Podcast

Belinda Agnew’s Startup Journey: From Small Country Town to Tech Entrepreneurship

For our latest episode of the Give It A Nudge podcast, Steve sits down with the incredible Belinda Agnew of xenabler! You don’t want to miss this inspiring conversation.

by hao-nguyen on April 16, 2023

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About the guest

Belinda Agnew

Partner at xenabler

Belinda Agnew grew up in a tiny country town three hours from Melbourne, moved to Sydney at 15, and built her career through door-to-door sales, call centres, and eventually Open Colleges. She founded and exited an RTO sales and marketing agency, Open Education, by age 26, then moved to Melbourne and fell in love with tech through recruitment. Belinda joined xenabler, a development company of 75-plus staff working across web2 and web3, as a growth consultant before becoming a partner. She is also an angel investor who backs people over ideas, and was preparing to take xenabler’s new subscription product, Daz, to Dubai, Rome, and Austin at the time of this episode.

Episode overview

Steve sits down with Belinda Agnew for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about one of the more unconventional founder journeys on the show. Belinda did not start with an entrepreneurial spirit and says so directly. What she did have was a survival instinct, a talent for sales that emerged early, and a willingness to keep pivoting until something clicked.

The conversation traces Belinda’s arc from door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales at 17, through Open Colleges, to founding Open Education (a sales and marketing arm for an RTO), exiting at 26, then discovering tech through recruitment and eventually joining xenabler as a partner. Along the way she talks about investing based entirely on people, navigating male-dominated industries as a woman, and why she stopped complaining about structural barriers.

I genuinely believe every idea that a founder comes to me with is good. But it is great once executed well, with the right team. It is the people that make the difference.

Belinda Agnew

The episode covers xenabler’s pivot from agency to product model, including the Daz subscription platform and a real estate tokenization project, plus Belinda’s imminent move to Dubai, Rome, and Austin to test the US market.

Key takeaways

Sales is where the entrepreneurial spirit lives. Belinda did not think of herself as an entrepreneur until she hit her stride in sales. Her argument is that all salespeople have an entrepreneurial spirit because sales, by nature, requires making something out of nothing, which is exactly what founders do.

Your first exit will cost you most of the money. Belinda sold Open Education at 26, made significant money, had no mentors, and spent most of it. She is transparent about this not as a failure but as the tuition that shaped her later judgment as both an operator and an investor.

Invest in the person, not the idea. Belinda’s investment framework is entirely people-first. She will back a serial founder she is not excited about the idea of over a compelling concept with a shaky cap table or misaligned co-founders. Most good ideas fail because of execution and team, not because the idea was wrong.

The goal of any service business should be to productize. Moving xenabler from an agency model to a subscription product, Daz, was the defining strategic shift. Subscription recurring revenue is fundamentally different from starting from zero every month. Anyone running a service business who watches startups build product companies eventually sees the ceiling.

Stop working in the business to grow it. Belinda is explicit that her role is brand awareness, sales, and growth, not day-to-day operations. She has had to let go of things she loved doing operationally in order to work at the level the business needed. That transition is hard every time, but it is the work.

In a male-dominated industry, stop interpreting it and start using it. Belinda’s advice is not to stop noticing the dynamics but to stop complaining about them. Setting clear personal limits, stopping the complaining, and focusing on what she can control changed her experience of navigating tech as a woman more than anything else.

Episode chapters

0:00Intro: country girl giving it a go in tech2:30Growing up in a tiny country town and moving to Sydney5:00Door-to-door sales at 17 and finding a talent for selling8:00Call centres: Optus, Telstra, e-learning courses10:30Open Colleges and becoming a top performer13:00Starting Open Education and exiting at 2616:00Falling in love with tech through recruitment in Melbourne18:30Joining xenabler as growth consultant then partner21:00Investing based on people: the cap table and co-founder vetting process24:00The pivot from agency to product: Daz subscription platform27:00Real estate tokenization project in web330:00Expanding to Dubai, Rome, and Austin33:00Being a woman in a male-dominated industry37:00Why xenabler is a good place to work and grow

Companies and people mentioned

xenabler

Topics covered

tech entrepreneurshipsales careerstartup exitangel investingweb3subscription productreal estate tokenizationagency to product pivotwomen in techglobal expansionDubai startupAustralian founderbootstrapping

Frequently asked questions

Who is Belinda Agnew?

Belinda Agnew is a partner at xenabler, a development company of 75 plus staff working in web2 and web3. She grew up in a small country town in regional Victoria, built her career through door-to-door and call centre sales, founded and exited an RTO sales and marketing agency by 26, and found her way into tech through recruitment in Melbourne. She is also an angel investor who evaluates investments based primarily on the people involved.

What is xenabler?

xenabler is a development company founded by Prashant in 2011 that builds projects across web2 and web3. At the time of the episode it had around 75 to 80 staff. The company was transitioning from an agency model to a subscription product called Daz, which gives clients access to developers at a flat fee rather than paying large per-project development costs. xenabler was also working on a major real estate tokenization project in web3.

What is Daz, xenabler’s subscription product?

Daz is xenabler’s subscription-based development platform. Rather than charging large one-off fees to build products, Daz offers clients access to three developers for scaling projects at a flat monthly fee. It was in soft launch at the time of the episode and was already generating signed customers. The product is a key part of xenabler’s pivot from agency to recurring-revenue product business.

How does Belinda Agnew approach angel investing?

