Following Startups & Tech Trends

Vishal Sharma Monday, July 14, 2008 Australia , Business , Entrepreneur , Innovation , Interview , Online , Service , Startup , Technology , Tools , Web 0 comments

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Vishal Sharma Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Australia , Blogger , Entrepreneur , Interview , Media , Search Engine , Ventures , Web 0 comments

In our ongoing coverage of startups coming out of Australia and interviews with CEO's, Media Personalities, Philanthropists, and VC’s, today we showcase a successful venture and an exciting entrepreneur Ben Barren, co founder of Gnoos - Australia's Largest Blog Search Engine for Consumers and Enterprises.

I recently met Ben through our common friend Duncan Riley. I was highly impressed by his breadth of knowledge and enthusiasm. I followed up with him to do an email based interview with me to explore his thoughts on the progress of his various ventures and new emerging trends. This is what he has to say:

• What is the name of your company, the people involved, and can you provide some background on the venture?
Red Lion Ventures Pty Ltd owns Feedcorp Pty Ltd and Gnoos Pty Ltd. Red Lion Ventures was co-founded by Michael Leone and Ben Barren. The business has doubled revenue in the last 3 quarters so we’re hitting a real growth spurt.

In early 2005 Michael and I believed there was a great opportunity around enterprise RSS; This is when companies such as Feedburner, Newsgator and Technorati were flourishing and sites using RSS like MyYahoo, Flickr, and Delicious started to thrive. We wanted to localise this opportunity.

Feedcorp deals with our enterprise customers in the community arena. Gnoos relates to our Aussie blog search engine in the consumer space, whose business model is a mirrored deployment of the index running intelligence and syndication offerings for our clients who want to track when their brands and topics of interest are mentioned on Aussie blogs and twitter feeds.

In November 2007 the business also brought in Peter Burley as Shareholder + CEO of Feedcorp as an experienced media, online and management professional. Pete has previously worked setting up Fairfax Digital, ninemsn, and Vividas.

Our fulltime headcount has grown from 4 employees to 9 with the majority of those (6 FTE) being in engineering, as well as hiring an experienced CEO Peter Burley.

• Please tell us about your venture/company?
Gnoos has the largest index of Australian blogs and media RSS feeds – currently indexing 150k feeds : Which it then uses the power the Gnoos blog search engine to provide Australian blog only results; The unique business model is that blue chip Australian companies pay to access the blog and social network intelligence from the data, which includes when their company and product names were mentioned.

Gnoos also powers extensive content syndication for large media companies wishing to publish popular Australian blogosphere content. Clients log into a custom branded web based secure extranet with their own branding and set of topics and keywords. This is a unique offer in the intelligence and content syndication space. By indexing 150k media and blog sources, gnoos indexes far more content sources than competitor offerings.

We aim to grow this to 1m feeds within 6 months, at which time we aim to have a new consumer version of gnoos (finally) available, as well as a developer API so they can mashup the Aussie blogosphere and widgetise the content. Blog search in itself is not a business, as technorati proved. Blog search didn’t solve a real problem, and didn’t package up a digestable RSS product in the way FriendFeed or Dave Sifry’s new Offbeat Guides seem to.

• Please define metrics for success for your business?
We look at traditional business metrics : Proposals out to market; Percentage likely to close and Forecast Revenue and Cashflows, with tracking of expenditure against this. It was important our business was already due diligence ready with audited financials, and appointed accountants and lawyers. You need to be always ready.

We are on track for over $1m in revenue for CY 2008, with more than half of that revenue locked in. Since Facebook hit mainstream adoption, brands realise they need to have a social networking and web 2 product in their portfolio. We are looking to go to the next level of the business through launching a new version of gnoos, an API for the Australian blogosphere, and extended enterprise offerings in the user generated content syndication and intelligence space.

Acquired companies such as Pluck.com bought by Demand Media for $75M and Sphere.com bought by AOL for $25M-$35M - who have similar offerings - show there is a market for the enterprise intelligence, syndication and community offerings we currently offer and want to develop further.

