How to break up: ending it with your current employer

mitchellake on April 7, 2016

Breaking up is hard to do. You’ve invested time and energy into what you think is a great match, only to realize that it’s time to move on. I’m not talking about my dating life (for once) but about the process of accepting a new job and having to resign from your current position.

I recently had a light bulb moment when I offered a candidate a role with a startup that seemed to be a no-brainer: awesome career path, supportive manager, and team members she’d worked with in the past. However, it wasn’t as simple as all that. We’d negotiated and received an offer that ticked all of her boxes, yet she still hesitated.

Finally it hit me: she was not hesitant about this new company, but was hesitant to leave her current employer.

The Challenge
The candidate had started with this company straight out of college and after 10 years investing in this business, not only was she completely ingrained in the company, but her professional self-identity was strongly tied to this business. To top it off, she had also never had to turn-in her notice before.

When I asked her if that was the actual issue she confirmed my suspicions, and I explained this was understandable. It’s tough to look your manager in the eye and tell them that you are voluntarily leaving an organisation that has made an investment in you and vice versa. It is most difficult to leave a team that you have been embedded in and have grown to respect. Additionally – and what may be the real kicker – you have to inform your manager in a roundabout way that you’ve been engaging in interviews without telling them.

After establishing that taking the new job was the right decision, we had a long discussion about how to turn in her notice and not only did she feel better about accepting the offer, she was able to maintain a great relationship with her former manager. There is absolutely a right way and a wrong way to go about doing that.

Communication is key
Communication and transparency are a must. Most people (understandably) aren’t comfortable telling their manager that they’re interviewing and will only do so once they receive an offer. While it is common practice to send a resignation letter in writing to provide a paper trail regarding when you turned in your notice, your last day, etc. this should be done as a follow up to an in-person discussion. Setting a face-to-face meeting conveys respect and also shows that you’re doing your best to communicate professionally with them, instead of hiding behind text.

Never, under any circumstance, enter these conversations in the heat of the moment. You want to maintain a level of respect for your employer and overall business, not only as a professional courtesy but also because you never know when you will cross paths again. It can be detrimental for your future if you burn bridges along the way. Go in with a clear mind and reasons for leaving, framing it in a way that the move is beneficial to your career rather than reasons why that company wasn’t up to scratch.

Timeframe
As a guide, always offer to give at least two weeks’ notice in the United States, and possibly longer if you’re working on a project or task that isn’t easily handed over. Be aware that this differs from company to company, and across locations. In Australia four weeks is the norm, but check your contract as required notice may be written in there. Your manager may or may not be surprised, and they may or may not be curious about details (counteroffers are also a possibly, but that’s a can of worms for another time).

Do it for yourself
Any great employer will listen to you and respect your decision, as long as you present yourself in a respectful manner. Above all remember: you are a professional making a well-thought out, strategic step in your career. You owe it to yourself to do the best for you and although this can be an awkward conversation, it’s important to be able to overcome uncomfortable situations if it means pushing your career as far as possible.

Do you have a story or tips about resigning? We’d love to hear from you. Continue the conversation on Twitter here.

MitchelLake Group makes strategic hires in APAC to support global business growth

mitchellake on March 27, 2016

While the team here at MitchelLake has been busy sourcing leadership and building teams for cutting edge ventures and digital initiatives across the globe, continued growth in our APAC and US operations has encouraged the firm to invest significantly in our own leadership assets.

MitchelLake co-founder Jon Tanner explains, “We recognise the time is right to bring in leadership that has proven experience in fast scaling international businesses, while maintaining a laser focus on the highest quality of professional service and consultation. We are proud to announce the hires of Group CFO Rachael McVean and Executive Search Partners Gerry Davis and Luke Henningsen.”

