Patrick Blampied and Raj Pandita

Hatch TEK Program 1

8 Aug 2022

Introduction

Patrick and Raj formed their website design company Sequence Digital pre-covid building and servicing local business websites. Always tinkering at different things they were approached by Geelong Council to develop a solution for monitoring composting piles after some serious fires had broken out across Victoria due to poor management. Pat and Raj, with the support of the local innovation network in Geelong developed a hardware device that could monitor the temperature, was practical and usable by council staff and a support dashboard removing multiple manual spreadsheets.

Pat and Raj entered the program as they wished to explore the agricultural industry for application of their technology to a broader market. Although they had Geelong City Council as a client they were keen to understand the pains of producers and support services for the agricultural industry. The technology could be pivoted to monitor temperature for different waste and provide additional data beyond temperature depending on what the industry required.

Hatch TEK Journey

As the primary carer Pat managed to juggle the demands of their current website design business, Geelong Council as their first waste client and home demands whilst completing the program demonstrating the team’s commitment to grow their startup. Pat and Raj started exploring agricultural waste speaking to producers in the cohort, connections to the agriculture through coaches and travelling to Gippsland to explore and discuss agricultural compost piles in that region. Through discussions with their coach the team decided to think more broadly about who had temperature issues that the hardware could solve for and also landed on the setting of concrete, which must be constantly temperature monitored and could apply the technology to both the building industry in terms of commercial real estate but also agricultural uses such as bridges and dams.

Sequence Digital’s key customer segments include:
-Compost stock piling organisations currently using manual devices and spreadsheets to manage and monitor the temperature of stock piles.
-Construction industry building commercial real estate or agricultural support structures.

Pat and Raj had a major coup towards the end of the program when Geelong City Council launched the success of their collaboration with Sequence Digital in terms of managing their composting waste and the support the local government had made to this local startup business. The last 2 weeks of the program were spent working through how to maximise the opportunity of the PR and partnership with the council to bring on more customers quickly. The team had excellent exposure and are now pursing two new clients as a result.

This course is great because it's based on the Lean Startup Methodology which forces you to test your assumptions with good questions and real customer interviews before spending a lot of time, money or both. It will help you refine your idea and develop a clear action plan to get the ball rolling.

What's Next

Sequence Digital is pursuing the new clients who approached after the recent PR. They are still in discussions with the Gippsland compost waste management group looking at how their technology could be tailored to suit their specific needs. They will maintain their contract with Geelong Council and have received back 9 of their prototypes to gain feedback on weather tolerance and design. Pat and Raj are focused on progressing to a stage to be eligible for Harvest FY24.