Brad Parsons is CEO and founder of Movus, a company that provides monitoring tools for industrial equipment with the mission of preserving the earth’s resources by improving the efficiency and life of industrial assets. At the time of recording Movius is active in 16 countries, and has ambitions for further growth. In his conversation with guest host Will Tjo, Brad discusses how he has seen an increased emphasis on funding for startups with a focus on environmental sustainability, as well as his belief that Australia’s startup ecosystem suffers from a greater degree of risk aversion than other nations.
Movus: https://www.movus.com.au/welcome/Brad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradparsons/
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Adam Spencer: Let me tell you about our partner, Teamified. If you need to build a top-notch team quickly, Teamified is your go-to solution. They not only provide fractional CTOs, they can also do contractors and even remote team members tailored exactly to your needs. And whether you're looking for expertise in the Philippines, India, or Sri Lanka, Teamified has you covered. What's amazing is that Teamified uses a blend of AI and human expertise to cut hiring times by 50%, cent. The platform handles everything from automated onboarding to day-to-day management and even performance tracking. You can also handle rewards and recognition, buy equipment, and order training all through their platform. Simplify your hiring process and get the best talent fast with Teamified. Check them out now and transform your team. Go to dayone.fm/teamified. That's dayone.fm/teamified. T-E-A-M-I-F-I-E-D, and get started today. Hi, I'm Adam Spencer, founder of the Day One Network, which is bringing the history of the Australian startup ecosystem to you. I believe in founders. It's why I do everything I do at Day One and our media company, W2D1 Media. And that's why the Day One Network exists, to create helpful content for founders. We've got some great shows in development, but a large part of what we do couldn't be done without support from our partners and sponsors. And I couldn't be happier than to be working with NTP, who get community better than any other technology recruitment company out there. A Newcastle company like mine, NTP are invested in seeing the growth of the local tech community in Newcastle, Sydney, and more broadly Australia. So thank you, NTP, for helping us bring helpful content to founders and the startup community in Australia. Back to the interview. Hi, I'm Adam Spencer, founder of the Day One Network, which is bringing the history of the Australian startup ecosystem to you. I believe in founders. It's why I do everything I do at Day One and our media company, W2D1 Media. And that's why the Day One Network exists, to create helpful content for for founders. We've got some great shows in development, but a large part of what we do couldn't be done without support from our partners and sponsors. And I couldn't be happier than to be working with NTP, who get community better than any other technology recruitment company out there. A Newcastle company like mine, NTP are invested in seeing the growth of the local tech community in Newcastle, Sydney, and more broadly Australia. So thank you, NTP, for helping us bring helpful content to founders and the startup community in Australia. Back to the interview. Hi, I'm Adam Spencer and welcome to Day One, the podcast that spotlights Australian startups, founders, and the organizations that empower Australian entrepreneurship. We go back to the beginning to tell the story of Australia's most inspiring founders and how they built their companies. You're listening to a special interview series as part of a documentary W2D1 is producing about the history of the Australian startup ecosystem. This episode was conducted by guest host Will Cho.
Brad Parsons: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Australian Startup Series interviews. Our guest today is Brad Parsons. So good to have you on, Brad.
Speaker C: Hey Will, thanks for having me here.
Brad Parsons: So to start us off, could you introduce yourself for the audience?
Speaker C: Sure. My name's Brad Parsons. I'm the CEO and founder of Movus. We're a technology group based outta Brisbane.
Brad Parsons: Could you tell us a bit about what you do at Movus and yeah, how did it start?
Speaker C: Sure, started the business back in 2015, which is, we're now 7 years old, which is pretty exciting. What we do is we provide a service called FitMachine. FitMachine monitors machine health continuously. Our customer base is industrial and we're currently operating in about 16 countries around the world.
Brad Parsons: Brad, would you say that you've always been an entrepreneur? Take us back even to your university days.
Speaker C: I'm sure I was an entrepreneur but I certainly didn't fit the mold. My bosses would always, you know, be a bit nervous on their feet. I was never happy with the status quo and that's probably in the history of my career was I was always looking for a better way to do it, um, and always sort of challenge the conventional thinking. Um, and I think that's— that hasn't stopped. I have now— now just got a better mechanism to, to, um, to, uh, take that and run with it.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, definitely. It sounds like the, you know, stereotypical startup journey. Didn't fit the mold, was unhappy with the status quo, decided to go out there and do something about it when he saw an opportunity.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Brad Parsons: So with Movis, would you classify that as a social enterprise?
Adam Spencer: Uh, when you look at us from the outside, you'd I would say no.
Speaker C: Anyone that is in this business, we've had a couple of new team members join this week and I typically spend time with them. They soon realize that under the surface we are. Maybe I'll give you a quick insight into why that is. Currently, the globe, across the globe, there's about 2.3 billion electric motors and they use roughly half, so about 43 to 46% of the world's energy. But unfortunately, only less than 3% of those are actively monitored for health. So there's enormous energy footprint out there that is consuming way more than it should. And that's where our focus is.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, just in essence, improving efficiency using less energy.
Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely.
Brad Parsons: What was it like back in 2015 when you launched your business, Movus?
Speaker C: Fair to say I came out of sort of 25, years of corporate, gave up my, you know, very well-paid consulting career. The startup ecosystem certainly in Australia was in its infancy, shall we say. There certainly wasn't support and wasn't the breadth and depth of capability that there is today, I'll tell you that much.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, did you join any sort of accelerators or those sort of like startup infrastructure support structures?
Speaker C: Yeah, I did actually. I joined i-Lab, which is part of UQ. There were very few in Brisbane. There's probably 3 or 4 to be honest. To be honest, being in Brisbane, not being, you know, obviously in Sydney, Melbourne. At the time it was, you know, very immature. Wasn't too many investors, not too many startups to sort of hold up and benchmark against. There were a few, sort of Safety Culture, Air Tasker, you know, Safety Culture is a Queensland-based business.
Brad Parsons: Yeah.
Speaker C: Based outta Townsville. But there wasn't too many to look to. So it was a real learning experience, fair to say.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. Absolutely. How has the ecosystem grown over the last 7 years from your perspective? Has it been a good surprise or?
Speaker C: I think certainly there's been a lot of attention and obviously we just talked about investors. So more recently you see the likes of super funds investing. I think that's a sign of maturity.
Adam Spencer: Yeah.
Speaker C: I think there's still a long way to go. I mean, I've visited other countries, I've been to Israel, I've been to San Fran, so I've seen where it can go. Certainly, there's been a lot of focus on, not trying to be pessimistic, but on startup theater. So there's a lot of, you know, here's the business model canvas and we're gonna teach you that. I think the biggest weakness we have here in Australia is the next step beyond that. You know, once you've got a business up and running, the support really falls off pretty quick.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned when you went to other ecosystems like in Israel, that it's sort of a mold of where Australia can be. And I'm curious on your perspective on why is it that we've lagged behind?
Speaker C: I think this sort of episode's really focused on day one, right? So day one is really what the ecosystem's focused on. Day two, you know, Amazon, Jeff Bezos calls about day one, you know, largely they've kept that mentality and thinking I think for us, we need to look at what do you need once you've got that business up and running? What skills, what introductions, what network? You know, how do you raise capital? How do you, you know, price? How do you, you know, grow a business in terms of people and capability? There's sort of all of those things. And I'm fortunate that, you know, I had 25 years in corporate, so running large global teams. Mm-hmm. But there isn't that support within the ecosystem to enable entrepreneurs to do that, and the fall-off rate is pretty high as a result. Obviously, it's difficult as it is, but it's difficult without that ecosystem support rallying around you.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. So in essence, it's just the, I guess, basic ingredients of what an ecosystem should have that's still somewhat lacking. It works for you because you had 25 years of corporate experience and you were able to leverage that, but for people who don't have that experience, it's still quite difficult.
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And you talked about Israel. Israel, if you've been there or you understand that society is, you know, everyone goes through military service, everyone goes through that, uh, it's mandatory. And, and through that they have this quite strong network that results, you know, they've gone through some pretty, pretty strenuous, um, life-changing experiences in that, in that time. So they all bond really well and their network's really strong, uh, and you know, they've taken that into the startup thinking and take— to use the phrase— but they've almost militarized, you know, that journey from idea through to exit. And, and there's a very strong, you know, process, and, and that network is really strong. We've kind of got to the business model canvas and we've kind of stopped. That path to exit or path to, right, you know, raising capital, listing It's just non-existent as far as I can tell.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, I liked how, what you mentioned about how there's quite a lot of startup theater going on, and it's just every other day we kind of hear headline news that startup X has raised $5 million or $20 million or so on, and we kind of celebrate that as opposed to actual revenue, actual earnings and so on.
Speaker C: Yeah, I was actually on a VC call with a US, a San Fran-based VC this morning, there's some celebration when those raises going through, but you don't hear about the successes and the growth and the, you know, getting to cash flow positive. You know, it's all about the raise. It's not necessarily about the outcome or the impact that those businesses are having.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. Do you think overall we're still on the right trajectory?
Speaker C: I think there's early signs of that. There's certainly been some great success stories. But generally, those businesses that are out there building global, I mean, you're in Australia, you have to be global. Same as Israel.
Brad Parsons: Mm-hmm.
Speaker C: You have to be born global. We're now operating our technology in 16 countries. Having businesses that have the support around them that can get to that point and that understand the pains of global growth and global presence, I think, We've still got a lot of work to do, unfortunately.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, switching gears a little bit into that tangent, what could we still be, like what do we do better than other ecosystems?
