In our latest podcast episode we chat with Andre Pinkowski about his career to date, his experience as a founder and invaluable tips for scaling startups.

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00:00:20:05 – 00:00:33:01
James MacDonald
All right. Welcome to another episode of The NewyTechPeople Podcast. On today’s episode, we’ve got Andre Pinkowski. For those of our listeners who don’t know who you are, can you give them a bird’s eye view of who you are and your backstory today?

00:00:33:03 – 00:00:34:05
Andre Pinkowski
My backstory?

00:00:34:07 – 00:00:37:07
James MacDonald
Yeah. What brings us to sitting down and having a conversation?

00:00:37:13 – 00:01:15:05
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, right. So I guess look, right now, I, I sit on a number of boards. I advise and consult a number of startups. Scale ups. I don’t have a day job anymore. I was CEO or co-CEO and co-founder of a company called Port Power Tweet. Yeah, we did Enterprise, SAS, some big contract and procurement management systems for government and Enterprise sold that last year, stepped away in October, took some time to myself, got a bit board, started dabbling again and both in terms of governance and strategy, helping out the organisations in terms of board roles as well as advising and consulting.

00:01:15:06 – 00:01:16:00
Andre Pinkowski
Nice.

00:01:16:02 – 00:01:31:10
James MacDonald
The reason I’m super interested to have a conversation today, you are a successful startup founder who got to that exit stage, which I guess for a lot of people is the end goal. Some people want to see it through and that be their life’s work. Other people want to get to that exit and get out and get their cash.

00:01:31:12 – 00:01:40:11
James MacDonald
So really interested to explore that story and see what sort of advice you might be able to give, other people are going on that journey. But how did Port start?

00:01:40:11 – 00:02:05:07
Andre Pinkowski
So Port started myself and an old uni colleague, Chris Holmes. Yeah, we we were both working in Canberra at the time, consulting, contracting to Federal Government myself in more technical I.T. roles and Chris in project portfolio management roles we saw an opportunity to to not just be part of these bigger projects but to lead these, these big projects.

00:02:05:07 – 00:02:35:04
Andre Pinkowski
And so we put together a company called Single Cell Consulting at the time, and we brought on some people mainly as subcontractors, and we, we pitched in for and won a number of big, big I.T. projects. This was mainly mainly in the Microsoft enterprise stack. So deploying customer using developing against SharePoint Project Server, these sorts of big Microsoft enterprise systems.

00:02:35:10 – 00:02:59:02
Andre Pinkowski
So we did that for a few years. We’re both originally from Newcastle, met it at the uni here before my wife, who is also from Newcastle. Couldn’t handle the cold in Canberra anymore. Yeah, so. So we moved, we moved back to the coast, to Sydney. I started doing some work with New South Wales Health. Chris was doing some work with federal industry at the time and his work was around strategic contract management.

00:02:59:04 – 00:03:24:04
Andre Pinkowski
So they were looking, they’d engaged us to build separately to build these big bespoke enterprise contract management systems. And this is for either high value or high risk contracts, contracts that need not just contract managers, but supplier managers. They’ve got inputs and outputs from from across the organisation. Yes. So we were doing we were building these bespoke systems and we asked ourselves, why is no one using off the shelf software for this?

00:03:24:04 – 00:03:51:16
Andre Pinkowski
This is back in 20, 2012, 2011. And you know, you had your SAP, Ariba, you had your Oracle I procure a few of these bigger systems, but they weren’t really they were sort of older, they clunky, weren’t really, I guess, localised appropriately for the Australian market. So so weren’t weren’t really I didn’t have a lot of uptake. So we saw a market opportunity there with we pivoted the organisation over a number of years.

00:03:51:16 – 00:04:17:11
Andre Pinkowski
It took and effectively built a SAS product to manage, manage these big procurement contract management processes for organisations. We beat out Spain competitive tender with New South Wales Health for our first customer, which is very much like eating the 423,000 staff over over the whole state. Chris, my co-founder, became a Rex frequent flier traveling everywhere to to to get this system up.

00:04:17:17 – 00:04:22:08
Andre Pinkowski
It’s an 18 month project, but that was the cornerstone of the company effectively.

00:04:22:10 – 00:04:43:02
James MacDonald
Really interesting point. So I think there’s two sides of this going on right now in the market, the rise of AI and different AI products that are out there, right? There’s technology there and people can build technology solutions without actually having a problem or having a customer at the end and to actually buy this great technology. I think it’s the same with the App Store runs thousands of really well built apps on the App Store.

00:04:43:02 – 00:04:59:03
James MacDonald
No one uses them, maybe they didn’t get that product market fit, right? You’ve gone in the opposite way. You actually had a problem there. You had customers coming to you and then you built the solution for that problem. Vice versa. Do you think that’s part of the key to your success?

00:04:59:09 – 00:05:21:05
Andre Pinkowski
look, a big part. And I’ve seen that quite a lot. And the VCs I’ve spoken to over the years also really look for that. Look for someone who’s who’s either who’s who’s felt the pain in the industry because you’re much closer to the problem. You’re aware that there’s a problem. Yeah. And you can better capitalise on that, build it and they will come, which I did multiple times earlier in my career.

00:05:21:05 – 00:05:24:12
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, it’s not an effective strategy to to scale a business.

