Three things you didn’t know about Sociall
Breaking rules and building an alternative social network in Australia’s beach capital
A young tech startup boasting a private social network in its beta phase, Sociall is an emerging project with a solid team and a bright future ahead.
As we move forward in our project’s development, we thought it’s about time you got to know us a little better. Here we reveal three things you probably didn’t know about Sociall.
1. The Founder & CEO is only 25
Sociall’s roots were sewn like most tech startups … from the laptops and lounge-rooms of young entrepreneurs. Sociall’s Founder & CEO, Jade Mulholland, is a full-stack developer and passionate entrepreneur, who transitioned from coder to CEO with a staff of 20 almost overnight.
“CEO is not a mantle I wear lightly,” says Jade. “It’s one thing to have a disruptive concept, and another to have the skillset to actually create it. But to manage a team of 20 experts in their field and ensure the business is commercially viable is an entirely different challenge.”
Even at age 25, younger than many of his employees, being Founder & CEO imbues Jade with the loudest voice in the company. However, his humble demeanour and willingness to work hard allows him to collaborate with his management team effectively, always bearing the project’s best interest in mind.
“Instead of fumbling through or learning on the go, I accelerated our growth and my own management expertise by hiring leaders in their respective fields — from our front-end and back-end dev, to our product manager, to our marketing team.”
Jade continues, “I don’t apologise for my youth or lack of C-suite experience — I believe it’s an asset in leading an agile, ‘why not’ culture. You can break rules and make new ones when you tackle a concept like Sociall from a blue-sky perspective, rather than a traditional, corporate management approach.”
Jade is a prime example that age is only a number and that true leadership is comprised of confidence, communication, delegation and commitment.
2. The Entire Team Works In-House
From development to management, marketing to finance, the entire Sociall team is housed under the same roof (well, two). Nesting an entire team together works efficiently across the board, allowing consistent collaboration across departments to ensure clear communication and optimised project management.
When new platform features are upcoming, they move seamlessly from the UX team over to development, through to testing, over for management approval, then out to marketing to inform the community.
Working in-house also greatly benefits our Sociall community. All project feedback and bug reports move instantly from the support team across to our development team, allowing for fast and efficient problem solving.
The entire team and project building process works like a well oiled machine — a process that wouldn’t be easily replicated with separate out-sourced teams and agencies.
3. We’re Proudly Australian-Based
Move over Silicon Valley, there’s a new tech town emerging.
Sociall is an Australian-born startup, with headquarters located down-under on the sunny Gold Coast, Queensland. A historic hub for tourism and construction, the Gold Coast hosts a population of around 600,000 and can be found 80km south-east of Brisbane City. Home to three world-class universities, close proximity to two international airports and a unbeatable lifestyle and environment to draw inspiration from, it’s no wonder that the Gold Coast is an entrepreneurial hub — one in five people living in our city work for themselves.
Hosting your company in big bustling cities does not guarantee business longevity and success. Many startup founders and CEOs have made a name for themselves here in the city of golden sand and the future is looking good for local entrepreneurs.
A 2015 report by KPMG looked at the future state of the Gold Coast in regards to population projections, social change, economic and cultural change. The predictions of the Gold Coast’s Technology and Innovation sector states:
‘It is this entrepreneurial mindset that, combined with rising tertiary student numbers, could result in even higher numbers of patents and innovative business ventures on the Gold Coast by 2050, providing the base and opportunity for the Gold Coast to carve out a niche as Australia’s start-up city’.
Sociall has certainly cemented its place here in Australia’s emerging tech town as a startup to keep an eye on.
We’ve set ourselves a whopping big goal to completely reimagine social media and build a Sociall community of 100,000 contributors in 12 months. Scary? Yes. Do-able? Absolutely. But we need your help — join us by sharing and signing up to our Sociall beta to help make our platform your platform.
