2015 was an extremely successful first year for blueshyft. With over a thousand agent sign ups and two major international partners, the tech startup shows no signs of slowing down, and has major plans for 2016. We recently had a chance to sit down with the Managing Director of blueshyft, Kain Warwick, to talk about the business and what the future holds.
What prompted you to start blueshyft?
Matt Handbury brought me in to review the technical approach to the business. I saw that there was a huge opportunity to expand the business model and when Matt asked to me to run the business before we launched I was obviously extremely excited by the opportunity.
What has been one of the greatest challenges so far?
We have found that building the network has required a significant investment of resources. Even though the platform offers significant advantages to Newsagents, there is still a process of getting the information out to the channel and building trust and engagement.
What do you consider to be the most important feature of the blueshyft platform that sets it aside from the competition?
The biggest difference between blueshyft and other platforms is that we are operating a Network as a Service. There are other businesses which have adopted a similar model in the past, but we believe that the intersection of our software platform, the hardware and the quality of our retail locations sets us apart from our competitors.
What does the future of blueshyft look like?
We are aggressively expanding the number of partners on the platform. Due to the fact that we have to spend a significant amount of time tailoring a solution for each new partner this can take quite a while to get right. But we have a number of very exciting additions to the platform coming in 2016.
Any advice for other tech startups?
Raising money is always hard, particularly in Australia. Obviously one of the best ways to prove that your business model is viable is to get customers signed up pre launch. We were very lucky to be able to sign TNT and Ladbrokes before we had fully launched the platform this allowed us to take a significant amount of risk off the table. There is still a lot of work to be done, but knowing you have customers before you start is a huge advantage.
Thank you for your time! We’ll let you get back to work!
It was my pleasure. We’re looking forward to showing everyone what we’re capable of this year.
And there you have it! If you would like to read more from Kain, you can check out his Medium page here.
