Sydney founder journal

Marco Tran, The Simple Entrepreneur.

A personal record of building digital signage products, testing business tools, running every day, and sharing the lessons along the way.

2,454

days in the running streak

16

products and projects launched

32

affiliate tools and recommendations

Timeline

Major milestones

  1. 1978

    Born

    The start of my awesome life. Was born in Baclieu, Vietnam.

  2. 1978-1987

    Lived in Malaysia and Italy

    Parents fled Vietnam as refugees a few months after I was born. Our family spent time in Malaysia before being given the opportunity to live in Italy.

  3. 1987

    Moved to Australia

    Our family moved to Australia.

  4. 1996

    HSC

    Completed Year 12 and was accepted to UTS studying Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) majoring in Telecommunications Engineering

  5. 1997

    Love

    Met the love of my life

  6. 1998-1999

    Project Manager/LAN Administrator Assistant @ Transgrid

    Started my first job at Transgrid

  7. 2002

    Graduation

    Graduated from Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.)

  8. 2004

    Graduated from Masters

    Completed Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in Telecommunications Networks

  9. 2003-2004

    Network Project Manager @ RTA

    Project Management of various network project to specify, install, configure and commission new systems and services for the Roads and Traffic Authority

  10. 2004-2005

    Senior Network Officer @ ABC

    A technical role to provide support and maintain voice and data network for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

  11. 1/2006

    Married

    Married to my beautiful wife Angela.

  12. 2005-2006

    Infrastructure and Telecoms Engineer @ Lilly

    Managed the voice, voicemail, data – (routers, switches, VPN, firewalls), fax, teleconferencing, web conferencing, mobile phones, wireless and blackberry services and provided Tier Support for Australia and New Zealand

  13. 2/2006

    First company Advertise Me

    Started my first company. Came up with an idea whilst attending a course and soon after launched Advertise Me. Advertise Me is a digital advertising company that primarily focused on the digital signage industry. The company now focuses on digital solutions. This includes custom tools, mobile applications, advertising so much more. I've learnt so much since the inception of this company. Visit Advertise Me

  14. 11/2007

    Son

    My son Jayden entered into this world.

  15. 8/2011

    Daughter

    My daughter Olivia joined our family. Our OJAM (Olivia Jayden Angela Marco) clan is complete.

  16. 5/2012

    Launched Squeak

    Whilst working on a number of projects for Advertise Me we saw an opportunity in the mobile space to create an exciting app that helps consumers shop and find great sales based on their interests. Visit Squeak

  17. 6/2015

    Launched Social Wall

    Our parent company Advertise Me launched a new product and website called Social Wall. The idea with this product started as we saw a need to be able to display social media posts on digital screens. Social Wall is a simple and easy to use tool to aggregate and display social media posts on any digital device. Visit Social Wall

  18. 1/2017

    Launched this website

    Decided to start my own personal blog and here we are.

  19. 12/2018

    ePosters Launch

    Launched a new digital signage solution product called ePosters. This is an interactive digital poster solution designed to be used for events, exhibitions or any location that requires displaying interactive posters. Visit ePosters

  20. 3/2018

    Vegan Journey

    Started the Vegan journey. Decided it was time to move from a Vegetarian to a Vegan diet and launched a new website called Veggie Meals. Visit Veggie Meals

  21. 5/2019

    Social Timeline

    Social Timeline is a new Idea for a social media application to display digital content. Created the beta version so visit Social Timeline

  22. 2/2020

    Online Hosting Solutions

    Online Hosting Solutions is a hosting business and I started this because I was frustrated with domain renewal costs. I'm looking at expanding to hosting SaaS tools.

  23. 10/2019

    Started Running Every Day

    I started running at least 5 KM every day.

  24. 2021

    Education Tafe NSW

    Completed the following Reading and Writing for Adults, Social Media Engagement

  25. 2021

    Education Charles Sturt University

    Completed the following short courses Digital Forensics, Cryptography

  26. 2022

    Education Charles Sturt University

    Completed the following short courses CISSP, Comparative Cloud Technologies

  27. 2022

    Education Tafe NSW

    Completed the following Small Business, Introduction to Accounting

  28. 2022

    Education University of Tasmania

    Completed Undergraduate Certificate in Applied Technologies, Information Technology

  29. 2024

    Education Tafe NSW

    Achieved Generative AI and its Business Applications

  30. 12/2024

    Medical Boards

    Launched Medical Boards - Digital Signage Solutions for Medical and Healthcare Centres

  31. 1/2025

    Directory Board

    Launched Directory Board - Digital Signage Solutions for creating directory boards

  32. 3/2025

    Education Cybersecurity Certificate ICS2

    Achieved the ICS2 Cybersecurity Certificate from ICS2

  33. 4/2025

    Education Salesforce AI Associate

    Achieved the Salesforce AI Associate from Salesforce

  34. 10/2025

    Education Oracle Certifications

    Achieved the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2025 Certified AI Foundations Associated, Generative AI Professional, Data Science Professional

Latest notes

From the journal

All posts

Portfolio

Products, websites, and operating experiments.

Open portfolio

Tools

Recommendations that solve real workflow problems.

Browse tools
CHEAPEST WAY TO SEND MONEY TO INTERNATIONAL BANK ACCOUNTS wise website
Finance Toolkit pick

WISE - FINANCE

I recently discovered the convenience of using WISE for paying overseas invoice, and it has been a game-changer for business Advertise Me.…

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