Frustration is a word Brad Moran might use to describe his footy career, but it was also definitely the source of a bright idea that gave birth to his life after football.
Retiring from AFL football before the end of the 2011 season after seven injury-riddled years and 21 games at the Kangaroos and Crows, Moran immediately shifted his focus to the development of mobile ordering application, NoQ.
As its name suggests, NoQ is an application that allows the user to dodge the queue by pre-ordering food and drink using an iTunes style payment model.
Moran launched the product onto the market in 2011 and within three months a major bank knocked on its door with a significant investment of capital and technology.
He makes raising money sound pretty simply, but it wasn’t. Moran was walking into the office of potential investors on crutches following a knee reconstruction, insisting his current physical state wasn’t a metaphor for what he was selling – in fact he received more than 50 knock backs before landing his first investor.
“That first phone call is the hardest one because you don’t know where to start,” he says.
“But every time you get knocked back you realise what the next guy wants.
“You felt like giving up after 10, after 20 and a lot of guys do, but you just have to keep going.
“It’s no different to football, you get knocked back by the coach or different things but you learn from your mistakes and know that if you keep trying, eventually you’ll get better and you’ll crack it and get your first opportunity.”
“It’s no different to football, you get knocked back by the coach or different things but you learn from your mistakes and know that if you keep trying, eventually you’ll get better and you’ll crack it and get your first opportunity.”
Without life as an AFL footballer, there might have been 50 more doors slammed in his face before that first break arrived. But Moran says seven years in the AFL system left him with more than a book full of contacts.
“I think that football teaches you resilience, discipline and hard work. A lot of people use those terms in corny expressions but the guys that really do have those three things, they are the guys that end up being successful in no matter what they do.”
“Business is exactly like football in the sense that you are obviously going to get some bad luck and I got some bad luck in football…but life is a journey. Whether you are successful at football or the next thing, you just have to keep applying your hard work and you have to make the right decisions.”
Sitting in Melbourne’s QV cinemas before Adelaide played Essendon back in 2009, with a hankering for Nachos, Moran was convinced the iphone 2 in his pocket had the ability to satisfy his hunger without missing the movie.
Six months on and another knee injury later, NoQ was born.
NoQ is being utilised by a number of stores, including IGA supermarkets, Fasta Pasta and national franchise Pie Face which has 80 stores around the country and in the US.
“Their consumers can pre-order and pay for coffee, food and catering using their mobile device and then when they get to the store, it’s there,” he says.
“We basically provide both the out of store and in-store digital experience.
“It’s really feeding into that convenience market.”
Moran charges around $50 thousand for a customised mobile application.
An innovative business idea waits for no one and Moran believes being first on the market with his product was crucial to its early success.
He got the ball rolling on his idea while still an Adelaide Crow, but once he committed full-time, things really started to come together.
“I had lost that passion for football and I knew without it (passion) I wouldn’t ever be successful,” he says.
“I thought I would part ways with football and continue my business given that I thought it had more legs than my legs.
“I thought of football as another 3-5 year career, whereas the business could set me up for life and I wasn’t going to miss that opportunity.”
When Moran left the Crows his priority was to assemble a new team, this team didn’t need a centre-half-forward or a tagger, it needed money and know-how.
“I founded a business plan and a capital raising document. I then went and had a chat with a few high network guys I knew, the first one being Rob Chapman who was the Crows chairman at the time and also the Bank South Australia CEO.”
“He put me on the right track and said what I needed to do. From there I went and raised one million dollars worth of angel capital investment from 20 guys in Adelaide and have since raised a further $4.5 million to fund the continual growth of the company .“
Moran admits he is no tech-head and he doesn’t have a university degree. His business model is based around common sense, instinct and a team of quality people with specific expertise.
He built a board from the pick of the most influential business people in South Australia and now has a staff of 23 who take care of the technology side of things.
“I was able to utilise what I had in football, which was the contacts and avenues for advice and I lent on a few people to get my business off the ground.”
“The reality is I don’t know everything about software, I don’t know everything about business, but I know guys that do and the inclination that I had to go and speak to them, get their advice and ask the dumb questions; lots of them.
“Football set me up beautifully for that, it taught me a hell of a lot about personal development, which gave me the skill-set to take into business afterwards.”
For AFL footballers or anyone looking to invest in a business or make their bright idea a reality, Moran believes the key component is its people.
“People get very wowed by product and they want themselves to believe it’s going to be successful. What you need to look at is who is behind it and who is driving it…you have to look at the team behind them. What’s the creditability like? What’s the passion? What’s the vision?”
“I think there are two key booms for business in the next five years and it’s going to be convenience – from an e-commerce ordering digital experience and the other is the fulfillment.
“Anything that feeds that instant gratification of the customer, that’s the market to get into.”
Moran hopes to move the business to Sydney within the next six months before expanding globally, starting with the West Coast America. He hopes the value of the business is north of $100 million in five years -“That’s the dream.”
He has returned to football for SANFL side West Adelaide, this time it’s fun, not business.
Born in England, Moran started playing AFL at 17 years old and then retired at just 24. Put simply, he rocked up late and left early, like every good queue jumper should.
Visit Noq.com.au to see some of brad’s work