Identifying opportunities
Case study: Entrepreneurship opportunity
Spreets Group-Buying Site
Dean McEvoy is a successful entrepreneur who has had a significant impact on the Australian entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, this was not always the case. In 2008, McEvoy had been through a difficult period trying to grow his venture, Booking Angel, for over eight years. At 32, he struggled with the recent loss of his grandfather, saved cash by moving back in with his parents, and was ignored by the bigger players in his industry.
After years of challenges, McEvoy’s resilience paid off. He was referred by a friend to pitch his Booking Angel idea to Pollenizer, a local incubator and venture fund. Pollenizer agreed to support the venture. At Pollenizer, McEvoy was surrounded by like-minded people. For the next two years, Booking Angel delivered $3.5 million worth of business and McEvoy was able to explore opportunities to grow as well as start new projects with those around him. At the time, Pollenizer had spare developers and lacked longer-term projects. Recognising an opportunity to make use of developers’ time, McEvoy capitalised on the moment and pitched a second idea to the leaders of Pollenizer in 2009.
What gave McEvoy his competitive advantage?
McEvoy seized this opportunity at the right time with the right amount of expertise. McEvoy was ready to leverage his years of experience as an entrepreneur, as well as his access to the resources he needed.
McEvoy’s second pitch was Spreets, a company that provides customers with new deals every day for the best things to do, see, eat and buy across cities in Australia. McEvoy had noticed a similar venture (today known as Groupon) emerge in America that was still young, but showing high-growth. Adopting the concept to Australia was utilising incremental innovation similar to the Rocket Internet and mousetraps examples. After just 12 months of operation, Spreets was bought by Yahoo for $40 million in 2011.
What was the opportunity that was developed?
While others were frustrated by the thought of paying high prices for eating out, tourist experiences and shopping, McEvoy saw an opportunity to source the best discounted deals from businesses located across Australian cities. He was influenced by what was working overseas, and realised that opportunity in a new Australian market.
What makes this opportunity innovative, is that he recognised value for:
- customers who could save money and time whilst obtaining a service or product they want
- businesses who could reach target customers efficiently with the increased ability to generate greater sales
- Pollenizer who was looking for a longer-term project for their developers to work on.
Was this an act of entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship?
McEvoy responded to this opportunity by creating a new business that introduced a new service to Australians. As this involved creating a distinct startup business, this was an entrepreneurial response to the opportunity.
Today, Spreets continues to be innovative. Spreets had to find opportunities to evolve to remain relevant to customers and businesses. Over the years, other group-buying competitor platforms have risen to the top of the industry in Australia, such as Groupon and Cudo. In response, Spreets modified their solution and started to list these competitors in a centralised platform, rather than listing the customer-facing businesses as they once did back in 2011. This is an exemplification of incremental innovation.
Rags to riches
Read about the birth of Spreets at Business Insider.
The untold story of Spreets, the Aussie company Yahoo bought for $40 million