Following Australian Startups and Tech Trends

It is been more than a year since this portal started following and discovering new ventures coming out of Australia across various domains. It's been an interesting journey learning about the stories of people behind these ventures and their success stories. To reflect upon what has been achieved in the last 12 months I have compiled the list of the top 5 reports and interviews published here. Top 5 Reports Sensis and the Australian Search and Directories Market Local Search & Directories Market Heating Up Emerging Mobile Startups of Australia FY08 Report - Telstra & Sensis Performing Well, Expansion into China, Starts Competing with iTunes Telstra lost round 1 to Apple's iPhone, now gearing for round 2 with Google's Android Top 5 Interviews A VC Perspective: Innovation & Start-ups Landscape in Australia Story of an Aussie Entrepreneur - Mother of 4 and Owns 3 Ventures Paul Budde's View: State of Telecom Industry and Innovation in Australia. Status of Mo...

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...

What is the average monthly revenue of an early-stage startup? That's one question a lot of entrepreneurs ask about early-stage startups in a given market segment, especially while investigating the feasibility of a startup business. Early-stage startups generally face an uphill walk when it comes to solidifying their business model. For that purpose, we have launched the Startups Business Model Survey 2008 -- an open survey for all early-stage startups to participate in, and eventually learn more about the functional business models of other startups in a similar market segment catering to a similar audience. This global survey presents an open comparative analysis of the business model of early-stage (ideally up to 12 months old) startups. If you represent an Internet startup, then please take a moment to share some information regarding your own startup's business model, keeping your identity anonymous if you want. We hope that this survey-based analysis will help early-stag...

This has been an incredible experience and journey for all of us. This is the first time in Australia that a carnival showcasing profiles of new business ventures from different domains was covered online. In a world that 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 VCs on contact couldn’t understand what we were doing, just showed the state of affairs to our VCs. 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 prizes. We do acknowledge that in comparison to the first prize 2nd and 3 prize winners don’t get much value. But this was our first event and we tried our level best (it was an understatement) to get as many ...

The 25th participant is The Fame Experiment Founded By Mark Schumann in 2008, The Fame Experiment , was 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 , that 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 signatu...

The 24th participant is Adimade Co-founded by Jake Lawton and Nat Graf in 2008, Adimade - is a video-sharing website focused on User Generated Advertising or UGA. Put simply, Adimade is YouTube for brands. Adimade brings together the talent of the YouTube community with businesses seeking a new way to interact with young consumers. Nat describes: Adimade runs ad creation projects on behalf of our project partners. Users create videos; submit those videos to Adimade, then users share and vote for the best clips. The project partner selects the best clip from the finalist’s videos, and is free to use that video for any advertising and promotional purposes. Adimade gives the amateur video creator the chance to get paid for the entertaining and clever videos they create. By submitting an entry to one of Adimade’s ad creation projects, video creators have the opportunity of getting paid for their work, funding their next film project and getting their work seen by the people who count...

First of all, we would like to thank all our participants who have participated in this carnival. We are happy to announce that we have received 23 28 applications for the event. This has been a great outcome considering the short time frame we were working in. Ideally, we were looking at 40-50 applications but some of the startups have become full grown businesses now and don’t consider them startups anymore, moreover and other was we tried so many VCs to come on board but nobody came on board. We are still negotiating sponsorships for the event with 2 organizations one will be a major sponsorship for the event if finalised we will pass on the sponsorship to winners of the carnival. 2 smaller sponsors have come on board, once we get the money it will help us in recovering tiny cost and support the enormous day and night efforts going on behind the scenes to make this happen. Our Judges have started working on putting together the guidelines and soon will be on the task of scrutinizin...

Q1. What is the objective of the carnival? A1. Carnival is the first step in creating an ecosystem where, we can learn about Aussie startups in various fields spanning from IT/Telco to Media/Games, and help those who want to dive into it or may join these upcoming ventures. We strongly feel that there are loads of new ventures starting, but they don't get to see the light of the real world, for various reasons. We intend to help these ventures by creating a platform and environment where they can learn/share/help others in their journey. Starting up a new venture or learning about how to go about it, is like black magic. When we look for some help/expertise or some formal education specifically on entrepreneurship, we just get some elementary education or basic guidance. In today's digital world, there is high-level information about business models and how companies are doing, how and what they did and so on. There is not much guidance/help available freely on how we should go...

Update: Registration is closed but we are giving the extensions in most cases . Apply using the same registration form and send it to us. Update : We have published a FAQ , to clarify some of the queries that were raised in the last few days. We are delighted to invite all the entrepreneurs or thriving ones from the land of green and gold to participate in this online (web-based) carnival . It starts on March 3, 2008 (AEST). How to Register: Download and fill in the registration form and send it to us by email. Upon receiving the registration, a confirmation will be sent by email. Fees: There are no charges/fees for participating in the carnival. Sponsorships: We are offering sponsorship ad units, in the sidebar of this site. As a sponsor, you will be associating your brand with this coverage of Australian Startups, read by thousands of influential people every day. Details here

In our previous post , it has been outlined the reasons for the start of this new initiative. Now to set the ball rolling, the first thing we are doing is we are asking everyone to tell us what they would like to know and learn from the owners/ people behind startups/ventures. We have compiled a list of queries/questions that will be useful for everyone, esp aspiring entrepreneurs. These queries/questions are listed below; please let us know what you think of these queries. If you want to add or remove questions/queries or have suggestions then let us know by contacting us or drop in your comments here. All the information collected will be published here. Questions/Queries we think will be useful to know : Please tell us about your start-up/venture/company? Who are the founders behind this and how it started? How long it took before it was up and running? What stage of your start-up is, stealth mode, beta mode or fully functional. What is the main objective/mission behind your ventur...

As posted earlier we are starting Aussie Startups Carnival 2008. Startups covered during this carnival will be from telecom, web, green computing, media and other segments. We are expecting more than 60 startups to be covered during this carnival. This will be a good place to learn about the people who are behind these startups, their approach, technology and their future plans. Details of how to enter the carnival will be posted here next week. We are offering sponsorship ad units, on the sidebar of this site and at the bottom of each profile post. As a sponsor, you will be associating your brand with this coverage of Australian Startups, read by thousands of influential people every day. Ad Specs: 125 by 125, 468 by 60 and 250 by 250-pixel size Links to the company product page You may insert a tracking code to monitor the performance of your ad Pricing is: 125 by 125 pixel size - on the sidebar of the whole site is - 499.00 AUD 468 by 60-pixel size - on ea...

VS Consulting Group has put together this site for following the next-generation startups in Australia . In the coming weeks, we will be starting Aussie Startups Carnival - 2008. If you know anyone who is involved in startups or new ventures then please pass on this post and my details . We will be covering one/two startups every day, giving insights into the people behind them, technology, target market segments and much more. More details will be posted here and on my blog . Related article : Top Web2.0 Apps in Australia Acknowledgment: The image is provided by Uvouch