What is actually worth building?
Drone Complier began by listening to people who needed help. That experience still shapes how I think about business: understand the problem, make something useful and stay willing to learn.
My story
I know the pull of the next
big thing.
A customer problem. An idea you can’t leave alone. The possibility of making something useful.
My career has taken me from banking technology and enterprise CRM at Vodafone, News Corp and ABN AMRO to building aviation safety software. AeroSDB was later acquired by the Flight Safety Foundation. From there came drone compliance and a stint leading engineering at ConsenSys in Web3.
Drone Complier grew out of something I saw while training drone operators: they needed a better way to manage compliance.
I founded Drone Complier in Australia, built a team, raised venture capital and took the company to 115,000 users across Australia, the USA and South Africa. Along the way, we opened offices in the USA and South Africa. I learned to listen to customers, change the plan and work with people whose strengths were different from mine.
I also took on too much. Business loss and burnout made me look at how much of my identity I had tied to what I could deliver.
What has changed is my relationship with achievement. Accepting who I am, what happened and where I am now has given me more room to choose what comes next. I still enjoy building things. I also want to be present for the people and the life I already have.
Wayne
