Tapping into the $110b tradie economy – HiPages Group w/ CEO Roby Sharon-Zipser | Summer Series

Bryce: [00:00:15] Welcome to another episode of the Equity Mates summer series over 12 episodes, we're diving into some of the most exciting, interesting and well-known companies from both here in Australia and over in the US. In some instances, we'll be hearing directly from the CEOs to give you firsthand insight into their companies. My name is Bryce, and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you going? 

Alec: [00:00:36] Well, I'm very good. Bryce excited to be back. Halfway through our summer series. 

Bryce: [00:00:41] Yeah, yeah, it's been awesome. We've got some amazing companies to go. We've spoken about some amazing companies. I love doing this. It's a great time of year. The summer series is brought to you by superhero. Super Superhero allows you to buy Aussie and US shares and ETFs with no monthly account fees, and you can now earn Qantas points with superhero. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions and fees and charges apply now. Ren We have spoken about some pretty big companies this one. Some of that community may not have heard about before, and it is Hi pages. The ticker is a page listed on the ASX, an Australian company. You would say overnight success story, but it's been going for six years. 

Alec: [00:01:23] Yeah, well, it only listed it. Listed time of recording mid-November. It listed a year ago, so at least in mid-November 2020, it's up about 50 per cent since listing. So you'd be pretty happy with that. Yes. But yeah, it's been a it was founded in 2004,

Bryce: [00:01:40] one of those similar to the Adore Beauty. When we did it for the summer series last year, I think it was 20 years they were running before listing. Yeah, something something like that, that sort of true grow from your garage story of success that gets to a point where they could then list on the ASX. 

Alec: [00:01:56] Yeah, and it is the largest marketplace for tradies in Australia. So like if you want to if you want to go online and arrange a tradie, the Hi pages is probably what you're doing it. I don't own a home. No, I'm not a tradie, I'm not a tradie. And I can't say I've ever used it before. No. Have you 

Bryce: [00:02:17] know, that's because I use Airtasker 

Alec: [00:02:20] for tradies, 

Bryce: [00:02:21] wool for what I would use as a tradie job? You know what I mean? 

Alec: [00:02:24] Like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:02:25] Come and fix this. Unblock that drill this drill that firstly, I'll try and do it myself, but I'm going to try it hi pages because, yeah, yeah. 

Alec: [00:02:36] Well, I think we might be in the minority because there's a job posted every 26 seconds, according to the company. Like, they've got a serious number of users when you think about how many Australian households there? Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:02:47] So before we jump into into Hi pages and what they do and their business are reminded that we are giving you the opportunity thanks to Super Hero to win a thousand dollars into a superhero wallet to a lucky listener from from the Equity Mates community. All they need to do is listen to this episode, head across to the Equity Mates Instagram page and on the corresponding post for this specific episode, the Hi pages post. Let us know in the comments what your favourite fact about Hi pages is and tune in as we will announce the winners on our stories towards the end of the week or early next week. And just make sure you're following Equity Mates and superhero to be eligible. But all you need to do is tell us your favourite facts and you could be in the running for a thousand bucks thanks to Sydney Ren 

Alec: [00:03:31] So Bryce so Ren two sided marketplace. Yes, tough business to build. Very tough, incredibly difficult business to disrupt.

Bryce: [00:03:40] Yeah, once they get going. 

Alec: [00:03:41] So we're talking here in Australia, you know the raise, the car sales, the stakes overseas, you know, the the Airbnbs, the Ubers stuff like that when you can get that equilibrium of, you know, both sides of the marketplace. So in this case, tradies and customers in oba's case riders and drivers in car sales, chaos, car supply and car buyers like that is just a thing of beauty. Yeah, it is. Yeah, in terms of in business, you know, 

Bryce: [00:04:15] it's hard to get that nice dynamic. 

Alec: [00:04:16] It may not be a decentralised dhow buying the US constitution. No, it might not be Web3, but it's pretty beautiful. 

Bryce: [00:04:23] It is pretty beautiful. So that's what Hi pages does. And we'll dig into that in a little bit. But let's start with some opening sort of stats about the tradie economy, not an economy that I've paid a lot of attention to. I know it's big, but some of the numbers are pretty astounding. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:04:41] And I think for me, thinking about Hi pages when we were doing this research, there's not many companies that are exposed to the tradie economy, like in terms of stocks. Yeah. Like the only one I could really think of was like Wesfarmers, which has Bunnings. Whoever owns might attend those days. Who owns 

Bryce: [00:05:01] Lowe's? 

Alec: [00:05:02] Isn't Lowe's like the

Bryce: [00:05:04] work where Lowe's work is? 

