After much debate about ways to improve the Top 100 startup list we’ve decided to ditch the old, traffic-centric, method and partner with YouNoodle.

Below are some FAQ about the list, followed by the list itself.

At all times you’ll be able to access a real-time version of the list by clicking on the “Top 100 Aussie Tech Startups” link in the toolbar. (the quicker ones amongst you will notice a name change away from “Web Startups” to “Tech Startups” - this is because now we’ve dumped the traffic-centric model all sorts of tech companies should start to get a better run)

We’re also going to keep a list of the top 10 movers in the sidebar, so you can see who’s moving and shaking.

FAQ

How does YouNoodle calculate scores:
A YouNoodle Score is a measurement, on a scale of 0 to 100, of a startup’s progress as an early-stage company. Typically, a 0-15 company is just getting started, a 30-60 company has experienced some very strong growth (through traffic, funding, or revenue), and a 90-plus company is a strong IPO or acquisition candidate. The score is based on a sophisticated algorithm using information from thousands of online sources: traffic, level of mainstream media coverage, funding, blogosphere activity, and other key factors.
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Why is TechNation Australia working with YouNoodle?
TechNation Australia has decided to start working with YouNoodle because we feel they have a better way of tranking startups than pure traffic alone.
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What is the YouNoodle score based on?
YouNoodle’s scores and rankings are based on a sophisticated algorithm using information pulled in from thousands of online sources: traffic, mainstream media, funding information sources, the blogosphere, and other key factors.
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How can I influence my startup’s score?
Build value for your company! This is in the form of whatever is most valuable to your business in the short and medium term - possibly traffic, funding, revenue, partnerships, key hires, or major media coverage. Keep in mind that the algorithm for scores is specific to an industry, and in some cases location as well.
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How can I get onto the list of startups that are being measured?
For now, as it was before, you can add your startup to the list of startups on Startup-Australia.
I highly recommend that you also add your startup to YouNoodle as soon we will be doing filtering straight off their list (ATM they have over 27,000+ start-ups, so you may already be there)
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Will I still have access to the old Top 100 lists?
Yep – they’ll be at the bottom of the “Top 100 Aussie Tech Startups” page

image source: http://www.propertynewsmedia.com/profiles/packer.jpg

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Just read that Conslidated Media Holdings are selling their James Packer inspired stake in Seek for just over $440M.

Not bad for a 2003 investment in the then private Seek of $33M (That’s an ROI of 1233% over 6 years or a simple annualized ROI of 205%)

Obviously CMH is not a VC fund (and JP isn’t a VC), but if it/he was, the time frames would be about right, if at the long-end (6 years from entry to exit), to be considered a successful investment.

I’m struggling to think of any australian post dot-com VC exit that is better than that.

If he gets bored of the Casino-game there could be a future for him in VC.

A little while ago I was given a Demo of Macquarie Bank’s new share trading platform, Macquarie Edge, by their Head of Direct Investing, James Leplaw.

To be honest, based on my past experience with online trading platforms created by banks, I wasn’t expecting a lot. What I saw, however, blew me away.

Before starting development on Edge, Macquarie did a lot of research to find out what online investors really wanted in a share trading site.  They found the following:

• They seek access to quality market informatioon that is current and insightful
• They desire simple functionality without jargon
• They want access to experts and the views of others who they trust
• They want the option for personalisation and a tailored interface

That research makes sense, too. I mean, who wants jargon-filled, un-personalised information from randoms without credibility?

With an eye on the above research, Macquarie has worked hard to make sure that they can make as many of the 1.8 Million people with online accounts (that grew by 40% over the past 2 years BTW) happy, and they’ve certainly achieved it.

How have they done this? With a mix of Web 2.0 / Web 3.0 technologies that hasn’t just seen them jump into the market, it’s seen them jump over it in a way that will have the incumbents like Commsec struggling for years to catch up.

I spoke to Richard Slatter from Wotnews, whose semantic technology powers the news search and aggregation components of the site and he agreed:

“We’re really pleased with the final product and how our technology has been used by Macquarie to provide contextual information throughout the site.  On top of that, speed is of the essence in a trading site, so it’s really impressive to see the way that the Macquarie team has enabled so much functionality without sacrificing display times.”

