While flicking through an old copy of Anthill magazine, I came across an article profiling the diary of a start up called TrickyTix an ‘online event registration solution’. In the article, which can also be found online, Scott Handsaker, one of the founders, has written a diary of his start up process in which he divulges the costs associated with their project as well as some lessons learned along the way. I think most of us can probably relate to Scott’s comments, especially the ones about his constant ideating, but as Scott says ideas alone are worth nothing and it is the execution that’s the difficult bit. Scott also mentions another valuable lesson he has learnt, the art of applying constraints, this is one that I am still learning but as he mentions, a good place to start is the 37Signals book ‘Getting Real’.

Some of the costs revealed are quite high level for example:

$4,200 spent in UI and design

$6,500 to develop the front end

$9,000 backend

It would have been interesting to have a further breakdown of these costs or the number of development hours spent, but it is refreshing to see this level of transparency, and call me a cynic, but let’s face it, it’s not a bad marketing ploy either.

TrickyTix is due for full public launch in August and a video demo of their service is available through their website, although I haven’t had a proper look at this yet, mainly due to time constraints. J

On the front of it, this service appears to be similar to a UK based offering called ‘eTicket’ who started back in 2005 and have gained recognition after picking up the ‘Innovative Business of the Year Award’ at the 2007 Natwest Startups awards. According to the TrickyTix website, Scott and his cofounder, Andrew Edwards, started the business after running online event registrations for a number of years and are therefore well placed to develop a solution aimed at addressing the problems experienced. While emulating the success of eTicket may prove ‘tricky’ (groan) for most, I reckon these guys could well have the best chance of anyone.

For more figures behind some of the top web apps check out this link.

In all the hype surrounding the launch of the 3G iPhone at the recent Apple WWDC event, it seems most of us missed the fact that Remember The Milk won an Apple Design Award for Best iPhone Web Application.

This is just another accolade for the site, which now has over 500,000 registered users and continues to be a market leader in the online task management space.

Well done, guys.

a href=”http://www.technation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lee.jpg”>Time to introduce another of our TechNation Australia writers - Lee Goodman.

It’s a little late, as Lee’s already written 2 articles, but better late than never

Lee, in his own words…

I recently moved to Sydney from the UK after 9 years in I.T. My first job was with EDS and after a brief spell supporting mainframes and writing Cobol I quickly moved into the client server team and from there into supporting Siebel and other CRM environments. I eventually left to try my hand at contracting and have been earning a living that way ever since, but I have always known that I am a closet entrepreneur. I joined the Open Coffee network on arriving in Sydney to help me realise this secret yearning and hopefully learn a thing or two from a few people who have spent some time in the trenches.

I recently started work on my own project, Riamo, with the aim of realising some of my web ideas. It’s still just a name and some vague concepts, but I hope to focus my efforts over the coming months to produce something tangible. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll have my very own ‘start up’…watch this space!

As usual, please take the time to welcome Lee in the comments

Earlier in the week I posted Part 1 of an interview with Omnisio co-founder and Y combinator veteran Ryan Junee. In that interview we focused on his Y combinator experience. In Part 2 we focus more on his video startup, Omnisio.

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Is Omnisio still just you, Julian and Simon or do you have more people working on the site – if so, how many?

It’s still just the three of us. It takes a lot less these days to build a web-based business, in terms of people, cash and resources. Although we do all work pretty hard

How long did it take to get Omnisio up and running?

We began discussing the idea in early 2007, and began working on it full time in October. We launched publicly in March (although we had a private beta program before then). So about 5 months to get it up and running. We strongly believe that it’s best to get something simple out there as quickly as possible, and then iterate as fast as possible based on feedback from users.

What is Omnisio’s mission?

In a nutshell we are trying to drastically improve the experience of online video. What we see with online video today is the experience of TV translated to the web. This is typical when a new medium is created – early TV shows were very similar to radio shows of the time. Now that people are comfortable seeing video on the web, it will start to break free from the constraints imposed by the old medium, and make use of the unique features of the new medium. The web is more interactive, more measurable, and knows who your friends are – so we are exploring this new frontier by rapidly creating a set of rich video applications and seeing what people do with them.

How many people are using Omnisio? What’s the growth rate like?

