwinds for that around regulation, around health and safety, knowing who was in building? Had there been any changes with anything like that? Yeah, there were.
Speaker 1:I wasn't consciously tapping into those, of course, in the later stages, yeah, definitely. Obviously, the health and safety side is biggest knowing who's on site and you know, signing agreements as they come in Later on. We benefited from, you know, data privacy, gdpr, all of that. And a visitor book in Europe is not compliant because you can scroll through it and see who the last visitor was. And then, yeah, I mean even COVID as well. It was a great tailwind for health regulations. So, yeah, we've had the benefit of regulatory tailwinds, basically for the life of the business and those early ones. Yes, they were buying it because of that, but I wasn't aware it was. You know, I'd call it dumb luck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you build sort of a 10K product and you're making 10K a month almost. At what point are you starting to go? Okay, I need help, I need to start hiring people, and where does that pretty?
Speaker 1:quickly, pretty quickly. So I would say, around that stage I had a co-founder come in, another ex-superyacht guy who was equally saw the problem and that was ben scott, so he really helped me. When you get two people on board something, you don't double capacity, you triple or quadruple it. You know you're making decisions quicker. You've got, you know, someone to bounce ideas off. And that was that stage.
Speaker 1:And then we realized that that version, because it was built so cheaply on the fly it wasn't going to scale again. So we had a third iteration we built out properly. So that's actually you know what we've got today. Whatever it is kind of probably nine, nine years later. That's what it's built off. So it took me three goes to actually get the product and the stack and everything right. But use that revenue from that second version that was done on the fly to build things out properly. And all the while I was piloting during the week, on week off kind of thing, and whenever we had spare money to employ people, I would roll them in and keep my salary going. I would roll them in and keep my salary going. So I didn't necessarily burn the bridges and fully leave for quite some time until the business and my salary was very secure.
Speaker 2:And so, by the time you did leave, how big is the business at this point in terms of headcount and that sort of thing Cool.
Speaker 1:Well, we had outsourced developers at that time, so I guess the headcount revenue was a bit lighter, but on ARR terms, we raised money at that time. So I guess the account revenue was a bit lighter, but I mean, on ARR terms, we raised money at that time and I think we're about 600,000 New Zealand dollars in recurring revenue when I finally left and so we started to raise, we decided we need, we saw the opportunity. It was massive. There were other people popping up with you know, they've gone and raised a lot of money. We're like, oh okay, we're kind of left behind here. So we went to raise a million dollars as a target and that was probably 2017. So, if you're kind of following the curve of revenue, it took quite a while to get to that point. But our raise I guess maybe took four to six months from starting things to closing and by that time we were at a million ARR. So we were really hitting the gradient on the curve there.
Speaker 2:And so you raised. Where Did you go through angels, or did you do a bit of a VC route?
Speaker 1:Yeah, through angels primarily, and that was mostly backed by. Well, K1W1 were the first investors in and they were quite quick to make the decision, and then the bulk was Enterprise Angels here in the Bay of Plenty as well. We did some pitches there and then a couple of other high net worth that rounded up that amount and, yeah, that was 2017.
Speaker 2:And was that the?
Speaker 1:only raise you ever did. Yes, in hindsight we never even needed to do it, so kind of fast forwarding a little bit. We actually had an approach six months after that raise to buy the business out, which I'm sure we'll get to, and we'd barely spent any of that money and we were growing really well and I would say we're up at about 16 employees in New Zealand at that stage as well.
Speaker 2:So take us through that offer to buy the business out. And I know there's been some challenges in this. Just having got to know you a bit over the last 12 months or so, Take us through what you're prepared to share there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, cool when it started and people often asking me how did you find an acquirer or what were the first steps? Did you go to market? I just had a LinkedIn request from someone over in the UK, accepted it and then from there, the initial conversation and for anyone that I guess may be listening around potential acquisitions, it always starts with a partnership and they want to get to know a little bit more around the business and, hey, we're looking at partnering and at some point in the future we are also looking at buying companies, and potentially yours. So that was how it started. And then I think, the second conversation, you know, within I don't know maybe three days, they'd forgotten about partnership and it was like, hey, we're keen to buy a business in this space and we want to buy you. That escalated pretty quickly. I've always had the viewpoint that I'll have discussion with anybody. I won't stop things at the door, definitely explore it for as far as possible until it makes sense, and that was one thing we explored and ultimately we did close in the deal there.
Speaker 1:We're a listed company in the UK under the London Stock Exchange. There's a sub-exchange for the AIM market, so for smaller capitalization companies, and they had just sold off an infrastructure business for something like £18 million and wanted to transition into a tech business and we were, I guess, the first acquisition to help enable that. And at the time that we sold we were doing about £1.7 million in New Zealand in ARR and we sold for £11 million. So it was about six and a half times revenue.
Speaker 1:As far as the transaction goes and the reason that you make the best decision with what's in front of you at the time of course you do the reason that I did that is that I got to maintain and the management shareholders got to maintain skin in the game, so it was basically a 50-50 cash and share sale. So on the valuation of the business, they rolled in in equities, issued new shares to me at an equivalent value and then I got half cash out. So it was like a mini exit. I was happy to continue to operate, and under a public company as well. I thought would be pretty cool. I've always had interest in you know stocks and investments and I really wanted to see what the world looked like there and it was a bit of a fast track. You know way to do it.
Speaker 2:And how did that look in reality after that deal was?
Speaker 1:done, strangely, didn't change a lot. Didn't change a lot, they had said at the outset. So the company's smart space software and it's fast forward. Again it's been spent delisted but they'd said, look, the biggest risk to us and our business is them. So they quite consciously left us to continue to execute on the business and the opportunity and we did so.
Speaker 1:In that way I'm quite thankful there wasn't a lot of changes and interruptions which you often see with other acquisitions, and we just cracked on and grew really well, month on month, year on year, and continued to seize the opportunity and we ended up being public for a good five years, five plus years. Where the frustrations crept in is that we were one of like, in the end, kind of one of three tech businesses. We were the ones that delivered the, I guess, the enterprise value. We built value with and swiped on, whereas the other ones didn't quite deliver and execute, which kind of dragged the opportunity, dragged the share price, but in another world, another lifetime. They all delivered and you layer up the enterprise value, you know happy days and we all win. So you don't go into these things completely blind and without risk.
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Speaker 1:You know we got a lot of that. Yes, there was a degree of early investment but by and large over that five years we were essentially bootstrapping from within and we became profitable, while we were cash generative basically from acquisition. You know, maybe six plus months out of that. So we were obviously a paper losses but we were generating cash. And then thereafter we acquisition you know, maybe six plus months out of that, so we were obviously at paper losses but we were generating cash. And then thereafter we went to you know EBITDA profitability for the last couple of years and that profitability in the end was balancing out losses in other areas of the group. Not ideal, but look, I do get it from a group perspective that certainly since the kind of tech bust through you know 21 to 22, that profitability has been key and we did deliver on that and delivered on a group perspective. So yeah, just kind of time and place stuff.
Speaker 2:And you're out now.
Speaker 1:So, yep, fast forward again, I would say. Around early December this year there was an offer to buy our parent company from a competitor in a tangential space. So they wanted to visit it. They did a lot of desk management and wanted to add visitor into like a full office management I know it's boring stuff, but bear with me. But they wanted a bolt-on acquisition for us and in the end it didn't have board support, so that's turned a hostile takeover like cool yeehaw. I want to see this stuff.