• Any external funding – from VC, Govt, Self funded
The business was self-funded by Family and Founders for the first 2 years through the use of a $200K debt facility. Feedcorp did a Series A Angel round of around the same amount in May 2007 incl co-founder of Hitwise Adrian Giles, plus high net worth individuals and is currently raising $800K for its Series B round, of which one quarter is subscribed and is in advanced discussions to close the remaining amounts. So it’s taken us about $500K to get us to where we are, over 3.5 years; Which is a lot cheaper than what it cost to run a digital business in the dot-com period. But it’s not peanuts and good engineers, designers and project managers are all $80-$120 per hour cost lines, even with the benefit of equity and working on cool cutting edge projects. Unfortunately the banks in Melbourne pay engineers a lot of money to keep their online banking online, and a 9-5 job can be quite attractive to some people. Which is unfortunate because a lot of technical people’s skills are only getting semi-up to date by the programming they do on their own projects at night.

• What services do you provide for customers?
After 3 years of operations in the web 2.0 space, through trial and error, we have learnt what products customers will pay for, that we can deliver and scale, with good economics : That being powering online community and user generated content for media companies. As well as providing syndicated user generated content from the Australian blogosphere. Further, financial institutions and other blue chip brands are paying for our social networking intelligence offer, which provides them with a hosted secure extranet webpage where they can track if their name is mentioned on Aussie blogs, twitter and social networks.

Demand for these 3 products (community, content syndication, social network intelligence) has grown rapidly with revenue for the last 3 quarters doubling quarterly; $54K (Sep 07 quarter) to $96K (Dec 07 quarter) to $209K (till March 08 quarter) - The intelligence and syndication products are driven by the investment we made in the gnoos.com.au blog search engine. The benefit of Series B investment will be ability to upgrade the back end RSS infrastructure, as well as expand the sales pipeline, which at the moment is well over $3m.

• What type of customers you are targeting?
Customers we’ve worked with include large publishers such as business units within News Ltd, PBL Media, large media companies, digital agencies and online startups in high value verticals. We’re currently seeing the most demand in media, travel, automotive, financials, classifieds, and sporting clubs.

• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
Personal and company brand building using blogs, twitter, talking at conferences and interviews like this ! The most important marketing however is to traditional decision makers who read BRW + AFR, but are high unlikely to use Twitter or Facebook J For these people, our CEO Pete Burley and myself have done over 60 meetings with a qualified sales pipeline of over $3m. In these meetings a lot of time is spent educating clients about social media, and what types of tools they can use to participate in the conversation. You can’t beat hitting the pavement, day in, day out. We try and use well presented documentation that clients can understand. We also spend a lot of time with investors, where we do similar explanation of our business, with more of a focus on the business model, expenditure requirements and competitive scenario.

• What is the monetizing/revenue model?
Gnoos draws its revenue from setup and licensing revenue from its (hosted) intelligence and syndication offers. It also through Feedcorp offers a complementary community offering so a clients end user can create conversations around the syndicated content. Setup fees average $25K for intelligence and syndication; Up to $150k for community projects. Ongoing licensing fees are $2500 to $10k per month depending on the offering.

• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
Gnoos is the only blog search player with a dedicated index of Australian and global blogs and feeds. Neither google or technorati index Australian blogs solely. And other Australian offers don’t index globally. Indexing RSS is very hard though and we aim to major upgrades to the number of blogs we index (from 150k to 1m), the way in which the content is categorised (our enterprise clients want to slice n dice the data by location as well as product/brand name mentions) So we’ve got lots of work to do and to date our team of 6 engineers has been focused on the paying projects. So it’s a balancing act between back end investments and front end client work.

While we are just based in Australia presently, the same “localisation” issue applies to every other country such as UK, Germany, India, US, Singapore, Japan etc – So these are attractive markets for us, the same applies in the online community tools provision (+ blog syndication) where large publishers such as UK newspapers want to syndicate local content and embed tools in their sites. But we’ve definitely learnt we don’t want to be a Web 2.0 web developer, nor are we trying to be ning.com or google alerts.

