Discover how an entrepreneurial child with a camera evolved into Tim Vaughan, the visionary CEO of Education Perfect and Revision Village, an integral part of Crimson Education.
Today's episode offers a front-row seat to Tim's entrepreneurial journey, marked by a relentless amount of hard work in the digital education space.
Tim's story is a masterclass in obsessing over and getting super close to the real customer pain point.
You can connect with Tim via his LinkedIn profile.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
Discover how an entrepreneurial child with a camera evolved into Tim Vaughan, the visionary CEO of Education Perfect and Revision Village, an integral part of Crimson Education.
Today's episode offers a front-row seat to Tim's entrepreneurial journey, marked by a relentless amount of hard work in the digital education space.
Tim's story is a masterclass in obsessing over and getting super close to the real customer pain point.
You can connect with Tim via his LinkedIn profile.
Coal Mine Rhythm - Short Version B by Dan Ayalon
My guest today is Tim Bourne. Tim is the CEO of Revision Village and is a very, very impressive individual. I might say I was chatting to Tim a few weeks ago. I was driving on Auckland Southern motorway and we'd never met before. But through, I guess, a little bit of serendipity, my daughter worked for a company that Tim will talk about today, education Perfect. We made a link linked in and I could just tell by talking to Tim that he was. He's a very, very smart rooster and I knew that hearing his story today and his experience would be really valuable. Tim has a commerce degree from the University of Otago, which is near and dear to my heart because all of my kids have been there. I've spent a lot of winters down there supporting setting them up into flats and, yeah, now is the CEO of Revision Village, which is part of the Crimson Education absolute monster of a business that's growing out of New Zealand for the last 10 years. So welcome to the podcast, tim.
Speaker 2:Thanks, greg. Thanks for the kind words. Very nice. I feel like I need to pay you something for saying such kind things.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I agree with the smart piece. Oh yeah, definitely a smart guy. Look, I'd love to learn a little bit about your early story and how you got to be from growing up to doing what you do now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah. Well, look, I think with all good stories, I'll start with my childhood. I think it's really interesting. I was always described as entrepreneurial, even from when I was really young, which is really interesting, and I don't really know what it was that drove me, but I always had this passion for creating businesses. And I remember when I was nine years old my younger sister, who was seven we were on our bike going around the block in Hamilton and I remember seeing these for sale signs that were popping up and I just was really curious. I'm like, well, these people are selling their houses. And I remember a neighbor who's a friend said, oh, you saw our for sale sign and we're gonna be selling, so it's really sad to be leaving the neighborhood. And I just had this thought pop into my head. I was like, oh, how are you gonna remember us? And you know this is a young guy, you should take some photos of your house and things so you don't forget it and they said, oh, yeah, it's actually a really good point.
Speaker 2:It's the kind of thing I don't really do take photos of a house and I remember just Johnny on the spot said, well, my dad's got a camera, like I can do it for you. And I remember just like super energized and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can turn this into a business. It was just this like very, very excited, energized feeling in my head when I was like, yeah, very young, and I remember going back to his house and I think he just thought I was cute and I can't remember what. I charged $20 or $30 or something. I took some photos of the house and then I thought, well, hang on a second, there's always for sale signs. But I just go knock on their door and say, hey, it looks like you're selling, can you want some photos of your house? And yeah, we turn it into like a little business. And I had my sister sitting in a little kind of a and I'll drag her around the neighborhood and you know we got so into it.
Speaker 2:This is when I was like eight years old we started this that I remember one weekend my dad coming into my room, really concerned, and he was like I sort of need to know what's going on. And I said what do you mean? He's like well, you know, mom was saying that you've been sort of hitting out taking photos of people. I thought you were doing it just to be nice. And he said and I found this money. And I later found out it was like $1,800 and something. And what I've been doing is I worked out the cost of the film, you know, and it would the three day film would be cheaper. So I did the three day, you know development and then the next weekend go and give it back to them. And I've made about $1,800 in the last few weeks. And I just remember thinking like, yeah, it's just so easy, like why, why go to school? And I can just come up with business ideas. So, yeah, that was sort of the start of my entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 1:And you sold that to Open2View when you were nine years old, do you?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I got all onto Bitcoin. I think that's the.
Speaker 1:That was funny.
Speaker 2:I think you do reflect on these things and I think, yeah, some people are just sort of wired for, I don't know, for being slightly more entrepreneurial, me, it was never about the money, it was just the sort of thrill of the, I think, independence, yeah, and that very much continued, you know, through sort of different iterations of different businesses, right, yeah, right through until today, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so one of the things I'm really keen to dig into. So after university, you finished university. How long was it between kind of your days at Otago University and then getting involved with education? Perfect, Was that an immediate step change?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I actually at university I was getting very involved with business case competitions.
