Tech Trajectory
Presented by DiUS – where growth, grit, and bold ideas collide to uncover the human side of innovation.
Join us each fortnight as we dive into the journeys of trailblazers shaping the future of technology. Through engaging conversations, we’ll explore career highs and lows, groundbreaking ideas, and the challenges of leading in a rapidly evolving industry.
Whether you’re navigating your own tech trajectory or looking for fresh insights, this podcast is your go-to for inspiration, connection, and actionable takeaways.
Tech Trajectory
From CEO to Enabler: The Leadership Philosophy Behind Empowering Others
In this episode of The Tech Trajectory Podcast, host Kavita Kerwar sits down with Roby Sharon-Zipser, Co-Founder and CEO of hipages Group, to explore how leadership evolves as a business scales—from garage startup to ASX-listed tech company. Roby unpacks what it takes to move from being a hands-on founder to an enabler of innovation, how to build a culture of strategic execution, and why staying curious about technology—especially large language models—is key to future growth.
1. Evolving from founder to enabler
[04:42] How Roby’s leadership style shifted from micromanagement to team empowerment as hipages scaled.
[06:32] What it means to step back and elevate your team with trust, clarity, and accountability.
[07:24] The importance of letting go of low-value tasks and building out an executive team.
2. Building purpose into strategy
[10:04] How hipages keeps its dual customer base—tradies and homeowners—at the centre of decision-making.
[11:38] Roby breaks down how AI and cross-functional teams are improving customer experience across the board.
[14:22] End-to-end customer journeys: why true innovation requires integration beyond the top of the funnel.
3. Leveraging large language models (LLMs)
[11:48] Roby’s first reaction to LLMs: from confusion to realising their transformative potential.
[15:37] The risks and rewards of LLMs—why hallucinations, security, and accuracy matter.
[17:52] How hipages is using AI to streamline internal processes and customer interactions.
4. Scoring innovation and strategic execution
[19:47] Scaling the tech team and building a product-led culture from the ground up.
[22:11] Internal scoring frameworks: how Roby weighs commercial value, customer impact, and long-term ROI.
[24:57] Why not every idea has a direct revenue line—but some drive lasting retention and experience gains.
5. Advice to his younger self
[26:09] Network early, network often—the compounding power of shared founder experience.
[28:56] Favourite books, podcasts, and frameworks that shaped Roby’s thinking, including The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Seven Powers.
[31:36] Why listening, learning, and structured strategy execution are key to scale.
6. Founder reflections and what’s next
[32:53] What Roby loves most about his job—from company-wide presentations to robust debates.
[34:59] His least favourite part? The admin-heavy side of performance reviews.
[38:48] The hardest part of scaling: capital management, making tough calls, and staying focused on long-term survival.
[41:36] What’s next for hipages.
Where to find Roby Sharon-Zipser
- Website: hipages.com.au
- LinkedIn: Roby Sharon-Zipser
Hello listeners, and welcome to the tech trajectory podcast, where we explore the human side of innovation, technology and leadership. I'm Kavita Karwar, and joining me today in the studio is Roby. But before we get into the podcast, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the custodians of the land on which we are recording today, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respect to elders past and present. All right, welcome, Roby. Welcome to the studio.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Thank you the podcast. Thank you. We got a whole Jenga set up here, too.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh absolutely. So for those who are not watching us on video, we do have a Jenga set up, and as we get into it, I might do a quick introduction for you, Roby, and let me know if I've missed something and got something right. So for those who don't know, Roby Sharon-Zipser, is the CEO and Co-Founder of hipages. And if you haven't heard of hipages, where have you been? Oh, my god, hipages is an Australian startup, and like all startups, I believe this was born out of an idea that you had and you implemented it in a garage for home improvement directory, and since then, hipages initially start up, and now is an ASX listed company. And from what I've heard, has been around for the last 20 years, and we've had around 12 million, 12 million records on your platform.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Okay, yeah, that's kind of right, and mostly right. I did really well, good job. Yeah. So actually, the story goes a bit further back in terms of where the idea was born. I was trying to renovate an apartment, a newly purchased apartment with my wife. Wasn't new. It was very run down, and it was a horrible, horrible experience. And figured there had to be a better way. And so the directory was born. And my business partner and I, David, we started hipages as a just a directory business, and I think it's getting close to maybe just over 11 million jobs that have been posted all time. So that's when you say records. I think you mean like homeowner posting jobs. And for everyone that doesn't really understand what we do if you need a trade, hipages has this magic algorithms that connect you with up to three trades very, very quickly, pretty much anywhere in Australia and New Zealand now.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh, that's amazing. That's That's fantastic. I remember, Oh, but first Yes, before we go into our next question, we gotta do a bit of Jenga. Oh, yeah, because I remember being like a new homeowner, and I had moved into an apartment with my sister, and we both were very clueless of how to do anything, because we both were raised overseas, and we didn't have this DIY mindset that now I see so many Australians have. But I was like, how to build this, so how to fix this? So it's fantastic when you have a platform like high pages and you can just reach out to trades people, that's awesome. Yeah, all right, let's have a go.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:So you're in what we call the Do It For Me category.
