Last week I had the privilege of attending a Melbourne University Alumni event at Masani where Andrew Bassat, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Seek.com.au. This was a fantastic event and was great to tap into some of the thought processes behind the building of one of the great Australian success stories… particularly online.
Some of the highlights from the discussion for me were;
- Online is far more of a winner takes all game as opposed to the offline world where 4 to 5 big players can survive
- Classifieds are even more cut throat with it difficult to even sustain 2 main players.
- Thus, getting to critical mass is one of the most important aspects of success in the online world.
- It is important to have investors that have faith in the vision of the company. Often, early on, there is pressure to start delivering profits and these need to be resisted until the businesses position has been solidified.
- For online ventures it is far more important to get the critical few right than getting 4 projects out of 13 right.
It was great to spend some time listening to Andrew’s thoughts and I have to say thank you to Melbourne University for holding the event and Andrew for his open and frank discussion.