Start-up introduction
LAB3 is an Australian-based start-up company that was established in 2017 and, over the past five years, has experienced tremendous growth. In mid-2021, the firm had over 300 employees and saw its operations expand to New Zealand. LAB3 strengthens businesses and governments to grow and accelerate without fear by providing them with managed, automated, reliable, and scalable cloud technology. The organization works in close collaboration with Microsoft, especially Microsoft Azure, to ensure that optimal value for clients is achieved on matters concerning cloud computing. LAB3’s chief executive officer Chris Cook is a fearless inspirational leader and has made it clear that his main goal is to see the companies grow and modernize quickly. This start-up organization mainly focuses on the two countries mentioned above, but it has recently begun to make a global impact thanks to its ready-made solutions for clients.
LAB3 offers a variety of services for its diverse range of clients. It seeks to empower them by giving modernized computing systems enabling them to offer differentiated products and services. The venture also targets governments to ensure they achieve quick cloud adoption, mainly with its partners Azure, hybrid, or multi-cloud, and have the governments serve people better. LAB3 further focuses on healthcare institutions by ensuring that healthcare information is stored and managed securely. Additionally, the Start-up analyzes health data on behalf of the institutions and draws insights from it, helping the institutions in decision-making. Other organizations targeted by LAB3 include independent software vendors (ISVs), mining companies, and utility companies.
One of the leading roles that LAB3 performs is providing cloud and DevOps services. DevOps involve the combination of tools, practices, and cultural philosophies and improving services by combining software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the system development life cycle (Leite et al., 2019; Borst and Seeck, 2018). Due to the massive data available to them, the organization also provides solutions by helping clients make data-driven decisions. The studies have proved that organizations that use big data for decision-making have a competitive advantage over their counterparts (Shan et al., 2019; He et al., 2021; Fernández, 2020). Powered by coding and programming skills and driven by automation and machine learning algorithms, LAB3 provides its client’s solutions that keep them a step ahead of the competition, thus making its services invaluable. Another significant role the start-up plays is providing fast, secure, and reliable networks that connect its clients to the rest of the world. Additionally, LAB3 offers other solutions to its users, such as ensuring a secure work environment, a modernized workplace, and effectively managed services.
One of the major fears that LAB3 addressed is the fear faced by many agricultural businesses of making losses. The start-up under analysis addressed this problem by making the best farming decisions on behalf of farmers. LAB3 helped AgBioEn to be able to grow more food in a smaller piece of land. Moreover, it targets organizations in the construction industry to help them do their projects. It has helped CTO- a client- build property cost-effectively, as seen on the company’s website (LAB3, n.d.). LAB3 focuses on ensuring that government bodies tap on the power of data and has used its technological leverage to help Yarra Trams make Melbourne a more citizen-friendly city.
The company’s goal is to provide financial institutions with fully automated scalability and 100% cloud consumption optimization. It has dealt with this type of problem and helped Australian Neobank have $60,000 in savings per month (LAB3, n.d.). In their mission of ensuring they help healthcare industries transition to cloud services for data storage, LAB3 ensured that Hearing Australia transitioned to fully modernized Azure in just 12 months. The company, through data, is also able to understand the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and studied the old equipment for GM, an Australian equipment manufacturer, and helped them reduce wastage by 30% (LAB3, n.d). Moreover, the firm has a good record in improving retail and visibility for utilities and retail companies.
Process of Venture Creation
All organizations follow a somehow similar process during their creation. The five standard phases of creating a new venture are idea generation, opportunity evaluation, planning, company formation/launch, and growth (Davidsson and Gruenhagen, 2020). LAB3 has followed a long way to become the multidimensional company it is today. The company was formed by three men who signed a partnership agreement to form the company back in 2017. The partnership’s main goal was to change how cloud computing was done in Melbourne and Australia at large.
They understood the gap in the Australian market of having many businesses in need of cloud computing solutions and provided it. This method is called opportunity-based entrepreneurship and has been found to correlate positively with the success of a new venture (He, Nazari, Zhang, & Cai, 2020). The opportunity-based framework, as shown in figure 1, combines regulative, normative, and cognitive factors to know to identify the best opportunity in the market. The trio preferred the pecking order theory when forming the start-up, where internal financing was preferred over external one (Ahmad and Atniesha, 2018). Two of the founders are still part of the organization’s leadership, with Chris Cook serving as the organization’s chief executive officer.