Kavita Kerwar:I'm in the very do it for me category. I'm like, please don't let me do it myself.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Exactly. There's people that have aspirations for DIY, but like, like me cannot drill a hole in the wall, so pay someone to do it and maybe do it in an efficient, cost effective, trustworthy way. And that's where you go to hipages.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh yeah, I think I had high ambitions. Yeah, I bought a drill. And never, I never.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Stole my boss, like most people.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh my gosh. All right, let's do it. Let's do a Jenga. And I think my DIY, or lack of DIY skills, is going to come across now, because I'm really bad at Jenga, okay, I might be good. Who knows? Who knows?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:That's a rookie mistake, what you're doing. So high up bottom. Anyway, do I need to do it in the no come on? You've already broken the rule. Look, you've let go of the brick that you touch. You got to follow through. You touched it. You got to finish the job. I feel like maybe you're getting a favor of my management style. Now, let me help you. Okay, I would normally not help because I'd like to win, but there you go.
Kavita Kerwar:Yes, empowering, empowering some. Oh, my god, please, please. How dare you.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I thought you supposed to be nice. But just like when you know this is the limit, I'm also very genuine.
Kavita Kerwar:Fair enough. All right, do you want to have I'm gonna do, oh, my god, starting from the is this the right way to do it?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Little loose.
Kavita Kerwar:What is this? This is rigged. Is this rigged? Kirsty, have you rigged this.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Did I tell you I am high risk I have a high risk appetite. Is this rigged?
Kavita Kerwar:Kirsty, have you been part like, what is this?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:God damn it, we'll finish the game afterwards. I can see clearly you're gonna lose.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh my god, that's true. So tell me. And I think this is a really good analogy, and you referred a bit about your leadership. So has your leadership style changed since when hipages was initially born, and now that you're scaled up so much.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah, absolutely, it's changed. I think if I go back, I mean, I was a leader in the business, but I actually wasn't necessarily the CEO. I took a bunch of titles. I was CFO, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and eventually evolved into the CEO role about six or so years ago. I think as you. Evolve in your leadership style, I think also as a startup and a scale up and then, like a proper medium to large size business, you have to evolve. I would probably say I was a micro manager in the beginning. And I think my main learning is, I think stay true to your values, and that should be representative of the organization. But for me, I definitely have always been a genuine, transparent, hyper competitive, as you can tell. I would never have guessed. But for me, in terms of the main leadership style is, I think, I think it's okay to let some people fail a little bit if the house isn't kind of fall down. I think they have more ownership of projects, more ownership and responsibilities handed over to the leadership team and the management. It's a nice way for people to develop themselves in their career and giving them some freedom to make mistakes. I mean, if the house isn't going to fall over, even sometimes when they're trying to do things that you know, have you've tried yourself and failed, you don't always know if you tried it the best way, and maybe sometimes the wrong time, giving people some freedom to experiment and test and give things a go again. Give them a go and go again. If you've tried in the past, it's a good thing.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, that's that's fantastic. So you've spoken very openly about being a very hands on, almost micromanager, and from then now, you describe yourself as an enabler, instead of a traditional CEO who is very hands on. So how do you go about making the switch from being a very hands on person who's very passionate about their product and their baby to then being a bit of an enabler for your teams?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Okay? So if you want to be a bit of an enabler, you're sort of like as a founder, you kind of like, you know, you do everything you know, your chief water boy to Chief Data Analyst to CFO to coo so you actually kind of okay at everything, and that's that's very common trait for founders, but at some stage, you're going to have to get the experts in. And you my advice is, is to always try and elevate your team. So afford the best you can get to do specific roles, delegate that as fast as possible and make sure that you trust those people to do a good job of it. And at the end of the day, if you're not doing a good job of move very quickly on those people and replace them with better people.
Kavita Kerwar:Okay, all right, yeah, move fast. Pivot fast. Yeah. Know when to do that. I think that's a really good answer. Do you have an example where maybe stepping back gave you a better outcome than if you were hands on, then you would have got otherwise.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I think, in the earlier days. And look, it's probably you've got different different audiences from different stages of their business life cycle, listening to these podcasts. And so what I would say is, like in the early stages, there was a lot of administrative tasks that I was doing that probably in terms of value add, like high value add were probably on the low end of the scale, but were important tasks that still needed to get done. So for me, getting someone operational to help with that was critical, and that certainly was a good next step. Sort of built confidence for me. Okay, well, I can hand over some things. What next can I do? Eventually we so that was an operational admin type person. Then we went to a financial controller, eventually, CFO, eventually chief people officer, and, you know, HR manager and ng people officer, you start to evolve that executive team over time. And some businesses move faster, and some move a bit slower. It depends on your budgets and rate of growth and available cash to do it. And so for us, you know, we've got a full executive team. Nearly all the traditional executive roles with modern titles are now covered. It is still evolving, but it's mostly, mostly done 20 years in.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. All right, let's do another Okay, so what should I follow your.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:play your own game.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh, this is a bad move. I don't know. This is, Are you filming this? This is like fall of the Empire overhere. Oh, gosh, I'm going to regret bringing this game. Why did I do this?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:So you just got to make a decision.
