Brian O’Farrell (Image: Balancing the Grind)
Company Description📝
Furthr is a Card-Linked Loyalty Platform that leverages the payment infrastructure of card schemes and payment processors. We have partnered with 400 online and in-store brands across 1,600 locations. With our platform, customers can earn an average of 5% cashback every time they make a purchase at these brands. This not only allows them to save money, but also increases their loyalty to the brands they love. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
We partner with 20+ Publishers (Banks, FinTechs and consumer-facing apps) who have over 4 million customers helping them do more of what they love from saving money, donating to charities, investing in stocks or crypto, sponsoring their local sports clubs and more.
Company Location 🗺️
We are Headquartered in Sydney but we have people living in Melbourne, Dublin, India and sometimes in Campervans just keen to mix up their office.
Company Stage 🚀
We raised a $1.5m Seed round in 2022 from AfterWork VC and a bunch of incredible Angel Investors from Segment, PayPal, Stripe, DataDog, Rothschilds and more, who’ve acted as an extended team which we are incredibly grateful for.
Company Origin🧑🍳
I intended for it to be a Travel App as my business partner Nathalie Mann and I weren’t born in Australia and personally every year I was met with a dilemma…
I was lucky enough to be able to save for one holiday a year and had to choose between adventuring for fun which I found rejuvenating, or visiting my friends and family back home in Dublin for Christmas. Home won every time.
But I always wished for that adventure, so we thought if we could build an app to solve many things travel-related, including the ability to save 5% on everyday purchases, I hoped to fund the additional days or weeks of travel.
“COVID struck and people thought we were mad building a travel app which was kinda fun. We were incredibly lucky to have friends to advise us – a multipurpose app is nearly impossible to scale especially on a shoestring budget!”
Brian O’Farrell
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Our founding team consisted of a small but remarkable group of individuals from within the travel industry. This tight-knit team, driven by a shared passion, were eager to bring our vision to life. While, like any startup, we’ve faced our fair share of challenges, the journey has been overwhelmingly positive and filled with excitement.
What Does it Mean to be an Irish Founder Abroad? ☘️
Exciting, you get this inner feeling when you are out of your known environment trying to build new networks and want to make your friends, family and old teachers back home proud. It’s also a reminder that those D’s and E’s in school don’t define your potential; what matters is the passion and determination you bring to what interests you.
Australia has been an amazing support network on top of all the Irish out here, everyone has been helpful beyond belief, wanting to help you succeed, and offering words of wisdom.
To be honest, I never thought about being an entrepreneur and one day found myself a little lost career-wise, I spoke to my two Irish friends I moved over with who said: “Why don’t you do something yourself, you can do this!” My brother said “Go fail, you’re gonna learn so much it’s a win-win” so that day I just decided to give my own thing a crack.
What’s one bit of advice you would tell yourself when you first emigrated?✈️
Work with people you love to work with and know what you are selling inside out. But at the end of the day work is work – rejuvenate, have a sauna, walk, swim and laugh but don’t make every day about you.
For me true fulfillment lies in the everyday acts of kindness that bring joy to others. Whether it’s a smile to a stranger, or a helping hand to a friend.
Brian O’Farrell
But always try and get home to the Emerald Isle as often as you can to see your amazing family. 💚