At around 9.20am on Friday 2nd July, almost 11 years to the day since the company was first incorporated, aussiehome.com Pty Ltd was sold to REIWA.
In a good-natured signing ceremony, along with my cofounder Nick Streuli, who I’d met while we both completed our MBAs at UWA in the late 90s, I signed the final papers that saw REIWA take over.
Nick and I went off for a coffee afterwards to reminisce. What an 11 years it had been…
In March 1999, Lisa and I attended a ‘Night with Barry Humphries’ at the Regal Theatre. During the show, we were both dragged up on stage to eat a meal with Dame Edna, which had just been ordered from the Subi Hotel. A night neither of us could forget - it was also the same night Nick rang me with his idea for a 'local property web site'. 6 months later, I resigned my secure Head of Department job at Hale School. I remember the date – 9/9/99 - as Dame Edna might have said, “spooky!” Portentous maybe.
1999 was the Year of the Dotcoms. If you had an MBA, a dotcom idea and a pulse, people were interested (6 months later, they ran for the hills). While most e-businesses came crashing down to earth shortly after the Easter 2000 'Tech Wreck', aussiehome.com survived due to its loyal following of visitors and real estate agents and some calm advice from some key shareholders. As the continual shift from print to online took hold in the 2000s, so aussiehome.com developed web site design and hosting services, print publications and online databases, enewsletters and CRMs. We moved into seminars and training, social media and mobile/iphone applications.
There have been many bumps and dinks along the way, some close calls and some great moments. Only 7 months old, we won the Asia-Pacific IT Award for WA for Best Innovation in E-Commerce (beating much larger companies such as AdultShop.com and others). 2 years later they won the Best E-Business in WA and also the People's Choice Award for the most popular web site. In 2004, the company won its first national Award, as a BRW ‘Best Start-Up' Business, and in both 2007 and 2008 a 'Smart Company Top 40' Award (the only company in WA to do so). I also won a Business News '40under40' Award and our wonderful IT & Systems Manager Amit Sethi won a 'Early Career' Award for Computer Science graduates.
We love to innovate – Nick always insisted that we ‘push the envelope’. We were the first company anywhere to put houses on interactive maps on the internet; the first company in Perth to offer virtual tours to the real estate industry; the first (and still only) site to have a professionally produced real estate TV show (many aussiehome.com clients have featured in it) and still the only site to have 'heat maps' and the ability to 'plot your home open route on a map'. [Goodness, I'm beginning to sound like Kevin Rudd listing all his achievements - sorry about that.]
We all share a lot of pride in our accomplishments. But most of all, we've had fun, and I want to thank all our staff (past and present) and of course our shareholders (who gave us a go back in 1999) and especially our clients who could have easily gone with someone else, but plumped for us and stuck with us. And of course Nick who came up with the idea and convinced me to do it in the first place.
I'm so glad all the aussiehome.com staff are coming with me. I get to run REIWA.com. We get to bring all our services (although most of the staff will still be based in our Nedlands office, and the aussiehome.com web site will continue, at least for a while).
Coming home on Friday night I told my 2 kids that I had just sold the business. My 6 year old boy piped up with “Does that mean you have no work Dad?”
“Oh no," I replied "I have lots of work to do.”
We all do. We are all working with REIWA.com now. We can’t wait. In fact, we’ve already begun.
Meanwhile – thanks for all your support. I have met loads of people over the years who have told me how they have loved using the aussiehome.com site.
I even met Dame Edna - thanks your majesty - you were there at the beginning. As you once said: "“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.”
Now let's all go have some fun on REIWA.com ...