Value Proposition
The value proposition for LAB3 is to fear less and achieve more. By helping their clients with issues such security of their data, the clients can focus more on achieving their goals rather than trying to deal with data. A deep look at clients’ feedback after dealing with LAB3 shows that the company seeks to deliver its promises. LAB3 expresses that cloud computing services offer a platform to store data safely and use the data to drive insights. Studies have shown that organizations with great value propositions are likely to achieve more success than those without (Fernandes et al., 2020). Therefore, a sound product service system should be matched with an excellent proposition, as LAB3 has done (Blomsma et al., 2018). Most of the leaders of the organization’s different departments also have their favorite statements to express how they will offer values, all of which seek to ensure that clients will be fearless in following their goals.
Entrepreneurial Marketing and Finance
There are numerous entrepreneurial marketing strategies that an organization can adopt when starting as a venture firm. The most common include the four Ps comprising product, price, place, and promotion (Lim, 2021). Of the four, LAB3 mainly focused on the product, in this case, their services offered through Azure and other computing platforms. It has also focused on promotion, ensuring that all those clients who have received exceptional services can offer their five-star ratings. In the initial stages, the venture focused on gaining finances from internal sources such as equity capital. However, as the organization’s growth has continued, the company has been forced to leverage finances from the outside. Therefore, the organization has used the pecking order and trade-off theory for five years.
Recommendations
It would be recommendable that LAB3 would expand its operations to countries other than Australia and New Zealand. Globalizing in the IT industry would not take much investment capital compared to what other brick-and-mortar industries have to incur. However, care should be taken to ensure they understand the legal procedures of the new geographical locations they expand to. The organization could also seek to expand by increasing its services portfolio.
Reference List
Ahmad, N.S.M. and Atniesha, R.A.A. (2018) ‘The Pecking Order Theory and Start-up Financing of Small and Medium Enterprises: Insight into Available Literature in the Libyan Context,’ Financial Markets, Institutions, and Risks, 2(4), pp.5–12.
Borst, A.H. and Seeck, H. (2018) Reuniting IT Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops).
Blomsma, F., Kjaer, L., Pigosso, D., McAloone, T. and Lloyd, S. (2018) ‘Exploring Circular Strategy Combinations – towards Understanding the Role of PSS. Procedia CIRP, 69, pp.752–757.
Davidsson, P. and Gruenhagen, J.H. (2021) ‘Fulfilling the process promise: A review and agenda for new venture creation process research,’ Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 45(5), pp.1083-1118.
He, J., Nazari, M., Zhang, Y. and Cai, N. (2020) ‘Opportunity-based entrepreneurship and environmental quality of sustainable development: A resource and institutional perspective,’ Journal of Cleaner Production, 256, p.120390.
Fernandes, S. da C., Pigosso, D.C.A., McAloone, T.C. and Rozenfeld, H. (2020) ‘Towards product-service system oriented to circular economy: A systematic review of value proposition design approaches,’ Journal of Cleaner Production, 257, p.120507.
Fernández Lizana, M.I. (2020) ‘Advantages of R as a tool for data Analysis and Visualization in Social Sciences,’ Rev. ciente. UCSA, pp.97-111.
LAB3. (n.d.). LAB3 | DevOps Networking Solutions, Consulting, Managed IT Services, IOT. [online]
Leite, L., Rocha, C., Kon, F., Milojicic, D. and Meirelles, P. (2019) ‘A survey of DevOps concepts and challenges,’ ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 52(6), pp.1-35.
Lim, W.M. (2021) ‘A marketing mix typology for integrated care: The 10 Ps,’ Journal of Strategic Marketing, 29(5), pp.453-469.
Nazari, E., Biviji, R., Farzin, A.H., Asgari, P. and Tabesh, H. (2021) ‘Advantages and challenges of information fusion technique for big data analysis: Proposed framework,’ Journal of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, 7(2), pp.189-216.
Shan, S., Luo, Y., Zhou, Y., and Wei, Y. (2019) ‘Big data analysis adaptation and enterprises’ competitive advantages: The perspective of dynamic capability and resource-based theories,’ Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 31(4), pp.406-420.