I love the fact that charities are embracing technology to make their job easier.

Anything that makes it easier for me to donate and participate when it’s convenient for me, and gets rid of the swarms of backpackers collecting for commission in Martin Place, makes my day better.

As such the recent work by local startups in the charity space is very pleasing indeed.

SMSPoll (35th in our July’08 Aussie Startup Index) has announced a partnership with leading charity consultants, Pareto Fundraising, that will see a number of local charities using SMSPoll’s innovative offering to better engage with their membership and identify potential new donors. Pareto’s clients include Cancer Council, Amnesty International Australia, National Heart Foundation of Australia, Médecins Sans Frontières and CanTeen.

It’s a nice pickup for SMSPoll who, after launching less than a month ago, continue to generate good traction with Educators, Event Planners, Promoters and Corporations. The company has also been selected as one of NSW’s top ten finalists in Pitch 08.

This also comes on top of Anthill Magazine Top 30 Under 30 member, and daughter of former PM Paul Keating, Alexandra Keating’s fund-raising site - Go Fundraise - which aims to make it as easy as possible for charities and community organisations (small and large) to engage with the public online.

I’ve always thought there has to be a better way than sticking people in Koala suits on corners. Glad to see that people are out there doing something about it.

We’re very happy to announce that TechNation Australia has become a Media Partner for Web Directions South 2008.

Web Directions South is part of the Web Directions conference series which bring together the web industry’s leading experts from around the world to educate and inspire attendees.

The conferences began in Australia in 2004 and were started by long time web industry figures Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp. They have gone from strength to strength every year, which is part of the reason we’re so happy to be associated with it this time around.

As part of the upside of being a Media Partner we get to offer TechNation Australia readers a special offer.

If you register for the event before Septemeber 6th you can use the code: WDS08TN and prices are $895 discount rate, and $995 full rate (standard pricing for early bird tickets pricing is $950 and $1050)

Just over a week ago I did a story on the ANZA Technology Network and workshops they have coming up which help prepare Australian startups to make the move into the US. (if you’re interested you’d better be quick, the first workshops kick off in Sydney on Friday)

The CEO of ANZA Technology Network, Viki Forrest, is an tech industry veteran with experience and advice to pass on the local startups trying to make the move into the US.

Viki took some time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions for us, below

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Tell us a bit about your background / projects you’ve worked on

I’ve worked in tech in Australia, Asia and the US since the 1980s. I’ve seen a lot of changes in technology and the marketplace for it since that time. I’ve worked for a US-owned, multi-national major corporate player in Sydney and Asia, and then was part of an Aussie startup that went to the US in 2000.

When did you decide to make the move to Silicon Valley and what were your motivations?
I came to the Valley in late 2000 with an Australian software startup – we had our sights set on the US despite the economic downturn. The downturn actually made setting up in the Valley very inexpensive at that time, everything from office space to employees’ salaries were very affordable and in abundant supply. Unfortunately, for this company, as well as many others, the downturn became the dot-com crash. We were out of business by the end of 2001.

How did ANZA Tecnology Network start up?

There have always been a lot of Aussie and Kiwi ex-pats in the US, and particularly California and Silicon Valley. But back in 2001, there was no business network for ex-pat Australians and New Zealanders – plenty of drinking opportunities with other Aussies and Kiwis but no way to connect for business. Given all business is done through personal networks in the US this was a major obstacle for those who were not born and raised here. Executives from Austrade, NZTE, Macquarie Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Intel Capital recognized this and established ANZA Technology Network as a non-profit organization to address this gap. In 2002, ANZA hosted its first Gateway to the US Summit. These events give innovative Australian and New Zealand businesses an opportunity to showcase their companies and products before a US audience of entrepreneurs, investors and potential partners. It has proven to be a very successful model in getting entrepreneurs from Down Under connected with the right people in Silicon Valley who can help them gain a foothold in the US market.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see aussie start-ups making?

Lack of a focused market entry strategy and lack of speed in execution. Also, a lot of the Aussie entrepreneurs still think they can ‘work from home’ – they want to stay in Australia and run US operations from there and come to the Valley every 6 weeks or so. That just doesn’t work for Australians or anyone trying to launch business in the US — you have to be here to execute well no matter what your business model is.