00:05:24:15 – 00:05:43:12
James MacDonald
Yeah. So if you’re talking to other people who are looking to be startup founders at the moment that have got a great idea or a great product. Is that going that MVP route, really testing it with the market? The market is that is that type of device you would go with somebody looking to, you know, start out at the moment.

00:05:43:14 – 00:06:06:15
Andre Pinkowski
Look, it’s hard to give general advice like that. Yeah. Because it really depends on the sector in the industry. So B2B be to a yeah, we could go with more of an MVP and we could take it a bit slower and we could bootstrap. I mean, yes, we had a high margin consultancy business. We could funnel all our profits into R&D, but our contract average contract size was significant.

00:06:06:15 – 00:06:29:04
Andre Pinkowski
Six figures. Yeah. And took, you know, eight months to implement, at least in the earlier days. So you had time to sort of time and resources to work through it. And you could, you could build a partnership, a personal partnership with your customers be to see very different a lot of those luxuries go away and you approach it from it from a different a different angle.

00:06:29:10 – 00:06:41:20
Andre Pinkowski
But look, certainly being part in or part of the industry, you’re trying to to change and having a passion for it or an understanding for it is definitely an advantage.

00:06:41:22 – 00:06:49:09
James MacDonald
Yeah, it sounds like a really good starting point, right? Somebody having that or scratching their own itch, each having their own problem that they’re really understanding that industry and then building for that.

00:06:49:14 – 00:07:02:14
Andre Pinkowski
Absolutely. And then if you’ve got the passion, if it means something to you because that’s another big part of it. I mean, it’s many, many, many days and nights of hard work. Yeah. If you don’t have the drive or the passion for what you’re working on, it’s easy.

00:07:02:16 – 00:07:20:02
James MacDonald
Now, you mentioned about bootstrapped before. I imagine you were. I do know for a fact that you raised money throughout that process. Now, can you give us a bit of review of what that process look like? Let’s get start there and then maybe some advice for other people. But as the VC market’s really interesting space at the moment in Australia, it’s definitely tightened up.

00:07:20:04 – 00:07:33:12
James MacDonald
So that and there’s a lot of companies going through either looking at it, raising a down round or I’m trying to avoid that extending their runway. But really let’s start with your experience and keen to sort of understand how that played out for you.

00:07:33:14 – 00:07:45:06
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, sure. So big caveat and it was it’s a different time. Yeah. Like, like you alluded to that back in 2019, we closed our round the Christmas almost.

00:07:45:06 – 00:07:47:20
James MacDonald
By you did bootstrap through you can start.

00:07:47:23 – 00:08:16:04
Andre Pinkowski
With until then. Yeah. So, so we took on contract work, project work and we even had some non nonsense product related contracts right up until almost before we sold. We’d scaled it right down. But there were some great customers that have been instrumental to our journey and we we certainly wanted to support them along the way. Yes. So we were we bootstrapped, we had a high margin consultancy business where we could put profit back into to R&D.

00:08:16:04 – 00:08:41:05
Andre Pinkowski
So we definitely had that going for us, which meant we were profitable. We had to be profitable otherwise goodbye savings and houses. We were profitable up until right up until we decided to take money. 2018 we first went out to the to to the the capital markets. We we had services revenue, our services revenue was higher than our IRR at the time proportionally.

00:08:41:06 – 00:09:00:12
Andre Pinkowski
So we had a lot of questions around, you know, are you really a SAS company? You’re making most of your money on services around your product. That’s great, but how scalable is that, etc., etc.? That was probably the big, big sticking point. We had a few offers, we had some timesheets in front of us, but ultimately we as we were in a luxurious position of being able to to knock those back.

00:09:00:12 – 00:09:22:16
Andre Pinkowski
And we spent another year effectively getting our business investment ready and that involved getting the ARR, focusing on ARR. And you know, if anyone’s worked in a SAS business, they know you can productize almost anything and, and that’s what we really focused on, getting that subscription revenue up and we came back a year later and we’d done all the things we said we were going to do.

00:09:22:21 – 00:09:26:16
Andre Pinkowski
So we closed a 4 million round in late 2019.

00:09:26:18 – 00:09:29:18
James MacDonald
Where the money come from, the Australian based.

00:09:29:20 – 00:09:50:03
Andre Pinkowski
Based CVC Emerging Companies Fund. Yeah, a couple of guys called Christian and Christian Jensen and Jonathan Pierce. Fantastic guys sat on our board through COVID. Yeah, I guess you can really see the, the metal of a person when you’re going through through crises together. I’ve got nothing but great things to say about those guys and the funds they run.

00:09:50:05 – 00:10:09:20
Andre Pinkowski
But yeah, the, the process itself, I mean, it was a pretty standard investment process in that we, you know, we we shopped around and went on the the roadshow, the pitch roadshow pitching to it to anybody who would have us narrowed it down, mutually narrowed down a list around who was interested and who would potentially be a good fit.

00:10:09:24 – 00:10:35:00
Andre Pinkowski
Everyone talks about getting smart money and the right investors on, and we certainly wanted to do that. But I’ve since found that it’s quite difficult to do having people put money in and then be engaged in your business in a in a productive way is is not as easy as it sounds. So I think getting someone you can work with is probably the priority.

