Businesses need to be valued in various circumstances like when they’re being acquired, merging with another company or obtaining a public listing. The process of valuing a company and its business units can also help founders identify sources of economic value creation and destruction with the company. But how can entrepreneurs tell if they’re ahead of the game or falling behind? Most don’t understand the mechanisms of company valuation, nor do they keep up with their company’s value over time. This is understandable given the process of company valuation has traditionally been expensive and time-consuming, and performed manually by financial experts. But Daniel Faloppa and Gianluca Valentini, based out of The Netherlands, realised that, with the help of technology, there could be a better way to do valuations. 

With Equidam, founders can see their entire financial report boiled-down to one index: business valuation. Equidam’s humble beginnings date back to July 2012, when founders Faloppa and Valentini were studying M.Sc in Finance and Investments at the Rotterdam School of Management. At the time, Faloppa and Valentini were also delivering consulting services for entrepreneurs and startups on the side. They noticed two things: first, there was increasing demand for private company valuations, which coincided with the rise of equity crowdfunding in Europe. And secondly, the company valuation process was not yet standardised, even though financial professionals were employing the same methods.

Many early-stage startups looking to raise funds cannot afford full consultancy, but still need to provide documents supporting their valuation and subsequently the share price. Also, founders tend to overvalue their companies when pitching to investors, as evidenced by nearly every episode of Shark Tank USA. This is where Equidam comes in. Its technology-powered DIY service allows entrepreneurs to understand, monitor and grow company value.

This is how it works: after you subscribe to Equidam, you need to fill out an online form, and Equidam’s technology couples this with data (mostly financial data) drawn from various sources. Through five different valuation methods – from Discounted Cash Flow analyses to Balanced Scorecard reports – the technology comes up with an average company valuation and presents the information both online and in the form of a 16-page PDF report.

The great thing about Equidam is that founders can monitor their company’s value in real-time, as opposed to a one-off, sporadic calculation. Valuations can be tracked on a daily basis and benchmarked against industry competitors, thanks to Equidam’s proprietary business intelligence system.

Equidam’s technology allows CEOs, CFOs as well as investors and board members to give a rational estimate for every important decision process. The startup stated in a blog, “Owning insights into a company’s marketability enables managers to plan and optimise timings for M&A deals, private financings, or even exits with newfound conviction.”

Co-Founder Faloppa told Startup Daily that Equidam’s initial target market was equity crowdfunding platforms. Although equity crowdfunding is, in some ways, similar to going to angel investors and venture capital firms, there is one main structural difference. Angels and VCs invest directly in the company and thus become shareholders, whereas a fundraising platform aligns demand and supply of capital, making valuation absolutely critical before equity can be distributed.

Equidam currently serves 14 equity crowdfunding platforms across Europe and North America, but now also has more than 3,000 registered advisors, entrepreneurs, accountants and corporate clients. Over 50 percent of the companies using the technology are from The Netherlands, 12 percent are from the United States, and the rest are scattered globally. Equidam’s research found that the average value of a US-based business that uses Equidam’s technology is $9.4 million.

Faloppa also said that Equidam is horizontal across industries. “If you see our users are coming from industries as diverse as Pharmaceutical Marijuana to Banking or even movies, the largest percentage, about 10 percent, comes from the internet sector, so internet businesses and the like.”

In the process of expanding horizontally, Equidam has been able to recognise its full potential, particularly when it comes to data collection. The expansion has allowed Equidam to collect data on early-stage companies, which Faloppa said is “superior in quality to standard (often governmental) surveys and researches”.

“We are starting to see now how this data, always used in aggregate, can really benefit our final user and many different players in the market. Think of a government trying to test which stimulus program is more effective, think of an investor trying to guess which is the next trend in a market, think of a bank trying to get information on what is the average value of a company in case they have to liquidate it,” said Faloppa.

“As the amount of data grows, these use cases become more and more strong, increasing our potential in the same way.”

According to Faloppa, Equidam has two types of competitors in the market: alternative services and competitive services. ‘Alternative services’ include accountants who do valuations manually.

“[We] differentiate from them because of the fact that our process is automated, thus an order of magnitude cheaper and faster, and do-it-yourself solutions, and we differentiate from those by making the whole process much easier and by supporting difficult steps with a lot of intelligence,” said Faloppa.

