Author Archive

We are Hiring!

Blog on February 23rd, 2011 1 Comment

I suspect that this is just the beginning for 2011, but there are already open positions on our job board. If you apply, please take the time to read our website and ask around a bit before submitting your application. We respond well to people who put some effort into their application and we especially [...]

Gen-Y – Awesome for building web businesses

Blog on November 10th, 2010 No Comments

I had the pleasure of joining Mike Knapp who founded the wonderful Shoes of Prey on Mark Jones‘ show for Financial Review TV. We spoke about Generation Y and we agreed that they can be awesome for building web businesses. What do you think?

Loving the Micro-Fail

Blog on November 10th, 2010 No Comments

Because I have built more web businesses than I can remember, I am very comfortable releasing products early. I know how much a product evolves in collaboration with its users when this happens. I know there will be more moments of micro-fail where I see users hating something, being confused by something, seeing bugs that [...]

Measure things that you can learn from

Blog on September 28th, 2010 No Comments

What do you measure? Measuring the number of users and revenue is OK for tracking the general growth of your web business but it doesn’t help you improve it. If you have 20,000 users in month 1 and 20,001 in month 2, what do you do with that information? You are still blind even though [...]

How to turn an idea into a business: Launchpad

Blog on September 24th, 2010 No Comments

It would be very cool if we had a Y Combinator in Australia, but we don’t. It has been tried and it has failed. We just don’t have the investment ecosystem to support it yet. We are a long way off the possibility of a hyper-competitive angel ecosystem causing a super angel conspiracy in Australia. [...]

Startups and Babies: Guest Post by Chris Hitchen

Blog on August 9th, 2010 2 Comments

This is a guest post by Chris Hitchen, CEO at getprice.com.au in celebration of Mick’s new son, Samuel. Startups and babies… The launch date is never certain and often late It doesn’t come out the way you expect it to It costs much more than you think There are lots of bugs along way No [...]

[Launch] 99dresses.com For All Womankind

Blog on June 3rd, 2010 4 Comments

The founder of 99dresses.com is 18 year old Nikki Durkin. She came to see us after her last exam and this is her 3rd business. Her idea this time is to liberate women’s wardrobes which are typically 80% crammed with stuff that is never worn. 99dresses.com is a peer-to-peer clothing business which provides the tools [...]

Life at the Kanban Wall

Blog on May 2nd, 2010 6 Comments

I’m pretty proud of the work we do on our processes in Pollenizer. Our production  flow would be pure chaos without them. The starting position of all requests is do it now, do it for as close to free as possible, put the best people on it and make it perfect. Along the way this [...]

A Must Watch for Product Designers and Founders

Blog on March 1st, 2010 4 Comments

There is so much game theory in product design. Here is a terrific, yet slightly disturbing, journey through our game-packed world. DS Games – E3 2010 – Guitar Hero 5 As difficult as it may seem, you need to know this if you make consumer web products. Especially if you want to make revenue. My [...]

A One Site Strategic Plan

Blog on February 17th, 2010 5 Comments

We’re at Growth Summit this week and thought it would be useful to share one of our most valuable tools: Pollenizer’s Site Page Strategic Plan Template We are big fans of Verne Harnish and the Rockefeller Habits. One of his most powerful contributions to our business has been the idea of a one page strategic plan [...]