CFO Rachael McVean joins MitchelLake from Groupon Australia where as Finance Director she was responsible for leading finance and legal operations across their Australian and New Zealand entities. Rachel also served on their board of directors, and has previously held board and advisory roles with Not for Profit and Arts organisations. Rachael forged her earlier career at PWC in Australia and the US, working in audit and transactions practices across media, technology and communications clients. Rachael will oversee commercial operations and planning as the group continues to grow in existing and fresh markets.

Luke Henningsen has worked across executive search for nearly two decades. Starting his career in law and finance, Luke moved into executive and specialist staffing with Hudson and rose to executive leadership roles with Alexander Mann, Jon Michel Executive, and Chandler McLeod prior to co-founding highly successful boutique firm Staite Henningsen Klein.

Completing the trio of strategic hires is Gerry Davis, a globally experienced business leader who spent more than a decade in chief executive and executive roles across technology, digital and consulting organisations before commencing his now 20 year career in Executive Search. Gerry previously led Heidrick & Struggles as Managing Partner of Global Practices, and was most recently with CTPartners (via acquisition of Johnson Partners) based in Sydney where he focused on the establishment and leadership of their APAC technology practice.

Tanner concludes, “We are very pleased to have been able to attract executives of this calibre to join MitchelLake. Like us they share a vision that we are at truly unique moment in time in terms of talent, globalisation and technology. MitchelLake supports some of the most exciting organisations, ventures and entrepreneurs across the globe as they navigate the unprecedented opportunities and challenges brought about by digital transformation via fintech, IoT, cloud computing and mobile applications. Our mission is to be a force of positive change by helping them succeed.”

The Asian Pie: the startup ecosystem in Singapore

mitchellake on March 18, 2016

Inspired by my colleague and London-based Sophie Cohen’s blog on the startup scene in Europe, I’m excited to kick-start something similar in this part of the world, starting with my home, Singapore.

The Lion City roars …
Singapore is reaping the seeds recently sowed through a concerted push – coupled with the right infrastructure, initiatives and incentives – to build an innovation-centric economy. At #10 on the Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking, we are known to be a sizzling hub for investment and startups. Singapore is the gateway to expand into the much bigger SEA market, reaching upwards of 600 million people.

The Lion’s treats …
● Setting up a company is a breeze. Singapore is #1 on The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings.
● Efficient tax system. With a maximum corporate tax rate at 17%, this is a big lure for startups in new ventures. There are also no capital gains or dividend taxes.
● Attractive tax incentives. To name a few, the [Startup Tax Exemption SUTE, and Angels Investors Tax Deduction Scheme (AITD)
● Support for innovation. In Singapore you’re incredibly well supported, with everyone from academic institutions and private bodies lending a hand. Support can be anything from mentoring new businesses through entrepreneurship programs to being set up within the Founders Institute.
● Commitment in becoming a Smart Nation. Strong government support in building and expanding spaces for like-minded tech folks to congregate is one such initiative. JTC LaunchPad@one-north saw a doubling in capacity of Block 71 and the addition of BASH to Block 79.
● Growing number of accelerators and incubators. These are pivotal in sustaining early-stage tech companies. Joining pioneer JFDI, new kids on the block include Muru-D and Rockstart. Hot on the heels after the growing emergence of Fintech and Cybersecurity, there are Startupbootcamp FinTech and Life.SREDA.
● Capital is available. Capital was virtually non-existent in 2010, yet only 6 years later and it has become abundant. Singapore accounts for more than 55% of total private equity and venture funding in the region. More than $9b was deployed in 2014 with venture capital investments in excess of $1b.

Money, Money, Money …
The government, through the National Research Foundation, plays a crucial role in providing funds to entrepreneurs:
• Government schemes. Entrepreneurs, get enchanted here: National Framework for Research, Innovation, and Enterprise, SPRING Singapore and National Research Foundation
With Singapore being #4 in 2015 Venture Capital & Private Equity Attractiveness Index, smart money is trickling in from VC/PE local and abroad riding on the increased appetite and government incentives for startups:
• Equity financing. Budding startups should check out the Map of Active VC (MAVA) for the VC landscape and search tools on your funding needs.

