THE INTERVIEW: SEEBY WOODHOUSE

It’s just over ten years since Voyager’s Seeby Woodhouse, then aged 29, banked $19.44 million from the sale of ISP Orcon.

NZB: Looking back to when you sold Orcon, and with the benefit of hindsight, was the timing right?

SEEBY: The timing was perfect for an exit. It was June 2007, just before the GFC.

However, that was purely an accident on my part as we’d been in sales negotiations for a year.

I sold because I was having some health issues, and I wrongly thought it was because of stress from the business, rather than an unrelated health issue that it actually turned out to be.

NZB: What’s it like to build a business from zero to $ 24.3 million? To go from stressed CEO to having all that time on your hands? How do you deal with that level of success?

SEEBY: To build a business from zero to $24.3 million was an amazing journey. Each year, what I did in the business completely changed – from initially doing everything, to doing less and less (other than management). Becoming CEO at that level was a process of exclusion.

NZB: You always said that your Green Carbon venture was two or three years ahead of its time. What lessons did that whole exercise teach you?

SEEBY: Timing is everything! Businesses and industries have lifecycles, just as we do as people. Some industries, such as the fax machine manufacturing industry, are at the end of life and nearly dead. To start a business in the wrong stage of a business cycle is to ensure certain failure, even if you do everything else right. Too early, and there is no market. Too late, and there are no customers.

NZB: What’s your view on New Zealand’s environmental performance since the GFC? And what initiatives would you like to see that would be good for business and the country as a whole?

SEEBY: New Zealand has some real environmental issues that are out of step with our supposedly clean-green image. In the long term this is going to harm our economy, as once environmental assets are lost they are often hard to get back. With such polluted waterways, and other issues, we're putting the income we make as a country from agriculture at risk.

NZB: Voyager was launched a year or so after your restraint of trade expired from Orcon. Have your initial expectations for Voyager been realised?

SEEBY: I didn’t have huge expectations initially. I was just frustrated with being a customer of my old company and starting to receive substandard service. I saw the emergence of The Cloud and the move to New Zealand’s ultra-fast broadband fibre network as good opportunities to win business from the incumbents.

I recognised were doing a substandard job – one which we could do better at. NZB: Looking back over your time with Voyager, what have been the major milestones and achievements for you? SEEBY: First, registering over 20 percent of all the Internet domain names in New Zealand.

Second: becoming the fastest growing company in all of New Zealand in 2014.

Third: exceeding the revenues that Orcon had when I sold it (Voyager now has larger revenues than Orcon at sale time).

Fourth: becoming an important ISP wholesaler in the marketplace, and competing directly with the Big Four telco’s for wholesale revenue.

Fifth: becoming a true telco with our own phone number ranges and interconnect agreements, rather than just a voice reseller.

NZB: The business grew substantially in 2014 – what was the driver for this? And what are your growth plans today?

SEEBY: Some of our growth in 2014 was by acquisition, but it’s always easier for a smaller company to grow very rapidly. As I’d done a similar thing before with Orcon, the expansion of the company in the early days was expected to be very fast.

Recently we’ve acquired Conversant, a VOIP company with ten staff and some great intellectual property. We see them as a key part of helping us toward our current goal of $100 million turnover, and ten percent NPAT. NZB: How do you view the telco market in New Zealand today, and with new emerging technologies where do you think the opportunities lie going forward? SEEBY: There is still the opportunity to win over customers who are in the process of migrating from dial-up and xDSL to the faster and more reliable fibre. We are doing well in that regard with our more friendly and personal service.

Also, around 75 percent of New Zealand businesses are still running on old copper phone lines, and haven't taken advantage of the cost savings and feature enhancements of a cloud voice phone system, the likes of which Voyager offers via Conversant. NZB: What is the best piece of business advice you ever received? And what’s your advice to budding entrepreneurs who want to succeed like you? SEEBY: Before starting my business I had read literally hundreds of business books, starting from age 11 when I became passionate about learning about business after the sharemarket crash of 1987. So there is no one single piece of advice I could give. If you’re a budding entrepreneur and you have the hunger for success, my advice is to start with the classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and read it at least twice.

NZB: What’s next for Seeby Woodhouse? Where would you like to be in business and life in another five years?

SEEBY: I absolutely want to have a $100 million-valued business. That’s a life goal that I’m not going to give up on until it’s achieved. And I’m optimistic that it can be done with my team at Voyager in the next five years.

In certain respects I think I sold Orcon too soon and should have kept going. But it was the right decision for me at the time.