Tamir Vigder left Year 12 to pursue his business ventures using growth hacking to help small startups and well-known brands increase their digital reach.
By Ethan Morgan and Andrea Velechovsky
On the 21st floor of a Westfield corporate tower in Bondi junction, some might find it odd to see a 20 year old in a Lakers hoodie emerge from behind a desk cluttered with empty food containers and coke bottles. However, for high school dropout Tamir Vigder, this is just another day at the office, managing deals with transnational corporations and overseeing his nine employees.
Tamir has expanded his company, VigderMedia, through the development of his growth hacking techniques. His multi-million dollar enterprise helps market businesses of all sizes through various online campaigns. Yet, despite this success Tamir says “I’m not even near where I want to be.”
Growth hacking is a tactic for achieving super-fast growth for businesses ranging from small startups to giant corporations. A combination of digital content marketing, product marketing and online advertising is used to promote and build client bases. VigderMedia focuses on generating traction and sales online through low-cost strategies such as Facebook ads, search engine optimisations and YouTube videos.
The young CEO quoted his campaign for Bondi Pizza as one of his best when asked about his recent successes. “We came up with a campaign where people had to get vouchers online,” Tamir said. The project drove approximately 3,500 vouchers in the first two months which resulted in about $319,000 in store sales. “This was substantial for Bondi Pizza and good results for us,” the 20 year old entrepreneur said. “That was our best success in the past quarter.”
After migrating at the age of 12, Israeli-born Tamir arrived in Sydney with no friends and no knowledge of English. “I started from scratch,” he said, “it was definitely a challenge.” He began attending Killara High in 2014, however by early 2017 he decided to leave school to pursue his business ventures. “I just didn’t do well, but I also didn’t care at the same time, so there was no point. You either get an 85 plus ATAR or you may as well not even do it because no one looks under 80… I just thought it would be a better path than school.”
Following his three years at high school in Sydney’s North Shore, Tamir’s first significant business success was with HashChing, an Australian marketplace for people wanting a loan. The young entrepreneur used growth hacking tactics and created a YouTube parody video which generated a substantial amount money.
To ensure that his company would be successful, Tamir began with a small test, and saw that it worked and that the business was profitable. Now, nearly two years later the young CEO believes that his company has the potential to be “ten times bigger than what we are right now”.
Tamir’s friend and former classmate, Anson Cheung, was hired by Tamir in late 2017, although he had no knowledge of the business operations. “I learnt everything while I was here on the job,” says the VigderMedia employee. “I can build websites, landing page designs, different integrations and run multiple social media bots.” Both working and studying full-time, Anson has been able to pursue his Commerce degree whilst also contributing to the company. “My biggest achievement is learning from Tamir and the rest of the team,” he said. “It’s a really good working environment… I can’t ask for a better boss.”
Due to the significant usage of growth hacking in an increasingly digital world, new entrepreneurs are wanting to know the tactics that generate large amounts of interest.
VigderMedia partnered with the University of Technology Sydney to provide an online course to educate students on the aspects of digital marketing in today’s world.
In 2017, the New South Wales Government launched a project called Rebuild Assist. The program allowed individuals to check the licensing of their tradesman and connect them with those who had signed up. However, the government faced a problem in gaining users and as a result hired VigderMedia to increase their reach. “When we joined them they had about 400 tradies signed up on the platform after nine months. After a nine week project we had about 3,000,” Tamir said. VigderMedia used an email campaign to drive people to a landing page which Anson had designed and built. “We’re pretty quick,” the young CEO said, “we always get ten times the results in a short period of time. So that was very successful.”
Among others, VigderMedia has worked with the Australian Government, Mercedes Benz, General Pants, KBMG and QUIC to expand their reach. Tamir mentions that over the past few years his company has built a portfolio to include clients that are all over the spectrum, ranging from small, pre-revenue startups to huge, transnational corporations. He speaks of the achievements of VigderMedia, commenting “I think what’s more important than the value of the business, is the kind of clients that we have. The value generated by our clients have been crazy big… looking at well over ten million dollars. We miss some deals and lose money all the time but we are more than what we lose.”
When asked about his plans for the future, the businessman answered, “I thought I would go to America and that’s why I got my US visa approved… but I didn’t end up going. At the moment we’re based in Sydney, maybe we’ll travel and find new clients overseas, but right now we’re really Australian focused.”
Tamir’s plans for the future of VigderMedia aren’t entirely clear, but he aims to continue the expansion of his company and help his clients achieve great development through growth hacking.
“Just go for it,” is Tamir’s message to aspiring entrepreneurs. The 20 year old CEO says that persistence was key in creating VigderMedia. “You can fail many times and people won’t mark you for what you did wrong, they will mark you for what you did right.”