Speaker 2:So if anyone's listening, who's at university or has kids at university. I think they're just phenomenal. We had a guy called John Guthrie who was, and still is, the Otago business case comp guy and he was just phenomenal, really good mentor and I think it was like our opportunity to kind of get real world exposure. So it was a really good experience and that was really good for networking as well, because you met people that were like-minded and wanted to sort of apply some of the stuff that we're hearing in the lecture hall in the real world. So I was in a really interesting position at uni. I'd actually started another business exporting wine to China and I entered what they called your Dacius business competition, which was a local Dunedin City Council sponsored initiative, and I entered my wine business and I won the first round. And then we were rolling into the second round and I thought you know what I'm just going to do this. I booked tickets to China, signed up three wineries and had it operational.
Speaker 2:And it was at that time where I had this other idea that I never actioned. But I'd gone and spoken to a bunch of schools about around financial literacy and this was just sort of back at my mind, never actioned. And then I heard about Craig Smith, who was this guy who'd also gone through the Dacius program and won the main event and he had this flash hard sort of language learning tool and that was how we actually got connected. So it was actually at university and Craig was just this exceptionally smart, entrepreneurial guy and just had this unbelievable ambition and I remember just being struck by like wow, he is just no matter how bad the idea or the thing is, now this thing is going to work by brute force. He's just one of these individuals where you just can't help but be impressed with.
Speaker 2:So I guess that was the point of connection for us really. So Craig and I met with a kindred spirit. So I was talking about my financial literacy app. I'd spoken to I hadn't written the line of code or anything, but I'd spoken to a number of different schools using post-it notes and that was how we connected and I actually started doing work for Language Perfect. We hadn't incorporated at that point, but it was very much just like extremely early. It was post-idea, so it had incorporated and it was generating a few cents, but yeah, it was very, very, very early.
Speaker 1:And was it called Language Perfect at that stage?
Speaker 2:That's right, language Perfect. Yeah, so it was, I think, like flashcards for vocabulary, so a word would pop up in French and you had to type in the answer in English. So one of the building blocks of learning a new language, which for me, to be totally honest, wasn't terribly exciting, and so I struggled with English like, let alone, learning a new language. Yeah, so the idea of doing my own thing, continuing with this wine business expansion or staying with Craig and my best friend, scott Carville, it was kind of like, well, ultimately, I kind of want to get some experience in the real world. It's very easy to kind of, I guess, play it safe. It felt like I was doing it. So I thought, well, I want to give us a go.
Speaker 2:So I applied for a role in consulting, moved over to Sydney and down that. I just always operated this very entrepreneurial kind of way, even consulting, to the point where I would be looking through the papers in the morning, looking at opportunities within the mining industry, and then going to our CEO and saying, hey, why don't we do this and this and this and organize a dinner with these executives? And it just worked really, really well. So I sort of felt like I carried this sort of entrepreneurial endeavor even through a more sort of corporate learning environment, which was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about myself.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting that as a student at Otago University, rather than partying all the time, you were actually exporting the produce, exporting wine up to China, when probably half of Castle Street was quite keen on your product. Clearly those entrepreneurial genes weren't just as a seven or an eight-year-old in Hamilton. They carried on through university. So then you've met Craig, You've got it sort of posts, some very early revenue, pretty rudimentary product, but you then go off into consulting. Did you then come back into the fold somehow? How did that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a really interesting one. I was very much right in shotgun with the business in terms of talking to Scott all the time and Craig and it just staying, I guess, tuned into the story Without sounding too skeptical. I'd never thought language perfect would be a huge success story. I thought it would be. We didn't use words like SAS and RECA and revenue and it just wasn't really a thing that I mean. I'm sure it was a turn back then, but it certainly wasn't something I was familiar with anyway, so we didn't have the language to put around what the opportunity could be. I ended up getting a role a dream role for me, up in Brisbane working for an organization called PIN Australia, and it was in a brand role and it was. You know there's retro skateboards. They're called pinky skateboards. You see kids, and often big kids, right in them as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so not so young kids out there.
Speaker 2:Not so young kids. Yeah, and it was just the stars aligned. I took the role and I remember thinking, you know, it's one of those really interesting things, I think, when you learn a little bit about yourself. I think one of the things there's other things I'm not good at, but one of the things I think is helped me a lot is this whole idea of like first principles thinking and sort of breaking down something really complex and to sort of the Fundamentals. And I think in consulting that really helped me understand that. So the consulting firm was really oriented around design thinking and sort of really really deep Ethographic, like user research to really understand you know what the problem is, what the opportunity is and I felt like that was incredibly good Kind of baptism, I guess and to sort of try to understand you know really really complex system. How can you use heuristics, how can you apply mental models to really distill things down to sort of fundamentals?