He added:

“Credit should also go to the Macquarie team for deciding to go with a tech startup based on its merits rather than with a traditional news aggregator.”

I know what Slatter is saying here, but the truth is that when Macquarie decided to launch a leading-edge investment platform there was no other choice, in Australia at least, than to knock on Wotnews’ door.

So now we’ve gone over the high level stuff, let’s look at what’s about Edge in detail and what’s got me so impressed.

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NAVIGATION

Going through the site, the first noticeable thing is that contextual information is always available. If you’ve ever used another trading site you’ll notice how much you have to click around to get good information. That’s not the case here. For example, no matter where you are, when you have a trading account the buy/sell button is always available – a small thing but something that leading trading sites don’t feel the need to make available

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VISUALISATION

This is one of the best bits about the site. Everything from market depth to expert opinions to correlations between shares and industries is presented in an easy to understand way.

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RELEVANT CONTEXTUAL NEWS
This is where Wotnews’ semantic technology comes to the fore. Rather than just giving you a stream of company announcements or information directly related to a particular company, Edge is able to understand relationships between organisations, industries and news, so you get presented with the most relevant information possible. A simple example may be that rather than just displaying BHP Billiton news, the site also understand the relationship between Rio Tinto and BHP at the moment, so presents relevant information related to Rio as well.

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NEWS vs MOVEMENTS
In Edge you can map news/announcements onto a share price’s movements. I know Google has been doing this for a bit now , but the difference is that you can’t buy/sell shares in Google. By providing this service in Edge, Macquarie is becoming a one stop shop for all investment information.

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COMMUNITY
Turns out most people get their investment advice from friends and family. Macquarie have recognised this and have embedded some community features on the site which aim to help people better understand what investment decisions to make.

Their community strategy is actually 2-pronged.

First of all you can get  detailed information on what the total Edge community is doing - what shares they’re holding, which shares they’re watching etc.

However, Macquarie has taken this one step further and has included what are essentially private communities so you, and trusted friends/family, can form online groups to see what each other are trading/holding as well as to discuss stocks and other investment information.

(You’ll have to log in and become part of a community to see this one…

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There’s much more to Edge, too much to put into this one article, but you get the idea. The team have thought long and hard about creating the best tool possible with using modern technology and they’ve pretty much succeeded.

They’ve created a great way to aggregate disparate sources of information in an easy to understand fashion. They’ve created a great tool for educating people about investing and they’ve also managed to introduce some web 2.0/3.0 technology into the site to make it fun to use.

On that note, it’s great to hear the team’s dev path is centred on constant and frequent iteration (how Web 2.0 of them!). That’s just another example of how, despite the fact that Edge is owned by Australia’s largest investment bank, there’s nothing old-school in their approach.

If you want to have a poke around the site you can access almost all of the information as a guest – i.e. you don’t have to register. If you register and become a member you get a little more info and then when you’re ready to open a trading account (which is free, BTW) you get the full gamut of services.

If share trading is your thing, and even if it isn’t, this is a site that’s definitely worth checking out.

Been hearing more and more about how the recent Innovation Investment Follow-on Fund (IIFF) is working in practice and it’s not good.

You can see how the funding has been allocated HERE.

As a quick refresher, the IIFF was announced as an $83M boost to investment capital available from the Federal Government to incubators/VCs (fund managers) who participated in the first 2 rounds of the Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) program. The ideas, as the name suggests, was to provide follow-on funding to those organisations who needed it.  

We covered the announcement and some pros and cons here.

6 months on though, it looks like, as usual, what’s been delivered is not as attractive as it was made out to be at announcement time and what had the potential to be a good thing has turned into a massive headache for fund managers and startups alike.