Kavita Kerwar:I am I'm trying to kind of Yes. Oh, my God. Oh, okay, maybe I'm gonna do this one. I can do this, right? I can hold no. Oh, no, I can't. Oh, hello, hello. Please come out. I saw a video where someone trained their cat.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:All right. How'd the cat go? Very well. Wow. It's impressive.
Kavita Kerwar:I'd be beaten by a cat. So do I do this? Put this up here?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Oh, yeah, I forgot to put mine up.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh, fantastic. Oh, there's clothes.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Oh it's too early to be close. You've got plenty to go here.
Kavita Kerwar:This is very exciting for everyone else who's in our studio. Kirsty is having a great time. Kirsty, how's your afternoon going? Good? So I guess coming back to high pages, my question is around your purpose is built around empowering and supporting training. Its people. So how does that guide decision making on a day to day at your workplace?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah, so I usually take the customer's experience into account in our business, we obviously have two customers. We have what we call the supply side, which is the tradies, and we have the demand side, which is the homeowner. And their experiences on our platform are critical. So if a homeowner comes to high pages to be connected with the tradie. Our primary objective is to make that connection experience seamless and fast and get an outcome, which is to get two to three trades to call them back with their query on whatever they want to get done around their home. And so we're very focused on that investments in innovation around that key. We're about to launch what we call a Sarah AI tool. Also tools around cost guides are all being available for homeowners to read. We've been doing that for a long time, but it's all integrating all of that historical cost guide licensing information, and then ultimately, the job is to get a homeowner to connect to a trade at speed. And we, you know, we're moving into large language models to help us with that kind of thing on the trading side, everything to do with their onboarding experience, to getting them set up well, getting us to call them back quickly when they've expressed interest, to get leads from us, explaining our technology that we've been building in our subscription packages to them in a seamless way, getting them onboarded fast, getting all their credentials checked fast. All of that is top of mind. And we've invested in what we call cross functional teams in the business to ensure that customers start to get better experiences, and also our internal customers, which is like our sales and service teams, getting better experiences so that they can support the customers better.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, that's fantastic. So how have you I'm very curious to learn about your implementation of large language models, and what has worked for your business. Is there anything you'd like to share?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yes, it's like, it's like, it's interesting. It's such a hot topic. I think two years ago, I wouldn't have really thought too much about it. I think about two years ago, a year and a half ago, you know, you start to read some media about it, and people start to ask questions about, what are you doing with large llms? And I'm like, I think I remember. I said, what's an LLM? And I was like, Okay, it's AI. That's just what they mean with large language models. I said, okay, cool. I better look into it. So start looking into it. And I'm like, Oh, holy crap. This is good. This is good stuff. Like, we can see potential growth opportunities here. Better customer experiences, efficiency players, dare I say it? People may not want to talk too much about that, but, like, there's some pretty interesting opportunities, certainly removing menial tasks quite seamlessly, using using the latest technology. And so you go through this process of like, Oh, wow. This is cool. Pretty interesting. Like, what is this? This is cool, interesting. Then you get overwhelmed, like, holy crap. What do I do with this? And then it starts to form part of your strategy as an organization. And then you start to identify how you're going to execute using the latest technology to give you the either growth, revenue growth or expenditure efficiencies that will give you operational leverage as a business. And so that's now forming part of our strategy. You know, everything down to writing emails at probably a simpler level, even helping writing the CEO reports, suming the language analyzing data, down to sentiment analysis all the way through to our matching algorithm, using machine learning and AI to optimize that speed of connection, which is quite a complex thing that we do, where you're connecting effectively 1000s of categories, like you've got, you know, 30 top level categories, 200 you know, like trade categories. But then there's 1000s of subcategories. So what do I mean by that? So plumbing is a parent category, obviously. But then underneath plumbing, you would have Blocked drains, toilet replacement, hot water tanks, that's, those are all be subcategories. And then if you look at Australia's geographies, there's 1000s of livable postcodes. So effectively, you're down to the subcategory level. To a livable postcode is a micro marketplace that you need to connect trades to a homeowner at speed in that micro marketplace and also create a good value exchange otherwise charge the right prices to the customers, so that the business that's doing that connection at speed that's leveraging its network effect the investments it's made in market. Made in marketing and technology, to make a good return. So using machine learning and AI to make that come to life.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, definitely, that's fantastic. Like, I think I've seen a lot of businesses that focus a lot on the top of the funnel, engaging the customer who maybe don't know your product or are just entering into your ecosystem, yeah, but what you're talking about is almost that end to end customer journey, like, integrated in different.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:That's right, yeah, so that's right. And so, like, the way you're describing is, like, how to help, you know, shortcut, so you don't have to talk to a human being, maybe use a chat bot, like, you know, it would be, like, kind of like a second level, AI, integration in the business. There's fancy words for it. I literally just came from a Salesforce conference and they gave the proper terms. I'm just, like, talking in, like, simple terms, the way I understand it. So yeah.
