Long before crowdfunding existed, 17-year-old Brisbane Grammar student James Moody raised enough cash to fly halfway across the world for a three-week study tour of Star City, home to Russia's cosmonauts.
He came away with stars in his eyes, but didn't dream of becoming an astronaut. He wanted to be the guy who built the spaceship.
Twenty years later, Chin Moody (his surname now includes his wife's) is busy promoting his rapidly expanding parcel delivery start-up, Sendle. 
It may sound as humble and far from the cosmonauts as possible, but there are many antecedents that have brought Chin Moody here.
In the world of logistics - something he, a self-described "nerd", is fascinated with - nothing is ever as it appears.
Chin Moody did go on to become an electrical engineer, and learnt how to build satellites, before completing a doctorate in innovation at the Australian National University. During this time, he was recognised as Young Australian of the Year for Science and Technology.
As if the ensuing leadership and management roles at the CSIRO weren't enough, he soon sealed his credentials as a futurist with a book, The Sixth Wave.
In it, he describes a new industrial boom, characterised by technological innovation and a growing scarcity of resources. It is the age of Uber and Airbnb: the biggest taxi company in the world, which owns no cabs; and the biggest hotel company, which owns no hotels.
Enter Sendle, a little-known delivery company, which owns no vans. Sendle taps into networks of partner couriers - it recently signed major player Toll - to offer commercial-scale (i.e. cut-price), door-to-door parcel delivery rates for consumers and businesses.
Customers have no interaction with the courier companies, instead accessing Sendle's services via a web app. It replaces complicated pricing with simple, flat rates; is easy to navigate; and can be used without having to register an account.
"We're creating a software and support layer over the top of multiple couriers," Chin Moody explains.
As with Uber, Airbnb and many other apps, Sendle's customers are invited to rate their service experience each time they use it. A dedicated support team tracks and follows up each delivery on their behalf; something Sendle's partner couriers don't always do themselves.
It can't track a package in real-time though, at least not yet; that may hinge on whether its partners, which include Fastway and CouriersPlease, adopt such technology, Chin Moody says.
The logistics underpinning Sendle have grown out of Chin Moody's other start-up, TuShare, which aims to reduce waste by providing a quick and easy way for people to give away unwanted items via the web. Unlike, say, classified advertisement site Gumtree, TuShare takes care of delivery, charging a low-rate fee to the recipient.
About   May last year, Chin Moody says, something interesting happened. He noticed some TuShare users were hacking its business model.
"They were actually using TuShare to send stuff to each other," he says.
"It was hilarious when you think about what you have to do to make that happen: you've got to list the item and let whoever it is you're sending it to request that item through the site so they can pay for the postage to get it picked up and delivered.
"That's when we realised there was a bigger business inside our little TuShare business." The environmental philosophy behind TuShare has also carried through to Sendle: both are carbon neutral, thanks to a partnership with Climate Friendly.
A $1.8 million seed funding round in   April, led by NRMA, has allowed Sendle to expand its founding team to 14, who share an office with TuShare in the trendy inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe.
Chin Moody won't disclose exact figures, but says Sendle "swamps" TuShare in terms of deliveries.
These grew 60 per cent in   July, with very little marketing.
Sendle's rise comes at a time when Australia Post is ripe for disruption.