#awinewith Jodie Imam
MEET Jodie
Jodie is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Tractor Ventures, Find Jodie here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Jodie, welcome to Spark tv.
Jodie Imam (00:09):
Thanks, Danielle. Great to meet you. Cheers. Cheers.
Danielle Lewis (00:13):
So good, love. You can
Jodie Imam (00:14):
Still, we're in different states. Yeah, that's
Danielle Lewis (00:16):
Right. That's right. I promise it's late enough for me to be drinking wine. So we are good. So I have been a huge follower of yours on LinkedIn for quite some time, and you've come highly, highly recommended in the female founder arena. So super excited to talk to you today. Thank you.
Jodie Imam (00:39):
Thank you so much.
Danielle Lewis (00:41):
So why don't we just start easy. Who are you and what do you do?
Jodie Imam (00:46):
Gosh, you're
Danielle Lewis (00:48):
Like, oh, that's not an easy start.
Jodie Imam (00:53):
I've been doing so much therapy lately that that is a very complicated question.
Danielle Lewis (00:57):
Yeah, that's right. It's like, oh my God, who am I?
Jodie Imam (01:01):
Do you want to know my title? My inner child? I
Danielle Lewis (01:05):
Mean, let's go deep. We do have wine. This could go anywhere and I'm kind of excited about it,
Jodie Imam (01:12):
Assuming that we're talking about a title with career currently and co, CEO at Attract Ventures. At Attract Ventures. We do non dollar capital and support for technology companies, and we started two years ago and it really came from the needs. So my co-founders and Matt and April Allen who have been in the ecosystem for a long time as well. We've all had multiple startups ourselves. So half the team has already been to this rodeo before many times. And then the other half are finance kind of professionals that we've found along the way. So we do non-validated funding, so it's basically a loan against future revenue. We're also doing an inventory advance now, which is a loan for either inventory if you're an e-commerce company or if you're a manufacturing company and you need to buy some parts or stock or invest in machinery to produce product. So we have 17 of us in the team. We have deployed $30 million in the last two years to about a hundred founders. So it seems to be the right place, right time.
Danielle Lewis (02:22):
Totally. So in my vintage, it was all equity, it was all raising capital for equity. And only in the last couple of years have I really started to see the investment ecosystem, especially in Australia, start to change. And that was going to be my question to you. So why did you go down the non-dilutive path that is so different for this market? I love it. It's really cool actually.
Jodie Imam (02:49):
Well, yeah, thank you. Great question. And it sort of begs the next question, why tractor and how does that make sense? And so we talk about tractors and rockets, and so the rocket is very much that equity, the VC path, and well, there was, if you had a startup and you needed money, you looked for investors, and then the VC investor is a specific model again, so they want to back rockets that land on the moon. And the ones that do it, it's very exciting, but also most of them blow up along the way. And so I've
Danielle Lewis (03:24):
Never heard anyone say that, and I love that and I'm stealing it.
Jodie Imam (03:28):
It's true. And I think as investors and in the ecosystem and supporters, we've seen that many times and we love our VC friends, but the model itself just lends itself to backing that winner that is going to get to the moon. The ones that are struggling along the way, unfortunately, it's just crush and burn because that can't be supporting all. So we figured, yeah. Okay, so one in a hundred startups maybe fit that VC model. What about the other 99 and what about other methods of funding? And I think we talk to farmers all the time, and the ones that are looking for non-value funding are the ones that they've already sort of got along the journey enough to know there's product market fit and enough to know that the shares are potentially very valuable and they don't want to be getting rid of them early and not having them down the track. Yes. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (04:20):
Wow, that's super cool. And I love the new inventory model as well. So obviously this show mostly we talk to female founders and one of the biggest challenges, especially in hardware or product-based businesses is that capital outlay. And you're right, a lot of early founders who've proven the model know that they can do it. It is just that barrier of upfront capital that's sometimes an issue.
Jodie Imam (04:47):
Yeah, that's right. Exactly.
Danielle Lewis (04:50):
Awesome. So how did you get here? So this is all fabulous to talk about, but I'm sure you don't wake up in the morning one day and just go, oh, I'm just going to start this
Jodie Imam (05:01):
Investment firm. What's
Danielle Lewis (05:02):
Your story thus far? Was there Korea? You mentioned other startups. Talk to me about that journey.