Speaker 2:And I remember thinking with with Penny I thought like this is a really cool skateboard but rather than like just dumping money into you know digital aquas, a digital marketing or performance marketing and trying to acquire customers, surely there's like levers that we can pull that are gonna have a like disproportionately large impact on the market. And I remember my first week talking to it's a being where it having dinner. He's the founder of any armada's house and I said to him you know, it seems to me like these young young people, these young kids tend to be hugely influenced by Social media and and certain people in social media. So why aren't we just like talking to the people that are like most influential, like the? Miley Cyrus isn't like these bad example, although we did get her writing a penny. I got some good story.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:But it was really amazing that I remember the next day going to the office, sitting in the boardroom Getting a spreadsheet and just I think I googled like best fashion magazines, best Surf magazines. We sort of figured out the category we wanted to sort of dominate was like surf skate, but it was kind of a crossover category where, aspirational, you know, people that might not have surfed would have written the penny because it was kind of a surf web brand, you know. Anyway, I emailed all these people and said, hey, you guys are, you know, an outstanding Fashion magazine or what have they were. We've got this, these really cool retro boards. We're just wanting to give them to you to see what you think. Would you be interested in them? It was really crazy. A lot of people respond, a lot didn't, but a lot of people responded and said like, absolutely, like, what's the catch? Do you want us to do an editorial? It was like no, no, I just, I just want to put them in your hands with the hope that you know you'll, you'll, you'll do something with them. And literally that was the inception of just this extraordinary growth of penny and what we.
Speaker 2:I'd seen a whole number of skateboards to Vogue in China. You know Vogue magazine in China. You know it's the price surprise. I'm not really a, you know, fashionista, so I probably wasn't aware of that how much much of a breakthrough this was, but They've been taken a photo that put them on their boardroom and they're taking a photo of it and it had, you know, hundreds of thousands of likes and comments and things. And we just saw these huge demand from certain markets, like in Japan and China and things.
Speaker 2:And then I I messaged the WSL, the world surf league, and said, hey, can we, can we give a board to your top you know, the top 44, I think it was at the time men, surfers, and they were like yeah, absolutely. And they sent back a sponsorship package. It was like a hundred thousand dollars. I was just like Sorry, like there's no way, but we can give you boards. And I remember with the Rip Curl pro and bells beach they said yeah, sure, like send us some boards. Next thing, you know we had to for Lepo. It's a little, you know we had some of the Kelly Slater, you know surfers riding down the hill on their pennies Boards to the to the main, you know, competitors area taking photos and it just blew up and next thing, you know, I was getting contacted from Will Smith's sons agent, literally Miley Cyrus, who's a whole bunch of celebrities saying like can we get a board? Like we'll do this for you, and things just went absolutely ballistic.
Speaker 1:Yeah that is so cool and and that obviously is very early days in the world of influencer marketing, right, so that's not even necessarily having the words and the language around it, but it was very much influencer marketing and so there was no. And then you. So I'm really keen to sort of dig into the Education perfect story a little bit. I am, I sort of became aware of the company. I, to be honest with you, not being a teacher and not being a student, for quite some time I hadn't, I hadn't heard of the brand.
Speaker 1:And then my, my daughter, got a, my oldest daughter got a graduate role there in Dunedin Few years back. And then I sort of followed the, the progress and I saw that you know, one of the big PE firms, kkr, I think it was out of, out of New York had made a massive or taken a massive stake and valued the company at a significant dollar value. There's a big story, obviously, between the early days of talking to Craig and and Scott was it around? You know those early days of of the business through to that point. Tell us a bit about that story, because that's possibly a story that not a lot of people know know about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's terribly un-sexy and I think that's kind of one of the. The realities of entrepreneurship was that you just have to put your hands to plow every single day. It's like a, a consistency to sort of building to that scale. That just takes time and takes like consistent compounding effort. But in terms of, maybe, if we back up to the how it all came to be, I was actually in in Brisbane at penny and Scott Carville it was one of the core founding team of language perfect. He messaged saying hey, I'm in Brisbane, let's grab a beer.
Speaker 2:It was with Joel Laguez and other. I keep calling him he's not a kid. I keep saying Joel's a kid. He's not a kid, he's a grown man now. But at the time he was young we hired him out of school and we were having a beer at Brisbane golf course and Kate, my wife said, just blurted out she's like oh, by the way, we're pregnant. And Scott was like oh my gosh, I mean congrats. So you're coming to work for us now, right, like you come back to New Zealand.
Speaker 2:It was this very kind of like jump to conclusion and my first reaction was like I don't think you understand how well, this is going here Like we're going on a moon. This is kind of a? You know, I'm running a global brand now spending time in different markets Like it just didn't make sense. But there was this kind of tug around, like you know, the idea of like really running my own thing, I mean, I'm so cut from that cloth. It's very, very hard to say no to. But, to be honest, languages I'm just not passionate about it Cause it doesn't really resonate with me. I wish I'd learned a language. Never had the opportunity growing up, grew up in the Anglo-Saxon bubble, so I felt it really hard to kind of you know, I don't want to try and manufacture excitement about it.
