Meet Ronen Heine from #CorporateAdvice … Today we discussed how Startups and Entrepreneurs are operating abroad compared to Australia.
Ronen and his team run an awesome company. If you have an idea and want to proceed make sure you check in with him and his company first.
More: www.CorporateAdvice.co
Transcript
Tobi Skovron: Hey guys, welcome to the blog, I’ve got Ronen Heine here from #corporateadvice. So over here we have our Facebook live audience, in the middle we have Instagram live audience, and little guy on the right is youtube, so that’ll get up on youtube later.
Tobi Skovron: So yeah, known Ronen for a little while, really was first introduced to you after you did Mobilla, and you did I guess a pitch night with the members or the recipients of? Do you wanna just go into a little bit more depth on that?
Ronen Heine: Yeah sure so it was a, we called it a mentor driven accelerated program, and saying mentor driven because most accelerated programs might be associated with a fund or some sort of just a corporate accelerator with a corporate innate design for startups to come in and develop their businesses, maybe get funding, connect to a network. We called it a mentor driven accelerator because we got mentors to design the programs for the startups that they were going to mentor.
Tobi Skovron: Great.
Ronen Heine: So the mentors decided what the program’s gonna look like and what the startups needed. It was a five month program, started off with a few touch points where the mentors first of all chose the startups that they wanted to work with, they met, they got in touch, they formed a relationship. They then went over to Israel to connect with technology over there, sort of turbo charged their ideas and also going, yeah?
Tobi Skovron: No I was gonna say, Israel I guess, like my last 8 and a half years have been US West Coast, Los Angeles, Silicon Beach, Silicon Valley, Israel is, and then New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles are the biggest tech hubs in the US, but globally, you know pound for pound, Israel, Tel Aviv is a massive tech hub, and you got to go over there and with these participants of the course and mentors, can you shed some light on that experience?
Ronen Heine: Yeah so Tel Aviv is like, people talk about a startup ecosystem when people say, “Hey here developing our startup ecosystem.” You go over to a place like Tel Aviv and you actually understand what a connected ecosystem looks like. So everyone knows their role, everyone collaborates, and startups, the founders if you like are the heroes. So they don’t look up to sports stars, they don’t look up to TV celebrities, well they do, what they really appreciate is…
Tobi Skovron: Zuckerberg?
Ronen Heine: Exactly, so you go over there, they’re great at technology for all sorts of different reasons, they think really big because they don’t need to think this is the Israelis that they don’t have in commonly that they can think about, “Hey I’m starting up a business and I can make it big in my own country,” It’s kind of too small for that so they have to think global from the start. And they have a sort of a let’s go out and do it, stuff that we’re just gonna make it happen type of thing.
Ronen Heine: So when you go over there as an Australian, you know a bit risk averse and sometimes we get caught up just being there, the king of Melbourne or the queen of Sydney? You know going out there and thinking a lot bigger. So for us taking the startups, going over there, immersing them in an ecosystem and it’s thinking way bigger, that understands how to collaborate between government and investors and you know accelerators and the founders themselves, have them all collaborate to make really big ideas happen.
Ronen Heine: So if you take Australian founders over there with their mentors, expose them to this, they sort of get their eyes completely opened and wowed and so we went over there, came back, and then started a 3 month program to work with their business.
Tobi Skovron: Was it a bit of a culture shock for the Aussies that you took abroad?
Ronen Heine: Yeah, a huge culture shock. So you sit there, so we would get there straightaway, straight out there pitching their business ideas and because everything’s like, there’s no time to [inaudible 00:04:26] so it’s like straight down the line, they’re pitching to me, saying something, that’s just it, they’re getting instant feedback, some of it hurts but it’s like straight down the line. But also I guess it’s that you know, they don’t have a fear of risk over there.
Ronen Heine: So you know a lot of founders in Australia think, “Oh I can’t do this, I would love to do this but,” and over there it kind of just like just goes on, so I think that was a big one.
