Versent on The Meteoric Rise From 0 to 130 in Under 3 Years

On asking if they could have predicted such rapid success James offered: “I don’t think we could have tipped that we would win BRW Fast 50 and lodge number 7 in that” started James “I certainly don’t think that we could have predicted that we would have won Amazon Web Services Consulting Partner of the Year this year”

“It’s been pretty meteoric and it’s been a lot of hard work” says James.

Controversial kickoff

Founders James Coxon, Thor Essman and Eddie Smith had all worked together at National Australia Bank.

“It started in relatively controversial fashion” James advised, referring to the fact that the trio had started the business after realising they had the same passion to drive change in a pragmatic and impactful way.

“We grew sick and tired of corporate mediocrity within IT” explained James “we were frustrated by the lack of craftsmanship and artisan quality with regards to technology in big businesses”.

The trio saw opportunity through frustration.

Delivery through demonstration

Versent today consults to some of the biggest names on the ASX 200 list, including 4 of the top 6 financial institutions in Australia.

Many big corporations see the success stories of AirBNB and Netflix and want to be able to have the same sort of success, share the same types of technological implementation but they are filled with legacy.

“A lot of what we do is help organisations through really good discipline, process and thought leadership” says James.

Scrapping the traditional model that tied their hands in the corporate world, James and the team employ Amazon Web Services to allow corporate clients to “break down the size of the prize, get it into consumable chunks”.

“It’s delivery through demonstration” James says of their method.

Corporate clients have been lead to believe that they do not have the same agility as the startups they compete with. Versent work with their clients, one project at a time, to prove this wrong; whilst keeping bird’s eye focus on delivering only the highest quality solutions.

This they believe to be their key to success, “we have run through our own molasses of what was tricky and what would stop us”.

Versent knows the pain points of the corporate world and they are on a mission to solve them.

People greater than commercials Having experienced plenty of corporate culture over the years, they wanted to take some of the very best that those big organisation offer. “Especially around flexible ways of working and being able to offer travel to those that want to travel but being able to have the flexibility of remote working for those that don’t”.

“People are not resources. You need to nurture, train and invest in them and have them be as happy as they possibly can and as productive as they possibly can, whilst also trying to operate a commercial business”.

“We have a little, unwritten rule internally which is ‘people greater than commercials”.

In closing, James and Versent’s focus for the future: “Success through delivery, every day. As a company, we continue to grow in order to meet customer demand, as well as continue to expand into full-stack development. We have a number of ends to end, full stack product development programmes in flight – and I’m personally very excited to expand Versent’s experience and capability in this space.”