Alec: [00:05:05] Oh yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:05:06] Yeah, yeah, Hi vis stuff. Am I getting that confused with another business? 

Alec: [00:05:11] You could be right. I think you, mom. You might be wrong. We are out of. But I think I think for me, going back to the listed options on the stock market, there's not a lot and that's because of the nature of this industry is it's it's incredibly fragmented and it's a lot of, you know, smaller companies. Trade is being owner operators of the business or being in small companies. And there's not really a big company or there might be like racist plumbing as well. But again, like supply? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me, if you're interested in this economy, Hi pages is an interesting view into the economy. So let's talk about the economy. Let's talk about how big it is, and let's talk about the meaningful contribution it makes to Australia's GDP. 

Bryce: [00:05:57] Well, the home improvement industry here in Australia encompasses nine point nine million households. Two hundred and 57000 trade businesses and about 85 billion spent on home improvement each year. And to your point, Ren being out of our depth, Australians engage an average of seven trades per year per household. Definitely doesn't apply to me.

Alec: [00:06:22] No, the 85 billion number's big. It's also not that surprising. Like, we love spending money on property. It makes sense that we're trying to upgrade it and maintain it. And this this is just me speculating. But renovating your house is probably like this probably some serious operating leverage there in terms of just like what it can mean in terms of the eventual house price. Yeah, that you can sell it for the industry's big Australian side property. It's probably not going anywhere. It isn't growing that quickly, though, so it's expected to grow at approximately 2.2 per cent a year over the next three years. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:06:59] I just want to point out here as well that we're talking specifically home improvement here. But as we will hear from our CEO, 

Alec: [00:07:06] oh, we should have probably said that I was speaking so, Roby, to say we've got 

Bryce: [00:07:10] Roby coming up. Hi pages doesn't just operate in home improvement, they also have tradies that are operating in the commercial landscape and various others, so their total addressable market is actually in the $110 billion range. Okay.

Alec: [00:07:24] Yeah. Tradies also spend about a billion dollars on advertising, and that's expected to grow a lot faster than the market. It's expected to grow at an average rate of 8.8 per cent over the next four years. And that advertising point, I think, is important because that's where a platform that can bring you a lot of warm leads might be able to save you some money on advertising, 

Bryce: [00:07:47] whereas the last time you've seen a specific tradie advertise, I can only think of utes. And yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, course. But I've never seen like an individual ad for for a tradie. Be like, I'm the utile guy. 

Alec: [00:08:04] You know, you make big. I'm thinking, 

Bryce: [00:08:05] Where's that bullet going fridge 

Alec: [00:08:07] magnets as well? When you were growing up, did you have like the local plumber and stuff like that? Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:08:13] So where's that billion going?

Alec: [00:08:16] It could be youth decals. Well, I mean, the feel like I feel like we're just not looking in the right places. I feel like not like classifieds, but Google ads, maybe Hi pages. Maybe they have an uprising business. Yeah, yeah. In terms of in terms of the effectiveness of that advertising, I mean, I'm sure it's effective. But to Bryce point, it's clear that consumers aren't seeing a lot of it because 70 per cent of Australian consumers still engage tradies from word of mouth or by contacting a previously used tradie. Mm-Hmm. 

Bryce: [00:08:53] There you go.

Alec: [00:08:54] It's it's a sticky relationship. Big? Yes. Yeah, they say marriage, kids and tradies. The three stickiest relationships in your life. 

Bryce: [00:09:02] It's probably because, you know, there's that element of calling a tradie. Are they going to do a good job if you've got someone that you know is going to do a good job, the price pricing dynamics of tradies as well? 

Alec: [00:09:12] Well, very opaque. So I think 

Bryce: [00:09:14] if you if you mate, there's no way to do due diligence. I guess Hi page is a good way to do it. Traditionally, you you jump online, you want someone to come and fix some tiles. If the only way to know if you're getting ripped off on ripped off or not is to spend more time out of your day, calling five other tradies to get a comparable quote. And then you go from there, like 

Alec: [00:09:36] you also just can't go like you can get five quotes, but then it's a balancing act of is the cheapest. Just going to do a terrible job like that. That trade off of quality and cost is just, yeah, it's impossible to say yeah. Whereas with a lot of these two sided marketplaces, you can say writings and 

Bryce: [00:09:52] this is where Hi pages comes in. 

