My story (so far)
The last 5 years I've had a lot of fun working on internet businesses – creating products, ad campaigns, web apps, and releasing them to the world.
In the last decade I've been a designer, developer, advertising creative and now founder.
If you enjoy this stuff, please share do say g'day at charlie@gearsi.de
Discovering Photoshop
As a teenager, my love for Photoshop (thank you, Kazaa) and cars had me illustrating the car designs of the future. According to Wikipedia, this scene now has a name – Virtual Tuning, though we called it 'photoshopping cars' back then.
My first line of HTML
This led soon led to my first website, awkwardly coded from tables in Adobe Dreamweaver. This soon led to my first dollar from Google AdSense. The cost-per-click on car keywords was beyond good, so this served like a gateway drug into the world of online business.
Perls of wisdom
From there, throughout university days in Sydney, I worked as a web developer and UI designer in a bank and startup incubator. I learnt the scripting language Perl, a bit of JavaScript and built a bunch of websites. Many of them don't bear repeating – though ShapeDatabase, stocked with free files of pentagons and dodecahedrons, was a particular low point. Cringe.
Joining Adland
From there, convinced that I was cooler than my computer science cohort, chased a shiny position in an Advertising Agency. With my dad's advertising war stories from the Golden Age of the 1980s ringing in my ears, I thought I had found my calling. I spent 3 years in two agencies, learning a tonne from some amazing creatives, before I burnt out.
Quitting Adland
Turns out, it's nothing like Mad Men anymore, thanks to the atom bomb that is the internet. Budgets are smaller, marketers are more timid and ideas just aren't as wide-reaching as they used to be. So in 2016 I quit, grateful for what it taught me about branding and clear communication. Time for a sabbatical.
Learning programming
I went back to technology and startups and locked myself in a room in Bondi to learn in JavaScript (this time, Node.js).
Digital marketing + DTC
In 2017, I joined the Australian direct-to-consumer mattress startup Koala as a front-end developer and soon took the role of Creative Director. We made lots of fun ads and built a brand that is loved in Australia. I learned a shitload about digital marketing from Dany and Tim.
Building brands on the side
In the last couple of years I've built two web apps (Decka and WorldwideMed) and two brands (Petflair and Van Diemen's Land), and each one is taking my closer to my goal of building a successful online business.
Founding a healthcare company
In 2019, I left Koala to start Eucalyptus, a multi-brand, healthcare business builder. In 2 years, we've grown to a 50 people and have served over 100,000 patients in Australia. So far, we've launched:
Advising
When possible, I like to help the next generation of founders coming through, and advise DiviPay (an Australian company that eliminates expense reimbursements by issuing virtual corporate cards) and Nook (office furniture-as-a-service).