00:10:35:02 – 00:10:57:23
Andre Pinkowski
looking back and what we got out of it. So we went through, we signed a letter of intent and had a period of exclusivity where they ran through how due diligence process. So certainly it’s not just having your story. If you’re going for VC, you know, they’re not angel. If you’re it’s not just having your your story and your headline numbers and pitch lined up.

00:10:57:23 – 00:11:18:03
Andre Pinkowski
It’s about having the data behind it because these guys are professionals there and they will go through everything, through contracts, customer references. It’s great. You’ll be getting you’ll be getting a lot of questions. We’re like, okay, I hadn’t thought of that or didn’t think that would be something that’ll come up and then you’d have to go work through it.

00:11:18:05 – 00:11:37:07
Andre Pinkowski
So having a data room or having data easily accessible is definitely helps the outcome, helps expedite the outcome. So through a whole bunch of data and then obviously negotiating a final shareholder’s agreement and what that would look like and deal before closing and right before COVID hit.

00:11:37:08 – 00:11:42:07
James MacDonald
Yeah, right. And did that that was your last raise before you got to the your exit?

00:11:42:07 – 00:12:07:06
Andre Pinkowski
I was at one and only right. We were looking to raise again for even bigger international expansion in 20 at the end of 2021. That’s when we were approached and around acquisition. I mean, we obviously during those times you’re getting pinged every week, private equity, they say, etc., Private equity in particular. Sorry about acquisition. I was heady, heady, frothy days.

00:12:07:12 – 00:12:15:17
Andre Pinkowski
But but we had a couple very serious pieces of interest there, which we followed through and ultimately exited with one.

00:12:15:22 – 00:12:34:13
James MacDonald
Right. Talk through that little part there, because I think that’s an interesting part of a lot of companies. Well, not a lot of companies. If you get to that point where they’ve built a solid enough business where they’re having those conversations. But what did you consider what we what was playing on your mind when that you know, those offers were coming out, ran an acquisition?

00:12:34:18 – 00:12:43:01
James MacDonald
I imagine there’s an iron out period there. What does what did that process look like? What’s going through your head? Did did your wife build this to sell?

00:12:43:03 – 00:13:22:19
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, I think to answer the last question first, yes. At the beginning of the journey, it was just a consulting company. So it was a vehicle for us to to do interesting projects and to be paid for what we were worth. Obviously, I think when you start on a product journey, you know, it’s about scale and it’s either it’s an exit of one, one type or another, whether it’s full trade selling, you step away, whether it’s an IPO and you bring in a, you know, a better management team, if that’s the way you go, you know, one, one shape or another, it’s it’s some sort of, you know, transformation of your your business and your

00:13:22:19 – 00:13:41:24
Andre Pinkowski
role in it. And of course, as soon as we brought on investors, they say, yeah, they’re not there for the good times. No, maybe they are a little bit, but but mainly they’re there for the returns for their, for their, their investors. Yeah. Yeah. So, so certainly we’d, we’d been on that path for a while and we had an ESOP in place.

00:13:41:24 – 00:13:54:03
Andre Pinkowski
So we work at incentivizing and rewarding key staff with options, share options and yeah, without an exit, they’re not worth anything. So, so definitely it was, it was a core strategy.

00:13:54:06 – 00:14:05:02
James MacDonald
So if we get to the point where you’re successful enough, you as you said, you’re getting pinged. Yeah, daily. What’s going through your mind at that stage? What’s one of the things that are at play when you’ve gone through that process?

00:14:05:04 – 00:14:26:23
Andre Pinkowski
You know, an exit, It’s all they’re all very unique, you know, it could be somebody wants to do a roll up strategy where they, you know, private equity loves this, where they buy a bunch companies and smash them together, look for cost synergies, cut a whole lot of people and revenue synergies where they can cross-sell, etc., etc.. You become you become part of that.

00:14:27:00 – 00:14:43:09
Andre Pinkowski
And it’s more than likely you’re sort of you’ve leveled up, but you’re on another startup, bigger startup, but you’re on another journey then versus a straight acquisition to a to a bigger organization where they deploy you out in cash or scrap and you might have an earnout period.

00:14:43:11 – 00:14:46:16
James MacDonald
What did it look like for you with your decision in the end?

00:14:46:18 – 00:15:10:12
Andre Pinkowski
So so we had a a straight trade sale where we’re 100% acquired by by advanced a UK I.T group. And look, we’d been up, they’d been a partner of ours for a year or two prior. They’d spoken. They’re quite acquisitive. The private equity backed had and at the time in M&A team with, with revenue acquisition targets. And so they were looking to acquire growth.

00:15:10:14 – 00:15:35:16
Andre Pinkowski
So they’re a big company, profitable low single digit or sorry single digit growth, which is fine, but it’s not, you know, setting the world alight terms of returns for private equity. So they look to get a lot of their high growth from, from acquisitions. Yeah. And we were quite wrong company rule of 40 of 41 or 42. Your listeners are familiar with the rule of 40.

00:15:35:16 – 00:15:59:16
Andre Pinkowski
It’s effectively growth rate plus profitability should add up to two effectively 40%. Yeah. So you can be high growth but low profitability or mix of both, etc.. So we were we weren’t profitable, but we are a hard, high growing business, which is why we were effectively looking for more capital to grow further and expand. And that lined up perfectly.