Kavita Kerwar:yeah. I think yeah, you're right. There is a lot of hype about it. And two years back, or three years back, people weren't talking about it as much. And it's very interesting, because at DiUS, we have a few people who've done PhDs on this subject. Yeah, they just look around, they're like, you're just catching up. Yeah, we've been talking about.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:it's definitely a game changer, I think, if you're not, if you're a CEO or a leader in a business, and you. Are not thinking about how large language models can enhance your your not just your life, but your business, in your your your department in your business, or the overall business, then you're really going to be left behind, because things are moving very quickly, and there's more and more pressure to be more efficient. And this is, this is an enabler for that doesn't necessarily have to be afraid of it, just like when the first iPhone or when the first search function came out, those were like, oh wow moments. So certainly, if you've hadn't had an experience with large language models and have not gotten an oh wow moment, and then start to think about the applications of that, then you need to start looking at it very closely. That would be my advice to people.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, what challenges do you reckon for someone who is a business owner and who is just entering into and learning about llms, maybe they're not familiar, and now there is so much hype, and they start to look into it. What challenges do you reckon?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I think, I think, I think you're like for us, for example, is is like not all the things that first of all, except it's not, it's not all as good as what people say. I have first hand experience where all of the bad things that human beings have, all the bad traits, so cheating, lying, manipulating, llms, which is otherwise falling under the banner of hallucination, yes, is, is all true. I've literally had this thing lie to me. And then you call it out and say, and then they say, Oh, I apologize for that. You're absolutely right, sir. So So that's, that's scary, right? So you just can't let it go like on its own. You need to have an expertise, and then you can, and then test it and learn from it. So, I mean, I give examples of that, but so that's more on personal world. But I've noticed as well. For example, I've been using chat GPT to assist me writing the monthly CEO board report, which is loaded up a whole bunch of data and all that, and so it writes it really nicely, but every freaking number in the CEO report is wrong. So I have to go through and check every number because it's not doing it right, and train it to pick up the right numbers for the next time, but it is slowly optimizing. That's just a little example. So if you're a CEO, that's the fear. I think you need to be very mindful that I'm working in a closed environment, so I'm using the power of the LLM, but I'm not opening it up to the public to have access. Obviously, being listed, we have high levels of confidentiality. Privacy needs to be protected. So working in that type of environment, so you need to set that up. You probably also need to be mindful that you just need to have some rules for your organization, depending on the size of your organization, what type of llms You're allowing people to use, or a process for people to use, latest and greatest technology that subsequently gets approved. Security is a big issue, obviously, if you're processing millions of records, as we talked about earlier on, you know we need to be mindful of the fact that information could be shared publicly and so that we need. So we need to lock it down. We want the capabilities, but we need the privacy and the security that comes from it.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And if, and I think what I've seen with with some companies is they try and make it a bit more transparent to the customer by by allowing the customer to have some control, by having customer consent, like, if you want to opt out of this personalized, if it's a recommendation or something personalization, you can do that, and then you can track how many people actually are hesitant or trust, AI, but no, that's fantastic. Thank you so much. All right, should we do another Jenga?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:You gotta do faster. You're like, slow. I'm like, Well, come on, let's do it. Did I tell you I'm a very impatient human being?
Kavita Kerwar:Oh, I think, you know, you don't need to say that. No, no, don't. Don't fall on me, please.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I think you got it. You're good, you're good. Also putting pressure is part of the tactic in winning the game.
Kavita Kerwar:God, this is like strategy, yeah. Okay, your turn.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Thank you for that one.
Kavita Kerwar:I feel like I'm playing a losing game here.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I did tell you I'm hyper competitive. We did the Gallup strengths. You know, where we match up people's strengths, like, I score like, way above the average human I don't like to lose.
Kavita Kerwar:Well, I mean, we hate we are also very competitive. And people who don't believe that, just watch us at a cricket match.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yes for sure. I have seen some some games. Yes, yes.
Kavita Kerwar:Okay, so, so it sounds like you've really got a culture of innovation going at high pages, and that's like no easy feat, especially as you're scaling up the company. So what do you do to maintain, like, a culture that focuses on innovation?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah, like, I mean, it didn't come easily to be fair. I mean, we were very much an operations and sales driven and service driven organization. I think, you know, if you go back a few years, we would have had a couple 100 employees and maybe 40-50 people working. In technology and innovation. So I'm talking about like engineers and product people and some designers, and maybe a little bit on data. But that would have been around, you know, 50 ish people, and the rest was sales, service and operations. Now we're today, an organization approaching 350 people, probably 150 sales, service people, maybe 4050 what we would call support functions, which includes the typical finance people and legal side of the business, and maybe a little bit of marketing in there, but marking, sort of embedded across the business. And then on the product and technology side, you know, you've got 100 100 and maybe 120 people approaching that, that number. So it's like, it's, really materially moved from the 40 to 50. And so having having like organizers and start to get to scale, and you think about all the things you need to do as an organization, you kind of need to get to, like, 100 100, over 100 people in technology and innovation, thinking about all the types of engineering expertise, all the data, the product, the user, UX, the design, all of that to build, to build a like an organization at sort of a medium to large enterprise level, you need a minimum of that type of resource, or people, I should say, to support it. So that's that's been major decision in investments in the business to grow that, and then obviously raising capital to do that's been key, and then making sure that we develop good processes where cross functional teams in our organization develop their ideas and initiatives but score it, and then develop a business case, and then a timeline of delivery and accountability. Behind all of that, that's certainly a key part of strategy execution. So we've brought a lot of that into the business, and so that's been given like not everything wins. Are you gonna get some turkeys? But some things are really like, oh my god, blew it out of the park. And then some things are a bit like, yeah, what meet expectations, but overall you're better off. And then following certain processes, you keep you can continue to invest in the business, yeah? Renovation.
