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.

One of the principles of Lean development, particularly as it applies to software, is that of Minimum Viable Product – the absolute bare minimum you can get away with in order to determine if your idea will be successful or not. The idea is that an MVP should take as little investment as possible to build, because the sooner it is up the sooner you can validate if your brilliant world changing idea actually makes sense as a business.

Also, as you discover that perhaps your idea didn’t stand up in the real world as well as you’d like, or perhaps wasn’t adopted in the way you expected it would be, you will be less recitent to throw away misconcieved early ideas if they didn’t take too much energy to build them in the first place.

This model works well for many web-based businesses – your MVP can be as simple as a building a brochureware website (perhaps with a limited degree of interactivity), add in some tracking, throw some limited marketing at it and seeing if it will fly.

But what about those truly innovative ideas, the ones that require a substantial investment in research and development before even you can be convinced if you have a product that has traction? Something that might take millions of dollars in research and development, specialised teams, and months or even years. How do you execute on a project like that while remaining true to the principles of Lean?

One such project where we encountered was Friendorse.com – a great little service that helps you find information from local experts in your area. Users visit the site, connect with Facebook, ask a question, and a few minutes later get e-mailed an answer from an independent local expert.

It sounds simple, but as we fleshed the idea out it became clear that the technology required to run a business like Friendorse at scale is actually pretty complicated. Questions must be tokenised, term vectors extracted, categories clustered, taxonomies developed, users social and spatial distances must be calculated and indexed, and all this data would need to be fed into a fairly sophisticated machine learning algorithm.

Such technology would require a significant investment – many months of development by skilled engineers – as well as a significant amount of data in order to build and verify a working product. That’s if it could be done at all. All in all – a pretty big barrier just to test if the idea even worked. Furthermore it was recognised that the Friendorse matching algorithm, like the Google search algorithm, would never be truly ‘finished’, but would have to continue to evolve as the product matured.

Our solution to this was simple – don’t build an algorithm. Inspired by a great discussion from the founders of Aardvark.com, we realised that to test if the product worked in the market – all we really needed to do was create a site in which people could ask and answer questions. But behind the scenes the crucial step of ‘routing’ a user’s question to a local expert would actually be handled by a person (working under a strict confidentiality clause) rather than a machine. The Aardvark guys call this the ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach, and we think it’s a pretty apt term for the process. Behind the shiny stage and the fancy lights, it’s actually a person pulling the strings.

Building this project ‘Wizard’ style allowed us to deliver a product much faster, cheaper and with greater certainty than we otherwise could. It also allowed us to experiment and pivot more quickly – dropping those ideas which didn’t work in the wild and iterating towards those that did.

From a technical perspective, it had another significant benefit – having a live project in-production, taking queries from real users that were being manually routed and managed by human operators, gave us a significant cache of training data with which to embark on the next stage of the project.

We know now for example that people don’t typically ask questions like “What’s the best pest controller in Melbourne?”, they ask “How do I get rid of these damn cockroaches?”. We know that coffee suppliers in Brisbane don’t know all that much about the cafe scene in Sydney. And so it goes.

Having data like this before seriously sitting down and figuring out the internals of the algorithm is immensely valuable and a huge competitive advantage for the Friendorse team.

By following a Lean approach, Friendorse has charged into it’s first battle (market acceptance) as a lean and agile creature. Not only did it survive, but it will face it’s next battle (fund-raising and scale) better equipped and far more informed than it otherwise would have.

Suggestions by Wildfire:

#1: Ask fans to ‘Like’ your update!

#2: Encourage comments by asking yes/no questions

#3: Don’t use the Facebook links box!

#4: If you post your own videos, do use the Facebook video upload

#5: Target your messages to different segments of your audience

#6: Make it worth your fan’s while to look out for your updates!

http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2010/06/02/6-clever-tricks-to-double-the-effectiveness-of-your-fan-page-status-updates/

Want to take one year off work but can not convince your business partner? Just show them this video from Stefan Sagmeister about the need for ‘workcation’. Perhaps a day or two off each month for research would be more realistic?

It was a little bit opportunistic with Eric Ries, the key proponent of the concept, in town and a little bit of ‘about time, we need this in Sydney’. We only confirmed that the event was less than two weeks ago so we had to move fast.

In fact, we had to be lean. So we ran it like a lean startup.

Openly, with a pregnant wife, moving house, 8 live projects at Pollenizer and catching up after a recent flu, I knew I didn’t have the time to do a good job on the event. I wasn’t aiming for perfection, we just wanted to get started. So I tweeted out for help.

I got about 10 offers of help, including from Michelle Williams who I knew had been doing some great work in the community and a bit of that around events. I reached out to her and she said yes to helping organise. So our lean team was coming together.

