{"id":44738,"date":"2023-10-20T15:38:17","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/from-a-sydney-bedroom-to-the-asx-in-20-years-grudens-journey\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:38:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:38:17","slug":"from-a-sydney-bedroom-to-the-asx-in-20-years-grudens-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/from-a-sydney-bedroom-to-the-asx-in-20-years-grudens-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"From a Sydney bedroom to the ASX in 20 years: Gruden’s journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gruden<\/div>\n

One of Australia’s oldest startups began life 20 years ago in a bedroom where the most contentious decisions were left to Lucky, the pet fish.<\/p>\n

Now Gruden is a multimillion-dollar digital marketing and app development firm with a lucrative ASX-listing in the works.<\/p>\n

When Gruden was founded it was 1995 and co-founder Todd Trevillion, his father and Brent Trimnell-Ritchard had just discovered a website enabling tax returns to be processed online.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed pretty easy and I said, \u2018I reckon we can do that\u2019,\u201d Trevillion tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After some brainstorming, Trevillion and Trimnell-Ritchard, who built training CDs for a living, began developing their own website in his bedroom.<\/p>\n

What resulted was Australia\u2019s first online tax return systems Net Tax, which they sold to an accountancy firm for a few thousand dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent way more hours than we actually earned for it,\u201d Trevillion says.<\/p>\n

And he says they faced strong opposition from government at the time.<\/p>\n

Trevillion says they were featured on network news as the young faces that beat the ATO in rolling out its online tax return system.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of what we\u2019d done, they introduced new regulations,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Now, Gruden is a company of about 80 people operating out of offices across Australia and Asia, and they\u2019re in the final stages of a public listing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Over its two-decade lifetime, Gruden survived the dotcom crash, the global financial crisis and a recession in New Zealand – and they’ve been bootstrapped the entire time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have just reinvested profits out of the work that we\u2019ve done,\u201d Trevillion says.<\/p>\n

By steering clear of external investment, Trevillion says his team learnt to become prudent on how and where to invest the company\u2019s revenue in order to move it forward.<\/p>\n

It also meant they had to build a robust business-model that was self-sustainable, he says.<\/p>\n

Monitoring costs, numbers and having a thorough understanding of the scope of the work they were engaged for proved to be invaluable for this, Trevillion says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that can go wrong,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As Gruden transitioned from a small startup to a larger firm, the team started looking at product development to spark new revenue streams.<\/p>\n

This led to the launch of MobileDen, a mobile payments platform, and the company now boasts a client portfolio including state and federal government and major international brands including Disney and Woolworths.<\/p>\n

Looking back, Trevillion says the best thing they did was being customer-centric from day one.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day our biggest success is survival and the key is really having good client engagement and long-term work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And they didn\u2019t start out with any grand vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started with the view that there\u2019s an idea and a product that we think we can do so let\u2019s just go out there and do it,\u201d Trevillion says.<\/p>\n

When the dot com crash hit, Trevillion says many startups failed because they were celebrating too early purely on potential value rather than having real substance.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo new sales were coming through but we were able to sustain and supply by working with our existing client base,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Creating a startup that was built to last took more than 20 years of Trevillion’s life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent hours on all of that un-sexy stuff that you really need to have in place to make sure that you’re sustainable and will be around for tomorrow,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter,<\/em>LinkedIn <\/em>and <\/em>SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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