00:20:11 · Ben Pfisterer
[00:20:11] S0: I think it was probably came from the velocity of building the business and the product from start, and that bled across all the different departments and different areas to say we just won't tolerate moving slowly. Like, we have to move fast. So it was like that wartime mentality, if you will, where, listen, yeah, we've got this amazing injection of capital, but comes massive responsibility to that. So let's just build everything out with absolute urgency. And that's, again, in in every single team. So in terms of go to market, it was a little bit of a shotgun approach. Like, we sort of said, let's go broad rather than getting too narrow. Because if you're narrow and you get it wrong, you stagnate. So we went broad. We had some great go to market strategies. Obviously, we went direct or wanted to be a direct business, only on direct channel, but we partnered up with Officeworks as well, which gave us a great halo effect to to launch. But we also came with an enormous amount of experience. Like, the initial team, have done a lot of this stuff before. So we're in different organizations and different sectors, but it wasn't our first proverbial rodeo. Like, it wasn't a rock out going, what's paid marketing? Should we do it? How do we get earned media, etcetera? We know exactly what we wanna do. And, also, we just focused on that. We've stripped out of the bureaucracy, the overthinking. We didn't ask any customers. We didn't have any, but didn't ask any merchants what they wanted. We said, we got a vision of what we wanna build. Let's build that. If we got this wrong, we can pivot quickly. Let's just go at it really, really hard. So once you strip out all that bureaucracy and the stuff that you don't need in businesses, you're left with let's execute. And I think that mentality across everything, go to market, was very important. Also, the other thing we knew we had to get right is you're going into dealing people's money. So you have to look solid. You have to be stable. There was no flimsy MVPs. This was an absolute amazingly stable product and service and onboarding, etcetera, from day one. We didn't cut corners. We went straight through the middle, built what we had to build. Plus, we had to make our brand look bigger than it was. Like, it had to look professional. It had to look amazing.
00:22:05 · Ben Pfisterer, Sachin, S3, Adam Miller
So the product team and the marketing team did a phenomenal job in making us from day one look like a big company. Yeah. There's some of the things I think ultimately, but it's just all about that pace execution and a slight sense of paranoia. Like, this could turn any day, so let's keep pushing. [00:22:19] S1: So just a quick break from the pod. We're sitting here with one of our newest founders, Rix from KC Ventures. Tell me about what does KC Ventures actually do. [00:22:27] S3: So KC Ventures is all about helping startups scale from everything from finance, operations, and strategy. So we can be a fully outsourced finance function, so everything from accounting and all the compliance work, but it's really the strategic work that sits on top of that. My background as a founder, built and scaled my own tech startup. I really try to bring that in and adding that and helping startups as they scale too. [00:22:46] S2: Luke, we're early stage founders, and we know the mess of trying to organize this stuff yourself. When is the optimal time for a founder to come to KC Ventures? [00:22:53] S0: I'd say it when [00:22:54] S3: the founders are at a point where they've got something that they need to manage and really wanna get more data and insights about their business and how they can take it to the next level. So early stage founders, I would say they can focus on keeping things as lean as possible. But when you get to that point where more data and insights is gonna be really valuable, that's the point where you should get in touch.
