Web Entrepreneur & Sidekicker Founder Tom Amos on Startups, Ideas, and Finding Opportunities

Published: November 22, 2013

“Very few ideas are new,” says Tom Amos, Founder of Melbourne-based Sidekicker.com.au when I ask him how, exactly, he got the idea for his fledgling but successful startup business.

“I think there’s way too much of a focus [in the startup space] on creating something totally new that’s not being done anywhere else in the world. What’s the saying? ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.'”

Of his own business, he says simply, “We saw an existing market, and we wanted to improve on that.”

But it turns out the factors that let Tom spot that opportunity are pretty complex.

Sidekicker is an online marketplace that connects small to medium businesses (SMBs) looking to increase their project skills or capacity with quality temporary talent–the “sidekicks”.

It was a combination of personal experience, professional experience, industry knowledge, and passion that let Tom perceive that opportunity.

Personal and professional experience

Tom initially saw the opportunity for his business in his own life.

Back in 2010, while he was working at consulting firm Deloitte, he was also studying and playing golf for his local club. Tom didn’t have a lot of spare time, and says he relied a lot on his mum to help him out with errands. But, he says, “I kept thinking, ‘I’d pay someone to do this for me.'”

TaskRabbit had just started operating, so Tom knew there was a business model around that idea of personal help.

But it wasn’t until Tom was working on Sidekicker that he and co-founder Jackie realized that the bigger need was within small businesses, rather than the individual market.

For now, that moment was a long way off.

In the meantime, Tom was working with SMBs through his role at Deloitte and knew how stretched they were. His first-hand professional experience told him there was a problem with the existing temp-agency model in the SMB niche.

Industry knowledge

Did Tom research alternative models within the particular niche he was targeting?

Interestingly, when he talks about temping agencies, he mentions that his understanding of that space is limited. For him, the hands-on experience he gained when working with SMBs–and as a gun-for-hire himself in the world of consulting–gave him the insight he needed.

He knew how much SMBs disliked temping agencies, and began pondering ways to improve on that model.

“Business owners are time poor. We’re dealing with people who have got projects or event[s] and they just need to scale up quickly. They don’t want to be looking through applications. They want to be connected with someone at a reasonable price and without a lot of hassle.”

For Tom, this was more food for thought.

Passion

Passion was another key factor in his ability to perceive the opportunity to create Sidekicker.

“One of the things I like is people being empowered and taking control in what they want to do”, Tom says, rather than being told what to do by a placement person or overseer.

This view steered him away from, for example, creating a better temping agency that could outcompete others in the same market. It encouraged him to consider a technical, crowdsourced solution instead.

“Our view is that through technology we can connect the two people that are important: the person posting the job, and the person doing the job,” Tom explains. “There’s no need to have someone else there as a roadblock. Our technology takes care of a lot of those things.”

That passion, he says, is “what keeps you going on the shit days.” Seeing his business make a real difference for others–whether they’re sidekicks or hiring businesses–is immensely satisfying and inspiring for Tom and his team.

The final push

With these ideas swirling through his mind, many of the dots still remained unconnected. What was it that prompted Tom to give his “crazy startup idea” a go?

It was time spent working in Wellington, New Zealand with a friend who’d started his own beer company. “If he can do it,” thought Tom, “I can do it.”

So when he came back to Melbourne, he started talking to people. “I just kept getting myself in deeper and deeper,” he says, “so that I had no choice but to do it.”

Finally, he decided to take a year off work, to focus on Sidekicker and really give it a go.

More opportunities

Tom’s startup idea wasn’t completely new: it was already gaining traction in a different niche, as TaskRabbit.

And as Tom worked on the business, bringing in co-founder Jackie and digital agency Loud and Clear, the idea evolved into the SMB-targeted service you see today.

“All ideas start with one thing,” Tom says, “but they lead off into something else as you realize new opportunities.”

Tom is always looking for business opportunities to enhance Sidekicker’s offering. Right now, he’s working on an idea to partner with a training organization to upskill and train the Sidekicker applicants who don’t make the cut.

This opportunity arose from a connection that Tom made months earlier at an industry event with the owner of a training business coupled with data from his own business on applicant rejections.

For Tom, it seems, opportunities are everywhere. So his advice to new and would-be founders is straightforward.

“When you’re starting something new, you can’t hold onto your idea too tightly. Yes, you’ve got to have passion, you’ve got to have a clear vision for where you want to get to, but you also need to be adaptable,” he says.

“If opportunities pop up where you can do something that’s a little more profitable, or it’s going to change people’s lives more, then you’ve got to grab that.”