When times are tough, make lemonade, says founder

Founder Angie Judge, like countless others before her, left a trip to the Smithsonian feeling inspired. Where she differed was her source of inspiration – a security guard ‘clicker counting’ each visitor. 

With a background in network analytics, she immediately saw the need for data transformation for visitor attractions.

Not knowing much about the sector, Judge started talking to people, going so far as to spend a month in a museum director’s office. She also attended industry conferences in both New Zealand and the US “just to see the industry at large”. 

She says this helped her validate that she was “somewhat on the right path”. 

A decade later, her moment of inspiration has turned into Dexibit, a startup that uses visitor data, machine learning and forecasting to allow institutions to know more about their visitors to serve them better. It’s markedly different from Judge’s original vision – largely thanks to the market – but she says its central purpose of democratising data remains.

Dexibit's customers include cultural institutions such as museums, zoos, parks and libraries, and commercial attractions like theme parks, stadiums, ski resorts and family entertainment centres. In a full-circle moment, the Smithsonian is one of its clients. 

Though based in Auckland, Dexibit has a satellite office in Washington DC, which helps provide access to cultural institutions in New York and throughout the US. Judge says having a physical presence there has been critical. 

New Zealand is used to dealing with international vendors, but that’s not the case in the US, she says. An American customer looks for permanence and an understanding of the local market and if you want to attract them, you have to be there, she says. 

Today, Dexibit works with nearly 400 million visitors, with 95 percent of its revenue derived from the US. While hit hard by Covid, it has bounced back to growing in double and triple digits each year.

Even with the economic crunch, people are still going out and having a good time, she says. “Our sector is still very much enjoying the gift of its recovery.” 

Here Judge speaks with Caffeine about her founder journey: 

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What do you wish you had known starting out that you learned along the way?

In a software company, research and development are your largest investment. 

Making a good product is not simply ‘I’ve got this great idea, let’s do it’ more so than it is letting the product evolve in its own way, based on the ideas of the team and the shape the customer gives. That can be hard because it involves letting go of all the ego and decision making in product-land. 

I’m fortunate to work with the most exceptional product and design team and thinkers who can tackle the existential decisions that a tech company like us has to make, such as ‘what is your product, what goes into it, what are you going to work on next, what are you going to invest your money for the next year?’ 

It makes a big difference between something good and something great.

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What went wrong along the way? 

The hardest thing we’ve had to deal with as a company was going through the pandemic when every visitor attraction closed. It taught me that sometimes the things you fear the most are the best for you in the long run. In the interim, you have to learn to make lemonade. 

The irony is, if it weren’t for the pandemic we wouldn’t be the business we are today. We rebuilt our product from the ground up because everything we knew changed. We redid our brand, changed how we spoke in the market and how we produced content. 

As visitor attractions started reopening post-Covid, which was so unique in New Zealand, we did all sorts of crazy stuff to share their stories – even jumping off the Sky Tower. It was probably the best time of my career. We had thousands tuning in. I was recently in the US and people were coming up to me and talking about that content and how important it was for them back then. 

In a non-business-like approach, sometimes you have to trust that it will work out as it should. I wouldn’t want to do it again, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

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Who did you work with that’s been helpful in your journey? 

A lot of the inspiration for me comes from our customers. 

When you’re a founder and start a company, the act of starting is very small. Living it day after day, year after year, is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. 

You must have that energy source that will power you through. You must be married to your problem and customers for better or worse. That’s really important through the long journey that is taking a startup from New Zealand to the world. 

We work with some of the most breathtaking places on the planet. I can’t think of anything I would rather do than support the people doing the important work of preserving our history and culture for future generations, who somehow talk about the difficult issues while still bringing fun and delight to visitors. 

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What’s the best advice you ever received? 

The most impactful thing I’ve done for my leadership journey has been taking part in a course called Leadership at Play by a group called the Play Contemporary Leadership Lab – Sandy Burgham runs it. 

I expected it to be a usual leadership course – advice from HR and the like. Instead, it was more like group therapy, meditation and journaling, focussing on you as a human being. It was the most transformative experience of my life, professionally and personally. 

In the course, they advised: don’t play not to lose. What they meant by that was that quite often, when making a decision or strategising something, we often play our cards not to lose. That is very different from playing your cards to win. 

When you permit yourself to play to win, it changes the risks you take. It changes your mindset so you’re not doing it from a place of fear; you’re doing it from a place of freedom. 

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What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur? 

Don’t do it if you have any doubts. It is harder than it looks. It is not an inch as glamorous as it looks. It’s just a lot of hard work, pain and sacrifice – I’m not really selling it. 

But, if you’re 100 percent sure you must do it, then the richness it brings, the experience and the people, the way it will shape you, is life changing. 

There is no room for half in, half out. 

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What was your first entrepreneurial moment? 

As a kid, I dreamed of building an underwater hotel and, ironically, a visitor attraction on the Great Barrier Reef. The idea was you could stay underwater and see all the sharks swimming in their natural environment – I was obsessed with sharks.

I got to the point where I went and found an architect to teach me how to draw architectural diagrams so I could design this hotel – I was an obsessive kid. I made this elaborate hotel plan and had this book I would carry everywhere, filled with architectural drawings and business strategies. 

One day, our family dog was throwing up. My mother, in an attempt to stop him from vomiting on the carpet, grabbed the book and shoved it under his mouth. He spewed all over my life’s work. That was the first hurdle in my entrepreneurial learning.