Overall the blog search space is being subsumed in parts by google.com’s universal search. As a result, while blog search is important to Feedcorp, the next version of the site will be focused on having the most popular browseable blog (and mainstream media content) and the ability to filter it by location and topic, as well as personalise it.

So rather than compete directly in the search space, we want to be positioned more in the “hyperlocal personalisable news” space. A bit like http://www.outside.in (in effect similar to the tool that our publishers utilise) In this way gnoos.com.au will become much more like a hyperlocal theage.com.au or news.com.au – However it will include all the latest breaking blog news (and each of the categories to read thru such as travel, finance, auto, sex, politics, tech)

Unlike newspaper websites the next version of gnoos will have the ability to subscribe and personalise, as well as search. The original vision of gnoos was heavily focussed around the ability to use RSS to subscribe to feeds, topics, peoples and locations you are interested in, then when you login next time receive updates on what you have expressed interest in. It just happened that Search was the first feature we bit off. If you use google reader, the experience will be similar to this, however your feed reading will be setup and you just add and delete feeds, topics and locations you are interested in. Further, the ability to “share” and “clip” content you find interesting on gnoos, onto your blog/facebook/twitter/tumblr page is important as alot of blog search users want to blog about a topic once they find a relevant weblink. Again, we need to make this easy for gnoos users.

As you can see we want to build out the service away from the pure blog search space, and much of the functionality and algorithms we’ve developed in the enterprise space we want to apply to the consumer. (and vice versa)

Further, with funding, the aim is to create a developer API For gnoos.com.au so for non-commercial use developers can create mashups of Australian blog content eg if someone wanted to create an Aussie Politics Blog Website or Latest entertainment gossip (or overlay a google maps interface with Aussie blog content) This API should also stimulate media publishers who are interested in using Aussie blog content and want a quick way to get to experiment with content before going to market.

• What are the main technologies used behind this venture?
We’ve been an open source orientated company from inception : Using Wordpress Multi-User and MySql for our community projects with structured blogging and mh-reviews microformats for user generated reviews. On the search side we’ve used Lucene and Postgres running Java. For the mirrored enterprise deployment which runs separately (and doesn’t have the same speed and indexing freshness of gnoos.com.au which we should have fixed shortly) we’re very happy with the Django framework and Amazon web services.

• What’s your thought on being an entrepreneur? How tough it is to start a venture in Australia?
Feedcorp. is our company website which details the latest projects we are working on. My blog also captures my end of day thoughts in running a business a 24 hour flight from the optimal place to be doing it – California. There is an absolute lack of early stage specialist Web 2.0 and online investors like Mobius, Union Square, and Y-Combinator in the US. The benefit of Australia though is lack of competition. But the biggest challenge in running a worldclass online business is lack of skilled engineering resources downunder. I want to grow my RSS index from 150k feeds to 1m in the next 6 months, and run machine learning queries on top of the index to power my intelligence and syndication services to Corporate Australia for example : But I need RSS and search engineers to help me achieve this. Please contact me thru my blog if you are an engineer up to this challenge. If you do, it will make doing this interview worthwhile :-)

Thanks Ben for sharing your thoughts with us. All the best for future.

For coverage on other Australian startups, innovation, tech trends check this out and our coverage on interviews can be found here

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Ashutosh Saturday, April 12, 2008 Australia , Blog , Entrepreneur , Interviews , Online , Startup , Technology , Young 0 comments

In our ongoing series of interviews where we are interviewing CEO's, Media Personalities, Philanthropists and VC’s, today we bring our interview with Ross Hill, Founder of HatchThat. HatchThat is a blog that interviews entrepreneurs. Ross's other startup Yabble will also be launched sometime soon.

Let us explore what Ross has to say about his startups and also about Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Australia.

• Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests?
I'm 20, and was accepted to RMIT's Entrepreneurship program straight out of High School. I'm in the final year now, but have had a web design business for 6 years. I'm interested in social media and where that is going to take us in the future. More recently I have started developing my own websites including an entrepreneurial interviews blog at HatchThat.com, a cd cover search engine at CoverHunt.com, and the latest which hasn't been launched yet at Yabble.com.au.

• What is the name of your venture/company/start-up?
HatchThat.com

• Please tell us about your venture/company/ start-up?
HatchThat is a blog that interviews entrepreneurs. My aim is to get a wide variety of people from all sorts of industries.

• Who are the people behind this and how it started?
I have done all of the interviews so far but I'm open to guest interviews.

• How long it took before it was up and running?
One rainy afternoon. I had the idea, set up a Wordpress installation, and made a quick and simple custom template. I wanted to get it up and running as quickly as possible so that I could focus on getting the first few interviews online and prove that the concept was popular. Now that I know it is I am working on a redesign to give it a more interesting interface which has room for growth.

• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
To interview lots of interesting people, and create a blog that is useful for other entrepreneurs and people in business.

• How many people are using your services?
There are around 400 subscribers right now, but there will be a redesign and relaunch in the next few weeks which should increase that substantially.

• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
The most important thing is to try to make interesting interviews, but I am trying a few things with StumbleUpon and Twitter.

• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any special mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
I'm measuring subscribers as the main metric, and using Google Analytics for other statistics.

• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
I'm going to start selling banner ads privately in the redesign, because Adsense while being easy to implement doesn't pay very well.

• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
Well you seem to be doing pretty well with your interviews :) There are plenty of blogs out there but only a few that focus purely on interviews. Competitors don't concern me as long as they post interesting stuff for me to read.

• What are the main technologies used behind this venture?
Wordpress is open source and runs on PHP and MySQL. I use a couple of plugins but it is a pretty standard installation.

• 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?
I go to three or four networking events each month, including The Hive of which I am a founding member. Cam Reilly's MODM is another good one.

• What's your thought on being an entrepreneur? How tough it is to start a venture in Australia?
It really depends on the scale and industry of the venture. If you are starting a blog you can do it from anywhere in the world, the same really goes for any online venture. It might be easier in some areas than others because of the networks that exist, but I don't think location is a barrier to getting started.

• What do you think of new ventures and innovation coming out of Australia?
I don't think we hear enough about Australian startups - for example not many people know that Google Maps actually came from a startup here.

• Any new ventures you think are worth keeping an eye on?
Yabble of course!

• Do you think we can create a new Google in Australia?
Why not? I'm sure there are people already trying.

• Which city in Australia is more vibrant and can be regarded as the Silicon Valley of Australia?
I'd have to say Melbourne, since I'm just down the road in Geelong :) But really, there are interesting startups all around the country.

• Do you have any thoughts on our TAFE/Universities and their curriculum in terms of promoting and encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation?
I'm in the final year of RMIT's Entrepreneurship program, which is focussed on entrepreneurship and innovation - but I think more entrepreneurial subjects should be offered to other areas of study. A lot of graphic designers will end up running their own businesses, doctors have ideas they would like to commercialize, computer science students might try building their own software and selling it. More business concepts should be taught across the board so that less small businesses fail. It should start at high school.

• What do you think the government (federal and state) should do to improve the culture of innovation and the telecom industry?
At one stage a few years ago Internet access was rapidly decreasing in cost, but over the last year nothing has happened. I talk to people overseas and I have to explain the concept of download quotas, and they wonder why our definition of broadband is so slow. If everyone had access to true high-speed broadband it would open up a lot of potential for developers. The same goes for mobile. At Mobile Monday last week game developers explained that if they sell a game for $4 the consumer still had to pay about $10 to actually download the thing - which makes it ridiculously expensive. If the communications infrastructure gets cheaper it will provide a more competitive environment for developers which can have a massive impact on everybody.