Alec: [00:09:54] Yeah, but let's before we get to Hi pages as one more stat that I think is interesting, that is worth talking about the residential trade sector. So again, to your earlier clarification, we're not talking about commercial here. We're just talking about residential. The residential trade sector contributes almost six percent. To Australia's GDP, so 

Bryce: [00:10:16] it's a huge big industry. Ten per cent of GDP. Six per cent of GDP. Well, let's have a chat about Hi pages Ren. It's a group that operates as we've spoken about, this marketplace that connects traders with with consumers. People have customers who need traders specialising in home improvement gives the opportunity for for traders to advertise their services and get those warm leads that you are talking about. Their services include renovations, repairs, maintenance, new buildings, installations, you name it. You need a tradie. Hi pages is the place to go, and, as you said, a job posted every 26 seconds on the Hi pages platform with over one hundred thirty five thousand trade and building professionals nationwide. It's an interesting business and one that is in a captivating and capturing a really strong niche. 

Alec: [00:11:07] Have you jumped on the website and have a look? 

Bryce: [00:11:09] Yeah, when we were researching for this year, I want to get 

Alec: [00:11:11] on it now. No, it's just an interesting one. Like for someone who hasn't used it. When I was having a look, it's it is just really useful just in terms of giving more information. You know, like you can say recommendations, you can say writings. You can see like all the credentials and stuff you can see if they're COVID 19 vaccinated. Nice. That's important. Yeah, I still would be sort of picking blind. It definitely gives more information. [00:11:39][27.4]

Bryce: [00:11:39] Yeah, well, they get recommendations. I think there's something like just shy of a million trade verified trading recommendations. They've thirty four thousand professionals on the site. I'm going to give it a crack next time. I need one. I'm a bit of a DIY kind of guy, though 

Alec: [00:11:54] you'd like to think everyone likes to think they're a DIY until they have to do a real job. Yeah, that's true. 

Bryce: [00:12:01] A 10 day window installation. 

Alec: [00:12:04] So that's the Hi pages platform business. There's only so much you can say about it, like if you're familiar with real estate or come to the you or sake or car sales. Think of that. But for tradies, the model is pretty simple, but it's just incredibly powerful when you can build scale in that business. The adjacency that they've moved into a newer part of their business is it's called trading core, and it's a software as a service product. Because it's 2021, everyone has a SaaS product. Everyone, everyone and that helps traders optimise their business helps them with like digital invoicing, tracking payments, managing customers, scheduling, providing quotes, all of that stuff. So you know, there's a number of pain points for traders, and we've got some data on some of the key ones later in this episode. But if you're thinking about Hi pages and what they're trying to do as a business, they started with this platform to funnel work to traders, to get aggregate customers and push them to traders. And then the adjacent business that they're moving into is helping traders then manage that work. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. 

Bryce: [00:13:12] So as we mentioned at the top, the total addressable market for Hi pages 110 $1.3 billion. The tradie advertising spend, as we've also said, is about a billion and the number of trade businesses 250 7000. But what does that translate to? Hi pages? So of the billion dollars spent on advertising, Hi pages have a five per cent share. So that's pretty significant of the 250 7000 trade businesses in Australia. Thirty four and a half thousand of those are listed on Hi pages. And of the 110 billion total addressable market, 2.6 billion is going through Hi pages in terms of the the value of the spend in the market and on trade is 

Alec: [00:14:03] Candace and quick maths for me,

Bryce: [00:14:05] I can 

Alec: [00:14:05] try. What's the percentage of traders on the market and what's percentage of on the platform and what's the percentage of the market that they take

Bryce: [00:14:14] percentage of traders on the platform would be about eight percent. 

Alec: [00:14:18] I'm guessing 13 percent is [00:14:20][1.7]

Bryce: [00:14:20] that it says that the 13 13 percent and about two and a half percent of total addressable 

Alec: [00:14:27] market? Yeah, not so. The thing that stands out there for me is that they have 13 percent of the trades, but they're only clearing two and a half percent of the value in the market. It's on 

Bryce: [00:14:40] the low end of town, two 

Alec: [00:14:42] possible explanations just off the top of my head. There's probably a third correct one. But yeah, first one. As you said, they're getting the lower value jobs through the platform and the Hier value jobs are going elsewhere. The second one could be that they have a lot of trades listed on the market who are getting the job first job and then they're reverting to that word of mouth or, you know, contacting a trader you've already used and they're not and customers aren't going through that platform again. So while there might be 13 per cent of the. Trade is listed on the platform, not those trades. Not every job is going through the platform. They're going off platform, which wouldn't be surprising because, you know, they've also got the decals and the other advertising and stuff like that. They're sourcing jobs in other ways. But that discrepancy, the 13 percent of trade is listed on the platform. Two and a half percent of the value of the market is an interesting, yeah, dynamic. It's an opportunity. 

