Today, 29 February, 2012 – is the four year anniversary of the incorporation of Pollenizer Pty Ltd.

Woohoo!!!!

Yes, we were incorporated on a leap year just to be even more different.

Wow, four years. Four big years. So much has happened I couldn’t possibly put it all in here. But I’ll put some random bits, in random order, of which some you’ll love and some just won’t work – so it will in many ways emulate the story!

How did it start?

Phil had finished up a horrendous time at Omnidrive. I had finished 18 months at Tangler. We were both doing a few contract gigs with startups and we were sharing projects with each other. We start getting more and more invites to work on things and we end up mostly working together. Phil tallies up all the opportunities and says we should meet up. Here is the email….

Finding a Name

The name (and domain name) can be harder than the idea. Here are some of the names we threw around;

• Idisian – eeerk
• Sotega – something about Social Technology Group… yuck.
• Whiztang – clan?
• Bootstrap – cliche!
• 7Girraffes – wot!
• 7pencils – wot wot?

Thanks to Alisdair Faulkner and others for support ditching the bad ones.

We gave up trying and went to the beer (Mick) and wine (Phil). As we were crossing the road Phil says “I registered a domain a few years ago that might work. Pollenizer.com…. What do you think?”. Before we’d crossed the road I said “DONE!”. Lachlan’s response was;

So what have we done in 4 years?

Year 1 Summary – 2008

• First (brave) customers were 3eep and Lingopal. Amazing lessons in getting something started. First use of the word Focus!
• Help start Silicon Beach with Friday night drinks with Kim, Elias, Lachlan and Bart.
• We are joined by our first team members Clare Hallam (just one day a month as book keeper – the biggest underestimation ever), Jon Tyson, Pierre Sauvignon, Peter Fellows and Bruno Mattarollo. Clare and Pierre are still with us. Huge.
• Started working with Xminds, an Indian dev team headed by Jugs, KK, JK and Ram. Great guys who really gave a lot to us over the years.
• Help start OzPDA with Ozweather on the iPhone, our first revenue share deal.
• Help start Mogeneration with Keith Ahern and Tom Adams. Our first joint venture.
• Started using the word Focus a lot!
• Pick up a few interesting businesses.
• A big bunch of bankers screw the world over to make more money and we hit a Global Financial Crisis. We lose 4 projects in 24 hours and have our first look at death. Our response – SELL!! Phil and I hit the pavement and within 2 more weeks we find another 4 projects.
• Totals: 5 people, 150 ideas pitched, worked with 50 companies and 2 companies in the portfolio.

Year 2 Summary – 2009

• Started January 2 with new projects, including new portfolio companies Posse and Mixin (Swiss based).
• Started doing some work in Europe.
• More team members joined – Fleur, Jo, Bree, Oliver.
• Cash flow challenges of a growing company which tries not to make too much profit (our accountants were not sure…)
• Started doing Bootcamps.
• Moved into our first real office at 54 Foveaux St, Surry Hills. Shared it with Mogeneration and Bullroarer.
• Started work with Dean McEvoy on Booking Angel.
• Pulled out of Europe by the end of the year to focus on Sydney.
• Started Spreets with Dean McEvoy after he couldn’t get funding for Booking Angel
• Totals: 9 people, 350 ideas pitched to us, worked with 120 companies, 6  companies in portfolio.

  

Year 3 Summary – 2010

• Started the year at full pace again with lots of work and the partnership model starting to work.
• Decide to not do any consulting work any more. A huge leap of faith… will it work…
• More team joined!
• Got threatened with legal action from a jerk who’s business idea didn’t work. Such is business.
• Started getting help from Michael Derin and crew from Azure Accounting. Big help.
• Raised a very small fund to incubate new businesses from 16 of Australia’s best angel investors.
• End the year with a term sheet from Yahoo7! to acquire Spreets.
• Totals: 14 people, 800 ideas pitched to us, worked with 160 companies, 16  companies in portfolio.

  

Year 4 Summary – 2011

•  Sold Spreets to Yahoo7! for “about $40m” said Rohan Lund the CEO of Yahoo7!.
• Raised $5m for Dealised
• Had our first big team hack day out at Avalon. Trying the new pod model.
• More team joined!
• Moved into our new space at 180 Commonwealth St, Surry Hills. Huge. Love it.
• Mark and Tony join the board.
• Started the Pollenizer Way – a semester based approach.
• Raised angel investment for Pygg, Wooboard and Friendorse.
• Raised further capital into the incubation fund.
• Totals: 24 people, 1,600 ideas pitched to us, worked with 200 companies, 26  companies in portfolio.

2012? – Watch this space!

Phil and I would particularly like to thank our wives and kids for going through the crazy roller-coaster that is a startup that starts startups. Kellie and Karen really go through a lot with weekend work, late nights, out for events, overseas travel, emotional highs and lows and a risk on risk environment. We couldn’t have done it without you and even after all of this you still support us.

Lessons Learned

It hasn’t been a easy four years. When we started there was only the ATP as an incubator. There was no silicon beach. No VC’s. Sydney Angels didn’t exist. Innovation Bay was just starting. Atlassian was still growing. Angels were hiding under rocks. And we had the GFC. It was hard work.

Plus we didn’t have a detailed plan. We couldn’t. We hadn’t done this before and in fact no one had in Australia. We just knew what we wanted to do – build startups and get rewarded if we do a great job. So we kept doing that. Bit by bit, year by year we got better. We seeded to change the model every six months, so that’s about 8 big laps of the block – nearly there! That hasn’t been easy on our team or the people we work with.

We’ve had fun times, and some good big wins and I’m proud of them. I’m also proud of the many failures we’ve had. Failed ideas, failed workshops, failed partnerships. We’re trying. We get up every day and try hard and try to do good by people. It doesn’t always work out, and I’m sure not everyone loves us, but I’m happy with how we’ve approached a big challenge. I’ll never disparage anyone who turns up and is prepared to fight to make things better, which the Pollenizer team has consistently done.

I have so much appreciation for the team. Phil and I could have stayed consultants and had much easier lives. We wanted to be a part of something bigger. We wanted to create something and share it. People are the most rewarding and challenging part of most things. We have fiery external co-founders, hard hitting investors, suppliers and a fast growing team. Managing a team building Pollenizer has been wonderful and hard. You have to care about their whole lives and try to match the startup your building with the ambitions of the team member and do it all while trying to run a business.  It hasn’t always worked out perfectly but the great crew have always rolled up their sleeves and jumped in the deep end again. I’ve been terribly stretched in the past year, so thanks for getting it done with minimal support.

Do we have it perfectly nailed yet? No. I don’t think we ever will be. We work in the hardest part of any business in one of the fastest changing industries in a completely global market and do it in a scalable way. It’s risky, chaotic, uncertain and in a constant state of flux.

But I love it. I love the ideas, the optimistic entrepreneurs, the product creation, the customer sale, the capital raise, – I love it all.

A few messages from our family;