Tim Fung explains why Australia is a great market to test startup ideas

0:00 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. Their 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— Thank you. 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 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 a 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. On the episode today, we have—

3:18 Tim Fung: Hi, I'm Tim Fung. I'm the co-founder and the CEO here at Airtasker. We're Australia's number one local marketplace for services.

3:30 Speaker C: Let's go right back. What was your very, very, very, very, very first exposure to this, Australian startup ecosystem?

3:39 Tim Fung: Well, I think, you know, during university, I, you know, started up a couple of things with friends, but I wouldn't really call them like startups per se in the way that most people probably would assume or think about them now in terms of like technology and, you know, investing into, you know, getting venture investment and stuff like that. So with that sort of lens on, I would say it was back in 2009, I had just left Macquarie where I spent 5 years as an analyst.

4:07 Speaker C: Yeah.

4:08 Tim Fung: I was working in a modeling agency called Chic Management, and I met the co-founder of the agency, or the co-owner I should say, of the agency, was one of the founding directors of Optus, and he gave me the opportunity to work with him on a startup idea that he had, which was to set up an online-only mobile virtual network operator, MVNO. And so, you know, he asked me to put together a pitch deck for him and you know, we just went out and raised money and it was a great opportunity to watch him build a startup which I just didn't know was like really a thing that you could do. Obviously I knew that startups existed but I didn't get a close feel until then.

4:45 Speaker C: Right, so yeah, so we're talking 2009. Like Fishburners didn't really kick off until 2012 and a lot of people kind of, especially in Sydney, say 2011, 2012 is when things really started to, you know, ramp up a fair bit. Back in 2009, what was visible to you? Like when you looked around, like what companies did you look to, people, organizations that were doing stuff in the startup world?

5:11 Tim Fung: Well, it was 2009 that we had sort of started off with Amaysim and I think it was in 2010 that I started to, you know, by going around and doing the capital raising for Amaysim and touching base with people, you know, through that process. I started to see a few things. I think one of the really interesting things was the whole German contingent that kind of existed. And, you know, Maysim was actually managed and co-founded by some German folks that we had brought over from Germany. And they immediately sort of like got us into a bit of an ecosystem. What I realized is, for example, Rocket Internet had a presence in Australia with things like Groupon that was just expanding around 2010. Mm-hmm. So I think there were companies like scale companies like Groupon, there was Spritz which was also a German co-founder, a guy named Justus Hammer partnered up with Dean McAvoy which is an Australian guy but actually raised money from some German VCs which is how they really scaled that business and it was actually quite eye-opening for me. I didn't realize how much of a, you know, because the German tech ecosystem's actually quite advanced I think, you know, not quite as big as Silicon Valley and stuff but but quite large and it had quite a big presence here in Sydney. So that was sort of the first bubble that I kind of got connected with and then, you know, of course there were the folks from Fishburners too which we used to hang out in.

6:38 Speaker C: Yeah, feel free to pull me up too if I skip over any important details but, you know, so Amaysim was 2009 to 2012. Did something happen during your time helping to build that company Can you tell me the origin story of Airtasker? How did that— where did that idea come from? Was it something related to working at Amaysim?

7:02 Tim Fung: Well, I think— so it wasn't directly related to working at Amaysim, but it definitely was influenced by that. So when we started Amaysim, one of the first things that I did is actually brought in one of my uni friends, a guy named John O'Lewy. He was a telco engineer. And was working at IBM at the time, and I pulled him into AmazeSim and said, "You should come and join this thing. It's like looking really exciting. We need a telco project manager in there, so come in and help us build it." Once we had sort of done that first sort of like 2 years of really getting the company set up, we started getting itchy feet. And so we would catch up every day in the kitchen and just talk about new ideas that we could start, because, you know, AmazeSim wasn't our company. It was—

7:46 Speaker C: Yeah.

7:47 Tim Fung: We were working for that company, we were the founding team members but you know it wasn't— we weren't big equity holders.

7:53 Adam Spencer: Hmm.

