Dexterity Talks with Hilary Watson
In July we met up with Hilary Watson, Venture Builder (https://www.beanstalkagtech.com/team) to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing startups in 2024.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
My current role is as a Venture Builder with Beanstalk helping startups in the agtech space to scale and grow. I’ve come from a career in startups mainly in Canada, first as an employee then later as a founder myself. It has given me a very diverse set of skills and experiences to draw upon.
The first startup I was involved in focussed on financial auditing, then I had exposure to hardware with digital signage and then the medical space, then I helped launch a startup focussed on the residential tenancy market.
How is business in 2024?
It’s been really interesting to join the Beanstalk team and to move into agtech. Agriculture is a unique industry, it’s primary production, you are outside all the time and we are visiting a lot of rural areas. Australia’s climate is unique with a broad range of climatic zones. We have cattle like the US, we have rice cultivation like Asia, and so on. For startups in agtech it’s an exciting area to work in, it’s the most creative part of business when you are building something out of nothing.
What has been your biggest challenge in business?
For one of the startups I founded, we initially planned to secure external re-insurance but this proved difficult as our book of business wasn’t big enough (we had a chicken and egg problem where we needed to be big enough to get reinsurance). We solved it by taking a huge risk of self-insuring for the first customer (possible as re-insurance wasn’t compulsory, but this would not be recommended by any lawyer or person look at risk in this space). This required all the founders to put their own money on the line in the early stages of the business. It was a challenge to get comfortable taking that risk and a calculated bet on us (where each default could have cost 10K plus for tenant non-payment).
How did you get comfortable with that risk?
We grew the company in iterations over time so we could test and learn as we went. That is beneficial to the extent you can do it. In the early stages, we needed leads and decided to acquire an adjacent business that could bring these in. That required more capital but ended up being a great boost to the business.
Do you have to deal with lawyers or legal issues as part of your role?
Some of the startups I’ve worked in have been heavily regulated (medical/financial/legal/property), so I have had to work with lawyers from time to time. I think a lot of people can get scared when they need to deal with lawyers if they have not done so before. I recall once we received a cease and desist from a much larger competitor, which may have spooked some founders, but I actually found it reassuring that they had noticed us. I think you need a lawyer who can help you understand, assess and get comfortable with business risk.
What do you most enjoy about your role?
This role allows me to live vicariously through other people, getting exposure to their journey as a founder, and hopefully to help them avoid some of the pitfalls they would otherwise go through. I get to draw upon learnings from all the challenges I’ve gone through, or witnessed, in my career to help guide them to the short cuts. It’s really exciting seeing startups come up with brilliant new strategies. It’s also a great social role as I know it can otherwise be really lonely as a solo founder or small startup team. You are trying to accomplish something new and most fail rather than succeed. I like that this role gives me the opportunity to make it less lonely and hopefully stacking the odds in their favour.
Dexterity Talks is a web series of interviews with founders, investors and advisors in the Australian startup scene. This interview was conduct by Pippin Barry (BA, JD), an Australian lawyer and the principal of Dexterity Law.