Silicon Valley of the East…
In creating its own version of Silicon Valley in the city, our government has put enterprise development as one of its top agenda. We are now witness to more than 50,000 startups in Singapore, of which 5,640 (10.6%) are in tech.

With all the lion’s treats in place, Zach Tan’s Singascape provides a good overview for aspiring entrepreneurs on how the treats journey through Singapore’s startup ecosystem.

Who’s Who…
● Temasek – Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, a major player in the Singapore’s VC industry. It has pumped $190m into the local VC market: $100m to its subsidiary Vertex Venture Holdings, and $90 million to 4 local VCs.
● NSI Ventures Part of Northstar Group, a SEA PE firm with 5 funds over $2b. Typical investments at series A or B stage. Latest addition to their portfolio: Jualo, Grain, Crayon Data
● Monk’s Hill Ventures Partnership of seasoned entrepreneurs backing top entrepreneurs in post-seed companies in Silicon Valley and Asia. Latest partnership: Playlab, Zipmatch, Compare88
● Jungle Ventures Singapore-based VC focused on building category leaders across early stages in Asia. Latest investment activities: SnapBizz Cloudtech, Moglix, CatchThatBus
● Golden Gate Ventures An early stage VC investing across SEA at seed, series A and bridge rounds. Latest funding: MyMusicTaste, Xfers, Aptoide

Internationally, Silicon Valley’s heavyweight Sequoia Capital, and private equity players such as Tiger Global have also propelled strong VC growth in the region. Here’s a quick glimpse at their activities in the region:
• Sequoia Capital Led a $6m series-A funding on Carousell. Latest funding: Kfit, GoJek. Its newest $920m fund is said to be the largest raise for India-specific investments.
• Tiger Global Led a series-C round of $65m funding on Grab. Latest venture: TVF Play. Bulk of its $1b invested in 2015 was geared towards India and SEA countries.

Other key investors are 500 Startup, August Capital, East Ventures and Pix Vine Capital. Notably, the investments tend to focus in e-Commerce, marketplace and enterprise, largely with software-based companies.

Singapore resident, Eduardo Saverin (of Facebook co-founding fame), dubbed the billionaire investor, has also invested in about 5 local tech startups since his arrival in 2009 including anideo, Nitrous.IO, Redmart, 99.co, TechinAsia.

Our success stories …
Dreams do come true! The below statistics are encouraging testaments to inspiring entrepreneurs on our robust startup ecosystem, having the ability to turn lucrative ideas into successful businesses that can go global.

Top 3 funded start-ups:
o Lazada. E-Commerce. Series F. Total funding $686m.
o Grab. Transportation. Series E. Total funding $680m.
o Zalora. E-Commerce. Series C. Total funding $238m.

Billion Dollar Unicorn Club
o Garena Online
o Lazada

Exits
o Viki. Acquired by Rakuten for $200m
o Nonstop Games. Acquired by Candy Crush Saga King for $84m.

Challenges…

Top of mind and highly relevant in our business is talent crunch. Contrary to rosy reports on easy access to talent here, we have had our fair share of roadblocks in getting available and qualified talent in Singapore.

Culture fit is often quoted as the main concern. Founders tend to place more emphasis on candidates to prove their experience within startups, than their relevant skill sets. One other hurdle that can’t be left unmentioned, is the risk-averse mindset of local talent – some under family pressure – to seek stable employment.

When the current demographics of the top 50 startup’s founders are foreigners, Singapore’s strict foreign talent employment policy in having the quota set on hiring foreign workers complicates talent solution finding, and is viewed by many “in the way” of the government’s move to build a Smart Nation.

What do you know about the Asian startup scene? We’d love to hear from you on Twitter @MitchelLake

Sources

● Asean Up
● DealStreetAsia
● Founderspace
● Infocomm Investments
● Tech in Asia

Image credit: tech.co

MELBOURNE // Data Science Disruption Breakfast Event

mitchellake on March 10, 2016

Mitchellake Group and Zendesk are excited to partner on this Data Science Disruption breakfast event.
With Data Science on the rise, we pose the question about disruption and opportunity, aiming to understand what it will bring to the economy of the future.

