Online offer pioneer, Market Buy, has announced the appointment of John Hellaby as its new chief executive officer.
Mr Hellaby has both pioneered and lead tech-based solutions for real estate agents – creating almost $2 billion in commission leads since 2010 through Check My House Price, and then in 2017 through FBM Academy, to teach people how to market properly on Facebook.
This quickly morphed into a pivotal agency specialising in results based social media marketing.
Mr Hellaby takes on the role following three years as the company’s chief digital strategist, working closely with its founder David Stewart and associated management team.
“I’ve spent my entire life working with tech and innovation,” Mr Hellaby said.
“When I came across (founder) Dave (Stewart), I thought ‘I can buy a house from my phone – now this is real disruption’.
“This was at a time I was passionately against the word ‘disruption’ as it was being heavily overused in our industry.”
So, Mr Hellaby started advising Mr Stewart, drawing on his more than 15 years’ experience helping build and guide multinational tech companies.
“It was purely voluntary, just for the love of the game,” Mr Hellaby said.
“Dave was building something amazing, something that had the ability to help our industry, to change our industry, and I wanted to be a part of that.”
When Mr Hellaby was offered the role of chief digital strategist, he jumped at the chance.
“A chief digital strategist in an online tech company has to be across every aspect of the business,” he said.
“You have to understand how everything works, be involved in the planning, be involved heavily in the budgeting and allocation of resources and then support the team as everything is implemented.”
And with Mr Stewart’s time dominated by working with agents, identifying their needs, and developing ways to meet those needs, transitioning Mr Hellaby to CEO was a natural progression.
“Dave breaks the mould when it comes to managing directors – he’s always been on the front line and he loves it,” Mr Hellaby said.
“It’s where our innovation and agent focus is driven from. This is how we have built a system around supporting agents and listening to industry feedback throughout our software development and will continue to do so.
“My previous role (CDS) encompassed significant corporate duties as it was, and combined with my experience building companies and my network in the tech space, coming on board as CEO was an easy choice.”
Mr Hellaby said his role in a nutshell would be scaling Market Buy’s infrastructure, as well as guiding the company through its international and local market growth.
“Essentially, I’m now in a position to support the team doing the incredible job they’re currently doing at significant scale,” he said.
Mr Hellaby’s CEO position will allow further growth within the duties of his previous role, including the marketing and digital strategy aspects.
“We’re scaling up. Last month we beat our previous monthly record by 40 per cent,” he said.
“Looking back at October 2019 versus October 2021, Market Buy grew 968 per cent in terms of properties sold via our platform.”
Mr Hellaby said he was passionate about working with a company that grew efficiently but was also profitable, overall industry focused and agent centric .
“We maximise our resources, while also providing an exceptional level of service,” he said.
“We have the opportunity to effect positive change across the industry on a global level, and that’s exciting.”
Mr Hellaby shares the vision of Australian tech impacting a global market and continues to innovate, lead and drive the core of Market Buy’s vision.
