Leveraging technology to support growth: helping businesses successfully develop and take tech products to market, with Scott Middleton, Founder and C...

This year, the Australian EtA and Search Fund community is looking forward to its first big event for the region. The EtA Forum (www.etaforum.com.au) will be held in Manly Beach in Sydney, on Friday 16th September.

In today's episode of the next step, I speak to Scott Middleton, who is the founder and CEO of Terem. Terem is a technology based business that provides tech product development support for big to small businesses across Australia and New Zealand, all the way from strategy to product to engineering and everything in between.

Scott and his team have recently developed a JV structure whereby they partner with businesses typically small to medium type businesses around building technology that supports the growth of those businesses. And as such, has come across the search model in the last six to 12 months and has been really engaged, so much so that he's become an excellent supporter of the community and will be sponsoring the EtA Forum this month.

He'll also be speaking at the event, on a panel about the various forms of search and will be giving us a description of the JV model that he and his team are bringing to market that leverages some elements of the search model, partnering with searchers to buy great businesses.

Scott has got a range of experience from building his own computer game years and years ago through working on technology projects with VCs startups, high growth businesses, all the way through to government organizations like the ATO. So he's got a wide range of experience. And in some parts of the conversation, I find it hard not to end up down all sorts of rabbit holes. So it was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it.

www.etaforum.com.au

Connect with Pete : https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteseligman/

Connect with Scott : https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmiddleton/

What we discussed:

03:15 Scott gives us an insight into his background and how he got where he is today.

05:07 Scott tells us about when he was a kid, how he built and sold a game that was sold globally.

08:59 Scott discusses his experience dealing with corporate culture, big business, the bureaucracy in approval structures & processes compared with the agility of the entrepreneurial spirit.

17:03 Scott tells us how he has found the search space so far and what things resonate most in relation to the search model and search community.

24:14 Pete asks Scott if he has started to see an increase in opportunity in relation to the JV model he is building.

Quotes:

I've been an engineer working on some large projects, and I kind of bring all that together. I've also lost a lot of money. I've probably lost about a million dollars of my own money on let's call it - they weren't a bad idea - though just poorly executed is how I would put it. I have to learn decisions the hard way. Because I'm playing with my own money, not someone else's.

That's really my background and why Terem came about. I just saw a real need to help organizations build tech products better, and help their teams perform better.

The exciting thing about those big organizations is that there's really big opportunities attached to them. We've launched products with Qantas, for example, that have moved the needle on their share price, and gone to millions of people in the first week.

We can push boundaries more, which we think is kind of necessary to make things work and make decisions faster and learn faster.

When I'm investing, I'm looking at the stock market saying I'm investing in Company X, who's listed, because I believe in what they're doing in their market, not because I want them to be a VC.

The way that we've observed to do it is not so much through an innovation lab. An innovation lab in a business is going to make incremental change on the edges, where you get disruptive outcomes in small teams, isolated from the day to day, freedom to operate.

Get them outside the building, let them run separately, don't put red tape around them, let them do what they're going to do for their specific purpose, and you'll get much better success.

What I like about the search community is it just kind of vibes with my approach, which is that really methodical considered, take out your downside, give yourself options, build your cash flow.