SECURE YOUR SPOT NOW.

We’ll provide a light breakfast to kick things off and we hope you can join us for a morning of insights and conversation.

WHEN — 8am-9.30am, Wednesday 23 March
WHERE — Zendesk, 395 Collins Street, Melbourne

SPEAKERS:

Chris Hausler – Data Scientist, Zendesk
Chris describes his role as ‘turning lots of data into magic’ and he does so with the help of Machine Learning, Hadoop, graphs galore, Python & Clojure. Chris has worked in this field for over a decade, for companies including Trading Post, Berlin Brain Computer Interface Lab and Sportsbet

Sveta Freidman – Head of Analytics and BI, Envato
Sveta is an analytics and business intelligence leader with over 12 years’ experience in consulting and client-based environments. As a data strategist professional, Sveta connects people to data, in order to make decisions, build better products and execute marketing strategies. Sveta is a member of the IAPA – the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia.

Darshil Mehta – Data Quality Manager – Big Data, Connexity
With extensive experience across the US, Singapore, India and Australia, Darshil’s work has been focused across the IT industry, focusing on Information Management. Darshil’s interest lies in Data Warehouse & Business Intelligence projects from conceptualisation to completion. His roles have seen him work across various businesses including finance, hotel industry, telecommunications and state government.

Sarah Murray – Senior Innovation Manager – TAL Life
Sarah has extensive software development experience, having worked for some of Australia’s largest media, telecommunications and financial organisations. Passionate about intrapreneurship, Sarah gains great satisfaction from discovering which innovative ideas will deliver the greatest impact or revenue, and from accelerating change and transformation in the organisation she works for.

The event’s host will be Brett Adam, MD at Zendesk.

Tickets are free, but strictly limited, so please reserve your spot now. Click here to book.

 

The rise and rise of eWAY: Matt Bullock’s story

mitchellake on February 18, 2016

Sometimes you get the pleasure of being privy to the inner workings of a truly successful and driven person. This February saw Matt Bullock take the floor at Innovation Bay in Sydney. If you’ve ever purchased anything in Australia, chances are Matt’s company eWAY has processed your credit card payment. One dollar in every four spent online in Australia is processed by his company.

Matt spoke about where he came from, where he is and where he’s heading

We’re introduced to Matt as a 16 year old Canberran. He’s at school writing code. He sells his code to mates who then on-sell it. He starts small. He then takes a consulting job – the last time he had a boss. He saved $50,000, left the government job, and became his own boss, launching his startup with that nest egg.

His first customer sold bicycle parts. His biggest customer paid for everything that was required in his business. It didn’t take long.

Matt’s ownership structure is simple: he owns it.
He’s never taken venture funding – and it’s been offered – but he’s never taken it, because he’s never needed it. Matt is open about his revenue model. The company takes a clip of each transaction, but it also has a capital arm; lending merchants money to complete ecommerce sites. So far they’ve lent $250K.

eWAY have grown fast, with 80 staff managed from their main office in Canberra with offices across Auckland, Edinburgh and Toronto. Their transactions were to the tune of $5.8bill last year. But there’s no time to stop, with each month’s numbers needing to be built upon in the following month. This has led Matt and the team to change processes, look at hiring more people. There’s a bigger opportunity for the company now than ever, with a huge proportion of Australian businesses not having an ecommerce functionality. His customer number is 24,000 and growing. The eWAY narrative is resonant of many fintech success stories, their agility as a business far eclipses the banks. It’s taking eWAY mere hours to do what it takes financial institutions weeks. eWAY align themselves with anyone who link the market and make it easier for someone to make a payment, so Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Paypal are all on eWAY’s Christmas Card list. Having said that, they’re also connected to 27 banks globally.

