Vishal Sharma
Saturday, March 22, 2008
2008
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Australia
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Startup
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Summary
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Australian Startups Carnival 2008 is over now. Our coverage is continuing and expanding. This post is all about summarizing and providing all necessary links for people who want to read about the carnival. The necessary links are:
Vishal Sharma
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Australia
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Carnival
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Startup
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Technology
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Thanks
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First of all, we would like to thank all who particiapted in this carnival, participants, our elite panel of Judges , our sponsors, CeBIT Australia, which is our major sponsor, SmartPath, Cagora, and BuiltWith and our readers. This has been a great exercise for all of us involved. Our efforts has been received well everywhere whom we have contacted and or those who have contacted us or given a feedback.
As we have said we want to expand our coverage in areas like IT (Enterprise, Product, Opensource, SAAS, eCommerce,)/Telecom (Mobile, OSS/BSS), Media (News, Social Networking), Marketing/Branding, Green Tech (Sustainability, Carbon trading), R&D. So continuing that commitment we are expanding and making some head ways in that direction.
As part of our ongoing efforts of providing more exposure to startups coming out of Australia and help them, CeBIT Australia is interested in talking to all of you and would like to contact you in regards to upcoming Transaction2.0 conference being organized, solely aimed at new startups.
On our front what we are doing, well:
We are trying our best to learn/share/help about new ventures and if you have any feedback, suggestions or tips please feel free to contact us.
Also we do advise please keep this portals feed and Vishal's blog feed subscribed to know what's happening.
Image credit: Above Image is used from Stampit
Vishal Sharma
Sunday, March 16, 2008
2008
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Australia
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Carnival
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Startup
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Startups
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Telecom
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Winners
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This has been an incredible experience and journey for all of us. This is the first time in Australia a carnival showcasing profile of new business ventures from different domains were covered online. In a world which is becoming flat day by day, as explained by Thomas Friedman, we will see more and more new ways of doing traditional things. Our local VC’s on contact couldn’t understand what we were doing, just shows the sate of affairs with our VC’s.
Today we are happy to announce the winners of this carnival. We have already published the feedback and how Judges have marked the participants. If you have missed that please read it here, as it will describe how we have marked all the participants. We have declared our first prize and now updated the page with 2nd and 3rd prize. We do acknowledge that in comparison to first prize 2nd and 3 prize winners don’t get much value. But this was our first event and we tried out level best (its an under statement) to get as many sponsors we can, but just couldn’t. Probably from next time we will have more offerings.
We will again like to thanks, all the participants, Judges and sponsors,without their effort we couldn’t have succeeded in dong this. From the Judges panel we have a message for all of you. This is what Ross Dawson has to say:It was very encouraging to see many exciting new market entrants as well as more established firms in the carnival. The depth and breadth of entrepreneurial talent in Australia is rapidly growing, and taking advantage of the massive opportunities emerging in the online space. Hats off to the drive and initiative of the entrepreneurs behind the very impressive array of entries.
This is what Justin Davies has to say :Lots of innovative ideas presented this year. Good to see innovation alive and well in the tech space in Australia. However there were lots of ideas that were minor twists on existing ideas, and as a result need to get enormous traction quickly or face annilation. Other ideas were unique - but not particularly compelling. Ask if there is a niche in the market and a market in the niche. Entrepreneurs need to focus on creating unique sustainable value, and continually ask the questions, "why is this different, why is this compelling, how do I make it more so?".
Now, the moment of truth has come. Our winners in ranking order are:Rank No. Participants Marks (1-10) 
Scouta 8.42 
GoodBarry 8.33 
Suburb View 7.61 4 OurWishingWell 7.50 4 88 Miles 7.50 5 Vquence 7.17 6 Tiinker 7.00 6 SmartPath 7.00 7 Me2Mobile 6.92 8 3eep 6.42 9 GlobalSurfari 6.17 10 Plugger 6.13 11 InvoicePlace 6.08 11 TheFame Experiment 6.08 12 SwapAce.com 6.00 13 Buzka 5.83 14 Adimade 5.67 15 Rave About It 4.83 16 Evaluator 4.42 17 Uvouch 3.75 17 WhatYah 3.75 18 ZaaBiz 3.58 19 Community Enabler 3.13 20 GreenAirFares 3.00 21 Confer 2.67 22 Plutext 2.50 23 Australiaforum 2.38 24 ITQSM 1.75
This portal will keep covering startups in Australia. As we forward, we will be expanding our coverage, esp in core IT/Telecom sectors, some really good stories to tell. We are also going to prepare a report on various aspects of startups covered here, to highlight what we are doing well and what needs to be improved upon. So keep watching this space as more will come and this is just the beginning.
All the best to all of you on behalf of VS Consulting Group
PS : If you have suggestions/feedback please post your comments here or in the comments section of feedback post.
