Honestly, going into this interview I thought we would get more into the tactics and technicalities of running a SaaS company. Instead, the story that unfolded during my conversation is so much more than an archetypal founder story. What I discovered about Luke is that he’s someone who puts fun at the heart of everything, isn’t ashamed of his ambition to one day make it into space, and has a deep desire to learn and grow as a leader and entrepreneur. He has a huge respect for the people who’ve helped him create VXT, emanating the entrepreneurs who inspired him as a teenager. Taking a leaf out of Ben Horowitz’s book, he once made the bold move of driving five hours without an appointment to get a meeting with the CEO of Two Degrees Mobile in the early days of building VXT.
Don’t let the fact that Luke almost flunked university make you think he hasn’t worked hard either. Like many entrepreneurs, the traditional path was never going to be for him. Fast forward to now, and in the 12-months, with co-founder Lucy Turner, VXT has tripled its ARR to almost $3m, servicing customers in the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and Canada. They happily call New Zealand their smallest market. Their team of 17 “really, really like working at VXT and people who don't work at VXT, when they find out about what it's like to work at VXT, really, really want to come and work at VXT.”
Click through to find the full episode and get seriously inspired.
Skim the show notes from my chat with Luke Campbell:
In the last couple of years, VXT has found product market fit. “At the start of 2024, we were at $800,000 in annual recurring revenue. At the end of 2024, we were at $2.5 million.” That’s come with a fair amount of pain, though. “In 2023, we had two implementation managers. Onboarding 50 new users a month meant we were really pulling our hair out. It was really hard. We were working crazy hours. Now, in 2024, with the same team members we’re adding 150 new users per month. We did less work because we had developed our systems and processes.”
Luke says that CEOs should be competent across everything in the business. “The CEO shouldn't be just doing every job in the company, obviously, and they're probably not the best person for every job independently. But let's say someone on your team is facing problems, really hard problems and that team right now is a bottleneck to your growth. *Massive issue*. You need to solve that bottleneck so that you can grow faster. To solve that bottleneck, you need to take the seat of power in the business and put it right next to whomever is responsible for solving that bottleneck. If it's you directly [the CEO], you need be able to chat together and go, what this problem? Have you thought about this? Have thought about that? What are you going to do? What would you do now? And then empower those people to make really fast decisions. It's like skip level meetings. Empower those people.”
Luke’s investor updates always include lyrics from a rap song that reflect the mood or lesson in each update. He shows a bit of himself in exchange for what his investor network has to offer. “People talk about your surface area for luck. When you send great updates to lots of people on a regular basis, sometimes someone might go share them with someone else, who for whatever reason, might be person you need to meet at that time in your startup's journey. There's so much indirect value from investor updates, and many other things that I think people generally don't necessarily consider. Having great investor updates has made fundraising dramatically easier.”
Edition Group is offering a $15,000 grant to support a woman-led startup.
After working with almost 100 different tech companies at Edition - Design & Technology Studio over the past five years, they had a bit of a wake-up call last week - realising they had worked with more founders named Dave than female founders.
Edition co-founder, Jodie Kennedy says:
“It’s no secret that women receive less than 2% of global venture capital funding. And with fewer women in senior leadership, self-funding new ventures is even harder. We can’t change the system overnight, but we can do something to help. So, we’re launching a $15,000 scholarship to support an aspiring female tech founder with getting their idea off the ground."
Applicants must:
The successful applicant will receive:
Applications close on April 8th, so email them an intro, including your background and venture idea to hello@editiongroup.com.
Read, watch and grow in under 5 minutes a fortnight.
A newsletter designed by Atlas Digital.