Kavita Kerwar:So you mentioned scoring. So very curious to know, how do you internally score? Because you've got your purpose where you're empowering trades people, you're looking at solutions that actually empower them and add value. Yeah, and then you've got a keen focus on innovation and scaling up. So how do you balance it out?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I don't think they're like mutually exclusive ideas. I think they I really encourage the team to think about, well, if you can't find a commercial reason as to why that's not going to generate more revenue for the business and also get good outcomes for the customer, then maybe you're not thinking hard enough about it, and maybe you need a hand to think through that. So sometimes the revenue upside is not apparent on the first instance. So I'll give you, give you an example. We had a team partnerships him. So what's the debate on partnerships? Partnerships really work or don't work? And there are some fabulous examples of how partnerships have worked around the world. So you think of Starbucks as an example, and how it's embedded in Costco and Barnes and Noble, which is a bookstore and like, it's a fantastic partnership arrangement for that business, and it represents a meaningful proportion of its revenue. But then you've got other businesses have done partnerships, and you hear about them, and it's like, I don't want to call them out, but like, just been a total flop, and they built their whole business off that. So in our case, we've had sort of mix. We've got some fabulous partners with IKEA and Bunnings and things like that, but sometimes it goes up and down. But what we couldn't tell. The story is, what's the revenue upside of those partnerships? And then we realized we were missing a treat. We realized that customers that were in enrolled in a partner program, so our trading customers that were enrolled in a partner program had one of the lowest, lowest churn rates, or highest retention rates, than any of our other customers. As I was like, Okay, well that means that we should be taking that into account when we do our business cases. But we were never doing it before. It was very linear as like one to one. So what I'm trying to say is sometimes the revenue upside is not on the first step, but it could be a second step, and you need to try and work a way to quantify that. So if you can't find a revenue upside or a second stage revenue upside, then possibly there's a way to find a way to justify that in the business case, or investment in that technology innovation through maybe inefficiency or a better experience that results in a cost saving for the business. So you're getting good customer outcomes, that you're also introducing a cost saving in the business. So then you'd measure everything and then look at it as a whole. Before you say this is getting a score or a weighted. Exactly. So I try and I we use, like, OKRs in the business, and that's a whole other podcast. We won't have time to go into that detail. So we try and use that. My first level is move x to y by z deliver X by Zed, because it will do something for the business. And sometimes, after all of those processes, there are, there are instances where you just have to say, we just have to do it because, like, we're like, 10 years behind on something. We should have done it already three, four years ago, five years ago. So there are instances and you have to put a strong argument forward for that, but you can, you can still get those through in our internal processes to move on innovation.
Kavita Kerwar:Oh, yeah, that's, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But. There'll always be those outliers where you feel, even if the numbers aren't adding up, there's a really strong need or a drive to get that done. Yeah, fair enough. All right, should we do another
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I don't think people are playing games with me. I don't think I'm fun. You don't think you're fine. No, I don't think I'm fine. No, I know, good call, good call. You did. Well Well done. Thank you.
Kavita Kerwar:So we're like a few minutes in the podcast, I just want to say the Jenga has not fallen on my watch. Oh, my God. The confidence, the confidence in that pool.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I'd been persuaded, right? Oh yeah, you were like, emotions done.