We haven’t published our numbers, but our daily unique visitors to the site are in the thousands (with many more people viewing our videos embedded on other sites), and we are happy with our traffic and rate of growth given we have only been public for 3 months.

(NB: Compete.com puts their total May visitors at 28,459 with impressive growth over the past few months)

Do you currently have any revenue? If not, what are your thoughts on how you’ll be able to turn Omnisio into a profitable business?

No we are still very much in an exploratory phase and have not yet begun monetizing. We have several ideas for monetizing based around better quality video advertising, as well as licensing of the platform to third parties.

Actually, on that point, how concerned are people in the Valley about revenues and profitability? I mean no doubt it’s important, but are you being pressured to monetise or are investors more interested in you gaining market share and worrying about the business model when it appears?

Speaking about the consumer web space, with which I am most familiar, I would say that people here are much more concerned with growth than monetization in the early stages. It is important to have some idea of how to turn your users into profits, but it is MUCH harder to build a massively popular site and gain users, than it is to figure out a way to make money from those users. Most savvy investors will not pressure a company to monetize its product in the early days, as they know this can jeopardize growth. Google is a canonical example of a company that had no clear monetization strategy in the beginning and is now one of the world’s largest businesses. However, there are certainly dangers with focusing solely on growth – many would argue that Facebook is over-valued because, while it has massive traction, there is still no clear path to monetization to justify its valuation.

How often do you catch up with other Aussie tech entrepreneurs?

I periodically run into other Aussie entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but the community is quite fragmented at the moment. I’m on the San Francisco committee of a group called Advance (www.advance.org), which aims to connect Australian professionals who are living overseas, and one of my goals is to help connect aspiring Aussie entrepreneurs who are just getting started out here, with those who are more experienced. I’d recommend any Aussies living in the San Francisco bay area join Advance (it’s free), and also don’t hesitate to contact me personally so we can grab a beer.

Do you think Aussies abroad should band together and promote our Australianness or is it better to forget all that patriotic stuff to concentrate on success and let that be the promoter of what Aussies can do?

Australian culture is unique, and its always good to hang out with other Aussies so we don’t forget that. However, Silicon Valley is incredibly multicultural and I think that’s more important than promoting any one nationality. The people who move to Silicon Valley are generally self-selected and very motivated to succeed, and I’m always excited to see entrepreneurs building fantastic companies no matter where they are from. That said, it would be good to have some more success stories of Aussies who have moved over here and started companies, to help encourage more potential Aussie entrepreneurs back home to take a chance and follow their passion.

What are your thoughts on being an entrepreneur?

I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur unless you absolutely cannot imagine doing anything else. I think I agree with this. Starting a company is a LOT of work. It’s an emotional roller coaster, and as much as you hear people tell you this, it’s hard to understand how difficult it can be until you are actually doing it yourself. Most entrepreneurs I know have such a deep passion for starting companies that even when times are tough, they still could not imagine doing anything else. Paul Graham of Y Combinator has said that persistence and determination are more important than intelligence or experience for a startup founder (http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html)

Do you have any advice for people who want to start their own startup?

Yes- just do it (thanks Nike :). It’s easy to get caught up in ‘analysis paralysis’ - wondering if your idea is really going to be the next big thing, whether people will care about it. But there is no better first step than just building something and releasing it. Let your users tell you what they want, and let that guide the product’s evolution (keep in mind that my advice is biased towards consumer web startups)

There is no need for a comprehensive business plan – as long as you can describe your idea to someone clearly and succinctly enough to get them excited about it, you should just get started. And drop me an email – I love hearing about new startups.

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A big thanks to Ryan for taking the time to answer all those questions and for being so open. Make sure you go check out Omnisio when you get a chance. They’re definitely a team of Aussies in the US to keep an eye on.

Today I came across a new startup that was added to the startup-australia list.

2Vouch is an online professional recruiting service that uses the power of referrals to help companies and recruiters find great candidates who are hard to reach.

They certainly make it attractive to recommend your friends and colleagues, offering cash rewards between $1,400-$2,800 when you make referrals that result in someone being hired.

Members are able to promote opportunities to their social and professional networks directly by email and via a FaceBook application, blog badges and soon a LinkedIn application.