00:15:59:18 – 00:16:21:14
Andre Pinkowski
So what they were looking at at that time, not just in terms of the business, the operations of the business, but the product and the product being the key thing for them, strategically plugged a perfect gap hole in their in their product portfolio. And that’s that’s something they could take to their board and their their investors and get across the line.

00:16:21:14 – 00:16:32:13
Andre Pinkowski
So definitely, you know, being able to be a strategic fit for somebody somewhere is going to make that conversation a lot easier.

00:16:32:15 – 00:16:53:05
James MacDonald
Now, the interesting part, you mentioned that you mentioned the word partner back in the study story you built for partner. And so customers and you viewed them tight relationships as a partner, you’re building with them, working out their problems, taking their money from a consultancy perspective, but also building with the partner. You grew the business, you started working with another partner who ended up being the people that acquired you.

00:16:53:07 – 00:17:08:16
James MacDonald
Yeah, that deliberate obviously is deliberate at the start from there, the endpoint with the acquisition, was that a deliberate partnership? Did you see that as potential on the table when you started partnering with them a couple of years? AT Yeah, just a really interesting progression. I think that’s a smart approach.

00:17:08:19 – 00:17:29:17
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah. Look, they, they weren’t shy about, about saying that, be very interested in acquiring us when the if and when the time was right when they first partnered with us. So, so that was always, always on the table. We worked with them as a distribution partner, effectively channel partner into the UK. Yeah.

00:17:29:19 – 00:18:08:06
Andre Pinkowski
So, so they got a very close look at it, obviously a product, but then also how you sell it and how it was received in that market there. So, so that gave them a lot of surety around what exactly they were they were buying I guess the, the, the only of the comment on make on, on that process, how it was made easier with a partner was effectively that we knew them, we knew the people there, they knew us and they sort of deals often come down to interpersonal relationships, particularly during the middle of COVID when this was so we we did the whole deal and and over video call at times.

00:18:08:08 – 00:18:26:19
Andre Pinkowski
I remember one time with a call with lawyers from all sides had us UK, Australia and I was actually quite sick with COVID at the time, but it was just a whole screen of little faces everywhere, everyone talking and it was definitely an experience.

00:18:26:19 – 00:19:03:09
James MacDonald
Yeah, I said, You’ve built a technology, you better SAS company from the ground up started from a consultancy scratching our nick scratching customers itch, seeing an opportunity building that up. You’ve all started as a technical person and you ended up being the CEO of a company that’s had a successful exit. What did that transition from? A technical, someone who loves playing with technology good in that technology space to becoming a CIO, That’s why I’m super interested in the rise as somebody goes through the thing you did go from seat like from the technical reading and the CTO, you went to the CEO.

00:19:03:15 – 00:19:22:08
James MacDonald
But what did that change look like? What did that change look like? Again? Was it deliberately you should not go to the CTO around and really position yourself as a CEO? What did that journey look like for you? Because I think it’s a really interesting one. Different skill sets. Yeah, not everyone can play in both spaces. 9:00.

00:19:22:08 – 00:19:52:18
Andre Pinkowski
Be it? Look, it’s a great question. Look, I’ve always been more, more, more on the tech side than on the you know, I’ve been on the sales leadership side. I taught myself the code when my uncle gave gave me his first computer or my first computer when I was 15 or so. Yeah. And yeah, had had a few little web web companies that I’d set up and obviously contracting in Canberra, that taught me a lot more the softer, softer skills, interpersonal skills that would help a lot later on.

00:19:52:20 – 00:20:02:13
Andre Pinkowski
But it was definitely a journey. It was over 13 years or so that we started port. Yeah, I started building it, but I think they’re still running my production service. Go and help them.

00:20:02:13 – 00:20:03:14
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:20:03:16 – 00:20:33:04
Andre Pinkowski
Hopefully they’ll be decommissioned soon as they move to more modern containers and things. It was, it was very much a journey I had to learn all the time. I had to be uncomfortable all the time out of my comfort zone. I hated selling. I still don’t like selling, but I had had to do it. Especially as you grow when you have more people relying on you, relying on on this entity that you’ve helped bring into life.

00:20:33:10 – 00:21:04:20
Andre Pinkowski
So no, I think being open to learning all the time, really not skimping on those interpersonal skills both internally and externally. Certainly I had my challenges there and I’m definitely still on the on the the more no nonsense side of things in terms of interpersonal engagements and leadership there. But it was look, it was just trial by fire.

00:21:04:20 – 00:21:21:16
Andre Pinkowski
You had to do it or you didn’t. And I didn’t go to CTO. I’m not brilliant. Technically, we brought on a brilliant guy, Nigel Castellano, who I think you’ve met before. Yeah, who who was our head of tech and became our CTO. And yeah, I couldn’t think of a better person.

00:21:21:21 – 00:21:41:13
James MacDonald
Yeah, it’s a really interesting. I was only writing something on, I think, what Sydney start ups the other day. Very, very often in the past I think I was a somebody with an idea, a business idea looking for a technical guy founder, and I think there’s a bit of a switch happening at the moment where it was always are the business side of, you know, hard and you know, the coding side, the more difficult part.