Kavita Kerwar:Okay, so I really like, I really like, how you, how you've explained the thought process behind, I guess, prioritizing innovative ideas, and also your approach to now being an enabler for your team. If you were to look back on your journey, what advice would you give, like your younger self, who was just starting out with hipages?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Oh, so there's so many like I don't know where to begin. I think my biggest like learning along the way is someone, someone very close to me and involved in the business told me a couple things, and I wish I'd listened to them more back in the day, but two things that they said to me was network more and access and network faster. So go to some events, talk to people or connect with other like people that are in your position, the collective network experience, and it's an amplifier of 10x so like, you're on your own, so you're one times one, right? But then you start meeting five to 10 other CEOs, and you can ask them some questions in a confidential way, because it is really a lonely job, and sometimes you just can't ask people within the organization. And I don't necessarily know, I've had coaches and things like that in the past, but just in a network of other CEOs that have had experience, preferably working with a network of CEOs that have run businesses a couple of times, or start up businesses on their own once or twice, the knowledge that they have and the experience they have is just you can't compare it. The second thing I would say is thinking about strategy. I think it took me a long time to understand what is strategy and how to evolve strategy. And I think if I could give anyone a piece of advice on strategies, know your product, know where you think your product is going to go, but then use research and read a lot like, read, read, read like. Or if you don't like reading, listen to audio books. Or I found a fabulous product recently that summarizes, I think it's called Blinkist. It's just, and you can, I can listen to, like, a book a day, and get the gist of the book every single day. And sometimes it's garbage, just total garbage out there. Like, just, like, be honest, because that's rubbish. Like, yeah, who even bothered publishing that? Like, it's, like, seriously, most books don't sell, right? There's very low volumes, but, but there's some really good stuff, and if you can get just like one good idea a day that definitely helps form in your mind where you should take your business and strategy and you become like a thought leader, and then have a very good strategic execution plan. So make sure your teams present pillars of those strategies. There's always pillars in a strategy, and put the resourcing behind it and then make people accountable and responsible for the delivery of the execution of that strategy. I wish, I wish I'd listened to people talking to me about setting goals and metrics and moving X to Y to Z, and delivering x by Zed, and making people accountable to that and have the reporting cadence it took. Took, I would say, probably took me too long to work that out. And we have it embedded in the business, and people know the way we operate. So I think, I mean, people like, I like to give three things, but I think those are, those are probably the top two things off the top of my head right now.
Kavita Kerwar:Favorite, favorite book, or the book you find most.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah, I've said it before. I've been asked this before, I thought I'm very passionate about so I would say the thing that's been eye opener. I don't know if there's one thing I've been moving really into podcasts lately. And, I mean, I'll give an answer to the book, like, I think, for any founder that hasn't read the hard things about the hard things, and obviously, and it might get boring if you've heard me talk about it, but there's like, a page in the book. I think it's page 69 or 68 it's like, just read those two pages or print it off and have it in your drawer. And it's like, it's just like, worth reading. It talks about the challenge of being a CEO and every aspect of like, firing people and having investors and like, all everything. It's like 100 lines, like it's quite poetic. So that's the book thing. Put that aside, I would say for people to really elevate their understanding of business and understand what makes people successful. The Hamilton Helmer, Helmer, seven powers is an absolute must read. So. Talks about how you can generate your competitive mode, and looks at the most successful businesses in the world and understand what are the powers that make those businesses the most successful business in the world. Now there's a podcast called acquired Ben and David. They've been running for about eight or nine years, and what they do is they do like a complete biography, Autobiography of some of the most successful businesses in the world, everything from Costco, lvhm, Walmart, Amazon, Microsoft, they did one on Mars Corporation just recently. Lvhm Amaze like the whole history of those company and what's happened. And then they do an overlay of what the seven powers, how they work with those businesses. And I would suggest just pick a few of them. Start maybe with the Costco podcast. I thought that was amazing. But then start picking and choosing the ones that you might be interested in, or maybe start into a category that you like. So if you like cars, they did one on Porsche. So Porsche, okay, so you can hear the whole history of Porsche if you're interested in retail. So you've got, obviously, Costco, which is like, food and things like that. But then you might be interested in the IKEA story, so they go into a whole history of high care. And I love, I love, love, love that type of learning. So that's been my new thing for the last couple of years. Was a long answer to that question.
Kavita Kerwar:Great. It's perfect, because I've found that I myself, I'm on the journey, and I think most of our listeners will probably be the same, but you start off with, I loved books, and then now I think you just have a shorter time frame. You don't have the time.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:But you have time when you're commuting all traveling.
Kavita Kerwar:So easy. Yeah, even I like audiobooks very much, but it almost depends on the narrator. Sometimes, yeah? Because I'm, like, some narrators, it's just the accent.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah, so Ben and David, it's like, this very American. It's like, sometimes a bit of, like, a hyper intelligent Beavis and butt head, but they're awesome. They're so good. And if you're not listening to their podcasts, you're out of the game, like, you got to know what's going on, and applying the Hamilton helmet seven powers to those businesses, and then thinking about how you can apply it to your business, very strong. I also listened to another one domestically. It's called the contrarians. It's Adam Schwab, who's like the founder of luxury escapes, and a Adir Schiffman, who's executive chairman of catapult sports. And those guys have the founders, and they've had lots of experience in business, and the way they explain a lot of the way things work in the Australian market, and particularly around accounting and how to think about business, the contrarian. So you have to agree with everything they say, but the debate, and that's the kind of debate and the discussion that you'd be having at a board and executive level as you mature as a company. So that's also a really good, good one to listen to.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, fantastic recommendations. Thank you. So what's the best part about your job? What's your favorite part about your job?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Look, it is definitely like a roller coaster Road, like I love presenting in front of the company. I know that's not everyone's thing. I love presenting and talking about the business and the direction, and seeing the plans come to life and achieving metrics. Now you you get those joys momentarily, and then you because you as a founder, you typically beat yourself up on the misses way more than you acknowledged the wins. But those moments when you do have a win, or you're celebrating with the team, or you're working in deep debate. I'm a little bit of an agitator as well, so I like to agitate people a bit. It's almost like a stylistic thing. Like to rub people the wrong way, but it forces people to speak up and say what they're really thinking. And then you get the challenge and the debate. I love a debate. I love the opinions coming through, and then you get to pick and choose the best ones that you think are going to come, come from the business. So it can be a lot of fun, too.