Vishal Sharma
Saturday, March 15, 2008
2008
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Australia
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Carnival
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Feedback
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Judges
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Startup
5
comments
Name Comments By Judges The consumer site can still get more traction. Do a relaunch, reach out to bloggers again, work on partnerships with entertainment sites etc. Create a white label that can be embedded into online news sites. Keep pushing it! Work hard on the value proposition and aim to trade sale to one of the big real estate sites. To get attention for the site, it's worth considering a free automated pricing systems, as Zillow has. The basic business can stay the paid reports, but the automated system will generate traffic and media attention. Done a good job in developing an intelligent approach to filtering news, and also makes articles a bit easier to get a grip of. Couple of problems in logging in and also on multiple occasions advised me that I have already read the entire internet. There also isn't any selectivity immediately obviously available by country, nor focus/refinement by news source. Marketability is uncertain - who will buy it? And defensibility - any major eg Yahoo, Google etc can apply resources to recreate the same type of approach. Nice layout but the key to great aggregation is up to date content. The site was a day old when I checked it, and wasn't aggregating the latest (and big) stories. The search function is very slow and needs to be improved - people don't have that much patience. Other than that it's a great space to be in, so put energy in. Make it as easy as possible to get started with the site so you get critical mass with participants. Great site, useful. Isn't the prettiest but it does what it aims to do very well. I can see myself using this site regularly The site needs a redesign to look at lot more professional. There are a range of monetisation mechanisms possible here, including exploring referrals to realestate agents. Unoriginal idea that could be easily put together with some Magpie and a WP tweak. Great site revamp recently. It is time to carefully consider taking this to other countries. There may be ways of monetising some of the company monitor features. One of the most important things is broadening your sources, and if necessary paying for partial feeds in order to get more complete coverage. Good job, well done. Looks like a solid product and marketing strategy. Need to be clear whether prices are US$ or A$ and otherwise clarify the positioning in different country markets. Still has some useability issues with the maps etc. Needs a redesign. The front page includes 'popular' and 'recently added' surf sites with no indication of how they're organised (popularity? recency? continent? currently daylight?) making them close to unuseable. Highly centered on providing home surf forecasts, while many will be interested to look at what's happening in other locations globally. You may want to reconsider your pricing tiers, for example make them based on numbers of invoices. Need clarity on your intended users, and in particular their degree of tech sophistication. Be aware that not many people with the tech nous to use this (the way it is presented) use docx. I like buzka but it's a difficult space to be in. Not clear whether Buzka.com or Popnets is the submission here - there isn't enough information on Popnets to judge it, though the overt positioning is interesting. Buzka has a very slow load time. The front page doesn't do justice to what is contained within the site. The site concept needs greater clarity for first-time visitors. Goodbarry - really odd name Solid! I don't want to provide a mark for this as all we have is a concept but given the inventors not wishing to disclose at this time we have no specifics to evaluate it on. There is no question that carbon / green market opportunities abound but I get very concerned about greenwashing, that is, taking the approach that I can buy a Hummer as long as I buy a carbon credit alongside it. A very cynical market will kill initiatives that are for the wrong reasons. That said, if someone HAS to fly, and they can select a choice that puts part of their spend into renewables, then that is a good thing. The challenge with this venture is turning a quid - and perhaps if you set it up as a non-profit venture you might get the serious traction you are looking for. I think we will see a trend towards all companies contributing to the environment and therefore eventually bringing carbon neutral to carbon offset neutral in the same way that frequent flier points became undifferentiated as all airlines were offering it. The principle is interesting, but there is nothing else to judge at this point. I question whether people will want to have the airfare and carbon offset bundled. It will be challenging to provide an equivalent access and quality of the established online travel sites. This site may make more sense for people to buy their own carbon offsets for travel booked elsewhere. But I could be wrong and this might work on a small scale. Nick gimmick, but should this be in the competition? The proposition of the site isn't very clear, and isn't really in line with the writeup. If this is really about people coming to Australia, then more useful information and thinking about the process is necessary ie I want to move to Australia, where do I find migration consultants, moving companies, information about which state, which suburb, schools etc. A generalised chat about Australia will run out of legs very quickly when the developer gets tired of it - it desparately needs a value proposition I can't mark this, it's a VB install, a forum doesn't really cut it as Web 2.0 for me While it has some traffic, it is still far from reaching critical mass. One step is to make it more user-friendly for non-registered users. e.g. the search function requires a difficult CAPTCHA, which will result in people leaving the site - there's no need to protect search in this way. This application tries to bring together a range of blogging, clipping, social networking apps into one. As a result it does none of them brilliantly. I only marked this because I can't remember the name of the cheap script that powers this site, but I know I've seen it in the past. Nothing original here Because it covers many content areas it is diffuse and