00:22:54 · S3, Adam Miller
[00:22:54] S3: the founders are at a point where they've got something that they need to manage and really wanna get more data and insights about their business and how they can take it to the next level. So early stage founders, I would say they can focus on keeping things as lean as possible. But when you get to that point where more data and insights is gonna be really valuable, that's the point where you should get in touch. [00:23:11] S2: And the reason that the velocity of shipping product then led to that viral growth, is it just because the product was so good and then there was word-of-mouth on the back of that? Like I was trying to think through are there any network effects in in the product? I don't think there are. Are there? They're absolutely. Okay. Is that is that negotiating better rates off the back of
00:23:30 · Ben Pfisterer
[00:23:30] S0: I mean, there's definitely that. The good thing about experience, we knew what good rates were. So our cost base is better than, I think, any other financial services business in the world. We had to be efficient on that Yeah. On that front. But the awesome thing about our products, particularly more so on the payment side of the terminals than on the banking side with the transaction account. But we had branded cards going around, so people were seeing them every day. We've got terminals everywhere now. Know, tens of thousands of them in the Australian market, so people were seeing it. So although the terminal markets moved more towards where we are now, our device looked quite unique when we launched it. So it was kind of like an eye catching thing. Then the interface we worked a lot on. So the cardholder, even if they didn't... Because they shouldn't care about payments as they're buying something, but they kind of... Something piqued their interest, whether it was the UI that was, you know, quite special, a little bit moving in a different way or simpler or clearer, etcetera. So that ability to to start getting exposed, like, the numbers of people that have seen our terminals or transacting on them is exponential. So whilst you don't care about it if you're a cardholder, if you're a business and you're thinking about changing or starting a new business or wanna better service a provider, you might even know it, but you've already got that sort of inside your awareness. So when you see an ad, it's like a reinforcement thing.
00:24:45 · Adam Miller, Ben Pfisterer, Sachin
[00:24:45] S2: It's also... Yeah. There's those multiple channels looking together, and it's also not minimalist. Like, when you see a Zeller terminal, it's big. I was out for drinks on Saturday and I saw one when I was buying my hard solo and it was like big and I was like yeah maybe it was just a spot off effect because we're interviewing you today that I noticed it but it was like very salient. [00:25:05] S0: Spot off. Got like that. Yeah. Hopefully, you see him a lot more, around because I think it is a bit that when you see it once you start noticing it. So if you're a merchant and you're in the market for this or thinking I need to change, that effect absolutely happens. So there is that brand awareness out there all the time. [00:25:19] S1: So from what I hear, it seems like a lot of things went right here when it came to product, sales, building out the team. Were there any nights where you literally couldn't sleep because you were so stressed about anything that was happening on the horizon? Like, what were the sort of low points of Zeller? I
00:25:36 · Ben Pfisterer
[00:25:36] S0: struggle with this question because I think I've got an ability to forget quickly. Yeah. I think... So I go back to my... With setting up Square in Australia, it was phenomenally hard. That was the most taxing, awful experience for the first two years of getting that going. So what I did in getting through that, I learned an enormous amount about myself and resilience and how you get through obstacles, the impossible obstacles as well. So when it came to launching Zeller, I I had the advantage of bringing together the right people, the right strategy, the right approach, the right founder, the right investors. So a lot of the pieces were in the right spot. But I think... I mean, we we... We're no different to every other startup in terms of we have issues every single day. Every single day something pops up that you have to deal with and problems big or small. So it's definitely got those. I'm not saying it's perfect way, any stretch. It's not. But we have such a good team and good approach to things in place that we can just move through them quickly and solve them. Probably the one moment which I really kind of got a bit nervous was the the launch night. So... Because you... But we... When we raised funds at the start, like, shortly after a few days or weeks, COVID hit. Right? So suddenly... Actually, there's nothing. Suddenly, everyone across media and tech was telling us that face to face transactions, face to face experience e commerce was disappearing overnight. Everyone was moving to ecommerce or QR codes or some new thing. So our business was predicated on face to face and digital banking space. So I was like, woah. This is this is big. This could be a little bit different. But I don't think we blinked. I think we kinda saw it. We thought that's not right. Like, they... Like, we don't know. We're no experts in this space, but COVID will come and go. Humans love interacting. Face to face transactions will absolutely be a thing and come back. And we believed in it, and we kept going. But that moment when COVID hit and locked down, oh my god, what's happening here? This is gonna pull our funds, etcetera, etcetera. So there's a lot of, like, moments then. And then when you're launching, you're so in the echo chamber of the team is that you think everything is gonna work before you've launched.