Last October we ran a story on MyGuestList as a service. Recently we were able to catch up with one of the co-founders, Damian Janeski (the other co-founder is Andy Marcus), for a more personal interview about his startup.

What are MyGuestList.com.au co-founders doing on their spare cycles?

MyGuestList engrosses the two of us on a full time basis now. It started off in the spare rooms in our houses, moved to a small office, and now moved to a larger office as we prepare for our first round of financing.

In our spare “social” time, we don’t mind a drink or 7 and talking a whole lot of baloney about MyGuestList innovation, other web services, tech and nightlife news.

Any secret events you would like the world to know about that only MyGuestList knows about?

Haha. We are aiming to take over the world. One guestlist at a time!

Haha. We are aiming to take over the world. One guestlist at a time!”

How did the MyGuestList.com.au idea start?

Andy and I met at uni where we both undertook internships under the computer science/software engineering degrees. We also both had club/bar management experience. Combining the two, we discovered a need for a technology solution to rectify the many tedious and laborious processes within the nightlife industry. And so, MyGuestList was born.

The idea came after realising that venues paying a staff member with a clipboard to ask for patron’ details was both innefective and outdated. So we created a completely new and innovative business scenario to automate guestlists online, allow venues to share content (SMS,emails, YouTube videos etc), have interactive web galleries with sharing/commenting abilities and much more.

The MyGuestList project was in development for approximately 18 months. Late nights, red eyes and take-away food were on the agenda most nights. Not to mention the fact that many of our family & friends forgot what we looked like during the whole ordeal.

(Boy did they get a shock of the aftermath visuals!)

How long has MyGuestList.com.au been around?

Development took about 18 months.

Became Public Beta about 2-3 months ago. Team started off as 5 members and is now growing.

What is MyGuestList.com.au in one sentence?

MyGuestList is an online tool that helps venues and promoters manage guestlists, database & marketing.

Describe the typical MyGuestList.com.au’s user?

Currently, nightclubs, bars, pubs, promoters, function venues are all utilising the system. The beauty about it all, is that the system undergoes a complete customisation to work in exactly the way the user requires it to for their operations.

We recognised right from the very beginning, that although we have a solid and much needed system, a restaurant, a nightclub, a sailing club and a golf club do not operate in exactly the same way.

Which is why we offer a very niche designed product. One that is aimed at the nightlife industry, and is customisable to every individual’s needs.

Which is why we offer a very niche designed product. One that is aimed at the nightlife industry, and is customisable to every individual’s needs.”

What did you use to build MyGuestList.com.au built on? Are any of the MyGuestList.com.au co-founders coders?

MyGuestList is written completely from scratch and has been built with php & ajax using in house frameworks, mysql for database and apache httpd web server.

Who are the other companies MyGuestList.com.au’s space? Would you consider this a vertical market?

Some of our competitors like to see the act of data management and marketing as a horizontal “one-size-fits-all” game. There is nothing that I could disagree with more.

MyGuestList was created as a niche product for the nightlife industry. It is because of this that we can strengthen and innovate the system with time, listen to feedback accurately, and provide the features and content that our users in this specific industry require.

Had we endeavoured for MyGuestList to also accomodate another industry, we would have quickly realised the vast differences and needs in the day to day operations of the businesses.

It is due to this, that we are able to grow and create an ongoing innovative environment which updates and reflects upon new emergences within social media and social interaction.

What is entrepreneurship for you?

And there it is. The magic question. Maybe this question is best answered by saying what I think ISN’T entrepreneurship.

* Having an idea and doing nothing about it

Everybody has ideas, do something about it. develop a prototype, speak to target customers before you begin development and ask them whether they would like to use what you are proposing.Ask them what they would like to see in it? What are their painpoints?

* Not telling people about your idea

Confidentiality agreements, fear of idea theft and any general stealth attitude towards your idea are completely useless.”