is less likely to attract users with specific interests: celebrities, videos etc. It may be better to focus on one area/ target market before broadening - this is more likely to attract enthusiasts. This is a really immediately useful application that provides neat preview and categorisation of videos - it puts me in control to scan quickly items of interest plus add my own. this should appeal to those who are interested in creating content and reviewing other content. Where is the monetisation? Perhaps similar to utube in building and audience and seeking trade sale. An issue is dependence on utube as underlying technology - should utube change their model for aggregators, life will be very interesting! Well resolved.. has it's moments. tough vertical and tech didn't impress me. There is still real scope for this to become a hot consumer site. Perhaps a relaunch and/or a concerted blog campaign could help this to pick up visibility, which will support the business services side of the business. Sorry, this appears to all intents to be a service business and one without a compelling proposition. For mine it doesn't meet the criteria for application. Is there a product here? There is an opportunity to differentiate a primarily services-based business with online services, particularly free ones which will lead to consulting or education engagements. I think this is a great concept that ties into the inherent need to tell people about good service. So what happens when service is lousy? Have the owners considered the legal issues of publicising negative comments? It is difficult to find businesses that have been rated - at this it looks closer to yellow pages online, albeit done better, than a good ratings site. These guys would do well to study Choice. Yet another customer review site, and far from the best I've seen locally. If they're running it on a shoe string it will last, if they're spending money lets take bets on when it folds The platform seems solid but it needs users. Perhaps focus on or promote it to a niche such as auto repairs or natural health - areas where people definitely want recommendations. At the moment because it is so broad, people will usually find no reviews. Don't like that you must sign up to even see what it looks like - barrier to entry Australian linked-in. FAIL. This will not get any critical mass as it stands - there is little incentive to join as you can't see anything about the network, and it strongly limits the value to non-paying users. Given the strong value available on the many completely free social networks, the only way this just might go anywhere is to be far more open, and monetise later. Looks like an aggregated blog. Hard to see how that will be unique or defensible as a proposition. YAY! a Pligg run site. 0 across the board, millions of Digg voting sites out there, I see absolutely nothing in this one. There are hundreds of Digg copies out there. There needs to be something more compelling than just doing that for Australian content - some kind of spin or twist that will generate interest. Hitting back doesn't take me back to what I was looking at. Swop library the old fashioned way. Potential to drive online movie purchase, but due to distribution by post, it becomes interesting. Ever lent someone a book? Not easy to chase up and get it back. I'm not even sure what this is suppose to be, something between delicious and myspace? Site was throwing up SQL errors, if they can even get the basics right. This has strong network effects, but it will be very difficult to get critical mass of users. You need to consider offering incentives for people to join, balanced with monetisation mechanisms around online sales. Any tools to facilitate loading media collections will help a lot (e.g. visual recognition of DVD/ CD spines etc.) When I was at kmp, our team did something similar in the UK, with govt development backing. There is a need for sports clubs to have an easy way to share content ( by coincidence I am developing a site for our junior football club now) - but what is here is very limited in its approach for anything other than small teams. It's not original, however first time I've seen a local site like this. The strength is in the whitelabel provision like their deal with Prime. Not a brilliant service, but one that may well have a decent future. The strong focus is one of the real strenths of 3eep. Tieing in with sports sponsorships, especially with local businesses such as credit unions, can be a very powerful model. The differentiated platform offers many possibilities for marketing into verticals beyond sports. I am sorry these guys have put so much time and sweat and cash into this, and I do hope they prove me wrong - but this just doesn't look like a model that will fly. Bearing in mind that they are discussing a new product, which I assume is not Cagora.com. A business model of sharing advertising revenue without having to worry about how that occurs is interesting and new, but if the new product is based on Cagora, it lacks content, and doesn't looking compelling to find or add content to. If their product is different the challenge here is having something to review in order to mark it effectively. That said, the writeup provided with this submission was the most articulate of all of them. Unable to mark, I must have the wrong address for them, I got some weird security message It is very hard to see the organising concept behind the current site, making it confusing and hard to navigate. It would be better pared back to a far simpler interface with far clearer value for visitors. The NFP community model has been proven to work - when done very well - in the US. Puts SMS campaigns into the hands of those people who want to use them. Not sure that I can see anything around avoiding sms spam. I'd question whether there's a low end market for this sort of service + the legal side may cause issues going forward. Not a bad site, just limited This looks like a solid offering. This could be bundled with other marketing/ social network offerings through partnerships. A great idea for young creatives to get notice, to create viral campaigns and let the community do the grass roots marketing. Taking a step further, sponsorships by AFA AdSchool / ad industry / movie makers etc - could be a neat hunting place for talent. I like it. Failed idea from the US, no reason to think it will work here. While not highly original, there is a solid business model and the simplicity of the approach will help. The key issue is building