However, Equidam doesn’t believe that its solution will make accountants or other financial experts redundant; in fact, the startup believes financial experts and Equidam’s solution will complement, rather than substitute, each other. There are about 150 accountants registered to Equidam, many of whom provide valuation services to their clients supported by Equidam’s technology. Faloppa said this contributes to the accuracy of their valuations and provides value creation and value management consulting for the companies they serve.

The closest technology competitor is BizEquity, which claims to have valued almost 30 million companies globally. If there are about 200 million businesses operating globally at the moment, that would mean BizEquity has a solid market share. Equidam is cheaper however, offering three types of subscriptions – free, €27.5/month (AU$38+) and €279/year (AU$388). BizEquity, on the other hand, offers two standard subscriptions – USD$49.99/month (AU$62+) and US$249.99/month (AU$312+). On the surface, it’s hard to pinpoint which service is better or worse. Faloppa, however, argued that Equidam’s solution is more thorough and requires more detailed inputs. He also said that Equidam employs methods that are geared towards early-stage companies.

Equidam understands that valuing a startup is more difficult than valuing a traditional business, because bringing new products to unproven markets is inherently risky. Added to that, first-time founders often overestimate sales, underestimate expenses, overestimate margins, and underestimate the time, effort and resources is takes to grow.

Equidam believes that, regardless of where they’re at in their lifecycle, startups should value their company to assess their potential.

“With a valuation report, startup founders can validate their idea, and show potential investors and other interested parties the opportunities their business offers them in the future,” it said on Equidam’s blog.

Equidam’s technology uses a variety of valuation methods, and also takes into account qualitative aspects of the startup, like the experience of the founders.

“When valuing startups, it not only the financials that determine whether a startup will survive or not,” it said on Equidam’s blog.

Equidam was bootstrapped up until August 2013 when it raised €60,000 (AU$83,000+) in crowdfunding. In 2014, it raised a further €225,000 (AU$312,000+) in seed funds. Further rounds of funding will likely take place, but it’s not an immediate focus.

Equidam team

The startup is firmly focused on improving its technology. It has four in-house developers working behind the scenes, as well as Faloppa who is a developer by passion. The startup is actively expanding its business intelligence service so that companies can see what they are doing right or wrong compared to their peers in greater detail.

“[While] I sometimes work on code itself, the highest value I can bring personally is to work on the algorithms as knowing both about finance and code, I can really understand what goes on there,” said Faloppa. “We have, however, made a clear decision for in-house development some time ago, as our main target is to grow faster than all the competition and as a technology company, our technology is our product, and it has to grow and change as quickly as possible.”

The biggest challenge for Faloppa as a founder has been going from an active role in building products to a managerial and inspirational role.

“When you are building you are completely focused and never distracted, that is the opposite when you are the backbone of the team and you have to put everybody in the condition of succeeding,” said Faloppa.

“It is challenging to always bring more motivation, focus, enthusiasm and energy than everybody else, but it is teaching me a lot on what are the real limits of what’s achievable in a team.”

Despite this challenge, Faloppa takes pride in the fact that his startup has been able to prove that valuation can be done in a standardised way.

“[When] we started nobody believed that, and believed valuation was more of an art form. In commercial terms, I think the market dominance as the valuation solution for the Equity Crowdfunding industry is what makes me more proud,” said Faloppa.

Remember the scene in Back to the Future II where Michael J Fox’s character Marty McFly, visiting the year 2015, is overwhelmed by a holographic movie advertisement for Jaws XIX, the 18th sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws? That’s the kind of ‘Augmented Reality’ experience that brands are beginning to embrace today – though, not so much the idea of sharks popping out of movie posters. Developers are creating images within applications that blend in with contents in the real world; and these applications are making their way into industries like advertising and real estate. For instance, imagine coming across a property advert on a suburban street and having the ability to scan the advert using a smartphone to see floor plans in 3D or virtually walk through the property. This is what Perth-based startup Virtualiis (pronounced Virtualise) enables.

Virtualiis, which has been nominated in the 24^th WAITTA INCITE Awards in ‘Best Startup’ category, has created an application that works in much the same way as a QR code scanner, but instead of being diverted to a URL, the user is directed to an animated and interactive virtual world. Under its ‘3D Marketing’ offering, Virtualiis allows businesses to showcase an extra dimension to their product or project to prospective customers. Given the startup is focusing on the real estate industry for the time being, this means that potential customers can see a floor plan in 3D or even view a 3D model of the display home through Virtualiis’ mobile application.

