Christie Whitehill is an entrepreneur and mentor in the Australian tech space. She is CEO of Hatching Lab—an innovation and tech partner to startups and corporates, co-founder of Poppy Renegade—a movement to empower women to stand tall in all facets of life, and creator of the Tech Ready® program for women—an 8-week accelerator course specifically designed for non-tech female founders who want to step confidently into the tech space.
Christie is dedicated to empowering and educating women in startups, tech and innovation. In 2016 she was recognised as one of the Top 50 Women in Tech by Startup Daily.
Tell us about Tech Ready Program.
Tech Ready is an 8 week accelerator course that connects female entrepreneurs with highly regarded industry experts to mentor and support them. Over the 8 weeks they develop skills and confidence to validate their business idea and to select the appropriate technology platform to build their Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
What inspired you to start Tech Ready Program? You have another business called Hatching Lab – how do the two interact?
I started Hatching Lab three and a half years ago with the intention to help non-tech entrepreneurs validate their ideas, and build their MVP. Over those years Hatching Lab’s core focus has been software development services for entrepreneurs and corporates and over the last year we started making the shift towards tech education. Tech Ready is a our first program and it has been a vision of mine since I started out in tech as a non-tech founder. Women very under represented in the tech industry and I felt their was a huge gap for a skills development program to give women the tools and the knowledge to step confidently in the tech space and create successful businesses and innovative products.
Tell us about your career and background.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs so being an entrepreneur is in my blood. I was one of those kids who set up lemonade stands out the front of my house. Before I started my own business at 25, I travelled and worked in retail management. The first idea I had for a tech startup was in 2012. The idea which I started with my friend was a dating website called Fancy My Friend. The concept involved friends recommending their single friends. I learnt a lot about not what to do when it comes to building tech startup in those early days! Since then, I’ve been involved in the design and build over over 25 different products.
Describe a typical work day for you.
I have a 9 month old son and I like to spend at least an hour with him in the morning, so I usually don’t get into the office until 9.30am. No day is really typical at the moment, however, I do have regular standup meetings with the team, catch up on emails and I’m usually in meetings most of the day.
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business? What do you think are some of the fundamental differences between starting a traditional business vs a tech business.
If you’re thinking about starting a business, be sure the spend the time doing customer research and interview as many potential customers as you can. Focus on solving a problem. Forget about trying to build a solution until you know you’re solving a big enough problem.
What’s next for you, and your businesses?
We’re about to launch a series of one day Tech Ready master classes and will be soon launching the program in Melbourne and Brisbane.
