Our mission: unlock hidden career potential
Millions of talented people spend years of their lives dreading the work they do. We envision a world where anyone has the opportunity to access a fulfilling career with high impact, no matter their background.
We believe that business sales is the career path to achieve this
When we first started Earlywork, Australians thought that sales was commission only, always on the road and high volume “Wolf of Wall Street” cold calling environments.
However, our perception of the sales role in Australia was different from our early careers.
There were a smaller sub-segment of roles that were hard to find, but were always:
Paid a base salary of $65,000+ for junior roles with commission on top
More strategic relationship based selling vs high volume cold calls
Had active career progression opportunities
Required no uni degrees or past experience to start
After some digging, we found that what these roles all had in common was that they were selling to other businesses.
That’s why we created the term "Business Sales" alongside a dedicated pathway to help Aussies learn about a business sales career and start a career in it - completely free of charge.
Here’s more about our journey.
The Origin Story
Earlywork was founded by Dan, Jono & Marina in 2020. We began as a newsletter curating early-career resources around tech & startups, after seeing friends struggle to find meaningful job opportunities.
As our audience grew, we launched a community in 2021 for more intimate career conversations, the Earlywork Village. That's now APAC's largest free community for early-career folks interested in tech & startups, with 6,000+ members.
With the rapid growth of our community, we raised a $700K pre-seed round led by Square Peg, supported by Archangel Ventures and several angels, to go full-time on our dream project and explore ways to help connect fast-growing companies and ambitious, early-career talent.
In researching with our community, we spotted a huge gap for tech companies hiring junior sales talent, something that universities weren't addressing.
So, in 2023, we launched Earlywork Academy, APAC's first tech sales bootcamp with a job guarantee, with the vision of building the fastest, fairest pathway to begin a career in tech.
From our first cohort, something clicked. 100% of graduates actively looking for a tech sales role landed an offer, in an average of less than 4 weeks.
We saw an opportunity to dream bigger and raised $1.5M from No Brand, Jelix Ventures, Archangel Ventures and several angels to scale our model and expand into new areas.
In helping 200+ Aussies break into tech sales, we realised that in Australia, the majority of business sales roles were outside of the tech industry and had equal job security, compensation and fulfilment.
Reflecting further, we felt that our impact was limited and our current product wasn’t accessible to everyone due to the payment required.
That’s why we made all of our education and employment products completely free of charge, helping Aussies learn about a business sales career and start their own.
Our Values
There are many ways to shoot for a mission and vision and so, we ground ourselves in our company values to define what we build, who we hire and how we make decisions.
In every decision we make, we start by defining the best possible learning & employment outcomes for our fellows and work backwards. Never lose sight of the individual.
We start with the simplest way to achieve an outcome, focus on nailing this, and cut the fluff. We value substance over signal.
If we see a problem or opportunity without someone leading the charge, we step up or find an owner. You don’t need to be an expert to make the first move.
We question the status quo in every part of business, regardless of our role, tenure or seniority. Dig to understand the root cause and be intellectually honest, even when the answers are uncomfortable.
We’re all working towards the same mission, and we recognise direct, honest communication is critical to shared success. But to create an emotionally safe environment, this must come hand-in-hand with empathy, trust and respect.
We strive to make play a part of work, and build vulnerable, vibrant human connection into everything we do. Our lively & cheeky spirit ripples through what we build, but we uphold a sense of reliability and trust throughout.
Become an Earlyworker
Our ambition is for Earlywork to become the #1 training ground for customer-oriented startup leaders.
We’re building programs that can radically change where someone starts out their career. In turn, we provide a springboard to change the course of their life and the impact they make with their work.
Join a team with experience working at top tech companies and startups like Atlassian, Amazon, SafetyCulture and Finder. More importantly, we left those jobs to work on something that we all deeply care about.
In working with leading tech companies like MYOB, Shippit, Yotpo and Podium, you'll get to rub shoulders with some of Australia's top commercial leaders.
