Interview with Ben Thompson, Co-Founder, IncoDocs

Welcome to ChainTech, the show and podcast focusing on the latest trends in supply chain, procurement, and logistics technology. My name is Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council, and together with my co-host and special guest, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in supply chain. From early stage to unicorns, And from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help drive more innovative, agile, and resilient supply chains around the world. This is ChainTech. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of ChainTech. I'm your host, Max Henry, from the Global Supply Chain Council. And I'm joined today with my co-host Sandeep Chatterjee. Hi, Sandeep.

Oh, hi. Hi, Max. Hi, Ben. It's good to be here. So my name is Sandeep. I work with Deloitte primarily in the supply chain domain. I'm looking forward to a great interaction.

Thanks again for joining us for this new episode of the show as we continue to host some of the most interesting GenTech founders and discuss the rapid rise of supply chain, logistics, and procurement technology across the APAC region. As we jump into this conversation, I want to make sure again that you're aware of the Chantech platform that we recently launched. You can visit it at chantech.net, and you can also find all the previous episodes of our show at chantech.show. So today we're very pleased to have Ben Thompson, who is a co-founder of IncoDocs, joining us. So hi, Ben, how are you?

Hi, Max. I'm great. Thanks for joining. Thanks for inviting me on your platform.

Okay. So maybe we'll get started with just the introduction questions. Maybe tell us who you are, where you're based, and maybe give us a bit of background about yourself.

Yeah, sure. So I'm based in Brisbane in Australia. Our team at IncoDocs is mainly Brisbane-based. And yeah, I've been I've been involved in the import-export industry since 2009. So, that's when I began my career working for a trading company. So, yeah, we used to buy and sell building materials from factories throughout Asia and ship them into Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands countries. So, I've been in the industry for quite a while and learnt a lot, and it's been quite fun.

So, what motivated you to start your company, IncoDocs?

So, when I began in the industry, I worked for a trading company for quite a few years and learnt the processes and understood global trade and the import-export process. And from there, my business partner and I, Brandon and I, we started our own trading company. So, we were buying and selling products and running that. It was actually through, you know, the own problems that we were having within running our own operations, all of the problems that we were having with, you know, shipping documentation and suppliers, you know, messing around with Word and Excel templates that would, you know, have missing information or not be correct. And it was causing problems within our own business. And, you know, we thought, We're always on the lookout for better ways to do things. We thought there must be a better way to do this, and that's when we started working on IncoDocs.

Okay. In one sentence, so what is IncoDocs doing exactly?

So, IncoDocs, it's cloud-based software that streamlines the sales and export documentation process for exporters when they're shipping goods overseas.

Okay. And what kind of specific problem are you solving with your solution right now?

So, there's many different problems that are caused by bad documentation. Documentation is one of the key parts of the import-export process. All of that information must be passed from party to party along the supply chain. All of that data and information is being passed through, you know, paper-based documents or PDF documents. So, it's a critical piece to make sure that a shipment moves from one location to another without problems and delays. And IncoDocs is, you know, solving that problem by making a very, very easy user interface, a very easy way to input that information, a very easy way to generate those documents. that are in the right format the first time, to avoid having any problems, fines, delays, and misshipments and things like that.

So you are solving a problem, I understand. But again, there are a lot of other companies which will offer a similar— because it's a cloud-based software, right? So how do you differentiate? What are your key differentiators in terms of what has the competition been doing? About this.

Yeah, so yeah, we do have competition, which is predominantly— there are some older-based, PC-based software documentation solutions which were created, you know, quite a long time ago with older technology. So some of those systems are, you know, a little bit harder to use. To learn to use quickly. Some of them are not cloud-based and they're primarily designed for larger enterprise-type shippers. So, IncoDocs has been very much designed where people can land on our website and they can create a free trial instantly. They can get started straight away and that's a very unique part of the process where There's no heavy, long sales process involved. It gives the user a chance to get in there, create some documents, test the system, and see how it can actually help their business.

Is there any specific reason that you are targeting small and medium businesses and not the big ones?

