“It’s probably good to start without any preconceived ideas about how fast things should happen.”
“Not being around people trying to do the same thing, there wasn’t that pressure to conform.”
Numbers on small business start-ups located in regional areas are not easy to find.
According to statistics from the Department of Innovation Industry, Science and Research released last year, of the over 1.9 million businesses classified as small, 58% of them were to be found in NSW and Victoria – but how many of these are regional?
However, there are organisations attempting to find out – while still in its early stages, the Startup Nation survey is one such organisation (though from the looks of it, there’s a long way to go before it reveals some solid stats).
And one regional start-up I uncovered through the survey is Simone Eyles’ 365Cups, an online coffee-ordering service for cafes that allows their customers to order coffee via their mobile, based from her home town Wagga Wagga.
Eyles says: “It just stemmed from an idea we had. I’ve never been in the hospitality industry, I’m not a developer (luckily my business partner is) but I’m a lover of coffee.”
“One of our biggest challenges was to make sure we could get 365Cups going in at least one café. When we did, it became a lot easier after that.”
Eyles’ comments are humble, considering that 365Cups has spread from Wagga Wagga to many of the major states and New Zealand.
But she also indicates being based in a major city may be far from a start-up prerequisite.
“It doesn’t matter where you are nowadays – now you can be completely mobile, do everything over the internet and, if there are any problems, jump on the phone to solve them.”
There are, however, additional benefits to being far from the bustle (aside from the quiet).
Eyles points to the cost-of-living issues that face many city-based start-ups.
“The cost of living is a lot lower. Yes, there is travel, but in general it’s cheaper to live and set up a business in a regional area.”
Jones believes that having a solid ‘farming income’ helped give him the time and focus to build PA Source, which, according to Jones, was developed through the good fortune of a bumper canola crop.
In addition, access to initiatives such as the Small Business Support Line (SBSL) may have helped him along.
However, Jones also believes that while there may have been state and government assistance to draw from, it may have not have been right for him at the time.
“I think you need to be in a certain place in your development to take advantage of those kinds of things,” he says.
“If I’d found one of those projects four or five months after I started, while I was still learning a lot for developing the software, it probably wouldn’t have been as efficient and would have been quite frustrating.”
“It’s good to have a gradual ramp-up in terms of improving your own skills. (Though) some sort of networking support would have been a help.”
But, while Eyles is content for 365Cups to remain a proud Wagga Wagga resident, Jones has moved PA Source’s operations to Melbourne.
“It (the move) happened at a good point in the life of the business because there are things about country life that are a distraction – you put a lot of time into travel, especially if you have a family,” he says.
“If you’re on a farm, that’s another ongoing distraction. So it was good to be able to take those out of the way.”
“The local community can also be a big distraction, there’s only one way for things to happen in rural areas and that’s by being involved in them.”
“If you want to take yourself out of that picture it’s just not easy to do, whereas in the city you could be highly dedicated to something and no one in your community will notice because they’re off doing other things.”
“The city is a good place to be selfish; it suits the whole start-up enterprise.”
For Eyles, it was the community that gave life to 365Cups, not only by embracing the technology but giving old-fashioned feedback on its usability.
“Without the feedback we received, which allowed us to fix the little bugs, we wouldn’t have been able to build it into what we have today,” she says.
While Jones’ advice for rural start-ups is ‘if you can fund it, get out of the country’, he encourages regional entrepreneurs not to lose their perspective on why they’re doing what they’re doing.
He says: “There’s a whole culture around start-ups in the city, where people want to do a start-up and then go look for an idea – entrepreneurs looking for a problem to solve.”
“PA Source started from a problem that needed to be solved and turned into a start-up. I’m not a wannabe; I don’t know who the ‘start-up’ cool people are.”
Eyles’ advice is simpler. However remote you are, your success is relevant to your tenacity: “Don’t lose belief in yourself and what you’re doing.”
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