Kavita Kerwar:So you don't want people who just agree with you and just say, yes, yeah.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah those people suck. Like, I mean, I mean, then you just pleasing me. I don't mind it. But like, I think what I do, I do, think, though, is at some stages that you acknowledge politely that you know what you've said, and I understand it, and I've gotten good at like coaching that back to people, but sometimes you do have to make your decisions. Personal experiences in the last last year have been always present options. Sometimes the options aren't the ideal answer, but getting a couple of options, and preferably a recommendation, but also just showing a couple of options and feeling the room, reading the room to see which is the option that feels right for the consensus. So you don't always get consensus, but then you have, sometimes you have to jump in and just say, Okay, well, this is the one we're going to go with. And sometimes you just don't have, like, a data driven reasoning. You have to work on intuition and gut. And sometimes you're going to be wrong, and you have to own it you're wrong. So it's interesting, interesting process in leading a business. Yeah.
Kavita Kerwar:And what's your least favorite part about your role? So another, most favorite part you speak about, like your team just having those debate on ideas, looking at options, looking at how to move forward, whether it's data driven or.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I know much. People in culture person gonna kill me for saying this. Okay, I know that they're gonna kill me for saying it. So I think one of the lessons I probably the third lesson, which I didn't finish off because I had a bit of a mental blank earlier. But the third lesson was, if you're finding yourself as a CEO, actually doing some kind of work, like some sort of spreadsheeting or something, or, you know, mucking around with something that you shouldn't be doing. You should be asking yourself, why the hell am I doing this? And is it the right time that I should be getting someone in my organization to be doing this work? And so, like that, that's a key thing. So delegation is probably the third point back where, five questions ago. So we do, like, I don't know if we can edit it, leave it in, because, yeah. But my point. So the thing like is the money, it's hard to delegate, is the performance and grow sessions with team. I like the conversation and just getting doing, you know, the feedback? Have you heard of the feedback sandwich? You could tell everyone about that, like, 10 good things that they did, and give them maybe one little nugget, because everyone's so sensitive nowadays about everything. It's like, I used to just go straight to the jugular on that was a bit shit, whereas now I realize that's super important. You got to tell everyone, like, this is this? This is good. You did really well. There. You're amazing. This is awesome. You're a champion. That was so cool. And then, oh, but this thing here, it was kind of like, not that great. And maybe we could do a bit better next time. So, so that the actual writing of all of that down. I hate. I just like to have, like, a free conversation, like, more friendly conversation with people about that. So the writing bit and publishing that, and that's the process, sucks a little bit.
Unknown:But I get, like, your people and culture, a person's job, because otherwise it's important. Imagine the glass door reviews
Roby Sharon-Zipser:like, I know that it's important. I'm not saying not to do it. It's just you asked me honestly, part of my hands being genuine. Really enjoy, because I actually feel like I'm doing work.
Kavita Kerwar:And it doesn't come it's not like a very especially if you're like in your case, you've grown your business from scratch, where you had a higher degree of control you and you had perhaps a camaraderie with your, you know, core team, and now you've scaled up so much, so I can definitely understand why this is now. The layers of having admin and having that people and culture speak is probably, like, very foreign to how you maybe the team used to operate.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Yeah and we've been doing it for a while. It's just like, I think just writing of it all, it's like, the formality of it is what, you know, whereas I'm a little bit more like, play it by a free talker kind of thing? I'll give you a tip at the end of the game.
Kavita Kerwar:Yes I would like a tip. I don't know why I chose this game. This is my own doing. No one to blame, but must, I don't know. Oh, this is so dangerous.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I'll give you a tip. So you got to find the loose one. There's going to be always a loose one, because the weight gets because the wight gets distributed. So you find a loose one, and then it's just easy to come out. And that's why I did it like quite, quite swiftly with my movements, sometimes it's hard to find there's always one. There's always one, because the White gets the weight gets redistributed every time a brick comes out.
Unknown:Only like the loose ones is only when Roby touches the Jenga, they're like.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Did you see there was one? You see, I just gave you a little tip. Thank you. Thank you so much leadership moment. Okay, so there's my go, right? So now I now probably stuff it up because I gave my tips away. Okay, here we go. Oh, that is good. See how easy that was. There you go. Yeah.