critical mass. Partnering with industry associations and offering subsidised deals to lead clients could help bring momentum, along with the usual online promotion techniques. I don't get this. If this is meant to be scientific, the sampling certainly wont be. Interestingly novel idea, and could be one to launch either a book / blog / body of research from. Cute, but I'd question its inclusion here. Nice! A lovely reflexive idea. Chances are it won't take off, but if you can get some traction it just might go a long way. If this doesn't work, try it again under a slightly different guise. Do what you can in blog promotion, and it's definitely worth advertising on Facebook. Watch out classified adverts, here is the new model. Incorporates freecycling as an idea, and I think we will see the ebay shop model moving across to this as well. Good job. The only thing being recycled is the idea. Work on the simplicity and look and feel. I'm personally not keen on how it looks - it doesn't seem contemporary or sophisticated. Pull back on the ads and over-prominent self-promotion - they clutter the site and can in fact make it seem less well established. That said, a great concept which could go a long way with massive determination and some luck. For people to use. Loads of viral opportunities, lots of opportunities to contribute and various spin offs of the technology. No wonder they are doing well, well done! I like the site and the implementation but it loses marks for originality. Highly marketable though but again an extremely competitive vertical, if it can build momentum could go well A really nice implementation. The license program is good - I presume this provides white-label sites. There is a lot of potential to get media coverage for this - it sounds like you've done this already. Offline marketing will certainly be very important - the right blogs will also be good to promote to. There is definitely good upside for this. This is a biased opinion, but I had looked at 88Miles in depth prior to this competition and evaluated it as the best timesheet system for a multi-user business. Really good value, and I am planning we will adopt it for our business. I like the product + tech but I worry whether this is enough of a product to be stand alone A niche market done well. The web service is definitely good to promote. While you are targeting a specific area now, there is the potential to build related applications to provide a very simple Professional Services Automation (PSA) suite. This has only recently become a major sector in enterprise software, but there are extremely limited offerings for smaller companies (and a rapidly growing market as many professionals go independent).
We are happy to announce that we have successfully showcased 28 Australian Startups in IT/Media/Telecom/eCommerce/Social Networking/Marketing/News/SAAS. We also covered 3 surprise entries which missed the competition by a whisker in registering for the carnival with extended dates :-).
This carnival was possible because of all the participants who participated, our elite panel of Judges who have put lot of time, effort and energy from their personal time with shear passion to mark all the participants. Our sincere thanks goes to Judges and all the participants. We would like to thank our sponsors, CeBIT Australia 2008, which is our major sponsor, Smart Path, Cagora, and BuiltWith. Without their support its very hard to keep going a long way. We do appreciate and thanks them for their encouragement and participation.
Judges were assigned the difficult task of marking on these startups profile. Judges marked them under four major categories :
Each category was judged and commented by Judges and then final comments/feedback was added. Each Judge marked each participant on a scale of 1 to 10, with higher the number, higher the relevance. After each Judge marked them individually on a scale of 1 to 10, we took the average and prepared the final results. Final results will be published tomrrow.
Today we are only sharing these final comments by judges, as a feedback, with all of you. We are not disclosing the comments given under each category. We will be compiling those comments in a separate post here or can be sent to you directly if requested. The final comments/feedback given is in order of participants being showcased. A pdf of this feedback can be downloaded from here.
The surprise entries couldn't particpate in the competition so we dont have any feedback for them, may be next time on a different stage or here :-)
Vishal Sharma
Saturday, March 15, 2008
2008
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2008 Web
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Australia
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Books
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Carnival
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Library
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Startup
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Web2.0
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Continuing in our coverage of bringing more surprise entries, today’s surprise entry is Booktagger
Co-Founded by Jeremy and Rebecca LeBard, Booktagger is a niche web 2 social community for book lovers. Each Booktagger profile is a graphical representation of your physical bookshelf on the internet. The bookshelf can then be shared with friends, family and others searching for the next good read. Booktagger.com is the first offering, trading under the entity name Amity Agency, which specializes in the creation of niche web communities.
Jeremy describes:We hope you'll congregate into book clubs and share reading experiences. Or maybe you'll catalogue all your books and track to whom they've been lent. We are a stand-alone site with a Myspace application due for release shortly.
Jeremy gives us more insights about their startup:
• How it started?
Booktagger started off like any good journey, with a woman. Rebecca, an avid reader and fellow internet addict, could not find a free and appealing service on the internet where she could store
memories of books and share them easily with family and friends.
Jeremy took it as a personal challenge to implement what she was looking for. With Rebecca's continued creative input Jeremy designed a unique way of sharing books that functions more like an application and less like the traditional internet experience. An idea turned into a business entity, Amity Agency. Like any good saga the Booktagger story is just getting started.