00:21:41:19 – 00:22:03:07
James MacDonald
And now with the rise of hotels and I and a few other bits and pieces, we’ve got some technical potential technical co-founders looking for somebody who can do the, the business development business. Well, that’s probably the hard part. That’s, that’s part management. The rest of it can, you know, we can work on that. But that business developments aside, really interesting pair out with those technical skills, right?

00:22:03:07 – 00:22:27:22
Andre Pinkowski
Absolutely. If you haven’t got sales, you haven’t got revenue coming in, what do you what are you doing? So absolutely. And we again, we Chris and myself, fill that BD role as co-founders for for the first half or so more of the business life before we brought on a brilliant head of growth Mark ready who like Nigel in the technical space was Yeah.

00:22:27:23 – 00:22:32:16
Andre Pinkowski
Had incredible experience and and skills in the in the growth.

00:22:32:22 – 00:22:50:08
James MacDonald
So it sounds quite interesting there are you and Chris are they’re building building building you playing multiple roles to get to a certain point in growth and then you hire a specialist instead from a technical perspective then bringing you CTO, then you bring in you had a graph that sort of how you’d recommend other people play. Obviously, as a smaller company, you’ve got to wear many hats.

00:22:50:08 – 00:22:53:19
James MacDonald
You’ve got to do what’s necessary until you’ve got the money to pay for somebody good.

00:22:53:22 – 00:23:15:09
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, that’s right. And look again, it depends on the situation you’re in and the market servicing and that that’s that’s a way that worked for us. It would work for for similar businesses in a similar market, in a similar position. We were growing organically. We didn’t have resources to throw it at hires to, to see what worked. We just had to make do with with what we had.

00:23:15:09 – 00:23:39:08
Andre Pinkowski
So I think I worked on it in every single role in the business before we we backfilled and Chris Chris similarly it’s hard I know a few times during during our journey would be looking to hire hire for these sort of half half roles. And I’ve seen a lot of start ups do similar things because that’s, that’s all you can afford and you need someone who can do two to sort of wildly different things.

00:23:39:10 – 00:23:51:04
Andre Pinkowski
It’s very hard getting that person and you struggle to get the right person and then to get them to stay. But it’s it’s something you work through and you Yeah. When you have two nights must.

00:23:51:06 – 00:24:15:13
James MacDonald
Yeah, not now. You mentioned before you’ve got to go online. Go online, grow online. Right. You obviously technical to start with baby did a university degree as well I was that growth and learn from not the technical side but what that look like for you looking at external partners company looking at coaching you looking at mentoring you looking at mix of are you looking at ambitions like what’s your, what’s your experience?

00:24:15:13 – 00:24:18:18
James MacDonald
That’s not what your experience was. And then advice for others.

00:24:18:20 – 00:24:52:00
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, look, there’s a lot of resources out there. For me, the most valuable things I found was one having, you know, people talk about a growth mindset, but but effectively being open to self-improvement, being self-critical, I mean, you can only yeah, there’s, there’s a great saying you measure measure yourself against yourself yesterday improve on yourself don’t look too to others and compare but being being able to be self-reflective.

00:24:52:02 – 00:25:23:15
Andre Pinkowski
Think about things afterwards. Change how you’d approach that in the future. I think is is is is a important skill. Mentors are critical both from just being a sounding board, someone who’s been through this in one way, shape or form who can you can relate to, and of course someone who can just you can give you advice. Mentors, I find, have a shelf life in that you really want the right mentor for the right time and where you are with your journey.

00:25:23:17 – 00:25:45:09
Andre Pinkowski
And then yeah, find one another one. Push yourself. Not that you can’t have multiple mentors or one for a long time, but I find in particular that yeah, mentors hold up a mirror on the particular challenges you’re facing right now and help you work through those. Having one, having mentors tailored to that helps a lot. I did have executive coaching later on.

00:25:45:15 – 00:26:08:21
Andre Pinkowski
Once we had that bit of free cash flow to be able to spend on those sorts of things. And again, I found that incredibly beneficial, whether I’d get the same out of it earlier in my career, I don’t know, probably not. I think I was definitely in a place where we’re always ready and willing to to get those additional tools and take it even further.

00:26:08:23 – 00:26:26:21
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah. So I think those those three things, at the end of the day, it comes down to it to you. You’re your own harshest critic, surrounding yourself with the right people, mentors, coaches, whatever it is, but being able to self-reflect, take in feedback and grow from there. It’s the most important thing I imagine.

00:26:26:21 – 00:26:57:21
James MacDonald
Self-reflect. Other people externally look in startup founders success flags that you know you’re happy days, right? That’s that’s the ideal plan for everyone. I imagine there were some some down periods during that time and I think I think it’s something that’s often overlooked, that it’s a grind. It’s tough. You’re going to have some tough days. Maybe there is a one big mistake or big thing that that happened that really influenced the way that you you went forward.

00:26:57:21 – 00:27:15:08
James MacDonald
So a big change might have been mistake or might have been an issue that came up with something that helped. You know, you have a change of mindset or something that you could really learn from. And going for was like any one big issue is that like obviously there’s multiple things that come up across that journey, but yeah, they’re a big learning along that way.