The overwhelmingly most common mistake Aussie startups make is underestimating the essential nature of a loyal, well-connected, personal network to breakthrough in this market.

What do you think is stopping Australia from becoming a leading global tech-hub?

Australia is a very small market relatively speaking – execution must happen elsewhere – Europe, Asia or the US . While we’re great innovators we just don’t have the experience to commercialize at the pace and success rate that you see here in the US . So much good innovation simply goes nowhere.

So many Australians enjoy the comfortable life of working for a large multi-national so we become great salespeople in a small market but we don’t get the experience of real product marketing – it’s all done for us elsewhere. ANZA is all about successful commercialization of great innovation – we hope to change the executive ranks of Australians, make them great marketers and great at execution so they can return that talent and expertise to Australia.

Do you think that, in light of the cessation of the Commercial Ready program that it still makes financial sense for Aussie start-ups to keep their R&D in Australia ?

At the moment the US is looking quite competitive as an R&D location – this is a very recent turn and I think it’s a combination of the softening of the US economy making doing business here more affordable and the very low unemployment in Australia making salaries close to parity with the US . Add to that the demise of the Commercial Ready program and you’ll find most Australian CEOs considering alternative locations for their R&D. A cautionary remark on this – a good alternative program to the Commercial Ready grant could change all this.

What advice would give an Aussie startup considering making the move into the US market?
The US is the largest market in the world and very attractive because of language, law, business practices etc. While these things make it easy for Australians to do business in the US, it also must be remembered that the US is a very complex market to navigate. You have to really understand your market, your competition and have a very clear value proposition for your customers. If you want to do business in the US you have to be in the US – understand the consequences of that and prepare well. I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend taking a good look at the programs ANZA runs – they are specifically designed for Aussie startups moving to the US .

Any last thoughts?

As an Australian who has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years—and in Silicon Valley for the past 8 years—I believe the entrepreneur with classic Australian business discipline, innovative strength, creative problem solving and pure ‘Down Under’ determination who is ready, willing and able to adapt to the speed, focus and subtle but important cultural differences demanded in the US is destined for success—that’s what ANZA is all about.
 
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A big thanks to Viki for taking the time to chat.

Global software giant Symantec has announced that it will acquire Australian software company PC Tools.

That’s great news for founders Simon Clausen and Peter McKow especially as the pair started the company in 1998 and bootstrapped it rather than take venture capital.

That must have been a hard decision with all the money flying around in the dot-com days but it’s paid off now, even without specifics of the purchase price or the deal having been made public.

The company’s revenue for last year was around $50M. I’ve always understood the rule of thumb to be that software companies are worth 1-2x annual software revenue so the purchase price would probably have been round $50-$100M.

Not a bad payday.

That might also be really good news for the local startup scene as hopefully it means we have 2 new high net worth individuals, with domain expertise, who may invest (e.g. as Angels) in local tech startups.

Well done guys.

There were a lot of disappointed Australian users last week when Twitter dropped its outgoing SMS alerts service to all territories outside of the US, Canada and India.

You can hardly blame Twitter tough - the service must have been costing an absolute fortune.

Well, Elias Bizannes (of Silicon Beach Australia / Data Portability fame) wasn’t the only one who thought this should be seen as a huge opportunity rather than a great loss. Already various organisations have emerged to fill the void.

Aussie twitterers looking for SMS alerts already have a couple of services to choose from: -

• Firstly, there’s twitsms - who are charging 11c an alert (to be prepaid for in lots of 100, 200 or 500)
• Secondly, there’s 3Jam who have apparently also announced that their Twitter SMS service, which will include a local Australian number, will go live tonight. (check that link out later on tonight)

Should also be interesting to see if the Silicon Beach Australia team can come up with something more interesting that these two options from their project.

I’m guessing that these are just the beginning of a flood of options, so keep an eye out for better and better deals in the near future.

Kristen Le Mesurier, one of Australia’s leading journalists in the emerging company space, has picked up on the Web Equity story and written a post over at her ‘Innovator’ blog for Fairfax Digital (e.g. SMH, The Age)

I think we should all head over there and post comments to reward her efforts in covering a startup as well as to make senior Fairfax people realise that when they publish stories about local Tech Startups they’ll get a great reponse.