Jodie Imam (05:09):
Yeah, it's funny, now that I'm here, it seems that everything I've done is the perfect thing, perfect combination of things to do, but God, I was never in the plan. I did a commerce marketing degree. I went into the typical corporate graduate program. I worked for an IT company called NCR and I was in Sydney. I worked for them in Sydney on a graduate program. Went to London and I was selling support services contracts for ATMs and point of sale to big banks in the uk and then came back to Ericsson in Sydney and was selling services around mobile phone networks. So highly technical, really blokey world. And after three years, I realized that it was just not the space for me. Not that it was blokey, but just that it was, I don't know, I saw a lot of redundancies. I didn't see role models or people that I wanted to be in the future. So the women back then, this is early two thousands, they needed to dress as men to get the top jobs, and not just in clothing, but in just the way they behaved. And I saw a lot of that and there wasn't many squats for women in those top jobs, so they kind of had to adapt. So I ran away. I
Danielle Lewis (06:31):
Did a decade in Telstra, so totally, totally get you totally understand. I know
Jodie Imam (06:35):
This, it's funny because at the time I didn't realize it so much, I just kind of subconsciously thought that's not the life I want to lead. So I ran away to the fashion industry and didn't realize I'd be there that long. I just thought I'd explore it. I worked with the fashion designer, Leona Everton, in her second business. And so she was just starting out. She had two stores at the time. We grew up to 25. We had stores in London, la, Hong Kong. We had a hundred staff, 25 stores in total. We took manufacturing offshore to China, so just every year. So I was there for nearly nine years and running it as their gm. And just every year the job was different. So I just was so entertained the whole time, but I still had this kind of yearning to do my own thing. So then I left and started occasional Butler with my then husband, which was based on our own need to get some small jobs done around the home and office. But we also were looking at trends in the US and we'd seen TaskRabbit, which was a marketplace similar, and oh my God, we want to be TaskRabbit here in Australia. So we built it all out and we were the first kind of player there. And Airtasker was a week behind us to launch.
Danielle Lewis (07:53):
Oh my God. Wow. What timing?
Jodie Imam (07:57):
We had a huge run in. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, we ended up selling that to Airtasker four years later and also started one of Melbourne's first coworking spaces, Depot eight here in Fran, which we ran really profitably for the whole eight years and grew a community, grew it organically, very bootstrapped until the pandemic hit, and we had to close it down, unfortunately, but we made that decision pretty rapidly. So we closed it in March, 2020.
Danielle Lewis (08:25):
Wow. That's quick.
Jodie Imam (08:27):
Shit. This is not going
Danielle Lewis (08:28):
To work. Yeah, yeah. We're out to done. Yeah, good foresight. Because so many of us were like, surely this will be like a week and we'll be fine.
Jodie Imam (08:36):
Yeah, it was lucky. I'm still grateful we made that quick decision. Oh yeah.
Danielle Lewis (08:41):
Awesome.
Jodie Imam (08:42):
And so then just did a whole lot of ecosystem stuff as well. After selling occasional Butler, I've been mentoring to the Wade Institute. I ran the SB Accelerator for female founders or women led business and just a lot of mentoring, advising, investing in startups. So that's where I met Matt from just all those events and getting around. And we were advisors together for different founders. And then he actually had the idea of Tractor Ventures and he and April wanted to join together. They hadn't worked together before, but knew they needed somebody to run the thing. Really a buffer executor. And so they thought of me and it instantly resonated to the idea having been in that struggle myself before. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (09:35):
Wow. I have a lot of questions. You've done a lot of things, but super interesting. Your comment around how on reflection, everything was the right thing. Everything has led you to the point you're at today, so right. Sometimes you can't see it when you're writing it, you're like, what am I doing right now? But then you look back like, oh yeah, draw from there. Draw from there. Draw from there.
Jodie Imam (09:59):
That's right. That's cool.
Danielle Lewis (10:00):
That's very cool. What was it like exiting the Airtasker?
