Emily Bobis – Compass IoT (Australia’s leading connected vehicle data provider)
Entrepreneurial journey told by six students
Story written by Nicolás Coghlan
Being an entrepreneur was not something I planned to do, or I had dreamed to do, it was more like something that happened during the way. So, I think that in a certain way, you can say that entrepreneurship chose me and not the other way round. I meet my cofounder by luck in a university exchange in Singapore. We are friends since then, and before creating Compass, we worked together in a startup he created called Airbike. This experience was important to encourage me to start my own business in the future.
After I graduated, I tried applying for job positions and it was a lot of work. The whole process was very tiresome, sometimes they even asked for things that were not necessary, for example, a psychological test for something that was not related to the job or every grade I had during my university years. I was not comfortable with the job applying process, and after having experienced working in a startup, being message 24/7 and being paid a little amount of money. I realized I didn’t want to have a normal job experience, working from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. I wanted to have lots of money, to be able to rest in the weekends without being bothered, and to be able to go to sleep after 5 pm. Therefore, I said screw all of this, and decided to hire myself, trying my luck with my own startup. I wasn’t scared thinking if this was going to be a success or not, because even if this went wrong, I would have the experience and maybe be more employable, I was in my twenties and out of frustration, so it seemed like a great plan.
One of the most important aspects of creating a company it is defining its goals. In my case, the first one was to build products that solve a genuine problem, and our customers will really love. The second one was to create a great space to work in, in which people can feel that they are contributing and making an impact. Lastly, to be profitable. Thanks to my Airbike experience, it became very clear to me that there was a big problem between how we design our cities in contrast to how people actually use them. Having a good timing, luck, and skills on our side, we focused on that problem.
Story written by Motong Guo
I’m Emily Bobis, a former Master’s student at USYD where I specialized in International Business and Marketing. Currently, I am one of the co-founders of Compass, Australia’s leading connected vehicle data provider. Like most graduates, I had applied for corporate jobs, but I decided to hire myself after I met my partner Angus on a study exchange. We worked together for a bike-sharing company, and along the way we discovered a real problem and strong demand, and we found our entrepreneurial direction after talking to a tech-driven traffic engineer, Nick. The way we designed our cities did not align with how people actually used them, which posed a significant challenge. It was mostly guesswork, and we were unsure if people were taking shortcuts. Transportation presented a major problem because everything was done manually. For instance, people had to count cars using a manual counter or use rubber strips on roads, which were not only highly inaccurate but also time-consuming and costly. Nick proposed that we can get data from connected vehicles and extract useful information from them to help other companies such as the government. We took the opportunity and decided at the right time to leverage technology to transform our first Start-up to a data provider, and work really hard to get it off the ground. The result was that we achieved the desired outcome because we were providing data that no company could do, at a time when the government was still relying on manual access to data.
But at the same time in the progress, we realized innovation doesn’t equal acceptance. Especially as young entrepreneurs who are promoting innovative ways to use technology to change the old manual model, even if we know it will actually help our customers, but it still takes a lot of effort to make them accept and trust your technology. Sometimes the communication up front to establish a partnership can take years, but starting a business is never easy and we need to be prepared for the long-term game. But everything would get easier after building momentum and getting reference from existing customers who trusted you. Entrepreneurship is very empowering, especially when you deliver a product that your customers are looking for, and you have a lot of freedom in making decisions. But at the same time never forget to keep learning and improving, even there is no one above you to refer to.
Story written by Freya Han
“When you’re in doubt, do something – it’s better to make a decision than to do nothing. That’s what I’ve always told myself. When I was faced with that 40% of my essay that I didn’t want to finish, I told myself I had to decide. Either finish it like a normal student. Or go on an exchange program. Obviously, completing the essay would be relatively sound. But I wanted to take on this challenge. Luckily, I met my co-founder Angus on the exchange programme, and we hit it off and were both very interested in becoming entrepreneurs. Finally, we got our chance. We discovered the market for bike-sharing and quickly set up the first ever bike-sharing company. Soon after, the government also signed a contract with us. But the joy of success did not last long, and problems soon arose with the bike-sharing. The problem of different stopping points each time made it impossible to confirm the number of bikes on each road, let alone how many were lost. So, after many failed manual counts, I opted to leverage internet. The accuracy of the internet data has made the bike-sharing business better. Then I spotted another business opportunity. Perhaps road data could solve more problems than just bicycle data. And at this point I knew a traffic consultant who gave me a lot of advice. Through the efforts of the whole team, we have really digitised the roads. So far, we’ve had some success, for example, with our road data, Transurban has halved the number of traffic accidents on one of Sydney’s busiest roads. However, I am only 27 years old and managing a company is not an easy task. Manager and entrepreneur are two different roles, although I am still learning to become a qualified manager. But in my current opinion, a manager is more than just delegating tasks; I need to learn how to communicate with them and how to assign tasks in a way that maximises their respective strengths. Meanwhile, organisational culture is an important factor in promoting productivity. Employees need a good environment, so I always tell them that our work is a good thing and that we make sure the roads are safe every time we work hard to get the job done. This organisational culture works well. Of course, a team can’t go on with just moral encouragement, and I will reward employees with shares. Because they are also the pillars of Compass IoT, they deserve these. As a result, even though I am not a fully developed manager, I will continue to work to advance my team.”