Customer Development for Customer Development

Again, we wanted to be lean, and one of the principles I believe is a part of lean is to charge people money to see if they are really interested. This was important to me. I know that communities need love and I was only prepared to put the effort needed to get it going if there was enough real interest. Charging money is a great way to guage that. I would have been very happy if we only had 20 good people who cared enough to fork out $50. I really had no idea of what the price should be, but I thought if 20 people paid, at least we’d cover our costs. My goal with the two tiers was partly so that the big company people or the PR/Marketing providers could pay a bit extra (I thought they’d have it) and the startups and students could get a cheaper price. It was also a good way to see what type of people were interested.

Action Stations

We also had to move fast. We had just over one week to organise it, promote it, and make it work. Again, we weren’t aiming for the Oscars, just a solid first event. I put the event details on Amiando the day Eric confirmed he could make it. Even before Michelle found a venue. And I just tweeted it out.  Launch early! Within an hour I got some emails and DM’s with things I’d missed out. I got the hashtag wrong, a URL and more, but most of it was there. The best thing was that we got sign ups and re-promotions straight away. People were keen and keen to tell their colleagues. Good start. And the good thing was that with the event set up, the promotional machine could just start building while we worked to actually set up the event.

Monday with one week to go, Michelle go moving on a venue. She looked at a bunch of them, but at that point we had no idea how much money we’d have so we were aiming for super cheap. But we also needed a projector and a mic for Eric. And probably food since it would go on. With me running off-site workshops for much of the week, Michelle and I were SMS’ing and emailing until we settled on Bar 333. Basically we didn’t have any more time to find a better venue or better deal. It was Thursday and we needed to finalise it and tell people before Friday. It wasn’t perfect, but we’d make it work.

By Thursday I think we had about 40 people signed up – great, we had a big enough group to cover the costs and have an interesting event. Eric was currently at Webstock and communication channels were not great, but we managed to work most of it out, if very slowly, over the week. Remembering that Michelle and I have day jobs, so we were squeezing this into busy schedules.

Monday we met up a few hours before the event, Michelle arrived with the hired projector and screen, and we printed the audience lists, grabbed some pens and labels and took off to the city. We still hadn’t heard from Eric yet, though we were pretty sure he was deep in the bowels of Google working with the Google Wave team.

Arriving at the venue it was packed with chairs as if we were having a massive hens night. After furniture removal, Eric arrived with a very sore throat after a day of constant talking. A cup of tea and two Vicks Vapour Drops and we were going to make it through, though he wasn’t sure if he’d finish his full deck of slides.

Then the night took off;

• People turned up, grabbed a free drink (Though some people who were late missed out. Sorry, that’s the way it goes. Come earlier next time.)
• Most people were actively running a startup which was great.
• Eric gave an excellent talk doing a full hour on Lean Startups and telling some good background stories to make the point.
• I won’t try and paraphrase Eric, instead you can see the presentation and full deck of slides below.
• A few questions from the audience before I let Eric’s voice rest and everyone else mill about and chat.

Eric Ries Lean Startup Lessons Learned Presentation

Eric’s Slides

Some Photos

Eric Ries espousing some home truths about startups

The crowd of founders at lean startup sydney

Mick Liubinskas intro at Lean Startup Sydney

Lessons From This Lean Event

So we did it quickly, cheaply and with a big goal if really seeing if enough good people were really interested in this. After talking to people after the event I think we definitely showed this was true.

For a quick sprint, we also learned a lot;

• Pricing is ok for corporates and service providers ($90), and $45 probably ok for startups. Should have a $20 option for students. If you’re not willing to part for one night out drinking money, then you’re probably not that interested.
• Honesty is interesting since we don’t check what category you’re in. 99% of people paid into what I’d guess was the right category.
• The venue was pretty, but chairs could have been laid out a lot better and a second mic for questions would be nice. I’m not sure Sydney has enough good venues for events like this.
• Food was ok, but not spectacular. We didn’t spend a lot of money on it, and compared to other events I think it was reasonable.

So what’s next?

• Join up to the global group – Lean Startup Circle
• Join the Sydney group for event updates – Sydney Lean Startup Circle. We have some money left over from last night to run the next event.
• Check out the Lean Startup Wiki
• Eric is hosting a talk in San Francisco and will be streaming it out. Pollenizer will aim to host a Jelly at our office on the day to watch and hang out. More details to come.

Thanks to everyone for turning up and being positive. Very exciting to be a part of a growing, energetic community.

Thanks to Eric for giving up his time to give such a useful talk and for really driving some new learnings into the starutp space.

Big, big, big thank to Michelle Williams who got stuck into this quickly and did a great job in such a small space of time with a terrible brief from me.

