Why Startups Carnival ?

Background :
Australian Startups Carnival - 2008 is an initiative by VS Consulting Group. This online (web-based) carnival is all about learning about new ventures started/surfaced in IT, Telecoms, Green Tech, Media, and Web 2.0/Social Networking in the last couple of years. Vishal covered the state of web 2.0 startups in 2006 for ReadWriteWeb. But since then a lot of water has gone under. We are now expanding our coverage, as some great ideas are being put together and executed. We intend to discover the people behind these startups, their motivations, how the future looks from their perspective, what technologies are being used, what market segments they are targeting, their mistakes, their advice and more.

Why:
One of the main reasons we are doing this is to make this black art of starting up more open and easy. When we look on the web there is so much high-level information about business models and how companies are doing, blah blah, but not much on how we should go about it, what mistakes we should be avoiding, how to tackle issues, where to get help and things like that.

Our belief is that we can learn a lot more from our fellow countrymen, because if we have to start something here then first learn from the local guy and then take advice from the guys in Silicon Valley (some really smart chaps there) or other parts of the world.

We know it's hard to get things going here for various reasons and this is why this initiative. We firmly believe by starting this and continuing this initiative we can learn from others' experiences. We need to learn more about this art and promote it for others to dive into it. This space is evolving quite rapidly and we are trying to learn more about it, there are not many dedicated places in Australia, to find information on these things except some lists. So the best way to learn is to share, the more we learn and share in an open environment more it will help others and eventually people behind these ventures.

How it works:
It’s an online (web-based) carnival, starting on March 3, 2008.
On receiving the applications/registration from various startups/ventures, profiles/information will be compiled in a web format. These profiles /information will be published on the carnival portal, starting March 3, 2008. Three/four profiles will be covered every day on the portal.


In terms of what participants get are:

• New ventures learn about other ventures and the people behind them across Australia.
• We are finalizing a Judging Panel of 3 to be announced by Monday, Feb 18, 2008. The panel is going to judge all the ventures on originality, simplicity, technology and marketability. They will select the top three. They will also provide some suggestions to all participants.
• We are also working with some sponsors to offer some form of prizes to the top three ventures and a few freebies to others. Once finalized it will be published on site.
• We are also working on getting some famous global bloggers to write about this initiative and the people/ventures who are participating.
  

To know more about it, please read the FAQ page.