ACS has three innovation labs in Australia – Harbour City Labs in Sydney, River City Labs in Brisbane, and Bay City Labs in Melbourne.
‘A Look in the Labs’ is an Information Age series profiling the high-growth startups based in our labs – what they do, their ambitions, and the advantages they’ve gained being based at the ACS Innovation Labs.
This week, we speak with Lucas Meadowcroft, co-founder and CEO of Tribu.
Business Tribu
Established 2020
CEO Lucas Meadowcroft
Based at River City Labs, Brisbane
Online at Website
What does your business/product do and how does it help people/other businesses?
Tribu uses automation to help IT helpdesks and managed service providers (MSPs) to improve the IT support experience for everyone.
In what is believed to be a world first, it is the only program of its kind that integrates with the Autotask PSA (Datto), ConnectWise, and HaloPSA systems along with Microsoft Teams to automate the IT support help desk triage.
Tribu improves the IT support experience, providing an AI solution to the most common helpdesk issues, like prioritising workload and labelling incoming issue and sub-issue tickets.
How did the idea for your business come about?
After working in the IT industry for 17 years, we've experienced first-hand how technicians are overloaded with incoming tickets and have difficulty being productive. As a result, they get discouraged and overwhelmed leaving no room for growth.
Was being an entrepreneur always one of your life’s goals and what have you learned about being an entrepreneur?
In my heart, I believe I was always an entrepreneur but when growing up this was not a topic of conversation around the dinner table in my working class family.
I love this quote: “Working hard for something we don’t care about is called Stress, working hard for something we love is called Passion” by Simon Sinek.
What has been the biggest challenge and the biggest milestone for your business so far?
The biggest challenge was educating MSPs about innovative new solutions and changing the way they work. Right now, they are used to doing things manually, so changing people’s mindsets is hard.
The biggest milestone would be the launching of our latest product, the first fully AI solution which classifies incoming tickets to automatically be labelled with its correct issue and sub-issue. Our AI model can improve overall service delivery, resulting in faster ticket responses to requests and improved ticket management.
Where would you like your business to be in two years?
We want to be the leading provider of AI solutions for the entire help desk industry worldwide.
What is the best business or life advice you’ve ever been given?
Hustle but work smart, don’t say yes to everything and make shit happen every day to keep you moving forward.
What made you decide to move into the ACS Innovation Labs and how has it assisted your business?
We want to be closer to like-minded individuals and other startup companies in the area, so that we could learn from each and apply it to our own company, and give back to the community.
For more information on the ACS Innovation Labs, visit the websites of Harbour City Labs in Sydney, River City Labs in Brisbane, and Bay City Labs in Melbourne. If you're interested in joining successful Australian businesses in the ACS Innovation Labs, email scale@acs.org.au
