{"id":43503,"date":"2023-10-20T15:29:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/how-this-fast-growing-tech-company-stayed-true-to-its-startup-culture-after-being-bought-by-a-big-corporate-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:29:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:29:04","slug":"how-this-fast-growing-tech-company-stayed-true-to-its-startup-culture-after-being-bought-by-a-big-corporate-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/how-this-fast-growing-tech-company-stayed-true-to-its-startup-culture-after-being-bought-by-a-big-corporate-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"How this fast-growing tech company stayed true to its startup culture after being bought by a big corporate – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Neto was acquired by Telstra last year, co-founder Ryan Murtagh made one thing clear: The fast-growing company\u2019s startup culture would not be changing.<\/p>\n

Telstra made a majority investment in the online ecommerce platform in June and Murtagh says it was somewhat daunting to have such a big player come knocking.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have them knock on our doors was exciting but also very scary,\u201d Murtagh tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At Neto, Murtagh and his team have kept the startup spirit close to heart, explicitly telling Telstra that this should remain undamaged.<\/p>\n

But he says Telstra has become more accustomed to working with startups and giving them enough room to flourish.<\/p>\n

With a culture of working hard and playing harder, the Neto office features themed meeting rooms including one inspired by Melbourne’s laneways and another by the Swiss Alps.<\/p>\n

They also have a scooter track that runs around the office in addition to an arcade room.<\/p>\n

The open play office is a deliberate strategy to nurture Neto\u2019s internal experimentation and external growth so they continue to deliver on their mission to enable more businesses through e-commerce solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you micromanage a small team, you\u2019re going to do nothing but restrict the innovation,\u201d Murtagh says.<\/p>\n

It was this focus on having an open and playful culture that helped Neto stay true to its startup heart, he says.<\/p>\n

Neto is now enjoying 200% year-on-year growth and has partnered with the likes of MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks.<\/p>\n

Murtagh says this was thanks to not being afraid to initially be \u201cthat irritating guy\u201d cold calling large organisations.<\/p>\n

By pushing forward with a friendly attitude and a clear articulation of what his startup could offer, Murtagh and his team has been able to secure a series of major partnerships.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially, when I approached these businesses, there was a lot of push back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was persistent and the persistence paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a team of about 100 across offices in Brisbane, Hong Kong and Manilla, Neto is now planning to crack into Australia\u2019s multi-billion dollar traditional retail space.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus is not on revenue or profit, we\u2019re much more focused on just enabling businesses,\u201d Murtagh says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo remove barriers for traditional businesses to sell online, we need to make payments and shipping a lot simpler.”<\/p>\n

From day one, he says the team\u2019s focus was to build a product addressing the pain points of their users.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also didn\u2019t grow too quickly,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Until the Telstra acquisition, Murtagh says they bootstrapped the company and managed growth steadily to ensure their team wasn\u2019t spread too thin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe focused heavily on ensuring we got the most out of every single employee,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Creating a culture of putting its people first and building an internal \u201cfamily\u201d is an important part of the Neto story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely fostered a number of our employees from their first job into roles now where they are leaders of fairly large teams,\u201d Murtagh says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Neto was acquired by Telstra last year, co-founder Ryan Murtagh made one thing clear: The fast-growing company\u2019s startup culture<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,18,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}