• http://www.google.com (big surprise!)
• http://www.crunchbase.com
• http://venturebeatprofiles.com

First let me give you some basic tactics about these sites. While searching on CrunchBase, use advanced search; http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies

CrunchBase has a very large database, so simple searches may bring thousands of results. It is hard to read them all.

I use the “Founded After” field in some cases. Since we are looking for new trends, start your search for 1-2 years before, if you go back more than that, you will probably know many of the trends already.

If you are looking for some startup ideas which can be executed in your country, the “Acquired” field is very useful. It gives you a list of startups which have gone through all the steps required from A-Z, so they may also help you in your potential pitches to investors. It shows the validation of the model.

I also use “Acquired After” field in the same way I use the “Founded After” field.

I use the “Funded” field as well. As CrunchBase is an open directory, even very small startups create their own page, so it makes it a good filtering method. You can also use “Funded After” field for the same purpose.

Press mentions is something I use, if I do a quick research because it limits number of results greatly. However, do not check both checkboxes when using press mentions, because it uses “AND” operator when searching. So when you check both checkboxes, it finds all startups which have both TechCrunch AND Techmeme mentions, not TechCrunch OR Techmeme mentions. I do two searches for this reason.

One of the most important thing in CrunchBase is that, it uses OR operator in the keyword field. So if you are searching startups building Facebook apps, you will probably use more than one keyword, but it increases number of results because of using “facebook OR apps” term. So, I turn to Google when I need to do a keyword intensive, more specific research. Google has number of very useful operators. Let’s say we want to search in all companies in CrunchBase using Google:

This is the main search term we will use: “site:crunchbase.com inurl:company” (Without quotes)

What it does is, it searches in crunchbase.com (site:crunchbase.com), and looks for the word “company” in the URL, because it is something unique for company profiles. (e.g. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/linkedin) Now you can add more search terms to do a keyword focused search. The downside is, you can’t use all the other filtering options which you use when doing advanced search in CrunchBase. However, there are a couple of tricks. Look at these two pages;

• http://www.crunchbase.com/company/the-hyperwords-company
• http://www.crunchbase.com/company/linkedin

There are differences right? So, say you want to search companies which have been funded. Just add “Funding” with quotes, and you will eliminate most of the unwanted results. The reason we are using quotes is that Google is a smart search engine, so when you search the word funding, it will most likely find the results which has the word “funded” etc. as well. We want to search the exact word, hence we use the quotes. You can use any keyword, which is specific to the metric you are looking for.

Quotes are incredibly useful in other situations as well. Say you want to filter it down. Using “facebook application” (WITH quotes), will only show the exact search. However, it will not show you “facebook applications”, as we are doing an exact search. You can do a second search, but if you have large amount of results, using OR operator will make your job easier. You can also add more variations, like “facebook app” OR “facebook apps”. When you search “facebook application” OR “facebook applications”, Google does double search. It also uses its ranking algorithm to return most relevant results, so it combines results and re-orders them based on relevancy.

So, our final search term becomes something like this;

site:crunchbase.com inurl:company “funding” “facebook application” OR “facebook applications” OR “facebook app” OR “facebook apps”

You can combine and filter using different combinations. There are other forms of research but this is the most common way I do the researches.

When you find the startup you are looking for, it is time to find the similar ones. CrunchBase provides the information we need.

Say Zynga is the model we have been searching for. Let’s look at the company profile in CrunchBase;

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zynga

First of all, you should always read all the press articles listed on the right section. They will give you a great perspective about the startup.

The left section has two very useful sections. The competitor field lists similar startups, it is very easy to find tens of startups by just clicking competitors recursively for each company listed there.

Tags are also useful when you are out of keywords. For instance, the casualgames tag and keyword would be very useful when searching companies like Zynga.

Google is also useful when searching competitors of a startup. It is best if you know at least two companies in the same space.

Rockyou is another social gaming company like Zynga. Just search “zynga” “rockyou”, If you spend some time, you will see that people are using these words when giving examples, and it is likely that you will catch some more names in the same sentence.

Just in the first page of the result, we caught two more startup names, operating in the same space.