Bryce: [00:15:41] Yeah. So a few other trends that are coming through the industry. So traders are seeing a shift in the way that they engage with customers. We know that word of mouth is one of the biggest or is the biggest lead generator. But a large portion up to sort of 21 per cent are expecting that more of their work is going to be generated through third party providers such as Hi pages. And if we think about the competitive landscape I mentioned at the top of the show, Airtasker, it's probably the one that comes to mind as a major competitor. It doesn't necessarily have a focus. Just on trade is it's more of a give us a job broadly, and we'll try and match you with someone who can do that. They they'd certainly compete with people who are looking for tiling to be done or. 

Alec: [00:16:23] Yeah, it definitely is competitive. Yeah, yeah. Gumtree would be another competitor. We've got another one listed here service seeking that would be hateusmore. I'll try and list one on Amazon Bot or eBay. That's why I not getting any jump on it now. But look, there's there's plenty out there. I'm sure Facebook Marketplace probably tried to do something similar, but Hi pages is definitely the biggest. So let's turn to financials. As we said, the company listed about a year ago or a year ago, they're up 50 per cent from there. They've had a good good run. Like most tech businesses, they're not profitable yet, not surprising, but they are making a fair bit of revenue the last couple of years. F 18, they made forty three mil, a forty four mil up to f twenty one. They they made 56 million. 

Bryce: [00:17:13] Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Compound average growth of 8.6 percent. $495 billion. Market cap, you write Ren. They are, they're not making a profit, but they certainly seem to be getting closer to profitability based on some of the numbers here. So good to see another Australian success story. But Ren, let's have a let's turn our attention to the future of Hi pages, and we go into a bit more of this in detail with Roby, who is the CEO and the vision that he sees for Hi pages over the next next few years. But look, they're solving problems for both customers and traders and big pain points that we're solving.

Alec: [00:17:54] Yeah. So from some data, we could find some of the key pain points for customers, 48 percent say finding a reliable tradie who will show up on time. Forty five percent say unforeseen and unexpected costs, 33 percent say they don't like paying in cash. So there are some key pain points for customers on the trade side. Biggest pain point getting paid? Yeah, fair enough. That does sound painful if you're not getting paid, 33 percent say preparing quotes, 33 percent also said finding employees, 29 percent said payroll and taxes. Twenty nine percent said admin as well. 

Bryce: [00:18:34] If we look in quotes, but anyway, payroll and taxes admin, it just feels like it's admin. I'm getting paid. 

Alec: [00:18:43] Yeah, yeah. Paperwork for customers. A lot of it feels like reliability, finding a reliability who will show a reliable tradie who shop on time reliable, unforeseen and unexpected costs like reliable quote trust. If we think about what Hi pages feature is, it's trying to solve those pain points through the Hi Pages website. If they're if customers can manage jobs through that and then they can pay through that as well. That solves a lot of the pain points for customers. It solves the key pain point for traders around getting paid and then the other product, tradie core will help with a lot of the admin. The preparing quotes, the payroll and taxes, the admin, that kind of stuff, sending invoice as well as well so will help with getting paid. But the model going forward is pretty simple just become best friend to tradies and be the easiest way for customers to get trading.

Bryce: [00:19:37] Yeah, it's great. Another exciting partnership for traders is the partnership with Bunnings 

Alec: [00:19:43] Partnership, a 

Bryce: [00:19:45] partnership for Hi wages or trades, so they partnered with Hi Hi Pages in June 2018. And essentially, how it works is that consumers can now purchase, for example, a toilet or a kitchen through Bunnings and then through Hi pages. Find a national tradie to actually then go and install that and make the whole process a lot more simple. We probably don't even have to leave the house anymore.

Alec: [00:20:11] Yeah, that's pretty 

Bryce: [00:20:12] good order of toilet, didn't I? 

Alec: [00:20:14] Didn't I? Hey, do something similar with like a Airtasker or something like that. Yeah, yeah, it's a good model. It definitely removes a pain point for customers getting the Bunnings deal. You'd be pretty stoked with that. You would. 

Bryce: [00:20:25] Yeah. So look around. It's an interesting company that is recently listed. It's certainly carving out a great nation in the marketplace. As we said at the top two sided marketplaces, if you can nail it, they're there. You know, great businesses, incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful. They set the terms. 

Alec: [00:20:42] So, yeah, incredibly powerful. But they've been running for six years and they're not profitable. 