Speaker C: I think due to our size, what I'm sort of seeing more is, certainly more recently, is more impact. So the ecosystem and the startups that are popping out are more impact-focused. They're not necessarily about raising a bunch of capital and, you know, getting a nice exit. What I'm seeing the themes coming through the startups is there's themes around sustainability, there's themes around new types of food, there's themes around making a difference in the lives of people and I think that's pretty exciting. Having impact as a result of what you're doing really drives a differentiating and I'm certainly seeing that more here than I am overseas.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, I'd love to get your opinion on this idea of impact because there is a prevailing attitude that impact and returns is mutually exclusive. Do you think that's the case in startups?
Speaker C: Definitely not. Uh, you know, I was just looking through, uh, working with one of our customers this morning who's a large gold miner. Um, you can see there's a lot of VC capital, and there's a lot of capital in general, um, that is trending towards, um, you know, those businesses— not just startups, um, you know, large multinationals— that are sustainability focused, that those that are looking at their energy profiles, that are looking at their energy mix and, you know, looking at their future. And that's where the smart money's all headed.
Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.
Speaker C: And that's just not in large multinationals, that's at the startup level. You'll see more and more cash will be heading towards that. And, you know, we're looking at, in our next raise, we're certainly looking at VCs that, that adopt that and support that.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. What do you think was the catalyst for that? What changed prevailing attitudes?
Speaker C: Hmm. Over the last couple years, we obviously had COVID and COVID's driven some very interesting behavior and there was already behaviors globally where the focus has been less about globalization and more about localization. You know, you're looking at the society you live in, you're looking at, you know, the person down the road. We've all had to be in lockdown for the last couple of years and, you know, if you're in Melbourne, You know, I really feel for you guys. You've been in Melbourne longer than any other country on the planet. But in doing so, what you're doing is looking at your local impact, looking at, you know, where do you source your goods from? Supply chains obviously been under a lot of stress, semiconductors through to fertilizer. There's a whole range of that. And I think that localization, that focus on localization, that focus around, you know, where does my— where do my bananas come from? I think that's gonna continue and amplify. We've seen with Ukraine recently that there's a lot of supply chains disrupted and even Scott Morrison came out recently and said, you know, these are the 7 things that we need to focus on. And fertilizers, as I just mentioned, and semiconductors, no surprise they're on the list. Businesses and people globally are looking at, you know, where do their product, where does their product come from and how can they secure that and how can they make sure it's as sustainable as possible?
Brad Parsons: Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any unpopular opinions about our ecosystem? So something you believe is true but others aren't on the same page?
Speaker C: Um, yeah, I guess at the risk of being a bit controversial, I think it— everyone is of the belief that, you know, most of the startups that we breed are globally focused. I don't think they are. I see a lot of, a lot of businesses that really trying to make a market out of their local city or even Australia, there's just not the market size. We're 2% of the world economy. Unless you're thinking global from, literally from day one, then what you're building only has, you know, a very small market size. And we look after machines and you think every factory and every plant in Australia has plenty of machines and we could make a sizable business, but the reality is that's not the case. Mm-hmm. You need to be looking overseas immediately.
Brad Parsons: So Brad, what we're trying to do with this podcast is to document as historically and accurately as possible our ecosystem. And we're aiming to reach all corners of the ecosystem from policymakers, founders, investors, entrepreneurs, and so on. Is there anything that's on your mind that you think about that they need to hear?
Speaker C: It's quite clear that the growth in this country is not coming from the big multinationals. The growth is coming from startups like ours, scale-ups. That's where the future of the economy is. And unless you're putting the investment behind it, unless you're putting support mechanisms behind it, then the future of the country's growth is at risk.
Brad Parsons: Yeah.
Speaker C: You know, that sounds like a big statement, but it's true. When you go back through, you look at the figures on where the growth of employment is coming, it's typically from businesses of this nature.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. I'd like to dig in a little bit to when you said support mechanisms, is it just funding or what sort of support?
Speaker C: Yeah, it's much more than that. Driving an international intellectual property agenda or strategy. You know, how do you think about that? How do you think about trademarks? How do you think about patents? How do you think about, you know, branding, uh, you know, naming? You might name your brand XYZ, but it might be offensive in another country.
Adam Spencer: Hmm.
Speaker C: And, you know, I think there's car manufacturers that have been on the wrong side of that. Um, so thinking about all of the aspects around that, we've just did a sizable amount of work around our pricing and rethinking our pricing and strategy and finding local expertise around how to price, how to evolve from a pay-per-month to a pay-per-use to a pay-per-value. Having the talent and the capability here that can support businesses like ours that are going through that evolution, we need to go overseas. We need to be on late night calls for Europe or we need to be on early calls for the US because there's just not that sort of breadth of talent support here.
