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Fonto chose to house themselves at the funky WorkInc offices in Lavender Bay in October 2018, and have been here ever since.
Located in beautiful converted warehouses under train tracks on the approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Fonto’s Founder and CEO Ben Dixon sat down with Work Inc’s Brendan Sav last week for a fireside chat on the topic of “What No One Tells You”, a regular session with founders and business leaders to uncover the insights behind successful growth stories.
Having emerged from corporate leadership roles with major market research and data companies like Nielsen, Kantar, and WPP, the discussion highlighted how Ben had chosen the entrepreneurial path by identifying a gap in the market around data quality. A serial investor, he had previously invested a personal financial technology business that revealed the willingness of consumers to share their daily financial data in return for positive utility. In the case of Fonto, the exchange was receiving real financial compensation for allowing their transaction data to be used for market level insights and completing consumer surveys.
Not everything is sunshine and butterflies in startups of course - with speed being critical to every entrepreneur on the planet, it can be frustrating not to have your early prospects or your team completely in sync with you: “When disrupting an industry, no one ever moves as fast as you want them to, and that is probably because no one is as passionate as you are about the changes you are making.” He went on to highlight the critical importance of taking the time to bring your team along the journey of your vision and its execution, something that he does on a weekly basis to keep the team grounded, but with blue sky ambitions.
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Must-read material for aspiring founders? The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday according to Ben. “It taught me that you inevitably encounter major obstacles, and that when you do, you must sit with your team and work through it,” he says. The outcome is almost always a stronger business and a broader moat around you.
The current economic and fundraising climate? Ben acknowledges that the current climate is tough and makes fundraising harder. What he (and Fonto) have onside however, is that the major global market research companies are simply not innovating fast enough, as they tend to be owned by Private Equity with a strong focus on cost control and reduced overall investment.
Artificial Intelligence? Fonto views itself as an accurate, sustainable input to AI models looking for better quality data on consumer spending and how customers feel about their experience with major brands across categories. “While we’re developing our own Generative AI capabilities, we also know that many of our clients will simply want to ingest our data to improve and train their own internal analytics platforms.”
But if you weren’t running Fonto? “I’d likely be back in corporate life looking for the next gap in the market, and if not that – I’d love to be running a fishing charter”
Fonto’s members share their daily transaction data, and complete surveys about their customer experience with major brands, providing a deep profile of consumers, along with unique insights into their spending, their experiences and why they choose to spend with specific brands.
To find out more, connect with the Fonto team.