Speaker 1:And that was to buy our parent company but ultimately it was to buy us because we were, you know, the main asset within the group, representing 95 percent of revenue, and that there's obviously quite a process and quite rightly as a public company being sold and during that process it was actually weirdly similar to buying a house. You know, you have the due diligence offer, which was the initial one, and then we can get to a point where it's completely unconditional and that company had gone through DD. While DD was happening, someone else can come in and put another offer in, and we did have that. So we had another offer out of another US company. So the first one was based in the US and the second one came in with a higher bid again. Ultimately, that bidder was a bit of a I would say, a gorilla of private equity funds and they really muscled in and they got that deal and there wasn't a competitive bidding back and forth, which would have been quite cool. But anyway, I'll quite happily take the second bid. Shareholders voted on it, it was more or less unanimous, and we closed on that about six weeks ago. So we're now part of we've gone private again and we're part of well now the largest business in our in our industry, which is quite cool before we sold, and that's part of well now the largest business in our industry, which is quite cool Before we sold, and that's one of the benefits of being a public company or previously being.
Speaker 1:We can disclose our numbers. I can tell my friends or whatever, what the revenue was, number of locations we had, because we had to put it to market as a private company. They're a lot more coy about that, and rightly so. So we were, I would say, 11-something million in ARR. Bear in mind, five years ago we were 1.7. We'd scaled through to 11 and we had about 9,000 workplaces using our system as subscribers. And then now the combined entity that we've joined, we're well in excess of 30,000 locations. We really are the gorilla in the room and the biggest company in our market, which is, you know, from starting it in Timaru from the kitchen table. It's quite cool to now play a key part in that.
Speaker 2:And has it changed your world at a personal level Because being able to take some cash off the table, et cetera has it changed things much for you and the family.
Speaker 1:Yes, so yeah, if you'll recall the first exit, I'm twice exited from my own business. I don't know if that's something to be proud of Probably not. But the first exit was half cash and shares. And then the exit went through six weeks ago. Just realized all of those shares. There was a very small premium on what was issued back in 2018. So, look, financially it was good but not great. But I mean, yeah, I probably don't have to work again if I don't want to. I've achieved a lot. With hindsight, I probably would have done things differently, but so would have we all. So, yes, yeah, it absolutely has changed things, given optionality. Now, for me, it's about doing what I enjoy and just growing as an individual and someone within business. You know, someone that's come from no tech experience, no business experience, to kind of build up and lead a business with I think we're about 50 people today. As long as I've got cool opportunities to keep growing, then yeah, I'm all for it, and if not, I've got the option to do whatever I want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would have been the hardest sort of time in that journey, from sort of what, 10, 11 years ago through to today? You know, in that whole entrepreneurial journey Because it is really hard Was there a moment that stands out where you're like man, that was rugged.
Speaker 1:The weird thing about me is I don't know if there was like an emotional curve on the journey. I don't go super super high and I don't go super super low. I'm quite balanced in that sense, just naturally as a person, and I think maybe it was a bit of training working at sea or as a pilot. If you panic, shit just goes downhill really quickly and you're in some quite tight situations. You just need to kind of put things into perspective. So, yeah, there were trying times and probably the biggest thing is people in HR and dealing with tricky situations in other people's lives. The business stuff takes care of itself if you set up good systems and have good people running it. But there's not one thing that sticks out in my personal life. So when I was 33, so I'm kind of four years into this journey as well and I did have cancer myself I don't know if you're across that I wasn't aware of that.
Speaker 2:no, no yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was like the worst personal thing. So I had what's called like a liposarcoma and yeah, as I said, I'm 33, we're just about to raise money. So I had that, had an operation. It came back six months later. I was like, oh shit, here we go.
Speaker 1:So like I'm doing like calls and emails from from hospital and that was pretty full-on, as you can imagine, and it's kind of existential. But once again, like that's really good now because it puts things into perspective and you're just like, oh, it really doesn't matter what people think or how you deliver. There's far more important things in life. And look, to be honest, that probably paid a little bit when I had the opportunity for an early exit. I don't know what next year is going to bring. I'll take some money off the table.
Speaker 1:So that was the most testing personal thing. I mean, I'm seven years clean from that now and I get annual scans and it's all good. It's kind of long forgotten. But I'd be remiss if I didn't actually bring it up as being the most challenging point. I remember I was just got off crutches for our first pitch with Enterprise Angels and so, and then I had pitches up my side like I had like a meter worth of stitches and I was like I didn't want to tell them it would come out in dd, but I didn't want to stand up there and I thought I was going to kill over next year or something. So I like dropped the crutches and then went and did the pitch and then sat back on the seat. So no, it's all good stuff, yeah it's an amazing story.
