s/Busy/Full

January 2, 2015

2014 Annual Report

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
– Socrates

“Don’t say you’re busy. Say you’re getting lots done. If the latter isn’t true the former is irrelevant.”
Not Socrates

I managed a whole year without using the word “busy” to describe how I was. It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you’re not constantly complaining about how busy you are!

What started so well, with a long relaxing break, mostly spent doing nothing of note, was quickly swallowed by a very full schedule. I don’t know how that looked from the outside, but from the inside trying to do a few too many things at once did eventually wear me down. Because the next thing was always hovering I didn’t always appreciate what I completed during the year, so hopefully writing all of this down helps to put that right…

Work

My work in 2014 was nearly all LLB and bugger all BSc(CompSci).

At the top of the list, it was a huge year for Vend. Deja vu!

The early part was once again dominated by capital raising. It was very exciting to close a US$20m round in March. We are humbled to have the support of some great investors, and it was excellent to add Valar to that list this year.

With more fuel on board, we doubled the team. Again! In fact, we doubled just about all of the key numbers. There are now 12,000+ stores using Vend in over 100 countries around the world. We opened new offices in Toronto, Berlin, London and Wellington. We processed more than 60 million sales through the platform during the year. It’s really come a long way, and it still feels like we’re just getting started.

There were many opportunities to dress up and accept awards – Vend won the Emerging Company of the Year and the Exporter of the Year under $5m (for the last time!) at the Hi-Tech Awards in Christchurch in May, where we surely secured the homepage spot for another year with our official photograph; Vaughan won the Technology category at the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in October; and we celebrated with a table full of women working in technology; and in November we picked up 4th place at the Deloitte Fast50, with 1097% growth.

I’m relishing my role as Chairman. I’m committed. I’m learning a lot.

It was also a year which saw Timely start to get a bit more attention. So much so that it’s already nostalgic to look back at my debut in the ODT in February.

Shortly after that we announced a $1.3m capital raise. The team has more than tripled since then, with people distributed around New Zealand (in Dunedin, Wellington & Auckland) and also in new sales offices in Melbourne and London. There are now over 2000 salons, clinics, trainers and many other small business customers using the Timely booking platform. During the year they took more than 5 million appointments!

I was upgraded from advisor to director in October. I’m excited to be involved.

It wasn’t such a great year to be a Xero shareholder, but I suppose I still need to mention that here having given myself credit for backing them early over the last couple of years, as they were on on the way up. I remain long.

I invested in three new companies during the year: Atomic, Revert and Respondly. It was exciting to see them start to talk about what they are working on. Expect to hear more from me about these in 2015. I have high hopes for all of them.

I’m increasingly proud of the ventures I’ve backed, and will continue to focus on investing in the best companies, not the most companies. Overall, the portfolio doesn’t owe me anything at this point, which is a privileged position.

Southgate Labs has been the foundation for a lot of this over the last four years. Investing in Vend was literally the first decision we made together. We always talked about the possibility that one of our ventures or products would suck us all in. In the end it turned out to be a few different ventures. So it goes. It’s been a fun team to be part of and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

However, prior to that, we did finally manage to launch Dr SaaS, which we’ve been using internally with the ventures we work with for a while. Hopefully I can get a few more companies using that next year.

I work with amazing people. That alone justifies my founder-centric approach. They all do things that I can’t or wouldn’t, and increasingly haven’t, which makes it a bit odd, at times, to be an advisor. Nonetheless I enjoy my part.

Play

It was a great year of #sportsball. This started out as just a conscious attempt to get along to more live sport, which is something I love doing. But, it ended up taking on a life of its own. It was fun to see it embraced by a wide group of people, some of whom might have even surprised themselves.

I did see some great live world class sport: ASB Classic Tennis in Auckland, Black Caps Cricket v West Indies in Nelson, Speedway, Australian Open Tennis in Melbourne (where I was thrown a real live sports ball!), Black Caps Cricket v India in Wellington, A-League Football in Melbourne and also with the boys in Wellington and then Phoenix v West Ham in Auckland, Sevens in Wellington (more, more), Dragon Boats (more), AFL on Anzac Day in Wellington, Super 15 Rugby in Wellington and then All Blacks v England enjoyed with some old friends in Dunedin (although my choice of wardrobe had me sticking out a little) and even MLB Baseball in Toronto. Thanks to everybody who came along and enjoyed these with me.

Where I couldn’t get there in person, I soaked it up on the big screen, and there was a lot to take in during the year: the Winter Olympics, the Masters, the Football World Cup, the Commonwealth Games, the FA Cup (although the crowd didn’t exactly go wild for Arsenal), the US Open Tennis, and the Baseball World Series.

Of course, there is a lot more to #sportsball than sitting and watching…

In February a combined Vend/Southgate (+ some ring-ins) team ran around Lake Taupo, finishing the relay in 14h 3s (3 seconds, grrr!)

In March I ran the X-Race with my oldest son (an event at the intersection of endurance running and Lego which was great fun – we’re looking forward to the 2015 edition) and also ran the length of the Abel Tasman track with my brother, over two days (it was worth every kilometre just for this great photo).

And lots more: Skiing in Nelson Lakes, Queenstown, Wanaka (including a great day cross country at Snow Farm), Table Tennis in Toronto, Tennis in Wellington, Golf in Otaki, Ice Skating in Wellington, Mountain Biking up and down at Kaiteriteri and just down at Rameka, a couple of Sea Swims, Putt Putt in a few different places, including Picton and Paraparaumu (I honestly cannot recommend the latter to you unless very hung over), Pheasant Shooting with Rathmoy in Te Para, Rangitikei (there was some debate about whether this qualified as #sportsball, but we eventually settled on #sportsbang), and Sailing on San Francisco bay.

Towards the end of the year I got a bit more serious about training. I ran a new personal best time of 21m 22s for 5km in Wellington in August, more than 2 minutes faster than I’d previously run, thanks to some great pacing from Nick. And in December I ran The Goat from Whakapapa to Ohakune in 3h 11m.

Thanks to all of that I finished the year fit and weighing less than I started for the first time in a couple of years, which feels good.

We’ve enjoyed some good family holidays. Before Christmas we rode with a big group from Mt Cook to Omarama on the new Alps2Ocean Cycle Trail. We spent a great week on Hamilton Island with a different big group. And we end the year skiing in Whistler in Canada.

I spent a lot of time playing and listening to music, and in January we finally got along to our first (and last?) Big Day Out.

I also logged 104 movies. I don’t read much fiction, but I do watch it.

Home

We purchased the rest of a tennis court, burnt down one old house and made plans to build another. If only we were brave enough to film it, our ongoing project would make an epic episode of Grand Designs.

I installed iBeacons and tinkered with ambient status lights. It is quite fun living in the future, when I’m there.

Sadly few of the things above happened in Nelson, so doing so much meant a lot of time I wasn’t. According to TripIt I was away for 186 days during the year, which is an inauspicious new record. Just adding up the time I spent on planes and at airports represents a pretty significant opportunity cost.

Looking forward to 2015, I don’t think my schedule has ever been so well planned so far in advance. It’s definitely going to be another interesting one.

Beyond that, this is, I think, the penultimate annual report. Life goes on, but perhaps gets documented slightly differently. I still struggle to answer the “what do you do?” question that triggered this whole series of posts, but for entirely different reasons now.

Of course, there are pros and cons to a “full” life too. The pendulum swings back and forth. My new definition of luxury would be not feeling rushed.

Next year, I resolve, there will be more slack.

Promise.

Previous Annual Reports: