Changing the game with Wilson Casado - Aprill Allen

2022 was a busy year and I was lucky enough to finish it off with a conversation with Aprill Allen.

Aprill is the COO and co-founder of Tractor Ventures, an initiative focused on providing technology start-ups from Australia and New Zealand with non-dilutive strategic funding in order to foster their growth.

Along with her business and life partner, Matt Allen, Aprill boasts an investment portfolio of over 50 companies and provides her process improvement expertise to the companies supported by Tractor ventures.

Fridays Off

Stepping out of the confines of her bio, Aprill tells us how she met her husband Matt while working for the Australian telecommunications company One.Tel in the late 90’s. She would eventually leave the company to become a solo consultant before joining Tractor full time.

Tractor has a “Fridays off” policy which Aprill uses to work on her art studio and can often be found painting on Fridays in between enjoying her weekend with her husband and two teenage sons.

Not having gone through any graduation in the field of technology beyond a computing certificate from the Computer Power Training Institute, which landed her the position in One.Tel from which she’d build the rest of her expertise through experience.

She also points out how much of what she’s learned from her current line of work came from absorbing the information that she was able to catch from observing her husband’s work as a start-up builder.

Aprill’s story is just another trail blazer open to divert from the beaten path of high school-> college -> career along with so many that we have seen on the podcast thus far. It bears repeating that there are many ways to educate a professional. College is just one of them.

Tractor Ventures

So, what’s with Tractor Ventures and “non-dilutive” funding solutions for tech businesses?

Aprill explains:

“We help tech founders who traditionally aren’t super attracted to venture capital, they may not have the same aspirations, they still have ambition but don’t necessarily want to go at that rocketship pace.”

And this is the centre of tractor ventures' entire identity, most ventures try to be rocketships, they tend to be very expensive to build and tend to involve a lot of risks. Sure, there might be a big pay off if they stick to landing, but they also explode just as often.

Now tractors have the distinct advantage of being cheaper, simpler, and easier to fix, a farmer can rely safely on his tractor with the certainty that it will in all likelihood, never explode.

What tractor ventures does is support “tractor” businesses with revenue-based finance within a non-dilutive model, that is a loan that goes back to the fund through a top line share of the monthly revenue.

Tractor Ventures still supports their tech companies with everything they need, much like angel investors would, not only about their gross charges, but also with useful connections through the Tractor Ventures “village” where founders can get in touch and cooperate.

The Story thus far

The story of tractor ventures goes back to the year of 2012 when Zero did their dual listing on an IPO on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges which paved the way for Aprill and her husband to start a self-made superfund.

Since then Aprill has advised some of the most successful vanguard companies out there, with Flowork being a worthy mention on her part, along Mr.Yum and GoTerra, helping entrepreneurs manage talents at their disposal within the company.

As Aprill told me of all the companies she has worked with, I couldn’t help but notice a glitter of excitement in her eyes when talking about how these businesses have grown, this kind of passion that is quite common amongst angel investors.

Angel Investing: Facts and Myth

The first fact about angel investing is that it tends to be very high risk, and for Aprill and Matt, who were putting in family savings on their investments, while still having to manage things as a married couple.

At first, not coming from a start-up background herself, Aprill told me how she mostly relied on her husband’s experience and “good read of a team’s ability to execute”.

That being said, they are quite different in terms of “risk appetite”, with him being more of a risk taker, whereas Aprill “wouldn’t get upset with you if you described me as conservative”, even if Matt’s more adventurous disposition has rubbed off on her over the years.

Normally, their journey towards investing in a business would start, in Aprill’s words, with Matt getting excited with a new venture, then coming home to make a second pitch to her before they decided to go ahead with the loan.

These loans tend to be no bigger than 10 to 20 thousand dollars, somewhat modest in investing terms which dispels the myth that you have to be rich in order to be an investor, and which are normally balanced with other expenditures such as mortgage.

The Next Founder

When questioned about what she and Matt are looking for in their next founder, Aprill already had the answer at the tip of her tongue:

“We’re looking for tech-enabled businesses that are making a monthly recurring revenue of at least 15 grand, and that has a history of growth over the last months, and a healthy runway of 5 to 6 months.”

That being said, Aprill and Matt have not been making as much angel investments as in the past beyond “a couple of follow-on things”, with most of their investments being made on Side-Stage, a new fund set up by Matt and some partners which launched last year.

Female Participation in Investing

According to Aprill, women in the investing world have begun to become more aware of each other and are beginning to expand their networks to include other women, something that has come with a growing conscience of who they are within that space.

However, she points out how despite these advancements, the investing sector is still far away from being anything close to diverse, which is to be expected as the sources of these problems are structural and engraved in culture.

“It has to do with women not having senior roles” she explains “boardroom roles, seat level roles, anywhere near as man do”, which means that when these women get within Aprill’s age spectrum, they lack the money to even think about investing.

Fixing this issue is going to demand a restructuring of these systems through policy and government intervention, as women investors themselves can only go so far to remedy these injustices.

Conclusion

My talk with Aprill did a great service to angel investing by dispelling the traditional view we have of an investor (black suit, top hat, money bags falling out of their pockets), and brought it closer to home. Literally.

When you talk to Aprill Allen, you have the impression that, while she certainly is an interesting person, she’s also the type of person you could meet in your neighbourhood.

She discusses the risks of investment with her husband, worries about mortgage, all the while raising two teenage sons, a far cry from the “sharks” we hear so much about. That is, she’s living proof that anyone can become an investor.

With that in mind, it’s time for today’s thought exercise: if you were going to get into investing today, what field would you pick and why?

Also, don’t forget to check my website and YouTube channel for more conversations like the one you read above.