One of the unique features of the process is that the person who makes the referral is able to “vouch” for the candidate. Once someone shows an interest in a job, the referrer gets a notice from the system and is asked to vouch for the candidate. The referrer then adds their own comments on why they believe the candidate is a good fit for the job and these comments are passed on to the employer for review, along with the candidate’s CV/profile.

I asked the founder and CEO Riges Younan ­ a few questions about 2VOUCH, which is scheduled to launch next month.

Read the rest…

It’s great to hear that the consensus coming out of the Top 100 event today is that the Australian Web 2.0 scene is picking up some steam. It certainly does feel that way. Only a short while ago I would have had a hard time naming even 10 Australian Web 2.0 startups. Previously it was hard to find a cohesive list. There have been some valiant attempts recently though.

Vishal Sharma posted a list of 49 startups based on a startup carnival he ran recently and interviews he’s done since. Of course there was the Top 100 list that was released today. This was a comprehensive list but I’ve heard several stories of startups that weren’t considered because they were unknown to the organizers. Prior to announcing the top 100, Ross Dawson posted on his blog a link to a spreadsheet that listed 137 of the Web 2.0 companies that he (and other collaborators) were aware of.

Those are all great efforts, and I applaud them. Let’s remember though that we’re talking about web 2.0, and a big part of web 2.0 is community and collaboration. The lists I mention above were still, by and large, organized by one person.

That’s why I was so excited to come across startup-australia.org. It’s only been up for a few weeks but already has 73 startups listed. It’s an open wiki, so anyone can contribute.

If you have a startup, know of a startup, or have useful information that you can share with other entrepreneurs (about grants, valuation, etc), please add it to the wiki. If you don’t fit into any of these categories and still want to contribute, why not make sure startup-australia includes all the companies found in the other lists linked above?

It will be interesting to see how the wiki evolves. I’ll certainly be watching and contributing and I encourage you to do the same. It’s off to a great start so far, but, like many things, it will only remain valuable if it keeps its momentum.

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.

iTechne CEO Jed White had a few interesting stories regarding his childhood, which he then tied into today’s evolving tech scene, interesting, but not super engaging.

The CEO of Acidlabs, Stephen Collins, then gave a good lesson on why organizations should be more open to collaboration and allow workers to work socially online, as this can foster more creativity and innovation in the workplace.

Stuart Clarke the Homepage Daily editor then gave a short speech on how ‘edited’ web 2.0 content can still be very viable and work well as a business model for the future, provided there are ‘no boundaries’ in what you write and you have no problem ‘offending everyone’ who reads.

Ian Lyons from Pureprofile gave the most interesting talk in my opinion. He managed to put into understandable terms what the Semantic web really is, what it will become and how to get ready for it now. The basis of his speech was that at the moment, you find what you want on the web, but with the semantic web, the web finds you information, based on a set digital identity that you have created.

Janine Cahill from Futurejourneys spoke about staying ahead of the web 3.0 paradigm shift. The Viva9 CEO threw out some interesting figures on ad spend - US online spend US$21.7B in 07’ – 26% up since 2006, - performance deals account for 57% of total online advertising spend.

The BDT talk was very entertaining and had a 4 step system to becoming a media mogul.

• Step 1 - The Opportunity
• Step 2 - Business Model
• Step 3 - Software development
• Step 4 - Content.

As well as mistakes: -

• Mistake 1 - Thinking too far in front,
• Mistake 2 - Ethics.

One of the most thoughtful and funny presentations came from Tim Noonan from Tim Noonan consulting. Tim’s been blind his entire life and talked about how web 2.0 platforms are 38% less accessible than web 1.0 platforms and 1/5 people in the western world are unable to use the Internet as it currently is. Makes you think.

That’s my very quick, very brief, wrapup of pubcamp 08 Sydney.

Feel free to add anything I’ve missed in the comments

Looking forward to the next one!

We talk a lot about US-based tech incubator Y Combinator here on TechNation, but not many people know that Omnisio, a team of 3 Aussies, has been through the process and come out the other end. Omnisio was founded with the goal of “drastically improving your online video experience” and they’re well on the way to achieving it.

The Omnisio founders are Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar and Simon Ratner. I recently had the pleasure of talking with CEO, Ryan Junee, and he gave me so much good info I’ve decided to split it into 2 separate posts. The 1st will focus on their experiences with Y Combinator, the 2nd on their innovative site and his thoughts on the tech startup process.