Well, I guess, you know, in the beginning when you build out solutions and software, Enterprise solutions, they can be quite complex and have a lot of functionality, a lot of features, and take a lot of time and money to actually replicate all of that functionality. There were some players in that space. In the small and medium-sized shippers space, there was no real good instant solution for that market. So that, you know, when we decided to build the solutions for documentation with the new technology, you know, there was very little competition in that space. And those companies, you know, they're not using big ERP systems, or they might not even be able to afford the big ERP systems. So naturally, it was, you know, a good fit for that type of company.

Who do you sell to, Ben? What kind of companies are buying your solutions right now?

So, it is very broad where they're located, and customers are in many different industries. So, as I said, the main focus is small and medium enterprise, where IncoDocs is a very good fit for them. They don't have other expensive systems. They're able to adopt it very quickly and easily. Our customers, it's very broad. We've got customers in over 100 countries. So, you know, we do get customers reach out looking for solutions in developing markets, you know, throughout, you know, places like India, Asia, Africa, but all the way through to, you know, the Western markets like, you know, the USA, Canada, and Europe and Australasia. So It is— we've designed the software that it's, you know, the templates for global trade, you know, it's quite a, you know, there should be a defined format to include the fields that are required for trade. So, we've designed our software that can be used by, you know, these companies in any country. They can be shipping many different types of products, shipping to many different types of countries. So, You know, it's very universal in that sense. Yeah.

So, with your platform, are you trying to also standardize those documents? Because obviously, you know, different countries have different practice and different suppliers also might have different set of documents and/or requirement around those documents. Are you trying to kind of standardize or provide a framework for those companies to deal internationally?

Yeah, so there's the current processes, you know, depending on what products are being shipped from which country to which country and what documents are involved. It's— there's very much a lack of a process or a lack of a format or a lack of a, you know, a system that unifies everything. So what we've done, we've put a lot of focus on In our solution, we provide templates that are aligned as closely as we can to UNLK recommendations for global trade documentation. They have a recommendation of the format and the fields that should be required on different types of shipping documentation. So, in our platform, we provide dozens of these standard templates which shippers can easily complete and use. But on top of that, in the early days, we did find that people do want the flexibility. There are literally thousands of different use cases of companies in different industries shipping all sorts of different products to different countries. So, they might have something a little bit different that they need to suit their actual company's process. So what we did there is we put a lot of time and effort into engineering and building features that will actually let the user do within the system themselves. Whilst they're creating a document, they can actually edit the layout. So they can edit the title, they can edit the fields, they can remove fields, they can insert columns, add their own letterhead. So they can customize these templates themselves to match exactly what they need and create multiple variations of these templates or create the templates in different languages as well. So we've made it really flexible to try to cover for as many use cases as possible.

Okay, so localization is a very key feature because each country will have its own rules, laws, Though we are talking about global trade, but there is always a localization aspect. So how do you handle that? Because that's a key ask what we have seen all across the globe.

Yeah. So yeah, with different localizations, different countries involved, yes, they might have different documentations that are required for that specific product to that country. To handle that, we're always adding new templates into our system. So, you know, we're very much always talking to our customers, always talking to potential customers, always in the market finding out how things need to be done better and what needs to be added to the system. So, we, for example, for some recycled scrap shipments into India and other places, you know, Form 6 and Form 9 transboundary movement documents are needed. So, we've added those into the system. So, yeah, it's a continuous process of understanding what are the specific local requirements and actually adding what we can into the system, yeah.

And just to extend on that question from Sandeep, do you find sometimes market which is too difficult to handle? I mean, those local requirements are too tedious and you decide, okay, we're not going to touch this market because when it comes to documentation, It's just too difficult.

I think that one part of the process, the shipping documentation process, one part is the exporter being able to create the documentation and enter their information into a template to be passed on to another party, right, to create that shipping document. Another part to that process, which is very much localized, is that some shippers, some of these exporters, they might need to be able to integrate and connect with the local government's systems, right? They might need to automatically generate an export declaration number or connect to a government's phytosanitary system. Or connect to, you know, the port's receival system. So, depending on, you know, there's thousands of different use cases for different exporters and their requirements. Some of the larger companies, they will require 2 or 3 integrations with their local, you know, local systems or government processes to make that work.

