Ep.9 Cameron Priest – TradeGecko - a podcast by Heather Smith|CAANZ | ACCA |Xero | QBO

Highlights of my conversation with Cameron Priest

·        Singaporean Government fostering a technology hub

·        Global adoption of add-ons

·        Setting up a start-up in Singapore

·        Growing a business with a multi-lingual support

·        Giving clients the “wow factor” during the on-boarding process

·        The Smart Enterprise Software Wave

·        Choosing a currency to price in

·        Blk 71 Ayer Rajah Cr– the hub for start-ups in Singapore

Subscribe to Episode 9 of Cloud Stories on iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/cloud-stories-heather-smith/id908333807

Read about it here: http://cloud-stories.com/ep-9-cameron-priest-tradegecko-kiwi-cloud-inventory-solution-calling-singapore-home/

TradeGecko is a world-class Inventory, Order and Supply Chain Management platform with a comprehensive suite of functionalities – packaged together in an intuitive, cloud-based interface, designed and structured ‘user-first’ from the ground-up. Expertly manage your inventory as you save time, eliminate errors and streamline your sales channels, synchronized across all your stakeholders in real-time.

Transcript

Heather:        Welcome, Cameron, to the show. Thank you very much for being here.

Cameron, the first question I’d like to ask you is what did you like to do when you were twelve years old?

Cameron:      Well, I grew up on a kiwifruit orchard in New Zealand, so a big part of my life was exploring and building go-carts with my brothers, building things with my father, so kind of creating things was a big part of being twelve and kind of exploring the property.

Heather:        Wow. That’s amazing, growing up in a kiwifruit orchard. That sounds like the quintessential New Zealand dream doesn’t it?

Cameron:      I feel like it’s the butt of every New Zealand joke because we had kiwifruit and we had sheep.

Heather:        Did you? Oh, you mentioned the sheep. But that’s sensational. Was it like a big orchard?

Cameron:      It was a large kiwifruit producing orchard. It’s not massive but my father’s full time job was managing the orchard, so it wasn’t insubstantial but he is still doing that today.  

Heather:        Wow. That’s amazing. You have come so far from kiwifruits to this. I’m surprised your businesses name is not Kiwi Gecko or something like that or Kiwifruit Gecko.

How did a guy from Auckland end up in Singapore as a CEO of TradeGecko?

Cameron:      Yeah, well previously I’d had a business doing development of iPhone and web applications for third parties, so client based kind of web design agency, and we had some customers who were kind of having the issue that we now are trying to solve with TradeGecko which is managing the entire backend of their businesses, be they wholesale or retail businesses. I’d been searching and looking and kind of struggling to start a business that kind of ... I guess the theory was always a business that made money while you sleep. That’s always the end goal for everyone isn’t it?

Heather:        Yes.

Cameron:      So this to me was a great opportunity and the more I looked, the bigger the opportunity seemed. Yeah, I mean for us the move from Auckland to Singapore was just access to capital, access to international markets, and I guess just a shake-up. I mean it’s very easy to be very complacent in New Zealand. It’s beautiful and it’s slow and it’s easy to have a really good lifestyle but it kind of … a way to kick my own butt was getting out of my comfort zone.

Heather:        That’s interesting.

Are you the founder of TradeGecko?

Cameron:      Yes, so there are three co-founders. There’s myself and Carl Thompson who moved over to Singapore, and then I actually poached my older brother who is a great engineer a couple of months later to head up our product team.

Heather:        I did notice some other Priests on the ...

Cameron:      We’ve actually recently hired the youngest Priest as well. He’s a great engineer.

Heather:        Sensational, another ... it does seems a lot of the add-on solutions are a family entity or exercise, so that’s interesting.

Cameron:      Yeah.

How many staff do you have based in your Singaporean office?

Cameron:      In Singapore, we’ve got 29.

Heather:        Wow. That’s a lot.

Do you have staff based elsewhere?

Cameron:      Yes, we have a team in Manilla in the Philippines and we’ve just opened an office in San Francisco as well.

Heather:        Wow, so you’re growing rapidly because the ...

How old is the business? It’s only about two years old isn’t it?

Cameron:      Yeah, just over two years. We’ve quadrupled since last November which is scary to be perfectly honest.