Story written by He Rui Sophia
I always have a lot of ideas, even though “I maybe not willing to admit that I’m mediocre,” and I am confident in my ability to carry them out. I studied art-related subjects before starting my own business, and these classes had a significant impact on the way I approached entrepreneurship. The most fundamental skill for a student of art is the capacity for innovation. These concepts of learning, iteration, and innovation have greatly increased my openness to novelty. I’ll admit that this works to my benefit. In a school exchange programme, I got to know Angus McDonald. We have a lot of similarities: we have a lot of ideas, are action-oriented, make quick decisions, and appreciate each other. We always support each other’s ideas and don’t interfere too much with each other. This helped us launch Comprass IoT in 2018. “Do you genuinely believe that grades are everything?” I expressed opposition to such an unfair company. “I will prove that even people without high grades have their own passion and seriousness towards work.” Although this is not the main motivation for my entrepreneurship, but it did ignite my fighting spirit “. I am only 20 years old, what harm if there is failure?” I am still young, and I only live once. I must be myself and do what I like. Even when I encountered problems during the entrepreneurial process that no one could help me solve, I also wondered if I followed everyone else and found a stable job to learn about other companies’ management before starting a business, is that goanna be better? Fortunately, Angus McDonald and I always support each other and believe in each other, which supports me to get to where I am today.
We always go to client meetings together, enjoy ourselves together, and discuss the future. We often joke that “no one would want to hire us”. We believe that choosing to collaborate was the right choice because we love the lives we are currently living, we are constantly growing, and we can see each other’s progress. There are still many stories to be told and a very long future ahead of us.
Story written by Ziyuan Tian
I am always the “out of the box person”. I did not like going to structured classes, taking tests that will determine where I will be in the next few years in the corporate world without any room for me to do whatever I want and be whoever I want to be.
A question merged to my mind when I was on my first job in a first Australian owned startup which was doing bike sharing services, we got to chat with government about mobility technologies that focused on transportation and infrastructure. “Is infrastructure being used the most efficient way as it designed to be?” With this question in my head, I met with another student who was on an exchange trip to escape from schoolwork who eventually became my co-founder of my startup. We talked a lot about infrastructure and transportation data, and it became very clear that there is a big problem with city design and how people are actually using the infrastructure for transportation as people are always taking shortcuts, taking wrong lanes etc. To collect data and refine infrastructure design was also very inefficient and expensive since people must record data passively and manually which lead to mistakes all the time.
We met with a enthusiastic traffic consultant who then sparked us the idea of creating software using internet of things to record traffic data actively. We began our entrepreneurship journey four years ago, after we created our MVPs, we were lucky to find a traffic engineer and offered him one thousand dollars for his feedbacks on the product. A great value exchange brings us to continually develop our products and find contracts with governments, where we proceed to connect with reference and to land more contracts and connect again and so on.
Being an entrepreneur help me gain an 9-5, 5 days a week job and I can explore my career to where my interests lay. Execution and persistence are my strong suits, I can put an amazing idea into something tangible within 3 hours, and I am able to focus on strategic decisions and the outcome for the company and product. However, without the help from my co-founder and my team, I could never go this far. I make sure I am surrounded with people who can cover my weaknesses, working with like-minded people, we want to bring our venture further and greater.
Story written by Jiayi Wang
I rarely thought I would become an entrepreneur during my university years, everything seemed to go with the flow. Starting from when I decided to go to Singapore on an exchange and met Angus, to when I worked at Airbike, all these amazing journeys finally lead me to Compass. After graduation, I started looking for a graduate job just like most of my colleagues, but companies’ single-minded focus on grades in school and heavy overtime work made me think about whether it was the life I desired. I decided to start Compass, believing that it was an extremely cool thing to do, and more importantly, I wanted to make a difference. I started with little fear because it would still be a valuable experience for me to gain even if I fail, what could I lose? I believe many entrepreneurs fail because of a lack of focus, so I established three goals and have been stuck to them for four years, even though Compass has grown in size and our clients now range from government to road companies the three initial goals haven’t change. I wish Compass to build products that solve genuine problems and are best in class, build a culture in which people feel they are really contributing and making tangible impacts, and be a company that is profitable both for customers and our employees. People are the most important to me, we always put technical skills last when hiring and choose people who really fit in with Compass’s culture. Compass does not have a complex hierarchy, we want to give everyone the environment to communicate information quickly and ensure that we can make timely decisions in the fast-moving industry of information and technology. Employees usually own a part of the company, and they are highly flexible in terms of having their own life-work balance because everyone is working for themselves. Surviving in the early time was hard, but I guess hard work and luck went hand in hand, several enthusiastic professionals provided especially valuable information in the early days of Compass. I know innovation does not equal acceptance, and money doesn’t come straight up, so we needed to keep asking for feedback from our customers, and even gave significant discounts to get enough input. There were also moments of possible failure, fortunately, I managed to stay focused on the initial idea and goals. The effort finally paid, and Compass has been going for 4 years now, although earnings are not always substantial, being in control of my life has given me a purpose in life and led me in the direction.