Jodie Imam (10:05):
Stressful, I guess because we were neck and neck with them and then they were getting away from us. They were getting all these funds, they were raising capital, we were still bootstrapping. We realized after about three years we're going to have to raise money. We resisted it. We just didn't want, especially for me, I didn't want to be indebted to investors. I just didn't want to have to take someone else's money as long as I could resist. I just wanted to resist. But it became like we needed to. So we went on that journey and appointed a board, and then we're tossing around ideas about what investors we might take on or what investment and how we might potentially just all the different options. And we'd been talking to Tim since the very start. So one of the options was, well, maybe Airtasker want to acquire us and let's explore that. And the board were unanimous in agreeing that that's what we should explore. And it was just good timing because he at the time was raising money from new Chinese investors as well as Australian, and I think it was at a 20 million round. And so for him, being able to have an acquisition and tell a big story was really good timing. That's cool. That became the best option for us at the time.
Danielle Lewis (11:27):
That's really interesting too. I think it's interesting more than one way. I think that a lot of people when they get started, and I think I have a bit of a gripe with startup media that it's very much like raise capital, raise capital, get big fancy offices, spend all of this money. And I only say that in jest because that's what I did. That was my scrunches startup story. We did that until we changed our mind on how we wanted to approach business. But I do love that actually tabling different ideas and bootstrap for a while, go down the acquisition path. I think that a lot of founders really struggle because they think there's only one path. They think that to be a successful startup, you have to go out and raise millions in capital.
Jodie Imam (12:18):
Yeah. Well, I still say, and it's changing a little bit, I can see the media changing a little bit. And I talked to journalists and they say that they're wanting to write more stories, the real stories, not just the capital raise, but oh my God, when we were doing a cash every single day startup Daily, this person raises, and I still say that one of our biggest competitors at Tractor is that headline, because farmers still think, if I get the headline, I'm validated. It means my idea is a good one. Someone's put money into it and it's been published.
Danielle Lewis (12:51):
I know. And it drives me crazy because, so I'm a sales person by trade and I'm like, yeah, cool that Startup Daily publish an article by your capital raise. None of your customers read that publication. It
Jodie Imam (13:04):
Doesn't help
Danielle Lewis (13:04):
You grow your business at all. It blows my mind, but interesting. And I think amazing that people like you are actually looking for opportunities and to help inside the ecosystem. So I'm curious to know, you mentioned you've done some female founder mentoring in the past. You obviously are a female founder. What have you found, and obviously working in corporate in more of a male dominated area, you might have a bit of a lens on all of this. Do you think that it's genuinely different for a female to start a business?
Jodie Imam (13:45):
Yes. I think a lot of women start businesses that we dunno about in our ecosystem. So women naturally will have ideas and will be able and naturally sort of bootstrap and leverage their community and be given back to their community. When it comes to technology, scale up business, there's a requirement for capital, then it's very different. And there's so many, it's just a Pandora's box of why there's
Danielle Lewis (14:14):
Not enough time or wine or our podcast.
Jodie Imam (14:20):
So I think we can make, I try every day to make some little chip in that change cycle. But yeah, I feel like it's generations worth of stuff.
Danielle Lewis (14:33):
And it is, I mean, we won't go too deep on it, but I think that it is exciting that I feel like from when I started Scrunch, which is a software platform, so being a tech female founder a decade ago, the difference in the ecosystem now is just incredible. So many founder programs, sponsorships, even investors who only invest in female led businesses.
Jodie Imam (14:58):
Yeah, exactly.
Danielle Lewis (14:59):
Exactly. I think that's exciting that at least the world
Jodie Imam (15:01):
Is changing. Yes, that's right. That's right.
Danielle Lewis (15:04):
The stats may not be changing,
Jodie Imam (15:07):
But at least
Danielle Lewis (15:08):
I feel like I think the solution, just in case anyone caress about my 2 cents, I think we're going to do it ourselves. I think women are actually going to be our own solution. I think we're going to have a wave of really successful female founders who make it their mission to give back and really force the change.
Jodie Imam (15:26):
That's right. Exactly. Exactly. And it's just getting a few more started then. And that's the cycle we see at Tractor. So we've got about a hundred investors into Tractor Ventures who are exited founders, bootstrap founders, and they've had their success. They've cashed out, and so they've putting their money back into the next round of founders coming up. And so we see that cycle already just even in our community. So absolutely. And women have proven to do that. If they can make some money, they'll be more likely to give it back to their community than men.
