In conjunction with the publishing of the Top 100 Aussie Web 2.0 companies list was a lunch event. I popped down to check it out and here’s a quick wrap-up.
The event started of with an intro from Ross Dawson then a panel discussion with Duncan Riley from The Inquistr, Malcolm Thornton of Starfish Ventures and Phil Morle from Pollenizer.
The general vibe was that there is definitely some momentum starting to gather in the Aussie Web 2.0 space, but we’ve still got a lot of catching up to do. Duncan and Phil blamed the poor supporting forces around entrepreneurs - e.g. investors and Government - Malcolm obviously disagreed (it should be noted that Starfish are one of the good guys in the Web 2.0 space) but also highlighted the fact that its difficult to invest in lots of startups at the moment in light of his Cost of Capital and ROI requirements. This seems to be a valid point and ties back into the need for an even playing field for Web 2.0 investors when compared to the tax effectiveness of investing in Film, BioTech or even Blue Gums!
There was more talk about whether you need to go overseas to succeed or not - I think the general consensus was that you can build a good business that focuses on Australia, from Australia, but if you go overses you increase the potential of your business. Makes sense.
One really good point that Phil made was that we focus way too much on the Billion dollar exits. He equated starting a startup for the billion dollar exit with becoming an actor to be like Brad Pitt. Wrong motivation and highly unlikely outcome. It’s a very valid point and one that we probably should emphasise a litle more.
After that there was a showcase of 5 startups that were on the list. 3eep, Booking Angel, Engagd, Plugger and Redbubble.
My impressions:
3eep - still makes sense, definitely good for organising organised sport and I see the sense in white labelling it for others
Booking Angel- I understand they’re growing, but I still don’t get it. No offence to Dean McEvoy and the team, they’re obviously very successful, so they must be doing something right. The way booking angel works is that you book online then their back end calls the restaurant and an automated voice explains the booking details, including name etc. to the person at the restaurant. Essentially, they make the booking call for you…but you still have to put the details into whichever website happens to be using their booking engine. I mean, a simple issue, what happens if they don’t have the time you wanted to book for? At least if you’d called you could have chosen another day/time. And what about competitors like Open Table that allow you to actually make the reservation instantly, online? I know that requires infrastructure to be put in restaurants, but at least you’re actually booking. That having been said I’m not all that familiar with the ins and outs of the products, so feel free to tell me why I’ve gotten it wrong and why Booking Angel is doing so well
Engagd - Ashley Angell did a good job of explaining the uses of APML from a non-technical point of view and walked us through a demo of the Profiler tool. The Faraday Media guys are doing some very cool stuff with attention and data portability at the moment and developers should really consider using their API for personalising content delivery.
Plugger - Another very cool app. An Aussie news aggregator that is very customisable and captures information from a wide range of sources. Also gives out a wide range of information and has some pretty sweet data visualisation ( I like the positive and negative sentiment tracking). Richard Slatter actually showed us some beta visualisations that they’re running - but I can’t seem to find them on the site. Maybe someone could give me the heads up? Either way, I’m going to start using plugger from today.
Lastly, Martin Hoskings from Redbubble spoke about what they’ve been up to. It’s clear he has a lot of passion for the project and his energy made this one of the best presentations of the day. His candid comments like “the level of user engagement and intensity are frightening” were refreshing. If you can, try to hear this guy speak in person. Another thing he showed us was a recent post he’d put on the Redbubble blog entitled “Where we Stand”. His post is brilliant in its simplicity and it’s a question I think that most tech entrepreneurs should be asking themselves.
This post has already become too long, so I’ll stop here and save the further analysis for another day.
Once again a big congratulations to all the people who made the list, as well as those tech entrepreneurs who didn’t but who are part of this new wave of Aussie tech startups.
Also, well done to Ross for getting the type of people who attended, together. I think he’s probably the only person in Sydney, if not Australia, at the moment who has the pull to get top journos, investors, business people and tech entrepreneurs in the same room.
Oh, and for those who were wondering, the two course seated lunch was, in fact, “excellent” and the views were, indeed, “great”.
Now, I’m off to the Apple store…wish me luck.
It was my first experience of a pubcamp and all in all it was a worthwhile experience. Below is a very short summary of what and who was involved.