Bryce: [00:20:47] It's very odd. Very hard. So look, we'll we'll take a quick break. And then what we're going to be doing is jumping into an interview with Roby Sharon Zipser, who is the co-founder of Hi Pages, and we're going to be hearing from him about the difficulties of running a two sided marketplaces, as well as some info in both the trading core and Hi pages sites, and then hearing his views on what is in future in store for the future when it comes to Hi Pages Group. So stick around and see at the end of the show. So we're joined by Roby Sharon Zipser, who is the CEO and co-founder of Hi Pages. We've been looking forward to this all episode. The ticker is H Page. As we've discussed, but Roby, firstly, welcome to Equity Mates. 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:21:35] Thanks for having me.

Bryce: [00:21:36] So we like starting these interviews with the CEO describing their company in their own words. So what is Hi pages? 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:21:44] Five pages is really simple. You get connected with up to three tradies if you need trades on our platform. We're evolving that with technology and solutions for trades as well to make life easier for trades. 

Alec: [00:21:56] You say it's an incredibly simple business, but it's a two sided marketplace which are notoriously difficult to build because you've got to build supply on both sides and keep an equilibrium. There a challenge. A lot of people have failed trying to build those kind of businesses. So how did you do it, you know? Can you talk us through how you built your volume of trades and your customers and how you gave them both happy? 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:22:19] So first of all, you're absolutely right. I try and keep it simple for everyone. It is not only because of marketplaces are probably where the hottest businesses to build. You know, if you have your time again and choices of businesses, you may think differently. But in this case, we got there, and the way we got there is through absolute resilience, determination and a lot of hard work and innovation. And it's sort of in our values as a business, we the way we've done it is literally called trading after tragedy, putting them on our platform, explaining the product, showing them the value and then getting really clever with our marketing as a business. Back in the day, so this is a long time ago, we were very we still are, you know, leaders in terms of bringing users to the Hi powered platform through SEO search engine optimisation, search engine marketing, really clever with our social media and in the more recent years of the last three to five years, we've got sufficient capital to really build our brand in the market. So we've gone heavy and above the line marketing to keep that marketplace in balance branding. You'll see us on shows like the Block on Channel nine and things like that. 

Bryce: [00:23:22] So between Hi pages dot com, which drives jobs to tradies and tradie core, which is the platform to help traders manage jobs, Hi Pages Group is obviously very exposed to the tradie economy. Let's just sort of dig into that a bit. What should we know about this economy? What are some of the key pain points that Hi pages is trying to solve and how big is the market 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:23:45] might be looking at the last question first? $110 billion is why Australians spend on trades in two hundred and fifty seven thousand trade businesses. It's like something like last quick calculation on GDP. It's like five percent of the GDP. It's made up of a couple hundred subcategories. So I'm talking about like plumbers, electricians, your painters is absolutely massive. And when you think about the marketplace itself and compare it to other really well-known marketplace such as RCA and car sales and sake, it's equal to, if not bigger than most of them. Huge, huge opportunity there in terms of the TAM, where the work comes from for those trades is really varied. It comes from people that just want to do renovation repairs and maintenance in their home, and it's around like $4 billion in itself. Brand new home construction is around 30 billion. Property maintenance so rental property maintenance is around 12 billion. Commercial property maintenance. I like buildings where you get, you know, tenants asking for repairs. That's another eight or nine billion. You just start to segment it out and you can see how it's massive and we've only penetrated a small fraction of that market. I think we do around 2.4 billion worth of work that's fulfilled through our platform out of the 110 billion. So really small. Wow. 

Alec: [00:25:02] Wow. So for me, it's fascinating that there's an industry that's so big, and yet there's not really a lot of big names like in terms of ASX listed companies. I mean, Bunnings is part of Wesfarmers and they supply. And then you guys sort of are a platform where you match tradies and customers, but you can't really think of many other big businesses exposed to the trading economy. 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:25:25] Now there aren't the the industry associations like you guys might be familiar with, like the guy in the Master Builders Association usually write economic reports, but they're not really into intertwined with the business themselves, particularly around their marketing, maybe on compliance and safety and maybe some of the more boring aspects of it more important. But the marketing, the business management, the administration, the running of those businesses, there isn't really much out there. And so that's where Hi pages is really, you know, leading the pack by far and away in the market, we've defined it as the on demand tradie economy. I like 

Alec: [00:26:00] that. I like that. So homepages was founded in 2004, listed in 2020 16 year overnight success story. Yeah. In that time, you know, technology has changed. You think about the internet economy back in 2004 and where it is today, different worlds, and I'm sure there's been plenty of competitors that have come and gone. So I guess, how do you think? A Hi pages competitive advantage, how do you think about what do you attribute this 17 year growth story to?

