James Marin; co-founder of GoParcel, says it’s impossible to achieve a balance between a part-time role in the wine industry, and the startup which he is trying to build; a site allowing you to send urgent parcels in hours rather than days.
Marin worked full-time on the startup for a couple months, but found he had no money. It’s the startup irony; he now has the money, but not enough time. He says it’s challenging trying to squeeze meetings for GoParcel into limited hours.
It’s a problem that investment could relieve, and one of the reasons Marin and co-founder Taras Diakiw, who met through Sydney’s co-founder speed dating, are on the lookout for appropriate investors. With a margin of two dollars a parcel, success depends on scale. Getting traction on the platform is going to be critical.
“Make the phone call. Whatever you assume to be the answer is probably wrong.”
The good news? According to Australia Post, the parcel business is growing more rapidly than ever. The postal giant predicted the delivery of an extra three million parcels during December last year.
“We’ve taken the technology risks,” says Marin, “and it worked.”
“The business model works as well. It just depends on traction now, the volume of parcels.”
Marin came up with the idea for GoParcel somewhere between the town of McLaren Vale on the Fleurieu Peninsula, and the city of Adelaide. Marin was due to run a wine tasting in Adelaide one Friday night, when he found out the wine samples scheduled for delivery, weren’t going to arrive in time. Marin had to make the 90 minute round trip to collect the samples and be back in Adelaide in time for the tasting.
Marin demonstrates an ability to build long-term relationships. Maybe it’s a result of his career in wine sales, buying in bulk for well-known wine brands. His negotiations are always a long courtship; they end in negotiations over price, quantity and variables such as where stock is being shipped, and who is responsible for bottling. Marin has learnt is that you can’t always predict where a relationship will take you.
Strategic partnership: contacting the CEO of Temando
Early on, Marin was looking for a mentor and thought the CEO of Temando, Carl Hartmann, could be that person. Temando does for freight, what Webjet does travel, or iSelect for insurance so they were a bigger player in the parcel pond. It was January at this point, and Marin figured out Hartmann’s email by substituting the his name in the format of the other email addresses for the company. It worked and in January, Marin picked up the phone and spoke with Hartman. Six months later, on their fifth encounter, the pair finally discussed the partnership that would enable the two platforms to integrate. That relationship proved critical to the first version of the platform, which used Temando’s back-end to support the system.
“Make the phone call. Whatever you assume to be the answer is probably wrong.”
Co-founder speed dating
Meeting his co-founder Diakiw was a similar experience; another courtship. Marin describes the co-founder speed dating experience as almost like meeting a soul mate. The first two were duds, he says. Diakiw was potential co-founder number 14.
“He just started laughed. I didn’t know what was going on. He said ‘I’ve just built a freight management platform.'”
A month or so later that Diakiw jumped onboard. Turns out, there was more in common than they thought. They were both from Adelaide. In one of those ‘what a small world’ stories, Marin explains that his best mate turned out to be the brother of Diakiw’s best mate.
Running a startup: how much does it cost?
Marin says the business currently costs around $200 a week to run; taking into account things like web hosting, adwords and marketing. The duo also recently formalised their company structure, a process costing just over $2000; around $700 for legals and a partnership agreement, $460 for ASIC company registration, $310 for accountancy fees including a BAS (business activity statement) and TFN (tax file number) registration, and another $700 for the setup of personal trusts.
The GoParcel duo were runners up in the Sydney Startup Weekend in April this year. They also pitched at SydStart. Marin says the value with these activities is two-fold: you develop your pitch and get your face in front of people.
He’ll be back to Geelong in a fortnight for the Geelong $50k IT Invention Test. GoParcel is a finalist for this year’s prize.
James Marin has been blogging his journey as a startup founder for Shoe String.