by Phil Morle | Nov 27, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
For Stephen Molloy, writing a book on the evolution of smartphone apps has been more work than he could have imagined, with months of interviews, writing and editing. The aim of the project was to better understand what makes successful apps popular, and find out how...
by Phil Morle | Nov 23, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
Three years ago design marketplace 99designs had just three employees working out of a small space in Melbourne — the company now has 60 staff, managing a global community of more than 200,000 graphic designers. Jason Aiken has been part of the team since the early...
by Phil Morle | Nov 23, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
Braintree CEO, Bill Ready, says the increasing number of tech and commerce companies coming out of Australia is one of the reasons the company has chosen to expand locally. Braintree provides an online payment solution, allowing businesses to accept credit card...
by Phil Morle | Nov 23, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
In 2008, Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, put forward a list of ideas the startup incubator would like to fund — he’d previously been hesitant to do so, because he knew there’d be a flood of startups come forward offering exactly what was suggested....
by Phil Morle | Nov 16, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
You could say Jeff Perlman and Corneliu Tusnea run an internet plumbing business; their platform, OneSaas, connects virtual pipes; integrating the APIs of a bunch of well-known cloud applications, allowing businesses to sync data across their different applications....
by Phil Morle | Nov 12, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
What would happen if you treated apps as products — as though they were books, CDs or toys — instead of businesses, and built a company to publish them; like a record company does for music, or a publisher does for books? You’d end with something that looks very...
by Phil Morle | Nov 12, 2012 | Resources, Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
Online marketer, Steven Noble, decided to move his family from Sydney to Gerringong, a small coastal town two hours away, so that he could afford to focus on Testivate; the startup he has worked on full-time since September this year. Testivate is a benchmarking tool,...
by Phil Morle | Nov 9, 2012 | Pitching, Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
In May this year, at one of their weekly ‘pivot or persevere’ meetings, the founders of StreetHawk decided to change tack and try a different business model for their startup. Founders Natasha Rawlings, David Jones and Sri Panyam decided to develop...
by Phil Morle | Nov 6, 2012 | Pitching, Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
On Tuesday night, Alan Crabbe stood in front of a room full of investors, at the 150 year-old Union, Universities and Schools Club in Sydney. He was pitching to Sydney Angels, Australia’s largest collective of early-stage investors. The period decor, vintage red...
by Phil Morle | Nov 2, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
It’s the conversation you hope you never need to have: when you have to tell workmates, investors and family it’s time to quit; time to give up on the startup to which you’ve dedicated the past few years of your life. In part, it’s this...
by Phil Morle | Nov 2, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
Just one week after launching on Kickstarter, LIFX, the Melbourne-based company co-founded by Andrew Birt had raised more than $1.3 million to produce an initial production round. That solves some problems, and introduces others. LIFX is a Wi-Fi enabled LED light...
by Phil Morle | Nov 1, 2012 | Startup Profiles, Uncategorized
Catherine Prosser is at home in Narrabundah, Canberra, when we speak; I want to find out more about how StageBitz, the theatre inventory management platform she started with co-founder Mat Lawrence, raised an $890,000 angel investment round from a consortium including...
