Prior to launching GoFar in 2013, Danny Adams spent much of his career working in the corporate world, serving as a Technical Service Engineer at 3M in Sydney, and a Project Engineer at MSC Software. However, he knew he needed to make a change.
"I wanted to be responsible for my own destiny. If you look at the way the corporate environment works – or any hierarchy for that matter – the decisions that affect you are made many levels above and you do not necessarily have any influence or control over the things that affect your daily life."
Adams eventually realized that his time remaining at 3M was limited, so he began working on his idea in his spare time. While Adams was an aerospace engineer with a good idea and a couple of patents to his credit, he also acknowledged that he couldn’t launch a company without help. After he quit his job in 2013, he was quick to get a desk at the Fishburners, a top co-working space in Sydney, where he was surrounded by dozens of budding entrepreneurs.
While at Fishburners, Adams met several other like-minded individuals who would eventually join his company, including Ian Davidson, the Director of FlyResearch who became a Co-Founder; Syed Imam, a firmware engineer and data scientist; and Cameron Batt, a software engineer and Founder of Helperific.
“You have to meet the right people who want to be part of the team and part of the business. It is something you can’t force, you need to keep networking and meeting people for these opportunities to come along."
Concurrently, Adams joined the Sydney Founder Institute, where the idea really began to take life. Despite the program’s seemingly short duration of only 3.5 months, that did not limit the program's ability to push its founders to their respective limits - and beyond. He says this about the challenges he faced:
"It keeps you under pressure for three months. It is a great way to tell if you are really able to do what it takes. This course was designed to keep you under pressure and on your toes. There wasn’t a moment you felt safe from being kicked out. There was not a moment to relax.”
Not only did Adams survive his experience in the Founder Institute, he thrived, graduating the program as the highest-ranked graduate in his cohort.
At GoFar, Danny and his team has developed an application that helps cut emissions and make every car a "smart car", providing any driver with real-time feedback to help them reduce fuel consumption, improve safety on the road, and cut time in traffic. The company is now well on its way towards a long and prosperous future after successfully raising over $150,000 in a well publicized Kickstarter Campaign, and raising another $400,000 from notable investors like the Sydney Seed Fund.
Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.85BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