I am looking forward to the results of the Review of the National Innovation System and hope that the new government supports innovation in Australia.

• What do you think what can we expect from the Rudd government for IT and the Telecom industry?
When I heard about his plan for ISP-level filters I was very concerned both for freedom of speech and also from a technical perspective how it is even possible. I don't think we have seen much so far in regards to broadband speeds but it was an election promise so hopefully there is some action on that soon.

• Any thoughts on who is going to get the network coverage for the launch of iPhone in Australia?
If it is an exclusive deal then my money is on Telstra, and hopefully Apple can talk them into a good data plan. I think it is quite possible that it won't be an exclusive deal though.

• Do you have any advice for people who want to start their venture?
Start today.

• How many business partners you have?
None.

• Which City you are based in?
Geelong, near Melbourne.

• Do you have any business advisor/mentor?
I think we can learn from everybody that we meet - I love sharing my ideas with a wide range of people and hearing their perspectives.

Thanks Ross for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to hearing from you in the near future. All the best.

For coverage on other Australian startups, innovation, tech trends check this out and our coverage on interviews can be found here

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Vishal Sharma Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Australia , Ecommerce , Entrepreneur , Online Interview , Startup , Women 0 comments

Today we showcase a story of a young woman entrepreneur, Susie Hambleton, founder of Kahuna Bay, from Gold Coast, Australia.

Kahuna Bay - is a brand of tropical styled homewares and accessories. The Kahuna Bay products are sold in boutiques and homewares stores in Australia as well as online in the web boutique. The products are made from natural materials such as sea shell, mango wood, sandstone, mother of pearl, freshwater pearls and silk.

We explored bit further about Susie and her journey as a woman entrepreneur. This is what she has to say in her interview with us:

• Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests?
I live on the Gold Coast. I am Australian but grew up in California. I have an MBA from California State University and a Bachelors in Management and Marketing. When I’m not consumed with my business…you’ll usually find me at the beach, in yoga class or hanging out with friends. I’m learning to surf and always surround myself with people.

The first decade of my business career I worked in financial sales, then I was a business studies lecturer, and moved into corporate communication and marketing. In my late twenties I quit my job and started a homewares and café boutique in Brisbane. After three years, I sold the business. I always knew the boutique was going to be a launching pad for something bigger…I called it my retail uni.

It was there that I gained knowledge of the retail and wholesale homewares industry and decided to start the Kahuna Bay brand.

• Tell us how it started?
I went over to Asia and spent seven weeks looking for factories that could manufacture my products.

• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
My main objective is to create a great brand that means style and quality with inspiration from the tropics while at the same time having fun in the venture.

• How long it took before it was up and running?
I started Kahuna Bay in March 2007. It took about seven months to set up the manufacturing, develop the website content, organise international shipping, and create a sales system.

• What services it provides it for consumer or customers?
Kahuna Bay provides gorgeous products for the home such as vases, photo frames, candle holders and accessories like jewellery and silk scarves.

• What market segment verticals are you targeting?

• I am targeting boutique homewares and giftware shops that are independently owned in Australia.
• The secondary target is individual customers shopping online for tropical and coastal style décor.

• What type of customers you are targeting?
The end user of my products are usually affluent women between the ages of 30-50. Many love tropical style or beach style decorating and enjoy products made from natural materials. They are very into style and decorating their home is important to them.

• How many people are using your services?

• There are about 30 stores stocking the Kahuna Bay brand in Australia with numerous end users.
  
• People shop online, but this is not my primary focus. I have recently deleted over ½ the products online in order to streamline the business.
• I would like to see the number of stores stocking the brand triple in the next year.

• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
The most effective marketing as been a personal approach and that means setting up meetings and showing the product range. I have two sales reps as well as myself who represent the brand to prospective clients and service existing customers.
I have also used:

• Google Adwords
• National advertising in House & Garden magazine and Real Living magazine
• Shopping Centre counter to generate customer interest as well as test the market reaction to the products and set realistic prices
• Direct Mail
• E-mail campaign
• Decorating website community Coastal Living- by participating there I had more success than Google Adwords results.
• The brand will be launched to a wider market at a buying trade show in Melbourne in July/August 2008.