Belinda invests entirely on people first. She does not use traditional VC metrics like detailed financial models. Instead she evaluates the founder’s track record, the cap table composition, and the co-founder dynamic. She will back a serial founder building something she is not personally excited about over a great concept with misaligned or uninvested co-founders. Her view is that every idea is good, but only the right team makes it great.

What was Belinda Agnew’s first business?

Belinda’s first business was Open Education, a sales and marketing agency arm for an RTO (registered training organisation) called AIPE. She co-founded it with the owner of AIPE, grew it to about 25 staff, and exited at 26 when the government changed legislation around vocational education. It was her first real business and, by her own admission, she had no mentors, made significant money, and spent most of it.

What are xenabler’s international expansion plans?

At the time of the episode, Belinda was preparing to fly to Dubai, then Rome, then the United States, with Austin as the primary US launch point. The goal was to grow xenabler’s team in the US and test the market appetite for the Daz subscription product. She noted that there was also strong demand from Dubai for Australian tech entrepreneurs, particularly female founders, at the time of recording.

Full transcript

Read full episode transcript

0:00Introduction

Welcome to the show everyone. Today we have Belinda Agnew. She has a fascinating story, a lot of different things going on. Welcome to the show, Belinda. Thank you for having me.

I am a country girl originally giving it a go in tech. That is literally my intro. I run a company called xenabler which is a development company. We do really cool things in web2 and web3 and we are about 75 staff at the moment.

2:30Country girl background

I grew up in a town that is literally a three-hour drive from Melbourne, about 30 people, three shops. I left when I was 15 or 16. My mum moved to Sydney and I decided to go with her. And yeah, the rest is history.

5:00Door-to-door sales at 17

I was really shy at school and kind of an outsider. I grew up in a single household with my mum. From that I had to survive. I just knew I had to make money and get out there and survive. So I started in sales like every other person. Door-knocking, selling vacuum cleaners. Before Dyson, they were three and a half thousand dollars and every sale I made I would get 700 bucks. I think I was 17. I ended up becoming a demonstrator to the sales team that were 25 and above. That is when I knew I was pretty good at selling.

8:00Call centres

I went to call centres straight away and smashed it. Charities, Optus, Telstra, all of it, e-learning courses, Dr Demartini events. The skills and the ability to take rejection that you learn face to face on a door is so much harder. On the phone it is nowhere near as confronting.

10:30Open Colleges

I went into a company called Open Colleges on Elizabeth Street in Sydney. There was a team of 30 odd sales people, mostly men. I was a top performer there for about a year and a bit until I got caught up in the politics and decided to leave.

13:00Starting Open Education

I started a company called Open Education which was an RTO sales and marketing agency arm of AIPE. I teamed with a guy who owned AIPE and we went into partnership together. I grew that to about 25 staff and then I exited when I was 26. The legislation had changed with the government. Made lots of money, did not know what I was doing, was young and dumb, spent most of it. No mentors. Then I moved to Melbourne, got into recruitment, loved that, and then I fell in love with tech. I met with a lot of founders through recruitment and I was in awe. I thought I am playing too small.

18:30Joining xenabler

Prashant, my co-founder and business partner, started xenabler in 2011. I got into that business two and a half years ago as a growth consultant to assist with their scale. Then we decided to go into partnership recently. My role is marketing, sales, and growth. Prashant is more CTO and runs all the developers.

21:00Investing based on people

I have always found investing is based on a person. If I am going to invest in anything I invest based on the person. Venture capital companies have the graphs and the analytics and I do not understand any of that and have tried. I genuinely believe every idea that a founder comes to me with is good. But it is great once executed well with the right team. It is the people that make the difference. I was vetting a company three days ago and the founder was amazing, but the cap table structure was terrible. The co-founder was clearly busy and it did not make sense. I would not invest into something like that.

24:00The pivot to Daz

We have just transitioned the business from an agency model to a product model. We are building a product called Daz which is basically a subscription-based platform where you get access to three developers for scaling projects at a flat fee model versus paying hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to develop something. We did a soft launch about a month ago and already have people signed up. We are also doing a very large web3 project in real estate tokenization where we own the IP and license the tokens to real estate developers. We are just legalizing that at the moment.

30:00Expanding internationally

I am moving internationally. I am flying 15th of May to Dubai, then Rome, and then USA. We want to grow the team in the USA. Austin is the launch point. Americans love Aussies. There is also significant demand from Dubai for Australian tech entrepreneurs, particularly female ones. That demand is real and growing.

33:00Being a woman in tech

The hardest thing has been being a woman surrounded by men constantly in a male-dominant industry like tech. Approaching people and asking: do they want to do business with me or do they want to date me? I am not a feminist who goes to groups and talks about pay gaps. But I have had to figure out how to operate in this environment. What changed for me was stopping complaining. A lot of women complain constantly about not getting taken seriously and I used to be one of them. Cutting that out was a big game changer. I set my own boundaries, I know myself, and I focus on what I can control.

37:00Why work at xenabler

We are constantly growing and innovating. I have someone who started as an SDR about a year ago and she is about to become a manager of the sales team. Huge growth, huge potential, constant innovation. And I will never hold an individual back if they want to build a personal brand or a side business on the side. I will push them and help them. You learn a lot doing that on the side and you bring it back into your job.

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About the host

Steve Grace is the CEO of The Nudge Group, one of Australia’s leading specialist recruitment agencies for startups and scaleups. He is a serial entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience building businesses and communities across Australia. On Give It A Nudge he interviews the founders, operators, and investors building the next generation of Australian companies.

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