Speaker 2:So we were talking about it. I said, you know, one of the things that that really strikes me is when I was in school, like the extent of my use of computers was like going into a lab and like touch typing. It was just very, very limited and it wasn't until you get to university and then eventually into the workplace, everything's digitalized, right, like you know, you gotta know how to use Excel, and it just felt like this huge you know chasm and then I was sort of thinking well, why aren't teachers like getting data from you know, like student learning and like just, at least from when I was at school, I just don't really think that was a thing. And so we started talking and I was like, you know, if you were going to do like, like non-languages, like math, science, english and things like, fire out, if I had a tool that I could use independent of my teacher that could teach me things anytime, anywhere, like that's really exciting. Like I don't know what the market is, but that gets me really excited. And I remember just feeling like this you know, like I'm kind of excited and I'm like, wow, I don't know if it's a thing you want to do, but like, if that's the direction you went in, like now I'm really interested.
Speaker 2:When we were driving home, I remember saying to Kate I was like I can't, like if we move back to New Zealand, we can't do this, like I can't go and work for a little startup, like it's just, I just feel like that ship sailed, I've got to do my own thing. But you know what, if it was non-languages, this could be really exciting. Next thing, you know, craig calls man. We have a three-way call and Craig's like look, we're going to do this, we're going to go outside of languages. There's a contract in your inbox let's just do this.
Speaker 2:One of the crazy stories about all of this is a year prior, so it was startup 2012. There was actually a photo of me up in the language perfect offices and it was from the audacious business competition and it said something like one day, tim will return, or something. And then on the and Craig's notepad he had written down goal for 2012,. Higher-ten, number one goal. So it's just really like and I didn't know any of this like this is just totally unknown to me, so it's funny how these things work out. But that was really the inception of my journey back to language perfect, which eventually became education perfect.
Speaker 1:So what were some of those key early things that you had to do? So you joined, presumably you came back to New Zealand or you continued. You did the role from Australia.
Speaker 2:No, I came back to New Zealand, was into meeting, which is great it was. I remember my biggest complaint was I couldn't type properly because we were working from this little house that's since been destroyed next to the Greg's coffee factory and it was so cold like I literally couldn't type. I remember Scott saying, oh, you just get fingerless gloves. Yeah, if you just do that, because then you can type, I was like I don't think it's solving the problem. Like the problem was that it's like a student flat, you mean for one and three. Yeah, it's right. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of funny stories about those really early days.
Speaker 2:But you know, being totally honest, I came back, I think, with a bit of arrogance, and what I mean by that is I really saw language perfect as being like I'll be able to come in and show them how to think big and do some big things.
Speaker 2:I think we need to rebrand because this just looks really, you know, not that appealing as sort of more of a consumer product. And I remember Craig saying just learn, just watch and learn what we do. And I remember thinking I don't need to like I know how to fix some of these things. And it was really humbling because after like four to six weeks I realized that the kind of connectivity they had between the customer and themselves was just extraordinary and the amount of time they spent talking to customers, that kind of trust that they were building with those earlier adopters was just incredible. And actually having the site look prettier or having you know, better marketing materials actually wasn't going to move the dial at all. And I remember after it was probably a couple of months, craig said so what are you thinking? And I was like I just feel like I've been really humble, to be honest, and I remember just saying to him.
Speaker 2:you don't need all the stuff that I said earlier on. We just need to focus on executing and we just need to keep take the principles of what's got the business to where it is today and just keep following our noses. And so you know, my first entry back into Language Perfect was it was a bit of humble pie. Yeah, I was surprised at how much I didn't know.
Speaker 1:And was it a company that, early on, was raising capital and doing all the traditional things of sort of going through the pre-seed and the seed and the A and the B and, you know, hiring up the teams and scaling up the you know the processes? Is that how it worked, or was it way more scrappy than that?
Speaker 2:No, it was much, much scrappier. So it was actually never a dollar raised, which is kind of one of the crazy stories behind the business. So the way that the sales cycle works is essentially schools would pay for access a year in advance, so it's annualized. You know, when annual license, the school would pass the cost onto students via a book list or school fees. So they collect those at the start of the year January, february. You then invoice them to the number of students that they registered and then you'll have a whole bunch of cash at the start of the year, and then you just cross your fingers that it wouldn't run out by the end of the year. So, yeah, cash flow forecasting was extremely important, but it gave us the ability to, you know, effectively generate cash and live off that over the course of the calendar year.
Speaker 2:So there was no capital raised and it was just a very, very kind of a simplistic model, and so even I don't actually even think back then venture was much of a thing in New Zealand.
Speaker 2:I knew there were venture funds, but I certainly wouldn't have had confidence that if we had stood in front of a VC, whether we would have had this sort of compelling, you know market opportunity or sort of I guess, prior history of kind of being able to argue that we deserve a bunch of money.