Here’s a list of some of the issues:

• There appears to have been a $19M shortfall in the funding from $83M to $64M.
• It turns out the financing is actually a loan, not a grant.
• While the original plan was for there to be direct investment by the Government, based on an advisory group’s recommendations, into the startups requesting money, the Government has now loaned the Fund Managers the money instead – i.e. fund manager are responsible for repaying the money, not the start-ups.
• Some companies were allocated only 75% of their requested funding amounts. Because fund managers are now responsible for allocating the funding and repaying it, this means they have to reallocate resources amongst their investments independent of what was directly approved.
• The Government is trying to push retarded terms onto the Fund Managers. For instance after having borrowed the money and paid the interest the fund managers will only be entitled to 20% of the return on investment. This is akin to a bank saying “here’s a home loan, pay us interest, and when you sell your house we want 80% of the capital gain”. Dumb.
• The generally tough loan terms the Government is trying to put on the fund managers means that they, in turn, are having to be quite tough with the terms in their agreements with start-ups. For some start-ups that means being loaned money by the fund manager by way of convertible notes with interest that will be converted in 3 years based on the higher valuation of an EBIT multiple in the 3rd year or some other calculated value of the business. In this case, to minimise dilution as a startup founder, you’d be smart to try and maximise EBIT rather than invest back into your business. This may not be ideal for the long term success of many of the start-ups.
• The pressure to repay the loan means that fund managers are insisting on exit drag-along terms to ensure they can liquidate/sell the start-ups to repay the outstanding loans.

Admittedly, negotiations are still continuing, but the above is enough to show that the government still doesn’t get it.

Sad, but not unexpected.

Pocketlife, a mobile social networking app that we’ve covered a few times here at TNA, has been named as one of the winners of the “Apps on Maps” Category in Nokia’s Calling All Innovators awards.

The award sees the Aussie/NZ development team sharing in more than $250,000 in prizes.

Over 1,700 submissions for the awards (which included 3 other categories) were received from developers in 85 countries signaling a strong answer to Nokia’s challenge to think big and create mobile applications and services that can help build a better mobile user experience.

Purnima Kochikar, vice president, Forum Nokia Developer Community, Nokia, had this to say about the Award process:

“The quantity and quality of the applications we received are astounding,”

“We encourage our developer community to work with us to extend their market reach, taking advantage of our global presence, global distribution through Ovi Store and local market knowledge. Turning the spotlight on our developers in marketing efforts like Calling All Innovators is just one way we can expose the best mobile applications from our developer community to consumers around the world.”

Below are some exlusive screenshots of Pocketlife running on the Nokia N97

Congratulations guys! It’s really good to see local technology being recognised as world-leading.

Regator, the Atlanta, Georgia-based startup founded by 2 aussies, Scott Lockhart and Kimberley Turner, has finally launched an iPhone App - and it’s pretty impressive.

In their own words, Regator is “a website that gathers the world’s best blog posts and organizes them in a way that makes it easy to find the things you need—and fun to discover the things you never knew you wanted. It’s here to help you find, discuss, share, rate, and organize information on the topics you care about. ”

Now with the iPhone App you can easily do this anywhere/anytime.

Features include:

• Browse posts from over 500 topics as diverse as beekeeping, geology, indie music, pop culture, job hunting, or basketball.
• Search Regator’s extensive archive, returning results that users have described as being consistently more relevant and higher quality than those returned by Google Blog Search.
• View the most popular blog posts across the blogosphere or in your favorite topic.
• See trends to get an up-to-the-minute, spam-free look at exactly what bloggers in any niche are writing about right now.
• Keep up with the newest blog posts, updated every few seconds.
• Read the full text of posts on the original source blog.
• Share posts via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
• Find more information on a story with Regator’s related posts feature.

Check out the video below to see what the app looks like in action and check out Regator iPhone page to download the App and read the praise this Aussie startup is getting from all over the net.

Samsung has been running teaser ads for a while promising that “your photo taking experience will never be the same”.

Well it turns out that the reason is because they’re bringing out the ST500 and ST550 dual LCD cameras.

The key thing here is that these cameras have an LCD on the front, as well as the back, so you can take self-portraits easily and know you’ve got the right shot.

And there’s no need to stretch to get to the button on top anymore, you just tap the screen and it focuses and takes the picture.

These simple, yet particularly useful, features are the reason for the “Tap and Take” branding that Samsung is going to market with.

