kartasoft.co
Entrepreneurial journey told by one student
Story written by Bart Venhoek
My entrepreneurial journey goes back as far as when I was seven or eight years old, and I had a lemonade stand and it was, in part, inspired by lots of individuals in my immediate vicinity in pursuit of their entrepreneurial dreams. The journey was never methodical or prescriptive, but it was just the culmination of the ample role models, opportunity recognition, appropriate timing, and a stroke of luck. The realisation of KartaSoft was enabled by a lot of things just ‘lining up.’ The ideal was essentially sparked by the drastic events of the 2019 bush fire that devastated large parts of Australia resulting in the grounding of many flights coming out of Canberra, where my business partner was at the time. He culminated a lot of the geodata generated by these fires and it reaped some very interesting results. We started to delve into how these apps are created and the functions they could serve. Covid presented an interesting time to pursue this journey, I sold one of my properties and my wife started working full-time and said: ‘I am happy to give you the opportunity to do this.’ My entrepreneurial journey is far from a solemn one, as it is often imagined to be, there are a lot of unsung heroes supporting any endeavour such as this, my wife, my co-founder and all the other founders with whom we have built a network of mutual reliance and support. The most surprising part of my journey was the realisation of how close and supportive the founder community is. They’re living the same journey and have tripped up in similar areas as you. They have been a great source of information and mentorship. One thing any entrepreneur needs to know is you cannot be shy, part of my success can be attributed to my willingness to ask for help, you would be surprised how many people would reach out and extend a hand, that is just kind of how it is in that community, we all help each other. This is what excites me most, building a global company that people wanted to work at, and people enjoyed working in. We are big believers in giving young people their first opportunity in tech and it would be great to see those people grow with the company, that’s what we have planned for KartaSoft’s future!”