Trent Mankelow shares his business story creating, growing and selling Optimal Experience at the 2014 Innovation Forum

1. !
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! @trentmankelow

2. 1988

5. 1996

8. 2000

11. 2002

14. 2003

15. !
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16. Accessibility: Colour Blindness

19. 2004

21. $39,000

22. 2004

26. 2007

31. 2011

34. 2014

36. Purpose of today
Strategic plan
• Strategic options
• Plan of action
• Allocation of resources
• Organisation
Change
management
Leadership
Strategic
vision
Strategic
scenarios
Current
situation
Step 1: understand the
current reality (our
starting point)
Purpose of this
document
Step 2: Board
discussion to formulate
desired future state 4
years from now (our
“north star”)
Step 3: CEO and
management develops
strategic scenarios for
discussion with Board
Step 4: CEO and
management develops
strategic plan to
achieve the strategic
vision for approval by
Board

37. Companies don’t get sold.
They get bought.
- ‘Postmortem of a Venture-backed Startup’ by
Brett Martin, founder of @Sonar
https://medium.com/p/72c6f8bec7df

40. Lessons

41. 1. Passion trumps experience
2. Ask for help
3. Be a learner
4. Work hard
5. It’s really hard to do services AND
products
6. It takes years and lots of money to build a
successful SaaS tool
7. You don’t have to take external funding

44. Leaders have a
disproportionately
large effect on the
culture
- Maher, Plsek, Price, Mugglestone

54. THE #1 LESSON LEARNT
He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata.
It is people, it is people, it is people.

55. Thanks
@trentmankelow
@Op/malExp