There’s more to the cameras as well - both the Samsung ST500 and Samsung ST550 are 12.2MP cameras with up to 4.6x optical zoom, 720p HD video recording and image stabilisation.

The difference between the ST550 and ST500 is the size of the LCD on the back - 3 inches for the 500, 3.5″ for the 550.

So why am i telling you all this? (AKA - The Good Bit…)

Because as part of the launch, Samsung are running an online treasure hunt (who doesn’t love a treasure hunt?) and TechNation Australia will be part of the fun.

Between August 20th (tomorrow) and September 18th, the good people at Samsung will be giving away 100 ST500 Dual Screen LCDs.

All you need to do to be in the running to win is go to:

• Facebook Fan Page: Tap and Take Australia
• Twitter account: @samsungcapture

Everything you need will be there…and from time to time, here

You can also find out more about Samsung’s Tap and Take cameras at the official site - http://www.tapandtake.com/

Stay tuned for more.

Welcome to the August‘09 installment of the Top 100 Aussie Web Startup Index.

An explanation of the index and how it’s calculated can be found HERE.

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THINK THE INDEX NEEDS IMPROVING?

I’ve been listening to many of you who have issues with the way the Index is calculated and I’m going to do something about it. If you want to have your voice heard in the changes send me an email at editor@technation.com.au or just CLICK HERE and I’ll explain how you can be involved.

But remember: No email = no participation = no complaining please.

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PROMOTE THE FACT YOU’RE A TOP 100 MEMBER

I figure that if you’ve made the list you ought to be able to promote the fact.

To get your own badge like the one above (only if you made the list…of course) all you need to do is cut and paste the below code into your site!

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Now onto the list…(NB: The columns are sortable, just click on a column heading)

Image Source: ABC

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There are a couple of events coming up that some of you might be interested in. Details below:

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THE HIVE - SYDNEY

Date: August 18th (yes. this Tuesday!)
Location: The Burdekin Bar, Darlinghurst
Cost: Free

Summary

While not necessarily a tech focused event, The Hive team has been doing great things in trying to get entrepreneurs together, first of all in Melbourne, then Brisbane and now, with the help of Matt Jones, in Sydney.

Why you should go

Business is business, right? So why limit your entrpreneurial knowledge gathering to purely tech events? The Hive has a great following in Melbourne and Brisbane, so they must be doing something right.

CLICK HERE for more details

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ANZATECH - 2009 GATEWAY FOCUS WORKSHOPS:

Date: 24-28 August
Location: Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney
Cost: US$495 (a bit odd, i know, seeing as we’re in Australia)

Summary

The Gateway Focus Workshops are the first step in ANZAtech’s Gateway to the US program, which aims to help Aussie startups successfully make the move into the US. 

Why you should go

I know a few startups that have been through the program and they all have good things to say about it. Also, ANZAtech founder Viki Forrest works tirelessly to help Aussie startups do well in the US, so it’s a good chance to meet her in person.

CLICK HERE for more details

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TECH23

Date: 27 October
Location: Sydney
Cost: $250 + GST; $150 + GST (Special rate for Entrepreneurs, Members of ATS, ANZATech, AIMIA)

Summary

23 startups will be invited to do a four minute pitch to a panel of experienced entrepreneurs and investors.

Why you should go

That  panel is a who’s who of the Aussie tech startup and investment scene (I’ll let you check out the names on the event site), so should be a good day

CLICK HERE for more details

Earlier this year, Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, announced the Government would be establishing a $196.1 million Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute “to develop a radical new approach to commercialising the best Australian research.”

In announcing the Institute, Sentor Carr said it would “aim to see that the best ideas developed by our universities and publicly funded research organisations become successful commercial realities”

How it planned to do that was never really discussed…until now.

Sentor Carr has now called for public comment to help inform the development and operation of the Institute

Comments can be provided by completing an online form on the Institute’s website http://www.innovation.gov.au/cci.

A short discussion paper is also available on that website.

Now’s the time to act, so if you have ideas on how you’d like to see the Government aid Australian startups in the commercialisation process then speak now or forever hold your peace.

The deadline is the 28th of August - so if you plan to add your thoughts, don’t delay