Confidentiality agreements, fear of idea theft and any general stealth attitude towards your idea are completely useless. The more you can chat to people, especially target users of your idea, the more you will be able to shape and mold it to the liking of these users. This will also save you spending months of development time implementing features which only you think are useful, but not those which your users want. In any case, investors will always want to see a proof of concept prior to even thinking about involvement in your business.

* Not giving 3000% to it.

Yes, we’ve all heard it before haven’t we. Hard work, no pay, crazyness, little sleep. They are all ingredients of the entrepreneurship recipe. You must have these. If not, have a think about whether you truly believe in your idea.

* Dwelling on creating a business plan, or aiming to seek investment.

I have seen ideas and set up businesses been destroyed by this waiting game. There is no need to waste days, weeks and months on this while that time could be spent speaking to customers/users and developing the features they want and need.

Here is a formula that many well known online and offline brands have gone through:

- Identify a need
- Think of a solution to satisfy the problem.
- Talk to users to see if this solution is something they favour
- Implement
- Keep talking to users to add more functionality in there
- Build user base
- Investors begin to get interested due to proof of concept and only now does the business plan become important.

Anything that you would like MyGuestList.com.au to do all over again?

Something I mentioned earlier actually. It would have been good if in the initial development phase, we implemented features that were desirable by our users in the industry and not just ones which we thought would be needed. This would have saved us a bit of time and we would have been able to release certain features earlier.

Any encouragement for would-be Aussie startuppers? Why is Australia an awesome place for a startup?

Australia serves as a great place to unleash your ideas out in the wild. It is ridiculously easy to create a bootstrapped business, develop it, test it and expose it. Creative viral and guerrilla marketing techniques are excellent to get you started in the beginning.

Australia serves as a great place to unleash your ideas out in the wild. It is ridiculously easy to create a bootstrapped business, develop it, test it and expose it.”

I encourage anyone that has vibrant passion and a mere idea, to stop delaying and making excuses to themselves, and begin speaking to their target audience today to flesh out the full requirements of their system. Once you have that and have proved that a large number of your target audience will in actual fact use such a tool, there is nothing else to do but leave that unfinished business plan and get started on development.

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

First of all, on behalf of the whole TechNation Australia team, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope you have a safe holiday period and that you get to enjoy some quality time with friends and family.

Here at TNA we’re going to be winding things down a little for the next few weeks. Throughout the year we’ve tried to get a post a day out, sometimes two, but that won’t be the case for a bit.

Instead, it’s time for us to focus on other things. For instance each TNA writer actually has other projects going on that need some special attention. Why not check them out if you get sick of re-runs over the holiday period:

• Geoff Evason has Momentville - www.momentville.com
• Mike Watkins is working on his new Social Media Consultancy - Mudo - www.mudo-media.com
• Paul Pajo will continue working on his Pageman blog - http://pageman.wordpress.com/
• Lee Goodman is working on some really cool stuff under the codename ‘Devign Intervention’ that I’m not allowed to speak to you about
• Malcolm Lambert is working on Intresto - www.intresto.com
• And I’m working on OneEyeDeer - www.oneeyedeer.com

Please note that there will still be posts going up occasionally on TNA, so make sure you sign up to the RSS feed (by either clicking on the orange RSS icon at the top right or by clicking on this link) so you don’t have to keep checking back at the site.

Other than that, thank you all for your support over the past few months. We really appreciate it.

Enjoy the break and be safe!

Leading podcasting site, The Podcast Network’s, server suffered a “massive technical failure” yesterday and according to CEO Cameron Reilly, the media files (which are the lifeblood of the site) “went down with the ship”

OUCH!

Cam Reilly is one of the original Aussie Web 2.0 guys and The Podcast Network is one of the true Aussie Web 2.0 success stories, so it breaks my heart to see this happen. The guys are building things back up “site by site” but even if they get everything back, this sucks big time… especially only a couple of days out from Christmas.

Back in July we had our own complete HDD fail and lost everything. To think of how painful that was for us, then to factor in the sheer difference in scale between TPN and TechNation Australia, makes me feel sick for them.

