About Rob Ward

I co-founded Quad Lock in 2011 with my mate Chris Peters. We started with a single product, a performance phone mount for cyclists, and built it into a global direct-to-consumer brand selling millions of units across 100+ countries. In 2024, Thule Group acquired the business. I completed my exit in late 2025.

But that's the headline. The path there was anything but linear.

The Foundation Years

I dropped out of uni after three weeks. Took a job in door-to-door sales, which taught me more about rejection, persuasion, and reading people than any classroom could. From there, I trained as a fitter, turner, and toolmaker. That mechanical engineering apprenticeship shaped how I approach every problem: understand the system, find the leverage points, remove what doesn't work, measure what does.

After my first year as a fully qualified toolmaker, I took a job as a sales engineer for a Korean carbide cutting tools manufacturer, selling back into the same industry. Not exactly a growth market in Australia. But it led me to Farley Laserlab, an Australian laser and plasma cutting machine manufacturer that had been run into the ground by new foreign ownership. Over a few years, I grew the business, expanded the product line, and repaired the customer base. That's when I started thinking I should be doing this for myself.

Learning Through Side Hustles

While still at Farley, Chris and I started running side hustles. We built Get Clicked, an SEO and web hosting business; launched Origin System, selling our own brand of small-format laser-cutting and engraving machines called Origin Lasers; we started a blog 3d-printer.com.au and sold the first consumer 3D printers in Australia. Everything we touched worked well enough to keep going.

Then we watched the barriers to entry for consumer products start to collapse. E-commerce platforms, Kickstarter, and web 2.0. We launched The Opener, an iPhone bottle opener and the first Australian Kickstarter product. It took off. We sold it in 100 countries in the first six months. It was eventually copied and ripped off at scale because we had no IP protection. Hundreds of thousands of knockoffs were produced, including branded versions for Heineken and Budweiser. A brutal lesson, but a formative one.

Building Quad Lock

In January 2012, we launched Quad Lock as an iPhone bike mount. This was the product we truly believed in and knew could be a much bigger, longer-lasting business. We both quit our day jobs, didn't pay ourselves for the first 12 months, and lived off savings while we bootstrapped it.

Over the next decade, we figured out product development, scaled manufacturing from prototype tooling to mass production, built a performance marketing engine across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Ads, and established a global online presence built on Shopify. Quad Lock became the category leader in performance phone mounting.

Scale & Exit

In 2020, we sold a stake to Quadrant Private Equity and used the partnership to professionalise the business. In 2024, Thule Group acquired Quad Lock, one of the largest Australian DTC deals to date.

How I Think About Business

I think in frameworks. Every decision starts with where the market is, what resources are on hand, and which strategy gives the best outcome given those constraints. That mental model worked at every stage of Quad Lock, from two founders with no budget to a nine-figure exit, and it's what I bring to every founder and business I work with now.

What I'm Doing Now

Today, I invest in and advise growth-stage founders with a focus on e-commerce, consumer products, and DTC brands. I hold positions across VC funds and direct startup investments, and co-invest alongside institutional partners. I think in growth and innovation at the early stage, and EBITDA multiples, unit economics, and sustainable margin at scale.

I also created The DTC Playbook, a free guide covering everything I learned building, scaling, and exiting a direct-to-consumer brand. Product, marketing, operations, team, valuation, and exit. All of it.

I'm not a consultant. I've built, scaled, and exited. I back founders and operators doing the same.