- 8 July 2022
- Posted by: Canberra Innovation Network
- Categories: Coworking, Startup Stories & Profiles
Among the entrepreneurs in Canberra Innovation Network’s coworking space you’ll find a mix of startups. Let us introduce you to Brent Wijnberg, General Manager and Co-founder of Smartlox, as we find out more about what he does!
Let’s start with the origin of your Smartlox? How did you get to where you are now?
There are 3 partners who all met while working at Seeing Machines in Canberra. The other 2 business partners are based in Melbourne and Perth. We have a consultancy business that focuses on technology applications across logistics, agriculture and mining sectors. Out of talking to a number of companies, we realised that access control was a big growth area and nobody was focusing on it for remote, isolated and offline locations. So we decided to do it.
That’s great! We love to hear what comes about from entrepreneurs connecting with each other. Can you tell us about what you are working on?
Building a lock agnostic app that allows the easy sharing of digital keys. It’s a B2B solution that will enable organisations that have remote locations get the same quality of access control that you would expect from a well connected, modern, inner city building. The end goal is to eliminate keys. To be clear, I’m in sales & marketing and I leave it to the experts to do the actual app building.
Describe your business journey in three words
Fun hard work
What’s on your daily to-do list?
Speak to someone who can become a customer
Get rejected a few times
Have fun
So important to have fun! What are you looking forward to achieving in the next 12 months?
The business is in it’s infancy and in the next 12 months I want to be faced with big decisions. I want to truly validate what we are working on. Constantly refine and pivot a few times.
What’s your favourite thing about being part of CBRIN’s coworking space?
Working around people who have also taken the plunge and are trying to build something new or different. Some will fail and some will succeed, but we are all giving it a crack.
Is there something you’re proud of and would like to share with the CBRIN community?
Smart access for remote locations of course. Talk to me if you have a problem that needs to be solved.
Fantastic, thank you Brent. You make such a wonderful contribution to our coworking community!
If you’re interested in finding out more about our coworking space, book in a tour to come see us.