Brad Fraser

Co-founder

Backstory

Where did you grow up?

Born in Masterton but grew up in Christchurch as a Bedean!

What did your parents do, and what did you take from them?

Mum (Michelle) was a teacher and Dad (Malcolm) was in sales. From Mum I learnt sacrifice — she was only a teacher so she could spend time with the kids during the holidays, even though she could have done so much more. From Dad it was just the ability to push through and deliver regardless of the noise or situation around him.

What did you spend the most time on as a kid?

Basketball was life as a younger person, but any sport I was there. Any opportunity to compete against other people I was obsessed.

What did you do before TakeoffQS?

Best way to sum it up is taking side quests: entrepreneur, professional American football athlete, Army, lectured at AUT.

How did you end up at TakeoffQS?

That it was a hard problem that would require us to change an entire industry, and that the solution had to be so compelling that we would have to fight literally hundreds of years of inertia.

What I care about

What’s broken in estimating that you want to fix?

That the cost to build is so high. The culture in NZ is so fixated that home ownership is tied to your value, that by us lowering the cost to build we’ll have a bigger impact.

What do you look for in the companies we work with?

Leaders that want to lead.

A mistake you see builders make repeatedly?

Eyeometer — that the data is the key to their business and they disregard it.

What gets you fired up about this work?

That we have a world-class team of misfits who have no idea of their potential and how good they actually are. It is my job to poke and prod them in ways to speed up their learnings so I can unlock their full potential.