7:53 Tim Fung: So we got itchy feet, we started talking a lot. I was moving apartments at the time and I actually asked another friend of ours, Ivan, to come and help me move because he's got a truck that he uses to do deliveries for his business. And this just got me thinking, it's like why do we ask friends and family to do all these kinds of jobs when there's so many people out there looking for a job And yet, you know, you go and hassle your friends for this. And it just made us realize that it's really hard to like connect with people in your local community and it's really hard to like build a trusted relationship with them. And that's why like, you know, when you're hiring someone for a job, you go through this like really laborious process and it's worthwhile. But if you want to just hire someone for like, you know, a job to help you move on the weekend for $500 or $300 or something, there just wasn't a way to do that in a low-friction way. And so, Johnno and I kept talking about this and I think that by being part of Amazim and seeing a company go from zero to something, we both were like, oh, you know, it is actually possible to do this. And that gave us the, I guess, the kick up the butt to go and start a company.

8:58 Speaker C: Yeah, such a, you know, standing around the kitchen chatting about ideas and then, you know, how many years later, millions of dollars, ASX listed, Something, you know, I don't want to skip over all the amazing details that got you from there to here, but before we dive deeper into the Airtasker story, big, big jump between celebrity management to CEO of an ASX listed company.

9:26 Adam Spencer: The fashion part, is there—

9:27 Speaker C: because I see you've got a few other things in here, Joe Button as well. Is there an interest in fashion?

9:33 Tim Fung: I wouldn't say so, no. So my connection to, and you know, you can probably tell by the way I dress, people laugh at me now because I'm always in an Airtasker t-shirt. But no, I think the interest in celebrity management was that I did always have an interest in sort of sports management and I'm really passionate about Formula 1 and motorsports and things like that. And actually at the time I was trying to help a young kid named Warren White who's Mark Webber's third cousin. So if you remember, Mark Webber was a Formula One driver.

10:06 Adam Spencer: Yep.

10:06 Tim Fung: And we were trying to help him, you know, build up his career. And so I was actually interested more in sort of like talent representation. And at the same time, I was watching Entourage. So, you know, I liked Ari Gold. And so I thought, hey, you know what, I should try and do something, you know, creative and learn how this is done. And I think one sort of commonality between all these things is like, I don't mind sort of just going in to learn about stuff. And so I actually quit my job at Macquarie. I went and joined this modeling agency, but it wasn't really to like make money or anything. It was just like to learn something new. And, you know, I think that like making money is great, like business is important. Most people tell you that, you know, money doesn't matter at all. It's probably, you know, there's only some truth in that. So it's good to like have a business and make money and stuff, but I think the starting point is usually go and do something that you're interested in and try to learn about it. And if you do that, over a few times, then you're probably gonna make some money out of it, which is good.

11:04 Speaker C: What would you say is maybe the biggest, either out of Amazems, your time there, or as a talent agent, is there any transferable skills that you took out of those two experiences that helped kick off Airtasker?

11:17 Tim Fung: Yeah, it's actually quite a lot. I'd say the number one thing that I think was important in the early days of Airtasker was actually the storytelling. Of being able to take a big picture problem, break it down into more understood problems, and then be able to sort of convey to somebody how you're gonna go and solve those problems. And that's actually a pretty common skill across all of these things. When we were talking about talent representation, it would be like, hey, we're trying to do a Nike sponsorship, so here's the celebrity that we've got. You're trying to convey to your customers that Nike is all about empowering women to be able to get out and become their own, become a successful athlete. And so we can give you Michelle Bridges, for example, a fitness trainer, and we're gonna, that's how we're gonna solve your problem. And I think that same thing with Amazim, it was like, hey, there's low-cost, all the mobile plans out there are a total rip-off, we're gonna solve it, and here's how we're gonna do it, and breaking that down step by step. And it's the same thing with Airtasker. One of the biggest things that we had to do early on was kind of paint that there's this big problem that exists out there. People cannot connect with other trusted local service providers in their community. Be able to break that down into like something that's actually solvable and then actually to be able to, you know, take people on that journey and show them how you're gonna solve that problem. And I think that's common across, you know, starting any business.

12:45 Speaker C: So you started Airtasker in 2012, early 2012, and then later that year you decide to start Tankstream Labs? A, how did you have enough time to do that? And B, where did that idea come from to start a coworking space?

