www.reordr.com.au
Entrepreneurial journey told by three students
Story written by Senal Munasinghe
Meet Hugh Stackpool, University of Sydney Alumni, once an aspiring fund manager who now is an entrepreneur, his own boss, with a SaaS business on the precipice of taking over the ecommerce industry and, family man. As a part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship course within the Master of Management program we got a chance to pick his brains and understand how a start-up works as well as what makes him tick.
He started his journey while still studying, by working part time at a boutique private equity firm. After graduating and completing his CFA, he worked at JP Morgan, being as the head of mining within the equity team. While he enjoyed this well-paying job, he found himself not being satisfied and realised he wanted to be his own boss. He decided to try his hand out at using his free time to start a consulting business working with smaller companies than at JP Morgan. While he had some small wins here, this venture wasn’t a massive success. Hugh was never one to back down from opportunities he recognized, even flying to Israel over a weekend to sell oil cleaning chemicals. While these side ventures weren’t succeeding, it didn’t faze him.
Then, a couple of years back, he had his biggest Eureka moment yet. When attempting to reorder some vitamins, he struggled to find them online and had the thought to himself that there must be an easier way for him to reorder this. That’s when he realised the opportunity, he had to capture this space. That was the origin story of Reordr, the SaaS Hugh works on with his wife Lara. They have developed it to where, scanning a QR code on product packaging would lead the consumer to a webpage where they can easily reorder the product. In the time since while the pandemic has created a boom in the industry and allowed for faster development than expected, they have also secured an MVP grant from the government while Hugh recently completed the Blackbird giants program, a 12-week mentoring program which he plans to redo in the future.
At the end of a long, enlightening chat Hugh also shared some words of wisdom for us aspiring entrepreneurs, he recommended that we keep trying different things and that we don’t put all our eggs in one basket. Another important point was to remember that you can be an entrepreneur while also having a salary job. The last piece of advice was to not get too attached to our ideas, saying he too would ‘be happy to walk away from Reordr if I found a better idea’.
Story written by Asther Phong
From working part-time at a boutique private equity firm to starting my first business venture, I’ve learnt that my ideas don’t matter until I test them out in the real world. I had a terrific career and pay at JP Morgan prior to launching my first venture. It was great, but I wanted to be my own boss. While working a full-time job, I started doing what I did at JP Morgan on a micro-scale to raise money by putting myself out there and reaching out to clients. I also experimented with consulting and banking software. Until then, everything felt so ‘corporate’, and I wanted to do something to make a change in the world.
In search of an idea, I found myself running out of supplements and not being able to replenish them easily. Frustrated, I thought to myself, “this is my opportunity”. My wife and I came up with the brilliant idea of Reordr. We intended to make reordering a product as easy as scanning a QR code on the package. A government grant aided in the development of our concept, and our business grew as COVID hit, forcing businesses to reach out to their customers more than ever before.
At a conference, we approached potential partners and offered our services for free, and we enrolled in a venture capital program to learn from experienced mentors. We tested several features we thought would better cater to customers, but many were unfamiliar with our product. It didn’t matter how much money we made during this process because we strived to understand our consumers’ needs and create something that would help them. We hope to create something that people will talk about and share with their friends and family, achieving product-led growth in the long-run. In doing our part in sustainability, we envision Reordr to be integrated into reusable and recyclable product packaging. The obstacles faced during the beta testing period have only motivated us to connect with customers and developers to add even more value.
Pivoting is extremely important in finding a product-market fit. Feedback from others may raise red flags but that should not stop you from bringing your vision to life. You may even face a huge competitor unexpectedly but take it as a learning opportunity and remember your motivation for starting this entrepreneurial journey. Above all, my family is my greatest motivation in making this successful.
Story written by Keshavan Thayagaran
My entrepreneurial journey began when I studied bachelor of commerce in University of Sydney and concurrently I worked part-time at boutique private equity firm. While working part-time I learned how to do financial modelling and also it was my first opportunity of doing financial consulting to my clients. After graduating my bachelors I started working full time in an equity team serving the mining company. Shortly after I had the opportunity to work with JP Morgan as a consultant and I aided small businessesunder $100 million market capital. As a consultant I also helped a cannabis company to receive $600,000. Despite my enjoyment of making money by serving these firms I had a vigorous yearning to have more freedom and to be a manager of my own company. I also aspired to try something new. One day I took few days off work to travel to Israel and sell oil cleaning chemicals the Israeli pipeline workers. Despite the failed attempt I enjoyed my trip to Israel. What inspired me to create Reordr was that I couldn’t find and reorder a particular brand of vitamins powder on the internet. This experience frustrated me however this gave me an opportunity recognition create Reordr. I established a Reordr store in Shopify but I am experiencing some obstacles when governing my own business. For instance I’m dealing with channel conflict because when merchants are selling and making payment on my website and delivering products to customers, these same merchants are also making income and delivering similar products from another company’s website this creates channel conflict. Reordr’s primary target audience is attracting other merchants and make them to integrate Reordr’s QR code into their product packaging which results in making customers scan the code on the packaging which enables them to reorder the product. My advice on anyone starting a company is to try something new at every opportunity because it can give inspiration to implement any ideas. Even if you fail at something always learn from your failures and attempt the second time. There are also online programs such as Hub spot and Blackbird bird giant company which can help start-up companies to succeed and provides an appropriate strategy for the company to flourish.