Speaker 2:And honestly, what I realized too is that often, like in the absence of having capital and having money, it kind of forces you to be far, far more innovative. And so just things like if you look at the early days of the LP, we used to do things like I'll give you an example we used our quarterly costs one year to go and buy biscuits and things didn't give to teachers because companies were sponsoring these really, really swanky stalls at a conference and we didn't have the money for stalls. So we just went and bought biscuits and stuff and we just walked around the conference and we were like hey guys, and we just made friends with everyone. So like we were always looking for ways to stretch the very little that we had and I think we actually got much, much better returns because of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I think, because it's more authentic. And who doesn't love a good biscuit as well? You know, there's the flashy. There's the flashy big budget campaigns that generally don't pull the heart towards something and then is authentic. And wandering around a conference, a trade conference or whatever, with biscuits is a bloody good idea, exactly. And so how did the company scale? Obviously it didn't raise external money, but did it grow fast, like headcount offices, et cetera?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was very Dunedin based and that 99% of our staff were in Dunedin, one or two people outside of that, but very much Dunedin centric. Craig was actually based up in Auckland, so the main office was in Dunedin and I think the way. So here's a really interesting point because it's very easy to assume as a linear trajectory or even exponential trajectory when it comes to scaling particularly in like a high gross margin SaaS business, right. But really we made two really critical mistakes, the same mistake twice actually. So we had what we thought were the bones of a really good user experience for a student, right, these flashcards. And so the thesis was well, if we just take science questions or maths questions, jam them into the same kind of an architecture, then we can increase our time or our we can share a wallet is immediately 5x or how we were thinking about it back then. It's just extremely naive. And what we found was, when we pushed it out to market, schools were saying like this is awful, like this is not what we need, and my response was like we probably need to educate them on how to use it, or the response was not tell me more. I really wanna understand what the problem was? The response was let's try and convince them more.
Speaker 2:So we had started to develop a bit of a sales team and we were just falling flat on our face. It just was not going well. So the first iteration of education perfect just didn't work like at all. It was really bad and we went back to the drawing board. We tried to sort of reconfigure certain things and then we sort of pushed out again into market and tried to sort of relaunch it and it fell even harder on its face, partly because we felt like we had fixed a bunch of those things but we hadn't really gone back to the drawing board and kind of gone ground up.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't until that point where we sat down and I remember the conversation was like, do we just not do this? Do we just go back to languages? And I remember the conversation was like hang on a second, we're still. We're still on these hard code assumptions that this is the way that students want to learn. Excuse me, this is what teachers want. We've spent no time talking to teachers in different subjects, even about what they actually want. Like, as ridiculous as that sounds, we're just drinking our own Kool-Aid, like we've got no idea. I don't have a teaching background. It was like super humbling.
Speaker 2:But I remember it was just like this Damascus road moment where we're like why don't we just go and actually not take the tall one and say, what do you like, what do you not like? Why don't we just shut the hell up and just go and observe the classroom and just see what teachers are doing? And it was one of those moments where I was like, oh my gosh, we're not competing against product X or product Y, we're competing against existing ways of doing things. So it was like they're using spreadsheets, not using a competitor, like just all these auxiliary insights that we just didn't account for whatsoever.
Speaker 2:So the thinking was we have to rebuild, like literally torch the entire code base in some respects and start again. And that's what we did. We started EP like again, we built everything from scratch. And even then, one of the things I say the key to success of our story were the keys to our success was that we just embraced this real humility and this real naivety.
Speaker 2:And so, rather than building a particular feature, pushing it out and seeing who converts or seeing what the sort of lead indicators were of adoption, we took it to teachers and we said what do you think? And now what? And now what? And we just developed this way of working which was just pathologically focused on iteration, and I've got so many stories. One that comes to mind relatively early was I would just. I moved the family to Sydney a couple of times to try and launch education, perfect there, and I remember literally landing, we were staying in all the beaches and I was out surfing and I remember I don't know why this is walking out the beach and it was Sunday evening and we just arrived the following day.
Speaker 2:And I remember thinking, holy shit, I've got no idea what to do. I don't know what to do. I just had this like paralyzing fear of like I don't have a launch education, perfect here, I've got no idea. I remember like probably having a bit of a panic attack walking up home and I remember just thinking like I need to talk to Craig, like I actually don't know what I'm doing. I feel really vulnerable right now. And I remember, as I was walking home, I just had this kind of realization that you don't have to know all the. I'm not a teacher, you know, I don't know all that ins and outs.
Speaker 2:But what was working is we were asking people, you know what their problems were, what their issues were. We weren't making it about us, we were making it about them. And so the next day I've written down the top schools in Sydney and I said, well, I'm just going to ring these schools and say can I be put through? Do you need a science please? Can I be put through to so and so? And I was always told you can't do this. These schools are kind of, you know, closed. You can't just ring the school and call, call them. But it worked. And I said and I remember the first I won't say the school, but the first school. I got through to the head of ICT. Sorry, the ICT coordinator answered and I said look, I hate call calling, but I am call calling you.
Speaker 1:It's quite the famine, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 2:And I said look, you know, I'll be totally honest. We're just arrived here. Your department actually kind of uses our tool. I don't know 12 students or something that used it. We have this vision but like completely transforming how teachers teach and how students learn, and like I'm really energized about this vision. We just have no idea how we're going to get there. So can we meet? Would you be up for me? And she was just like yeah, of course. Yeah, that sounds amazing. And she was kind of became like almost a bit of a pseudo mom. I remember meeting with her and saying, look, it was really funny.