Speaker 2:Do you think the cancer journey changed your outcome on business generally or even just you know life? Did it really radically change things?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, definitely. I think anyone's been touched by that, whether it's personally or with family does change their perspective. But like, yeah, I totally see it as a positive. For me, you just don't get so caught up in the day-to-day or even the months-to-month stuff. It just just doesn't matter and just gives you a bit more freedom just to crack on and have fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly because it's not that big a deal compared to life and death. Yeah, and when it comes to you and your kind of entrepreneurial spirit, do you think you've got it in you to go again?
Speaker 1:Definitely, I definitely do and, yeah, ideas just keep popping up. I mean I do wonder in the world of AI. I mean I know the answer that there's opportunity everywhere and you can execute on anything, but it's a pretty saturated world. And then you think AI is just going to take care of a lot of things and features and I haven't had a massive, massive yearning to jump into anything else, and I know what it takes. It is a 10-year journey. I am keen to do it again, but to anything else, and I know what it takes. It is a 10-year journey. I am keen to do it again. But also I'm really enjoying the team now, the opportunities to grow, so I'll just keep doing this while I enjoy it, and I know I've always got another one in me at some point, whether it's months or five years away. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so where do you get inspiration from? I mean, obviously you've got a tremendous amount of resolve in yourself and in your character, yeah, but do you read books, do you listen to? Not so much podcasts, but you know. Where do you get your inspiration for being an entrepreneur? Where do you learn? Or is that just on the job?
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, there is a lot of on the job and I love the creativity of things and that does keep me going. As far as learning goes, I'm actually a big podcast listener as well. So they say, you know, successful people read a book a week or whatever. I love books, but I can't smash a book a week. But I could do four podcasts in a week, no stress, whether it's driving, I'm mowing the lawns or whatever. And, yeah, a lot of business podcasts. I know it's geeky, I just really like that and that's why I'm doing. I'm in the job I'm in. I really got into this one called Business Wars as well. It's like Coke versus Pepsi and, you know, netflix versus Blockbuster and there's a lot of learnings from that that you can put into the you know industries you're in today and it's really cool. And what about?
Speaker 2:And, of course, your podcast group. Oh, of course, of course. Yeah, we'd be remiss not to say that. But what about your ability to recharge? How does that happen? Do you just like, are you pretty full on during the week Well, you certainly have been in the last few years and then do you just collapse on the weekends. Do you run, do you fish, like, how do you recharge? Oh Gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I've got three young kids so I can kind of live vicariously through them and go into their sports and all of that. I try and I mean we're in the Bay here so I try and get out for walks and, I guess, just get amongst nature as much as possible. But yeah, and I kind of back to my earlier point that I don't have wild highs and wild lows, Like I don't feel like I need to disappear for a long time. I know it's weird and maybe it's not quite right, but I just feel kind of naturally energized every day and I get energy out of the team here. You know I've hired the first person through to the 50th. I like them all, we all just kind of build off each other and I mean mean it is a great privilege to be able to, you know, hire people you want to work with and enjoy working with them.
Speaker 2:And yeah, it's just, it's a pleasure to turn up every day like so I don't know geeky or something, but I just really get energy from from the game here it's really interesting and I've been kind of thinking, as I've been chatting to you, about the earlier origin for you and being a pilot and being a skipper generally on container ships and super yachts et cetera, and how that mindset of just staying calm because you know there's tidal movements and seas and other boats and all sorts of things going on and so just staying calm and staying you know well, actually pun intended, even keeled is probably then translating a lot into startups because, as we all know, for startups it's insanely hard at times and it's a very uneven keel at times. So you having that mindset, that must be quite an asset when everybody else is getting flustered. You're not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you did right. By the way, I love the maritime analogies and there's so much of modern english that just has these maritime yeah origins terminologies through it. I love it, I love it. But yeah, I mean that's the thing. You set a destination, you're working towards that and we're very, very big on on vision and brand and culture and there's almost no difference working on, say, yachts, as an example.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, you've still got to go down to the crew mess and have lunch with these people. You've got to sleep and live with them. So if you go and rip into people about something, it's really awkward, like 30 minutes later when you're just off the. So there's probably a management lesson in just the humanity and working with people, which I don't consciously try and do, but does probably roll into the way that I operate, and I like to think that people are motivated by just, you know, doing cool things together and not wanting to let not myself, but even each other down, and that's very, very similar to yachts and ships. And if you've got a captain that is running around shouting things, being an asshole or whatever, then the crew leave and you just don't achieve what you're after.