• How are you measuring the success of your venture? Are their any special mechanisms/tools are in place to monitor the progress?
I am measuring success by repeat store orders and qualitative feedback from store clients as well as end user feedback. I am using a customer database that tracks store orders as well as look at trends and room for growth.

• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is their any new model, which is being tried?
Product sales. Nope…just an old fashioned model of buying and selling.

• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
There are many brand competitors. But I have chosen a product niche that was different in the Australian market and entered the market with competitive prices. I approach the market from the retailers perspective, harnessing my experience owning a boutique.

• What are the main technologies used behind this start-up?
The website is based on CubeCart, its pretty easy to get going but its not perfect.

• What has been the most easy to use, out of box and helpful technology?
For sure CubeCart and my customer database by Simply Contacts.

• 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?
No formal networking…just informal. There is a local bloggers group and I have used Twitter to link in with other entrepreneurs. I tend to meet other entrepreneurs when I travel to international trade shows.

• What’s your thought on being a women entrepreneur? How tough it is to start a venture in Australia esp if you are a woman?

• The homewares industry is a natural for a woman to be involved in. In my opinion I haven’t faced any harder challenges than a man would face in Australia.
• I think some people are surprised by what I do… because I’m a female, but it could be that its unusual. They are more surprised that I travel on my own and have set up my Asian networks alone.
• I probably have encountered more obstacles in Asia being a female…but I have been able to work through each issue as they come along. I just try and take it one step at a time.

• Which city in Australia is more vibrant and can be regarded as Silicon Valley of Australia?
It seems there is a lot of activity in Sydney.

• What do you think of new ventures and innovation coming out of Australia?
I think some Australians are very innovative. I get excited by new ventures and love meeting other entrepreneurs.

• What do you think of our TAFE/Universities and their curriculum in terms of promoting and encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation?
I wasn’t educated in Australia, so I don’t know if I should comment. Although university helped, nothing could really prepare me for having a business like having a business does. Having your own business can be an obstacle course of extreme highs and lows. You have to be a risk taker as well as a good juggler. You have to learn to cope with anxiety and be better than others. Most importantly you must believe in your business ideas more than anyone else, even when other people are doubting you. I think real entrepreneurs should be the ones teaching innovation and business. You can only teach it if you’ve experienced it.

• Have you sought any funding?
No, Self-funded

• What do you think government (federal and state) should do to improve the culture of innovation?
Besides grant matching programs or reduced rate loans, I would love to see the government put in place useful initiatives at the local State Development offices…more than just business planning. Wouldn’t it be great if they did free seminars, networking and share space. What if there was a share space for entrepreneurs added to local libraries?

• At the 2020 conference, PM Kevin Rudd is meeting with top 1000 people from different background to discuss and collaborate on the issues facing the nation. What issues would you like to raise if you are given a opportunity to attend?
I think issues of drugs, domestic violence, depression, high cost of living and troubled kids are all really important issues.

• Do you have any advice/message for people, esp; women, who want to start their venture?
If you are thinking about a business, but don’t know where to begin, start a journal. Before I started both businesses I had a journal where I sketched out what I wanted until it became very clear. Documenting my thoughts really helped me create a clear path of what I wanted and what the business concept was. Using word concepts or drawing pictures is great.

When you do decide to start the business you must realise it is going to be hard work. You will be working all the time and much harder than in a 9 to 5 job. Its not an early retirement and people will doubt you. Stay clear on your focused goal and just go for it. Once you start you have to know your in it for the long term. Keep visualising how you will feel once you achieve your goal and reward yourself for progress.

Thanks Susie for sharing your thoughts. We look forward to hearing from you in future on the progress of Kahuna Bay. All the best for Kahuna Bay.

For coverage on other Australian startups/innovation/tech trends check this.

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