Cuberider basically, is trying to reinvent
the way that we teach science and technology in high schools.
So, we're getting rid of the traditional way that we've always taught it
and making students think that it's boring and nerdy,
and showing them how fun and exciting and rewarding science and technology really is.
So, you're actually doing a real space mission in place of your science class.
And at the end we take their experiments
and we sent them out to the International Space Station.
One of our biggest milestones is putting together this space mission,
which happens to be the first for Australia.
So we didn't get funding,
because we were two techie people who didn't know how to communicate their ideas.
And in not all cases is it good to be a young entrepreneur,
sometimes it's better to be older, so we failed at that.
And so the only way to run our business was to go and get customers.
We went to people that we knew, our old high school teachers.
And this was when we were still at idea phase,
before we even had a product.
And went straight into collecting customers
and getting market validation at the same time.
Actually going and selling as a techncial person was extremely hard,
there was this big barrier, like a mental psychological barrier
that we kind of had to cross and get over.
Cold calling sucks, it really really sucks.
Making your fist couple of sales sucks as well.
It's the most terrifying thing.
But at the end of the day, if you don't sell you don't have a business.
And I guess, once you actually get on the phone
you realise that the person on the other end is a human as well
and they empathise with what you're trying to do as well.
And once you've done it a couple of times,
and you've gotten the validation that yes people actually want to buy
people believe in your idea and product and your end goal.
Then it gets a lot easier and it's the snowball effect.
And you can go out and talk to lots of people.
Don't think you can really get in and run your own business
if you don't have utter belief in what you're doing.
I came into this business arena, start-up arena,
quite timid and intimidated by the whole concept.
One of the biggest things I've learnt is to be confident,
and confident in what you do and how you do things and that will get you a long way.
We went to market with paying customers from day one.
And that allowed us to actually build our product inline
with our earlier adopters' needs as well.
So we knew from the onset that what we developed was actually useful
and what the market wanted.
We had to do less iterations than most tech companies because of that.
But all in all, it's meant that our customers have been happy,
and they've been, they've become part of our family.
Once we got enough paying customers on board, then we built the product.
Gave ourselves timelines, that we kind of made ourselves accountable for
by promising that to our customers.
And then we constantly iterated on the product.
And we're only a year in now, but it's changed a lot in this last year.
If you have an idea and then you like, get stepping stones to get to that idea.
But basically, how you get from here to here changes a million times.
And one thing that I've realised is getting your whole team
understanding, participating and creating that plan,
has by far been the most valuable thing.
The power of networking is huge, put time and effort into your network
and building rapport with people.
Do people favours if you ever want anyone to do you a favour ever.
You've just got to be generally a good person.
A lot of our advisers aren't what you would typically call successful.
They're people that have made a series of attempts at things
and we have a lot to learn from.
The rollercoaster of having a business is intense,
the highs are high and the lows are incredibly low.
And sometimes that's within the hour.
But you'll never find anything more rewarding.
The best piece of advice I can give is to just hit the pavement
go out and get customers and start.
Thanks for coming on this journey with us,
and good luck in getting your ideas up and out there.
Love to get your thoughts and feedback on the series,
so don't hesitate to leave a comment below.