Speaker 2:Is there something where you know, has there been a time where actually the ship has really hit the fan in the business and you've had to just really take a deep breath?
Speaker 1:A couple of people. Things have come up where, while we have a good crew and you want to have everyone on side, you know, from time to time just things happen with people or their own personalized role into the business or whatever. So we have had a couple of rogue occasions. But I don't know, it kind of goes back to my earlier point. It's not really a big deal in the end of the day. And even on technology, I mean, you know it kind of goes back to my earlier point, it's not really a big deal in the end of the day. And even on technology, I mean, you know, years ago we had the whole system fall down because of something that was introduced, you know, probably by ourselves, into overloading the system. But as long as you're open and honest with customers as well, they're really cool.
Speaker 1:And you know we've had outages for I don't know, maybe three, four hours I mean I'm talking years ago here which is rock solid today, and I didn't lose a single customer because of it, because we had good, clean comms and we were transparent with it. And I think that's a lesson that I've continued and you can't really hide from team members or your customers. Just the more open you can be, and the more you bring them on side to business problems, then yeah, you can't lose. So yeah, we've had some trouble, but no, nothing. That's really Nothing too bad.
Speaker 2:I guess final question is tips for other founders. You've been in this game you know for a decade or more now and you're, let's say, 40-ish or 40. Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? What would you advise founders to really be thinking of in their journey, maybe particularly in those earliest stages?
Speaker 1:I had the benefit of naivety, and if I probably knew too much, I may not have even gotten things going and I spent too long scoping things out. So I quite like that naivety to a point. One thing I didn't have in the early days was mentors or people that had done it before, and that would probably be the biggest thing that could have saved me from making a few mistakes. And yeah, I mean, look, there's just really obvious things, you know, speaking to customers earlier, doing a lot more research before you build things, and that's probably where it would stick. And also perseverance. Actually, I can remember at least twice I'm like right, stuff, this, I'm packing up the business, it's just not worth it, and whichever reason.
Speaker 1:I remember once I was really close to that and I ended up getting a big contract for an overseas company that they wanted to pay three years up front. All of a sudden, we had this money to be able to create a bit of freedom that I didn't have to pile back in. So it's like the image of the person mining and the diamonds, like just there, like it does hit. So, yeah, I would just say that I guess. Perseverance and tenacity to a point yeah, as long as you've got the right business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I know you've helped a lot of people in their own journeys, go through you know as founders to go through that and you've been a real steady hand, if you like, on the tiller on the wheel for helping them. So I know that has been appreciated in the ecosystem. So what I will do actually is make sure that there's ways people can connect with you on LinkedIn and also to Swiped On and to go and check out Swiped On in the show notes to this episode. But you are genuinely just a hell of a nice guy.
Speaker 2:And you don't always meet nice guys and girls in startup. Often you do, but you are a hell of a nice guy and it's always really nice sitting down with you over a beer. A little bit more tricky now with me not being in New Zealand, but, yeah, I really want to thank you for the time today, hadley, like it's been a real privilege and an honor chatting to you.
Speaker 1:No, I really enjoyed it and an absolute pleasure. And yeah, keep talking, love the climate.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't forget to check out Deskwork, the team behind you, being able to build high performing offshore teams for your startups and SMEs. It's deskworkco. Backslash, greg, and go and save yourself some hard-earned money.