Posted by Jonathan Despinidic | 12 May 2011

Mark Ross-Smith

SMSFun

232 Comments

Tags: social media

Mark Ross-Smith has spent all his adult life as as an entrepreneur, starting his first internet business at the tender age of 16.

Over the years he’s been involved in the creation of hundreds of new websites from scratch and for the last few years he’s been building up what is now an extremely profitable social network platform. SMSFun is Australia's largest youth social network, focusing on the mobile space.

To date, SMSFun has sent over 50 Million sms's, saving members over 35 Milion Dollars! Mark is a self confessed monetisation specialist and was listed as a 30under30 winner for 2010.

Mark, What prompted you to move from web design and development into the social networking and mobile space?

When my partner Matt and I had web development biz (which is still running), it was a progression from our prior business which facilitated a sales channel from internet to virtual products and services. Small businesses in the area would come to us asking for web dev work which we didn’t want to do, but threw back ridiculously high quotes back at them – which they agreed to so we started that business.

Since then we diversified our online portfolio into new areas, and at the time there was sites like blueskyfrog and intazaar with free sms models which we thought ‘hey.. we can do better than them’. We gave it a crack, swiftly built up a database and realised we were onto something, but it needed some cross-pollination of key learnings from other industry we were involved with at the time.  It was 2006 when this happened and social networking was only just becoming a fad with MySpace – given the massive valuations it had at the time we thought it was worth expanding on the user base we already had captured.

In the FreeSMS marketplace and social network world, what differentiates you from the likes of SMSPup and Yakedi amd allows you to stay ahead of the game?

Sites like SMSPup and Yakedi focus on free sms, which is great for consumers – but there’s very little money in the business model behind of advertising for free stuff. Also when you take into consideration that nearly every phone plan in Australia now comes with unlimited free text, the writing really is on the wall for traditional free sms sites. We realised this very early on and began crafting a new business model that would take traditionally low value customers and through their journey on the network, turn them into high yielding and very profitable members.

Basically the SMSFun business is not what most people think it is, and that lets us play in the blue oceans of high margins and cracking profitability.  Through this we are able to offer faster, more reliable and overall better quality of service to our members. Most other free sms sites have limits, whereas we offer unlimited free sms to Australia and 60 other countries worldwide. Members can use our iPhone app or API to send if they wish too. It’s difficult to compete with free – and that’s what sets SMSFun apart from other sites.

Since the age of 21 you have been creating products and managing people. Throught your entrepreneurial journy and development have you had a constistant mentor? If so, tell us about them.

Having mentors and smart people around is one of the single most important things every entrepreneur should have. I’ve been lucky to have a few very successful and smart people around me over the years. The type of knowledge the right mentors can provide is so incredibly valuable – it’s the stuff no school or university will ever be able to teach you, the kind of smarts that only comes from years of painful lessons, lost fortunes and learning from hard mistakes.

I'm fortunate to have 3 Peters' in my life over the years, all with significant backgrounds in business, entrepreneurship and innovation. As much credit as I take for things to date, without them none of this would have been possible and this is why I rate getting the right people around you as the 2nd step in any new business you jump into (1st step being get a good idea!).

I also get a lot of new learning from constant reading of business literature, especially books. There’s literally thousands of years of business smarts, strategy and concepts which can be lifted from books and applied directly to your business instantly.

In the past 10 years of running your own businessess, what is the biggest mistake you have made and how did you rectify it (if you did)?

By far the biggest mistake I’ve made is attempting to do everything myself.  They say if you think you can be good at everything, that’s another thing you’re not good at.  In my first few years of business I tried doing everything myself to save a few bucks, from accounts to research, marketing, sales, development and admin duties. BIG MISTAKE!

Since I was whacked on the back of the head with a big wad of cash I was losing by operating this way, I’ve adopted a refined outlook on how to know which tasks to oursource. I put a nominal value on my time, let’s say $300/hour. If I can achieve the same result by outsourcing for less than this, it gets outsourced otherwise I do it myself.  This simple technique means that almost everything of ‘low’ value is handled by someone who is more efficient and generally an expert in their field at this.  Some experts spend years at university and on the job learning how to refine their trade to get it perfect everytime. Us entrepreneurs don’t have enough time in the day to do our tasks let alone learn how to specialise in something new.

Moral of the story is, if you need something done of low value – get an expert in that field to do it for less than you would have to pay yourself.

Where do you see Mark Ross-Smith the serial entrepreneur in 5 years time?

You mean apart from my private island in the caribbean? ;)  Honestly I love starting new ‘entrepreneurial journeys’ – whether that’s a new project being designed from the ground up or an existing business that needs an injection of new life. Being able to see fast results is what drives me to get up each day and my passion for the strategic direction and execution is what drives me to succeed.

But in 5 years from now? Well, I see a combination of everything to date with a splash of new learning over the years. As with most entrepreneurs, I go to bed each night and 500000 new ideas jump into my head (hint: great to have pen/paper on bedside table). No shortage of new projects and businesses to develop so I’ll either choose one of these, or jump into something totally new like a bricks and mortar business.  They say you’re only an entrepreneur so long as you’re creating businesses in new fields and industries.  Don’t want to lose the entrepreneur title now do I?

You can catch SMSFun at http://www.smsfun.com.au