Yeah.

To do that everywhere in every country all around the world is obviously a massive, massive job and is part of the problem actually. So, you know, we can't do everything, we can't integrate with everything, but a big part of solving that problem, what we're focused on is actually the key we believe here is allowing our users, our shippers, once they use IncoDocs, you know, you're able to get your shipment data, your order and shipment data into a structured format. You know, in the past, using Word, Excel, or other systems or PDFs, that data, it's very much locked in and it can't be used properly. It's not structured data. So, using IncoDocs, they can, you know, complete their shipment information in a structured format. And then be able to actually use that information to, to do whatever needs to be done. So a bit— a big part of that is that, you know, we've released our API documentation so that we want to make it as easy and as seamless as possible for these companies to, to build integrations into any other system that they need, right? Because You know, global trade, it's a very, very big beast with so many different moving parts, 30 to 40 different parties for, you know, one particular supply chain shipment. They all need to receive that information and that data. So, that's actually the biggest problem in the industry, and we're trying to solve that through making the connectivity as easy as possible. Yeah.

And in terms of IncoDocs, do you only provide this documentation or you're also providing some value-added services as well?

Well, for now, you know, very much we have been focused on, you know, creating the most easy-to-use documentation tool, right? So there are so many different possibilities down the track and so many different things that can be done with that. But one thing that we have found along our journey is that, you know, in global trade, that there are so many different problems to solve.

Yeah.

You know, there are problems everywhere from first mile through to shipping through to last mile. There is just problems everywhere, data connection issues everywhere. things that can be really streamlined. And we cannot solve it all. We cannot solve it all. Not one company can solve it all.

Yeah.

And one thing that we realised very early on is that the industry, it very much needs these companies, these software companies to work together. Everybody needs to work together. They might be the specialists in their own area solving a particular problem for trucking or for port services or for shipping or for documentation like ourselves. But they need to work together to actually make it work. If we were to try and solve too many problems in the beginning, we would actually get nothing done and would not be successful or would not solve a problem properly. Up until now, we've had a very strong focus in on that. We are the documentation specialists. We want to be the world's best documentation tool. Along with that, we've put so many years of hard work into making the user interface and the user experience as seamless as possible, right?

Yeah.

It's one thing to build a software solution that might be the best software solution in the world, but if it's too hard to use, or the change management or the onboarding process is just too much friction and then people can't work it out, you're going to have a problem onboarding people or getting customers. So, a very big focus of ours has been to make the user interface as seamless as possible. I mean, we have users in countries all over the world that can land on our website, they can sign up to our product, Can start creating documents straight away with no training involved. So like, I believe that adoption is key and it needs to be very easy to use.

Ben, do you compete with companies like JT Nexus or One Network, for example? Are those— do you consider them as competitors?

Which ones are they, sorry?

Infor, JT Nexus, or One Network. which is another company from the US?

No, I don't believe so. We've got some competitors which have—

What would you call your competitors? Which companies do you think are direct competitors to IncoDocs right now?

I think there's competitors such as in the US, there's a company, Shipping Solutions. That's one of them. They've provided, you know, documentation solution for companies, I think mainly in the USA, for quite a long time. I believe that maybe they're targeting—

Vortex was there, right?

Which one?

Vortex.

Vortex.

Vortex used to be there.

Vortex. Okay.

Yeah. No, there's quite a few over time. As I said, it's, you know, documentation has always been a problem for years and there's, there's companies there that have been providing good solutions, but we've found they've been mainly for the top end of town. They've been mainly for enterprise. The barrier to entry has just been too high.

Mm-hmm.

Another one to mention, I guess, is ESS Docs. I think they're based in Europe. They do a lot of documentation solutions and bill of lading solutions for large enterprise, right? But if you're a small or medium-sized exporter, it's probably not attainable for you to use their software.

How do you currently market your solutions and get your customers?

