Athol Whitten

We had a chat with Athol Whitten from Mezo to learn about his company, career, and the opportunities that co-working at Nous House have offered him.

Athol is the CEO of Mezo, a company that takes data and turns it into meaningful insights for adaptive management through their unique analytics platform. Their platform that enables organisations to optimise their resources using tools such as forecasting, and scenario testing.

What’s been the highlight of your business career so far?

Graduating with a PhD from Melbourne University is definitely a pretty significant highlight.

But something I’m even more proud of now is being able to take this expertise after a few post-doctoral positions and turn it into a company and now a platform. This is my highlight. It’s a path I’d never imagined when I started my career trajectory of studying science. I thought I’d end up in an academic position or at a research institute. I think I’m at the highlight right now.

What’s going well for you at the moment?

In the last 18 months, I’ve discovered completely new areas of business, government and new networks. I was well connected in academia and research in the natural resource modelling world but I had not yet thought how I would get well connected into different parts of government and business. In the last 18 months, my opportunities to meet new people, get involved in new projects and help Mezo grow have been pretty extraordinary.

If I was to be told 18 months ago that, “You would get involved in this and that”, I’d be pretty surprised.

So, I’d say what’s going well, is that the opportunities to have worked with Pollenizer (Australia’s first start-up incubator), and now with Nous Group & Nous House, has really opened up doors to excellent networking and business opportunities. I’m really grateful for that.

If you could give one piece of career or business advice to a large group of people what would your advice be?

Always be willing to fail and always be willing to learn. Try new things, be open to new opportunities, and just like the real world, your business is never going to stay the same.