For the uninitiated, this might still be confusing. Think of it this way: you come across a construction site; in front of it is a sign board containing basic information about what is being built. On the sign board there will also be a square-shaped  ‘Scan Me’ showcase marker. To scan the marker, you would need to have the Virtualiis app installed on your phone. You scan it using the app, and Virtualiis will direct you into a 3D world. The app has controls which allows you to move through the 3D imagery and get an understanding of the property’s shape and form.

Virtual Reality 3D Marketing Campaign. Client: Telethon Juvenile Diabetes Family Center. Source: Virtualiis.

More interestingly, if the property advertiser wants to showcase the building in life-size 3D (as opposed to just 3D), then you will be directed to a slightly different kind of experience where your smartphone or tablet acts as your third lens. You can be standing outside the construction site with your smartphone held at arm’s or elbow’s length, and move the phone up and down or side to side to see what the building will look like in life-size. Essentially, you are visualising the property (prior to being built) through the lens of your smartphone or tablet.

Soda Apartments – Lindsay Street, NorthBridge. View through Virtualiis.

Property advertisers can also allow potential customers to immerse themselves in an upcoming property sales presentation using Oculus Rift headsets, which means they can walk through the property as if they’re visiting the future and engage with the product without any distractions.

Added to that, Virtualiis also gathers data so that businesses can analyse how customers are engaging with the 3D marketing campaigns.

Founder of Virtualiis, Rebecca Lee, told Startup Daily that, a couple of years ago when she was looking to purchase property prior to its development, she recognised a number of limitations. Purchasing property prior to the completion of its development is usually cheaper, but also riskier, because the customer is essentially investing in a concept – not unlike investing in a wireframe before it becomes a product. Although real estate websites show floor plans, they don’t give potential customers a good-enough understanding of how the property will look and feel in the real world. What’s lacking is the third dimension.

“I learned that when you’re buying off-the-plan, it’s not just about the building, but about the builder’s reputation, the history, the area, the growth of the area, what the future’s going to be like … And from just reading floor plans, I was really struggling to envision the product. There’s a massive communication gap. Because the developers work in property every day, they can read these plans, they understand the imagery. And they’re not just selling property, but also lifestyle,” Lee explained.

“But if you’re working in something completely different, it’s hard to get yourself into that headspace. My thought was: why do we have this secondary language when we can just see the property, walk through it and actually experience it as if it were built today? That’s the core idea behind Virtualiis.”

Although Virtualiis launched this year, it’s a product of two years of research, case studies, and development. The Virtualiis team has been working closely with architects, property developers and real estate agents to identify their pain-points and needs. One of those pain-points is selling property prior to its development because there’s nothing to physically show.

Lee said two years ago, when she conceived the idea behind Virtualiis, Augmented Reality was considered ‘magical’. It was too difficult for people to understand, and in many circumstances, it still is. But generally, people have a better understanding of Augmented Reality and technology futurists claim it’s ‘the next big thing’ that will transform industries.

At the moment, the Virtualiis application is free for the end-user. Although the monetisation model hasn’t been set in stone, property marketers will be charged a subscription price. The startup is also looking to charge on a per-project basis depending on the needs of the customer. It could be something like custom virtual reality simulations or any other task related to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

The data-aspect of the application is also a work-in-progress. Lee said as more customers get on board, the startup will have a greater understanding of what kind of data they need and want. At the moment, the application collects the details of users who viewed a property’s 3D model. The property marketer can therefore identify prospective customers, but it’s up to them to convert engagement into property sales.

What’s most exciting about Virtualiis is that it has the potential to take real estate – an industry that’s been on the brink of disruption, but never quite tipping over the edge – into the future. There are many startups trying to bring real estate into the present – mainly by digitising what’s previously been paper-based and creating match-making algorithms to connect consumers to property in unique ways – but there aren’t as many thinking about the future of real estate.

That said, Virtualiis is still in its infancy. This is understandable given the technical complexity of its offerings. The small team of three is currently seeking funding from angel investors. Lee said they’re looking to raise between $250,000 to $500,000, not millions.

“We’re not looking for millions of dollars because we’ve got the application and the core team here in Australia. We’re just ready to go to market. We’ve got a lot more Research and Development to do but a lot of the groundwork has already been done. We just want some really insightful investors to help us grow and become one of the leading companies in Australia,” said Lee.