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:26:30] So first of all, just comment on the overnight success. I love that when I hear that

Alec: [00:26:33] no one, no one remembers the 80 hour,

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:26:36] you know, weeks that you did in the cockroach infested garage. Those days are long gone, of course, but that's kind of where it all started overnight success. That's funny. But yeah, so lots has changed. I think one thing certain is that it just keeps getting faster and faster. And I think for Al, for us as a business in the competitive advantages that, you know, as you said earlier about marketplaces, they're hard to believe we have passed that critical mass. We have thirty four, thirty five thousand trade businesses on our platform makes us the largest network of traders in Australia. Those trades are vetted, they're checked, they're licenced there, you know, and we have an ongoing trust and quality team. They recommended their writer. This is all the things that you'd expect from a marketplace business. And in terms of those businesses, those customers of ours, the trades as the as the primary customer, the users that come in, we get like 1.6 million job requests per annum. It's the biggest in Australia, and no one gets that kind of volume of requests for the category of home improvements and home services, all the on demand trading economy. So that's sort of fundamentals in what we have as competitive advantage. But now as an organisation is evolving to becoming more innovative and more technology driven. We're recruiting heavily into the technology and we're digging deep into our data because of the number and the numbers that we have in terms of customers, both trading and users, we're accumulating massive amounts of data. I think someone was telling me the other day, nearly every month we put on 50 to 60000 brand new users and 160000 jobs a month, but 100000 of repeat the repeating through us for putting on a 50 does not many businesses in Australia that accumulate in that kind of quantity of customer base? Yeah, for Australia, that's pretty significant. So I think to summarise it, the network effect that you have as a marketplace, the innovation and technology that we're putting out to the market and the data that we're accumulating as a business are all really, really important strategic advantages. 

Alec: [00:28:33] We often talk about these marketplace place businesses in Australia, the area, the car sales, the sales and they often get like to such a critical mass in Australia. And then they look overseas. You know, area is looking at India car sales, I think is looking overseas as well. Is this model transferable? 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:28:50] So the way I look at it is, is the Australian market. So all of these marketplace businesses evolved from the traditional classified model, and then they really had something different that was competitive in the beginning. I became the leader in the category category and then started to provide really innovative solutions. Car sales is really well known for the car CRM system of record that they rolled out. It's become part of the whole car yard car sales, even though they've got the word car sales. It's part of the whole ecosystem and I think for us as a business, you know, embedding ourselves as being a critical part of the technology infrastructure for tradies as they have now started to mature, relatively unsophisticated customer base. You know, you know, I know you tried the local tradie handyman probably don't really manage the diaries that well. We're probably still doing paper, book and book and Pad Pen writing down their invoices and all that. That's all sort of changing, particularly the last five years. Considering how mobile they are, the businesses, you know, be providing these tools for these guys and that's becoming where where we're going to do the international story. If you own the market that you pain like it, you're embedded, then it's a natural progression to find markets that haven't really been as successful for other players in those markets to take the playbook and roll it into those markets. So, you know, that's definitely a possibility. Yeah, yeah. 

Bryce: [00:30:05] What was the impact of Covid on your business? And I guess as an entrepreneur, what did you learn about yourself, what you learnt about your business through that period of time? 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:30:13] Yeah, sarcomas was an interesting one. Like this is like a once in 100 year event. And I think there are a lot of businesses that, you know, really struggles. Fortunately, in the category, Trades Services has done very, very well. I think the last lockdown was a little bit restrictive, particularly where the rules started to apply to trades. So the first lockdown, no, we were very successful in lobbying and communicating. The trades are an essential service, so so we weren't affected and actually one of the reasons why it was a catalyst to say, Hey, we've actually nailed the business model. So the learning is to have a really good, resilient business model. We moved to subscription only, so all our customers now pretty much can only buy a subscription product. We've got a small, small percentage of customers still on a transactional product, but we're rolling it all out to subscription. The power of subscription is, well, document. Your viewers will know that. And what that's done for us is it's allowed us to grow our ARPUs average revenue per unit or user. That's growing nicely and that's driven our top line growth. And we've been able to successfully grow in this climate, which is amazing. And we've just had our AGM and we gave our quarterly update, just talked about, you know, achieving 40 per cent growth in probably one of the. Office conditions we've ever seen. Now what's happening is as we're getting out of Covid and users becoming more and more. So this is a consumers people in their homes, they're starting to get a little bit more comfortable. I think I want to get trades to come out and do work because they're clear about the rules, particularly in the biggest markets of Victoria and New South Wales. We're seeing unprecedented demand. It's unbelievable the volume that's coming through record record numbers, and we communicated that as well to the market recently. I think there's a lot of a lot of demand in the Australian economy. Covid helps in that regard because it has been built up and people have saved a lot of money. But then online adoption is also accelerated. Then also people working from home, more so that crack in the wall that you're staring every day out of Sydney. You just working so annoying you want to get fit. People want to work in home offices. Now the home office has become a big boom. People want to work outside in a nice garden and enjoy the fresh air. That's all stuff that we're seeing in our platform. We're seeing that buoyancy come through. Our challenge is to get now sufficient qualified with a recommended rate of trade. So we're sort of taking the big marketing cannon and aiming at it tries to say, Hey, not only will we give you unbelievably great quality work, but will also help you with your business. We try to cool and we're actually rolling out some new technology, particularly around accepting payments because cash is becoming less and less prevalent. Everyone talks about the cash in the trading space, right? I'm sure that's on everyone's mind, but I don't know. Covid also removed cash. Like, I don't know. I haven't touched a note. I don't know. Yeah, two years I just tapped my phone on everything. I think there is still going to be that. It's hard to just get rid of that overnight, but it is changing and I think we're at the forefront of that. If that change, you could 

Alec: [00:33:01] be the first marketplace to accept crypto payments.

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:33:04] Yeah, but you don't want that. That's a possibility. I mean, with payments, you know, we're looking at obviously all the standard merchant stuff. That's that stuff that's on the cards to me. Real time payments and then BNPL options are all things that will be considered lending. And then, you know, if you want to pay with crypto and the trading accepts crypto, why not? 

Alec: [00:33:20] Not perfect. Yeah, absolutely. At the very least, it's good for a few headlines. You put that press release out, you get some media,

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:33:28] you know, I'll think about it. I mean, if we want to like, I don't know if we don't get Deep Dive on crypto, but you know, it is becoming like you can say, CBA's just made it. You can again accept a crypto like it's it's becoming normal. People accept it. It's it's advertised, it's absolutely fine, and traders will accept it to in the future. 

Alec: [00:33:44] I think the one thing that you missed there when talking about navigating through Covid is you listed your business and the share price is up about 60 percent since listing sixty five percent. So when you were talking about growth drivers there, one thing I be interested to know obviously, property is just house prices is just booming at the moment. Yeah. Do you? Is there a correlation between house prices and demand for home improvement services? 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:34:11] I think so. I think I think there is. So our research demonstrates that, you know, as people's wealth increases and you if you're a property owner, you immediately feel you've got wealth if your price goes up so you start spending more or oh, you definitely start looking to spend more. And so we did some research. And in the next six months, I think people are 100 per cent committing to about 34 billion worth of spend on their home, like committed to doing. That's just maintenance and repair. So if you think about the numbers that I said earlier, it's around 40 something billion a year. They're going to spend thirty four billion in the next six months, which that's where we're seeing this crazy, crazy demand coming through. 

Alec: [00:34:47] Numbers are just massive. Stress is a lot of property. 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:34:51] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I think I think just don't answer your question. Absolutely. I think people love their property. They love their homes. There isn't a lot of stock. If you sell your house, where are you going to buy? You have to take another mortgage or a bigger, bigger mortgage. Maybe we just make our place better off, you know, maybe we make that roof cavity, you know, a study or another room in the house. You know, we'll extend out to the garden, you know, like you use the space as smart or a bit off. Absolutely. 

Bryce: [00:35:15] So really, a big focus for the Equity Mates community is sustainability, and it's something that we ask all of essays about. How do you think about sustainability and Hi page's role in driving a more sustainable economy?

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:35:27] So we don't make a massive carbon footprint where a technology solution for our customers, and I think that's actually where it lies. If you think about the trade industry, the amount of emissions that those those companies do, the materials they use going backwards and forwards, the suppliers driving out and quoting and all that. If we can make that process as efficient as possible, I think the carbon emissions in that are significantly reduced. We don't fully track all of those efficiencies just yet, but I'd like us to start tracking that and demonstrating that, hey. In the past, you would have done three or four trips to a customer's house and to the store. You actually did it in one trip, one trip, which to go out and do the job. Everything was done with technology to quote the suppliers were delivered to you by a drone. Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, like this. I mean, it's look, we're thinking ahead where it's going and it's like, that's going to, you know, it's done in an electric vehicle. Something like that, you know, like, you know, think ahead where it's all going. Yeah, like, yeah, definitely the environmental and sustainability aspect of what we do comes in providing this technology, giving those trades more capacity to do more work in a more efficient and sustainable way. Absolutely. I think that's where we're going with what we're doing. 

