James Chin Moody, founder and CEO of Sendle, comes from a long line of engineers – his father, great-great-grandfather and others were engineers. He was even named after John Bradfield, a relative who is best-known for his involvement in the Sydney Harbour Bridge. [Moody was formerly known as James Bradfield Moody.]
From a very early age, Chin Moody knew he wanted to be an engineer – he enjoyed pulling things apart and problem-solving.
At 17, he was given an opportunity to do cosmonaut training in Russia, which gave him a taste for both the scope of what engineering could do and the fact that it was a multifaceted career.
“I’m pretty amazed that my parents let me go. At that time, it was almost impossible to get a phone call in or out of Russia, so it was a bit like sending me off to a black hole for a couple of weeks,” Chin Moody said.
Chin Moody went on to study electrical engineering at university, where he was also involved in space research.
While he was at university, he became involved in Young Engineers Australia, going on to become National President of the association and also named one of the top 100 most influential engineers by Engineers Australia in 2015.
“I think engineering is interesting because it’s not just about being an engineer, it’s actually about a way of thinking. It’s a way of taking a problem and fixing that problem and finding a solution to it,” Chin Moody said.
This way of thinking led Chin Moody down the path of being an entrepreneur in the digital world.
In 2012, Chin Moody had just finished up seven years at CSIRO on the executive team in business development, when he realised he wanted to wanted to go back to building something that could make a difference.
As he wanted to do this in the commercial sphere, it meant starting his own company, Sendle, a courier business where customers use a web app to access the company’s services.
This entrepreneurial journey has been one of constant learning and twists and turns along the way.
In the early stages of Sendle, Chin Moody made a list of what a postal service for the digital economy needed.
During this process, he identified 14 different “pain points” for small businesses. For example, lining up at the post office and complicated pricing plans for postal delivery.
Along with finding solutions for these pain points, from an engineering perspective, he also wanted to ensure that everything was in the cloud and had multiple redundancy.
“You don’t get a second shot at doing these things, so you have to make sure you’ve got multiple redundancy and that everything scales very well,” he said.
Moving from engineer to entrepreneur
Chin Moody said engineers who might be considering starting their own business need to ensure they have a problem that needs to be solved, and really come to love the problem they’re tackling.
“I talk to other entrepreneurs, and if you dig into it, the problem they’re solving might not be painful enough, because the pain involved in that problem is what becomes the very heart of your business model and becomes the thing that motivates you,” he said.
Really immersing yourself in the problem will help you understand it, Chin Moody said, and allow you to move on to the next stage.
He said time is also really important for start-ups – running out of time means running out of money.
“So time, for a startup, is the most crucial resource, and finding ways of using that time effectively,” he said.
Chin Moody also recommends engineers who are looking to become entrepreneurs to become really good at marketing, or find people who are good at it – he said too often someone might have a great problem and a great product to solve it, but they never get that product to market because they’re unable to find the right channels.
Challenges for engineers
Chin Moody said the challenge for engineers today isn’t necessarily about specializing in any one area, but starting to work out how engineers can interface with other professions.
He said doing this involves drawing on the strength that engineers have around how they see the world and their ability to solve problems.
He would also like to see more engineers use their skillset in politics in Australia.
“I think that there’s a certain amount of problem solving and analytical thinking that the engineering profession could bring to the political sphere. If you look at some other countries, there are quite a few engineers in politics,” he said.
“Engineers sometimes have a reputation for being very black and white about things, but I don’t know that that’s true anymore.”