Tobi Skovron: You know I’ve obviously spent enough time in Silicon Valley and obviously Santa Monica has got [inaudible 00:04:59], there’s some incredible companies there like Snapchat, Google’s there and a bunch of, I think Facebook’s there now as well. The thing that struck me with the Australian people so far is that we’re very much farmer mentality. And what I mean by that is, obviously no disrespect on Australia, so like I’m kind of haggling here by myself a little bit but in the US, hunting, I’d imagine like Israel they’re hunting for you know, or they’re climbing that hill at a rapid pace. Where as here we kind of like climb 100 meters, “Oh I’ll do the rest tomorrow” I mean there’s control there.
Ronen Heine: 100%. So there it’s like the people that are involved in startups or even just entrepreneurs in generally, not necessarily has to be a big tech startup of sorts, you know they’re driven and passionate about what they’re doing and they’re all in. So they’re not just leaving it at the workplace and not in their personal life, so I don’t know you hear this in Australia a lot, work-life balance and this idea that there’s a workplace that’s 9 to 5 and then a life thereafter, it’s all sort of intermingled.
Ronen Heine: So you’ll see that there’s always a bedtime at night and people are going not because they have to show a face at a function but they’re going because they’re passionate or they may be up and about to have a beer with a colleague or a collaborator to talk about their ideas and show theirselves so it’s part of their whole sort of lifestyle if you like, I guess. Sort of don’t really have [crosstalk 00:06:37] between I’m at work and I’m off.
Tobi Skovron: I sort of noted that in the US as well, like we come in, I come in, so where I was based in Santa Monica is very much a tourist destination, so on the weekends I’d be taking my kids to the ice skating rink or the shops or we could get some lunch or dinner or whatever and I’d park my car ’cause I have parking in the building. I park my car there and then come up through the elevator on a weekend and the place was full. And I almost feel guilty but I’m a father of two beautiful kids so my switch has to be off but the hustle man, the hustle was 24/7 365. And I’d love to see some of that here.
Tobi Skovron: Definitely wanna se it here at creativecubes. But I’d love to see the hunger, I mean you work with a couple hundred startups?
Ronen Heine: So I’ve thought about this a little bit and I think maybe one of our problems here in Australia is if you’re on a, let’s say, you’re like corporatised, so high achieving student in Australia, most people who do well at uni, good grades anyway, not don’t have to do well but high achieving people they leave uni and then they’re at corporate structure. So they’re going through a corporate lifestyle and a corporate approach, whether that’s a big bank, investment bank or a law firm, a big accounting firm.
Ronen Heine: And they’re going into a cycle of what a corporate lifestyle looks like. And a corporate lifestyle, most corporate lifestyles in Australia look like a 9 to 5 job at a desk and you’re into that type of mentality, which is completely different to entrepreneurship. Where it is a full lifestyle and you’re living it all over and you might take a morning off to go for a run but you’re working late at night to meet up with a collaborator and it’s just a different vibe so maybe it’s because of that, maybe it’s something to do with, I mean if you look at the founders that started in Australia, you know the startup, the big report that was just released recently, I read it the other day the average age of a founder in Australia I think in Victoria was listed as 36.
Ronen Heine: Right so if you’re a 36 year old and that’s the average age of the founder here, they’ve definitely gone through a more formal job before [crosstalk 00:08:58] so it’s not like they’ve been working for a startup and they’re used to this lifestyle. There has to be something in that.
Tobi Skovron: Well there is, and I think you’re an example of that aren’t you. You went to university and graduated and went into a law firm, IT law firm, and I guess rookie initiation was that you had to deal with some of the smaller businesses and then you’re like, “There’s something here,” and then copy it.
Ronen Heine: Yeah.
Tobi Skovron: You spun out to your own business, which is now serving a couple hundred startups. In what capacity?
