How I punched above my weight and got punched in the face!

I’m not encouraging violent behaviour, in fact I despise it. This article is not about that. It’s about how in the past three years I have managed to do things I’m told are impossible, getting knocked down and standing back up again.

To give some context, let’s first go a bit further back to when I was 7 years old. My family and I were living in a refugee camp in Thailand near the Cambodian border. The United Nations provided food stamps for the refugee women and girls. The men weren’t eligible because apparently they don’t want to feed men who supposedly may be part of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla fighters.

So what did I and a lot of young men and boys do? I kept my hair long, put on a skirt, donned my mother’s ear rings and demanded my food stamp. You gotta do what you gotta do, right?

So I have a natural tolerance to failure and hardship.

When I decided to quit my full time job as a software developer and begin my own startup company, I knew it was going to be hard. One of the first pieces of advice I received before I quitted my job was to have at least a couple years of runway (money in the bank).

I had two months.

After working from home for the first couple of months on our first startup TingTong (a peer-to-peer lending platform) with my co-founder Michael, we decided to look for an office. With no money to pay for an office, we thought how about getting other people to pay for it.

So we started a co-working space and called it Majoran.

The space grew rapidly and within three months we took out a 5 year lease on a 330sqm building in the centre of Adelaide CBD. The first big punch above the weight.

That next year, I went to SydStart (now StartCon) in Sydney, the one and only startup conference back then. On the plane back to Adelaide, I was determined to help make Adelaide startup ecosystem as big as it was in Sydney and started SouthStart conference. The second punch above the weight.

It worked.

So what’s that punch in the face I hear you ask?

For the past three years, I have seen and heard so many negative views, opinions and responses. I thought the “can do attitude” was ingrained in the Australian culture, but not in my experience.

It was very hard to get any support for Majoran coworking when we first established and not many thought SouthStart would be possible. But the event continues to grow year on year (albeit people getting tickets in the very last days).

What drove me to start and continues to drive me to push these two initiatives?

Self interest.

Maybe a little. You see, my family have moved from place to place since when I was five years old to seek a better future for ourselves. We spent 8 years in refugee camps across Thailand, 8 years in New Zealand and now I’m in my 14th year in Adelaide.

It’s self interest because I wanted to make Adelaide my home, a place where I belong. Now I’m glad to call Adelaide my home.

People like to talk down Adelaide. The popular Facebook page called “Opposing Everything Because I’m from Adelaide” illustrates this. It has become a running joke.

But Adelaide is an amazing place. It’s one of the top 5 best cities to live in the world year on year and in my opinion, it’s number one.

You too can punch above your weight. Sure you’ll get knocked down a few times (or countless time like I did) but what’s the worst that can happen? Get on Centrelink payments for a few months until you are back on your feet again?

If you don’t know where to start, come join me at SouthStart Conference on the 9th of June. Maybe you will meet a future business partner, mentor or investor, explore opportunities, learn something new and get motivated to start something. That’s a risk worth taking isn’t it?