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Anne Ful­wood in con­ver­sa­tion with Pure­pro­file CEO, Paul Chan 

Swaab, in part­ner­ship with Stone & Chalk, has put on a Start-Up mas­ter­class for bud­ding entre­pre­neurs. Inter­viewed by our own Anne Ful­wood, Pure­pro­file CEO Paul Chan spoke of the lessons he has learnt in his 15 year ​‘overnight suc­cess’, includ­ing the impor­tance of a great legal and advi­so­ry team.

In the busi­ness of being an entre­pre­neur, every­one has a sto­ry worth lis­ten­ing to.

Ideas into action, fac­ing your fears, will they buy what you want to sell? It’s all part of the lan­guage of entre­pre­neur­ship, and this week we had the plea­sure of hear­ing Paul Chan’s sto­ry at a Swaab Q&A Mas­ter­class host­ed by our own Anne Ful­wood, held at Fin­Tech Start-Up Hub, Stone & Chalk.

Paul Chan is the founder of Pure­Pro­file – a new era direct mar­ket­ing busi­ness which pays con­sumers to par­tic­i­pate in sur­veys. Results of sur­veys can be sold or ​‘white-labelled’ by any firm to gain insights and pro­files of their cus­tomers. How­ev­er, the con­sumer, or account hold­er has the pow­er as they are the data­base of peo­ple whom Pure­Pro­file can sur­vey. Pure­Pro­file account hold­ers have com­plete con­trol, and the site match­es users’ inter­ests with sur­veys, so busi­ness­es can make bet­ter deci­sions and reach their tar­get market.

Paul is a ser­i­al entre­pre­neur, ever since he won a Year 5 spelling bee by cor­rect­ly spelling that very word, entre­pre­neur. He got his prop­er­ty licence before he fin­ished high school, attained his degree in Land Eco­nom­ics, set up a real estate busi­ness, and says being an entre­pre­neur was always in his blood.

Launched in Decem­ber 2001, Pure­Pro­file was list­ed on the ASX in 2015. Based in Syd­ney, Paul Chan has offices in NYC, San Fran­sis­co, Lon­don, Mum­bai, Poland and Greece and world dom­i­na­tion is no doubt a goal!

Upon Anne’s request, Paul pro­vid­ed his ​‘Top 5 Tips’ to start-ups and busi­ness own­ers with ambition:

  1. Have the courage to think big
  2. Del­e­gate don’t abdicate
  3. You need to get things to 60% (49% not good enough/​100% is unachievable)
  4. Fail fast, fail often (although he agrees with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos that being wrong shouldn’t trump being right)
  5. Be brave and go all in.

And final­ly, inspired by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Paul’s part­ing advice to entre­pre­neurs keen to launch a busi­ness are pure Bezos:

​“Start with a press release!”

Click here to see pho­tographs from the event.

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