Pageup People
Smart50 rank: 26
Revenue: $8.20 million
Growth: 48.25%
Founders: Simon Cariss, 34; Karen Cariss, 33
Based: Victoria
Employees: 62
Industry: Information technology
Website: www.pageuppeople.com
Husband-and-wife team Simon and Karen Cariss started PageUp People in 1997 as a custom software development firm, but the most important job it every got was an internal one.
In 1999, PageUp was hiring a developer and built a piece of recruitment technology to help manage the hundreds of applications being received. It quickly became obvious that PageUp had just solved a problem that many companies had, and PageUp quickly entered the recruitment sector.
But convincing people of the value of the solution was not easy. Luckily, one early client, Adecco, helped Simon and Karen win ANZ, which in turn helped secure the Australian Taxation Office as a client.
“Then we had a story,” Simon says. “We could say ‘our clients include Adecco, ANZ, ATO – and that’s just the ‘A’s’!’”
The company’s blue-chip client base now includes plenty of companies starting with plenty of other letters, including Fairfax, Foster’s and Flight Centre. Revenue has grown at an average annual rate of 48.25% in the past two years. It was $5.45 million last year, and hit $8.2 million in 2007-08.
The next big goal for the company is to increase its overseas customer base. The company has offices in New York, Shanghai and London (where it also has a data centre) and money is being poured into marketing.
“As the product is now beginning to gain some clients and brand awareness in the global market, the challenge now is to get the infrastructure and the people on the ground to capitalise on the product and brand’s equity,” Simon says.
