Former civil engineer Brad Booysen is the founder and CEO of Storkk, a software applications company that helps lawyers and other professionals plan and manage their professional development. The company recently partnered with LexisNexis, a global leader in legal content and technology, and the New Zealand Bar Association to provide the continuing professional development solution to New Zealand lawyers. The company was founded in early 2013 and currently has six employees.
I understand you used to be a civil engineer. How and why did you come to start a business in a relatively unrelated field?
Having worked in the civil engineering industry for 10 years, I had reached a ceiling where I wasn't learning any more and my career was not moving forward as quickly as I had hoped. I decided that starting a business would give me the freedom to create my own path.
I started a company in the health space - an area I was personally passionate about - that ultimately failed. The lesson for me was that creating a product and then going in search of a market is the wrong way to do it, yet funnily enough this is how most people start a business. I went back to the drawing board determined to figure it out. Shortly afterwards, I discovered the lean startup movement, which was being pioneered by Eric Ries and it intuitively made sense to me. His book The Lean Startup is a must-read for any aspiring business owner.
On my second go, I spent a significant amount of time interviewing a range of professionals and business owners to understand what tasks in their day were taking up the most amount of time and what was costing them money. I would go and sit with business owners and observe them work, seeing for myself what tasks they were spending lots of time and/or money on.