We've put a lot of effort into providing a lot of useful content online. The whole import-export industry, from start to finish, it's very much, you know, it can be a black box of information, right? There's all of these problems and I believe not a lot of good resources online for people to find solutions to their problems, right? They want to ship more, they want to import, they want to export, and there's just so much to learn. So we've put a lot of effort into creating different blog articles which might detail a problem solution in that particular space. We've created some explainer-type videos and other types of videos on YouTube, on our YouTube channel. So we've also interviewed industry experts in different parts along the supply chain to find out what they're doing and how their solution can help others. I think content creation and providing valuable content has worked very well for us to get inbound customers.

A lot of content marketing, but do you go beyond that? Do you actually find database of importers or exporters and try to contact them by email or do additional outreach to them directly?

Not really, no. The vast majority of our customers and our sales—

People will find you.

people will actually find you? It's inbound through content marketing. I wish I had teams of people that could do outbound and that might come soon, but for now it's worked very well for us for the content inbound marketing.

I guess you have customers all across the globe, right? Just not confined to Australia, right?

Yeah, correct. It's quite broad. People in so many different countries, you know, that we find, you know, um, some— everybody's different, but there's people that are doing their process, you know, they might keep in the back of their mind, it's like, how can I do this better? You know, like, I'm frustrated, this is taking me too long, I've had too many problems, or it's cost me money with problems. So, you know, they start thinking, they start searching online, they go to Google, they go to YouTube, they go to these places to find the solution to their problem and it works really well. Yeah. So many countries, developing markets, Western countries, people looking for solutions all over.

Yeah. And I guess it's English as a language and there are certain countries which actually want content in the local language. Do you have any plans to do that or you want to stick to only English as a language?

So yeah, English is obviously the dominant one, but there are requests for localization. You're right. So we do have actually some functionality and features within our software which can help with that. So for example, I mentioned earlier our users, they can modify and create their own templates. They can create their own templates in another language and save a French version of a packing list, Italian version, Portuguese, whatever. That is working now within our application, and some of our customers find that very, very helpful. Another advantage with that is that the tools online which can translate in your browser, very, very helpful, right? You know, Google Translate, this is cloud software, this is web-based, this is new technology. So these tools and add-ons can instantly convert the UI/UX from English into Chinese or any other language, and therefore the user can follow it and they can also create their documents and fill out their documents in another language. It won't cover 100% of use cases, but it's definitely very flexible in that case.

Ben, what has been the impact of the pandemic on your business in the last 2 years?

The main— sorry?

What has been the impact of the pandemic on your business?

Yeah, yeah. So it's been interesting times, hasn't it? The past 2 and a bit years. You know, I think thinking back to, you know, early 2020, you know, it was a very confusing time, you know, when all of the lockdowns happened and international travel was restricted and people couldn't move and people couldn't come into the office. It was, you know, a very stressful time for a lot of people. They didn't know what was going to happen. They were losing money. They— And the biggest change obviously is that, you know, people were for the first time actually forced to work from home. So, and that was, I think, a massive wake-up call for a lot of companies, a lot of customers. We did see a lot more companies actively reaching out than needing to find better solutions, needing to upgrade their systems. You know, if they had you know, servers running in their office, which, you know, the workers literally had to be in the office to get their job done. That wasn't workable anymore. That wasn't acceptable, you know. And, you know, these people, they probably, you know, knew the restrictions of their existing processes, but, you know, maybe kept putting it off. And it just really forced their hands. So, You know, we did see a lot of companies reach out needing that cloud-based software, right? It's very, very powerful. You know, allows you to work remotely from home, from office, hybrid, while traveling. It can connect global teams together in different countries to a shared workspace. It really, really increases the connectivity and visibility of a business. So, you know, those people reaching out and yeah, it helped us. So, you know, people—

So you've seen an increase of revenue as a result of the pandemic with your own solutions?

Yeah, correct.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And whatever, you know, whatever things that you learned from the pandemic as a result, you know, I mean, you know, moving forward, what are the things that you are getting ready for?

So, you know, from— it's been a while now, you know, so it's been probably 2 years. And I think it's— over that time, it's really changed everybody's mindset. We're seeing companies that they have to implement or offer a hybrid approach to their workforce. You know, people do want the flexibility of working from home and in the office. So people are a lot more open is, you know, one thing I've learned. People, they're more willing to adopt new tools or question their current process and go out and search for something online. Like, it's definitely changed their mindset on not changing.

Right.

So yeah, people are more open to that. And also it's made it a lot easier to connect and communicate with people all over the world, right? Like the start of the pandemic, you know, if you try to hop on a Zoom call, it was still quite clunky and difficult and people needed to understand what to do or do I need to download software or get a camera or what do I need to do? It was just scary. But now, you know, I'm still talking to customers every day. And it doesn't matter what country I call through to or try to line up a Zoom call with, they're on the other end and they're connected and it's business as usual. So it's actually really helped a lot in that way. Yeah.

Sure. Now let me ask you a question about your company. Again, if you think it's confidential, you can choose not to answer. So tell us something about the team. How many employees do you have? How many software developers, or of course, again, whatever is not confidential, you can just go ahead and share.

Yeah, sure. So yeah, our team, you know, we're currently a team of 5. There's myself and my co-founder Brandon. We are the only 2 where we're non-technical. So we're not technical and we don't do the engineering, but the other team members, the 3 of them, we've got, you know, backend engineers which, you know, focus on, you know, engineering and building the databases and the connectivity and the features and the functions. And we've got a really good frontend designer who is also a specialist in, you know, the user interface and user experience, which is just completely invaluable, as I mentioned before, you know, like It doesn't matter what software you're building, if it's not easy to use, you'll have trouble trying to sell it.

Yep.

So, you know, that has been a very big focus of ours for years to just continually improve it, improve it, improve it. And the only way to do that is to keep talking to your customers. You know, how can it be better? Where do you get stuck? What do you need? You know, so it's a continual process that I think we make quite a lot of progress as a small team, which is good. So, you know, there's those short feedback loops. You know, you're talking to the customer, you're getting feedback, and you're condensing that information and designing out a new feature and then engineering it. It's not a big, long 3 to 6 month process. It has to be very, very short feedback loops to deliver value.

And any software typically will have some bugs. It's always there. It's nothing But in case there's something is reported, is it the same team which handles it or how do you go about it?

Um, yeah, well, it's, it's, it changes over time, right? So, you know, in the very early days of creating software, you know, if you're creating something from scratch, the first versions of your software, there's an old saying that if If you're not embarrassed by what you've released, well then you've left it too late. So I'm a firm believer the only way to build software that is valuable is to, you've gotta get people using it. And in the early days, you nearly have to beg them to do you a favor to use it because it is that bad, right? It's terrible.

Yeah.

So in those early days, you know, Nothing stable, you know, something might break or the whole page might not load or the server might crash or whatever, right? There's those teething problems in the early days. But, you know, as you obviously get further along and build better software, better features, more reliable services, etc., etc., it just becomes less and less, right? So, you know, there will be Obviously, you get to a stage where people pay you money for your software, which is, you know, obviously validation. If people aren't paying you money for your software, you haven't really validated anything. If they reach into your wallet and give you money, you've validated it. But then they start— they actually start using it. So when something breaks or something goes wrong, you're going to hear about it very quickly, right? So their businesses rely on it. So it has to be reliable. So, you know, it's a gradual shift, you know, through to processes now, you know, we have, you know, systems in place which automatically monitor these things. You know, you can monitor services and features and stuff like that to see if there are problems and get instant notifications, right? And most of them are only minor and they can be fixed up quite easily. So Yeah, you've got to be on top of that to make sure that it's reliable at the end of the day for your customers.

In terms of, again, your funding, are you bootstrapped or do you have VCs investing or what is your funding stage, if I may ask?

So our funding round, we raised a pre-seed funding round about 3 years ago of $1.2 million. Actually, Maersk reached out to us and, you know, wanted to learn a bit more about what we were working on at that time. Prior to that, we were bootstrapped in the beginning, and we actually got accepted into an accelerator program in Brisbane, which gave us the early days support and knowledge and help, you know, needed to move forward in the software industry. And after that, we kept developing the software and Mass reached out, wanted to learn more. And yeah, we ended up sort of closing our fundraising round to get more resources that we needed to build a better product.

Are you raising another round?