That having been said, I think we can all learn from how Paul Middleton has gone about promoting Web Equity.

Paul provides regular updates, gives good quotes and makes it easy for mainstream and non-mainstream writers to write about the site. Sure the Web Equity concept is interesting, but they’ve only just kicked things off and I bet the vast majority of startups out there have a good story and more users than Web Equity does.

It goes back to the notion of promotion (nice rhyme, Kim )

Don’t be afraid to promote yourself and your project. There’s a really good post over at the Silicon Beach Australia google group about free PR in Australia and heaps of resources on the Internet - so there are no excuses for not doing this.

Well done Kristen for promoting a startup and well done Paul for highlighting how easy it is to get coverage if you set your mind to it

After reading some messages about Geeksville, a new Sydney based incubator, on the Silicon Beach Australia groups, I wanted to find out more. Yesterday I met with Ian Naylor, mayor of Geeksville, at their offices in the Rocks.

Their offices are clearly a place where a start-up could thrive. All walls and windows seemed to function as whiteboards and not many people could have an office as they were reserved for Foosball tables, which were getting a good workout, and a Guitar Hero setup.

Geeksville officially launched in July as an “Internet Incubator”. Geeksville is part of Geekdom which has 58 employees, which in turn is part of the Photon Group (ASX:PGA) which has about 50 companies encompassing the full spectrum of marketing communication services.

Geeksville is looking to take on 6 investments before the end of the year and they are currently looking for people and companies to invest in. They are ideally looking for smart, fun and determined people that have innovative ideas (B2C, Web 2.0+, Social, Mobile) that can be taken to beta in 3-6 months.

The way the incubation deals are structured is interesting. Besides the $100k-$250k initial investment, they will hire you directly and pay you a salary. They also provide you with a complete business framework including desk space, access to programmers, lawyers, marketing channels, etc.

To select the companies and people they are going to invest in they are planning to run “Geek Idol”. For the first round you give them your 2 minute “elevator pitch”. From these pitches a panel consisting of Troy Rushton, Joe Najem, Randal Leeb-du Toit and Ian pick a set of “potential geeks” that will than give a 20-minute pitch at a Geeksville Day. The first one is scheduled for 28th of August.

All in all it seems that this is a great program for entrepreneurs that are passionate about what they want to build, but that find it financially hard to take the leap.

This will be a good test to see if Sydney actually has enough entrepreneurs with billion dollar ideas. Do you think Sydney is ready for this?

Great news - TechNation Australia has been added to Regator.

Regator is a filtered social RSS aggregator that has received a lot of good press for its completeness as an easy-to-use feed reader which has the potential to take RSS away from the geeks and out to the masses.

The site has an editor selected list of approximately 3000 feeds, broken into channels, then uses a nice layout and AJAX to make it simple to use.

Stories on Mashable, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and ArsTechnica (as some examples) all seem to be feeling the hybrid social voting/edited list approach. It’s true that the site may not be perfect for heavy-duty RSS users, but that doesn’t appear to be their target market - the goal is clearly to make RSS more user friendly and they do a good job of it.

Best bit though is that one of the founders, Scott Lockhart is an Aussie, which is why we’re proud to be supporting them and also to have them support us.

Check it out if you have some time.

The very important Data Portability Working Group has elected Steering Group officers and Australia is well represented.

Silicon Beach AustraliaFounder and original DataPortability Project member Elias Bizannesgets a guernsey as does Faraday Mediaco-founder and the face of the DataPortability project, Chris Saad.

Here’s a link to the ReadWriteWeb article covering what’s gone down (it’s been a long day and Marshall Kirkpatrick is a kick-ass writer - so I think straight linking is acceptable in this case…)

Just 10 days ago I wrote a post asking whether Web Equity could save the Aussie Tech Startup Industry. One key aspect of that was whether or not there would be support for the equity rather than cash model.

Well founder Paul Middleton has released a first report and it looks like the support might just be there.

“We’re heading towards 100 members already”, said Middleton, “which I’m really pleased about after only 10 days. I really had no pre-conceptions as to how the startup community was going to react to the service, but it appears to support the idea”.

It’s still early days, and, as Middleton acknowledges, the site will need a success or two if it’s going to be able to keep building the user base, but at least things are quickly heading in the right direction.

This is one to keep an eye on.