For those who don’t know, what is LVLY?
LVLY is the Uber of the gifting world. We’re a same-day gift delivery service that uses crowd-sourced drivers to deliver gifts across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane (plus a national next-day service). We exist to make people’s day.
How did you get the idea?
Born on opposite sides of the world and both living away from home, we saw a gap in the market for a gift delivery service that was affordable enough to fulfil those ‘just because’ gifting moments. Like when you’re homesick or when you can’t be physically there for a friend who had a bad day. After ten years of working in the advertising world, we decided we wanted to build a brand from the ground up and ‘just because gifting’ became the vehicle for this brand.
How’s your experience been funding your startup?
We’ve bootstrapped it all the way. It’s been a big financial commitment and we’ve reinvested everything we’ve made to grow the business. It takes a massive shift in mindset to leave the security of senior roles with big salaries to bootstrap a business and worry more about paying your team’s salary than your own.
It takes a massive shift in mindset to leave the security of senior roles with big salaries to bootstrap a business and worry more about paying your team’s salary than your own.
Describe your working environment and its pros and cons.
As two female founders running a gifting business, we’ve naturally attracted a team of brilliant women. This is a massive pro but the con is we struggle to attract males and we’d love to have a more gender diverse team.
What’s the best advice you could give to someone starting out?
Just get started. Done is better than perfect.
What was your biggest mistake?
It feels like there have been too many big mistakes to mention just one, but probably not getting an advisory team around us quickly enough. Looking back, we wasted a lot of time debating and procrastinating. Once we got an experienced advisory team around us they gave us confidence and held us accountable, which built an incredible sense of momentum in the business.
What needs to improve/change for Australia to become a global leader in innovation and tech?
In terms of population size, Australia probably punches above its weight for innovation and tech. But to become a global leader, Australian startups need to start thinking bigger than the Australian market. They need to think of scaling beyond Australia and APAC. It’s something we’ve been challenged on by our business advisors: we don’t always think big enough.
Have you had any challenges with sourcing and growing your team?
Our team is probably our best achievement to date. We have the most incredibly committed, passionate and loyal employees a startup could wish for. The way we approach hiring is to focus much more on attitude and aptitude rather than academics and experience. We’ve hired brilliant problem solvers and that’s proven to be a winning formula time and time again.
We’ve hired brilliant problem solvers and that’s proven to be a winning formula time and time again.
Do you believe someone with no business or entrepreneurial experience can succeed in the startup world?
Absolutely! No one has true business or entrepreneurial experience until they’ve been there, done that, failed and tried again. It’s often more about courage and resilience than experience.
If you could go back to the start, tell us two things you would do differently.
There are so many things we did a bad job of initially. But you know what, the best way to learn is to mess up. If we’d done things differently we might not have started LVLY at all.
Do you have any tips for acquiring new users and/or scaling your business?
Ultimately the best way to acquire new users will totally depend on the product, category and type of consumers you’re after. When most people start talking about customer acquisition the conversation revolves largely around marketing. However, you could have the biggest marketing budget in the world, but if you’ve got a crappy product and/or terrible customer service then you’re throwing marketing dollars down the toilet. The best tip for acquiring new customers is to create a truly brilliant product and really give a shit about pleasing your customers, every single one of them.
Create a truly brilliant product and really give a shit about pleasing your customers, every single one of them.