This week I caught up with Robert Castaneda, founder of CustomWare Asia Pacific, for an interview. Robert started CustomWare in July 2001, just before he left university. Eight years later the company has over 70 staff, offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Wellington and revenue of around $8 million. He lives in Menlo Park, CA, USA.
Adam: It’s not unusual for technology professionals to move into the consultancy business but what inspired your move?
Robert: After working in the USA during the dot com period, I moved back to Australia and began CustomWare. I was inspired by my mentor at the time, whom I worked for in the USA who also ran a consultancy firm. My first job in IT was on the developer support helpdesk at Borland and I always had great enjoyment solving other peoples’ problems.
Adam: Starting your own business is challenging yet deeply gratifying what have you enjoyed the most about the process?
Robert: The most rewarding part for me is being able to hire young team members and watch them grow and contribute to the company and community. Some of them go one to get married or work in other places, some stay with us, and a few have left the company, travelled around Europe and then returned. It is always good to keep in touch with them, as the industry is very small.
Adam: You lectured at the University of Technology casually for a while, did you find this a rewarding experience?
Robert: It was and still is a great experience. When you have to teach something, you actually have to know it, so being a teacher meant that I had to learn quickly and be able to research, summarize and be able to apply what I had learnt very quickly. I think combined with my support skills that I had learnt early on, it provided a great background in being able to quickly adapt to change.
Adam: You travel extensively covering some considerable distances what technology enables you to keep in touch?
Robert: Right now I am doing this interview on a train in California! The internet is so accessible these days, when I started we had dialup modems! I currently use a Palm Treo and a Dell Tablet PC. I do make use of many cloud technologies – such as Amazon based offerings such as Jungle Disk and SmugMug. I recently scanned my entire filing cabinets at home and now store them in the cloud so I can get to my information at any time.
It is easy for people to get caught up in technology and forget about methodology – meaning that learning efficiency and time management skills, like Dave Allens’ Getting Things Done (GTD) are a really important first step, and then you can apply technology from there.
Internally at CustomWare, we have a really cool wiki that we use to keep in touch, it is based on Atlassian Confluence.
Adam: Many technology and consultancies have been heavily impacted by the recent economic downturn, what are your top tips for weathering the current storm?
Robert: The formula is the same:
- Listen to your customers
- Provide Value
Adam: How would you describe your management style?
Robert: I like to ensure that my managers are in control of what they are responsible for and I try my best to keep out of their way and still be supportive. I am very big on data and keeping measurements and KPIs. I view our organization structure as an upside down team, with our leadership team supporting the each other.
Adam: Has this style evolved as your business has grown?
Robert: Certainly, when you run a small business, you can communicate directly with everyone face to face and keep aligned in the one direction. As you grow, you just can scale to do that in the same way, so you definitely need to change your style. It can be frustrating and for some, it can be too difficult a transition to make. In a larger business with more people, the idea behind the business is less relevant and the alignment of the team to achieve the companies goals are more important
Adam: Your offices are separated by vast distances yet there seems to be a cohesive culture throughout, how do you ensure that this is the case?
Robert: We have strong company values that we really believe in, top down – those are:
- Delight the Customer
- Share the Knowledge
- Think Team
- Focus on the Outcome
- Talk Straight
These apply to all offices, we also have a lot of travel between our offices that helps with improving working relationships. Another thing that we decided early on is that our org chat isn’t the same as our geographic location – meaning that our teams are spread internationally.
Every week 4, 8 and 13 of each quarter, we have an all hands meeting that lasts for 1 hour – every team presents for 4-5 minutes. Our rhythm is especially important to our culture and as mentioned above, our internal wiki helps with blogs etc. and general keeping in touch.
Adam: Can you tell us a little about your involvement with The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards?
Robert: Each year, as part of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, we run a global competition to find the best student entrepreneurs around the world. The regional winners fly to the US for the global final and a winner is selected. I am the chair for the GSEA in Australia and run the competition in Australia. The core idea of the competition is to encourage students who run businesses to celebrate them and stick to them after they graduate, not just to use them to fund their way through college/university and then get a corporate job – we’d love them to create jobs, not just take jobs!
Adam: What more do you think can be done to help foster entrepreneurial spirit in the next generation?
Robert: I think that there are vast resources out there these days that did not exist even 10 years ago, the biggest barrier I see is that many businesses fail, and for some people the risk is too high. The best resource is meeting other people – no amount of reading or studying can replace that!
Adam Toren