Good luck guys and hope to see you back up and running soon.

Reasontospeak.com is a video-based online learning program for people who want to learn how to become better public speakers.

The system is pretty simple. You answer 15 qualifying questions before you start and the site creates a custom-designed program built from up to 60 of their 200 3-minute videos “chapters”.

At the end of your course you get personalised feedback and consultation to let you know what you should be working on and how you’ve gone.

Reasontospeak was created by television journalist and educator Paul Griffiths. Griffiths began his career as a television journalist and has gone on to become “one of Australia’s foremost educators teaching business people media skills as well as academic programs at a number of institutions.”

Reasontospeak has a version for hearing impaired people where all web-based videos are delivered via sign language and also provides a text of each video and an MP3 player version of every chapter, providing for users who prefer learning via the written word or audio.

While there are plenty of sites focusing on online learning, Reasontospeak is unique in that it focuses solely on public speaking and also because of the personalised consultation at the end of your course.

AND NOW THE BEST BIT…

The nice people at Reasontospeak are offering 2 course registrations, worth $198 each, to 2 TechNation Australia readers.

All you need to do is send an email to me at editor (at) technation [dot] com [dot] au explaining why you think you should win. It’s that simple. Oh yeah, make it entertaining if you can…I like a good laugh.

The Pollenizer team have finalised arrangements and will be opening a co-working space at 98 Riley St, Surry Hills, Sydney, in March next year.

We’ve been following this story since July, so it’s great to see it get over the line. What’s even better though is to know that there’ll be a space, in what’s fast becoming the web/new-media hub of Sydney, where like-minded people will be able to get together and share their inspiration, creativity and passion.

There are various options re: how people will be able to use the space:

1. Book a permanent desk, a chair, fat pipe bandwidth, electricity and a chance to be in a inspiring space. $650 a month minimum of 3 months. Special Offer - book and pay for 3 months before Jan 30 and pay just $500 a month!
2. Buy a yearly co-working pass for $500. Drop by any time and take what space you can get. Free wifi, free exciting peeps, buzzing energy. Pay before Jan 30 and get founding membership numbers 2-20 (Number 1 will be auctioned off later). First in, best dressed.
3. Earn a free desk for six months by pitching your business/idea and being chosen as a “Wow, cool” opportunity.

You can check out the rest of the details on the Pollenizer Blog.

Really exciting news, Phil and Mick. Well done.

Kick-ass mobile social network and IM aggregator, Xumii, has just released a new version of their app.

Updates include:

• Check up on your recent chats - The newest chats now have their own tab in the Friend Chat section–check out “Recent.”
• More organized contact lists - Have tons of buddies? Now there are tabs for each social network so that your Facebook or AOL buddies have their own lists.
• Faster start-up - We don’t want to keep you waiting.
• In-Application Sign-up - New users can sign up and add identities from Xumii on their phone.
• Uploading larger images- You can upload photographs larger than 250K from your phone into your facebook, imeem and myspace social networking photo albums.

The fight is still on to see who will dominate the mobile social network/IM space, but the Xumii team are doing their best to maintain their position as one of the favourites.

Check out the official update announcement HERE.

We’re often accused of being too Sydney-centric here at TechNation Australia (yes, I’m talking about you, Mr. Riley ) so I’m really happy to point everyone in the direction of a recent Ross Hill post on tech meetups that are going on in Melbourne.

You can check out the post HERE.

BTW - Anyone in Melbourne who would like to write about the local scene for TechNation Australia, drop me an email and I’ll talk you through the details…

MomentVille.com, a Sydney-based provider of do-it-yourself wedding websites (and No.20 on the Aussie Startup Index for December), is introducing a new service tomorrow, that will allow users to build their own custom themes.

“When it comes to weddings, couples want everything about it to reflect the things that are important to them.  Having been there ourselves, we completely understand, which is why we’re so excited about letting couples build a website that matches their wedding style.” says Geoff Evason, CEO of MomentVille.

