Written by Ben Thompson, CEO & Co-Founder of Employment Hero
At Employment Hero, we’re big believers in the entrepreneurial spirit.
Without entrepreneurial thinking, we don’t have innovation. We don’t make the leap from idea to industry. We don’t invest in the concepts that have the potential to drive change.
It all starts with one idea. For Employment Hero, it was to create an employment management platform that helps every small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) thrive. This was a response to a clear need that I identified over 20 years ago as a lawyer serving SMBs. I realised almost every SMB lives in a perpetual state of anxiety about being an employer and managing all the responsibilities that it represents. I realised the world would be a much better place if SMB owners actually felt proud and confident about being employers and enthusiastic about every new job they can provide. This is even more important when you appreciate that SMBs represent 99% of all businesses and 70% of all jobs on earth.
Helping them with this essential function could protect their business from liability and the devastation that occurs as a result of (often unintentional) non-compliance. It could be the difference between running a business at risk, and building a company where employment is an exciting and valuable experience for everyone.
Seven years later, this idea has been fully realised. Employment Hero now helps over 5,300 businesses across the world operate at their best. Through our community of incredible customers, we’ve witnessed breathtaking growth and scale, while also experiencing our own. In July of this year we secured our Series E funding; bringing our valuation to $800 million and putting us on track to be one of Australia’s next tech unicorns.
We’ve experienced firsthand the stressful, rewarding, agonising and glorious path of being a scalable start-up. Now we want to help others who carry the entrepreneurial spirit do the same.
Fishburners are the perfect organisation for us to partner with to achieve this. Since 2011, they have empowered entrepreneurs to run with their ideas and make big moves. Now the biggest Australian startup community, they have fuelled over 350 startups and created over 800 jobs in the process.
We’re inspired by Fishburners’ impact through their mission. While no startup’s journey is linear, their guidance illuminates the path through this challenging experience. By providing resources, education, mentoring and community, Fishburners have become Australia’s leading incubator of game-changing ideas, and we are so humbled to be joining this important pursuit.
Through this partnership, I’ll be sharing my personal experiences with all things startup, scaling and business ownership. I’ll also be joined by some incredible members of the Employment Hero team whose expertise powers our business, plus some special guests handpicked from my network who will kindly be sharing their expert insights. Together, we look forward to producing ongoing events and resources for the Fishburners community on an ongoing basis.
We’re kicking off our partnership with a Lunch and Learn session on Thursday the 18th of November, all about scalable growth in a hybrid world. We wanted to kick off with this topic as we feel achieving consistent growth is one of the most common (and frustrating) hurdles that small businesses face. That’s before you add the pressures of a volatile world (think: global pandemics, talent shortages, hard-hit supply chains…) into the mix.
Sharing their wisdom and actionable advice around business resilience to achieve growth are Employment Hero’s Chief People Officer Alex Hattingh, LinkTree’s Global Head of IT Joseph Fuller, Dropbox’ Director and Head of Communications Le Tran and myself. You can secure your spot now by registering here.
The team at Employment Hero are driven to support SMBs, and with our partnership with Fishburners, we’re excited to take that one step further. Businesses don’t exist without an entrepreneur taking that first step to building something great. We want to support the next generation of start-ups on their journey towards growth, innovation, job creation and success.