Ronen Heine: So we’re like fascinated and passionate and probably maybe because I never really got encouraged to do it myself and I’ve thought of myself as an entrepreneur so I’m really passionate about running with an idea, you should give it a go, try and make it happen. And it doesn’t matter who’s saying no you can’t, like give it a go, roll up your sleeves, if you fail it’s cool, fail fast, get up go again, onto to the next thing, whatever that looks like. You may fail again and then go again, you could be onto a winner.
Ronen Heine: So I’m really passionate about that, and that’s what we really do, we help early stage entrepreneurs going from, ‘Hey I’ve got an idea,” to “Let’s develop a business.” And we do that by connecting them with a range of different services. So we might help them out in the early stage with their business model and it’s strategy, putting in the idea together. We’ve got a legal arm that helps that with the legal stuff that they will need along the way. We’ve got an accounting arm that helps them out with the accounting stuff they’ll need to grow a business at some point in time. And then we’ve got this connection piece where we will connect them into the ecosystem whether that’s to investment, help them with their investment strategy or other bits and pieces that you need to grow a business.
Ronen Heine: But we’re pretty much focused on helping that early stage entrepreneur put stuff in place to go from idea to business. So yeah so we work with a couple of hundred and love it.
Tobi Skovron: I love it as well, and I mean that very sincerely otherwise we wouldn’t have had you on the blog. No no, I really think you’re serving a real need, I really do, I think that it’s what, like already hit up on LinkedIn in all the time, how good idea branches just have no idea what to do and I think that the first thing is to understand the metrics on the accounting side of things, getting yourself protected on the legal side of things, and then start to work out how to make or deliver the vision that you have.
Tobi Skovron: And so I think that you do it in a very user-friendly way, I think that you do it in a very approachable way and obviously startups here, I believe you’re working in this site as well or just locally in Melbourne?
Ronen Heine: No we work all over the place, we’re based in Melbourne, so mainly based here but you know we jump everywhere.
Tobi Skovron: Well the market’s responding, we’re gonna call up there, how do we get more information from what you do and where you’re at?
Ronen Heine: So you can go to our website, www.corporateadvice.co or you can hit me up on LinkedIn personally, Ronen, R-o-n-e-n, Heine, H-e-i-n-e. Or ever better just come down to creativecubes, we’re here, come say G’day.
Tobi Skovron: You slipped it in there, we’re here. He’s taken the biggest office in the building, he’s got the most staff on any team here, but they’re doing great things and it’s something you should look into if you’re an entrepreneur or if you’re not an entrepreneur, some people don’t identify themselves as an entrepreneur.
Tobi Skovron: If you’ve got an idea and you wanna go after it, definitely come speak to Ronen before you do anything and just make sure that you’re safe before you go to market, and look I’ve been a victim of being ripped off, I came up with an idea when I was really young, shared it with a guy, he told me he couldn’t make it and before I know it he was injecting my file all over the place. So big failure on my end there but look, we will be back, I’d love to check in with you in a few month’s time to see where you’re at.
Tobi Skovron: The reason why I brought Ronen in on the show is he was a super impressive guy, I think it’s been identified here today. Stop by, say hi, don’t be shy. This is the awkward part of the segment.
Ronen Heine: I like that line, he must’ve used that before, stop by don’t be shy.
Tobi Skovron: On my wife, that surprised me as well. This is the awkward part where we go through three tripods here believe it or not and I go and switch off the tripods so it’s a real hack job, and I apologise, I hope the audio was okay today. Someone complained the other day, “I couldn’t hear.” We’re working on 2 iPads and an iPhone here which is also validation in itself like have a go guys. So I’m gonna go turn these off, Ronen will sit here and look awkward for a few seconds. Thanks for tuning in, we have an amazing guest coming on the vlog Friday so stay tuned for that and we’ll be back, keep enjoying. Thank you. Cheers mate.
Ronen Heine: One down.
