FLT will be covering the 2013 Startmate accelerator program, which aims to help early-stage companies become enduring internet companies. Here, we introduce Michael Dijkstra and Kevin Nguyen of Storyberg.

Sydney-siders Michael Dijkstra and Kevin Nguyen are no strangers to startups, having helped build several of them during the last 18 months, while working for startup incubator Pollenizer. They’ve recently left to focus on Storyberg, a product management tool which makes it easier for product managers to validate changes to their product.

We catch up on day one of the Startmate program. The founders have just had their first ‘office hours’ session with program founder and coordinator Niki Scevak; a more informal version of the weekly WIP they’re used to at Pollenizer. Each week, companies in the cohort have a one hour session with Scevak to share their current focus, explain what’s working, what’s not, and delve into particular areas where they might need advice or assistance. That’s in addition to informal mentoring with some of the crème de la crème of Australian tech entrepreneurs, who they’ll meet at various events through out the program. The goal is that founders will strike up relationships with particular mentors who have experience in their industry, and personalities that click.

“We released new features this morning — the whole thing now is capturing the validation piece,” says Nguyen. “It’ll track users and visits, or for Wooboard (the Pollenizer company the founders were working on), it would be ‘woos’.”

In a few weeks, the companies will begin regular pitching. Each Monday afternoon, they’ll get up in front of the other Startmate companies and some of the mentors, to receive feedback on their short introduction of themselves and their business, designed to spark the interest of customers, advisors and hopefully, investors.

They’ll need to refine this startup story in order to make an impression during the ‘Demo’ days  Startmate hosts in Sydney, Melbourne and Silicon Valley. While the cohort consists of eight very different companies, they’ll all be vying for investors’ eyes, and will need to stand out with a compelling story.

The teams are currently settling into their new home. There’s drinks on tonight with the Sydney mentors, and everyone is beginning to meet one another. Dijkstra and Nguyen had an early start today, getting up at 6am to roll out an updated version of their product, with a greater focus on helping users validate changes to their project. They think this might be where the strength of their tool will be, rather than the project management offering. The idea is that anyone who is building a new web platform will be able to use Storyberg to test their hypotheses — it will track users and visits, and the key activity which drives traction. For one startup it might be sales, or another it might be registrations.

Storyberg started as a side project for Dijkstra, frustrated with Jira while working as a product manager for Pollenizer.

He and Nguyen plan to spend the next few weeks doing customer interviews; spending time with people who have the problem Storyberg is trying to solve. Unlike some of the other Startmate startups, the Storyberg pair haven’t had to make any big changes to their lifestyle. For Dijkstra, it’s just one stop further on the bus route, while Nguyen is back on his own turf: he used to go to the University of Sydney, just around the corner.

Storyberg co-founders Michael Dijkstra and Kevin Nguyen (Image: Zach Kitschke)

There are currently 100 users signed up to Storyberg. Dijkstra says he would be happy to have 100 paying customers by the time Startmate travels to the U.S. For the Storyberg founders, the Startmate applications were the case of the right thing at the right time. It gave them the push needed to quit their day jobs. Whether or not they got into the program, they were going to give Storyberg a serious crack.

“For us, Startmate was just an excuse to make the jump. We thought, let’s say ‘we’ll quit and apply for that’,” says Dijkstra.

The pair has noticed a difference between working on their own company, and working on someone else’s. They plan to break up the work to suit their skills; Dijkstra coded the initial version, but plans to eventually hand the codebase over to Nguyen. Dijkstra will focus primarily on customer development and the product.

“Also, technically we’ve convinced a group of 30 investors (each mentor invests in the cohort) of our idea,” says Dijkstra. “That helped me convince Lucy [Dijkstra’s fiancé] there was something there.”

It’s not his first venture. Following a stint as a winemaker in Adelaide and Margaret River, Dijkstra launched online wine retailer, Ninety9 Bottles, in conjunction with Chippendale Cellars. However, trying to do too much himself meant the idea wasn’t sustainable. Ever since, he’s planned on doing his own startup again, and has been saving along the way.

Nguyen’s background is as a developer and platform engineer, having worked for Fairfax Digital Media and digital agency Extro Interactive prior to his Pollenizer stint. He’s given up the goal of buying a house, at least for now. The pair plan to use the $50,000 investment provided by Startmate to cover some business costs and their travel expenses to the U.S., but won’t be taking a wage.

“It’s hard to articulate but I decided after a week of working full-time on Storyberg, it’s something worth fighting for. It’s good to have skin in the game,” says Nguyen.

After their chat with Scevak, they’ve realised they’ll both have their own metrics to crank. Dijkstra says if you were to break it up, his key metric would be signups while Nguyen’s would be engagement.

Like GetStall (see FLT story), Storyberg is waiting on its U.S. incorporation to come through, in order to implement an appropriate payment gateway for the platform. It’s still expensive and time consuming to do as an Australian business. However, having a U.S. bank account means Storyberg can use either Stripe or Braintree. It’ll take a couple weeks to set up, instead of months.

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