Welcome to another edition of Fast Five – our fortnightly series where we ask Victoria’s most influential and exceptional business leaders five questions to get a behind-the-scenes look at some of Australia’s most dynamic businesses.

In this edition we spoke to Luke Trickett, Founder and CEO of Marmalade.

Before Marmalade, Luke spent over 15 years in the finance industry and was an Australian national team swimmer. He explains how the idea of this business came about and how it helps Australian businesses survive and thrive.

#1: In a sentence, how would you describe Marmalade’s offering?

With Marmalade your business can accept and reconcile any type of invoice payment automatically and receive instant payment for invoices as soon as they’re issued.

#2: Marmalade is a relatively new player and a world-first service. How did the idea come about?

I first saw an opportunity in this market through my own personal experience and pain of not having invoices paid in a consistent fashion.

While setting up my first business, Blue Stamp Company, I was reliant on my wife’s (Libby) income from her own business to support the two of us. Libby’s income was extremely lumpy and it would take over 90 days for an invoice to be paid, and that payment would have to last us three months. This became very difficult to manage, especially when the payments began to become less predictable.

We ended up relying on loans from family and had a number of credit cards and were continually cycling balance transfers to make ends meet. We also applied for loans from lenders, which were declined, and ultimately resulted in us having to sell our house.

After the experience of living with the pain of invoice payments, combined with my role as an Investment Manager for Blue Stamp Company, I started to look more into this and thought there must be a better way. After digging into the space, I noticed the significant adoption of cloud accounting software (such as Xero, MYOB and Quickbooks) and saw this as the vehicle to reach these businesses and intermediate the payment of invoices.

I could also see during this time that Afterpay was a new way to monetise credit through a payment. So by looking at these businesses in light of my own experience in having invoices paid, I thought that there was a better way for small businesses to access their money when they need it, in a really flexible and low-cost way - without it being another loan or liability!

Now looking back, every option Lib and I had was the same thing... a loan, whether that was provided by family and friends, banks or other non-bank lenders. However, what we really needed was our invoices just to be paid!

#3: What key challenge faced by your customers do you assist with?

Unpaid invoices is one of the top causes of cash flow problems for Australian small businesses, and poor cash flow is one of the top causes of small business failure. Here in Australia, 70% of small businesses experience cash flow difficulties in daily operation and the average small business is owed $38,000 in late invoices.

We help businesses to take control of their cash flow and unlock it whenever they want it by being paid.

#4: What sets your organisation or product apart from competitors?

Marmalade is not a loan or line of credit. We provide businesses with access to their money, precisely when they want it and unlike existing debtor finance products, when you cash-in an invoice, Marmalade will pay the full invoice amount, less a small one-time fee, while taking on the credit risk of your customer. There are no additional fees or charges if an invoice is paid late or not at all and you can cash-in as many or as few invoices as you like. If you don’t need to be paid, you don’t need to cash-in, so the service remains completely free, all the while reconciling payments and removing admin.

It is for these reasons that we can truly say that we are unique and different to other products that have historically been used to solve cash-flow problems.

#5: Since being established, what types of businesses do you serve and predominantly in what sectors?

Marmalade is fit for almost every B2B industry and certainly for those companies that want access to cash, without wanting to borrow money and increase the risks in their business.

What we have found over the years is that some industries have a more pressing need for Marmalade than others. Manufacturing, wholesale, distribution, construction, labour hire, transport, traffic management and professional services are a few that we’re seeing great uptake.

We believe we work well for these industries as they typically have large workforces and rapid, shorter-term payrolls, so cash flow is imperative. Many of these industries also need to pre-purchase supplies for the work they do in advance, which can leave them out of pocket until they are paid by their clients, often after 30, 60 or 90 days.