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With an easy to-use drag and drop interface, the new WYSIWYG theme builder allows users to create their own custom themes in minutes.  The process starts by selecting one of several templates.  From there, a user chooses their own images, fonts, and colors to create the look and feel that best matches their wedding.  They can use images from an existing library of images, or use their own.  Custom CSS is even allowed so users can have full control over how their wedding website looks.

Sounds like another reason for people planning for that big day to use Momentville. 

Sydney based garage startup Jobfeedr.com is on to something.

The site crawls all the worlds major IT jobs boards every few minutes, then automatically feeds these jobs to their homepage, your twitter channel or via RSS to your browser.

The service is one condusive to the times.  Quoting co-founder Mike Nicholls -

More people [are] fighting for less jobs, more online job sites that need to be checked constantly for new jobs, job sites making candidates wade through 100s of screens to get through jobs just so they can show more ad impressions.  Looking for jobs turns into a full time job.

In making this process automated, the Jobfeedr team just saved thousands of stressed out job hunters the hassle of wading through the irrelevant material that is pushed at them through the major jobs boards.

The setup process is dead simple.  Head to Jobfeedr.com, set the specific fields you want for your feed then hit ok. A list of job’s will then appear below.  Click on the twitter channel link of a chosen job, this will direct you to that job category’s twitter feed on twitter.  Click follow and presto, all jobs found by jobfeedr relating to that specific job field will be automatically twittered to your feed.

Same goes with RSS. Click the RSS button and that stream will begin feeding into your browser.

I really do see some promise here.  The idea is great, serves a real purpose and will save alot of time stretched people alot of time!

The global approach from launch is encouraging, the team is not just focusing on the smaller Australian or Australasian markets, they have San Francisco and New York City on the cards too - something we dont see enough of in the Aussie startup scene.

Mike Nicholls and Dale Hurley look like an experienced team who have the knowledge to keep pushing Jobfeedr forward.

Lastly and most importantly, although the look is currently very bare, the interface design and functionality is extremely simple, which is something alot of other twitter app and RSS app developers have yet to master.

Advert’s may come into play later down the track, with small ad’s being integrated into the twitter feed and possibly the RSS feeds.  However for now, the team is focused on getting the core technology right, believing if they do this, users will pick up and advertising streams will follow.

Keep an eye on Jobfeedr in the future and if your looking for your next job, employ jobfeedr to do the work for you, saving you alot of time for other things during these xmas holidays.

Below is the Dec ‘08 installment of the Aussie Startup index.

Sites are ranked based on an average of Alexa and Compete traffic data. Only sites that are ranked by both Alexa & Compete and that have an average ranking of < 1 million will be listed. This month 76 of the 165 sites listed on the startup-australia wiki made the list. To get yourself included just add your site to the wiki.

In addition to the Alexa and Compete traffic data are the following fields which, while they aren’t included in the actual rank calculations, add deeper insight into the startups on the list

• Quantcast -  data from Quantcast.
• Hitwise - Hitwise Australian traffic rank.
• Nov - The startup’s ranking from last month.
• Change - Change in the startup’s ranking between Nov and Dec.
• NB: All columns are sortable, just click on the heading

This month’s list has had a rapid increase in size with 76 startups now featured (compared to 57 in November). That sudden jump in numbers means there are quite a few new guys on the list. Congratulations to the following 24 startups who feature for the first time this month:

• beatmyprice (24)
• fivesecondtest (26)
• buzka (32)
• gourmetads (38)
• mozo (40)
• clivir (41)
• pollenizer (43)
• ador (49)
• spellr.us (50)
• 2Vouch (51)
• boomerangbooks (53)
• storyz (58)
• serviceseeking (60)
• panedia (61)
• BuzzNumbersHQ (62)
• Smartbuild (63)
• clickfind (64)
• suburbview (66)
• boozle (68)
• ankoder (69)
• localiq (71)
• gopc (72)
• gennit (73)
• foolkit (75)

Now, onto the list - with working links…

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