| This month, young Aussie start-up executive William Wright has been stalking his prey at Britain’s annual Conservative and LabourHe works for GovConnex, creator of a tech platform for government lobbyists. It has set its sights on the UK market, and Mr Wright’s mission is to crack open the corridors of Westminster and turn the platform into the British lobbyists’ go-to tool of trade.
Britain has four times as many MPs as Australia, a much larger bureaucracy, a tsunami of information, and a huge lobbying industry. GovConnex has had to wrap its tech around all this, then find customers. That means Mr Wright has to do what lobbyists do: network, network, network. “Fortune 500 companies will send C-suite or their head of government affairs … you’ll see these lobbyists falling over one another to try and get a meeting,” he said.“But for me, it was about just meeting as many people as I could who are lobbyists or in government affairs. Which is a really easy game, because they’re quite open people. They want to network.
“The English are more willing to give you a chance if you’ve got an Australian accent, they’re less likely to judge you. And also I think we’re quite direct.”He said his approach was just to take people as he found them. “We’re dealing with ministers, people who used to be ambassadors to foreign nations, people who have knighthoods. You’ve just got to ignore all that,” he said.