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Idealog.co.nz | The Transformation Issue
profile
CLOCKWISE
FROM TOP LEFT:
Chief data officer
Dr Xuxu Wang leads
a meeting, behind
the scenes of Predict
HQ's product and
Campbell Brown,
Xuxu Wang, Robert
Kern and Yen Lim,
the company's chief
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SRVVLEOH“As soon as that happened, we knew we had a real
business and we knew that it was going to be something
we could apply not just to travel, but to other sectors as
well,” he says.
Brown began raising seed capital and was joined
by co-founders Robert Kern (who is also CTO) and Mike
Valentine. When Uber came on board as a customer,
Brown took it as a signal that he needed to be closer
to investors and clients by shifting to the US.
“I’d done GrabOne and that was local and that
was cool, but selling to four-and-a-half million people –
it didn’t really excite me to do something like that again,”
Brown says.
After 18 months getting Predict HQ up-and-running
in Auckland, he shifted to San Francisco with his
family to start hitting the pavement in search of some
venture capital.
“I knew the only way we were going to scale this
business was by going to the US. Being in the venture
world in America, you really see the value they bring.
They open so many doors.”
But following the money didn’t come easily. Brown
calls the experience “brutal”, and says the legwork
required in Silicon Valley isn’t for the faint hearted.
“It took a year to really network. I was Kiwi, no one
knew who I was. No one gave a shit about One Republic,
no one cared about GrabOne, so I had no network. I spent
a year building that network up and meeting founders
one or two years ahead of us because I knew when it
became time to raise, the best kind of introduction or
referral to a VC is a warm introduction.”
Brown’s perseverance led to people telling him
he was crazy, he says.
“A lot of people said that I was dreaming when I
was doing it, but when you believe in what you’re doing
fundamentally and listening to customers and what they
say they need, that conviction you can’t get rid of.
“When you talk to Kiwis about it – I’m a Kiwi, so
I can say this – they almost get a little bit upset at you
like, ‘How can you have a dream that big?’ and you go,
well, it’s actually, genuinely possible.”
Over that time, Brown learnt the importance of
building up what he calls “scar tissue” by putting himself
out there, failing fast and trying again, which honed his
pitch to the level of quality needed to impress the VCs.
“Sometimes failure makes the business and idea
much stronger than you ever thought it could be. Some
of the things we’ve sold have come out of problems, they’ve
created real assets in our business. It takes time,” he says.
“Every day you’re getting beaten to shit and then
the next day, you’ve got to go back in, super confident
and pitch it again and pitch it again. You learn a lot
about yourself.
“My first pitch was absolutely diabolical. It was
horrible. By the time I’d finished pitching, I was on point.
I knew exactly what I needed to say, which is why we got
the investors we did.”
One of those investors was Theresia Gouw, who’s
named as the richest female venture capitalist in the US
by Forbes. Brown didn’t have a clue who she was at the
time while pitching but luckily, she liked what she saw
and bundled Brown in her car to go across town and
meet her partners.
Predict HQ went on to raise US$10 million at the
end of 2018 from the likes of Aspect Ventures (Gouw
is a co-founder), Lightspeed and returning investors
Rampersand, Addventure and Tony Faure.
It was one of the largest series A rounds out of New
Zealand recently, with Brown saying it took about seven
months up: three months of pitching, two months of due
diligence, and two months of sorting out the contract.
He also says being naïve was a superpower in front of
Silicon Valley’s most powerful.
“I had no idea who Theresa was – I didn’t know she’d
done all these amazing things or was one of the most
powerful VCs in the Valley,” Brown says. “And so, you go in
there, and you’re just yourself. You see these guys wearing
khakis, they’ve been to Stanford or Berkley. That ain’t me.
“I’m very passionate about what I do, I’ve got a very
clear vision of where the business is going and I’m a Kiwi
and I embrace that, and you become more memorable.
That doesn’t mean you can just rock up, talk shit and get
money. You definitely have to be a good storyteller. You
have to tell them how you’re building defensibility, the
sales process you’re going to lay out, you talk about your
competitors, and what your secret sauce is.”
He says often, founders are of the mentality that
they’ll win New Zealand first, then expand to the
Australian market and further afield.
“Just be aware technology moves so quickly that the
person who has the exact same platform as you is winning
America. Then they’re also onto winning Europe and that’s
30, 40, 50 times the size of Australia and New Zealand
combined, so let that settle in.”
Jim Cassidy from Sampersand says Predict HQ
was the first New Zealand company his Australian firm
invested in due to this global vision.
“You can build a really great New Zealand business
and have a great lifestyle from that, or you build a business
and say for this to be successful, it has to be outside of
New Zealand,” Cassidy says. “We saw that with Campbell
right away – the drive to take the business global truly
from day one.”