We are open to it. Like, there's different directions, I guess, you can decide to go with software companies. I think it all depends on, you know, do some people want to go growth at all costs, right? And nothing else matters and just grow, grow, grow. But that obviously costs a lot of money. And these businesses, they plan to burn money and not make money for years and years and years and actually rely on venture capital money to stay around, right?

Yeah.

And as we've seen lately, especially the markets in general drying up and funding is just not what it was and there's a bit of a reset going on. And so, we've had quite a strong focus for a while now to, um, to build a solid business model, to, to get paid and grow our revenue and stand on our own 2 feet. So, um, that's where we're at, which I'm glad where, uh, we focused on that for a while. It is difficult to, um, to do it, but as I said, if validation comes through people paying you money, if they, if they pay you more money, then you've built better software. So if we've kept focusing on that And we're standing on our own 2 feet, but we could continue to do what we're doing, or we're also open to looking at, well, if there is the right investor that understands what we want to do and aligns with our objectives, well, we could raise money to further grow that.

So, you could continue operating without raising and you'd be okay, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. What is your biggest challenge right now in your current stage with your company? What keeps you awake at night or gives you the biggest headache?

A few challenges. It's fun running it.

Just pick one. Just the biggest one.

Pick one.

Pick one.

I think at the moment, It's managing so many different time zones. It's very difficult. We do have people that handle inbound, new users and the deals in America and Europe and also in India. So that helps with those time zones, but it's just so broad. There's obviously 24 hours in a day and— It's often early mornings and late nights for different people. So yeah, if everybody was in the same time zone, it'd be a lot easier.

And what kind of strategy do you have long-term? Are you planning to exit and sell it to a big player? I mean, it could be a 3PL like Maersk or it could be a bigger software company. What are you looking at?

Yeah, so, you know, I guess we're open to options, right? You know, we're not actively planning on, you know, acquisition or M&A or anything like that. But of course, if it makes sense to somebody where they see value and it makes sense to both parties, we're open for that. So, one of our focuses is you know, to the future is to build out that connectivity component that I was talking about with the integration ability, right? That's, that's a very, very—

That's key.

That's key. That's the key, right? We've, we've spent a lot of time and effort building out a very easy-to-use documentation solution. So the next step is, you know, naturally flows into How do we empower our users to unlock the power of that data to connect to other systems? And that can be logistics systems, but that can be sales management and CRMs and ERPs and whatever it is. There's just so much there. So, moving along, yeah, we want to connect the data along the supply chain. Yeah.

Okay. Any other personal front? What are your goals in life? What do you want to do in life?

Oh, it's a big goal. Yes, that's a good one. That's a good one. Um, you know, it's just, uh, I, I think solve real problems, right? That's, that's what I enjoy doing. Um, you know, since, since early on, I don't know, I've always been, been wired to, uh, creating an efficient way to do something. So I like solving real problems, um, problems that are impactful, problems that do need to be solved. So, the supply chain is obviously a very big one to attack. So, that's naturally where I've headed. I'll probably be there for a while, but after that, I'm not sure. But I'll definitely always be solving problems and having the flexibility to travel whilst doing that as well. That's probably the goal.

Yeah. Okay, great. I've got some quick questions for you. Those are fire questions that I need you to answer very quickly, Ben. So let me go through them. Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Window or aisle?

Window.

Favorite action movie?

Oh, action movie would be, I think, 007.

What is your favorite sandwich?

That's my favorite.

Is it?

There we go. I've got one right.

Okay. What's your favorite sandwich?

Pork sandwich.

What's the most used app on your phone?

Most used app on my phone. That would have to be Slack or email, I think.

Okay. What's your favorite tool to build your company right now?

Favorite tool? I really like Notion. Notion is a very flexible way to manage a lot of different tasks.

Yeah.

Okay. And just to close again on what Sandeep was asking you, describe the rest of your life in just a few words.

It would be fast and fun.

Okay.

All right. That sounds great. All right. Thank you very much, Ben. Thanks, Sandeep, for co-hosting again today's episode. Okay, this was again Ben Thompson from IncoDocs. I want to thank you everybody for joining us today and for listening to this episode. We'll see you soon. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Sandeep.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Max.

Thanks, Sandeep.

Appreciate it.