From an ill-fated move into a full service agency model to becoming a trailblazing UX specialist acquired by Deloitte, New Republique has been on a journey to the top. Here, founder Nima Yassini tells his story.
I never meant to start my own business. It was an accident that went horribly right – a theme I’ve noticed over my career: to find something that works, you have to try things that don’t.
I started my career in the dotcom era, bouncing from ad agency to tech company trying to figure out where I fit. One formative experience was being fired from a role I was not qualified for. Out of the devastation it became the best thing that happened to me. That low point led me to commit to being great at something – the trick was I needed to find out what.
I remember picking up AdNews – in print – and circling companies whose brands kept cropping up as doing something progressive. I landed a job at BMC Media, which sold advertising on third-party websites. I worked 16-hour days and committed myself to learning everything sales and technology. I started selling SEO via BMCOptimise in the early days of Google. At my next role, at Glass Onion, I found my love for UX and UI and decided to be exceptional at it.
Commitment is often rewarded with attention, and I’ve been fortunate to learn from mentors who saw that spark in me: Anthony Bertini at BMC Media; Danin Kahn at Glass Onion, who taught me about running a small business; Tim Hipperson at RMG Connect in London on running a global business; and Tony O’Toole, who taught me about brand and comms planning. The power of sharing expertise is another thing I learnt from them, and something I’m determined to carry forward in my career.
Go deep, not wide – the birth of New Republique
Returning from London, I brought home some new ideas and started consulting under New Republique, my solo brand. The demand from the market for someone who connected brand and user experience meant the one-man brand accidentally grew into a business.
Like many small businesses, we were prone to mistakes. A major one was becoming a full-service agency by saying ‘yes’ to our biggest client. Anything they asked us to do, even outside our direct area of expertise, we fulfilled. We grew – in the wrong direction. When that client walked, almost two-thirds of our business collapsed.
In the depths of soul-searching, I reached out to my then-fiancée, now wife, Stacey Isaac. She ran a successful fashion business at the time, and I managed to convince her to join New Republique. She looked at the numbers and realised we were spread wide, when we should have gone deep. With her designer’s sensibility and business brain and my UX knowledge and digital experience, together we relaunched New Republique. We’d tried to be a full-service agency and it hadn’t worked; Stacey took us back to being a niche UX business.
The last piece of the puzzle was yet to fall. I remember talking to a client whose proposed website redesign defied the standards of the internet. They favoured their ‘gut feel’ over best practice. It was then I realised that if we could blend our knowledge of UX with data to validate designs, then we had a point of difference. Experimentation came to the fore. We rewrote our mission and values to align with this new focus and almost overnight we went from losing pitches to winning work without pitching; from not knowing why we existed to having purpose; and to working with Australia’s and the world’s largest brands.
After 12 years, we knew that to share the power of experimentation with the world more effectively we would need a bigger platform.
Deloitte became that platform for us. Their dedication to helping us grow, and excitement in our approach, showed us how all stakeholders – clients, staff, partners – could progress if we integrated.
We realised that joining them would allow us to have their incredibly smart, talented and friendly people on our side to continue to tell this story in a much more powerful way, and at scale.
But finding a like-minded business like a large professional services firm is not easy – and our team joining Deloitte was a mix of timing and happy accident.
Through a mutual introduction we quickly found a meeting of the minds. Deloitte has a very structured approach to adding capability and client offerings that is centered on getting to know the people. The core of their focus was on us as the the leaders of New Republique, and the team.
The process was steamlined and tight. The first meeting focused on the parties getting to know each other and understand what both are great at. Our second meeting focused on the team and what we would bring to Deloitte. And our final meeting was about the business and performance.
I have to say, I have never met a group so organised, respectful and open to how we felt through the process.
Stacey and I are excited by the opportunity to leverage the clout of a multinational to show how experimentation can transform a business has a far-reaching impact and we’re now in position to execute that mission.
Not bad for one guy who never meant to start a business.
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