She also said that the startup is looking to head East because “there’s a lot more going on”. Lee didn’t say Perth is bad; in fact, she said the startup scene in the city has been very supportive. She just wants to see what opportunities Eastern cities can offer.

“I find Perth is beautiful. What I like about it is it’s a developing city and that’s partly why I was inspired to work on an application that allows you to envision the future today. There’s a lot of development going on Perth as well,” said Lee.

“I’ve just been weighing the opportunities and seeing where it takes us. We haven’t chosen one or the other.”

Lee is also open to the prospect of expanding into Asia as well as the US, but feels that the opportunity is years away. In the mean time, Virtualiis will be focused on raising funds, growth, and additional research and development.

Millions of technology jobs are advertised each year, however the outcome of those ads aren’t always ideal. Employers still struggle with hiring architects, developers and engineers with the right skills, behaviours values that align with theirs. At the same time, whilst there are ‘career management’ services available in the market, not many are focused on technology careers and none are driven by data science. Melbourne-based startup Gooroo is set to tackle this problem by building a globally unique and verifiable talent-company-role matching algorithm which promises to not only transform the way employers recruit technology talent, but also the way technology professionals manage their careers and the way we understand the technology industry. The startup is using advanced people analytics to find relationships between technology skills, careers, salaries, experience levels and regions that have previously been overlooked.

To varying degrees, every industry has been affected by software. As such, demand for technology talent has increased every year for over a decade. Supply, on the hand, has decreased in the same decade, with university enrolments in computer science dropping in half. In fact, Australia is near the bottom of the OECD in creating STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) graduates.

Gooroo’s Product Vice President, Carl Joseph said. “When educational institutions start accessing global trending data such as what roles are in demand and what skills are necessary to fulfil those roles, curriculum and upskilling courses at universities and RTOs, faculties can be better informed about what students will be wanting or should be studying.”

Gooroo’s technology, though still a work in progress, collates roles, skills and experience from members along with live job data to evaluate movements in demand, salary ranges and skill trends for particular roles, skills and regions.

Terence Siganakis, Gooroo’s Vice President of Technology said: “Our ability to categorise familiarity and experience at the skill level for a particular role is quite novel. Our focus on the technology job market, means that our models and algorithms are heavily tuned for understanding technical skills, without having to worry about misclassification for other roles.”

Greg Muller, who carries 20 years of experience in management consulting and digital solutions, said it was the challenges he faced when recruiting technologists that spawned the idea for Gooroo. He founded an award-winning digital advisory and solutions firm iFocus in 2000; and by 2008, when it merged with another company Bullseye, it had a team of 30 to 40 technologists.

Muller realised that recruiting technologists with the right skill sets and career aspirations is a challenge for many employers and recruiters, especially those who are not proficient in the skills they’re looking for. For instance, if a company wanted to build a particular software solution and needed to hire a developer with certain skill sets, unless the employer or recruiter has a good understanding of those skill sets, they wouldn’t know what type of questions to ask or what to look for.

“We realised that if you’re not a technologist yourself, you don’t really know what kind of person you need to hire. Essentially, we set out to solve that problem. But there was a particular inspiration point a few years ago when a mate of mine called me up and said ‘can you find this person for me?’ He was looking for a Sharepoint specialist and was willing to pay anything to find the right person,” said Muller, Founder and CEO of Gooroo.

“The more people I spoke with, the more I realised that this is an ongoing problem that still hasn’t been solved today. There are recruiters and job boards trying to solve this problem, but we feel and believe that there is a fairly dramatic wave of change happening in the professional marketplace and hiring technology space, and we’re hoping to ride that wave.”

Sometimes, companies don’t realise that the person they need is right in front them, or a couple of cubicles away. Siganakis said, “The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the average cost of a bad hiring decision can equal 30 percent of the individual’s first-year potential earnings, why hire someone externally if you can identify that you have an existing employee who may be perfect for a role. Gooroo can tell you if they’re passionate about that work and with some additional training could fill the need perfectly. Resource issue solved and you have a happy camper on board!”

Although the idea for Gooroo was conceived three years ago, it wasn’t until October 2013 that the Gooroo team began developing the product. Muller said that they’ve approached the problem from the perspective of the talent rather than the employer. The question Muller had to consider was ‘how do we connect employers to the right individuals in an efficient and effective way when employers doesn’t understand what they need or know how to define what they need?’ Although this question focuses on the employer, the answer is in the individual.

