Interview with Thred Founder, page-2

Thred bit.

Dave: Absolutely well, I mean how long would we go? Because you know this is, has been such a fantastic journey, from some start to where we are now. You know, the original concepts like a lot of innovative ideas, came about because of environmental reason in tech that had just developed organically. So in other words, with the rise of social media and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn you know, and all of the other ways of communicating, it just became very obvious that each of those very fine companies was trying very hard to silo themselves or to know to create a walled garden, to provide everything that everybody needed within their properties. But the reality is that, that’s not really how people are, is not how to communicate. So what was becoming evident is that you know, I’m speaking to my family on Skype, I’m doing Whatsapp. I’ve got contacts in Facebook, I’ve got business contacts in LinkedIn and you know, then of course I’ve got my Microsoft Office 365. I’ve got a Google account. I mean it’s just like everybody would register all over the place. And this was becoming really unwieldy, and so we sat around the door. Well there must be a way to actually you know, to share content in a more unified or a more logical fashion. So that was the genesis of Thred.. It was actually about how we could share content more easily. And so we prototyped originally, joining together your LinkedIn, Facebook accounts and a couple of others, and doing a button in a browser. So that if you’re on a particular webpage, you wanted to share that, then you would click on the sharing button. It would open up with your contacts from your different social accounts. You could choose who you’re going to share it with and it’s in. So that evolved as you know from a simple browser button to a full messaging app and then a messaging platform and we realize as the journey continued, and as our thinking evolved, and as the whole space evolved, that it just made sense not only to aggregate contacts, but to aggregate content and news feeds. So we’ve got you know more than 75 channels that we’ve launched. We’ve just in the channel section for written media and every single thing that you connect, you can start a Thred about. So the idea is that communication is constant. It’s contextual and you just want to be able to do things the way that we would do things if we were sitting around a coffee shop table talking. So you know, you and I talking about football, sorry soccer and that’s because that’s how you talk about. And then when you talk about soccer, you’re talking about Arsenal, because that’s what you talk about. And then you say hey, the guns match is on do you want to go see it? You know we want to go see it. So yeah, let’s organize some tickets, and so that’s a natural conversation. But if you put that in the context of a chat app, there’s no way that you could order a coffee, you know order transport, buy a ticket and have that conversation back and forth in one place. That would take four or five or six different apps and a phone call. So raise their thinking, oh yes so that was our thinking, is like well how do we communicate naturally as best friends, as people? Let’s get all of that information in one place, let’s bring some third party services. So we deep link input, we deep integrate into Ticketmaster as well. And as a heat, more of those that are coming down the pipe and just make it easy for folks.



Chris: Makes a lot of sense. So obviously, the next few months are important. I was checking the Play Store today and so far it’s at a four point six dollars in the Play Store. Amen. Where do you see the product going from here?



Dave: Well, you know we we’ve had a lot of organic growth, really quickly affirming dates of the actual launch. We’ve got some new release stuff coming out. We’ve got a very solid tech team behind us, so our delivery cadence is very quick. You know we’re looking at weekly updates and you know adding additional features and functionality. But you know, because the most important thing per se, and I talk about this all the time. The most important thing is that we sort of be patient and open, and listen to our users because we built you know the platform because we thought it was a good idea. But how that platform evolves is now going to be a collaborative process between us and all of the good folks that are using it. So we’ve got a lot more stuff in the pipe that’s coming. We’re going to be bringing music, we’re going to be bringing streaming video. You know the heap of other things that we’ll bring to the platform. But yeah, it’s really going to come down to you know ultimately the users telling us how they use Thred and you know what they get the most out of.



Chris: Great, makes a lot of sense. I’ve got two more questions for you and then I will let you go, because I know it’s an extremely busy time for you. The Thred is not, was not a simple product to build and the funds raised enabled you to create a much better infrastructure, leveraging our partners Lateral in order to do that, than you would have been able to do if we’d been bootstrapping this. Tell us about that underlying infrastructure and architecture that we’re building Thred on top of.



Dave: Yeah that’s a really good point. One of the questions we get asked a lot of is you know, can other people build Thred? And of course, of course they can absolutely. But it hasn’t taken us two years for no reason, it’s incredibly complex. There’s you know, we’ve got a large development team of really skilled people who come from all sorts of backgrounds. You know, one champ ran, you know, one of our systems for one of the police departments here. You know someone else has come from London through the financial tech industry. It’s a really complex architecture because anything that might look simple as you know, has just got so much work and so many hours that have gone into it. Fortunately as you said, we have been able to raise the money and that’s why I would encourage any entrepreneurs listening to this; get out there if you can. If you really believe in your idea, then go raise the money. If the idea is that good, the money will come eventually. You know this did not happen overnight, there’s no such thing as overnight. And so the remaining thing is that we’ve been fortunate to raise the money and be able to build the platform out. So we haven’t just built an app, we’ve built a full platform and we’ll be opening that up to developers to build, you know widgets and other things against that platform. Because we now provide what we’re calling messaging as a service and multi app, where if you think about the Thred identity because you’ve already connected your other identity systems to it, a single thread identity is potentially more powerful, more accurate than any of any other one out there. So there are a lot of places that Thred can go, but you know we wouldn’t have been able to do it without lateral and without the great team that we’ve got behind us.



Chris: Great and last question for you. There’ve only been a handful of consumer apps, global consumer apps launched from Australia. What does Thred launch mean for the Aussie tech scene?



Dave: You know, I’ve always been a great believer in every local tech scene. When I was in Hong Kong, I was you know, really supportive of the of the start-up scene there, which is just boomed in the last few years and good friends of mine who is in Singapore, and I saw the same thing there. When I left Australia 11 years ago, It was quieter and you know there wasn’t the availability of capital that there is today. Hopefully, what the successive Thred will do though is, it will champion the tech industry, and that’s what every local tech seem needs. It needs standout systems or standout successes that raise the awareness in the investment community and just in the community in general, that there is a lot of innovation in your local scene, in the local tech scenes, because Australian innovation is incredible considering the size of the population and where we are in the world and so on. The innovation that’s come out of Australia is absolutely incredible, and it’s very sad to see it go overseas because it’s got to raise money there. So what I’m hoping is that Thred will stand out as an example, and that it will attract capital into the wider market.



Chris: Great! Dave, thanks for your time during this extremely busy period. Tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and more about Thred.



Dave: Well, you can go to LinkedIn, David Whitaker, 1 “t”, and you can find my profile there; or our website which is www.thred.im.