Brad Parsons: Mm, and it's a recurring theme that I often get with a lot of founders that I've interviewed that oftentimes they resort to going overseas to say establish a headquarters or to get funding or in your case to seek that talent and expertise. And it is quite a shame that we can't provide that to our entrepreneurs here. Here in Australia.
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll, you know, we've had multiple offers. One of the VCs in our last round said, we expect you to stand up an office in 8 to 12 weeks in the US. And that's the condition of the term is you will, you know, gradually move your presence to the US and you'll be California-bound. That's a harsh reality and a pressure that just keeps coming. I get approaches from US VCs or European VCs every week, and there's that inherent pressure. Some are more globally focused, whether, you know, the group I was talking to this morning had 6 or 7 offices around the world. But certainly US VCs, they want a presence there and they want the, you know, the business to be close by.
Brad Parsons: Yeah.
Speaker C: That pressure is always there, and, you know, the funding is enormous out of those ecosystems like Silicon Valley.
Brad Parsons: Has the, I guess, rate of adoption for your startup, has it been easier to establish in Australia or those other 16 countries?
Speaker C: I wish it was the reverse. Australia has this sort of mentality of, you know, we're quite easygoing. The reverse is actually quite true in businesses that they're actually quite risk-averse. The US businesses are more technology, centred. They will look to experiment, learn, and adopt technology actually much faster than we do. So I guess I have the premise, if you, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, because it is obviously a small market with risk-averse, uh, you know, corporates or industrials, which we're obviously focused on. Um, if you can build a marketplace here, then the US is much easier. So the The flip side of that is, why would you create a market here? Why wouldn't you just get up and move?
Adam Spencer: Yeah.
Brad Parsons: Why are we risk-averse?
Speaker C: Good question. I wish I could put my finger on it. Maybe it's a product of the size. Maybe it's a product of the sophistication of the leadership. Having worked in corporates, I come from, you know, I can sort of speak from firsthand. I guess the need to innovate the need to evolve businesses, it just doesn't seem to be here. I mean, we've— we're one of the richest countries in the world. I saw a statistic that by medium wealth, we are the richest in the world, uh, I think by 2020. When you've got that level of comfort, um, you're not under pressure. You know, Israel has, um, unfortunately quite a tough culture. They need to innovate, they need to adopt, they need to go, go global because Everyone's looking under their car to see what's under there. They're in a pretty constrained and difficult environment in that part of the world. We're on an island paradise in the middle of the South Pacific. Life's pretty good. Why change that? And I think that's probably part of the driver.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, absolutely. It's just because we've had such a great lifestyle by median wealth, the richest country in the world, we've never felt the need to innovate. Stepping out of our comfort zone essentially.
Speaker C: Yeah, you can't keep digging bigger and deeper holes in the ground. That's not a way to innovate.
Brad Parsons: If a brand new entrepreneur or founder came to you, you know, given all your experience, your wins and mistakes, what would you tell them to increase their chances of success?
Speaker C: Never stop learning. I probably spend an hour every morning, you know, this is my time where I go for a walk, I get some exercise, see some greenery. Um, and then it's podcasts. It's listening to those that have succeeded, those who failed. And I think if you accept this status quo, then that's, that's where your business will be. Um, if you're constantly challenging, learning, curious, growth will come.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. What are some of the sources, um, that you listen to?
Speaker C: Uh, there's, uh, there's a guy called Ray Reich, uh, the Metrics That Measure Up podcast, um, US-based. There's a group called NFX, and we really focus on network effects. So predominantly some of these innovative VCs that, that really talk around the, the challenges of scaling. Once you get beyond the sort of business model canvas, as I said, you need to start to, to learn and understand that there's many aspects of running a business that is global. And yeah, constantly learning would would be the biggest learning that I have is never accept and always challenge the status quo.
Brad Parsons: Yeah, that's amazing. Brad, what's next for you and Movus?
Speaker C: For us, we're really getting our house in order for our next round of global growth. For us, it's about building up the team and, you know, finding a great investor or investors probably towards the end of the year, early next year. But the world's just come out of the shadow of COVID Hopefully we can put that behind us. And for us, it's about ramping up the growth as the world comes back online.
Brad Parsons: Yeah. Brad, it's been absolutely brilliant having you on the show today. Thank you.
Speaker C: Thank you. Well, thanks for the opportunity and thanks for your time. Hopefully we can evolve the ecosystem to where it should be.
Brad Parsons: Absolutely. Brad, if the audience wanted to connect with you, connect and learn more with you, where could they go?
Speaker C: Ah, LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on there so reach out to me, I'm more than happy to connect and share however I can help you.
Adam Spencer: I hope you enjoyed that interview. More interviews are on the way. Follow the podcast wherever you're listening right now. Stay tuned for more interviews with many, many more amazing people from the Australian startup ecosystem. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Brad Parsons: Bye.
