How this 25-year-old entrepreneur built a world-first platform to increase revenue

Jackson Meyer may only be 25 years old, but age isn’t stopping the Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus from running two global businesses – one with patent pending.

Engineering a world-first solution to modernise the freight and logistics industry, Meyer launched Fickle – a real-time data tool allowing companies to monitor and track every step of the freight-forwarding process.

Initially developed as the missing link for Meyer’s first business – Verus Global, Fickle has been attracting some of Australia’s largest retailers as well as a prominent organisation in Belgium.

"We’re analysing customer’s products, purchasing patterns, ordering patterns – everything, and we’re taking it to the next level, which is really exciting," Meyer tells The CEO Magazine. "We’re exporting data customers didn’t even know they had but they provide to the freight or logistics company day in day out [without realising].

"I thought Verus was the be all and end all in terms of what we could offer, but we’ve been able to pick up efficiencies that can be exported to our advantage that I never even contemplated looking at."

With an ability to pick up errors that haven’t been seen before, Fickle provides customers with data visualisation, track and tracing capabilities, integrated finances and industry news.

"I like to think of Fickle as the Uber of data management," he says. "It’s my solution to help companies manage and evolve their operations."

Through offering companies a solution to track data in real time, The Group CEO and Director explains the platform has led his team to working smarter and more efficiently for fruitful profit gain.

"We’ve increased our revenue A$40 million [US$29.4 million] year on year without increasing our headcount by one," he says. "My staff’s time in terms of reporting has been reduced by 16 per cent."

In the past 24 months, Verus Global has turned over US$95.5 million (A$130 million), but the award-winning entrepreneur claims it’s down to the success of his newest venture.

"We’re opening up new markets we never ever would have been able to get into previously," he says. "For instance, we have a customer who is four times larger than our largest customer that we have on the books in the whole business.

"It literally came in overnight. Normally when you land a customer that size, it takes time for it to happen. We’ve had this development and turned it into money within six weeks.

"I would never have been able to get those customers at Verus if it weren’t for Fickle."

Humbly claiming the success of the platform comes down to his team of developers who built the program from scratch through custom coding, Meyer acts as a hub of innovation.

"We compete against some of the biggest players in the industry and continue to knock them off one by one." – Jackson Meyer

And his think tank is proving to offer fresh ideas, which ultimately led Fickle to being patent pending, as well as architecting his newest platform.

Revealing exclusively to The CEO Magazine, Meyer is set to launch a virtual reality shopping experience.

Just as users can walk the streets using Google Maps, the virtual reality shopping experience allows shoppers to walk virtually into stores to shop online.

"You can actually go into a store and shop as if you were live in the store," he explains. "With lockdowns, you don’t get the opportunity to branch into some stores, but now you have the opportunity as you would normally – you click in and go further.

"It hasn’t been put into practice here in Australia. It’s been done overseas a little bit, but it’s still selective in terms of companies that are putting it in place."

Already working in a traditional industry, the young entrepreneur continues to disrupt the somewhat dated industry through shaking up its techniques and values.

While it has been a challenging period for the business founder, especially since the majority of Verus Global and Fickle’s existence has been during the global COVID-19 pandemic, Meyer believes any obstacles will only make the company grow stronger.

"We’ve gone through COVID, we’ve gone through a series of events that have made us us, but we haven’t lost a staff member, which is my proudest accomplishment out of Verus," he says. "What that actually gives us in terms of a competitive vantage is something I’ve never been able to put into words.

"We compete against some of the biggest players in the industry and continue to knock them off one by one.

"Fickle isn’t just bringing Verus business, it’s making us stronger and more competitive, and we’re continuing that advantage."

Despite being the brain trust to many game-changing concepts that open up the world to new processes, ironically Meyer isn’t all that tech-savvy.

"I don’t have a tech bone in my body," he says. "I do have a really good partner who is based in South Asia, he’s European, and he interprets my ideas that don’t always make sense.

"Everyone can have an idea, but whether you can make it into a product that works is a different story."