Why TradeGecko joined the JFDI Accelerate Program

It was just back in 2012, that Cameron Priest and his TradeGecko co-founders would pack their bags and leave the lives they had in New Zealand behind, to take a chance on their dream of potentially building a billion dollar business by joining the pioneer batch of JFDI.Asia’s Accelerate Program in Singapore.

Fast forward two years, and after a great deal of hard work – they’ve successfully built up a customer base in over 90 countries, with the TradeGecko platform having helped facilitate transactions worth over USD850 million to date.

TradeGecko has arguably already carved out a spot for itself today, as a leading global player in the inventory and order management space for the wholesale and retail industry. But their success today was little more than a dream (and an idea), just a few short years back.

KEY MOTIVATIONS FOR JOINING THE JFDI ACCELERATE PROGRAM

To Cameron, the biggest motivation for joining the Accelerate Program was to simply get the proper guidance to help him and his fellow co-founders harness the great ideas they had, and put them together in order to build the framework for a scaleable business that could legitimately take-off over time.

“In addition to me personally having always wanted to move to Singapore, I wanted the opportunity to focus, to ignore the world for a few months whilst we developed our ideas, if we wanted to achieve success building a business at the scale we envisioned. I needed to focus on building a business, and felt that the circumstances back home were definitely not the most conducive to achieve this efficiently,” said Cameron.

“And as one of the world’s major commercial hubs with an economy that depends heavily on trade, it just made sense for us to join the Accelerate Program and move to Singapore – which had a solid ecosystem in terms of guidance, resources and the access to markets for us to achieve this efficiently.”

THE INITIAL CHALLENGES

Upon moving to Singapore, acceptance into the program, and getting to work on building their business; it quickly became clear to the TradeGecko founders that there were several crucial challenges they would have to overcome quickly if they were to find any long-term success.

“For instance, we had to pivot twice before we could nail the model for a viable product. It was also very difficult to get access to capital before joining the program,” said Cameron.

And it was the Accelerate Program which would help the young team adjust to the punishing demands of building a startup, what more one in the fast-moving and extremely competitive SaaS landscape.

As Cameron shares, “The structure, timeline and associated pressures with the program helped put a framework on our thoughts and efforts, helping us focus on the things which were crucial towards building a viable product.”

FINDING SUCCESS – THE KEY FACTORS

In addition to the structural, logistical and organizational guidance afforded, the introduction to a strong community of vastly-experienced mentors was also another key factor Cameron and his team greatly appreciated from the Accelerate Program.

“We were introduced to a stellar network of mentors and advisors like Hugh (CEO of JFDI.Asia), and had important referrals to investors and other key stakeholders within the ecosystem. These initial introductions were crucial, and would eventually lead us on to our seed stage as well as subsequent follow on investments.”

“These mentors had found great success, but only after having gone through a ton of hard work (coupled with innate talent and their big idea of course) in order for their businesses to succeed. I drew my inspiration from them, in the belief that similarly with non-stop hard work, the proper guidance and a little bit of luck, TradeGecko could make it too,” he added.

This support network of mentors, many of whom had “been there and done that” before would also be crucial for Cameron on a personal level, as he was now transitioning towards being a CEO – and learning how to properly focus on developing, building and growing the business (and all it’s various aspects) from scratch.

“I was way more naive and immature in terms of not just the skill-sets, but also the mind-set required of a CEO leading a fast-growing company, and of all the respective challenges the role entails. I’ve experienced so much personal and professional growth in this space of time, and am a very different person now in comparison to when we first started off in the program.”

ACHIEVING MILESTONES, AND THE ROAD UP AHEAD

The TradeGecko team would stay in Singapore beyond demo day, successfully raising multiple rounds of funding (read: How to raise seed funding in Singapore), all while keeping up the momentum of hitting important milestones.

These would range from securing their first paying customer, to hiring their first-time employee, to even opening a wholly-owned Filipino office half a continent away. All, while managing multiple office shifts in Singapore due to the need for more desk space as the team grows by the day.

TradeGecko has certainly come a long way since their days in the Accelerate Program, but it doesn’t stop there.

Over the next year, they are looking forward to eventually hiring their 100th employee (and moving offices for a third time to allow that to happen), as well as exploring the potential to open up additional offices in the USA and beyond.

In comparison to just over two years ago, Cameron’s dream of building a billion dollar business might not seem that far off now.