Founder Adventures - Episode One - Focus with Duncan Faulkner
Olivia Wensley
Welcome to “Founder Adventures”, brought to you by Startup Queen sound lights. Today, I am thrilled to introduce to you my first guest Duncan Faulkner, from Southern Software. Today we are going to talk about your new launch. So Focus is the name of the app. Do you want to give us a bit of background about what it is?
Duncan Faulkner
Focus is a tool for entrepreneurs, for ambitious people are for go-getters, and it's all about helping people to achieve their big, audacious goals. We find in life, it's too easy to be focused, or to not be focused and be busy doing the job, lots of small, little jobs, and be amongst all of that noise. And Focus is all about creating this really calming, digital space, that you can sit down in a nice comfy chair with a big screen to be really present. And focus on achieving your goals.
Olivia Wensley
That's awesome. So the reason why we're putting together this series, and what we're going to do is interview lots of founders from our region about what makes them tick and how they came up with their ideas. It's great to have you along. Because I mean, you've got a great background and entrepreneurship. You've done multiple startups. So this is this is fantastic to hear more about your latest project. What I like about it is that it's so clean. And it's such a great way to just organise your thoughts.
Duncan Faulkner
I think, from like you said, I've done a few startups now. So about seven, seven or eight years in entrepreneurship. I'm just just doing our first exit from our very first tech company Auditz.
Olivia Wensley
So what was your first company? How did you start getting into startup life?
Duncan Faulkner
Desperation! (laughs)
I didn't want to have a job. I've been ever since I was about seven years old. Selling conkers to kids at school, you know, like, I've always had that drive to want to have my own business and to try and make money by doing cool things.
When I first got into tech, that would have been 7 or 8 years ago, here in Queenstown Lakes, the adventure capital of the world. And seven years ago, the adventure tourism industry was going through this huge shake up around health and safety. We had a bad bad track record of killing tourists, which is very bad for the New Zealand brand.
Olivia Wensley
I remember that, when health and safety was just the word on everyone's lips, it was such a big deal for every business.
Duncan Faulkner
I know and what happened was the then Prime Minister put in place these new regulations that were making it so that adventure tourism operators had to be registered with the government and have an audit completed of a safety management system. So they were basically saying it was no longer okay to just think you're safe. You've now got to show evidence how you are safe. Most of the people in the adventure sector, they are out there paragliding, they are out there bungee jumping, rafting and all these cool things, but they don't want to be sat in the office doing reams and reams of paperwork. Completely by coincidence at the same time, I'd just gone through a massive health and safety implementation process for a helicopter company. I realised how blinking hard it was to do it. I thought there must be a better way. Let's build an app. We started that first company with zero funding, just sweat equity. I think the first money we spent on it was on a team pizza at Winnie's.
Olivia Wensley
Post revenue!
Duncan Faulkner
Yeah (laughs). And we were just really fortunate that it was such a big news story at the time, the health and safety issues.
Olivia Wensley
It was massive. And a really painful problem.
Duncan Faulkner
Really painful. And we launched to the front page of the paper and the phone started ringing. We just grabbed a whole bunch of customers and seven or eight years later...
Olivia Wensley
The rest was history. And you have just exited from that company?
Duncan Faulkner
Yeah, we've just done our first exit.
Olivia Wensley
I mean, that's something that we see consistently with all founders of successful startups is solving a painful problem. I always talk about it with the startups in our ecosystem. You're looking for a painkiller, not a vitamin.
So let's talk about the painful problem in this day and age, we're busy.
We've got a lot of balls in the air constantly. I mean, that's how I feel all the time. 100 balls in the air. And if one comes crashing down, then it's not good. So tell us more about how Focus works to help you keep control of all the projects in your life?
Duncan Faulkner
I think the first thing is like just acknowledging how hard entrepreneurship is, and how hard it is to be focused, right? In the modern world, everything is beeping or vibrating at you, all the time.
Olivia Wensley
People have a million different ways to get hold of you. Email, Slack, you're on multiple channels all the time.
Duncan Faulkner
Yeah. So the theory behind Focus was, if we can help those entrepreneurs, succeed - all those multitaskers to succeed - and then they can kind of have benefits from them radiate out to the rest of the community. They create jobs, and create a more stable economy.
So we had this concept of like, based upon what I've learned over the last few years around doing every single job in a startup, like there must be other people that share your same pain points. We find it extremely hard - so we asked how can we build a community and a tool that enables people to check-in and be accountable to themselves on achieving those bigger goals? The big, audacious goals.
This isn't about to-do lists. This isn't about check your email, publish this blog. It's about a goal. It might be that I want to create a new startup, it might be that I want to have a new brand, I want to set up an Australian office.
What are the big goals which take lots of repetition and checking in multiple times to achieve them? That's what you put into Focus.
And what's really valuable about this is, it's enabling, early stage entrepreneurs like myself, to be able to engage with people who've been there and done it have built billion dollar companies, and to be able to kind of build this community, so they can be like "Hey, how did you do that?" You know, Mr. Successful Entrepreneur with a billion dollar company, how did you manage to set up your bases in Australia, Europe?" You, us, like, you've got up in the morning, like I did you made a coffee just like I did.
Olivia Wensley
Yes - we have the same 24 hours a day!
Duncan Faulkner
So, what's different about that person? What was their ritual, and we want to try and use the software as a tool to kind of create this community where people can share the tips and tricks, both using the same tool.
Olivia Wensley
I like that term that you use, "ritual", and that's something I've been reading about as well lately. It's all very well to have "to do" lists, but if you actually just think of your life as a ritual, then that's a really successful way to operate.
Duncan Faulkner
Yeah. And what's unique about Focus, you can use this phrase to do this. This is about taking people away from their "to do" lists.
“To do”' lists are brilliant, they're great if you're a project manager, if you're an employee, if you've got stuff to do, "to do" lists are fantastic - that's why there's so much software doing "to do" lists.
Olivia Wensley
It's focusing on the “micro”, though. And you also want to be focusing on the big picture, the big goals, which I really love. Because a lot of people get too busy being "busy" and doing the little micro stuff, just checking off the "to do" list without setting themselves some big, audacious goals.
Duncan Faulkner
Yeah, so there's a time and a place for being down there in the detail in the noise, the hustle and bustle of business, right life.
But Focus is about more than just a software, it's about acknowledging that you need to have that time-out, you need to be mindful and present.
It's about actually locking out time in your calendar to say this is my Focus time, this is my 30 minutes or one hour. And this is when I'm going to go into the office and close the door, I'm going to turn off my notifications on my phone, I'm going to make a really good cup of coffee.
And I'm going to sit in a comfy chair, the big screen, I'm going to focus on myself, I'm very present on how I'm tracking it achieving those goals.
Olivia Wensley
I love that. And so is that built into the app? Because I really like that idea of actually just sitting, dedicating time to be productive and sort of check-in with yourself.
Duncan Faulkner
Yes it's built into the app. So one of the key things we do is we get people to basically set themselves a calendar invite, a repeating calendar invite for once every six weeks, or once every two weeks, whatever that frequency is, it's going to be checking in on yourself.
Olivia Wensley
I love how you can set your goals and then you can press, like a "snooze button". It's like, "Yes, I've done that *snooze*".
I do like that constantly cycling through and checking-in. Another good use that I think but as far as sort of checking in on relationships. It's sort of stuff that we do naturally, but it's actually quite nice to sort of put a structure into it, that reminder of "have you checked in with this person?" I think I think for client management, that's actually a really good use for it.To be constantly reminded to check in with others.
Duncan Faulkner
It's a very personal space. We made a very deliberate decision based upon some of the research we were doing, that was about creating a personal space.
Traditional project management software is all about collaboration and team and, sometimes you don't want to be dependent on everyone else. Sometimes you just want to have your place where you keep your records. And that enables you to say we set a goal.
Say, we check in with Brad and say, "Hey, Brad, how are we getting on with achieving this building a rocket ship?" and Brad says, "It's going well, thank you. We're all on track." Okay, so then in focus, I'm going to say it is "on track", and give it a green sticker.
Then I add some notes from our conversation. Or pull some stuff from some emails. Now the idea is, is then when we catch it with Brad, again, in six weeks' time, when the software card re-emerges on our screen, we can then self-brief ourselves. So we can say well, I spoke to Brad and he told me this. He said the rocket ships are ready to go. And they're just waiting on this part. Right. So then when I was going to speak to Brad, I know exactly what I'm going to be asking him. If his story changes. I can hold him to account on that.
What we're finding is like two really interesting bits of feedback. One is the sense of calm that the user gets. Because when you've touched the card, or you've updated the card, it fades away.
Olivia Wensley
It's a very "zen" space. It's very minimalistic. It's quite relaxing in the age of overload when you get sort of too much stimulation from all different channels. It's quite nice to have this very zen, calming, space.
Duncan Faulkner
It's kind of like iOS style. Kind of clear, "less is more" space, but we want people to be left in the middle of this feeling of calm and we actually get people texting us and saying, "Oh my God, I feel so relaxed using this".
Olivia Wensley
Such a great testimonial!
Duncan Faulkner
Thank you. We'll put that on our website! What's really interesting is it moves away from like, due dates. We're so used to saying this past we do on this day, but we found that was too much detail. So we did our software. So now everything works on a cycle.
Olivia Wensley
I love that just because it feels a lot more natural. It's a flow state.