“The first thing you need to do is to understand the individual and you need to bring that person to bare. Our focus is to ensure that we are delivering a compelling value proposition to technologists around the world, that we’re creating a place where they feel they’re being listened to and understood, and that we’re giving them the information and tools they need to take control of their careers,” said Muller.

Because of the volume of Gooroo’s data, as well as its statistical significance, Gooroo will be able – and is already starting – to predict future trends. For instance, if a Gooroo member is a data analyst today but wants to be an engineer in the future, they’ll be able to identify what skills they need to learn, which certifications are required, which technologies are trending, which career sectors offer the best salaries, and which kinds of roles are in demand.

“It’s a very lonely place out there. Looking for and finding a job, or identifying the best next step is quite daunting for many people. Our focus is on providing data-driven information and learning resources to ensure the individual understands themselves and where they sit in the context of the broader market and then use big data and machine learning techniques to say: ‘This is where you’re at; these are the directions you could take; here are some resources to help you get there and also here are some jobs available that will help you get there’,” said Muller.

Gooroo’s technology team has spent 18 months building a matching algorithm, which is essentially an automated process that matches an individual’s skills, passions and other psychographics to the needs of employers, including culture-fit, as well as marketplace trends. What Gooroo is creating is, therefore, a data and technology driven ecosystem.

“We believe we’ll be able to connect people more effectively, but also by doing so, we’re recognising the transient nature of many technology employment contracts and relationships with employers. Most technologists are on three-month, six-month or 12-month contracts; they’re moving around quite often so we needed to build a solution that meets the dynamics of the technology industry and ensure that we’re getting an accurate match quicker and in a more cost-efficient way for employers,” said Muller.

One aspect of Gooroo’s offering is the Gooroo Index which draws insights from millions of recently advertised technology roles in the US, UK and Australia, as well as from individual members in the Gooroo community. At the moment, Gooroo is processing about 500,000 jobs a month across the US, UK and Australia, and the index is currently based on more than 4 million jobs. The report presents salary trends and market demand for numerous technology roles; and access to this report provides employers and hiring managers with up-to-date data that other industry resources lag 12 to 18 months behind. Employers get an evidence-based understanding of how their own workforce fares against the rest of the market locally and internationally.

“We have our own proprietary algorithms that determine the priority of skills and experience within each job ad. We aggregate that data and filter it to provide what we believe is a very unique 360-degree view of the technology market. We’re using a natural processing engine to analyse each job ad and then identify those relationships between experience and skills and geography and salary and other career related information,” Muller said.

“All of our data is extracted by us from our own research or the algorithms we’ve created. There’s no other external service elevating that.”

Technology professionals can sign up with their LinkedIn or GitHub credentials or just their emails and must demonstrate and validate their competencies to make the matching process more accurate and trustworthy. Muller said that some of Gooroo’s data is imported from LinkedIn and GitHub, however members can adjust information where needed. There are also privacy features so members have full control over their information. This is important because some members may not be looking for jobs and have registered for different reasons.

“The reality is that to create a match, firstly we need people that want to be matched. Individuals will have that control to be able to make themselves available or not. The platform will also reward individuals who put an effort in and put in the necessary details and contribute because it’ll create tighter matches and more effective outcomes for them,” said Muller.

Muller is cognisant of the fact that a startup can build the best technology in the world, but unless people know about it and get value from it, it’s meaningless. Gooroo’s initial growth strategy has been to distribute reports on tech career and salary trends, which has attracted technology talent. This has also created a network effect; by creating valuable content, technologists are compelled to share it with others in the industry, which in turn generates more sign-ups.

However, Muller said they have not put much effort into recruitment or marketing thus far, as they’ve been firmly focused on building their core value proposition – that is, the matching algorithm, which will be launched in the upcoming weeks.

“We’ve been learning and iterating over the last 18 months; and slowly but surely, the murmurs and noise around Gooroo is starting to increase. We’re not accepting new employers yet, because it’s all about the talent,” said Muller.

“Our philosophy is if we build a valuable experience for talent, the employers and recruiters will be there because at the end of the day, they need the talent. Once the employer tools are ready and there’s a substantial talent base, we will start to open Gooroo up to employers.”

Muller said that Gooroo has already “hit a raw nerve for tech professionals around the world”.

“There are a couple of hundred million tech professionals around the world and this number if obviously growing, but a majority of them aren’t good at promoting themselves. They want to do great work, but they’re often misunderstood or generalised,” said Muller.