One Response to Social Gaming Roundup: Zynga, RockYou, Vostu, & More.

Zynga is a distant winner when it comes to social games. A fair comparison would be between RockYou and Playdom, …

You can now combine those names as well and create different variations to find more competitors. Once you find these names, don’t forget to go back CrunchBase and check “Competitors” section for these new companies you have found.

Happy searching!

What the role is;

• Leading a team of 4 customer development/marketing people as they work their butts off to start new web businesses.
• Build processes and systems to more efficiently and effectively get customers for new startups.
• Keep up to date on new systems, ideas, methods and implement them in our startups.
• Work very closely with product, engineering and design people to create great startups.
• Tracking and measuring everything that moves.

What we’d like to see:

• Must have worked on startups (day 1, creating products, no budget, finding customers, selling)
• 5-10 years online
• Marketing, customer acquisition roles.
• Strong hands on acquisition and Conversion skills
• Strong metrics/data driven person
• Heavy detail person, not big picture/strategic.
• Great people person, leader, manager.
• Great written and spoken communication skills.
• Sydney based (or willing to relocate)
• Able to juggle 5-10 businesses as once.
• Eager to work in high risk, uncertain environment where it’s up to you to work it out.

Key reasons the team at Pollenizer love what they do:

• The challenge – it’s hard to get startups off the ground, Pollenizer constantly challenges you.
• The impact – work a hard day and you’ll see a full days worth of value. Everyone makes an impact.
• The team – you’ll be surrounded by a strong team of passionate people always keen to help.
• The variety – you’ll never get bored. Everyone works on 2 businesses at once and you’ll get to have input into 4+ more.
• The pride – startups are high risk and they don’t always work, but you’ll be proud of the effort and thinking you put into the business to give it the best shot.

If you’re interested, please email your Linkedin profile to info pollenizer com or get a referral via Linkedin.

So here is a challenge for you.

I got an email today from a guy who had 3 ideas he could pursue and he wanted advice on which one to do.

I answered with this;

If you could only ask the budding entrepreneur one question for him to decide, what would it be?

Pollenizer co-founder Mick Liubinskas said he hoped to have invested all the money by June next year, with investments between $10,000 and $100,000.

A key difference from other venture firms is that Pollenizer joins as a co-founder, working directly on developing and building the web businesses the company invests in.

Pollenizer has successfully built up high-profile portfolio of 16 companies including mogeneration, Posse and 99 dresses. These companies together employ more than 60 people across Australia.

Pollenizer co-founder Phil Morle, said Pollenizer Ventures would only invest in early-stage ideas with strong commercial growth potential. “We’re looking for businesses at a very early stage, that can be validated quickly,” Morle said.  “We prefer transactional business models rather than be advertising based. We’ve learnt through solid experience that these are the companies with the best chance of success.”

Liubinskas said the fund comes at a time when the Australian technology sector is experiencing unprecedented growth and investment.

“There’s so much uncertainty in other sectors, that investing in growth in private companies is very strong,” he said. “We see the fund as another vote of confidence by the market, in the Australian technology sector. We thank the Pollenizer team for its dedication and the investors for their support. Most importantly, we thank the entrepreneurs we work with for their unending passion and hard work.”

The $500k seed fund is made up of some of Australia’s most experienced technology veterans including:

Scott Farquhar, Atlassian
Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian
Matt Macfarlane
Stuart Richardson, Adventure Capital
Adrian Vanzyl, Adventure Capital
Matt Dickinson, Growth Angel
David Cooper, Deloitte
Mark Greig via Elevation Capital
Adam Broadway
Rob Antulov & Nick Gonios via 3eep Ventures
Chris Hitchen, Getprice.com.au
Alan Jones, The New Agency
Domenic Carosa, Dominet Digital
Phaedon Stough, Mitchell Lake
Tony Faure

Next steps?

Pollenizer Startup Process

Pitch your startup idea to Pollenizer

We had a great offer, clear call to action, a good value price – let the cash roll in!

Ummm… we forgot to sell the product….

