FUTRLI (pronounced Future-Lee) was co-founded by Amy Harris and Hannah McIntyre. You might recognise these two faces from our App Partner, CrunchBoards. It’s the same duo, but with a major rebrand. FUTRLI gives business owners and accountant’s tomorrow’s insights, today. It launched at Xerocon in Sydney in 2014 thanks to the pair running a business before and “needing it”. Hannah loves numbers, Amy does not. They needed a way to run their business that looked ahead, to the future, with integrated forecasts, what-if scenarios, dashboards, management reporting and KPI performing tracking. FUTRLI is the fastest growing Add-on in our ecosystem and their success proves they weren’t the only ones who faced this challenge. Here’s a bit about the ups and downs of their road to success.
1. Why did you want to run your own business?
Hannah: “For me it happened quite quickly. By the time I was 26, I already owned my own gastropub. That’s where Amy and I met and, for us, the rest is history. Most best mates go shopping together, we’d be at home working on our next business plan.”
Amy: “Yes, but with a bottle of wine!”
2. What surprised you the most when you started your business?
Amy: “Nothing can truly prepare you for the personal investment you’ll need to make. When you have families as supportive as ours have been then it isn’t just you that is impacted by the commitment you’ve made. The whole family are involved.”
3. When you started what was the hardest thing?
Hannah: “This will sound predictable but it is absolutely true. It was our forecast. Every business should have an operational forecast. It is your navigation system. Your security blanket to make the right decisions. We built FUTRLI because we needed it so on day 1, when no code had been written, we were in spreadsheets. Comparing multiple scenarios and planning for the best case, worst case and everything in-between was challenging.”
4. What has been the most rewarding moment?
Amy: “Can I have three?! 1) My turn to be predictable! I hate numbers. The spreadsheets we used before didn’t motivate me…they’d send me to sleep so using our own product is a pretty special feeling 2) Seeing our team come together – the sum of the whole is definitely greater than it’s parts. 3) When someone tells me what we/FUTRLI does and they are using my words.
4. What’s the one piece of advice you would give someone else about to start their own business?
Hannah: “Make sure your numbers are on point and plan for every eventuality. Make it a game to think of another scenario – the more you can consider, the more confident you can be. Also, invest in your process and automate your systems. You’re never going to want to do admin.”
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Source: Xero
