Author: Campbell

2010 – A year in review

This time a year ago I was feeling very optimistic about 2010. After we reached a real low point in September 2009 we saw the market improve and literally within 3 months things were heading in the right direction again. My own optimism was shared by the building industry and we saw 2010 get off to a great start with January, February and March all showing steady improvement. Then in April the wheels started to fall off again!

While this may make it sound as though 2010 was a bad year i have to be honest and say while it didn’t turn out as expected I am generally happy with the results from another challenging year in business.

Anyone who knows me, knows I like to get things done so it is always interesting to review what was achieved to help provide a baseline for setting realistic goals for a New Year.

Without wanting to bore you completely below are some highlights (and low lights) for 2010:

Graphisoft New Zealand

As outlined above the NZ Building Industry picked up for Oct 09 – Mar 10 but then dropped away again. Building Consents hit a major low in October and while signs are pointing in the right direction consent continue to be at low levels.

This indicator translated to low sales for Graphisoft New Zealand, however, with our eyes on the future we have sustained our staffing levels and look forward to an improvement in 2011.

From a marketing perspective we take a medium to long term view and invest heavily in eduction (see below). Marketing needs a continual focus especially during a down turn in the market and we have continued to invest heavily in this regard.

ArchiCAD 14 was released in June and took inter-disciplinary BIM Collaboration to a new level. This in conjunction with the GRAPHISOFT BIM Server released with ArchiCAD 13 provide extremely effective communication of information rich building models.

Cadimage

Cadimage had a big year and again managed to grow sales year-on-year. While growth was single digit it is still a remarkable achievement all things considered. More pleasing was to see that total sales in the last three years are triple what they were in the first three years of this business.

We pushed through $1 million USD in export sales during the year and also launched our new branding.

The branding has been well received though we still have a long way to go with it. Working with BRR at the strategic level has proved interesting and enjoyable.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise have continued to support our global marketing efforts and we entered the fourth year of our Market Development Grant. Funds were used for strategic branding, translation and market visits.

Travel

2010 was a reasonably light year for travel for me though I did fly around the world twice and visited 9 countries.

In April the GRAPHISOFT IPC was held in Budapest and was all good until a certain volcano impacted our return trip – this added 3 additional countries to those I had planned to visit.

Septembers trip was less eventful from a interruption perspective but I crammed a lot into 12 days visiting San Francisco, Houston, Nottingham, London, Budapest and Oslo.

Education

As outlined above GSNZ continued investing in education with 2010 marking the third year of our involvement in the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards – this time visiting Wellington.

We were also stoked to see ArchiCAD has been used extensively in the design of the FirstLight House which has won a place in the Solar Decathlon. This is a remarkable achievement and we are proud to be a sponsor as the team prepares to take their house to Washington DC to compete.

Cadimage Group

From an overall perspective our continued strategy of building both an NZ focused business and a global business in parallel is proving a solid strategy. Our continues global growth has helped balance the downturn in NZ at just the right time – we await the time where things align perfectly so we can explore some new growth opportunities.

I have enjoyed the step we took with creating a ‘proper’ board of directors and appointing Lance Wiggs as a director. The regular meetings have been both productive and stimulating and provided a real focus for working on the business. Our final meeting for 2010 saw the presentation of our strategic plan and budget for 2011 which is something I am very excited about.

2011

January 2011 marks six years for me as Managing Director of the Cadimage Group. The last six years have flown by and the business has changed remarkably in that time. There have been highs and lows and I believe I have learnt a lot from both the positives and the negatives.

2011 also marks a new era in Cadimage with some high level changes to [hopefully] take the pressure off me and also provide opportunities for other key staff to step up. While I remain ultimately responsible for the delivery and development of our strategy I believe my team will take big steps and the business will improve immeasurably as a result.

While I still will be full time for Cadimage I am on the lookout for opportunities both to grow Cadimage, but also opportunities for me to offer my expertise to other start-ups and businesses.

There are many more exciting changes in store for 2011 which we will share with you as we go. I think the review above shows we can achieve a lot in a year so I expect 2011 to be no different.

New Xero Investor

From the Xero Blog today:

US Technology Guru Peter Thiel to Invest in Xero

Leading online accounting software provider Xero Limited [NZE:XRO] today announced that Peter Thiel, the San Francisco based investor and Silicon Valley authority, has agreed to invest NZ$4 million to support Xero’s expansion into the US market. He will also join Xero’s US Advisory Board.

This is a really good step forward for Xero and provides a great investment and partner to really have a great crack at the US market.

On a side note, earlier this year I  read the PayPal wars book one of Peter’s earlier investments. While the stroy is a number of years old it was still an interesting read and always interesting to see the different tactics employed by companies when threatened by a competitor with deep pockets.

McKinsey Three Horizons + Apple

A while back at one of our board meetings Lance introduced us to the concept of the 3 horizons – not surprisingly the 3 horizons concept is from McKinsey one of Lance’s previous roles.

Both Lance’s post a few months back and todays article on the NBR shows the amazing effect of 3 horizon thinking for business – 60% of Apple’s revenue today is for items that didn’t exist 3 years ago!

