INVESTING BUSINESS EXPANSION
Growingyourcompanygloballyrequiresaninvestmentskillsetof a differentkind
I
n October 2014, the then Abbott gov-
ernment announced its industry
innovation and competitiveness agen-
da. It was an action plan to build a
stronger Australia against a backdrop
of 23 years of economic growth – a plan that
would be challenged by falling commodity
prices, increased government borrowing,
an ageing population and flat productivity.
In its first few pages, the agenda states that
by 2050 more than half the world’s economic
output will be from the Asia-Pacific region. It
says Australian businesses will have increasing
opportunities to access distant markets, global
value chains, skilled labour and investor capital.
“Large businesses will have more opportu-
nities to scale up for a world market and small
businesses will be able to find niche markets
for their products overseas,” says the agenda.Learn the language
Turn to 2015, and Australian entrepreneur
Paul Chapman cracks the Japanese market.
After co-founding Moneytree in Japan in 2012,
Chapman led the business through its form-
ative years, including the successful launch
of a personal finance app in 2013. That was
great, but it was only the beginning.
Japanese accounting firms expressed inter-
est in Moneytree becoming a data-sharing
platform, an offer Chapman and the business
initially declined. After re-evaluation of the
fintech’s mission, though, the international
expansion began.
“Our mission was always to act as a bridge
between financial institutions and their
customers and to make the experience better
for the customer. Then we realised we could
make it better for the customer by also making
it better for the institution,” says Chapman.
Later in 2015, Moneytree received venture
capital funding from all three of Japan’s mega
banks. It now has 25 financial institutions using
its data-sharing platform, which supports
3000 data sources and is embedded in the
mobile apps of each of those top three banks.
That re-evaluation conversation, in Chap-
man’s view, was part of the entrepreneurial
learning curve.
Well before he began to raise money frominvestors in Japan, Chapman knew that to suc-
ceed it was necessary to master the Japanese
language. His first visit to the country came
after he finished high school in Australia,
spending his gap year learning at a Japanese
school before beginning university.
“If you want to raise money from Japanese
venture capital firms, for the most part you
should speak Japanese. It was really about
trying to figure out two things – how to raise
money for investment for the first time and
how to do it in Japanese. That was quite the
challenge,” says Chapman.
In the early days of Moneytree the
business thought it would be able
to raise money from Australian
venture capitalists (VCs) as well
as Japanese investors.
“Australia’s a small market
and surely they [VCs] would
like the investment and target
a bigger market like Japan and a
company with prospects to take
something global. It wasn’t the
case,” says Chapman.
“Venture capitalists globally
are risk adverse. They want to
set up lower-risk bets and at the
time Australian VCs and American
VCs almost had no desire to invest
in Japan. But now they’ve tried China
and few other places and they’re starting
to look further afield.”Make the first move
Chapman says investors and entrepreneurs
look for patterns. They look for things that
are working or the early signs that something
might work.
James Dutton, founder and chief executive of
Nutricare, had this type of vision. He quickly
realised his PATCH range of compostable
and hypoallergenic bamboo bandages had a
first-to-market advantage and would create
new categories in healthcare stores globally.
The idea for the bandages was born after
Dutton’s son had a bad reaction to a common
wound covering. Initially self-funding the
research and development of the bamboo
bandages, Dutton then sought a friends’Taking care of
STORY DARREN SNYDER