Making the switch from corporate to startups and moving to the US
Chats with UNSW grad, Julian Stafford about his role at Neara and startup journey
Julian Stafford is a UNSW Alumni, having graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Commerce — Information Technology. Julian is currently working in product strategy and business development at Neara, a cloud-based enterprise platform that makes the most complex analysis, design, and application accessible at every level of the infrastructure industry. Prior to joining Neara, Julian worked as an intern for Deloitte in Enterprise Applications (SAP) and Technology, Strategy & Transformation, as well as working on projects for Practera and Fiserv.
Can you tell us about your background and what you’re working on?
I’m 22 at the moment and graduated from UNSW last year. In terms of career background, I’ve had my fair share of both corporate and startup experience. On the corporate side, I worked at Fiserv and Deloitte throughout university. I am now working at Neara, a tech startup that’s recently gone through Series A funding.
In terms of my role, I’m co-owning a product called ‘Neara Point Cloud’. It is a spatial data processing visualisation and analytics platform driven by machine learning. It takes raw 3D data and automatically recognises and classifies captured objects. It then vectorises the objects to create a 3D model that is engineering-grade. This allows users to run complex analytics scenarios such as weather simulations and assess their impact on the assets.
My responsibilities look like this:
- I am developing and executing sales strategies. Currently, I am developing a sales plan to target geospatial companies in the U.S and EU.
- I am managing the product strategy of Neara Point Cloud. I work with the customers to understand the market, prioritise the short-term and medium-term roadmap, and define the long-standing visions of the product. I am also working with developers to release a quality assurance and control LIDAR platform.
Other things include, I guess, at a startup, the opportunity to go to conferences across the world.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in the start-up space?
As soon as I finished up with my corporate experience at Deloitte and Fiserv, I moved into a Sales and Marketing internship role at Neara and enjoyed it too much and never looked back. You will find that there is little to no internal politics and a united team with a common goal.
Neara opened my eyes to the benefits of working in a start-up space. The roles you find in this space are multi-disciplinary, and it allows you to exercise strategy and creativeness in an autonomous working environment.
The teams work together closely, and everyone aligns incredibly well with the company’s values. We hustle, laugh and drink together.
Can you tell me more about what Neara does?
Neara is a digital twin platform. We take 3D data and asset data to create a 3D model that is high fidelity. And what this allows users to do is create analytics scenarios. So, for example, if you can imagine an entire infrastructure network mapped out in a 3D environment, a user can go in and simulate a high wind storm coming through and identify all assets that may break before that actually happens in real life. And then they can go ahead and service those assets to make them stronger or provision their field workers and teams to make sure that they make their grid more resilient.
We mainly work with utilities companies. In the future, hopefully, we can expand into gas, water and other underground subsurface utilities. And then, perhaps, in the long run, to railway and roads, and ideally have an entire infrastructure network mapped out.
What does a day in your life in your position look like?
Because we’re servicing American clients at the moment, I often get started with meetings at 7am or 8am. In those meetings, I catch up with clients and give them updates on their projects. Other times, I’m selling to potential customers and trying to acquire them as clients. After that, we have an internal alignment meeting. So, initially, I work with the developers to go through our current short term priorities, look at the tickets we have in ‘Clubhouse’ and make sure we’re hitting our goals for the product. Then, we also have alignment meetings about the sales plans to make sure that we’re hitting our targets. I always try to give myself at least four or five hour blocks of uninterrupted time to focus on my work, and that’s where I start to hone in on my client projects and make sure that we can deliver.
However, there’s no such thing as a typical day. Often, the projects that I work on change a lot. For example, one day, I might be working on the sales plan. But the next day, I might be working on a high-level UI redesign of a platform. So it depends on how quickly I get tasks done and then move on to the next one.
I think the key is sitting down at the start of the day and setting out your priorities for the day and the week. Then, you have to consider what’s not going to block other people or what’s not going to block the current sales or deals you’re working on.
What would you say is the most challenging part of your role?
I think the hardest part of the role is balancing the priorities. Because it’s a multidisciplinary role, and I work on both sales and product, it’s hard to stay on top of everything and prioritise things correctly. Often, I might have a client pre-sales project that I need to do, and that drags out for two weeks because I’ve had to focus on my work as a product manager or product strategist. Also, balancing that with the mental fatigue from work is challenging. So that’s my biggest challenge right now. As a result, I often have things that are running overdue. I think regular discussions with management and co-workers to understand prioritisation are critical.
What sort of tools or techniques, if any, do you use to help you prioritise?
