David Tudehope says founders need to find something they are passionate about; success will take twice as long and be twice as hard as you think. Here’s what he’s learnt. Listen to the How I Made It podcast for free.
David Tudehope quit his banking job at 25 to found a start-up to target markets that he thought were “underserved and overcharged”. He’s now a Financial Review Rich Lister. Here’s what he learnt building Macquarie Telecom into a $1.5 billion company.A lot of friends said “this is not a great time ; this is a great idea for another time”. In many ways they were right because if I left, I wouldn’t get my job back.
It’s long hours. You’re the corporate lawyer, the corporate HR person, the administration person. So, what does that translate to? We were buying furniture from Ikea and assembling it on Saturdays. We’re doing the accounting on Sundays. We’re doing the billing run on Sunday night. We’re mailing the bills before the post closes at 8pm. That is the level of sacrifice that you have to make.You need the profit from that customer to pay for the next one, from day one.
If you find something you’re passionate about, it kind of makes it all worthwhile. You don’t feel like you’re spending your life at work, you are spending your life in your passion, and it’s a privilege and it excites you.What’s really made it work for for the whole 28 years is that we’ve always had enough space in the business that I can do my part and he can do his part. We’re not tripping over one other during the course of the day, there’s always been space for us both to play.
For years, he kept the quote in his wallet. “When things do come your way, it does reinforce how true this quote it,” Tudehope says.“I think sometimes people do you look for the shortcut, they do look for a Hollywood story where someone just comes with one big idea and the magic carpet turns up. Growing your business from scratch, particularly with your own money, that Calvin Coolidge quote rang very true for me.”In the tech industry, the pressure to adapt to change is huge.
The power of Noah’s Ark is that we capture all the aspects to trends. We take one salesperson, one product person, one engineer, a marketer, an executive or two, and we go deep on one or two big trends. We talk to people, visit people in the businesses like ours. We talk to some suppliers, we talk to end customers, we talk to consultants. We go for a couple of weeks.
The reality is if you get the right people in the door in the first place who care and want to do well and care about customer service, they will self improve and that’s much more powerful and also much more cost-effective.There’s definitely a trade-off with hanging on to equity and there’s a risk you end up with a large portion of a smaller pie.
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