Speaker 2:She was trying to sort of determine how I ended up in this position. She was like so you know what's your teaching background? And I was like well, you know, not actually a teacher. Oh, so you know, what school do you go to in Sydney? Well, actually didn't go to school, I was just I felt like my credibility was slowly declining. But she started to give us really good feedback and look, guys, you need to think about you know this, you need to think about that. And so we didn't have a figure, but we used kind of figure. Marisa designed and said what do you think about this, what do you think about this? And you know she, I think people really enjoy feeling like they're the expert, like asking them you know what are your thoughts on Alty versus Keck or whatever it might be? And she's like, oh, people want my opinion. And the funny part of the story is, after spending a lot of time developing some really cool workflows, she said, look, I'm going to get in front of the director of ICT, all of our SLT senior literature band, all of HODs they're already going to get a meeting, but we're going to make you the kind of keynote and in the two weeks prior they're going to test the tool with math students and students doing English.
Speaker 2:I remember standing in front of the SLT, you know, catching my heart out. This is the vision, this is where we're going. You know, very intimidated because these people will rule in suits and the head of maths, claes, is throat. I'm like I don't dare. And he said, oh, tim, I actually have something to say. And I was like, oh, this is going to be good. You know, he's done some research and he's found the tool works. And he said, look, I'm not trying to sort of show you up here, but we've done some research, some sort of A-B testing and what do you do and those terms. And we found a. We determined that students using education perfect actually get worse over time and the less we let them use education perfect, the better they get.
Speaker 2:So what we wanted to hear, oh my God, and it was just like the air was sucked out of the room. I remember just everyone looking at me and I was just there in the headlights and I was you know what do you say? Like it was just so humiliating. I remember just thinking I don't know what to say and I remember just on the spot saying you know what? That is exactly why I'm here today is because we don't actually know what we're doing and it's that kind of feedback that is gonna help us. And actually I need to talk to you before we leave.
Speaker 2:And I tried to sort of you know, save face after the meeting. I was really complimenting. I said, look, I knew you weren't trying to show us up, but it's kind of how it sounds. Can we meet next week? I really wanna hear what you have to say and I really wanna show you the data, you show me the data. And it was pretty flairish day. And he said but honestly, this is what you're doing. And he started talking about spaced repetition and this and we actually just need to wrote based these, wrote learning these concepts. If you can do that, then you can. And it was like, oh my gosh, this is just so good. That individual for several years was on the homepage of the MATS page saying EPS revolutionized how we teach.
Speaker 1:So it was a case I guess, of you. You know it's a really vulnerable place to be sitting when you don't. You think you've just turned up on the shores of Sydney, on the shores of Australia, this new market to go and conquer. You come out of the water and you realize what the hell am I doing? Actually, I don't even know where to start. You go into your first few meetings and it's like crickets and actually worse. It's we don't like. Well, it's not that we don't like your product, but it's taking our students backwards. It's the ultimate test in really listening to the customers, isn't it Like really really listening? And so I guess from there you know, obviously you did establish Australia. Did you end up in other markets as well?
Speaker 2:Not really. So I think one of the things we realized is that when you don't have a whole lot of resource, you've got to get very good at saying no to things right. So you really need to be very, very, very clear on the priority and not trying to do too many things. We always had this idea of like we'll sort of beat shed in our own backyard. New Zealand will be our proven grounds. If we can establish ourselves in Australia, we can probably scale internationally elsewhere, and so we really doubled down Australia. That's what we invested our resources and our time.
Speaker 2:I spent just every other week I've been in Australia kind of commuting from Todonga and yeah, I mean it was just. I always talk about like compound consistency, like I think consistency is like one of the most underrated characteristics that someone can have. I mean it's just one of those weird things to say. Like if you were interviewing someone you said, hey, what do you think you know one of your strengths are, and said like I'm consistently average, you'd probably be like you're probably not right for everything you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nice line though, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but you know like 100%, yeah, but you know, like that relative to someone who can come out of the gates swinging but then kind of, you know, tapers off quickly. I mean I'd have the form at any day, right, and you know, it was just years of just grinding it out and I personally, I had this wiring where I'm not very competitive when it comes to other people, but I'm extremely competitive with myself, like I have the highest standards that I apply to myself, and so I always just had this measure which is, even if I'm leading the business and I'm the product guy, I'm gonna, whatever the highest sales person, person of the team that's bringing the most revenue, whatever they're doing, I just need to do double that. I need to do double everything. Whatever target I've got, I'm just gonna double it. No real reason why, but I just love the challenge and I guess I competed at a high level in sport for a long time.
Speaker 2:It was a point there where I thought I'd get professional with cycling and so I think that kind of a climatizing to just you compete with yourself when you're in the saddle right, you're always trying to just find those like margins to play in that are gonna incrementally improve your performance, and I really applied that same thinking to business.