Rebecca is an academic at UNSW in the field of molecular biology where she has been working since completing her PhD at Sydney University. Jeremy is an IT professional who has consulted for Microsoft, Avanade and a number of other large Australian institutions.
• How long it took before it was up and running?
18 Months of planning, fundraising and coding
• What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional?
Beta
• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
Provide a niche social network for book lovers that leverages into established social communities.
• What services it provides it for consumer or customers?
Booktagger is a free book cataloguing and recommendation application available online.
• What is unique about your venture?
We are the first Australian based Web 2 niche community for book lovers. Booktagger bookshelves are interactive and allow for the easy movement and propagation of books throughout the community.
• What market segment verticals you are targeting for?
Niche social networks for book readers and social book widgets/applications for mature social networks.
• What type of customers you are targeting?
We are targeting internet savvy bibliophiles and casual book readers.
• What age group of people will be benefited most?
All ages of literate internet users.
• How many users are using your services?
We currently have 1,200 registered members and 9,000 catalogued books.
• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
We have grown our community base with no media spend. All growth has been viral.
• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any special mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
We measure Booktagger's success based on population interaction and uptake.
• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
This is a labor of love. ;)
• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
There are none based in the Australian market. However overseas there are several large players that have their own reading communities such as Shelfari, LibraryThing, GoodReads and the Facebook specific Visual Bookshelf. We fill a gap as Australian authored books are often not found in their communities.
• What are the main technologies used behind this start-up?
Php and Mysql.
• What has been the most easy to use, out of box and helpful technology?
We haven't used an out of the box technology our community is custom built. However our blog is hosted by WordPress.
• Are you using lot of open source tool sets for this?
We couldn't have made it as far as we have without open source tool sets.
• What is your operating environment (operating system) and what t
ype of database you are using?
We are using a Linux based platform and Mysql for the database.
• How often do you catch up with others trying similar things and where do you catch up. Do you have dedicated communities in your city?
On occasion I run into others starting niche social networks at entrepreneur meetups like Open Coffee in Sydney.
• How much money is needed upfront to start a venture?
How long is a piece of string?
• What are the main barriers in general for people start their venture in Australia?
I believe the main barrier for new ventures is finding early stage investors.
• What are your thoughts on the future trends of your service and market segment you are in?
AC Nielsen released a report in February 2008 outlining online shopping trends. The most sought after items on the internet were books. They also indicated that online product recommendations were the highest growth area for influencing buying decisions. We believe we've captured the right product, books, and mechanism, a social network, for promoting it. Online shopping growth world wide is a high growth sector.
• Do you have any advice for people who want to start their venture?
Be passionate, listen carefully and evolve.
Thanks Jeremy for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to hear from you in future on the progress of Booktagger. All the best for Booktagger.
Vishal Sharma
Saturday, March 15, 2008
2008
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Australia
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Carnival
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SAAS
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Software Development
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Technology
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Time Tracking Tool
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The 28th participant is 88 Miles
Founded by Myles Eftos, 88 Miles - is a simple time tracking application, aimed at the SME market.
Let us explore more about on various facets of 88 Miles from Myles. This is what he has to say:
• How it started?
88 Miles was founded and developed by Myles Eftos. I developed this for my freelance and consulting business because I realised that I couldn't accurately account for his time when working for clients.
• How long it took before it was up and running?
A beta was out with in 2 months - the final version was launched after about 6 months.
• What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional?
88 Miles is fully functional
• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
To provide an sustainable, un-obtrusive time tracking system that will be useful to other small companies.
• What services it provides it for consumer or customers?
Punch-in and Punch out facilities, time sheets, reporting, full REST AP
I and integration with Saasu.com a popular Australian-based Invoicing system
• What is unique about your venture?
It is time tracking that I would want to use. As a consultant, I don't need all the flashy Gantt charts or reports - I need to be able to track my time quickly and efficiently and generate a timesheet for my clients. This is all88 Miles does and it does it well.
• What market segment verticals you are targeting for?
Small to medium design and development firms. I'm also looking at the recruitment industry.
• What type of customers you are targeting?
Basically anyone that has to deal with per-hour billing. This includes owner operators and organisations that take on consultants or contractors
• What age group of people will be benefited most?
Anyone that is working I guess :)
• How many users are using your services?
I'm currently up to 24 paid account totalling 45 users which is breaking even on expenses. I am in the process of ramping up the marketing to get the name out.
• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
Mainly word of mouth and Google adwords at the moment. I have started a snail mail campaign - but this is in it's early days. Marketing the system is the next big step I need to take to make the venture viable.
• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any spe
cial
mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
Retention rate of users. Although the current numbers are small, those that have paid are loyal users, and the system has become a essential part of their workflow.
• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
Revenue is subscription based.
• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
There are a number of players in this market, the biggest is Harvest. There are some other small sites, such as Togglr, Clicktime and Punchytime, although they all use slightly different ways of tracking. 88 Miles is relatively unique in that is focuses on time clocks, rather than updating time sheets after the fact.
• What are the main technologies used behind this start-up?
88 Miles is built on Ruby on Rails, relying heavily on AJAX, and REST web services
• What has been the most easy to use, out of box and helpful technology?
Ruby on Rails
• Are you using lot of open source tool sets for this?
Yes - all of the tools are Open Source.
• What is your operating environment (operating system) and what type of
database you are using?
Currently the production system runs of Solaris
• How often do you catch up with others trying similar things and where do you catch up. Do you have dedicated communities in your city?
Many of the Perth based users are Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) members, so I will see them at AWIA meet ups. If I am interstate, I will try to catch-up with other users if possible.
• How much money is needed upfront to start a venture?
I've managed to get 88 Miles going from my own pocket, with little money. I obviously have a way to go, but it has cost me less than $5000 so far (not including my time)
• What are the main barriers in general for people start their venture in Australia?
Cost of hosting and bandwidth locally. You basically have to host in the US to save money. Other than that, there is no reason why an Australian company can't make a financially successful product
• What are your thoughts on the future trends of your service and market segment you are in?
I consider 88 Miles in the SaaS space, which is going to get huge. I think a lot of companies are realising the benefits of hosted services. This is especially relevant to small business owners how need reliable systems but can't afford the upfront capital hit, and to road warriors how don't want the hassle of syncing data between users.
• Do you have any advice for people who want to start their venture?
Build your system for yourself - that way you will get a feel for what does and doesn't work. You can't expect to build an awesome system if you are a heavy user.
Thanks Myles for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to hear from you in future on the progress of 88 Miles. All the best for 88Miles and the competition in this carnival.
Vishal Sharma
Saturday, March 15, 2008
2008
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Australia
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Carnival
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Ecommerce
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Service
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Startup
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Technology
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Website
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The 27th participant is OurWishingWell.com
Founded by Joseph Renzi, OurWishingWell.com is an online gift registry that allows hosts of any occasion to list items that they need/want and invite guests to view the registry and request contributions toward these gifts.
Hosts can list any item – from home wares, honeymoons, a holiday or a house deposit. Guests can view the registry and contribute any amount towards any gift on the list. It allows multiple guests to contribute different amounts to larger/significant gifts that would otherwise not be possible.
This is Joesph's 2nd venture entry in this carnival, first one was SwapAce.com. He tells us bit more about this intriguing venture:
• How it started?
It started with his team in 2007. The successful site has now expanded into other sites such as; BabyWishingWell.com, BirthdayWishingWell.com and BestFundraiserWebsite.com.
• How long it took before it was up and running?
The site took less than 6 months to develop before it was fully functional
• What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional?
Fully functional
• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
The main objective behind OurWishingWell.com is to provide a unique gift registry service to hosts and guests of any occasion.
In summary, a majority of people who are getting married have already been living together and already have the standard household items that they might receive for a wedding gift, so OurWishingWell.com provides them with an elegant way of collecting money towards other items (like their honeymoon or a house deposit).
• What services it provides it for consumer or customers?
• What is unique about your venture?
OurWishingWell.com is unique as it allows guests from all over the world to contribute to any gift listed on the registry. Hosts can list any items they desire – from household items to experiences to pets and house deposits. Money can also be withdrawn from the registry by the hosts at any time, which allows them to use the money to help pay for the event.
OurWishingWell.com is unique as it offers personalised features for each event. Hosts can print personalised gift registry cards to be distributed to guests. Hosts also have the option of creating a personalised website for their event. The personalised website builder allows hosts to create their own event website and add photos, event details and their gift registry for their guests to view. The website builder is free when you create a registry.
• What market segment verticals you are targeting for?
Marketing for OurWishingWell.com targets hosts of many events including; weddings, engagements, baby showers, birthdays, house warmings, fundraising eve
nts and Christmas wish lists.
• What type of customers you are targeting?
OurWishingWell.com targets hosts of all events and the guests of those events. Events include: engagement parties, weddings, baby showers, birthdays, Christmas wish-lists, house warmings and fundraisers.
• What age group of people will be benefited most?
Customers of all ages will benefit from OurWishingWell.com - as people of any age can create or contribute to a registry.
• How many users are using your services?
In less than 1 year, we have almost 10,000 people who have used our gift registry service.
• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
Online marketing is predominant and advertising through wedding websites. We also use public relations to create and maintain relationships with customers/potential customers.
• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any special mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
A majority of this information is provided to us through our own reporting system (attached to our database), but we also use Google tools like Google Analytics.
• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment? What are the main technologies used behind this start-up?
There are hundreds of both direct and indirect competitors in the gift registry segment. Direct competitors include: WeddingGiftsDirect.com.au, Wedding List Co., MelbourneWeddingRegistry.com.au, NotAnotherToaster.com.au,
• What has been the most easy to use, out of box and helpful technol
ogy?
Our internal wiki (pmwiki) for our internal intranet.
• Are you using lot of open source tool sets for this?
Yes.
• What is your operating environment (operating system) and what type of database you are using?
• How often do you catch up with others trying similar things and where do you catch up. Do you have dedicated communities in your city?
Networking functions throughout the city, small business activities, awards dinners etc
•How much money is needed upfront to start a venture?
Depends on the type of business
• What are the main barriers in general for people start their venture in Australia.
• What are your thoughts on the future trends of your service and market segment you are in?
The segment is expanding rapidly with an increasing number of competitors entering the gift registry market. Consumers are moving to online gift registries rather than traditional instore registries due to increased choice of items and ease of set-up.
• Do you have any advice for people who want to start their venture?
Thanks Joseph for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to hear from you in future on the progress of OurWishingWell.com. All the best for OurWishingWell.com and the competition in this carnival.
Vishal Sharma
Friday, March 14, 2008
2008
,
Australia
,
Carnival
,
Ecommerce
,
Service
,
Startup
,
Web
1 comments
The 26th participant is SwapAce.com
Founded by Joseph Renzi, SwapAce.com is an online marketplace that allows people from all over the world swap, sell, meet, and buy almost anything in a secure environment. It allows you to barter for goods and services; negotiate until you get the deal you want; and make offers to multiple ads without the risk of having to buy everything.
It creates and connects communities – both geographically and by interest. This enables you to meet like-minded people and trade within a special interest group. SwapAce.com also has personalised features which allow users to create a list of items you want and when someone posts something on SwapAce.com that is on your list, will suggest potential matches – increasing your chance of success.
Let us leran more about SwapAce.com from Joseph, this is what he has to say:
• How it started?
A gap was identified in the eBay net-based buy and sell model, so I set out to offer net users a unique village marketplace bartering approach. SwapAce.com was created so that users could swap and barter with items as well as buying and selling.
• How long it took before it was up and running?
The early days of the business were very challenging. I recruited a number of young people to join him, some just out of high school and some who had just finished university and soon there were 10 people working in the family home.
Four years later, and with additional funds from a government grant, SwapAce.com is now well placed to challenge eBay, the world’s largest online auction house.
• What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional?
Fully functional
• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
The main objective behind SwapAce.com is to offer users a unique experience with online bartering and negotiation.
• What services it provides it for consumer or customers?
SwapAce.com provides a place for its customers to swap, sell, buy and meet in a safe environment. And it’s free!
• What is unique about your venture?
SwapAce.com is a web-based system that enables users to buy, sell, swap and barter with virtually anything – products, services, events, etc. The company has patented several unique features which allow users to make multiple offers and negotiate the terms of the transaction until both parties are happy, enabling buyers to “shop around” during negotiation.
• What market segment verticals you are targeting for?
SwapAce.com is targeted at everybody.
• What type of customers you are targeting?
Anybody that has anything to swap or sell; or would like to buy and meet like-minded people.
• What age group of people will be benefited most?
Everybody can benefit from using this site, although the younger generation with less disposable income would benefit greatly as the site is free to swap, sell or buy.
• How many users are using your services?
SwapAce.com currently has over 200,000 members, from over 150 countries, and growing at a rapid rate.
• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
SwapAce.com is predominantly marketed through online channels. We also use public relations.
• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any special mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
Some of the key performance indicators are:
A majority of this information is provided to us through our own reporting system (attached to our database), but we also use Google tools like Google Analytics.
• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
To ensure our financial success, we have developed multiple revenue streams, including many options to provide a recurring revenue model.
Revenue from System Usage includes:
Revenue from other sources includes:
• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
eBay, freecycle, and other online auction sites.
• What are the main technologies used behind this start-up?
The main technologies include PHP and mySQL.
• What has been the most easy to use, out of box and helpful technology?
Our internal wiki (pmwiki) for our internal intranet.
• Are you using lot of open source tool sets for this?
Yes.
• What is your operating environment (operating system) and what type of database you are using?
• How often do you catch up with others trying similar things and where do you catch up. Do you have dedicated communities in your city?
Try to meet up at least once a month through various networking/ small business events in Sydney.
• How much money is needed upfront to start a venture?
Depends on the business venture.
• What are the main barriers in general for people start their venture in Australia.
• What are your thoughts on the future trends of your service and market segment you are in?