13:01 Tim Fung: Yeah, it's actually a great like organic story actually. So, and it actually does tie everything together. So one of them, when we started Amazyn, we brought on board a group called the Bridgeland Group and Marcus, Marcus Kalbetzer is the is the man behind that company. And he came on board as Amaysim's first Australian venture investor. Then when we started Airtasker, Jono and I, you know, we just started working on it and he tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, I want in, like I want to get behind this." So he actually became, you know, one of our biggest angel investors. At the time, we were actually renting our space at Amaysim, renting our space from Marcus who owned the whole building. And so when we started Airtasker, he said, "You know what?" you can just have some space. I've got an unleased floor. I got a completely empty floor. It's a construction site right now, but you guys can just like set up a desk and just go work in the corner for free. And so we're like, that's awesome because we have no money. So that would be really good. So we literally just started working in this construction site on level 1 of the building. But then we'd like meet with other startup folks. You know, I think it was like the guys from PayPal we had to meet because we wanted to integrate them. We have the guys from Sentia who actually helped us build the first version of the app and they would come in for meetings with us and they're all like, how did you get like office space? Because usually like back then it was really like, you know, a 5-year lease or you can't have an office, you need to work from home or work from your garage. And so they're like, this is a sweet deal. And so we said, oh, you know what, you can just pull up a desk and start working over here as well if you want. And over time, Marcus was like, hey, this is actually like, there's quite a lot of people who want this.

14:45 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

14:45 Tim Fung: Like why don't we just, you know, actually make this a thing. And so we just started that way, but by the time we sort of started Tankstream Labs, it was sort of 30% full. And it just really, really grew from there because people just, you know, there was just a really clear demand for having an office on a sort of month-to-month basis instead of a 5-year lease. And I must say, when we were doing this and we were starting Airtasker at the same time, I was like, oh geez, this is a much easier business than Airtasker, 'cause you know, Airtasker was really, really, really slow and yet Tankstream Labs was kind of like, hey, you know, 6 months later we're totally full and we need to start up a new floor. So I was a little bit tempted to switch tacks but thankfully we stuck it out with Airtasker.

15:29 Speaker C: Yes. How do you start a company like Airtasker, you know, multiple two-sided marketplace kind of deal?

15:38 Adam Spencer: Like what—

15:38 Speaker C: let's just go maybe first couple of months, like what were you thinking?

15:42 Tim Fung: I think actually we didn't think too much, which is actually kind of healthy in some sense. Like, I think that when you actually try to map out, like, how you're going to get from zero to something, you know, sizable and attractive, you can often wheel spin because usually the path is not linear. Like, for example, if you look at Google now and you go, okay, well, I want to start a company and I want it to be like Google. And you actually said, okay, well, what are all the things that Google have? They've got like this massive advertising model, they've got, you know, offices all over the world, they've got free lunches, and you try to like map out like how you're going to build that in a linear way.

16:21 Speaker C: Yeah.

16:21 Tim Fung: You'd almost certainly go, oh my gosh, this can't be done, and you're just not going to do it.

16:25 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

16:26 Tim Fung: Whereas if you just kind of start out and just go, you don't get that wheel spinning effect. And that's what we did with Airtasker. We were like, look, we want this thing to exist because it'd be awesome. And then we were kind of like, well, in order to do this, we're gonna have to raise a bunch of money because we have to build a platform, we're gonna have to start, you know, investing in marketing, etc. And so we raised about $1.4 million, which we were thankfully able to do because we had a bit of a track record with Amazim. Like, people knew us and they were like, oh, well, you were successful in building a company, so, you know, I'll give you another crack.

16:56 Speaker C: Yeah.

16:57 Tim Fung: The great thing about raising $1.4 million, and this was like, I think that's actually quite a lot of money, like in today's stance, like everyone's raising that sort of money, but back then people are like, oh wow, that's a huge amount of money. But what it kind of did is it was the equivalent of jumping off a cliff and you know, you've got all these ingredients, you know, you've got all these parts as I build the plane on the way down.

17:18 Speaker C: Yes.

17:18 Tim Fung: And that was actually quite healthy because I think that we had no idea what we were doing, but when we looked at this bank balance and it was just going down every single month, we're like, holy crap, we better just do something. And I say like with like real transparency and honesty, I think that was actually an important ingredient was just we don't have time to think too much, we don't have time to plan too much, we just got to do the next step, just think about the next step and get that. And for us, that was all about getting people to post tasks because we were like, if a posted task from a customer equals a job opportunity for a Tasker.

17:54 Speaker C: Hmm.

