Music Intro plays
Hello. Alison Drower
with another episode of the Showcase Entrepreneurs' Programme series.
In business, the term unicorn, is used to describe a privately held
companywith a value of a Billion dollars. Now it does happen,
but it's pretty rare, And the Entrepreneurs' Programme has yet to lay claim to supporting a unicorn.
However, CitrusAd International may be about to change all of that.
This Brisbane-based
start-up sells retailers e-commerce software
that gives them control over their own digital real estate.
Former AFL player Brad
Moran and co-founder Nick Paech has watched
CitrusAd enjoy a 2-Thousand percent growth rate in the space of a single fin year.
But the company's success
has been born from the battlescars that Brad
and Nick experienced when they were fired from their first ever startup.
CitrusAd is now giving Google, Facebook and Amazon a little bit of an
elbow nudge, and this is a dynamic partnership built on trust and
resilience. And maybe, just maybe, that unicorn is now within reach.
You know we compliment each other in our personality styles.
I'm type one perfectionist. You know, Nick's a little bit more laid back than
me, um, and that compliments each other. You know, I'm the numbers guy,
Nick's the creative kind of marketer and we both compliment
each other in terms of skillsets. So we don't really
run into each other from a conflict of interest perspective which has enabled the relationship
and the company to grow. Plus we both share the love for Manchester United
and the Adelaide Crows. Sure that helps. (laughs and coughs) Really?
Sadly it is at the moment. Port Adelaide are looking better by the day. (laughs)
All those years of footy
for you, like you were a pro-sports guy, and
yet this is your destiny. Was it always in the back of your head or what?
Football's good, but
it's taxing on the mind in so far as it's very repetitive. So you know, football and
business are totally different. I used to think football was stressful, um, it's a walk
in the park compared to business. Um, so let
that be a lesson to all footballers who think they've got it tough.
Can you tell us a little
bit about where Citrus was positioned at the
time when it reached out to the Entrepreneurs'Programme in what was it? 2017?
You know, part of the
Entrepreneur Programme the government helped
us with, um, I found it quite a pivotal piece of capital. We'd raised an initial seed round
and the seed round kind of enabled us to do what we'd said we'd do, which was take on
Australia and build the product and get to the market. What we did with the money from
the government which we'd never have done had we not had that extra capital, was go
overseas quickly. So we went to the US, we went to the UK, and took the chance of trying
to crack those markets using that extra funding. And had we not have done that at that time,
there was no way the business would have accelerated the way that we grew.
So even though it was a small amount of money in the
scheme of things from an overall capital perspective, you know
it was $850-Thousand we got from the government, it was that 850-Thousand that enabled us to
take the risk and the chance that we wouldn't have taken otherwise.
And Nick, the heartache you went through in America the first time,
how satisfying is it to now be having such success in that big league market?
It certainly takes alot
of time to crack the US. Even in the first
company, and that's one thing companies need to be aware of, and
even like, I have friends of mine that started Lonely Planet, and
even they said it took them 2 to 3 years to crack the US. It was the same with
us, because they really value relationships. The good thing
about the US is they are very addicted to the dollar. So as Brad would always say, you
know where they're coming from. But they really do value the relationships. But you've got
to get into those relationships. You've got to invest, you've got to go there, you've
got to do so many long trips over there. There are no shortcuts. And even with CitrusAd,
one of the best timed technology products that you could ever come across, um, it's
even taken us time to crack the US.
We're both, kind of, very self-critical people and that's what's
enabled us to grow is that we've remained extremely grounded, um, don't take anything
for granted and you know, we don't get ahead of ourselves at all. I think, you know, we're
always looking probably at the glass half empty which we probably shouldn't, you know.
We should probably look at some of the upsided and celebrate some of the upside but things
can still fall apart and so everyday is still a day that we have to come to work and work
hard. The momentum for Citrus has been turbo-charged. Has there ever been
the concern that maybe you've got to apply the brakes a little, or is the ride just too
exhilerating at this particular point? Exhilerating's a big
word (laughs) We knew we had a pretty exciting
product. We were pretty confident but you can never know right? And
retailers are a unique beast. They're very, particularly big retailers like when
we got into this, we thought, oh, you know we're going to be tier two,
tier three retailers. The big retailers, they'll
be building their own tech, they'll be all over this stuff. I remember one of our board
members going, don't go working with Woolworths, they're just going to build it. Those big
companies have it hard. They don't quite have the innovation and they become a corporate
beast and different layers. So it has been somewhat suprising to us that the big tier
ones, they really need us. They're there to buy. And with the right technology, retailers
are now understanding that actually, we are more attractive, we're a more attractive option
to these brands and advertisers than the big three of Google, Facebook or Amazon.
It's alot of hard work. Lot of hard work. I've still got a bit
of hair, it's good (laughs)
If you'd said to Brad
and I we'd be working with Sainsbury's, Woolworths, Coles, some of the biggest retailers
in the US, I can't even name some of them
now, Macy's, all these guys, you know, we would have said, no way. But you
know, here we are. Your little startup
has garnered so much attention from venture
capitalists, where do you think your unicorn is actually hiding?
To build a unicorn,
takes a long, long time. It takes alot of effort. You know, you look at Atlassian, 14
years before they listed. Canva are going there, they're not listed yet. They've been
around alot longer than we have. We're at year 3. I think Citrus is in the right space
at the right time, with the right product, um, and could absolutely be a unicorn. But
do we have our mindset on becoming a Billion
dollar company? um, I think we're just focused on getting to a point where we feel comfortable
that we've grown it as far as we can grow it and then we'll get, you know, people in
who like to run large companies, instead of, you know, Nick and I are creators, right.
We're creative personalities, like to forge new ground and new things, and when this business
gets to two, three, four hundred people, it tends to turn into auto-pilot, kind of photo
copying mode and you know, I don't think we'll probably be around at that point.
Do you think this business
marriage has great staying power to see you to a new frontier?
Oh, I'll never work
with him again (laughs)
Yeah (laughs) We will
never talk to each other again, in fact, I'm
going to an island where there is no retailers, just me and the animals to tell you the truth.
Phones won't be able to work. We may be on that island together. (laughs) But who knows.
And you can listen to
our extended conversation with Brad Moran
and Nick Paech in our Showcase Entrepreneurs' Programme podcast.
Just go to business.gov.au/episode