Yes, in our excitement or more accurately our myopia, we had assumed the world was excited about Wooboard and knew just how it was going to make their teams more wonderful and happy so we didn’t to tell them. Remember, to make assumptions is to make an ass out of u and mptions.

We were deep in the product and whilst we were thinking about customers, working with customers and actually being customers – we forgot the customers. Or more specifically we forgot to empathise with the customers. Looking at your business with fresh eyes is hard, or maybe impossible but it’s worth trying and it’s worth finding ways to do it.

The good news is that we didn’t send it to all our database, we included a feedback loop so we learned the reason why it failed fast and we get 5 people to try it.

That’s the idea, try, fail, learn – just do it fast and cheap.

The end result was a quick video on what Wooboard does. It’s not brilliant, but hopefully it does the trick;

What do you think? Does it work? Do we have some customer empathy now?

Visits

Page views

Registered users

These typically aren’t worth zip by themselves. When I want to splash the hot chilli sauce of reality on my face to get the brutal focus back onto what’s important, I go no further than Dave McClures Startup Metrics for Pirates. I’ve embedded it below, but pay particular attention to slide 4. It’s not the be all and end all, and it’s not the big slide that you show to the investors to get the fat cheque. It’s the table you look at every day, work at, test and love/loathe. It’s the beating heart and the sexy future of your ‘brilliant idea’.

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.

As founders ourselves and working with hundreds of other entrepreneurs, we’ve found there are a lot of conflicting skills, principles and characteristics that it helps to have. Here are a few, add your own.

1. Big vision and brutal focus.
2. Deep empathy and benevolent dictatorship.
3. Daily flexibility and arrogant stubbornness.
4. Unending patience and constant change.
5. Respect of the past and belief in the future.
6. Collaborative management and decisive leadership.
7. Left brain creativity and right brain spreadsheet joy.
8. Super lean, frugal cost control and willingness to invest in growth.
9. A love of technology, processes and systems and a love of people, emotions and feelings.
10. Supreme confidence and openly admitting you’re regularly wrong.

Yahoo!7 acquires Spreets – leading Australian and New Zealand online Group Buying
company

SYDNEY, Australia, 20 January, 2011 – Online media company Yahoo!7 today announced it has acquired leading Australian online Group Buying site, Spreets Pty Ltd, including its New Zealand operations.

Spreets (spreets.com.au and spreets.co.nz) was the first Group Buying site in ANZ having been in operation for almost a year with 500,000 members and more than 274,000 vouchers purchased since inception.

The Yahoo!7 business delivers a new audience to the Spreets site through distribution on the Yahoo!7 Network as well as access to the benefits provided in Australia and New Zealand through its joint venture partners Yahoo! Inc. and the Seven Media Group, including marketing and promotions.

The acquisition helps Yahoo!7 to deliver on its Local and Social strategies as well as providing further diversification of revenue streams outside of display advertising.

“After carefully reviewing the market it was clear that Spreets is a market-leader in what is becoming a highly competitive and fast growing market. The Spreets management team in Dean McEvoy and Justus Hammer come with strong expertise and experience in the Australian Group Buying market,” said Rohan Lund CEO of Yahoo!7.

“At its core Spreets is about leveraging insights to deliver the best local deals through an online social experience, and this maps perfectly to the Yahoo!7 Local and Social strategies. The acquisition of Spreets means we can bring the best of Yahoo!7 to grow the business even further,” he said.

According to Dean McEvoy, CEO of Spreets, the Group Buying model has rapidly evolved over the past year delivering cost-effective marketing to small businesses and addressing an unmet and growing demand from consumers for online coupon deals.

“Australians and Kiwis love an amazing deal and Spreets has seen significant growth delivering over $40 million in savings to consumers over the past year. We’re proud to be an Australian born company leading the market in this rapidly evolving space,” he said “We’re thrilled with the acquisition by Yahoo!7 as we see the huge potential that one of Australia’s leading online media companies, which has huge momentum in the market, will bring to the Spreets business.”

