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Boozle - Finds Cheapest Booze in Your Suburb

Today we showcase an exciting and successful venture co-founded by Darcy Byrne, from Perth, Australia, Boozle - it allows users to find the cheapest booze in your suburb.

In a recent email-based interview with Darcy, he gave insights into his venture and how he is progressing with it. This is what he has to say:

• Please tell us about your venture/company?
Boozle searches 1000's of liquor stores in Australia to find your favorite beer, spirits and premixed drinks at the cheapest price, and at your closest outlets.

• Who are the people behind this and how it started?
Darcy Byrne and Luke Mahe

• How long it took before it was up and running?
About 8 months, but we have done several iterations over time.

• What is the main objective/mission behind your venture?
We want to make it easy for users to find the alcohol that they are searching for at the cheapest price and closest to them.

• What services does it provide for consumers or customers?
An alcohol search engine and review system.

• What type of customers you are targeting?
Everyone of legal drinking age in Australia

• How many people are using your services?
We have about 25,000 7-day active users

• What sort of marketing you are using to spread the word?
Word of mouth

• What is the monetizing/revenue model? Is there any new model, which is being tried?
Banner advertising

• Which are the main competitors or major players in this market segment?
Boozewatch

• What are the main technologies used behind this venture?
PHP and MySQL

• What has been the most easy to use, out of the box and helpful technology?
Google maps!

• Are you using a lot of open-source tool sets for this?
Everything is open source! We are using the codeigniter php framework, jQuery, PHP and MySQL all running on Cent OS.

• What is your operating environment (operating system) and what type of database you are using?
Cent OS and MySQL database

• What’s your thought on being an entrepreneur? How tough it is to start a venture in Australia?
It's very tough in Australia, if we were in Silicon Valley we probably would have attracted some VC interest. Plus in the US there seems to be a larger community around start-ups and their users so it is a bit easier to grow.

• What’s your thought on the start-up culture and innovation coming out of Australia?
We haven’t really seen anything all that special, it would be good to see more start-ups aimed at an Australian market.

• The conventional computing model is shifting to Cloud computing which is comprised of SAAS, PAAS and IAAS (infrastructure). This has resulted in changes to the conventional monetising model? How do you see the future of business in terms of technology and revenue model?
Everything will eventually move to the cloud. Soon we will have computers that just load a browser and you do everything from there.

•What do you think the government (federal and state) should do to improve the culture of innovation and the telecom industry?
Australia should have a law similar to the DMCA that exists in the United States. I think this will open up the doors for more start-ups to try new ideas without the fear of getting sued for copyright.

• If you are allowed to change the nation, what 3 things you will do?
  • Faster and cheaper data.
  • More dark fibre links out of Australia, especially from Perth.
  • Don’t have net filtering; let people be responsible for themselves.

• 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?
Not that we know of.

• Do you have any advice for people who want to start their venture?
You have to have passion for what you doing and don’t expect to become a millionaire overnight (or ever!)

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

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


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