To most MBAs, the end goal of a business is about money. Plain and simple. So it is surprising to hear that Matthew’s motivation is anything but AUD. “It’s not money, it never has been!” he says. “People who focus too much on money will only ever get to a certain size. You have to have a deeper drive and motivation.”
Matthew, who describes himself as a creative and works part-time as a contemporary artist, is in business to shape the world.
His creation Vimily works by enabling users to create questions before conducting and filming an interview. When the user starts filming using their mobile phone, the questions are displayed as prompts on the screen of the device.
The video can then be uploaded to Vimily’s servers and displayed on a single webpage. From there, it can be shared by email or social media, or embedded in a blog or website. Each set of interview questions is assigned a code, allowing anyone around the world with the code to film a response.
The Vimily app is free to use, providing the user agrees to Vimily branding on the videos and the webpage, but only allows a maximum of 3 minutes of footage per video. Prepaid, branded packages for startups and small business cost $200 for a set of 40 videos.
Matthew's motivation behind Vimily is to use it as a stepping stone to something much greater. He envisages eventually selling the business. “It’s a stepping stone on the way to something much bigger,” he said. “Our end goal for the business is to sell it and move on.
“I would like to get into environmental work around the world. I want to make a difference. Whether its business two or business three, we’ll get there.”
But whether he has a passion for profit or not, business is in his blood: the family name, Barnett, is synonymous with Barnett International – the largest crossbow and archery company in the world. His brother heads that business while Matthew breaks into the tech industry. “It’s utterly, utterly different,” Matthew says. “But it’s the same concept: creating products.
“Obviously, although money brings the ability to go out and do better for the world and drive nations forward, I think business for me is the way to actually make a difference in the world.”
Matthew and the company's chief technology officer, Katrin Suess, both put $60,000 into Vimily at the start and raised a further $230,000 from angel investors. Before founding Vimily, Matthew studied Design at Brunel University in London before working as a consultant with GX group for almost two years. His motivation for quitting a lucrative consulting job certainly runs true with his desire to “change the world” through business.
But Matthew's stint as a design consultant in 2008 was cut short because of his desire to enter a more rapidly growing industry. “It was slow growth and I had ambitions to go for a high growth global company,” he said. “Consulting is great for money but it’s not really scalable at a rapid rate. Consultancy, essentially, is not a high growth business.”
But the mobile app industry certainly is. A recent study carried out by App Annie concluded that the industry is worth a huge US $1 trillion. The top ranked publisher (based on revenue) that uses the iOS App Store and Google Play - GungHo Online - increased their stock by 6,144 per cent between May 2012 and May 2013. In 2012, Smartphone penetration rose above 50 per cent in the UK, US, South Korea, Norway and Sweden.
Matthew works part-time as an artist, in fine art photography, alongside his duties as CEO of Vimily. He says that his creative side is what sparked the creation of this mobile app. “The photography is a way of burning extra creative energy," he said. "I have a weird mix of the business acumen, the drive and the sales side, and this creative side.
“Creativity and business is very similar and people don’t realise that. It all essentially comes down to doing something new. If you are creative you need to have an outlet for that because business is still the real world, you’ve still got to make money or it makes no sense."
Did he ever consider working full-time as an artist? “I started to do more and more while in consultancy in London,” he said. “I did quite a few solo exhibitions in London. But again, it comes down to scailing up: art is a slow growth industry. For me art is personal, but if I do business and that succeeds, I can always go back to art afterwards.”
Originally from the UK, Matthew chose the MBA program at AGSM because of its “amazing” biodiversity and links into Asia and the US. AGSM, consistently considered the number one business school in Australia and ranked 48th in the world by the Financial Times, is in a country he considerers a “western gateway” into Singapore and Hong Kong. “That’s where the opportunity will be in the next 20 years," he said.
“Australia is amazing when it comes to biodiversity. If you’re into the environmental side of things, here you have an island that’s been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. Compared to the UK, you’ve suddenly got 90 per cent of animals and plants that are indigenous to that island. From an environmental point of view, that’s fascinating.
“It’s also a gateway into South East Asia. You can get big brands on board that would be hard to get otherwise, such as Amazon, Red Bull and Google. Surprisingly, it has better connections with Silicon Valley than the UK as well.”
Does he hope to stay in Sydney? “Who knows where I’ll be in five years!” he added. “If you want to change the world, you just try and find the fastest way to do it.”
To find out more about Vimily and download the app, visit https://www.vimily.com/. To find out more about the MBA programs on offer at AGSM, check out their page for more info, news and networking!
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