‘Silicon beach’ mail provider eyes global market

After travelling around the world, Ben Duncan returned home in 1997 with the idea of building one of the first webmail applications. The fruit of his labour, the bare-bones, white-label service AtMail, quickly became a standard among ISPs and telcos the world over.

By 2012, the company had tens of millions of customers in more than 100 countries, yet it was still being run as a lifestyle business on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast by Duncan and his friends.

It was at that point that Duncan made a decision to explore the full potential of the business. He took on venture capital and a CEO, a management team and more rigorous systems and processes. AtMail embarked on a program of product development to make its service more attractive to the customers of telcos.

AtMail grew from eight staff in 2012 to 32, and expects to reach 50 this financial year, says chief executive Zach Johnson, who was recruited from running a tech company in Los Angeles.

Johnson implemented an agile development methodology and introduced a more mature quality of service process. For the first time in AtMail’s history, it has an outbound sales team with experienced execs on both US coasts and is rolling out a strategic marketing plan. A European office is on the cards as well.

The move has already shown results. Despite stopping all marketing and outbound sales in FY14, the company increased revenue by 40 percent and customer retention hit a record 70 percent. "There’s a tremendous amount of effort moving to a global enterprise software company," Johnson says. Perhaps unusually, the company decided to retain its premises on the Sunshine Coast – or, as they call it, ‘Silicon Beach’. Johnson says that, far from being the only tech kid on the block, there are a lot of young companies springing up in the region.

"I’m talking to the councils and the mayor and federal MPs on how we promote the Sunshine Coast as a destination not for retiring and holidays but to live and work," Johnson says. "You’re not moving here for the lifestyle and trying to find a job, you’re moving for a job and the lifestyle is a bonus."

It’s an easy message for someone in their 30s with kids who wants the weather and the schools. It’s also an easy sell to overseas hires who picture the Sunshine Coast’s beaches when they imagine Australia. The biggest challenge is hiring younger people with skills, such as senior developers with more than 10 years’ experience. AtMail has 20 positions open, as do several other local tech companies.

AtMail has also solved the regional broadband issue by tapping into a backbone for the NBN. A fibre rollout for the area was not due to start until 2017, so Johnson made a deal with TPG to connect to the fibre from the nearest joint. "We are the first company north of Maroochydore, on Peregian Beach, to have fibre," Johnson says. The company is providing free wi-fi to the village and looking at how to increase the reach of the fibre to other businesses.

With Gmail and Hotmail, Facebook Messenger and the like, is there really a future in webmail? "Our estimation is that it’s not going away any time soon. Email for consumers is still the primary mode of communications. The largest growing internet [demographic] is still the older population, and for them email is still young and fresh," Johnson says.

Email is still a unique identifier for many online services and AtMail has convinced service providers that email is a critical ingredient of their broadband bundles. Telcos might only use that email address to send the monthly bill electronically. AtMail’s mission is to add innovative features that impress the telcos’ customers, to lower the cost for telcos to manage the email service or find ways to add revenue.

AtMail has also moved from a perpetual software licence to subscription model and released a cloud service. "The cloud is becoming an increasingly attractive option for many customers," Johnson says. "We’re looking to now double our revenue year-on-year and we’re really well positioned to do that."