Danielle Lewis (16:04):
So can anyone get involved in investing in your fund or in this ecosystem?
Jodie Imam (16:12):
Well, we've now moved to, so we had our network investing us to get us started, and our initial loans were off our balance sheet, but now we've set up a securitized debt warehouse. So we've got more institutional debt providers now funding our products. So it's not really, but there's many other ways to invest and look, there's syndicates, there's groups, there's crowdfunding. Like it's becoming easier and easier.
Danielle Lewis (16:43):
It's becoming a lot more accessible, isn't it? Even for people. I think outside the ecosystem, if you are a corporate employee that makes some decent cash, then it's actually easier to get the startup space than just stocks, if you will.
Jodie Imam (16:58):
Yes, that's right. Yeah, exactly. And I think that indicates, and those groups, angel groups are a good way. If you've got a professional salary and you meet that sophisticated investor threshold, then that's a popular kind of way.
Danielle Lewis (17:15):
Yeah. Awesome. So left turn, let's talk about, obviously you've been on the startup side of things where you've actually grown a business, exited a business, but you also obviously work with a lot of businesses, with a lot of startups. Are there common challenges that you see when starting a tech startup or scaling a tech startup that you commonly see people come unstuck with?
Jodie Imam (17:43):
Oh, for sure. So even at Tractor, there's probably, as I said, about a hundred founders we're working with and across every industry, we are completely agnostic. As long as there's some sort of technology there, then it's suitable and it's raising money. And we talk a lot about weighted average cost of capital. So using debt for some types of activities and using equity for other activities. It's hiring, it's global expansion. It's just often it's shoulder to cry on. Sometimes it's a lonely road.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I can, yes.
Jodie Imam (18:23):
And so it's just that mental piece as well. It is a real mental sport, I think, starting.
Danielle Lewis (18:29):
Yeah, totally. I feel like it's one of those things where every day is different. As a founder, you are all of a sudden every job role in the company. And I dunno, I always found it really hard to ask for help. I always felt like I was supposed to be the expert in every job role that I suddenly had and that it was up to me to figure it out. But as I've grown up a little bit, I've realized it's okay to ask help.
Jodie Imam (19:02):
Oh, you have to.
Danielle Lewis (19:03):
Yeah. But I think that is a big struggle. You're right. The mental battle is insane.
Jodie Imam (19:08):
Yeah, yeah. You can one day get a piece of news and you think, this is amazing. I'm going to make it the next day. It's like, oh my God, this is going to ruin me.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Totally. Totally.
Danielle Lewis (19:20):
Both of ends of the spectrum until it probably just completely
Jodie Imam (19:22):
Within a week.
Danielle Lewis (19:26):
Any tips for founders on actually how to deal with that mental challenge?
Jodie Imam (19:31):
Well, I do think it's what you were alluding to. I remember at occasional Butler, there was just this point where I was stressed that I was paralyzed. I'd go into the office and I'd see it, and I couldn't actually type. I was frozen with anxiety and fear and stress, and I had this huge expectation of what our spreadsheet was supposed to look like, and it wasn't happening. And I was just locked in this and I wasn't talking to anyone. So I was just sitting there frozen, sitting until someone suggested I reach out to a mentor. And that just changed everything. It just unlocked me. It was someone saying, this is normal. I think that just women especially just don't feel like they have to take it all on and they'll ask for help. And it's critical. And there's so many people wanting to offer help. And as you said, the ecosystem's grown so much in the last 10 years and there's help everywhere and it's a very friendly, compared to the corporate world, it's a very friendly, inclusive, wanting to help in that place. So you should always be asking.
Danielle Lewis (20:32):
It's so true. And I think just getting in your own head is the challenge. You spiral out of control and literally sometimes just saying the words out loud to someone, you're like, oh, hang on. And then
Speaker 3 (20:44):
You got to be, I'm
Danielle Lewis (20:47):
Fine now.
Jodie Imam (20:48):
Yeah. Oh my god. So many times it's like I'll be listening. And the founder is just answering their own problems as they talk. It's like it's just that soundboard sometimes.
