True Grit: The PUSH pushes in Brisbane – Startup 101
The Push is a community of entrepreneurs based in Brisbane which supports entrepreneurs and startups by providing connections, resources, and networking to grow businesses in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The Push actively connects people with other like-minded people and gives startups access to the best entrepreneurs in the business.
The Push hosted an Expert Panel on 31 March 2016 in Brisbane at River City Labs in Fortitude Valley. The guest speakers were Danielle Lewis, the CEO of Scrunch, Chris Macaulay, the CEO of Advvy, Kay Lam-Macleod, Principal of Idealaw and Tres West, Program Coordinator at iLab.
The evening was lively, starting with some refreshments and lots of pizza! The panel got right into the discussion and was very open with sharing their experiences as startups, all the highs, as well as the lows.
Ms Lewis is the founder of Scrunch, which has a website that headlines “Find influencers who drive sales and growth (not just shares & likes)”. The business was started with the idea that:
We started Scrunch because we believe brands, agencies and influencers should be able to make informed decisions on truly great partnerships.
Mr Macaulay co-founded Advvy, a startup that develops workflow automation software for media agencies and publishers in the media industry.
Kay Lam-Macleod, principal at Idealaw addressed the protection of intellectual property, how important it is to clear ownership of intellectual property in startups as there are often multiple contributors. It is also necessary to obtain in writing the assignment of intellectual property ownership from any contractors who do work for the business.
Tres West, of iLab who co-founded the Bond Business Accelerator and is now working as program coordinator at ilab, a Queensland accelerator, spoke about the high statistics of startups failing and, in his experience, the startups that most often are likely to succeed, are those where the founders show “true grit” in the face of adversity.
From all accounts, “true grit” is definitely a required quality of the leadership team of a startup as the process of a disruptor has dramatic ups and downs. We heard stories of many late nights in the office, developing products that no-one wanted, answering hundreds of emails personally, and jumping on a plane to go to Singapore with no contacts to pitch cold to investors.
The final word is that in the beginning you “Do Things That Don’t Scale”, a quote from Paul Graham. According to Paul Graham, co-founder of top startup accelerator Y Combinator, startups take off because the founders make them take off. You can find out more here about what is True Grit.
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Disclaimer. The material in this post represents general information only and should not be taken to be legal advice.
