by Rick Wang – Alumni of Alpha Innovation Contest 2019
It is said that Australia ranks as one of the best countries to live in the world by international comparisons of wealth, education, health and quality of life. The sixth-largest country by landmass, its population is comparatively small with most people living around the eastern and south-eastern coastlines. As a high profile as the comment goes, the foreign residents of Australia often feel it is a country grows as slow as a turtle and it is hard to penetrate its core society as people migrated from a country speaks a language other than English. We are often cast aside by the locals whether we wish to offer value, deal, suggestions by various excuses. And we are most likely being talked to limit ourselves into certain types of jobs. We are sometimes put on some negative tags that are controversially given to us just because of different ethics and mentality. As a consequence, I can’t help thinking about what we can do for Australia to make it a better nation, to be a place that we can truly call our home? As a new migrant, I had that thinking for quite a long time.
Being a master’s degree graduate from a local university with several years overseas relevant industry experience, I once had a naïve idea that to secure a top earning job in the local society shouldn’t be any problems. Unfortunately, the responses from the job seeking were negative and led me to almost no other choice but to find a low salary job to begin with. It takes me a couple of years to mingle into the local society and start to learn the culture and value through the job. Coincidently, it takes almost same amount of time for me to learn it won’t make me rich and realise our value by doing the job that we are assigned to. To start a business becomes my obvious solution. But how?
There are too many options when it comes to choose a business for ourselves. We can buy a local franchise shop, run an international commerce website or start a local restaurant. But none of above is really going to offer the value the local society needs, which means they are not going to be recognised. It also means we are not putting on the Australian’s thinking hat. Australia needs solutions to add value to the majority of the country, and to increase its efficiency but not to disturb the local order.
This is exactly why I founded Cloud Ants, a smart property maintenance solution with Qin Fan. From the years I worked as a property manager, I see the demands from landlords, tenants, real estate agency owners and how these high demands suffocate the property manager which ultimately results in 85% of property managers quit their job in the first three years of career. It in return badly impacts on all above stake holders and it’s now harder to find a proper experienced and reliable property manager who can handle the demands. The current model of managing property is obviously on a tip of changing. To help addressing the needs, is what we, no matter where we are from, can offer to the nation. To understand their needs, and offer solution, to add value.
To help us realise the idea, we participated in the Alpha Innovation Contest 2019 and Cloud Ants has won the Best Business Model Award. After the Contest, our project was selected to participate in the Tianjin China International Innovation conference and pitch road show from Aug -Nov 2019. As a contestant, we believe such event has meanings much profound than a competition. Especially, partnering with Alpha Incubation Service, means we are more structured in business, have less chance to stray far. It also connects us with more experienced entrepreneurs, funding facilities and much more resources that we may need in the road of challenge.
【https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-wang-4aa0b038/】