I’ve bolded some of my favourite bits.

Verne Harnish:
Routine sets you free

Read read read:

• Bill Gates – Think week – read 18 hours a day for 7 days.
• Eric Smidth “Time to Read”
• Tom Peters – “Outread your competition”

Leadership traits

• Listen more, talk less
• Less statements, more questions.

Are you playing not to lose? Play to win.

4 decisions

• People
• Strategy
• Execution
• Cash

People
Books -> Keith Ferrazzi – never eat alone, who’s got your back. top 250 relationships.
Google alerts following top 50 monthly, 100 quaterly, 100 per year.

Books -> Ooops -Aubrey Daniels – management waste of time and money

Strategy – One phrase strategic plan.

Pollenizer – A great services business with a portfolio of web businesses.

Books – > Reality Marketing Revolution
- do you say us or we more than you or your?

Execution

Books -> Atul Gawande – The checklist manifesto

Cash

Books ->Built to Sell – John Warrillow
- is everything you’re doing adding value to be bought out.

Average age;
India 24
China 32

1 billion in middle class by 2020

Hermann Simon – Hidden Champions

Ogilvy – four ps. Four es

• Product – Experience
• Price – Exchange – value
• Place – Everyplace
• Promotion – Evangelism

David Meerman Scott

7 bloggers for Harry Potters ride led to 350 million views.
Private showing.
Webinar.

Buyer personas;
Startup founders – looking for help to build it.
SME Directors – looking for growth, ready for investment.

On the web, you are what you publish.

Most over used phrases -

innovate
please to
unique
focused on
leading privier
commitment
partnership
new and improved
leverge
120 percent
cost effective
next generation
flexible
world class

One of the top 3 buttons used when web browsing is the back button.

Email marketing metrics
mailer mailer

1. talk about customers, not you and your products.
2. Lose control
3. Put down roots
4. Point people to your site at all times.

Guy Parsons

Lean Transformation

• Maximise value
• Minimise waste
• Delighting customers
• Growing people

• Flow production
• Flexible, capable processes
• Bullet proof processes
• Organisation by group.

What is your companies operating system?

Make sure you measure the success

Eliminate waste:
- salesforce
- proposals
- reporting
- blockages
- meetings
- doing things multiple times.
- having less optimal people doing the work.
- project switching “No, I’m working on this now”
- Unfinished work.

Look for when nothing is happening or things going backwards.

- leveraging existing templates.
- Internal training

Toyota Processes:

1. Correction/rework
2. Overproduction
3. Material movement
4. Motion
5. Waiting
6. Invetory
7. Process
8. People

Waste is a symptom of the root cause;

Value of Pollenizer;
- Lowering risk
- Faster results
- Bigger results
- More enjoyable

Look at time

Understanding demand;
- how many startups – controlling it.

Value statements from customers;

“My idea will blossom at Pollenizer.”

“I won’t be able to do this by myself.”

“I’m looking to grow a business and it will be bigger with Pollenizer.”

“I don’t know who to trust with this. You guys have great references.”

“I don’t understand the technology side.”

Flow

Level production – level selling.

• Kaikaku – revolutionary change
• Kazien – gradual change

NPS – Net Promoter Score

• Would they recommend you to friends or family?
• 9 or a 10 is positive. 7-8 is neutral. 1-6 is negative.

Value from the Customer/s point of view:

Must incorporate all stakeholders – shareholders, customers, suppliers, team.

“Plans will not survive the first contact with the customer.”

3 Statements;

1. Go see – go on floor and spend time with the work.
2. Ask why why why why why why why?
3. Show respect

Too frequently there is a simple measure like ‘uniques per month’ but this tells us very little.   A small number of uniques can generate a large amount of business in some sites. The metric also doesn’t tell us anything about the engine inside a web business. Does it have an internal momentum or does it need lorry loads of cash thrown at each campaign to get any kind of user traction or transaction?

David Skok has posted a must-read post for anyone growing a web business built upon a social dimension. He clearly defines a working model that we all can use. Here’s the principle:

Virality is not a marketing strategy that can be executed by the marketing department. It has to be built into your product right from the beginning.

And here are the top learnings.

1. Understand what your ‘viral coefficient’ is.  This is the number of invites sent out by each user multiplied by the conversion rate. He shows how the viral coefficient needs to be at least 1 for viral mechanics to kick in. So if each user sends out 15 invites and only 1 converts, then your viral loop will collapse quite quickly.
2. Understand your ‘viral cycle time’. This is how quickly new users invite more users. The shorter the better.

I encourage you to read the whole thing carefully then download his spreadsheets and try them out against your actual numbers.

Then use them every month to test your assumptions.