17:54 Tim Fung: And so we were like, we need to create job opportunities because we need Taskers, but the only way we're going to get that is if we can get some customers. And so we just did everything that we could to bring in the customer side of the marketplace and, you know, I think most people would not have the stomach for the amount of cash that we had to burn in those early stages to be able to do that because it's pretty scary. One, you know, you've got a ticking time bomb in terms of like the cash balance going down. Two is that you've got a lot of naysayers. You know, you've got a lot of people saying like, "There's no way that's going to work." these guys are just gonna blow up $10 million and then walk off into the sunset and no one wants to be that person. So I think, yeah, it was really important that we just jumped off the cliff and were kind of forced into it from after that first capital raise. It was just sort of like, it was a bit of a forcing function.

18:43 Speaker C: So it was just that North Star, the main thing driving you guys was get job postings.

18:49 Tim Fung: That's right. And that's also a bit unintuitive because most of the startups in Australia now, I'd roughly classify as 3 things. There's sort of e-commerce, there's software like SaaS companies, like building software, and then there's marketplaces. And most of the successful companies that are out there, well, many of them are software companies like SaaS companies, you know, whether it's Canva or whether it's Xero or SafetyCulture.

19:14 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

19:14 Tim Fung: Or any of these things. And the contemporary methodology there is to some degree build a great piece of software and then it'll grow by itself. And then, you know, you've got to pour fuel on the fire, but, you know, first build great software, then scale. The difference in a marketplace is actually this software isn't the product. The liquidity and the whole marketplace community itself is kind of the product.

19:39 Speaker C: Yeah.

19:39 Tim Fung: And so you kind of can't invest too much in the software. You actually got to invest into building the community ASAP. And that's why it's kind of unintuitive, because a lot of the tips that you're getting are from people who have successfully built software companies telling you, build the software, build the software, if it's good, it'll just work. And that isn't really true for a network effect product.

20:01 Speaker C: So let's just compare the two for a sec, the software companies and the marketplace companies. In terms of operations, what is the main difference? Like what are you focusing on from an operational standpoint in the software companies compared to the marketplace companies?

20:17 Tim Fung: Well, I would say like you would see it at a capital allocation level, you have a crapload more in marketing and acquisition much earlier in a marketplace because you understand that the product is the network effect. It's the, you know, the community that you've built. And so if you're there tinkering with the software, you're not building that community. And that community is a big part of the customer experience. For example, You have an awesome software platform, you know, for a marketplace, but there's just no taskers on it, or, you know, in other cases, there's no one selling products or whatever.

20:53 Speaker C: Yeah.

20:54 Tim Fung: It doesn't matter how good it is, it'll suck for customers. The customers will be like, "This is crap." Like, "Wow, the browsing functionality is really, really fast. The latency is incredible, but there's nothing to buy on this website." And so I think that's different compared to, say, I would, you know, great example, Canva. Which would be like build that, you know, that designer interface and make it kick ass. And if you just do that, i.e., just build the software, more and more and more people are going to hear about it and use it, and that's how you get to scale. So yeah, two very different approaches, I think.

21:30 Speaker C: Let's switch gears a bit. Going back to Tank Stream Labs, what's the origin, like what's the name, the origin of the name? Can you tell me about that?

21:39 Tim Fung: Yeah, it's totally uncreative. Basically, If you look at the laneway out the back of the address, it's called Tankstream Way. And so we were like, let's take that and then change it to Labs. But I actually do think the Labs component of it was an interesting little thing. I think, you know, what we've realized is Tankstream, it's not really a property company at all. Like, it really is just a community and it's similar to Fishburners and similar to Stone and Chalk and some of those other really great communities that got built. People aren't there to— they're not paying for their desk. They're paying to come to a place every day where they get to like mingle and learn from other people and you know, especially when you're in a 6-person startup or something or a 2-person startup or a 1-person startup, you know, having that shared space and that shared sort of like knowledge and connections is pretty valuable.

22:35 Speaker C: Yeah, so you seem to be in the business of building communities.

22:39 Tim Fung: Yeah, I didn't really think of it outright that way, but I suppose that that is true. And actually, I think that's a really, you know, that is the most powerful thing about the internet. Like, when you really comes down to it, most successful internet companies are somehow built on community because that is really the fabric of what the internet can do that, you know, couldn't be done before.

23:02 Speaker C: Yeah.

23:02 Tim Fung: You now have these sort of scaled places where people can come together and interact. I think most of the big companies, or the successful ones, are effectively somehow leveraging, you know, community or networking.

