Eddie joined Melbourne Innovation Centre's Digital Solutions Program with a clear goal: to lift his branding, his marketing and his online presence. What he found was a structured, expert-led process that went considerably further than he'd expected.
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Eddie Tsyrlin didn't set out to build a business. He set out to survive a difficult chapter.
Eddie was in a period of his life where he needed something hands-on, positive and alive. Raising butterflies, as it turned out, was oddly perfect. It was therapeutic in the truest sense, something beautiful emerging from something hard. A conservation biologist by training, Eddie already understood the extraordinary science of metamorphosis. What he discovered was that sharing it with others could be just as transformative as studying it.
What started as a side project, run alongside his full-time work, gradually took on a life of its own. Schools wanted curriculum-linked butterfly sessions that brought science to life in ways textbooks simply can't. Events wanted butterfly releases that left guests with something genuinely memorable. Families discovered that a butterfly hatching kit could turn a kitchen table into a wonder. Aged care facilities found that a visit from the Butterfly Gazebo could reach residents in ways other activities couldn't touch.
More than 20 years later, Butterfly Adventures runs every week of the year, with a small, passionate team of contractors, including coordinators, packers, butterfly farmers and educators — while Eddie continues his career as a conservation biologist. He also completed his PhD along the way.
"I now juggle it with my work as a conservation biologist, having somehow completed a PhD along the way."
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For all its magic, Butterfly Adventures had a problem. And it took a friend's candid feedback to surface it.
"A friend told me that it's hard to see what we actually do based on the website."
It was a moment of clarity. The business had been built on genuine passion, word of mouth and the undeniable wonder of butterflies, but its digital presence hadn’t caught up. The website was dated and disorganised. Visuals were inconsistent across platforms. Social media was ad hoc rather than strategic. Marketing felt uncomfortable, something Eddie describes candidly as "figuring out how to market without cringing."
Like many founder-operators, Eddie had also been carrying the business largely on his own, managing everything from 4 am box-packing shifts to product development to the very real challenge of learning to trust his team.
"The hardest part has been learning to trust that others in my team can do everything I can, and much better than me," he reflects.
Eddie joined Melbourne Innovation Centre's Digital Solutions Program with a clear goal: to lift his branding, his marketing and his online presence. What he found was a structured, expert-led process that went considerably further than he'd expected.
Working with MIC digital marketing specialist Kirri Romero, Eddie built a clearer picture of his brand's genuine strengths — and how to leverage them. The program covered customer database building and the case for email marketing, promotional strategies for different market segments, and a detailed review of the website's structure. One of the most significant insights was about sequencing: content generation needed to come before a website rebuild. Without the right content in place first, a new site would simply replicate the same problem in a more expensive format.
The program also helped Eddie develop strategies to overcome the business's ongoing challenge with seasonality — identifying how to reach different customer segments year-round and keep momentum outside the obvious peak periods.
"I would like to thank the Digital Solutions Program for putting together an impressive panel of experts, and my digital marketing specialist Kirri Romero for being a positive force of nature, for providing a tonne of helpful advice and making me feel like my business is the best business on this planet."
The conversations with MIC directly shaped a brief for a full brand and website overhaul. Eddie worked with a brand design specialist to build a new visual identity and developed a content generation phase, giving the rebuilt website what it needed to truly shine.
Email marketing and social media are now being approached strategically rather than reactively. And the program has given Eddie a framework to think about his business's digital presence as a whole, not just a collection of separate problems, but a coherent story waiting to be told.
For a founder who started Butterfly Adventures as therapy, that shift in perspective is its own kind of metamorphosis. He built something genuinely remarkable. Melbourne Innovation Centre helped him see it clearly, and helped the world start to see it too.
Eddie's advice to other founders is characteristic of everything about him: direct, grounded and earned through experience.
"No matter how good you think your digital presence is, it is always helpful for a specialist to take a look and to have a think about it yourself."
For Eddie, the Digital Solutions Program wasn't just about fixing a website or improving a social media strategy. It was about gaining a clear, honest, expert perspective on a business he knew intimately — and discovering that even 20 years of experience, a PhD and a genuinely extraordinary idea don't make you immune to blind spots.
"No matter how good you think your digital presence is, it is always helpful for a specialist to take a look."
— Eddie Tsyrlin, Founder, Butterfly Adventures
