It sank a substantial portion of profits into a new lead monetisation platform, FIXr, to expand into adjacent and more lucrative segments, including bathroom, kitchen, air conditioning, door, and window installation.
Sendy says growth in these new segments will more than make up for the slump in solar.
“We’ve become experts in buying paid traffic off big [digital] platforms – Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram – which are very close to having a monopoly on consumers with intent to buy services,” Sendy says.
As well as doubling the size of its technology development team, Heaps Good Services has added 24 new sales reps to carve out a sweet spot in the US digital lead generation market.
The company is also making a tilt for one of Europe’s largest digital marketing businesses using windfall profits made last financial year, in which sales surged 88 per cent to $70.8 million.
If successful, the deal will be transformational for Heaps Good Services.
Sendy, who started the company with business partner Vassie Fitzgerald 11 years ago, confesses he can’t take credit for the original concept. He started buying digital leads from another Adelaide startup, SolarQuotes.com.au, while establishing a domestic solar installation business with his mates in 2008.
Despite a slowdown in the US, solar businesses say the outlook is bright. Bloomberg
That business, Solar Wholesalers, is now one of South Australia’s largest solar panel installers. Sendy retains a stake in the company but has stepped back from operations.
Growing an international business from Australia is tough, Sendy says. He was solo parenting two young boys when SolarReviews kicked off, so getting on a plane wasn’t an easy option.
Rough start in ‘noisy’ markets
RMA Global boss Michael Davey can relate. The global pandemic interrupted the ASX-listed digital marketing business’ US expansion plans.
After a slow start, international subscriptions for the company’s Rate My Agent online platform increased to $3.2 million, up 193 per cent, in the 12 months to June 30 last year.
″The US is a very noisy market, it’s hard to get cut through but we’ve found a way,” Davey says.
Michael Davey, chief executive of ratemyagent.com.au.
He feels the government could create better conditions for Australian businesses to expand internationally, including stronger networks and a bank of sharper market intelligence.
“It doesn’t have to be financial [aid]. There are lots of options to help companies find their way entering big overseas markets, like how to quickly work out if you’ve got a market for your product and how big it is,” Davey says.
Rate My Agent allows homeowners to search and compare real estate agents. Agents can market their services to vendors for a monthly subscription fee.
Sales in key states, including Florida and California, now account for roughly a third of RMA’s group income and are growing rapidly.
Davey says between 70 and 80 percent of US agents trialling the platform are converting to paid subscriptions. What’s more, most self-serve through RMA’s online checkout without any human interaction.
RMA expects the US business to be cashflow positive by early 2025 despite a sharp contraction in residential sales due to rising interest rates.
Davey says even in a bad year, the 300,000 professional agents that RMA is targeting will do between four and five million transactions.
“We want to get the business to cover costs here [in Australia] and earn all our profit in the US,” Davey says.
Strong US demand
The US is fast becoming the dominant market for media intelligence platform Truescope, which has just signed video streaming giant Amazon Prime as its 310th US customer.
Truescope co-founders John Croll and Michael Bade: US will dominant sales growth.
The US currently accounts for a quarter of Truescope’s revenue, however co-founder and chief executive John Croll expects it to reach 70 per cent within two years.
“Having clients like Amazon Prime on the platform gives us great confidence around where the growth is going to happen in the US,” Croll says.
The brainchild of Croll and Michael Bade – both veterans of iSentia’s media monitoring business – Truescope entered the US last year with the help of a $6.2 million seed funding round led by venture capital firms Investible and Jelix Ventures.
It is currently closing a $5 million SAFE note and feeling the pain of significantly tighter money markets.
“Funding it a lot tighter and the conversations take a lot longer,” Croll says.
Investible and Jelix Ventures have both topped up their investments and several new Australian-based investors have joined the mix.
Meanwhile, Croll says Truescope’s acquisition of Nebraska-based rival Universal Information Services has gone smoothly. “We moved 277 clients in six weeks onto [Truescope’s] platform and didn’t lose any,” Croll says.
UIS boss Todd Murphy is now spearheading Truescope’s US expansion efforts.
Australia’s got talent
Despite its success abroad, Croll and Bade remain fanboys of Australia’s computer engineering and web development talent.
When the pair set out to build a superior media intelligence platform in 2019, the University of Wollongong Innovation Campus was one of their first ports of call.
Croll maintains that establishing Truescope’s software development hub in Australia “was one of the best decisions we ever made”.
Like SolarReview, Truescope generates no income in Australia. Its first client in 2022 was a whole-of-government contact in Singapore, a nation now responsible for roughly half of Truescope’s annual turnover – about $4 million a year in recurring revenue.
Flush with cash from a capital raising exercise late last year, RMA is eying adjacent industries to extract maximum value from its $50 million technology platform, developed out of Melbourne.
“We’re exploring what adjacencies will allow us to add more subscribers,” Davey says.
Croll also has his eye on under-served markets with global brands, having recently signed Ralph Lauren as a client in Japan.
He says access to data and content remains a concern. Platforms like Truescope and RMA depend on it.
It is the reason that Truescope won’t sell domestically until Australia’s copyright issues are settled. “I’d love to come back to Australia. We know we could build a great team quickly and have a platform that’s working well on a global scale,” Croll says.
“But unless there is certainty around what copyright agreements are going to be, there are other markets in the world that are much larger where copyright has been sorted,” he says.