WANNABE a rockstar?
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How about a rockstar business founder?
Brendan Yell, long-time proponent of internet startups and current director at IBM company SoftLayer, gave a rousing presentation at Bega’s co-working space on Friday.
The COWS Near the Coast crew heard of Mr Yell’s colourful history as an early worker at the world’s first commercial online service CompuServe, bringing the first cable modem to Australia (installing it in his parents’ house to test it), the founder of free samples website ShopFree.com.au, and his attempts at luring AOL to Australia (while making sure he’d registered the domain name aol.com.au in the process!), before linking up with INXS to run their digital operations for several years!
According to Mr Yell, working with INXS was just like running a startup business.
He said the band members were all so different, but just like a startup, they used their complementary skills to work towards and achieve a common purpose.
As for specific lessons learnt during his career he could pass along to prospective startup founders?
“Move fast – sometimes you’re better off making a wrong decision than no decision at all,” Mr Yell said.
“Secondly, as you coders will know, it’s never finished, it’s never perfect.
“And finally – have lots of fun!”
Mr Yell was asked how someone should choose an idea worth following if they had too many rattling around.
“It definitely helps doing something you’re passionate about,” he replied.
“There are plenty of online businesses that no-one has heard about, but someone’s sitting back making $200,000 working a couple of hours a day from them and they are very happy.
Mr Yell also highlighted the benefits of groups like COWS for regional areas.
While he said the NBN would be a key to attracting “skilled seachangers” to the Bega Valley, having links to like-minded people through the co-working space was already a big drawcard.
He also praised COWS’ members’ efforts in taking software coding and online entrepreneurship to the next generation.
“A lot of people have the ideas, but not the tools,” he said.
“The density of people is not that big an issue – it’s more important to get people together.”
