tl;dr
- We took a different approach to business building in 2020 focusing on 2 projects instead of 5–6
- Evenly is on the path to becoming the global trust engine for transactions involving SMBs.
- connectID is helping to speed up the shift from paper to digital ID in Australia.
- We have a few other great projects that we’re excited to share with you…soon.
- We met a bunch of other awesome Australian studio people. The studio model will be a valuable part of the Australian startup ecosystem.
- We’re excited for 2021. All the best to you for the new year :)
2020 — The Year in Review
2020 was an unusual year for 25Fifteen.
Partly because of COVID-related constraints and partly because of our desire to keep experimenting with our version of the Startup Studio model, we had far fewer projects this year. Rather than our usual 5–6 concurrent projects we focussed on just 2; Evenly and connectID.
EVENLY
In July 2020 we publicly launched Evenly and its first product PayPredict.
At that time we were focused on helping SMBs beat cashflow issues by providing predictive payment insights based on trade payment data derived directly from accounting systems. At that stage we were 9 months into our existence and were tracking ~$200,000,000 in invoices.
Fast-forward 5 months and we’re now tracking ~$850,000,000 in payments and are well on our way to offering Australia’s best SMB credit risk insights as the first step in our mission to become the global trust engine for transactions involving SMBs.
PayPredict still exists as a tool that gives businesses and the accounting industry 10x better credit risk, income forecasting and debtor tracking tools that would normally require 3 other services and cost upwards of $200/month — all for $15/month. It will be joined by another 2 complimentary products in Q1, 2021.
Just as importantly though, we are growing our number of data partners and sources and have first customers consuming our credit risk insights, whether by building our insights directly into their products via our data insights API or by simply using our outputs as part of their credit decisioning processes.
With SMBs representing over 90% of global businesses and global trade continuing to open up there is a real opportunity for new approaches to enabling trust where there has traditionally been little data. Evenly plans to be at the forefront of that change.
CONNECTID
Another project we’ve been focused on, alongside eftpos and entrepreneur Rob Allen, is connectID. connectID is part of the shift from document-based identity to digital identity that’s been happening in Australia and around the world for the last few years.
Like payments, digital identity is an ecosystem, with consumers hosting their identities at an organisation of their choice, private or government, and sharing them with merchants upon request. You might already have a digital ID with myGov, though it’s of limited use today because merchants can’t request that you share it with them.
This is what connectID will enable — any merchant or service provider, from a government department down to your corner store, will be able to use connectID’s identity hub to request verification from identities hosted at any Identity Service Provider, without having to integrate with that ISP directly.
If you see echoes of what the payments networks — eftpos, Visa, Mastercard, etc — do here, you’d be spot on. We hope that connectID will do for digital identity what these networks have done for card payments, making it ubiquitous, safe, and accessible.
This is one of the reasons why partnering with eftpos was a natural fit for this project. They already know what this business looks like, have relationships with most of the players — critical in a market with a big first mover advantage and very strong network effects — and were participants in the digital identity work we had previously done with AusPayNet to create the TrustID framework (the industry equivalent to the government TDIF, under which myGov operates).
Another reason is that while connectID is a traditional for-profit startup, eftpos is a not-for-profit company, and as long-time privacy advocates, we believe that a system like this only works if individuals, not companies, are in control of their personal info.
We’ve been operating a pilot this year with over a dozen businesses and government departments ranging from ASX50 companies to startups, and expect to go to market in the first half of 2021.
You can read more about connectID and our progress here — https://www.eftposaustralia.com.au/connectid/
OTHER PROJECTS
Although we’ve focused on 2 projects there are other projects we’ve been helping out that we’re excited about. They include a new approach to providing disability and aged services, a new way to connect people with the food and food producers that are right for them, and we continue to think about and experiment with new approaches to insurance.
OTHER AUSTRALIAN STUDIOS
Another great thing to come out of this year was we started to build connections amongst the Startup Studio community here in Australia. As a starting group Michelle Dintner (Mawson), Keith Lindner (Coplex), Ben Johnston (JosephMark), Ash Kirvan (Polymath) and we, had a series of conversations about the studio model in Australia, sharing both experience and thoughts on how to optimise for our location.
There’s a strong desire to make the studio model a valuable part of the Australian startup ecosystem and these conversations will only help with that.
2021?
2021 will see us continue to focus on turning Evenly and connectID into great businesses while supporting the other projects mentioned. We’d intended to share more of our experiences in 2020, but the needs of Evenly, connectID, and other projects got in the way — we’ll change that in 2021.
All the best to you for the new year and for whatever projects you choose to work on. We hope 2021 is a wonderful year for you all.
Kim, Luke, and the 25Fifteen Team.