Danielle Lewis (20:59):
Totally. It just literally needed another human face too.
Jodie Imam (21:05):
Business
Danielle Lewis (21:05):
Model in that.
Jodie Imam (21:07):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (21:09):
Oh, so good. So what does the future hold, do you think? What do you guys see coming up? We've got so many interesting trends in technology at the moment. Is there anything that you guys are particularly looking into at the moment that we all should be aware of in the tech startup space?
Jodie Imam (21:25):
It's funny. We get asked this a lot and it is a hard question for us. So agnostic. And so I guess just revenue generating solid businesses. And a lot of the time they are enterprise B2B sales. So it's kind of the tractor being sort of that machine of the economy, not necessarily the new big thing that's more for the wild trends that we should know about that's coming. That's more of the VC world than our world. I mean, obviously AI is having a massive impact, but that's right here and now it's not the next thing. So I think we're attracted more in the now thing than the next thing so much.
Danielle Lewis (22:08):
But I think that's really interesting. And this goes back to reflecting on my decade in this space. You just said profitable businesses, that was never
Jodie Imam (22:20):
So novel. I know,
Danielle Lewis (22:23):
But it's hilarious. I think that it's really worth highlighting because I think, yes, we've got all of these different options now for funding, but man, nothing beats having a profitable business.
Jodie Imam (22:36):
Oh yeah. Oh my God. That's right. That's right. It's a full-time job raising money. And you could say you make the decision, do I just go and sell more stuff to more customers or do I try and get someone to buy shares off me? And more often than not, it's better to go and get customers to buy your thing.
Danielle Lewis (22:54):
Yeah, it's so true. I think that was the best advice I ever got was, yeah, raise money from your customers first.
Jodie Imam (23:01):
Yes, for sure.
Danielle Lewis (23:02):
And the ironic thing about that is the more customers you have who love you, the easier it is to get funding anyway. That's
Jodie Imam (23:10):
Right. Exactly right. Exactly. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (23:13):
So good. Alright, I love it. We could talk all day and wine all day, but I'll just leave you with one last piece of advice to give the Spark community. So reflecting on your time as a female founder, we have basically female founders listening in at all stages of their journey. Lots just starting out and wondering what the hell they did. Piece of advice that someone gave you or that you give other women in business just to make the days a little easier.
Jodie Imam (23:48):
I think we underestimate ourselves so much, and as we were chatting just before, it's this mental sport. And so I think probably it's just believing in yourself and back yourself. You can do this and definitely reach out to others and women who've been there, reach out to me, reach out. We're all happy to help. It is a good thing to be able to help someone. And it might be a five minute conversation where you're stuck in something and it might be just talking it out loud and then, oh, I've realized now just by talking about it what it is. So I think it's back yourself and don't try and do it alone.
Danielle Lewis (24:29):
I love it. So right. It is funny that women in business are, we want to try and do it all of ourselves. We think we've just got to muscle it out alone. Women in business are also the most generous. So if you just are, we're like, oh yeah, absolutely. We can help. We can help.
Jodie Imam (24:46):
Yeah, that's right. And I think when you were asked, the common thing is, and I'm sure this advice has been said before on your show, but it's like saying, can we catch up for a coffee? Oh, I don't know. I'm busy. I dunno where I can slot that in. But if you say, look, I'm just stuck in my head about this. Should I do this or that, then that's easy. I can say, Hey, let's jump on a phone call. Or you know what? I know exactly what to just type back to you. So I think sometimes it's hard. Sometimes you don't know what it is. That's the blocker. But trying to at least give some context to what you're asking for when you're trying to reach out is important. It makes a big difference.
Danielle Lewis (25:26):
That is great advice. You are so right. We are all buried in our inboxes and calendars these days. Given context is awesome.
Jodie Imam (25:35):
Yeah. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (25:36):
Incredible. Jody, thank you so much for your wisdom and insights and sharing your journey. Cheers to you.
Jodie Imam (25:43):
Cheers, thank you. Thanks having, thank you.
Danielle Lewis (25:45):
Coming on the show. Appreciate your time.
Jodie Imam (25:48):
Thank you.
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