Duncan Faulkner
It is really great, and helps build the routine. Mm hmm.
Olivia Wensley
So what can people do if they want to check out Focus?
Duncan Faulkner
Create a free account for Focus. Now, sometime in the future, we may charge for it. And if we do, it won't be very much. Because we just want to see how people use it.
So if you want to check it out, go to www.get.focus.space, and just create a free account, sign up using the Google login and off you go, there's gonna be a whole bunch of resources being poured into it as well over the next few weeks.
So we've got our community manager over in Portland in the US - she is a productivity nerd. So she is sharing all of her tips for how to be more productive and have to spot ways to shorten your week, get down to do less hours work and just be hyper focused on achieving more in less time that she's building that community.
At this stage, it’s about getting cool, smart people together, nerding out about how can we do more? And hack productivity.
Our approach is to build a community and let's see what people want. And let's deliver it and work out how to monetise it later on.
Olivia Wensley
You've mentioned that you're working with someone in Portland. Yeah. I mean, what's really interesting about what you're doing is you're global from day one. What's your strategy?
Duncan Faulkner
Yeah, I think you can waste a ton of cash, right? Because doing those traditional Google ads and marketing spend, we were really interested in their influencer type marketing.
It’s the cool thing about things like Instagram, there are people who have huge followings, about all kinds of weird or wonderful subjects, whatever you're into, and productivity is a massive one. So you know, we want to, you know, get into those communities, and share what we're trying to achieve and get them all involved.
Olivia Wensley
I love that, like software influencers. Very cool.
And so what's interesting about what you've been doing is, you've been one of the original people in the Queenstown Lakes Region, one of the OGs and making this place a tech destination. This is something I'm very passionate about. I think we both share that vision for what this region could be.
So, I just want us to talk a bit about why you think that this place is great to live.
Duncan Faulkner
It's paradise.
Olivia Wensley
So what's the reality is like, with living here, if someone's watching us, and they think “I'd love to live in the Queenstown lakes”, you know, what would you say to them? Just do it?
Duncan Faulkner
Just do it! I came here as a recruit into New Zealand companies, working for the government 13 years ago. And I just thought, give it a go. And I've never looked back.
It is just hand on my heart the best decision I've ever made. And the people are incredible. Support is incredible. The environment is amazing.
And, you know, business gets done on the chairlift literally, on the gondola when you're biking, so what is that not not to love about it? It's amazing.
Olivia Wensley
What I think really draws people to this region - this is my theory - is that entrepreneurs by nature are risk takers. We thrive on adrenaline. That's what people do here.
I was having this conversation with someone recently. The whole of the Queenstown Lakes Region is actually built on adventure. And so, I mean, 30 years ago, the tourism industry, - they were all startups.
They were all just doing crazy, wild things, like you mentioned, because that's what your first app was, it was addressing the health and safety repercussions of that. So I think that it's a perfectly natural fit for attracting further entrepreneurs.
Duncan Faulkner
Two key things - one, they're adventurers here. And two, they’re innovators.
Right? Who ever would have thought of attaching a great big elastic band to your legs and jumping off the bridge?
And that's become a multi million dollar company, a global multi million dollar company.
It sounds nerdy and it is nerdy. But Tech is one big adventure like it really, really is. I like adventure. I love my skiing. I love my mountain biking like hiking. I love tech startups because it's just you just never know whether you're coming or going whether you go boom or bust
Olivia Wensley
It’s a roller-coaster! You get the highest highs, the lowest lows, but it's still just so addictive.
Duncan Faulkner
I believe that there are so many multi million dollar ideas. And people that are working in tourism or hospitality in the region at the moment or agriculture, whatever the industry is, you know, people have those pain points, they have those frustrations with their jobs, or within their industries, and even hear people saying, “oh, wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that did this?”
If you're saying that, look deeper into tech,
Olivia Wensley
Just do it. I love that literally everyone has a million dollar idea, or a billion dollar idea at some stage in their life.
Duncan Faulkner
So you can harness that idea, build a tech product around it and launch it internationally. From here in Queenstown while skiing or biking.
Olivia Wensley
And it's so international here anyway, I mean, I'm just constantly amazed at the people that we come across. We've got world class talent here.
Duncan Faulkner
I mean, you're seeing people from Silicon Valley all around the world. Big big hitters in the tech space living down here.
Olivia Wensley
That's right. And then dying to come in as well.
The ones that can't get here just yet. They’re just lining up at the gates.
I think it's going to be a really interesting few years. To just continuing building on this vision. of our region, being a startup and tech destination.
Duncan Faulkner
A tech town!
Olivia Wensley
Yes - a tech town.
Great. Oh, thanks so much for coming on today Duncan. Great to hear about Focus, so make sure you check out the Focus website, and we'll see you soon.
