Imperfect Company is a podcast from Glitch Capital where Leigh Jasper and Sam Kroonenburg, two founders who've built billion-dollar exits and are going again, sit down with founders to talk about their journey: the false starts, the bad hires, the pivots, and the unglamorous calls that happen when you build at scale.

This episode: Mark Finn, co-founder of Melbourne-based Roller, the venue management platform that is the market leader in the US, running thousands of theme parks, trampoline parks, museums and attractions around the world, with roughly 70% of its business in the US.

Mark and his brother Luke started out building a booking system for Melbourne jazz clubs when until an inbound email from a Geelong adventure park revealed a far bigger opportunity: an entire leisure and attractions industry still running on legacy, on-prem software.

Mark takes Leigh and Sam through the tactical calls: how he earned a bigger TAM numbers and won by owning a niche first, how a 20 year old backpacker from his team cracked the UK, how they focused on anchor customers in the US early and why they embedded payments during COVID, using M&A to acquire competitors and roll their customers onto Roller, staying capital-efficient through the zero-interest-rate years, and building a US team when "Americans aren't Australians." This is the honest version of company building. Imperfect, on purpose.

Chapters

00:00 — From Melbourne jazz clubs to a US market leader

1:20 From Macquarie & PwC to building with his brother

6:30 Cracking the UK with one salesperson and £30k

8:00 on the ground in the US: Coney Island & Sky Zone

13:18 Bootstrapping, angels and the Australian VC "no"

16:40 Why big TAMs are a trap: win the niche, earn the right to expand

24:14 Embedding payments — and moving into capital & lending

34:20 The worst day: 23 March 2020

49:00 M&A as a growth engine: three acquisitions

New episodes coming soon. Follow/subscribe so you don't miss one.

→ Follow Glitch Capital on LinkedIn.

→ Subscribe to Imperfect Company on YouTube:

→ Connect with Leigh:

→ Connect with Sam:

→ Connect with Mark Finn:

→ Learn more about ROLLER here.

→ Got a question for Leigh & Sam, or a founder story we should cover? Send it to them on LinkedIn, and we'll answer listener questions on the show with our guests.