At the start of every day, I write a ‘to do’ task list in Microsoft OneNote of my top 10 tasks. It’s a drag and drop tool, which is excellent for reordering changing priorities by just dragging tasks up and down the list. Then I work through the tasks and identify which ones are ‘blocked’. By that, I mean tasks for which I need a decision or information from someone else to move forward. Then I figure out who I need to speak to to ‘unblock’ the task. Apart from that, Microsoft OneNote is really effective because I can write down notes correlating to the tasks that need to be done anywhere, just like a scrapbook.
I think something that complements this well is having frequent one-to-one meetings with the people you work with. So, I have a one-on-one with my product officers and CCO nearly every day. By doing this, I can make sure that I communicate my tasks clearly to them and let them know what I am focussing on. It gives them the opportunity to provide their input as to what I should be doing if I’m missing something or if they need me to do a task urgently.
Can you tell us more about your move to the US?
The discussion for my move to the US started in December or January this year when my CCO called me into a meeting and asked me how I felt l about going to America. The idea of moving felt quite daunting, but the experience was worth it. I understood that we needed to be present in the US to expand into untapped markets and demonstrate international growth.
So once I had made that decision, I had to work through the application process for going to the US, which was pretty troublesome because of COVID. We had to apply for travel exemptions; it probably took about six hours of collating documents to write a 10-page explanation of why myself and a colleague should be going to America. We had to explain what we would be doing there, whether we were vaccinated, that we didn’t pose a threat to the US and that our work was critical. That was on top of trying to secure a vaccination when the eligibility requirements were pretty strict.
So, we got to the US to implement the US go to market strategy (setting up the US team, hiring, training). It was timed perfectly so that I could help to train the team and accelerate business operations. That also includes successfully delivering our first Enterprise Project in the US and building solid relationships with a network of clients.
How has a failure (or apparent failure at the time) set you up for success in the future?
A failure I made was becoming too focused on work and letting it bleed into my personal life. The 9–5 boundaries started to become 7–10, which impacted my happiness as I forgo things I loved, such as spending time with people close to me, gym and boxing. Overworking, frustration, and mental fatigue also led to me producing shoddy quality work.
Upon realising this, I decided to tear down my ways to understand the problem and implemented efficient working habits to ensure I was producing quality work in a reduced amount of time. These include better prioritisation of tasks, improved delegation and collaboration and culling unnecessary meetings.
I then made sure to wake early and exercise before work, lifting my overall mood and giving me plenty of time to relax after work, spend time with others, and work on passion projects.
Implementing these systems allowed me to better delineate between work and personal life and confidently draw the boundaries at around 5 pm.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
It is hard to say because life is so unpredictable. I tend to stay away from curating a micro-detailed life plan, but more so, stick to the type of person I want to be. In 5 years, I want to be dedicating more time to the things I love most, my family, partner and friends. I want to travel the world and make up for the vacations forgone due to COVID-19. I want to be making sensible financial and career decisions to set myself up for a stressless life, especially when the time comes to look for a property.
5 years ago, I had no career goals and was bumming around with a few dollars. I didn’t take care of my health, nor did I take my studies seriously. However, personal events drove me to change my way of life, and I set my goal to make my parents proud and help them retire.
If someone told me that I would be working at a start-up travelling the world for work five years ago, I would be laughing and calling bullsh*t.
My guiding philosophy is to make the most of every day and opportunity and add value to other people’s lives. Don’t k-hole into your career, and make sure to add value to your partners, friends and family.
Why do you think students should get involved in the startup space? And for those who are keen, do you have any tips, tools or resources?
If career progression is essential to you, accepting a role with a start-up may be the key to taking your career to the next level. You’re likely to have more responsibility and be given more opportunities, given they’re likely to have fewer hands on deck. If you can demonstrate your successes, you may be the first in line for a promotion as the business grows.
No matter how your job with a start-up pans out, the opportunity to work closely with and learn from true innovators will prove inspiring and invaluable, no matter where your career takes you in the future. Knowing the value of innovation and seeing how it applies in business is always a worthy use of your time. It will also offer a range of transferable skills that could set you apart from the competition for years to come.
I highly recommend researching and shortlisting a list of startups that you would like to work for. Understand the problem they are trying to solve, their positioning and recent raises. Connect with individuals that work there in a role you align with and set up coffee chats. Be genuine and show your interest, and you should have no problems landing a role.
Want to know how you can take the first step to find your dream start-up experience like Julian? Be sure to follow Textbook Ventures’ socials here and subscribe to our newsletter to find out about more exciting opportunities with amazing VCs and startups making a difference.
