My CEO Life

I am a serial investor. To date, via the fund I manage, we have invested in 11 different Internet businesses. These investments range from a hundred $100k right through to $2m. We have been lucky, the investment of $6m has grown to be worth north of $20m in just over 2 years.

We invest in Internet businesses that are generally in the classifieds or editorial segments, are in their early stages (but not at pure start up phase) and are in emerging countries.

Some when we invest, what do we look for?

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Whenever you launch a new business, the hardest thing to do is get cut through with your target market.  Therefore you need to do everything in your power to create awareness of what you are offering them.  We have managed to acheive this with one of our new businesses, ListGlobally.

Just over a month ago we launched a new business from our incubator, Classified Ad Ventures, called ListGlobally.  ListGlobally allows any realtor, agent, broker or developer around the world to advertise their listings to a global audience. All they do is upload the listing to www.listglobally.com and we then syndicate that listing to the market leading sites in 23 countries. We make money by charging US$90 to advertise the listing for 90 days and then pay our distribution network a percentage of what we charge. Overall a simple, but effective, model.

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Classified Ad Ventures is looking for experienced online sales people to join our rapidly growing sales team. We are currently looking for sale people in all states in Australia and later in the year, we will have opportunities in other markets.

The ideal candidate has probably worked for a seek.com.au, carsales.com.au, realestate.com.au or domain.com.au in a front line sales position. They would have experience as either a BDM (business development manager – ie new business) or account management (management of existing customers).

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Imagine my surprise when i received a google alert today that i had been mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).  As i had not been interviewed by the SMH recently, it was then with enthusiasm and a little curiosity that i opened the online article.  Had someone decided to write about our new business venture, Classified Ad Ventures or perhaps one our investments – ArtsHub, Sports Passion, or Homethinking in the US. Or perhaps they had picked up on some of the articles about the REA Group / realestate.com.au that we had been writing over on Property Portal Watch. Thefore imagine my surprise when it was none of these.

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During my time as CEO of the REA Group, we grew the business from a small operation based out of Melbourne, Australia with 25 people to a global business, operating in 11 countries and 720+ employess.  In the process we increased revenues from $4m p.a. to over $155m p.a. and went from a loss to a strong profit.

One of the most frequent questions i am asked is how did you take the business from a purely Australian operation to a global focus.  This is not a simple question to answer so i thought i would write a series of blogs on this topic.  The first blog is about organic growth and how the REA Group entered the New Zealand market.

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There has been a bit of press since the announcement of my departure from the REA Group.  While many of the article were essentially reprints of the press release, a couple of online publications have gone a step further.  I tought i would share them with you.

The first is from Global Edge based out of the UK …

http://www.globaledge.co.uk/news/details/global-property-chief-sacked/22821?code=700 

The second is from SmartCompany.com.au in Australia

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080805-Realestatecomau-sacks-chief-executive-Simon-Baker-.html

Finally, an article from Business 2 in Australia (always good for a read)

http://www.business2.com.au/2008/08/04/job-vacancy-realestatecomau-ceo/