Speaker 2:So you know, just simple things Like in the morning you do a core block and you ring 15 to 20 people. Now it never got easier Like I hated it. It was just awful, but I knew that if I kept doing it consistently eventually it would lead to really good results. And in the end, you know, I was pulling in some pretty significant dollars, in fact selling to pretty much all the schools in Australia, to the point where I knew the school so well even up until quite recently. If you've made any score in Australia, there's about a 75% chance I could name who the HRD is. You know who the senior management are, what products they've line, what the product Like. I just I was so obsessed with executing and just being consistent with performance and I think that was a real key for us is just every day doing the right thing but the same thing and just not.
Speaker 2:You know when you have an off day, going away, resetting, coming back in and just being consistent. So I think, yeah, it's almost compound interest.
Speaker 1:It's the equivalent of, you know the Warren Buffett and the power of compound interest and what it can do. So presumably you know, roll forward the businesses. You know I don't know what it was like at the time where you start sort of looking to exit. And you know, have you got other management involved at this point in time? Have you got other? You know, is there a transfer of leadership going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our first transaction was with two private equity companies One based it's actually a Malaysian listed business, mulfa, and five year capital based at a Wallara or Warren Wallara in Sydney, and they came into the business in late 2017. And really the purpose of the transaction was really to free Craig and Shayna, so the two brothers Shayna, come back into the business. A few years earlier they had their goals. They were kind of set and done and you know they wanted to move on.
Speaker 1:And that was great.
Speaker 2:I was in a different position, and that I was. We were seeing market signals that this thing was just going to continue growing and I was actually, you know, really, really tired. But I was extremely excited by the opportunity and I've always been energized by the opportunity of building something that's truly like world leading, and I thought, with more resourcing, we could really go really fast. So Craig and Shayna stepped out in 2017. And, yeah, I was just leading the business and we really, you know the next two or three years, we really just went to a whole another level. We bought in more salespeople, more custom successpeople, and you know the principles of how we grew.
Speaker 2:The business just didn't really change. Like we were just still incredibly focused on the end user. We were very, very, very relationship driven. We were like deeply data driven as well. I think that's one of the things that we were very good at. So, being intellectually honest about what's working and what isn't, we were good at.
Speaker 2:So you know every it sounds crazy to say now, but every Tuesday night I would do an all nighter. That was my data night and from like, put the kids to bed 9, 9.30, I would start and I just wouldn't sleep. I just wouldn't sleep that night and it just it sounds bizarre to say now, but you were just working so incredibly hard. That was the only time I could do it. But I had this incredible dashboard, real clarity on you know where the points, where were the lead indicators that were concerning when were the lead indicators of charm? And so we were.
Speaker 2:You know, we were a really world-class team. I looked back at that time and I go, wow, we had an amazing kind of a DNA that we had developed and an amazing go to market. And yeah, I look back with just a lot of pride and you know, it's always the grass is always greener, I think, when you look back, because you know, equally, it was incredibly tiring, but there was just such a sense of, like you know, achievement. There were so many stories of people that were just having these like amazing experiences with EP and yeah, it seems to stories I could tell, but probably from another time.
Speaker 1:And then KKR comes in. At that point I'm not sure what year that was Big player, big New York based fund, huge how does I mean? A lot of people that are in this world, in the startup world, certainly by the time they're achieving scale, are aware or broadly aware of the role that private equity can play and may have their views on it. What was your experience with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, look, the experience with 5D and Molfo was really positive. I mean, they want to see, they want to see growth. You know, they want to see you essentially hitting the targets that you've seen. You could, you know. So they're certainly good in terms of like, helping you with build capability in the business, introductions to portfolio companies, those sorts of things. But you know, I think that first phase of private equity for us was really good.
Speaker 2:There was a recognition in sort of 2018, 2019, that you know I'd been going for many years. At this point I was really tired and really the question was like, look, do you want to stay on as head of EP, do you want to stay on a CEO? Or, you know, at the next liquidity event, do you want to exit? And really, I really want to stay on a CEO. I saw an enormous opportunity for the business and, yeah, I was really excited. But the reality was there was thinking like we probably need to bring in an external CEO if you're going to have any opportunity to exit in the next transaction, obviously privately work within fund cycles and fund lives and things. So the decision was made look, we'll go and hire a CEO and it gives you that optionality to exit fully if you want to. So we did that. We bought in a guy in 2019, an external individual. Yeah, it was a really interesting experience. I mean, like I said earlier, the way the sales cycle works is you lock in all your revenue six months ahead of time, 12 months ahead of time. So we were really fortunate that when I was handing over the reins, he didn't have to do anything until the next year, like the revenues were locked in for 2020. And the thinking was well, if I can go and build a team internationally out of somewhere like Singapore, there's no reason we can't do in Australia in a lot of different markets and you've got your sort of beach-shed markets where you've got significant time and proximity to current curricular and things. You look at the characteristics of where there's minimal kind of investment to get to the maximum return or at least attraction in the market.