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When did you apply for Y Combinator?

We applied in October 2007. Y Combinator (YC) has two ‘funding cycles’ each year, with applications typically due in April and November.

Where was Omnisio at when you applied?

Omnisio was at a very early stage – we had a founding team and an idea, and had begun development of an early prototype. Our product wasn’t available to the public but we had made a private beta available to a select group of users. We also hadn’t yet incorporated the company (we decided to wait and see if we were accepted into Y Combinator, as they help with incorporation).

How did they let you know you were accepted?

YC has a very efficient funding process. After the initial web-based application, a selection of companies are invited to either Boston or Mountain View for a 10 minute in-person interview. We flew to Boston and interviewed on a Saturday, Paul (Graham) called us that night with an offer, which we accepted, and on Monday we met with them again and were welcomed into the program.

Were you already in the US or did you have to move out there?

We were already in the US – I moved over here in 2003 to complete a Master’s degree at Stanford and had been working here since. Simon, our CTO, was over here studying for his Master’s at Stanford (which he completed in parallel with the Y Combinator program), and Julian our third co-founder had recently moved over to work on Omnisio. We were going to do it regardless of whether we were accepted into Y Combinator.

Tell us a little about the experience . We’ve heard a lot of stories, but as an Aussie, how did you find it, the culture, the Americans etc.?

Y Combinator is a fantastic experience. I won’t describe it in detail because as you said there is lots of information out there. I will say that for us the key benefits of Y Combinator were:

• Hanging out each week with a room full of incredibly smart and entrepreneurial hackers – the atmosphere is very collegiate and you can always find people willing to provide feedback on what you are developing, help with difficult bugs, and in general motivate each other to succeed. Not to mention the valuable insights from Paul, Trevor and Jessica who have seen dozens of early stage startups.
• Exposure to the valley’s top investors and entrepreneurs. With the Y Combinator brand behind us we had no trouble getting meetings with anyone we wanted.

I could talk a lot about the cultural differences between Australia and the US (or at least Silicon Valley). Having lived here for almost 5 years I can say that life here is a lot more fast-paced and ‘high energy’. It’s very competitive, but at the same time people are always very willing to provide advice and assistance. It is not uncommon for founders of competing startups to be friends. There is also a lot more tolerance for failure over here – after all the majority of startups do fail. Failing is not seen as a stigma, in fact in some ways it’s almost celebrated (at least you had a go, and hopefully you wont make the same mistakes next time). I think in Australia and other countries, fear of failure causes people to take fewer risks.

Sometimes I miss the friendly laid back nature that most Australian’s have, which is less common over here, but as much as I love Australia I don’t think there is a better place in the world for starting a technology company than here in Silicon Valley. Where else in the world can you live within driving distance of so many of the world’s top universities, VCs, law firms, technology companies and entrepreneurs?

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Stay Tuned for Part 2 of this interview and more information on how Omnisio gives you a better online video experience…

Over the next few weeks I want to go through a process of discovery and planning around the Australian Tech Startup industry. Part 1 of this process is related to clusters.

In one of his seminal works, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (read the introduction to the article if you have time), leading business strategist Michael Porter explains how certain nations get ahead in certain industries – think Germans in cars, or Italians in Fashion, or Japanese/Koreans in Electronics, or the Spanish in football players (OK, maybe I’m a little biased and made that one up)

Getting back to Porter, there are 4 major components of his diamond-shaped model, but the one I want to focus on is firm strategy, structure and rivalry.

The general idea here is that, when you have clusters of competitors, the co-opetition, or collaborative competition, drives innovation faster than elsewhere.

It’s a simplistic explanation and may not even directly apply to a post Web 2.0 flat world, but it’ll do for now.

So, I’m keen to hear your thoughts re: in what areas we (i.e. Australia) have clusters of start-ups working on similar problems.

2 points should be noted here: -

1. By “areas”, I mean areas of work, not geographic areas
2. This is not to say, by any means, that these areas the only areas we can be successful in

It could be something as specific as wine review sites (we have a few of those that always seem to get mentioned in leading blogs) or something more general such as data transfer (we always seem to have good scientists working on ways to improve speed and accuracy of data transport)

Part 2 of the process will flow directly from your responses, so let’s try and knock up as comprehensive a list of suggestions as possible.