Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

Today we showcase the story of an exciting venture, from Brisbane, Australia, ApartmentReviews - Australia's Largest Dedicated Apartment Resource , founded by Shane Moore. In a recent email-based interview with Shane, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • How long it took before it was up and running From the initial concept to having the first basic site live was around 3 weeks. The current design took another month or so to get right, at which point I started advertising through Google Adsense and posting on forums. • Stage of Venture The site launched in 2007 and since that time I've been concentrating on building traffic and attracting real estate agents to list their details. The next step will be to transition the 30 or so real estate agents we have into paying customers (currently it is free for them). • Which Market Segment Anyone looking to rent or buy a residential apartment. • Customers Any...

Today we showcase the story of an exciting venture, from Sydney, Australia, infome - Find Anything Nearby from your Mobile, co-founded by Scott Middleton, Andrew Lowe and Brett McDowall. In a recent email-based interview with us, Scott gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? When I was about 12 - thanks to a book my parents bought me - I found out that I could create web pages, I was so excited I distinctly remember tossing and turning the entire night because I began imagining the possibilities, imagining what I could create; especially how I could build websites for local businesses. A year or two later, still excited and full of enthusiasm I’d learnt how to create mobile games, A well-established local mobile developer bought my first game and it went worldwide – it even made it to a top 20 list for Australian developers. Even now, I still love mobile. I...

Today we showcase the story of an exciting venture, from Sydney, Australia, Mogeneration - Mobile 2.0 Web & iPhone Development House , co-founded by Tom Adams & Keith Ahern In a recent email-based interview with Keith, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • How long it took before it was up and running The co-founder Tom Adams and I had been talking about working together on iPhone and mobile projects for quite a while. In the end, it took about 2 months for a decision to launch. • Stage of Venture mogeneration started in October 2008 and launched "The Australian" on iPhone within a few weeks. We have offices in Brisbane and Sydney are still under 10 people. We have created 9 iPhone applications for Australian and US companies. • Which Market Segment We help companies and individuals get a presence on iPhones. We have worked with a wide variety of companies from News Ltd to small startups li...

Today we showcase the story of an exciting venture, from Melbourne & Sydney, Australia, Front Foot - Media Solutions for mobile phones and the internet, co-founded by Anton Sher, Ben Astill, and Richard Lennox. In a recent email-based interview with Anton, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • How long it took before it was up and running Front Foot started in April 2006 and we launched our first mobile site in January 2007. Since then we have built several mobile sites, including the Winner and Runner-Up at AIMIA's 2009 industry Awards for EA and Sky Racing respectively. • Stage of Venture Three years on and our portfolio is growing. We now have a mobile ad server, billing and alert systems, and video platforms, and are integrated into Australian carriers. Currently, Front Foot is looking at several export opportunities. • Which Market Segment Front Foot provides mobile solutions for all market seg...

Today we showcase the story of an exciting venture, from Melbourne, Australia, Debenu Pty Ltd , Document Management Tools for your Desktop, co-founded by Karl De Abrew. In a recent email-based interview with us, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? I've spent time in my earlier years in the UK, Australia, the US, Ireland, and then back in Australia. I'm an avid technologist and have been for as long as I can remember. Back to the times when people would laugh at me for using a keyboard when they had their trusty ball-point at the ready. I enjoy working with my friends, and consequently, I try to involve them all at some stage in my businesses. I have managed to create a working environment that doesn't feel too much like hard work. Sure, the hours are long, but as an entrepreneur -- well, I've got a great boss. I also get a lot of freedo...

Today we showcase the story of an entrepreneur, Malcolm Allen, from Melbourne, Australia, founder of Glynx - Your World of Private Applications, i.e.; it is software you run on your PC to control your online identities and make your internet private. In a recent email-based interview with us, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • How long it took to launch From the first concept to today six years old. We have had several goes at it, realising the problems are far greater than we initially anticipated, both technically and in terms of the competitive intensity. It would be true to say that I am not sure we would have started if we had known how hard it would be (and the amount of sacrifice required). For us it has really been a "force of will" - we are creating a business literally from nothing. We didn't even really believe the meaning of "we don't know what we are getting ourselves into...

Today we showcase the story of an entrepreneur, Aulay Macaulay, from GoldCoast, Australia, founder of JustRosters - a web application for Staff Rostering. In a candid interview with us, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • How long it took to launch It took 3 of us 6weeks from brainstorming to launch @ about 25 hours per week each. That is around 450 man-hours all up. • Stage of Venture Launched on the 3rd March 2009. • Which Market Segment Industries that employ a high number of part-time staff (Hospitality and Retail) Industries that employ shift workers. (Health, Emergency Services, and Manufacturing) Industries that have staff working at multiple locations (Building and Construction) Industries that sub-contract on an irregular basis (Government and Contractors) • Customers Business owners/managers. Whoever is in charge of rostering for the businesses identified above? • Targeted Age Group All ages. • Users U...

Today we showcase the story of an entrepreneur with successful ventures under his belt, Graham Dawson from Sydney, founder of OZWeather - an iPhone application for weather tracking and forecasting in Australia. In a candid interview with us, he gave insights into how he is managing and juggling. This is what he has to say in his interview with us: • How long it took to launch From idea to web app took about 2 weeks, although it used back-end infrastructure that was already in place. From a web app to a native iPhone app in iTunes took a further 10 weeks or so. • Stage of Venture The product was launched on 1st Nov 2008 and has had several incremental updates since. • Which Market Segment Aimed at the general public - Anyone with an interest in the weather. • Customers Aimed at the general public, iPhone or iPod Touch owners. Anyone with an interest in the weather. • Targeted Age Group All ages. • Users Using Service Currently about 30,000, typically increasing at a rate of 1500 per w...

In the ongoing coverage of exploring new startups coming out of Australia, today we explore a promising startup - GoPC www.gopc.net - is next generation “cloud computing”. It is your entire PC desktop along with your applications and data, but runs across the Internet from a super computer and projects a screen image to any device you happen to be sitting at. It's founded by Graeme Speak from Perth, Australia. In email-based interview with Graeme, conducted in Dec 2008, he explained how he is progressing with his venture. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests? My name is Graeme Speak. I’m the CEO/Founder of GoPC and currently based in San Francisco/Silicon Valley. I also founded and ran another company in Australia, Central Data, which operates a data centre and specialises in Outsourcing projects (network and software development). It’s now been running for 28 years. I studied Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science an...

In the ongoing coverage of exploring new startups coming out of Australia, today we explore a promising startup - RetailMeNot.com . It is co-founded by Bevan Clark and Guy King of Stateless Systems, Sydney, Australia. In a recent email-based interview with Bevan, he explained how he is progressing with his venture. This is what he has to say: • Please tell us about your venture/company? Stateless Systems is a bootstrapped venture focused on building websites and tools that make the Internet easier to use. Our web properties include: RetailMeNot.com : Find and share coupon codes for thousands of online stores BeatMyPrice.com : A people-powered price comparison engine CushyCMS.com : A super easy hosted content management system OurSignal.com : Social news aggregator and visualizer BugMeNot.com : Bypass compulsory web registration PDFMeNot.com : Takes the hassle out of viewing PDFs online JungleCrazy.com : Browse Amazon products discounted by at least 70% • Who are the people behind thi...

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...