Alec: [00:36:38] So, Ravi, we want to thank you for taking the time today. We find this, you know, a fascinating business, as we said, a 16 year overnight success story, but probably the well, definitely the first business that we've looked at that is really exposed to the tradie economy, which is just a fascinating space. A 16 year overnight success story. If you look 10 years or six years into the future, what would success look like for you? 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:37:03] So success for me, when I think about the customers and we really do have to customers, we have the users, the consumers that, you know, are out there that are, you know, posting 70 million jobs per annum in Australia. You think about that and how do we make that experience as seamless as possible without too much thought? Good pricing done by a quality, reliable tradesman. As seamless as possible is the way we we want to get rid of the friction in that process and, you know, recently presented to the market. And I recommend you guys, if you go to the HP corporate website, download the video. It's there. You can see the vision of what the future looks like. It's pretty cool, but you know, people paying for it like a maintenance programme and it's just on while you're out, out and about in the park, doing, enjoying things with your family. Things are getting done in your home on the tradie side. It's about giving them more capacity to do either more work or spend more time with their family. Because most trades, despite what you see in the news shows and all that, and most of them are just, you know, straight up business owners that just want to make a living, do a really good job, grow their businesses to a certain level and giving them that freedom back to have choices, whether they want to do more and grow their business more or give it to their family. And we're going to provide those guys with as many technology solutions to make it as easy as possible for them. And again, we show that in our product vision. So have a look at it. Enjoy it. We did that for that specific purpose of paint, a story of what the future will look like. 

Bryce: [00:38:27] We will include a link to the video in the show notes. The Equity Mates community can go and check that out. 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:38:33] Yeah, check it out and be great. It's on YouTube as 

Bryce: [00:38:35] well as Alex said. Massive thanks for sharing your time today. We love hearing directly from the CEOs of companies. We always get a bit of extra insight that you don't necessarily get through the research online, so I appreciate you sharing it with the community. It has been an amazing journey to watch and the success, and we wish you all and Hi pages all the best over the coming years. Awesome. 

Roby Sharon-Zipser: [00:38:55] Thanks, guys. Thanks for your time.

Bryce: [00:38:57] So Ren, great way to love hearing from the mouth of the CEO, as always, fascinating company and one that I'm going to be keeping an eye 

Alec: [00:39:06] on doing that interview during that episode. The one thing that I am thinking now is what we didn't get for this episode. I would love to hear try these experiences with using the different platforms. But like, I don't own this company. And if I was to think about building an investment case, that's probably the one key piece of information that we weren't able to get in this episode. It's like from a customer's perspective, it feels pretty easy. They all feel pretty easy, like similar to using Airtasker. You know, when we've used freelancer before, like, nothing is too different. It's all as expected, which is what you want as a customer. You don't want to have to try and learn a new platform so that on a customer side, that works. I would love to know on a tradie side if like Hi pages is better or worse than the competitors, but because for me, that's probably the key thing in building a thesis. Yeah, absolutely.

Bryce: [00:39:58] Summer series continues to build with a lot of momentum, and we're halfway now and there's plenty more amazing companies to go. A big thank you to Superhero for supporting the summer series superhero allow you to buy Aussie and US shares and ETFs with no monthly account fees, and you can earn Qantas points with superheroes. So visit Superhero Dot Com today you slash Qantas to learn more. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions and fees and charges apply. A reminder that you can win a thousand bucks into a superhero wallet off the back of this episode, just dropping your favourite stat about Hi pages on the corresponding post on our Instagram page, and we will be choosing out one of the lucky winners towards the end of this week or early next week. So keep an eye on our stories for that. And then Ren we are back next week or next episode, I should say, looking at the industry of funds management as we dive into one of Australia's oldest companies, and that is perpetual. 

Alec: [00:40:58] Yeah, it's a fascinating industry. We've obviously spoken about a few of the fund managers in Australia, but we haven't really spoken about perpetual, so I'm excited to dig deep into this company and unpack the business model. 

Bryce: [00:41:12] That's another opportunity for us to speak with the CEO as well. So stick around. Join us next week. More opportunity to win a thousand dollars with super hero. But until then, have a great week and we'll see you next week. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Equity Mates. We love hearing from you, so drop us a line at contact@equitymates.com or even better, go to your podcast player and leave a five star review. Also, a reminder that the Equity Mates content train doesn't stop when you've run out of episodes to binge. We've got a brand new website, a Facebook discussion group where on Instagram, YouTube and slowly making our way as an influencer on Tik-tok. That's Ren. So come and say hello and join the community. We'd love to welcome you. Until next time.