00:27:15:10 – 00:27:51:04
Andre Pinkowski
Like you said, there’s always, always ups and downs. It’s such a, it’s such a rollercoaster. In fact, you found has become so good at regulating their emotions. After we’d exited, the deal was done, everything was done. I felt nothing but numbness for for a week or so and not a good name or anything. You just just didn’t know how to feel because I had to, I guess, deconstruct all these mental frameworks in terms of, you know, that the lows are so low, the highs are so high, you can’t follow those or you’ll become an emotional wreck.

00:27:51:06 – 00:28:15:24
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, So, so you teach yourself to to really dampen down those emotions for for better or worse. And, you know, after it was all done, some unpicking, I had to I had to do that. So in terms of learnings, so many learnings, definitely one of the biggest one was around staff. You know, as you scale, you get past the 20 odd staff, you become no longer a small business.

00:28:15:24 – 00:28:43:13
Andre Pinkowski
You can’t sort of fire people that aren’t working at it at will. You have to very much very carefully manage the recruitment process and the probation period because toxic staff can really, really kill an organization. And there was definitely, you know, a I’m not going to go into details, but around disruptive staff members and how much damage they can cause was definitely an eye opening experience for me.

00:28:43:14 – 00:28:59:08
Andre Pinkowski
So certainly, yeah, at the end of the day, it’s a people business software. Certainly it’s tech involved, but at least for now, until I takes over, people are required to to build it, maintain it, sell it. Manager So it’s people business wherein.

00:28:59:10 – 00:29:16:23
James MacDonald
It’s also built for people, right there for customers. It’s the same with I think even if I when I continue to take takeover you’re essentially you might be building it or the eyes is being a solution for a customer. There’s a need at the end of it it’s still people aren’t I like all of tech is still people.

00:29:16:23 – 00:29:22:23
James MacDonald
The technology is you know they still exactly yeah yeah absolutely.

00:29:22:23 – 00:29:35:20
Andre Pinkowski
So having the like any organization or any team or any endeavor with a group of people working together. Yeah, that just reinforced to me how critical it is at all levels to manage that effectively.

00:29:35:22 – 00:29:53:16
James MacDonald
Go our vets back a little bit, don’t get too high on highs, don’t get too low on the lows for our mental resilience through there. It was that something you specifically focused on? Was that something you you know, you’re conscious of How how am I improving my mental resilience? How am I not getting too high in the lows?

00:29:53:16 – 00:30:04:20
James MacDonald
How am I not getting too low on the lows, high and highs of how do I had I smooth that out? Is that something you consciously worked on? Is that something you just double the emotion? How did that come about?

00:30:04:20 – 00:30:38:22
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, I think it I think that was just a natural outcome. Yeah. For me, I didn’t I didn’t consciously work on on managing emotions. It was just, yeah, it’s something that over, over many years, I mean I’d had a couple like I said, smaller start ups web and mobile development in the before port and, and so I’d been through a bit of a rollercoaster there and certainly picked up some I guess some, some ways of looking at things to to help help manage that.

00:30:38:24 – 00:30:45:11
Andre Pinkowski
Now everyone’s different. I don’t know if I have Yeah. If I can provide any relatable advice around that.

00:30:45:13 – 00:31:02:01
James MacDonald
Now it’s just an interesting space. I think. You know, there’s obviously a massive browsing, meditation and journaling and things like that at the moment. Yeah, we had gone through the roof and his popularity and all that. I think everyone’s dealing with things in a different way. But yeah, it’s something I think more people are becoming conscious of.

00:31:02:01 – 00:31:24:12
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, and that’s, that’s the most important thing, is to be conscious of it. Then find what works for you. Yeah, it works. You know, I don’t meditate daily, you know, I don’t meditate frequently at all. Yeah, I do enjoy it when I do it, but it’s not a tool. I need to manage certain things, but for other people it, it’s something that, you know, is part of their daily routine and that’s fantastic.

00:31:24:14 – 00:31:36:04
James MacDonald
So it sounds like just being conscious of your emotions through that period was probably the till the years, just being conscious of it and conscious that not writing a hard to higher, you know, I’ve gone through like, you know it’s that’s.

00:31:36:09 – 00:31:49:16
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah yeah you become a bit dull to it all after the sometimes desensitized That’s it after so many years of you know, some big wins and then big losses and Yeah, life goes on.

00:31:49:18 – 00:32:05:19
James MacDonald
I like am at my place in another and I’m getting away from tech now, but I’m getting the stuff that really interests me. I’m asking you the problems that I’m dealing with, right? I feel like if I, if I have a look at health, family and business as three different buckets, I feel like I only personally have a 2 to 3.

00:32:05:19 – 00:32:26:02
James MacDonald
Well, yeah, I go all in on my business and still try and spend time with my family where my health tends to fail. I’m going, well, I know business, you know, and long lunches and all the rest of health, you know, becomes second priority all in on that less time in the family. Those are three buckets. Now if you have look at if those three buckets for you how did you manage balance or.

00:32:26:04 – 00:32:29:10
James MacDonald
Yeah or is there no such thing going through a startup journey like that.

00:32:29:16 – 00:32:56:17
Andre Pinkowski
I don’t think there is. Yeah, I really don’t. It’s it’s a great concept and it’s fantastic to be aware of so that you can address any major issues, you know, family or health or the business before they they come up that it’s yeah it’s so all consuming thing driving a startup or leading a company of any size you know 60 hours a week and you’ve got no time left for.

