In celebration of Factor’s 2nd birthday, we thought… why not start a Factor podcast! What better way to kick it off than to sit down with the CEO and founder himself, Keiran Mott. During the chat, we dig into Keiran’s journey in tech and his decision to start his own company in the middle of the pandemic. Yes, that’s right, in the middle of the pandemic. It’s safe to say that that leap of faith is paying off.
Let’s take a closer look at the steps he took to make Factor what it is today and Keiran’s vision for its future:
The making of a CEO in tech
Keiran started his career in IT as a help desk assistant for Fujitsu after receiving his diploma in software engineering. In those days, he was looking after a client in New Zealand called Bonlac Foods, a farming agricultural business, so his first taste of IT was teaching farmers why their IT stuff wouldn’t work. Keiran joked, “Password resets were probably the biggest thing that we would do back in those days, but we had a lot of fun.”
He confessed that he didn’t start his career off thinking he’d run a business, but mentors along his career path helped spark and nurture his passion in growing people, leading and building functional teams, and providing a vision, along with driving value for clients. He quickly rose in his leadership roles to CEO of Veritec where he learned a lot about how to manage and stabilize a rapidly growing company and how company culture can really impact growth.
The 80/20 pivot point
“There’s a saying, there’s 20% of your job you don’t enjoy and 80% of the job you enjoy, and you can bare the 20% because the 80% you love,” said Keiran. And the moment that split flipped such that 20% of his time was dedicated to the things he loved, he realized he no longer enjoyed what he was doing, so he decided to look for work elsewhere whilst in the middle of a pandemic. Although he had many offers, he couldn’t find a company that allowed him to have the autonomy to deliver capabilities, control over a unified workforce, and shape company culture in a way that reflected his values. With approval from trusted clients and, most importantly, his wife’s encouragement and support, Keiran went all in on his business idea.
A different client experience
A big factor in his decision to leave was his desire to be more hands-on and engaged with clients. In his previous role as CEO, he hadn’t been on a delivery project for some time, and he wanted to practice integrating his passions for tech and business together in a more tangible way. His north star: helping clients solve problems in repeatable patterns rather than through bespoke projects. He saw that by leveraging previous work, he can create solutions and provide value faster.
Starting Factor during the pandemic
Starting a business at any point can be risky, but starting one in the middle of a pandemic, one can argue, is downright crazy. What made Keiran decide to take that leap of faith and start Factor when other businesses were shutting down?
“I think all business owners will say there’s no perfect time to start a business and it’s always hindsight that you should have done it earlier,”
he explains, “and for me it, it was reasonably lower risk given that I had a contract to go into to work. We didn’t have any overheads at the time and so really it was about setting the business up for success early by doing intelligent things around cash flow and, you know, not taking wages for a while and, making sure that we’ve had revenue coming in before we started looking at hiring people.” Low risk approach, especially around cash flow, led him to sign work with the federal government, which is now Factor’s “bread and butter” clients. The early days of Factor were both exciting and rewarding.
Shaping company culture through hiring the right people
Hiring the right talent means first hiring the best talent manager! Candice was Keiran’s first hire, and her decisions to hire the first few people to Factor has been instrumental to the formation of Factor’s culture. Her job was to find the right people who were excited about working at a start-up and the opportunity to be across different parts of a new business, especially the ability to shape its values and culture from the very start. In the early days, there was alot of reflection on personal values that they wanted to integrate into Factor which affected the way management overhead and systems were created.
Today, Factor’s hiring requirements are no different: open-mindedness, a hunger to learn new things in multiple disciplines, initiative to help other people on the teams and push each other to create not just good but exceptional work. If you tick those boxes, that’s all that matters. This has created a vibrant diversity across age, gender, ethnicity, and even national geography as Factor currently has team members in ACT, NSW, Victoria, SA, and Queensland.
The real manifestation of Factor’s incredible culture is when everyone gets to be together during Factor Fridays:
“People can come and be themselves and it’s a real buzz and a vibe when we are all together and you know that that’s pretty proud moment for all of us, I think when we see the connections that are being made and just the value that the company has as a result.”
Current challenges + solutions
The national and global shortages for people with the right technical skills makes it harder to manage the flow of available work and available talent to fill specific roles. Keiran’s solution: Developing juniors from other industries and reskilling them into power platform and dynamics, investing in trainings, and rewarding them when they upskill.
Since skilled work is harder to find, recruitment and retention of talent is instrumental for Factor. By providing a safe working environment where people can feel like their work is valued, cultivating a supportive team atmosphere, and giving opportunities to grow (plus some extra recognition and reward on top), Keiran hopes, “people will, will see that as a reason to stay at a factor or a reason to come and join.”
Looking ahead
Aside from taking more vacation days and spending more time with family and exploring passions outside of work, what Keiran is looking forward to in the future is Factor’s “circuit-breaking” IP work. He beams with pride when talking about how the team design applications that solve business problems in a repeatable way. “In the future I want to be able to deliver more value, not necessarily just with headcount and people. So that’s something that we need to continue to work on. And so, I think with time and with maturity, we’ll definitely get there… we are resilient. We were born in resilience. So, we will continue to do what we need to do to pivot if we need to or to reconsider different delivery models or value that we’re giving to our clients.”