And they’ve never been broken. I’ll repeat that: eWAY has never been broken.

What sets Matt apart?
It’s a number of things. He doesn’t have a formal board, he’s his own Sole Director. If there’s a problem, everyone is involved in resolving it. He does have a coach though, who Matt says has “been a really important part of my life”. He’s found a coach that shares his dream and encourages him. When he first started with his coach Matt had 27 employees.

Matt started out coding, but his calling was elsewhere. As CEO he has a team with far more talent at writing code, but Matt’s background arms him with the knowledge to confidently call bullshit on development progress.

Day to day, Matt prefers to look at processes. Fixated with automating things, Matt tends to pick something that is broken and work hard to fix it.

After experimenting with other programs, Matt is entirely happy with Salesforce and attributes it to being able to provide the service that eWAY prides itself on. It’s the eyes and the ears for Matt and the team, knowing every single activity that the customer has taken. From there, the team can call the customer to expertly and explicitly engage with them in the right context. Salesforce synchronicity didn’t come easy: it took three goes for them to get it right. And now they’re hooked: literally. They have 72 TV screens in the office broadcasting all their data from Salesforce – big data. When a sale happens, it’s on the screen.

Right time, right place
eWAY has been fortunate to benefit from the right environment and climate. Their location in Canberra means that they’re a diamond in the rough, standing out amongst a litany of government and education job opportunities. They haven’t needed to lure people in with equity offerings.

Their attitude to recruitment and retention? They have built a culture and attracted executive and specialist talent to the business who are passionate about their mission. This has been their biggest draw, and as the business has grown they have been able to compete with market rates to hire top executives.

What Matt does have is bucket loads of vision, but he knows how to manage it. He focuses on one thing that he’ll build or fix for the year. We look forwarding to following the continued growth and successes of eWAY.

Author

Kevin Griffiths leads MitchelLake Executive for the ANZ Practice. Based in Sydney, he is focused on supporting startups, NewCo’s, scale-ups, and established tech companies with C-suite and board requirements, in addition to working with Australian SME’s and enterprises undergoing digital/technology transformations.

Since joining MLE in 2012, Kevin has led over 100 searches. His time has been divided into three key areas – CEO searches for scale-ups or tech companies going through transformation; CTO/CPO searches for tech companies with a global requirement to bring talent to Australia with technology and/or product leadership at scale; and consulting to and leading searches with clients looking to innovate, who are seeking advice from the MLE practice on the question of build, buy, or partner.

Prior to joining MLE, Kevin was a Partner at BMS where he built and led the Midlands commercial practice in the UK, before moving to Australia to help scale the business in Sydney and Melbourne.

KevinGriffiths

kevin@mitchellake.com

Silicon Valley: Tour of Duty info night: (Sydney, 26 February)

mitchellake on February 16, 2016

Following the announcement that MitchelLake is working with some of Australia’s brightest young talent to facilitate a Tour of Duty to Silicon Valley, we’re pleased to announce that we’re hosting and informal drinks session in Sydney with US Immigration Lawyer, Elizabeth Jamae.

RESERVE YOUR SPOT HERE

If you’re an Australian Software Engineer with big ideas, or you topped the class in your Computer Science degree, then let’s chat. If you are hungry for exposure to the world’s most incredible ideas, products, entrepreneurs and companies, and passionate about the future of Australia’s Digital Economy then we want to help you lead the charge.

We care passionately about closing the gap between Australian talent and global leaders in an exciting time for tech and entrepreneurs. It is you who will lead this revolution, and we want to provide you with the experiences to make this dream a reality. We would love to have you be a part of this ongoing initiative.

We hope you can join us at this informal event where Elizabeth will speak about the E3 Visa process and answer any questions you may have.

A second speaker will soon be announced, joining us to share their experiences of moving to San Fransisco and back again.

MitchelLake’s offices in both SFO and Australia will support you through the entire process, from the application stage, during your time in SFO, continuing through to the time time you’re ready to make the move back home and return to the local job market.

