Our Story
Every great business begins with a great story…
It all began back in 2015 when a company called Station Five was launched. Its mission was to provide a process for catalyzing innovation by enabling technology adoption. Within two years, it became one of Australia’s fastest growing technology businesses. The primary focus for the fulfillment of its mission was to establish alignment between operations and technology teams within larger institutions.
This led to Station Five’s growth across its local and offshore offices and within four years of inception, its clients included Qantas, Ernst & Young, Bupa, Blackmores, Breville, IAG, ANZ Bank, AMP Capital, and both State and Federal Governments in Australia.
Then COVID-19 came, and many industries were forced to transform in order to survive. For many larger institutions, this consequently led to halting innovation efforts, which required Station Five to evaluate its service offering.
With the guidance of a strong advisory panel and mentorship from industry veterans, Station Five halted its pursuit of institutional innovation and reinvented itself to launch a new offering that would enable startups to develop technology solutions using a Silicon Valley inspired agile methodology.
This transition reduced its team size drastically but reinvigorated the remaining team members in focusing on its original mission and this new business model and methodology.
The new offering provided startups with access to distributed teams managed by client-facing expert project managers at the forefront of the industry. Most importantly, it introduced a startup-inspired approach to software development built for inspiration-driven teams.
Led by a nimble team of six people, this reinvented business expanded to over 100 full-time team members within 18 months.
While it began seeing success with startups and growth businesses, larger institutions were uncertain about this unfamiliar approach.
Recognising the merits of an agile approach to software development, the World Food Programme engaged Station Five in October 2020 for a proof of concept for conflict sensitivity analysis in the Philippines and Bangladesh.
Following the successes of this program, Station Five was engaged by the Swiss Government and the United Nations to create a technology-driven, conflict sensitivity analysis framework for Somalia.
After experiencing such rapid success with the new offering, Station Five began to recognize two critical things. One, that this model could unequivocally provide a service of great use for those in need of a versatile approach. Two, that Station Five, though aligned with its original mission, had grown beyond what the company’s focus once was and became something completely new. A new chapter was deserving. Thus, Adaca was born.
