Building the new gold standard in business appraisals
Interviewing Benjamin O’Dea- Co-founder and CTO at Negotium
Benjamin O’Dea co-founded Negotium in March 2020 alongside his business partner and good friend Edward Johnson.
After studying two advanced STEM degrees at the University of Sydney and serving as the president of BusinessOne Consulting Society USYD, Ben is currently a full-time specialised and technical (pen testing) consultant at EY, whilst also working on Negotium.
Negotium pitched at Textbook Venture’s Startup Pitch competition in 2020 winning the People’s Choice Award. They are currently in the fifth cohort of the Antler program and have seen notable growth over the past 16 months.
- What problem does Negotium solve and how does it differ from commercial business broking solutions?
There are two key problems that we recognised with traditional commercial business broking solutions:
- Small businesses face high upfront and legal fees when buying and selling their own businesses.
- The methodology used is fairly outdated, inefficient and error-prone, especially when collecting new data and navigating different customer processes. Traditional business broking solutions involve white-collar brokers assessing businesses through a price-based approach via calculations done on an excel spreadsheet.
Essentially, Negotium solves these issues by providing small businesses with the critical tools to buy and sell their own businesses, without additional fees. From signing up to Negotium, the business owner has access to a suite of tools, including a valuation calculator replacing the primary value offering of a commercial broker and referrals to solicitors and mediators.
Negotium provides a solution that combines the service-breadth of high commission brokerages like Link with the affordability of DIY-listing platforms like Gumtree. Negotium’s scaling commission model is both affordable and serviceable and works in the best interests of small businesses.
2. What sparked your inspiration to establish Negotium and what was the journey like from idea to launch?
My co-founder Ed originally came up with the idea of a modern business-broking solution from his personal experiences, by identifying inefficiencies with traditional brokerage solutions. As the technical co-founder, I built the product from ideation to launch. Currently, I directly manage 3 of our 7 employees, including two software engineers.
Through participating in various university competitions and accelerator programs, including the UNSW Peter Farrell cup, the Founders Program at The Studio Incubator and UNSW 10x accelerator, we were able to develop an MVP and seek mentorship.
From the Textbook Ventures Startup Pitch Competition, we had an opportunity to connect with Niki Scevak from Blackbird Ventures and attend Startmate’s office hours.
Overall, through attending these programs, we were provided with stepping stones in navigating the founder journey.
3. What was the process like in landing your first customer/client?
Initially to better understand the customer problem, we visited a number of local businesses in Sydney. When acquiring our first customer, we engaged in outbound marketing from cold calling businesses to conducting user research. Small businesses shared critical insights into their pain points including high upfront costs and legal fees, with a general expression of interest for a more efficient business broking solution. I was then able to run a number of beta tests with our initial clients to develop and iterate on Negotium’s core product offering. Our first enterprise client contacted us through our LinkedIn page which was a notable step for Negotium.
4. What are you working on at the moment and what do you anticipate to be the next steps for Negotium?
We are currently focused on scaling up all fronts of the business from operations to product. We are continually refining and solidifying Negotium’s customer feedback loop. My biggest takeaway is to stay flexible and let the product be guided by customer needs, which is critical to driving further growth to the business. Eventually, my cofounder Ed aspires to take Negotium internationally with consideration of legal and regulatory constraints, but it’s all a matter of time.
“Let the product be guided by customer needs”
5. What were the challenges of founding a startup?
The founder journey has been relatively smooth. Personally, the current challenges of founding a startup would involve balancing various commitments, including attending full-time university to working a full-time job. It’s definitely a balancing act with full-time work and building Negotium during after-hours and on the weekends. However, it has been very rewarding to experience it all.
6. What advice would you give to aspiring founders and students who want to get involved in the startup space?
I would be prepared to throw one or two ideas away. You will essentially avoid a lot of mistakes by learning from previous experiences.
It’s important to be realistic with current expectations as ideas won’t work out right away. Hence, you learn to develop an entrepreneurial instinct to pivot quickly and to eventually find product-market fit.
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