Started Valocity which was rapidly adopted by big banks in New Zealand, Australia, India and Singapore within 6 years to become an industry leader, and grew it organically from a small team to the current almost 100 FTE (Episode 81 - Carmen Vicelich)
In this episode, I interview Carmen Vicelich, the award-winning founder and Global CEO of Valocity Global, a company that harnesses technology and data to transform and create new and connected digital ecosystems, streamlining the mortgage lending and valuation processes around the world and automating workflow from end to end. Carmen is an entrepreneurial powerhouse passionate about leveraging data and technology to generate impact and transformation. In record time, she has created two multi-million-dollar, industry-leading businesses that do just that.
Purchasing a property is often a significant investment, however, before any bank can lend money for a mortgage, they must first assess its value. Carmen’s company Valocity has revolutionized this process, by digitally connecting lenders, valuers, brokers, and customers in one smart platform to streamline the valuation and approval process. This makes property-buying faster and more transparent for all parties, delivering huge efficiencies to the estimated $2 Trillion-dollar New Zealand property market.
The unique, cloud-based platform is used by some of the world’s largest lenders across New Zealand, Australia, India, and Asia. A true Kiwi success story, Valocity has been recognized globally including the prestigious India FinTech Awards 2019 as Fintech Start Up of the Year, and Singapore Top 10 Global Fintech 2018. In parallel to Valocity, Carmen developed a second company, Data Insight, which helps New Zealand’s largest business and government organizations leverage the power of data and advanced analytics, enabling data-driven decision-making to improve customer experience, efficiency, and profitability.
Outside of founding two data and technology businesses, Carmen mentors several students and business founders, is a regular speaker sharing her innovation success story, serves on several boards including UNICEF, and is a proud mother of four children. Stay tuned to gain valuable insights as Carmen shares her amazing small business ownership journey
This Cast Covers:
- Helping businesses that have data to make data-driven decisions through analytics and helping them leverage the power of that data.
- How Valocity eases the process of mortgage lending in New Zealand, Australia, India, and Singapore.
- Starting a business as a mother of four, aiming at transforming mortgage valuations around the world, and the value of getting support from her husband.
- Having a monopoly by introducing groundbreaking and new technology that was cloud-based, configurable, and customizable.
- Growing organically and the great partnership they forged with their current investor two years ago.
- Starting off with a small founding team and growing it to just under 100 full-time employees within 6 years.
- Winning awards and being driven by collaboration and innovation.
- Working with your customers to understand their problem so you can solve it better.
- Being really good at what they do in their first 4 years by growing organically without any external funding.
- How being agile has helped them navigate even the most challenging of times including the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Building a great culture and continuously appreciating her employees.
- The importance of focusing on one product or service that meets customers’ needs.
- Ensuring every team member is aligned with the goals of the business.
- Work-Life balance from Carmen’s point of view: Understanding your values and figuring out what you’re prepared to compromise on.
- Why small business owners should look after their physical and mental health.
- The valuable support she receives from her advisory board and why she would advise every small business to have a visionary board and a playbook.
Additional Resources:
Quotes:
“Finding a problem that your business can solve is very important” – Carmen Vicelich
“Success means the freedom to choose how we wanna work and who we wanna work with” – Carmen Vicelich
“If you’re not solving a problem and you’re not bringing value then customers are not going to buy your product” – Carmen Vicelich
“Growing organically installs as real discipline” – Carmen Vicelich
“Small business ownership is not a straight line” – Carmen Vicelich
“To be the right leader for a business, you have to continue to grow” – Carmen Vicelich
“Building a small business takes blood, sweat, and tears” – Carmen Vicelich
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