00:32:56:19 – 00:33:11:20
James MacDonald
That since that’s necessary as well, right. Yeah. I feel like Hustle culture was there for, I don’t know, five years ago, right? I think Hustle Culture was the big thing. And Gary Advantage, I was a big, you know, coach and then he got hammered for and he tried to reverse back and give more, you know, context around it.

00:33:11:20 – 00:33:27:09
James MacDonald
But I think that hustle culture ongoing in doing the 68 hours a week, sometimes it’s actually necessary to get something off the ground or to get something show are really stuff stage and and if you want that perfect what work life balance maybe a startup venture isn’t for you to run your own journey.

00:33:27:09 – 00:33:45:03
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah I think that’s it. If you if you made the perfect balance, you got to get a job and yeah. And, you know, draw a salary if you’re going to drive something to any sort of success, unless you’re supremely lucky with the right place, right time, that will require a lot of work and a lot of time.

00:33:45:07 – 00:33:59:23
James MacDonald
Yeah. And do you think the key is obviously you can go, How do I find this myself? I can go hard for a period of time and then you’ve just got to pull back. And that’s why you notice while I make my house falling a little bit too much, I’m not spending enough time with my family or those relationships.

00:33:59:23 – 00:34:04:10
James MacDonald
It might not even be family for some people, but just relationships outside of work.

00:34:04:10 – 00:34:05:02
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah.

00:34:05:04 – 00:34:06:05
James MacDonald
Just being conscious of that.

00:34:06:06 – 00:34:30:04
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s similar to how I, I manage through it. I mean, I’ve got an amazing wife who helped with the kids incredibly in the home. I had a co-CEO, which was also incredibly, incredibly great from a sharing the burden perspective. If nothing else from the fact Chris is he’s brilliant. Sharing the burden mentally and emotionally was important.

00:34:30:04 – 00:34:55:10
Andre Pinkowski
But certainly, yeah, you just it was all consuming. And then, like you say, you’d sort of blink and come up for air and try and fix a few other things in your life or get them spinning again in the spinning top spinning plates before getting sucked back in. Yeah, I don’t think, based in my experience and everyone I’ve spoken to and worked with, there’s not much room for balance at that that end.

00:34:55:15 – 00:35:16:05
James MacDonald
Yeah. And yeah, but in my I’ll continue for my opinion on arts while I balance is maybe not a priority if that’s your angle like you do or NGOs as a successful start up in an exit there, you don’t get through that through balance and but not having balance is okay because that’s your goal, noticing your goal and that’s your focus for that period of time.

00:35:16:07 – 00:35:29:10
James MacDonald
And it’s not going to be a forever. You can’t run like that for 30 years, right? You been at all? I think negative implications. No, You know, it will happen. Yeah. But for a period of time that’s that’s your singular go and you’re all in on it.

00:35:29:15 – 00:35:30:24
Andre Pinkowski
Absolutely. Eyes wide open.

00:35:31:02 – 00:35:52:12
James MacDonald
Yeah. I like it. There’s all in all my you spending all your time on stuff, it’s not overly productive. There’s obviously a heap of different productivity tools out there and things like that that can make life more efficient these days. Is it something or any tools or methodologies that you use to help make yourself more productive through those really busy times?

00:35:52:14 – 00:36:18:24
Andre Pinkowski
I used to be a big tool junkie. Yeah, I used to love tools. I still love a good tool. I mean, nowadays it’s in my garage with a mechanical tools everywhere, but I’ve set up so many project management systems and different methodologies I’ve both studied and been accredited in. There’s a lot out there and there’s a lot, a lot that works really well and obviously it’s very context, contextually relevant.

00:36:19:01 – 00:36:45:18
Andre Pinkowski
You know, big construction projects. You want something regimented like project. Yeah, a mass project to help manage all the different streams there in terms of personal productivity, I find again, it depends on on context and this is sounding a lot like GTD getting things done. But for me, you know, it was a it’s a lot of email, it’s a lot of phone calls, it’s a lot of conversations, chat messages coming through.

00:36:45:20 – 00:37:11:21
Andre Pinkowski
And I found Microsoft to do or was it wunderlist or something before then? Todoist is another one. Yeah, really simple, basic work and set just number one things to get it out of your head. Yeah, for personal productivity, get it into a list if you need to put some labels or things on it to contextualize things, great. But for me the big things are date, due date drop dead due date and priority or not.

00:37:11:22 – 00:37:34:06
Andre Pinkowski
Start or not. Yeah. And it’s that simple. And so every every Monday I’ll usually do a big scan of the coming week in terms of both calendar and personal tasks I need to do. I’ll set up sort of theme days maybe where I can focus on different things, or if I’m at a certain place, I can accomplish some certain tasks.

00:37:34:08 – 00:37:57:03
Andre Pinkowski
And then each day you just you check in and you work through it and there’s, yeah, there’s all those those tips out there which, yeah, do work wonders, get good sleep, get up early. I find at a good hour or so in the morning, early morning before anyone has gotten up before any of my my staff were online so precious I could get so much done.

00:37:57:08 – 00:38:08:15
Andre Pinkowski
It’s just getting into it there. That’s personal productivity. Obviously, for teams, it’s very different depending on the the discipline, whether service delivery team or technician. Yeah, different tools and approaches.

