Bonny Marsh is the female co-founder of Truii, a Brisbane-based technology and consulting company that creates data-driven web applications.
Truii’s web applications primarily support reporting, planning and implementation of natural resource management. Their visualisation and reporting tools combine beautiful visualisations with practical functionality that allows data to be easily shared.
Bonny and her team have worked with a range of clients to ‘give the environment a voice’, including Queensland Government departments such as Environment and Science, Agriculture and Fisheries, the Queensland Audit Office, as well as Queensland Water Modelling Network, Seqwater and Melbourne Water.
We recently spoke to Bonny about her business and journey as a Queensland female founder.
What inspired you to start your business?
Its inspiration stems from a driving passion to improve outcomes for the environment by managing and communicating environmental data through web tools.
The business came to fruition as it was Dr Nick Marsh’s (co-founder) professional background. I supported the operational aspects of the business as I was on maternity leave from my Queensland Health Speech Pathologist position after having our fourth child. I’m the co-founder of Truii and am still here 13 years later!
What milestones have you reached?
I think the most significant milestone would be that we finally ‘found our people’. We know what it means to work at Truii. We know the people, skills and attitudes that we need. We have a small but skilled team. We know the problems we love to solve and the clients that we serve. We build partnerships with our clients as we help them solve their complex data problems. To date we have 100% retention of our clients and our model is a mix of SaaS (software as a service) and consulting.
What business achievements are you most proud of to date?
Surviving. Showing up for our family in a way that was meaningful for us. We have developed some pretty cool software applications and dashboards that are in the words of our clients ‘giving the environment a voice’. We have big visions for how we can continue to serve our clients and the environment.
Have you participated in any Advance Queensland programs, or received any support from Advance Queensland to date?
One of our key Software Engineers came to us in 2016 via the Knowledge Transfer Partnership program (KTP). We are very grateful to that program.
I also attend ACE events, such as the Speakers Forum and mentoring, and have participated in Female Founders workshops, mentoring and events.
What’s your advice for other female entrepreneurs and businesses starting out on their entrepreneurship journey?
Offer themselves tons of grace. Things take time. Build connections, build relationships with mentors, clients and other business owners. Know their boundaries. Know their values. Make it work for them. It is a long game. Check in with themselves if they still want to play it, regularly. Say ‘no’ to things that do not serve them. Know their numbers. Know their people. Know themselves.
