Recognizing a problem, then resolving it with a disruptive approach is what great leaders do. One such innovation-favoring and tech-savvy individual is Kris Poria. He is an avid personality and a true entrepreneur, whose comprehensibility over implicating innovative ideology and methodology has earned him global admiration in the IT sphere. This Co-founder and CEO of EarlyBirds, is significantly driving innovation by engaging more businesses with potential networks creating a society in actionable innovation. 

Kris was born in a simple yet humble farming community in rural India but was passionate and ambitious as a child. At the age of 16, Kris spent around three months at an English school with almost no understanding of the language. Rather than shirking the task of mastering a much-needed foreign language, Kris displayed resilience, character, and determination to learn and soon succeeded in becoming fluent in it. He continued to tap into his impeccable abilities and surprised himself as well as others by running multiple businesses by the age of 21. At this time, he was handling two businesses, his university studies, a new marriage and was seeking better opportunities for growth. He became a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer and gained international IT experience in Europe and America. Later, he identified Australia as the right country to flourish his entrepreneurial spirit as well as to raise a family. Thus, he started various ventures in Sydney founding a new media publication, ‘Invest in Australia’. His passion towards IT facilitated him attain strong positions in some of the largest IT production companies and system integrators. But his entrepreneurial spirit never waned and Kris stumbled upon a gap in the market: absence of a platform that would empower big companies to work with start-ups that had innovative solutions. With his co-founder and business partner Jeff Penrose, Kris in 2019 launched Australia based EarlyBirds—a global B2B platform and business model that connects innovators –  start-ups and scaleups, along with independent experts, to share expertise and knowledge, to enable businesses to upscale quicker. 

It helps companies by providing capability solutions within a trusted networking platform to millions of businesses around the world. Moreover, the platform also allows early adopter’s business or technical issues to be solved quickly by experts providing solution options. This is complemented by innovation programs, products, and services on offer to allow newly established companies to be aware of the current global markets. And lastly, subject matter experts are welcomed onto the platform to work with customers to deliver business-focused outcomes. “This helps improve the innovation lifecycle and enable any products or services to come to life quicker,” says Kris.  

An innovator’s creation     

Whilst working for a large systems integrator on a significant project, Kris recognized a need for a solution to manage a multi-cloud environment. On the other hand, the startup with whom Jeff was associated possessed that multi-cloud management solution that perfectly fitted for the purpose. “Following a number of positive meetings with Kris’ tech team, Architects and other stakeholders it all looked positive, but they could not get approval from their Head Office,” mentions Jeff Penrose.

Later on, Kris and Jeff cumulatively came up with the thought of offering a better solution in order to nullify the occurrence of such situations. Initially, they considered providing business development and sales-as-a-service to six to eight local startups and scaleups. However, the more they researched tech innovators and early adopters they both realized this approach would fail to scale as the problem was immense. Hence, they collectively decided to create a platform that encompasses a link Innovators, Startups, and Scaleups with Early Adopter customers, private and public sector organizations under the brand EarlyBirds.  

Moreover, Kris emphasizes over a circumstance, which was then considered as unthreatening but a potential issue to the process of the platform. At the early stages of the company, the time spent by co-founders and tech incubators, and accelerators was a necessary and inevitable step. This interaction led them to realize EarlyBirds’ business model and platform to be highly complementary to the excellent work accelerators undertake with innovators. While market testing the business model and platform during late 2019, some Early Adopters advised they could not list their challenges due to commercial sensitivities or security concerns. To surpass such a situation, the co-founders, in consultation with potential customers, sculpted the third pillar to the EarlyBirds platform. “This is a services component with Subject Matter Expert (SME) independent consultants who are available to work with Early Adopters to define and resolve their business challenges,” explains Kris. “We also created two programs called Explorer and Challenger.” The Explorer program is designed for businesses needing innovation-as-a-service to supplement existing innovation programs or to conduct innovation projects as required. Whereas, the Challenger program is designed to solve one Early Adopter business challenge at a time then search for relevant innovators that meet the business, technical, commercial, and business risk requirements. And later, the early adopter can evaluate the selected innovators then after on similar terms further discussions are made. “These programs dramatically shorten the innovation life cycle where organizations in the past might be creating solutions and be unaware as to what is available in the market,” he says.   

With such solutions, the company has proved itself to be a go-to place for many businesses that are striving with network difficulties. It was feasible because of the values that EarlyBird’s holds and the ideas it believes. Their approach ‘to support, fail fast and learn faster’ has helped create a culture of innovation. With these values, Kris and his team are motivated to build and maintain a proactive open ecosystem with Innovators, Early Adopter leaders, and SME consultants; and enhance collaboration for the same. To date, there are already over a million innovators on the platform; 500 companies, and in excess of 100 SME consultants with the numbers growing quickly. Adding value to all providers on the platform and learning new advancements have always been the key factor of EarlyBirds’ growth. And Kris’s subject matter knowledge, passion, vision, and boundless energy have paved a better direction for the company. The platform will only continue its journey around the world acquiring customers at a rapid rate of knots, as it becomes the obvious choice for custom-made solutions for all parties involved.

Be curious to Prevail

Kris believes that life is a journey and everyone sculpts their own formula to success that encompasses a perfect blend of one’s skills, vision, and beliefs. “For me, it is bringing my passion, skills, and experience with a vision where I could add more value in the society,” Kris mentions. Moreover, he asserts that one must always be curious. 

Going ahead with the help of his early adopter organization, Kris desires to contribute to the making of a machine-led society by accelerating innovation speed and capacity by 80% and more. While, he is guiding his company to consistently help solve wicked problems oriented with Net Zero targets, working with COVID, accelerating other technology, business and processes to assist organizations to be a better social business. Currently, with EarlyBirds platform organizations can find and engage with Innovators that already have potential solutions to their business challenges.