By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
He has come a long way from the days when he delivered the Geelong Indy but it wasn’t all that long ago for Appster co-founder Mark McDonald.
Mr McDonald laughed as he recounted his days as a paperboy while speaking with Geelong Indy this week.
“I used to deliver a couple of hundred papers a week. I took on another round and at my peak I was doing 300 to 500 papers a week,” he said.
“My little brother is doing the paper run now.”
In just five years Appster became one of the fastest growing app development companies in the world.
The company is on track to post almost $100 million in revenue by 2018 with plans to eventually launch an initial public offering.
A proud Geelong native, Mr McDonald and his co-founder Josiah Humphrey started Appster in 2011 with only $3000 of their own money.
“We started it when we were 18 and 19,” Mr McDonald recalls.
“I used to be youngest staff member in the company but now there are some younger than me.”
But Mr McDonald said he never saw the age difference as a barrier. Rather it emphasised to him how important it was to get the best talent he could.
“You have to find a way to attract A-grade players and that ensure the right people are on bus and the wrong people get off the bus.
“We have had captains of industry working with us. Our finance officer worked for a half a billion dollar a year business before joining Appster,” he said.
“The key is that you have to give people the space to do what they do best.
“You have to have enough self-confidence to understand balancing act between different cultures and different countries.”
The five years of aggressive growth has seen Appster with almost 400 staff in three countries – Australia, USA and India – without any outside investment.
Last year, the pair debuted on BRW’s Young Rich List and were finalists in Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, winning the Southern Region category.