While you can’t simply focus on the future this does help to illustrate that R&D now can lead to enormous opportunities in the future – and revenue streams that are almost impossible to predict.

Current Travels

I am currently travelling with the support of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise around the US, UK and Europe.

Working on building  a global business is a challenge but with support from partners like NZTE it is nice to have financial support which means we can focus on other equally important issues.

We are constantly working on building our international brand – Cadimage – and for those interested I have also been posting on the Cadimage Blog

Round the World : Part 1 USA

Round the World : Part 2 UK

Trade Me – The Inside Story

This recently released book is a great history of one of New Zealand’s most successful businesses – Trade Me.

Originally I planned to read this on my flight from Auckland to San Francisco on Sunday night, however I ended up sitting next to Sam Morgan and almost felt embarrassed! We did share a joke about it and as it turned out I mostly slept or talked to Sam about one of his new ventures, Pacific Fibre (which incidentally is turning from an idea into realitiy very quickly!)

I ended up reading the book on my flight from San Francisco to Houston and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book has been well thought our and Michael “MOD” O’Donnell has done well to provide insights into how different aspects of Trade Me developed. The chapters on the purchase by Fairfax were especially interesting, not only from the point of view of the $ involved, but how Fairfax dealt with Trade Me after the purchase. You just need to look at the numbers since 2006 to see that to a large extent Trade Me have been left to do what they do best.

That said. it was interesting to read the current CEO’s (Jon MacDonald) take on what has internally been called “Trade Me’s Secret Sauce” Originally ten principles that Sam developed in 2005 for the company, Jon has updated these 5 years on, the underlying theme remains the same, however with staff numbers having increased by 87 (from 60 to 147) since 2005 it is not surprising the principles are a little more ‘corporate’ – in a good way!

If you are interested in the original principles you can jump over to Rowan Simpson’s blog where he wrote extensively about this topic – though don’t use that as an excuse not to buy the book!

At the end of the book Michael outlines a series of statistics about Trade Me on the assumption the book took the reader a week to read. I managed to read it in less than 3 hrs but even still during my flight from San Fran to Houston the following would have happened:

27,000 Items have been listed on Trade Me

5,000 Items have sold to some of the 72,000 people who visits the site

250,000 Automated emails have been sent to members “on everything from confirming buyer addresses for an iPod to automatic searches for twin carb Fiat manifolds.”

5,800,000 pages have been served to New Zealanders

In 3 hrs! In Micheal’s own words “That’s a lot of love in anyone’s language“

PS: For additional reading on my current trip also keep an eye on http://blog.cadimageworld.com

Rework

Yesterday I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – the guys behind 37signals and products such as BaseCamp and Highrise.

While controversial is probably too strong a word to describe the book it certainly is not your standard business guide. When you boil it down the book could almost be described as common sense though I expect there are many who would disagree!

Some of the section headings that show this non-conventional approach to starting a business include:

  • Ignore the real world
  • Learning from mistakes is overrated
  • Planning is guessing
  • Build half a product, not a half-assed product
  • Throw less at the problem
  • Good enough is fine
  • Underdo your competition

I could go on and on but you can see the theme. As book it was certainly an easy read and I was surprised how quick I got through it.

That said I think I will read it again soon as there was an enormous amount to take in – though as with all my reading I take all the ideas and concepts with a grain of salt and adopt aspects that I feel will benefit my business and me most.

Ideas

It is a common myth that success is built on great ideas. While it is important to have an idea to begin a business, true success comes from execution and actually making the idea a reality.

I have recently read Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky that is all about the execution side of ideas. You’ll notice the book is from a website called the 99 percent – highlighting that the ideas is only the first 1%.

The book gives a number of good pointers as to how to turn ideas into reality while at the same time highlighting why in many cases ideas never see the light of day. It talked about the challenges in team building and leadership that also hinder many ideas.

The recent issue of Idealog had an article on the Casualties of coincidence which looks at plagiarism and how many ideas emerge at the same time from different places. At the end of the article there was a link to a Malcolm Gladwell article that talks about the fact that many of histories great inventions were actually invented by more people than receive credit.

The article is a great read and it talks about a firm that has been set up simply to invent ideas which reinforces the theory that the idea is only the start.

If you enjoy Gladwell’s article then I also recommend his latest book What the Dog Saw – a collection of articles he has written for the New Yorker.

MBA Diary #4

Its been a few months since I last reported on my MBA studies. In that time Quarter 2 came and went and then I withdrew from the course.

While I can see value in what the course offered for many of the participants for me it was really a case of not adding value. When I looked at both the actual cost and the time involved it really wasn’t adding up, and as a result was also limiting the time I could invest in my business.

I enjoyed the classes but at the same time felt limited in what else I could fit in – since quarter 2 finished I have read 6 books and have another 6 in my pile still to read.

On the upside it provided me a discipline of working on my business one day a week – a habit I plan to continue.

Quarter 3 is now under way and I wish my team mates well as they continue their studies.