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Simple solution to big-time expansion [EMBIN (Emerging Markets Business Information News]
[October 17, 2014]

Simple solution to big-time expansion [EMBIN (Emerging Markets Business Information News]


(EMBIN (Emerging Markets Business Information News) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) BRISBANE-based marketing software company Simple Technology has deliberately kept a low profile since it was started by ­former APN News & Media advertising executives James Charlesworth and Russell Lister in 2008.



After boot-strapping for five years and taking on some seed capital investors only in the past year or so, Charlesworth says Simple is on the cusp of raising about $10 million in series A funding from two to three venture capital funds in Australia and the US to help fund a major push into North America.

The company is already being talked about by those who consider it the next Atlassian or Campaign Monitor — Australian firms that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from US venture capital firms as they expanded internationally. Simple is understood to have been profitable for two years and expects to have revenues of more than $5m this financial year.


“There's a real opportunity for us to create a billion-dollar company over the next five years,†Charlesworth says. “The next 12 months is about proving out the key metrics of the business and being established here and in the US with repeatable patterns to scale the business further.†Big brand marketers are signing on: Simple has only 15 staff but already numbers CBA, Westpac, AMP, an unnamed big local retailer and US data storage firm Brocade among its 15 clients.

“We've had a lot of (investment) offers from the US that were conditional on us relocating our headquarters over there,†says Charlesworth, who is the chief executive and, with chief operating officer Lister, retains majority ownership.

“We've got a firm focus to build the next significant software company from Australia. We're in the final stages of negotiating with our investors. We've been pretty deliberate about flying under the radar. That was because what we're doing is pretty disruptive to the big industry vendors such as IBM and the like.†Simple was designed to be a holistic marketing operations and collaboration platform and system of record.

It claims to be unique in that it caters for all aspects of a marketer's job, from budgeting and internal communications to collaboration with external agencies, campaign approval and reporting, and also handling new communications needs such as content marketing and social media, with a Facebook-inspired user interface that marketers enjoy using.

The size of the global market as underserviced marketing departments look to adopt new software platforms is estimated to be in the billions — and above.

Major technology firms from Oracle to Salesforce.com to Adobe to SAS have developed specialised marketing clouds as marketers spend more on digital and take more of their communications activity in-house.

“It's a hot area,†says Paul Bassat, co-founder of online recruitment firm Seek and investment vehicle Square Peg Capital (Bassat could not confirm whether his fund had looked at investing in ­Simple).

Xero global chief marketing officer Andy Lark — who used the product when he was chief marketing officer at CBA and later became an early investor through his personal company Group Lark — says the platform “has the potential to be used by any marketer anywhere … Absolutely it could be the next Atlassian. I've yet to show it to a marketer that hasn't said, 'When can I have it?' And I've shown it to dozens.†A long-time entrepreneur, Charlesworth, with his mother, former newspaper sales executive Sheila Charlesworth (an entrepreneur in her own right), started an advertising agency 20 years ago that developed software to customise terms and conditions for mobile phone plan ads.

Later he started media sales representation firm Intermedia, again with his mother as an investor.

“The interesting part of the challenge that you face is getting people to understand your idea,†Charlesworth says. “It takes proof points.

“Another key point that sometimes goes missing with tech start-ups is building a significant company takes time, and we want Simple to be around for decades to come.†(c) 2014 EMBIN (Emerging Markets Business Information News) Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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