Kavita Kerwar:T hat's amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I guess the next, the next question I had was more around scaling, scaling your company, and we were talking about, like, admin and team and delegating as well, what was your biggest challenge when you were scaling up? Because, and this is, like, such a privilege, because not every company that starts in a garage can scale up and be on the ASX. So, yeah, fantastic, what you and your team have achieved. But what would be, I guess, the biggest hurdle or challenge.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Capital is always a challenge. Like, I think we finished a fundraising, and you start looking for another fundraising. And you know, sometimes you got to ask yourself, if this is what you want, and maybe slowing the growth down a little bit. But then you run into channel challenges, because you have, you know, seed funders that may be less pressure at you at the beginning, but you don't want to lose their money, because it's usually friends and family. You move to early stage, and then you move into sort of, like, some VC funding. So when you get the VCs in, like, you've you've got to grow. You don't have a choice, and they're in the door. They're probably usually taking a director seat. They've probably got some preferential rights. If you can avoid that, that's would be good to do. So, you know, like the scaling up bit and getting capital. And then what happens in the life cycle of businesses is you go through many stages, and the problem is, is that you're gonna have to make some decisions sometimes that are super uncomfortable. And the longer you wait to make those decisions, the worse the business will be. And you need to survive, right? So you have to have a survival mindset. And I'm not trying to speak in, you know, hidden messages and smokes and mirrors or whatever. I'm just saying that sometimes you have to cut costs in the business, and particularly if it's in technology, it's usually people, and so sometimes you have to. To make adjustments or slow down your hiring or make some redundancies. And unfortunately, we've had to go through that journey because capital isn't free. It was free for a while, which has been good for a lot of companies, but it isn't free, and people expect to return, and they want to start to see operational leverage and margins come through. And so being being able to scale up is knowing when to be prudent with Capital Management, and that's a key skill. And making, sometimes, what I would call, you know, going back to the book, the hard things about hard things is making those hard decisions.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah cool. All right, let's do another one. Oh, my God. Okay. Oh, God, this is something. Yes, please, please, please.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Oh, I feel sorry for the next interviewee. Why? Because I've given you the tips. I'm assuming you do Jenga with everyone.
Kavita Kerwar:No, this is, this has just been you so far. Oh, wow. Maybe now I will.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:I've increased your competency
Kavita Kerwar:Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Okay, there we go. You see how there's a loose one in the middle there.
Kavita Kerwar:I feel like I struggle, and there's like latency when I do this and when Roby does it, oh yes.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Nearly fell. I was, like, a bit aggressive on that one, but I'm playing by the rules, which is, once you touch a brick, you can't let go. You've got to stay on. I have not let go. I've seen you touch and let go, but you were telling me that. I reckon if we play back the video, I think you'll see touch, let go, touch echo, whereas you see my swift motions, one one motion. I'm just saying, not accusing you anything of saying, yeah.
Kavita Kerwar:Okay. So what's next for high pages? Anything exciting? Yeah, yeah.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:So, I mean, we've had a big focus in the last half on getting all our trades onto a single application. There's so many really cool things going on. So for the trades, where we're going is building more features in our single application. So expansionary services are going to do a pretty decent investment on providing a payment solution for trades. They don't all pay cash, just by the way, but we want to give them really cool tools. So spending a lot of advances in payments, and we do have a payment solution, but it's just more of a merchant facility. We want facility. We want to provide a broader range of payment options, and getting adoption of that, and also adoption of the features that we have already built. So that's been a critical focus. There's a lot of stuff to help trades manage and run their businesses. We've improved our matching algorithms, and also, one of the other things that we're doing for the homeowner is we've effectively improved our matching algorithm so the homeowners get a faster and better experience. But also the homeowner is going to enjoy the better outcomes of trades using more technology so they get they get a better experience. One other really cool thing, just a little AI thing, is we've got Sarah AI being in prototype, which is effectively the homeowner can have an interactive conversation with an LLM, answer questions about the jobs that they want to get done, and then ultimately post that job and get it connected within, within the flow of that communication, which should be a an enhanced, nicer experience. And we're testing that as we speak. And you know, hopefully we'll roll some of that out soon as well. Very exciting. Yes, there's lots of, lots of, lot of things. New Zealand business is also going to replicate what we're doing in Australia. So I could go on forever on it, but we, like you said, we're making some big players in innovation technology.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, that's awesome. So if people haven't heard of hipages, how can they find you guys?
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Oh that's easy. Just hipages.com.au. if you go to the website or just download, go to the app stores and just download hipages, look for the homeowner app, and then you can post your jobs away and get quotes on your jobs and see how it goes for you.
Unknown:It's awesome. And then you you've got a drill lying around that you are never going to use. You can get on, put it on, you sell it.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Like you don't need it anymore, and you know you're going to get a good price. And they're all vetted and checked and trusted so and there's ratings and there's ratings and recommendations. So it's all happening on hipages.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, on a closing note, what has been the most fun part of your journey from on hipages.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Oh, wow. So, I mean, there's been a lot of moments. I mean, like, you can go back in time when you first made your very first sale, to all the way to listing on the ASX, to delivering on a piece of technology like we just did, rolling it all out to all our customer base, and getting that happen, and hitting just doing it on time, have been some amazing moments in the history of the business. Yeah, so so many it's been a long journey, but keep finding new ones, and keep getting surprised, and keep learning along the way.
Kavita Kerwar:Yeah amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on our podcast. Yeah, we really enjoyed having you. Thank you so much.
Roby Sharon-Zipser:Pleasure. I love having it. Love. Love meeting you, and hopefully I get to win this game.