“We’ve understood them and we’re delivering a value proposition directly to them, so whilst we’ve achieved some great things in terms of our technology, which looks as if it’s going to be unmatched anywhere in the world, the most satisfying thing has been the uptake and responses we’ve received from tech professionals. That support is incredibly rewarding.”

Muller also said that they’ve architected the platform to be global from the get-go. Although its focus at the moment is Australia, the US and UK, Muller said Asia, South America and Africa is next on the horizon given how rapidly those markets are progressing. In fact, many technology companies around the world, especially in countries that adopt pro-growth immigration policies, recruit immigrants. Various reports indicate that over half of Silicon Valley’s tech startups have one or more immigrants as a co-founder.

Co-Founder and CEO of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman once said, “Immigration is key to any entrepreneurial ecosystem”. Carlos Espinal, Partner at European investment fund and accelerator Seedcamp, also communicated this sentiment, saying “One quick way of bridging a shortage in staff in an area is to create immigration policies that allow for talented and capable individuals to enter the country and its labor force without major hurdles”.

Asian countries with strong or fast-growing startup ecosystems offer visa programmes or other types of residency permits specifically to entrepreneurs – like South Korea’s startup visa, Singapore’s EntrePass, Hong Kong and Malaysia’s investment visa, and Japan’s visa extension for entrepreneurs. New Zealand, Canada, UK and US also have entrepreneur visas. These policies and initiatives have allowed for freer movement of people, and subsequently diverse workforces.

While Australia awaits entrepreneur-friendly immigration laws, technologists in other countries looking to relocate can use Gooroo to understand the technology industry in different regions.

“First and foremost, we’ll ensure that the appropriate information is provided and that is going to be the responsibility of the hiring organisation as well. They need to be able to indicate their degree of comfort with accepting international applicants. We also believe it’s our responsibility to ensure that those who are looking abroad or beyond their current boundaries or borders are appropriately informed,” said Muller.

Although Gooroo is targeting technology professionals and employers looking for technology professionals, Muller said that over time, there will be multiple users in the system – like media professionals, investors, organisations or others who are interested in the data Gooroo collects and analyses.

“We’ve implemented a free model where anyone can sign up and access that data, but in time we expect that, because the data is so rich and valuable, we’ll be building experiences off it. Members will be able to access different dimensions of that data or the platform or the knowledge that exists within the platform via a subscription. The experience would be different for different users,” said Muller.

Muller was tight-lipped about Gooroo’s monetisation strategy, but admitted that the startup will be implementing a freemium model for talent, and a subscription or pay-per-use model for recruiters, employers, marketers and advertisers. Gooroo will also be launching learning services with key international partners, which will also be based on a subscription model. Details around this are yet to be revealed.

Thus far, one of Gooroo’s biggest challenges has been balancing capacity and priority. Muller said it’s important that startups have the funds to invest in ongoing product development and the right people to lead that development. But what’s also important during the development phase is prioritisation. Without the ability to focus and prioritise, startups can run out of money prior to commercialisation.

“We have taken the approach of ‘build something, learn from it, get feedback, iterate and then continue to build it out based on responses from the market’ rather than spending too much time and money on building a product that no-one wants to use’. Whilst this was a challenge, it’s allowed us to have much tighter proposition.

“We’ve still got very clear plans about how the product is going to change in terms of new functionality, but we have to ensure that we keep things nice and simple as we move along.”

Last year, Gooroo raised AU$1.24 million in its seed round from UK, Singapore and Malaysian investor. The funds were used primarily for product development, and Muller has invested heavily in Gooroo as well.

At the moment, there are six people working across Gooroo’s various departments including product development, architecture and marketing. Recently, Gooroo also brought on a behavioural psychologist Dr Simon Laurie to look after the customer aspects of the business.

The startup will be embarking on a more aggressive marketing mission when it soft launches its matching feature. Muller said they’re also going to form an advisory board to assist in making important business decisions as the startup moves forward.

But what’s the end goal? Many startups dream of getting acquired for eye-watering amounts of money. Gooroo’s goal, on the other hand, is “to build a global business and truly change people’s lives in a positive way”.

Gooroo is currently in discussions with various organisations about forming strategic partnerships, and will likely open up a new round of funding in the near future. At the moment, it seems like blue skies ahead for this startup. It has all the ingredients in place to become one of the best data-driven startups to come out of Australia.