Entrepreneur, CEO and University of Adelaide alumni Tom Welsby, shares his career journey

Entrepreneurship and innovation have always been a passion for University of Adelaide Alumni and Australian eChallenge winner, Tom Welsby.

The founder and CEO of ResVu, who had already started 3 businesses by the age of 18, says it’s a quality instilled in him from his father, who established his own business and had always been a visionary.

After completing a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting & Finance) at the University of Adelaide, Tom was employed at Boral as a finance graduate, working on all aspects of accounting.

At the age of just 21, Tom was then appointed to a prominent national strata management company– recruited to manage a number of its strata buildings, making him the company’s youngest employee in South Australia. This quickly paved the way for Tom to operate one of the largest portfolios in the company.

“I was driven to find efficiencies in my own workload in order to get jobs done, whilst trying to maintain relationships with many different people and managing hundreds of emails per day,” he says. 

“I identified so many inefficiencies in the industry, particularly with proactive communication. I thought that if I was only able to communicate better with those people, then I wouldn’t have received an email. From this, the idea of ResVu was born.”Tom Welsby

ResVu is a technology platform that allows strata companies to deliver better customer service across their entire portfolio by connecting their communities with their broader community management team. It builds transparency around community matters, enhances customer service delivery, improves decision making, promotes informed decision-making, and encourages safer and more vibrant communities.

The original business idea was brought to life as part of Tom’s involvement in the Australian eChallenge - an elective in his University of Adelaide degree. Together with his team mate Josh Marcus, who is now the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Tom won the eChallenge in 2017 and was awarded the $10,000 prize money, and a residency in the University of Adelaide’s start-up incubator, ThincLab.  

Winning launched his business. And Tom attests it was the eChallenge program that provided the foundation to launch.   

“The eChallenge was a brilliant opportunity, providing me with the tools to help me establish my own business,” he says.

“Everything that I put forward in our eChallenge finals presentation still exists. We haven’t changed the vision that was presented, and what was still a base product in the eChallenge is now powering almost 200,000 apartments."

“Looking to the future, we could be looking at half a million to a million buildings in the next 12 to 18 months, which is going to be really exciting.”

Tom was recently named the winner of First National Real Estate Innovation Award in the 7News Young Achiever Awards.

Australian eChallenge