23:14 Speaker C: Well, that community theme is a good segue into, you know, the rise of the ecosystem in Australia, like the growth and evolution of the ecosystem kind of coincided with, you know, iPhones and social networking. Aside from that being a driver of, you know, helping to bring the startup community together, what else would you say helped really, you know, kick things off in Australia?

23:40 Tim Fung: Yeah, I think one of the most powerful things about any kind of ecosystem, I think, is you need to kind of have proven success and proven experience. And that's why it is sort of like a compounding effect. Like, if you look at like why Silicon Valley or like San Francisco is like so awesome, it's because you've got like, you know, I guess you had folks in the '60s building silicon chips and then that experience and that capital got pushed into the next era, you know, personal computing or whatever, and then that gets pushed into the next era of like, you know, e-commerce on the internet, that just keeps compounding.

24:19 Speaker C: Yeah.

24:20 Tim Fung: And so I think what we're starting to see in Australia, which is like so, so, so exciting, is people coming out of some of these organizations or having these experiences, either building companies or learning from, you know, working at other successful companies, and they're getting funded now because there's trust there. People go, oh, they know what they're doing. Great. Let's go fund that. And it just keeps compounding. And I guess like the VC then is kind of like the fuel to that fire that sort of lubricates that process happening over and over and over again. But what I'm so excited by is like, you know, seeing these companies that are getting funded now and, you know, it'll be like multi-generational. It'll be like, yep, I was there at Lassi in the early days. Yeah. Learned how to do that, then built this company, exited that, and now I'm doing this company. And like, that's just really, really, really exciting. And I wonder if there's like any way that we can like turbocharge that even more.

25:11 Speaker C: Yeah.

25:11 Tim Fung: So like bringing people back, you know, Airtasker, I'm really fortunate, you know, 3 of our leadership team members we've, you know, we've bought back from experience, you know, either in the US or the UK. And I think that's really great because it's sort of like injects that experience straight back into the Australian ecosystem.

25:28 Speaker C: Yeah, I think I actually just noticed, is it your CMO ex-Facebook?

25:34 Tim Fung: Yeah, so it's kind of funny, but our CMO is ex-Facebook, our CTO is 8 years at Amazon in Seattle, and then Patrick is our Chief Product Officer. He's come from Zip and also previously founded an exit company in the US. And so yeah, it's really awesome to be able to, you know, I'm learning so much from them. As much as, you know, I'm also their manager. So it's really good, like that exchange of experience and skills.

26:06 Speaker C: How important do you think density is to an ecosystem?

26:10 Tim Fung: Do you mean like geographic density?

26:12 Speaker C: Population, yeah.

26:14 Tim Fung: Yeah, I do think that it's potentially becoming less important because of how much stuff is happening on Zoom and video and all that sort of thing. But certainly, like, with TakeStream Labs, even though, you know, we have had the pandemic and that obviously did cause a bunch of people to, you know, go work from home instead of in an office, people, you know, are sort of physical beings still. And the fabric of sort of the metaverse and like video calling and all that sort of stuff, it's just not yet able to replace what physical connection does. So yeah, I'm at, you know, we're in a bloody funny place right now because of the COVID stuff. But once things normalize, I do think people are going to want to have, you know, a lot more time in physical spaces together. And so I think density will matter again, albeit it's not 5 days a week for sure. I think, you know, we're working to something like 1 or 2 days a week. But yeah, interesting that you mentioned density because I think there's sort of the geographic density. There's also the time density. Mm-hmm. I.e., at Airtasker, where everything's marketplace, but we talk about network effect in the office too. You know, if everyone comes in one day a week, but everyone chooses a different day to come in, like, that's kind of crap. If everyone chooses the same day to come in, that day will actually be really awesome. So I think that that's also important, that the density from like a time perspective as well as a geographic one.

27:43 Speaker C: Fast forwarding to modern day, Can you comment on some of the gaps maybe that you observe in our ecosystem, like where we can make the biggest improvements, biggest leaps forward?