00:38:08:16 – 00:38:25:21
James MacDonald
Yeah, I’m I’m always interested in the personal personal side of things. I think if you get that part right then you are managing a team and that can be easier. But hey, if you’re trying to manage a team, you’re trying to get that right. While also not having your own ducks in a row I think can be a recipe for disaster.

00:38:25:23 – 00:38:48:07
James MacDonald
Yep. You know, one final question for working out, you know, what you’re at at the moment, But if you’re somebody starting out, aspiring technologists maybe wants to grow their own company or move up the ranks within one company into more of a CIO, CTO right now, senior management. So pure technology role growth, whether it be in a start up or internally within the company, any advice for them?

00:38:48:09 – 00:39:21:15
Andre Pinkowski
look, the soft skills, interpersonal skills and being able to marry a deep technical understanding of of the ecosystem or your your your company’s product set with the interpersonal skills. So being able to being able to explain to people why we should or shouldn’t do things and convince them of that, not just based on pure, pure technical logic, which often most people won’t get, but tying it into strategic objectives and business outcomes.

00:39:21:17 – 00:39:39:18
Andre Pinkowski
Very valuable, very valuable. And at the end of the day, you’re upper management is all focused on focused on the key numbers that the board sets. And if you can demonstrate yourself or an agenda you have being able to align to those, then that’s yeah, that’s going to get noticed.

00:39:39:18 – 00:39:58:08
James MacDonald
And that’s really interesting actually, especially for a pure technologists understanding what you’re building, who you’re voting for, why you’re building it, how that aligns the company goals. Yeah, I think it’s something that’s sometimes overlooked. Like I’m building a really quality piece of software. I’m writing really plain code. They’re like, What are we doing? What is the product that I’ve done in my bag?

00:39:58:08 – 00:40:16:08
James MacDonald
Like a product coming might be a product within, you know, a bigger company, like building something like understanding what the higher ups are actually trying to achieve because, you know, your boss or your boss’s boss is going to have objectives that are very often not how clean is code, but what are you building here? You’re building it for Has that creating efficiencies, profit, whatever it might be?

00:40:16:11 – 00:40:26:19
Andre Pinkowski
Yeah, Yeah. Look, it, it opens your eyes to the bigger picture and how you take, you know, how you can leverage that is then of course up to you. Lots of people.

00:40:26:21 – 00:40:40:01
James MacDonald
Now I think there’s never too early to start to really understand that and I think that’s a that’s a really good piece of advice, a period of numbness mentioned that’s a little while ago now about, you know, what are you doing with yourself at the moment.

00:40:40:03 – 00:41:12:22
Andre Pinkowski
So I sit on on a couple of boards, the Hunter Angels, which is a local group of local membership based organization of high net worths that invest into into start ups in in the area. And across Australia. I’ve just joined the board recently a few months ago, the foundation, HMRC Foundation. And so hey, tomorrow at the Hunter Medical Research Institute, I don’t know, up at the John Hunter there does some amazing world leading medical research in a number of areas.

00:41:12:24 – 00:41:38:22
Andre Pinkowski
Fantastic organization. We should be so proud to have had them in the Hunter. Have that in the Hunter. So. So my role there is to to help with with fundraising events and to to also work work with the team in terms of commercialization of IP. Some some advice on how how maybe some IP could be spun out and commercialized from from the organization.

00:41:38:22 – 00:42:04:22
Andre Pinkowski
So that’s quite exciting. I’ve recently stepped onto the the northern New South Wales Regional Advisory Group for AICD, an Australian Institute of Company directors. So they asked me again is a is an industry group that really focuses on education for company directors. They have, of course, the ICD directors course, which is fantastic teachers. A lot governance risk strategy.

00:42:04:24 – 00:42:33:11
Andre Pinkowski
Being a director or operating in the director always is very different from an executive. So certainly take some time to to think like that, learn to think like that. And certainly I’d advise any founder who’s who is operating as an executive, either sitting on a board or reporting into a board to to consider that course or at least look at some education in that area if, if and when the time is right.

00:42:33:11 – 00:42:55:17
Andre Pinkowski
Obviously early on, it’s low priority then then building a product and getting sales. But but as you start to to deal with the BCA and independent directors, etc., having been equipping yourself with those skills as well as understanding the liability you have under Australian law as a director is a significant amount of personal liability you take on. Yeah, and everybody should understand that.

00:42:55:17 – 00:43:18:19
Andre Pinkowski
So yeah, but those are keeping me busy at the moment. I also advise and consult with some local start ups and scale ups helping out in terms of growth and business strategy. There lots of interesting things happening in the Hunter at the moment. So. So yeah, keeping me busy as far as getting in touch, LinkedIn is probably the best reach out there now.

00:43:18:19 – 00:43:20:15
James MacDonald
I am filling that up now. Show notes as well.

00:43:20:19 – 00:43:21:03
Andre Pinkowski
Awesome.

00:43:21:03 – 00:43:39:07
James MacDonald
Appreciate them and thanks for your time today. Really interesting again, the of these going on that successful journey to exit and I think that is the holy grail for a lot of startup fitness and technology professionals that go out on their own. So hearing your journey and a couple of those learnings along the way, it’s a very interesting, hopefully helpful for some of our listeners.