Speaker 2:And so I moved to Singapore with a family late 2019, just after the new CEO had started and it was a big culture shock. He had a very, very different way of operating. He's very good at storytelling and building narrative, but there was this sort of like yeah, I must admit I was a parent and word about. Okay, like I think it is so unique and used to this, like hyper-octane, we're driving this thing forward super innovative. His focus was more around story. It was very, very different. So I must admit I was pretty anxious to see that sort of transition of power. But you've got to back your leaders, and so I was rowing in behind him as hard as I could, trying to help him get settled in the role whilst moving out of Singapore and then cope with it.
Speaker 2:So we'd only been in Singapore our family for seven weeks until Singapore was locked down and it was yeah, I mean, that's a whole nother experience. It was like it was like the coming of time for tech. I mean, we just experienced these just gaol-forced tailwinds like you can't imagine and my worries about the new appointment. I was like, look, it doesn't matter, anyone could be in that role and we're going to just explode in growth. And we certainly grew internationally. We did.
Speaker 2:Well, it was just a really bizarre time. I remember certain sales team members saying to me if you were back in ANZ, we would be going to the moon right now. This would be crazy. And I was like, well, you are going to the moon. This is just ridiculous. This server, things were like 5X what they normally are, and schools were just coming in. It was just incredible.
Speaker 2:And I remember there's one particular individual I used to always say to our sales team guys, you're not water takers, you're here to build relationships and be product leaders. You're there to go and learn what their pain points are. You're really there to help them solve what is a very big problem, which is student engagement and helping students really move the dial on academic outcomes. I remember he rang me and he goes hey, good news, I don't know what's going on. He goes I'm officially an order taker and he was obviously trying to wind me up and he said no, he said it's just ridiculous. He said the schools that I've been trying to get into for the last two or three years, they're literally coming to me and just signing any contract. They're so desperate for any resource that's going to help them.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of this bizarre period where it felt like the business was just slowing down enormously. Innovation just really slowed down. That sort of real, what I sort of think of as like commercial creativity and the real principles that made EP what it was, very successful were just drying up so quickly. Yet we were going through this, you know, period of what it had to be like amazing growth. So it was a funny time. But I certainly learned over that period. I felt less and less, I guess, just proud of what we had built. It was really funny, you know, like people often say, oh, you can't take. You know, don't take business to personally, you can't take it to person. I was like, well, I take it really personally. I used to say to my team like you're a product leader, if you're a PM, like I want you to be upset by things because I want you to own this role. And it was very much like it was just stories.
Speaker 2:I remember one story was Shane, the CTO and co-founder. He was running a school and there was a particular girl who was sitting at a test and I was looking at her across the room and she was working away on this test and you could just see her start like start to kind of get really anxious and she was trying to like look for a teacher, put her hand up, and I was like the teacher hasn't seen her, I'll walk her over and be like okay, she was using education. She was just like having a full panic and what had happened was that it was a multi-choice question. You couldn't click on the answer and I was like, oh, maybe she could go back and then come back in. No, that didn't work and she was just panicking and I was like, shane, do you know what's going on here? You know, I was pretty kind of like, oh, it's just a little bug, a little glitch, just a little glitch. And Shane was like, oh, my gosh, like what is going on here? We're just trying to work it out. And the teacher came over everything okay, and we were like, oh, just a little bug. And it was just one of those experiences where I was like, wow, if that had come through as like a juror ticket or some sort of a support issue, that would sit in sort of a laundry list of items, a multi-choice question.
Speaker 2:But actually what happened is that girl was a really high performer. I think she was trying to get a scholarship or there was some story there and she knew the answer, but she couldn't put the right answer in. And I remember talking to Shane outside after and I said to Shane, it's not about the drop down. I was like it's about her story. She's telling herself Like she wants to be top in the class, and it really gave us this sort of new perspective on really like living with your customer and really understanding, like what are they actually doing with your tool, what are they actually trying to achieve, like looking at your particular solution in their context, and a lot of that sort of way of working or thinking. Yeah, certainly we weren't doing and I don't sound too negative but there's a lot of people that were saying to me like what are we doing? This is not the EP way, this is not how we grow.
Speaker 1:So it was really hard.
Speaker 2:You know, there was a real period of, I guess, just cognitive dissonance, if you will Like. Just I don't really recognize what we're becoming. So it was a funny period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tim, I think this has been an absolute masterclass on engaging with the customer right from the very earliest days and right through the journey and remaining humble and keeping a mindset of being a humble guy through that process.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, I think there's a lot for those listening to take out of this. I think what I'd like to do is, down the line, is get you back on the show and talk about your new journey with Revision Village as a CEO of Revision Village as part of the Crimson Education Empire. That is really a very impressive story. Love to get you back to talk about that. But thank you so much today. I mean, you've given us, as I say, an absolute masterclass on how to engage with the customer and, I guess, almost a bit of an insight to what it takes at times to build something from essentially nothing through to something that is commercially is quite a phenomenal success. Those stories about just that compounding consistency and reliable consistency is phenomenal. So really appreciate your time today, tim, and look forward to getting you back again next time to talk about the next chapter.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Thanks, greg, it's been fun. Cheers.