27:55 Tim Fung: So there's potentially a bit of recency bias in this for where Airtasker is at at the moment, but I guess one thing that I would start with is saying that software engineering in Australia is getting really, really strong, which is great because there's lots and lots of software jobs, I think, being created. And, you know, we're really bringing in some great talent, and there's just a great deal of maturity here, I would say, forming in software engineering. I think though that what that presents then is what's the next layer up in sort of like the hierarchy of needs? Yeah. If you kind of look at Maslow's hierarchy in starting a software company, I'd say the engineering piece is like the absolute base of that hierarchy. You can't get that right, don't even bother. But the next level up is sort of like the product management side of things. And I think that this is an area that's really nascent but developing in Australia. One of the things I guess I've noticed is there's probably not a strong degree yet of business responsibility yet in the product management cycle— I'm sorry, in the product management experience that most folks have in Australia. What I mean by that is I think when you get really good at really sophisticated product management, you've almost got products running your profit and loss statement, i.e., being responsible for revenue and being self-funding and sustainable and pricing and all these kinds of things. So I think we're getting that first layer of product management pretty solid in Australia, which is like the very foundational side of user experience and making sure that users are really happy. But I think that higher up in that hierarchy is sort of— Um, getting the business side of that really mature too.

29:39 Speaker C: What do you think we're doing really well? I'm assuming you've had, you know, a decent amount of exposure to other ecosystems, other kind of ecosystems around the world. Is there anything that pops out to you in Australia that we just do better than anyone else?

29:53 Tim Fung: Well, this one is almost certainly perhaps a little bit like inwards looking, but we actually do have a And over, we over-index in the success of like our marketplaces and like classifieds type businesses, i.e., like network effect businesses. If you have a look at like, you know, Seek.com, like from the first wave of the internet, it's actually like a juggernaut, like on a global scale. I think REA, realestate.com.au, also an Aussie homegrown company, juggernaut on a global scale in that space. And with Airtasker, we are also sort of like in our particular space of sort of like local transaction marketplace, probably punching above the weight of what you'd expect, you know, compared to, say, the US and the UK.

30:40 Speaker C: Hmm.

30:41 Tim Fung: What I kind of think here is interesting is that Australia is an awesome pilot market for these kinds of build local, but then, you know, go and build it again overseas type models.

30:53 Speaker C: Hmm.

30:53 Tim Fung: I think you can, you know, being a smaller country, you can sort of build a network effect very quickly. Be able to monetize that network effect quickly. And then you can go and invest that into scaling that overseas. And I think we've seen that with Seek, we've seen it with realestate.com, you know, Menu Log was a massive, you know, over-indexer. So yeah, I think that actually one thing that, you know, probably doesn't get as much of a mention because it's less sexy than sort of like the global day one mega companies is potentially these sort of like local businesses that can be replicated again overseas.

31:29 Speaker C: Yeah, that's how the US and the UK kind of use Australia as a test market, kind of that kind of thinking, right?

31:35 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

31:35 Speaker C: Prove it out here first and then scale it in other countries with larger populations. Do you have an unpopular opinion? Is there something about the startup ecosystem that you just firmly believe but you just can't seem to get other people on the same page?

31:51 Tim Fung: Oh, about the startup ecosystem?

31:53 Speaker C: Yeah.

31:53 Tim Fung: Look, I would say The first thing is I would say that like it's a pretty healthy ecosystem, I would say. Like I do believe that for the most part, people are out there to help other people. I think one of the things that is potentially not that spoken about is the zero-sum talent acquisition space, which is that we're all here to help each other until it comes to the fixed zero-sum nature of talent acquisition. And that's where there's definitely a lot of argy-bargy going on between different companies and it's, you know, I think it's actually not a bad thing at the moment because it's actually benefiting employees and making sure that people get paid at the right levels and what they're worth. So I think that's a good thing, but it's probably not a very often spoken about topic is how much infighting there is actually to acquire the best talent.

32:44 Speaker C: Yeah, I, you know, the thing I took out of that is I'm so glad you said arjee bargie. So, only a few more questions. This is the advice question that I ask everybody and we can do this two ways. So, one is what advice would you give to a brand new founder, like a fresh founder that came to you tomorrow? What one piece of advice would you give him? But also what maybe one piece of advice would you give Tim, you know, 10 years ago?

33:15 Tim Fung: Yeah, I make it, maybe I can start with some advice to myself. I think, and I've actually heard this from other, a couple of other founders who have experienced a similar thing. When you're a founder, often you're not an expert in anything other than what you founded, you know, and the problem that you're trying to solve, but you're often not an expert in a lot of areas that you actually have to end up overseeing, assuming that, you know, you stay in the leadership of your of your company.

33:42 Adam Spencer: Mm-hmm.

