Mark Harbottle is one of the leading members of the tech scene in Australia. One of the co-founders of digital agency Sitepoint, the business now runs a plethora of websites including marketplaces Flippa and 99designs โ which received a $35 million investment from US firm Accel Partners back in 2011.
Since then the company has grown to turn over well in excess of $30 million, and operates in both Melbourne and the United States. Harbottle spoke to SmartCompany about how the company has developed since the investment, the problem with time management โ and why American venture capitalists got to him first.
Whatโs changed since the investment is the growth. Just doing the deal was a whole bunch of approval from Accel, and weโve noticed a lot of growth here since that announcement. Everyone knows who 99designs is now, and itโs helped with hiring.
We havenโt really chewed through that cash, but we can invest more in teams. We can have a slightly better office, hire a CFO and finance team, hire an analyst go to through the finances and so on. And just having access to the guys in Accel is great.
I donโt know all the employees by name. Itโs strange, but you canโt know them all, and particularly with a large team in the United States, itโs a matter of dealing with it. I try to meet everyone and say hello, but a lot of them donโt even know me.
Thatโs why I think getting along to those company events is important. Even if itโs just to have a few drinks and get to know everyone, but itโs good to do that.
I think the efforts being made to grow technology here are a good thing. And I think that by doing that weโll have more success stories, but I donโt think weโll ever be quite as good as they do it in the States. Itโs embedded in their culture, and itโs going to be hard to replicate that.
But that having been said, itโs always good to be moving in that direction. Itโs better than saying weโre not going to do anything. Every time you get a success story, you get more start-ups.
And thereโs definitely a lot happening in Sydney, but thereโs plenty happening in Melbourne too. Where did RealEstate.com.au start? What about CarSales, or Seek? These are billion dollar companies, and not one of them started in Sydney. They were all in Melbourne.
I probably shouldnโt bag venture capitalists too much, but we didnโt get one call from an Aussie VC. Every week I was getting a call from a US venture capitalist. Every week someone would call up. Thatโs not unusual; they have teams of analysts and juniors doing these calls. Itโs not unusual to get a call โ but I didnโt get one from Australia.
One of the things thatโs been an advantage to our development is that we donโt hire developers in the States. They say itโs a lot harder over there because youโre just competing against everyone. We donโt do it, because we have a good reputation here and just build the team here.
We have our management team and finance team over there, as well as service. Weโve found the Americans just do service a lot better there. Itโs embedded in the culture. Of course, there are downsides to that โ itโd be great to have management in the same buildings as the developers.
Iโm all over the place; Iโm really poor at time management. I find it hard to delegate things that Iโm happy to do, so I should get better at delegating. The stuff I enjoy doing, I just do.
Weโre not looking for people to invest money in, but really we want founders to run our businesses. Once they get out of that development phase, part of the networking we do is to identify people who may have a crap idea but really know what theyโre doing.