It’s been another huge year.
Pollenizer created 6 new businesses, turned 4 years old, learned, flearned, rebranded, opened an office in Southeast Asia, established a training school and published a book!
Pollenizer’s 2012 Timeline – The Lean Version
Here’s the full story.
January
Pollenizer welcomes 2012 with 3 new businesses.
- Big Happy – helping merchants sell distressed inventory at higher margins through auction gamification
- Coachy – a platform for business coaches to host real-time sessions with students
- Ryuu – an iPhone game for fostering healthier habits
February
Pollenizer partner Ninefold hosted a networking evening in early February. Five Pollenizer startups presented their business to a audience of investors with Coachy receiving investment from the night.
We ran our first training course for startup founders on being a company director.
WooBoard, our startup building recognition in the workplace hired their first employee. Building a team that would see big changes to the business over the year and unlock a whole new view through ‘cultural analytics’.
Pollenizer turned 4 on 29 February. Happy Birthday Pollenizer!
March
In association with Sensis, the #sapihack hackathon took place over two weekends in March. Some fantastic ideas and products came out of the event and two startups were invited into Pollenizer for mentorship.
Cockatoo Island – There’s a lot to be said of leaving the office and letting the creative juices flow. Pollenizer’s offsite saw us jump on a ferry to Cockatoo Island for team building and brainstorming.
April
We welcome a new term, new faces and 2 new Pollenizer startups.
GetListed – social recruitment service that allows employers to find the best talent. GetListed is now called Accuto.
FlikGift – gifting platform that allows social networks to contributed to ‘gifts that grow’.
Project Rebrand took place in April which saw a new look for pollenizer.com including a new logo. The new look encompassed the idea of a seed growing from something small.
Eric Ries at Pollenizer from Pollenizer on Vimeo.
Eric Ries visited to add to our ‘startup science’. He got us thinking a lot about how we measure the progress of our businesses.
‘Two Days to Release’, a 48 hour hackathon we run each year with our teams, gave new startups FlikGift, GetListed, Yellow Fridge and Locationally a solid jump start. The condensed 2 days pushed the team to pursue new ideas and get a product out fast.
[Interlude] Pollenizer On Retreat
May
A new term approaching in July provided the opportunity for fresh ideas and team members. We welcomed over 80 people through our doors for our Bootcamp. The fast paced nature of startups was passed on to our guests and 16 groups pitched their businesses.
June
From Little Things is born and partners with Destination NSW to present The DNA of Startups as part of the Vivid festival.
Mick presented at Failcon to push Sydney’s digital community to embrace failing your way to success. This leads him to hold a mini-workshop session during a Coworking Jelly and Ross Gerring, a member of the group coins the term #flearn. (f + learn)
July
Tiwala launched as a new Pollenizer portfolio company – derisking cash on delivery in developing markets.
We held another intern programme in Pollenizer, welcoming three great team members. We even kept one! Gab, our FinOp’s Coordinator, joined the team following the 10 week stretch.
Pollenizer Academy, our lean training program, opened with it’s first sold-out class, Building Lean Startups. We ran this course for entrepreneurs and corporate innovators twice more in Sydney, once in Singapore and once in Manila.
Pollenizer recognised by the Sydney Morning Herald for helping Aussie innovation.
Hosted by PWC, our portfolio companies pitched to the investor network and we unveiled our plans to go global. Our first step was opening an office in South East Asia and employing Isaac Souweine.
Friendorse ceased operation after a massive push to get traction in a hyper-local social network. The business ran for nearly 2 years attacking a huge challenge – amazing effort team. #flearn
Dan Noble appointed as CEO WooBoard:
August
Veteran of Pygg, Ryuu and Accruto, Michael Dijkstra presents a Lean Product Manager course as part of the Pollenizer Academy. 15 students successfully graduate.
Michael also introduced the ‘lean standup’:
- What did you learn?
- What will you learn?
- What is stopping you from learning?
September
From Little Things employs its first team member, welcoming Zach Kitschke to the family as Editor.
The team gets out of the building to demo at Sydstart. On stage, Mick throws down the challenge to Sydney startups.
October
GetListed, driven by Simon and Albie moves to Singapore and rebrands as Accruto, becoming our first team in Singapore.
Mick’s family welcomed a baby girl, Lucy Rose, into the world!
November
Pollenizer portfolio company Mogeneration held a training day in Pollenizer’s Sydney Hive. Nearly 20 hipster designers took part, learning how to develop and build an iPad app using Oomph software.
Working together with Startup Genome and Deloitte, From Little Things launched Silicon Beach: a study of the Australian startup ecosystem. The report outlined the inherent lack of female founders and the considerable challenges faced when raising capital. An eye opener for some, the report started some necessary discussions towards the maturing Australian ecosystem.
WooBoard raises additional seed capital to keep growing. Try the new WooBoard to kickstart 2013
We received some positive media coverage for Pollenizer with founders Mick and Phil included in the Top 30 Digital Influencers
Pygg targeted a new segment for mobile-payments by offering a service to parents of school kids.
Dealised became Sodacard and started appearing all over Hong Kong.
December
If you thought that was enough for the year, one of the biggest triumphs came when the first copy our book Startup Focus arrived at Pollenizer. Getting the book written and published required a considerable contribution from the whole team, especially Bree. We have already sold 2,000 copies. We hosted end of year drinks to share the book for the first time to investors, family and friends. Let us know if you’d like to buy some books
Dave McClure, Mr 500 Startups and Pirate Metrics for Startups, drops (literally) into Sydney with some of the Pollenizer team.
We’ve raised some more money from strategic investors and have convinced some wonderful new folks to join the board… but we’ll tell you more about that next year 🙂
We ended the year on a high and we are pumped for the big year ahead.
2013
So how do we top that? What’s next?
- Phil’s Long Thoughts for 2013
- Taking our current companies and making them bigger
- Working more and more on the science to keep derisking startups
- Start some new, big, disruptive businesses
- Stronger presence in South East Asia
- Stronger capital bridge to the USA
- Stronger links to corporate partners
- Taking everything up another notch
We can’t wait.
A huge thanks to our families, investors, suppliers, supporters, and media for helping make the audacious goal of Pollenizer possible. Have a great holiday break and we will see you in the new year.
Things to do: