Fab Mackojc
Fellow at AfterWork Ventures
Fab Mackojc
Fellow at AfterWork Ventures
Melbourne, Victoria
Overview
Work Experience
Fellow
2021 - Current
I'm an LP in Afterwork, a community-powered VC fund that invests in pre-seed and seed stage startups in Australia and New Zealand.
Entrepreneur In Residence
2022 - 2022
I was brought in by the fund to advise portfolio companies on sales / GTM and implement strategies to achieve the following: • Generate more ideation stage deal flow • Amplify the existing seed stage deal flow • Offer better support for non-technical founders in the portfolio • Conduct technical due diligence for follow-on investments
Investment Principal
2021 - 2022
With the company going through a restructure and my previous role splitting across our two major business units (agency + venture studio / VC), I decided to stay in the venture arm of the business and lead the company's commercial efforts there. I led the development of our venture studio's go-to-market strategy and ran deal origination initiatives. I was also tasked with helping find investors for the fundraise of the company's first $10M venture capital fund.
Head of Sales
2020 - 2021
After 18 months as a salesman, I was promoted into the senior leadership team and put in charge of the company's sales org. Building on all the work I'd done to date as an individual contributor, I formalised our sales playbook, refined our ideal customer profiles, and established a repeatable sales process. I also levelled up all our sales collateral, working with our design team to turn our old sales proposals into slick presentations. During my tenure running sales for the agency we successfully sold 6 and 7-figure software development engagements to a number of major enterprise clients including one of the largest crypto asset managers, the largest telecom in New Zealand, and a major US bank.
Regional Lead
2019 - 2020
As the first commercial hire at a boutique software development agency, I was tasked with doing whatever it takes to increase top-line revenue. Alongside selling, I drove a number of initiatives, including content marketing, SEO, PR, and partnerships, to build our brand and generate inbound leads. Some of my big wins in this role included: • Orchestrating an industry-specific direct mail campaign across multiple verticals where we achieved a 15% meeting rate with CEOs and CIOs of ASX200 companies. • Winning a major contract to do the end-to-end design and build of a mobile app for Bakkt, a unicorn fintech owned by the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.
Co-Founder
2015 - 2018
Over a three-year period, my co-founder and I started a number of businesses: a SaaS company, a digital marketing agency, and a D2C travel supplement brand. The first business failed, the second one I handed the reigns over to pursue other interests, and the third we decided to shut down when we stopped working together. In the end, I made some money, lost some money, and learned an absolute sh!t ton about business. TextGoose: Simple SMS marketing for Australian businesses. The Mailchimp for SMS. RankingPress: A digital marketing agency that helps businesses drive more leads, sales, and increase revenue using advanced search strategies, software, and automation. JetMojo: Products for travellers on a quest for peak personal performance and self-betterment. We started by solving jet lag.
Software Engineer
2013 - 2015
After deciding I wanted to learn how to code, I moved to San Francisco to work at Groupon for the Breadcrumb PRO team. Groupon had previously acquired the POS and restaurant management app but continued to run the team like a startup in a big company. The majority of my role involved building the Ruby on Rails web app and accompanying APIs that hospitality venue owners / managers used to see dynamic reports about their business. Some of my other achievements at the company included: • Building the initial prototype of the Breadcrumb Live iOS app with Swift. • Leading the front-end engineering and Wordpress configuration for the new marketing website. • Launching a data infographic initiative that showcased interesting merchant trends on our blog.
City Manager - Melbourne
2012 - 2013
I was asked to join the Airtasker team when the Sydney-based startup decided to launch in Melbourne. I was responsible for implementing and leading our user acquisition team in Melbourne. Among many things, my role mainly involved: • Recruiting 3 people to join our growth / community management team • Leading this team to effectively execute user acquisition campaigns The company later went public and listed its shares on the ASX in 2021.