This early-stage company is currently seeking strategic partners who can make a valuable contribution to the business through capital investment and expertise.

StageBitz is a cloud-based web app that makes prop management a breeze for stage, film and TV production professionals.

The founder, Catherine Prosser, is an experienced theatre production professional with the reputation of being an innovator in the industry. She is a recent member of the ABC Advisory Council and founded theatre software company Production Genie in 2007. With her sights firmly set on seeing StageBitz used by the performing arts industries in  US, UK, Australian and Canadian markets, she is excited about what the future holds for StageBitz and its potential.

“Every year there are millions of props created and most of them are only used once. StageBitz will help the props professionals save time and money, stress less, and connect with each other,” said Catherine Prosser. It’s early days but StageBitz already has students and stage production professionals using the product.

Pollenizer co-founder and investor Mick Liubinskas said, “We see big growth potential in this market for the arts industry to adopt web-based products like StageBitz in Australia and abroad. For us, the founder is strong, the business model is strong and the revenue forecasts are very attractive.”

The Pollenizer team includes Mick leading the capital investment drive, and  Jo Sabin managing customer development and product marketing.

If you are interested in learning more about StageBitz, as a customer or investor, please contact Jo Sabin on Jo[at]pollenizer.com for more information.

Follow StageBitz’s activity  on Twitter and Facebook.

From technology strategy and implementation to product and market development, the Pollenizer team played an integral part.

SportsPassion’s suite of free online community tools allow team managers and teammates to better communicate and collaborate, while sharing the fun and spirit of their sport.

Pollenizer Gets A Guernsey

So how does Pollenizer help? 3eep CEO Rob Antulov says the Pollenizer team has the ability to take an entrepreneur or business from the early concept phase into development and then beyond, once a product becomes live.

“In any company, let alone in a start-up, the real risk is that you try to do too much,” Antulov says. “In a start-up that can be particularly dangerous since there are so many things that are not yet proven – so, you can easily expend scarce resources doing the wrong thing.

“The cases where Pollenizer has helped us focus are numerous, ranging from understanding which clients are the right ones to listen to, through to which features in a new product design are the ones we should develop and which ones we should drop.” Pollenizer has also helped define and then target SportsPassion market campaigns.

“After you work with Pollenizer – if you really listen – you’ll know what you need to do, and why. Then, comes the hard part. Doing it. Lucky they help with that too!”

Rob Antulov, CEO 3eep

Pollenizer’s ability to access in-house expertise to service a broad range of client demands was evident in our work with consumer comparison website Getprice. It also made it the prime and only contender vying for the work.

Getprice CEO Chris Hitchen explains why it is important having specific skill areas available for hire within one company.

“You don’t want to have too many consultants or suppliers to whom you have to explain your business model,” he says. “You are also opening up your business and sharing very confidential information so limiting that to one supplier where you can get a range of expertise was pretty important for us.”

He maintains the web presents a variety of challenges and there aren’t that many businesses around who can consult at the level Pollenizer does.

There are plenty of people who have good processes and good analytical skills that can take you through various problems and get you to an outcome, but there aren’t that many consultancies that live and breathe online as Pollenizer does.

Managing Rapid Growth

Pollenizer’s first brief was to find a better framework for Getprice’s development processes. “We were growing very quickly, with a lot of projects and we needed a really tight framework around managing those projects,” Hitchen explains. IT infrastructure assessments flowed from there, asking the question: Do we have the vehicle that can carry us to where we want to get to, in terms of hardware, software and bandwidth and is our development process optimal?

The second area of expertise focused on the marketing and the consumer proposition and asked: Are we doing enough to meet consumer needs and how can we better engage consumers on Getprice?

Pollenizer also engages with the clients it works with. “Because they are coming in, typically not just for an hour or two but for days at a time, often over several months, they are very engaged and often have skin in the game as well,” Hitchen says. “They also bring an international perspective and part of that is an international network, which would be important for many businesses.”

Getprice is a comparison shopping engine which aggregates pricing information from more than 600 retailers in Australia and also provides information about service levels for different retailers, covering warranties, delivery time and charges, and product and service reviews. This service is available via an iPhone application, as well as online.

Getprice is all about helping someone to make the last few decisions about where they want to buy a product. Shopping anyone?

“As a start-up with limited funding and access to top talent, we were fortunate to cross paths with the Pollenizer team who could offer their services to our company, maximizing our chances of getting things right,” Linqia CEO and Founder Maria Sipka says.

“Phil Morle conducted a technology assessment and confirmed the challenges we ‘sensed’ were there and highlighted opportunities to take our product offering and engineering team to a new level.

“Over six months we launched two products much quicker than we were able to in the previous 18 months and our team developed a strong foundation of accountability and alignment.”

How It Connects

Linqia works by presenting relevant and interesting commercial partners to social networks who bring affiliate deals, advertising, sponsorships, content, new members, products and innovative technologies.

Key decision makers at social networks register to Linqia for free and specify what type of opportunities they are interested in receiving. Linqia approves commercial partners to present their opportunities to selected social networks which Linqia sends to the key decision maker via the marketplace.

As a start-up with limited funding and access to top talent, we were fortunate to cross paths with the Pollenizer team…

Maria Sipka, CEO, Linqia

Shawn and Jordon are two Posse fans from Queensland and this is what they have to say. Great video lads. :-)

Shawn and Jordan talk Posse from PosseAustralia on Vimeo.