Heather:        Yeah, it’s amazing. That’s amazing growth you’ve got there. So based on what you’re saying there, let me ask you ... let me just jump ahead and ask you another question.

On your LinkedIn profile, you used the phrase, “We give the power of Walmart supply chain management to SME’s.” Where are your customers coming from and are you targeting the US market because obviously Australians don’t know Walmart. I’m presuming New Zealand doesn’t have Walmart, so it was a very American phrase for me sitting there in LinkedIn.

Cameron:      You make a very good point. I hadn’t thought about that point of view. Yeah, we do target the US. To be honest, the US and Australia are our two largest markets. In terms of the Walmart phrase, there’s actually kind of a positioning statement we’ve used when raising fund raising. I guess I kind of internalise it and have been using it in market materials, and perhaps isn’t the most targeted for the Australian or New Zealand markets, but that was kind of theory. Yeah, Australia is a big market but US is now overtaking them as our largest market nowadays.

Heather:        That’s sensational.

How are you approaching the American markets because it’s such a huge market to crack? How you approaching that?

Cameron:      With trepidation. I mean effectively … I mean with us and obviously part of this conversation is the partnership with Xero and Shopify were the first real partnerships that started getting us customers. So in Australia and New Zealand, we’ve really been able to grow to kind of ride the coat tails of Xero, and Xero obviously isn’t dominant in the US, although I’m sure we all hope and I’m sure Rod really hopes that it does become so in the future.

Heather:        Yes.

Cameron:      But it does mean that we’re kind of facing an uphill battle in terms of the way we kind of inch that market. Completely honestly, we don’t know everything about what our strategy is going to be to enter that market because it is such a different kettle of fish. It’s a work in progress.

Heather:        Yes, it is.

So are you seeing movement into the UK market?

Cameron:      UK is our seventh biggest country. US is big, Australia, Canada, New Zealand of course, Singapore is surprisingly large for us being based here but it’s still it’s a surprisingly small country and surprisingly large number of customers. I guess your classic western English speaking markets are large markets but then we’re everywhere to the Republic of Congo, Mexico, South Africa, some very, very … you know, 86 countries. It’s crazy the places that are using our software.

Heather:        It’s sensational. I imagine that … you have an inventory based software, I imagine, and correct me if I’m wrong, that compliance and legislation doesn’t necessarily affect you in that it would be same for inventory based software no matter where you are.

Cameron:      Exactly. I mean there are always going to be little things. I mean the Alcohol Tax in Australia, the Wet Tax, is actually another difficult issue we’ve had to tackle and we’ve had other issues in other countries. To your point, the US still has very complicated sales tax regime that we need to kind of work with.

Heather:        Okay, so that comes from within your solution rather than within the point of sales solution?

Cameron:      Exactly.

Heather:        Okay, that’s interesting.

How would you describe the Asia Pacific, Singapore, South East Asia start-up seem?

Cameron:      It’s burgeoning. I mean Singapore has had a lot of money inject into from the Singaporean government. In fact our first round of financing, our investors put in $89,000 and the government put half a million in.

Heather:        Wow.

Cameron:      You just don’t get that sort of thing in New Zealand and you have some similar schemes in Australia but they’re actually getting phased out not in. So we had this opportunity here which the Singaporean government has grasped to really invest, not ... I mean not substantial money but we’re still talking kind of $30-50 million dollars which to a government is very little but that’s a hundred different start-ups that can come to Singapore and start in Singapore. They’re really, really trying to foster a technology economy in Singapore. South-East Asia is growing as well but Singapore is definitely the hub.

Are any of your founders, and excuse me you may have mentioned this, are any of your founders Singaporean nationals?

Cameron:      We are all Kiwis.

Heather:        Yes, you’re all Kiwis. Okay, that’s really interesting. Isn’t it? “I’m actually prepared to fund you so much coming over there.” That’s amazing. But I guess you have employed a lot of people there in Singapore.

Cameron:      Definitely a lot of Singaporeans here as well.

Heather:        Yeah. I know when I lived in Singapore, I was on a very nice salary there, and I never used to get taxed. I remember going down to the Singaporean Tax office and putting all my stuff out and I just said, “You’ve just got to tax me, there’s something wrong. You’ve got to tax me.” They looked at it and they said, “N

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