Pollenizer: Building and Investing In Australian Web Startups

Are you ready to start a web business now? Apply for Startup Bootcamp today. It’s a practical and informative program to help you hone your idea and understand the full picture of building a successful business. What’s the commitment? 4 nights of 3 hr hands-on workshops over 4 weeks. You will learn from a team [...]

Pollenizer wants to be co-founder of your next web business For years we have been preaching focus. It aligns your team, simplifies most things, combines your energies in one direction and generally makes life better. This applies to us as much as it does to the companies we work with, and now we’re further tightening our [...]

Signing NDA’s is impossible for Pollenizer given that we see about 20 new businesses a month. We certainly keep all information confidential and never, directly chase a new idea brought to us from someone. Pollenizer’s integrity is and must be on public show and our reputation depends on living it. Openly though, it’s rare that [...]

I saw Steve Hopkins post today on hypotheses based testing and thought I’d share some ideas we’ve been using at Pollenizer. A lot of startups we see and work with are getting better at doing customer development, but they sometimes aren’t quite sure what to do with the results. Very rarely do you finish one [...]

“We’re 99% there,” says the very excited entrepreneur. “Fantastic, well done. Only 50% of the way to go,” responds the veteran advisor. We often laugh at this at Pollenizer. It’s something we hear lots of people say when they are starting a new web business, establishing a new partnership, closing a sale or raising investment [...]

A short story about the difference between belief and experience to encourage developers to get out of their comfy chairs and go and talk to your customers. At Lean Startup Circle Sydney, a number of the people were concerned about having to go talk to customers as a part of Customer Discover and Customer Development. [...]

Briefly, I mentioned a quick business idea to Dean and Justus from Spreets. It was an alternate way to use the same technology to grow a new revenue stream. Dean’s response; “One day, but right now, I’m not wasting a single second or cent chasing anything else.” Great answer. It doesn’t cost much or take [...]

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot I love this quote. Either you haven’t been through it and it just sounds like any old saying. Or you have been through [...]

One of the best thing about the geeky, propellor head Product and Engineering team is that they aren’t just geeks. They’re entrepreneurs, which of course makes them, as Phil’s new hoodie states, Entreprenerds. This of course is crucial for when you want to start a web business, as you don’t want pure tech guys who [...]

On Friday we had a workshop for a new business, searching for the minimal viable product in the area of fundraising. In order to learn a bit more about some of the basics and have some fun afterwards, we decided to do a quick manual MVP test. The goal was to raise $200 for KIVA [...]