We hope you can join us for drinks and to be a part of the conversation. The event is free but spaces are limited, RESERVE YOUR SPOT HERE.

If this time doesn’t suit, please get in touch with us on sydney@mitchellake.com to discuss an alternative.

***
Background:

As an Australian-owned company that now reaches across four continents, MitchelLake is proud of its roots Down Under, and excited by the talent we’ve seen come out of Australia. We’re inspired by local innovators and are continually looking for ways to boost recognition of innovation that is being created right here in Australia.

In a bid to further support growth and innovation across Australia we’re excited to be partnering with some of Silicon Valley’s foremost VC funds to offer a number of secondments to some of the world’s leading tech startups. Let us introduce to your our Tour of Duty, with the aim of bringing some of Australia’s brightest minds to the epicentre of global digital disruptors in America.

Recruiting at Scale – The Importance of Talent Acquisition

mitchellake on February 13, 2016

As part of MitchelLake Onsite Team’s weekly training session, we recently had the pleasure to hear from Richard Cho, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Machine Zone, on how he fell into recruiting and how he’s now dedicated his life to uplifting talent acquisition.

Amongst recruiters, many fall into the uplifting talent acquisition segment and Richard was no different. A UC Berkeley dropout, Richard left to try his hand at sales and he soon discovered he had a knack for it and enjoyed it much more than what he was studying at university. The company unfortunately went bankrupt; however a friend recruited Richard into recruiting himself, and his early clients included Tivo, Intel and Kaiser as he helped them all grow at scale.

The key takeaway for me about Richard’s career is his experience in scaling companies from only a few hundred employees to thousands. Some of those who may be misguided might say that this is simply a case of putting butts in seats, but this isn’t the case. Richard was very clear about how he built out his talent organisations. He assigned each recruiter to their own specific vertical – essentially becoming their own SME – and they had to focus in that particular area, not only to hire the right candidates, but also to truly understand each position and the necessity of it. By doing so, this allowed recruiters to be able to better understand hiring decisions. They also had the ability to consult with hiring managers and their teams about how to hire the right candidate in order to succeed.

Bringing that idea one step further, a great recruiter should be able to provide candidates the career development and counselling that they are ultimately looking for in the first place; a great recruiter will have the ability to positively impact a person’s life. This was how Richard was able to scale Facebook from <500 to >6000 employees between 2008 and 2012. Similarly at Dropbox from <500 to >1200 between 2013 and 2015. This is currently how Richard is building his recruiting team at Machine Zone to scale in the same fashion.

Richard has built a replicable and scalable process from these principles. In the ever-changing landscape of tech talent, the emphasis of talent acquisition and having a strong recruiting team has become just as important, if not more important than hiring a world-class engineering team. Richard stressed the importance of becoming a “master of your craft” and that recruiting is no different. Recruiting itself is a craft and one should strive to improve their craft consistently and constantly.

I may or may not have the opportunity to scale a company to the size that Richard has in my own career, but I do believe that each recruiter should have the same values as Richard. Recruiters are more than just a means to an end to grow a company, but we as recruiters have the responsibility to positively impact both potential employees’ lives, as well as positively impact the growth and direction of a company.

Tech Prophets pick 5 business trends for 2016

mitchellake on February 13, 2016

As 2016 kicks off, predictions are being cast far and wide about the year ahead. Futurists Ross Dawson, Craig Rispin and MitchelLake’s co-founder Jon Tanner had their clairvoyant skills called upon in an article in My Small Business about trends for 2016.

In the article, published on SMH on January 7, Tanner suggests ad funded consumer models for products and services in growth markets, and more agile global business activity, as key trends and areas to watch and move on. On global businesses, Tanner elaborates, “There’s no impediment to starting a business anywhere, which is why we’re seeing new start-ups pop up in a broader spread of regions beyond traditional hub cities”.

Read the full article on SMH.

Image: via SMH / Bloomberg