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Media Contacts:

Amanda Millar
Trade Marketing and Communications Mgr Yahoo!7
Tel: 8288 4758
Mob: 0407 454 229
Email: millaram@yahoo-inc.com

About Yahoo!7

Yahoo!7 (yahoo7.com.au) is one of the most comprehensive and engaging online destinations for Australian consumers and advertisers. Formed as a 50-50 partnership between the Seven Network Limited (ASX: SEV) and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), Yahoo!7 brings together the successful Australian internet business, Yahoo! Australia & NZ, and the online assets and television and magazine content of the Seven Network, one of Australia’s leading media companies. The company also combines the strengths of Yahoo! search and communications capabilities and its global internet network, with Seven’s rich media and entertainment content and marketing capabilities..

/media release

Congrats to Dean, Justus and the hard working Spreets team for really driving hard at this incredible new space for the last twelve months. Big congratulations also to the Pollenizer team, particularly Oliver, Jon, Fleur and Phil, for their enormous contribution throughout the year. A massive effort and a job well done.

Today’s deal in Sydney – $90 for $181 at Jordons Seafood Restaurant.

Tomorrows deal? Sign up!

News Coverage

Yahoo!7 Acquires Spreets: Leading Australian and New Zealand Online Group Buying Company – Yahoo!7 Advertising

Yahoo!7 buys online deals site Spreets - Sky News Australia

Yahoo!7 buys only deal site Spreets – The Age

- Sydney Morning Herald

- Herald Sun

- Brisbane Times

- Perth Now

Yahoo!7 buys only deal site Spreets – Australian Financial Review

Yahoo!7 buys only voucher site Spreets – news.com.au

Yahoo!7 acquires Spreets in $40m Deal – AdNews

Yahoo!7 buys group buying site for $40m – B&T

Yahoo!7 buys Spreets for $40m – mUmBRELLA

Yahoo!7 buys group buying site Spreets – iTWire

Yahoo!7 buys Spreets for $40m – Delimiter

Yahoo!7 snaps up Spreets for $40m – ZDNet

Spreets sold for $40 million in the biggest and fastest group buying deal of the year so far – Anthill Online

Yahoo!7 invests in retail – Inside Retailing

Yahoo!7 acquire Spreets for $40m – Startup Smart

brandsExclusive Congratulates Spreets and Yahoo!7 – brandsExclusive

Spreets acquired by Yahoo!7 for $40 million – Dynamic Business

Pollenizer has been named a Finalist in Anthill Magazine’s Fifth Annual Cool Company Awards, a national program developed in 2006 to recognise Australian companies that are doing things differently to bring about positive change.

Over 700 aspiring ‘cool companies’ were nominated for the 2010 awards, making ‘The Cools’ one of Australia’s largest business awards programs. The winners will be announced at an award’s function on Thursday 16 December 2010 and published on AnthillOnline.com.

“The Cool Company Awards are extremely egalitarian,” said James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine. “Previous winners have included two-person start-ups, not-for-profit social enterprises, large private companies and publicly-listed corporations.”

“Judging takes into account far more than mere business variables, such as revenue and wealth. The criteria is geared to consider other qualities, from the disruptive nature of the product or service to the culture of the organisation.”

“Applicants either nominated themselves or were nominated by peers, work colleagues, family, friends and other ‘admirers’. A field of hundreds was examined (and cross-examined) before our judges were able to isolate three Finalists for each of our seven categories.”

The program will conclude with an end of year bash, on 16 December 2010, in Melbourne.

What are Cool Company Awards?

The Cool Company Awards was launched in 2006 as a way for Anthill Magazine to publicly acknowledge and celebrate Australian organisations that are doing things differently to bring about positive change. In its fifth year, the awards attracted nominations for over 700 organisations, making it among the largest business award programs in Australia.

What is Anthill Magazine?

AnthillOnline.com is a digital business magazine that celebrates creativity, inspiration and commercial ingenuity, providing a fresh, exciting and practical perspective on Australian business in a global world. It is among the Top 50 Business & Finance websites in Australia, as ranked by Nielsen Online Ratings, and is home to the Cool Company Awards, the 30under30 and the Smart 100. It’s where ideas and business meet.