We believe that swapping (e.g. the swapping of products and/or time) will be increasing popular; especially for cash-poor individuals and organisations … for example, I can swap 1 hour of my time for 1 hour of your time.
• Do you have any advice for people who want to start their venture?
Thanks Joseph for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to hear from you in future on the progress of SwapAce.com. All the best for SwapAce.com and the competition in this carnival.
Vishal Sharma
Friday, March 14, 2008
2008
,
Australia
,
Carnival
,
Fame
,
Media
,
Service
,
Social Networking
,
Startups
,
Web
0
comments
The 25th participant is The Fame Experiment
Founded By Mark Schumann in 2008, The Fame Experiment, is developed to investigate the answer to one simple question, Can the internet be used to generate enough exposure for one person to experience public recognition?
It works on the idea that one person, if seen over and over again in a multitude of places, could experience public recognition, or become famous. The aim is for this person's image to be everywhere, and for that image to become embedded in Internet users' thoughts so that to see this person in public will trigger an I know you moment.
Mark describes, there are two phases:
Phase 1: is about getting the word out about the Fame Experiment. If users have a website, a blog, post on forums, or even email others, it is easy for them to participate.
By selecting the Earn Fame Points link after logging in, they will be given a choice of special code that can be placed on their website, blog, forum or email signature
. These links will generate an image linking to the Fame Experiment website, that when clicked on by others, will add to their Fame Points. These points contribute to the final selection of the subject.
Phase 2: involves publicising the selected subject to the large network of sites participating in the experiment.
From the moment the second phase begins, all images displayed on these sites will be changed to include an image of the selected subject, with a link back to the Fame Experiment where the subject's profile will be featured. During this phase, the subject will be encouraged to investigate any difference in public perception, and reflect upon this on their Fame Experiment blog.
Any clicks earned during Phase 2 will be considerably higher than usual and contribute to a likely second experiment.
Mark explains further about this unique venture of his and how he is progressing with it:
• How it started?
I had given thought to the multitude of Internet celebrities that had become famous, mostly for the wrong reasons. I wondered how their lives may have changed as a result, and whether they actually experienced public recognition. This lead me to the idea that some Internet users could actually want such recognition, and that I could provide a means for this in a positive light. The Fame Experiment was born.
• How long it took before it was up and running?
It took around 2 to 3 months for full operation.
• What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional?
It has just entered a fully functional state, moving straight from "stealth mode".
• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
As stated above, the main objective is to investigate the answer to this question:
• What services it provides it for consumer or customers?
The Fame Experiment does not service its users in the traditional way. The idea is that it is a collaborative experiment that all users benefit from. During the second phase, one user will be selected and will (hopefully) benefit at some level from public fame or recognition. Other users will benefit through reading the subject's blog, and earning Fame Points for a second experiment.
• What is unique about your venture?
The Fame Experiment is entirely unique in its approach to investigating the power of the internet in generating real fame. To be suddenly confronted with the same image of one particular person all over the web, and then to investigate the consequences, has not been done before. It is important that this perspective be maintained and that an investigative approach be constantly undertaken.
• What type of customers you are targeting?
Users with public internet pages such as bloggers, website owners and social networking users (e.g. Facebook users).
• What age group of people will be benefited most?
Users over the age of 18 are the only ones eligible.
• How many users are using your services?
Currently, under 10, but the site was only launched as of 3 March 2008 (the date of this email)
• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word? Initially, posts in forums, word of mouth, etc. However, the marketing model of this website is based entirely on its function. Since the purpose of the site is to build links to The Fame Experiment through banner images, this will also be its marketing tool.
• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any special mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
Stats packages such as Google Analytics will allow a detailed level of information about where people are coming from, and the depth of its exposure through the internet. After a satisfactory level of exposure is achieved, Phase 2 will begin.
• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
Google Adsense
• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment? What are the main technologies used behind this start-up?
There are no real competitors, unless a very similar experiment is being conducted that I'm not aware of. See below for technologies.
• What has been the most easy to use, out of box and helpful technology?
Drupal as a content management system for the basis of the website and associated modules.
• Are you using lot of open source tool sets for this?
As stated above, Drupal is being used to serve the content and manage the Fame Point system.
• What is your operating environment (operating system) and what type of database you are using?
The system is served on a Linux server, with PHP and a MySQL database.
• How often do you catch up with others trying similar things and where do you catch up. Do you have dedicated communities in your city?
There is no face-to-face communication with others at present, but this may change.
• How much money is needed upfront to start a venture?
Approximately $100 for hosting and domain name registration for the year, and around $250 for custom development using a freelance web developer.
• What are the main barriers in general for people start their venture in Australia?
From a web perspective, not a lot besides cost of development. Server costs are also quite high in Australia if local hosting is needed.