33:42 Tim Fung: And it's very easy to lose conviction and start listening to other people too much. And I think it's important to be able to like keep conviction without being closed or not being curious and not being respectful of others. I think it actually can be very easy to go the other way, which is to hire really, really smart people and then actually to listen to them a little bit too much, you know, to go to follow their direction. Too much. You got to maintain a bit of conviction and that can be really hard to do, especially when you're working with people who frankly on paper are just amazing. You know, when I look at some of the folks in my team, I'm like, oh my gosh, this person is really, really, really smart and they are. That said, you know, I've been working on this same problem for 10 years.

34:30 Speaker C: Yeah.

34:31 Tim Fung: So, you know, you got to be able to balance out conviction versus also staying open. I guess for an early-stage founder, the way that I might sort of like open up that slightly would be that you're gonna get advice from like a lot of like externals as well, from mentors and from people you raise money from and all this kind of stuff. And equally there, I think it's easy to want to kind of take on all of those opinions. But then what I started realizing is that heaps of them would be contrarian. You know, some of them would be like, all you got to do is work on the culture, work on that. And someone else would be like, and at the same time, focus all of your energy on growth. You know, it'd be like, ah, that's not really possible to do both of those things. So I think you've also just got to know that there's probably no right answer and nobody knows it all. So again, you've got to form your own opinions and pursue them.

35:25 Speaker C: Before I ask the last question, Is there anything that we missed in the story of the ecosystem, how we kind of got to where we are, that you can comment on?

35:37 Tim Fung: I think we covered it a lot. I guess it's one interesting thing to maybe comment on is there were so many people along this journey who, when you kind of think about startup ecosystem now, people mention Atlassian, they mention Canva, they mention safety culture. But actually there's this like whole long tail of people who are building some really cool stuff and contributing to this ecosystem in various different ways. Some of those companies didn't scale, some of them completely went kaput, others just became small businesses, etc.

36:11 Speaker C: Mm-hmm.

36:11 Tim Fung: But I think it is worthwhile sort of like recognizing all of those smaller companies and stories that sort of contributed to this because it isn't just like Canva and Atlassian and SafetyCulture equals startup ecosystem. It's all the people that are out there giving it a crack.

36:28 Adam Spencer: Yeah.

36:29 Tim Fung: Getting the $25,000 angel check, hiring 2 people, doing some interesting stuff, maybe selling their company to somebody else, you know, rather than scaling into some big thing.

36:38 Speaker C: Yeah.

36:39 Tim Fung: And actually I find that like, that's why the coworking spaces are this kind of great, almost like central hub of life. And when you go to these coworking spaces and you go to, you know, the Thursday night beer night, which we used to be able to have before the pandemic. That's kind of really the beating heart, I would say, of the startup ecosystem in Australia.

37:02 Speaker C: Last question. I'm trying to put together a documentary here that will as wholly and truthfully tell the history of the Australian startup ecosystem. We want people from all corners to listen to the story. Investors, founders, academics, policymakers, everybody. Do you have a message for any one of those groups or all of them? Like, just what do they need to hear from Tim?

37:26 Tim Fung: Well, I'd say like one of the biggest things behind like building any sort of ecosystem or movement is that you've got to believe and you've got to kind of, you've got to talk a little bit ahead of where things are actually at today. And when I think about it, you know, if you think about Silicon Valley and San Francisco and all that, Part of the reason why their hub and their ecosystem is so amazing is because they shout it from the rooftops. They keep telling us.

37:51 Adam Spencer: Hmm.

37:51 Tim Fung: Smartest people in the world, we're Silicon Valley, this is where it's at. They're making movies about it, they're talking about it, their government talks about it. I think we need to do that in Australia. I think we tend to be a little bit more humble and like, oh no, no, no, it's just, you know, don't talk it up too much, you know, rather walk the walk than talk the talk. I think talking the talk is kind of important. And I think that if, you know, we can convince more people from around the world that Australia is a great ecosystem and that, you know, lots of stuff is going on here, then it's sort of self-fulfilling. So I think we've got to start talking a little bit ahead of where we're walking.

38:30 Speaker C: Well, I fully support that idea because that's what I'm trying to do here with Welcome to Day One is to shout the shout it from the rooftop how amazing our founders are.

38:39 Tim Fung: Totally. There's so much going on and there's so much awesome stuff that we've done in Australia. Like I mentioned, all those Internet 1.0s like the SEEKs, Car Sales, REA, we kind of don't roll them into the story, but they were definitely the early folks.

39:08 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.