Startup Camp Canberra kicked off last night and the teams are already working hard on their projects.

As usual you can get all the schedule details from Startup Australia.

There’s also the #scc hashtag on twitter that you can track.

The projects are:

HereNThen
http://herenthen.com/ – user-generated location based stories

8what
http://8what.com/ – recipe finder

JobsDone Network
http://jobsdone.net/ – community-sourcing volunteer jobs

RateMyLoo
http://ratemyloo.com/ – “great shit” – rating site/comments for toilets

FamilyWrap
http://familywrap.com – family profile/gifting site

At first glance, RateMyLoo looks like it’ll be fun and HereNThen looks like a really interesting idea.That having been said, there’s not much to see on the sites just yet, but no doubt that will change throughout the day and night.

Congrats to by Bart Jellema et al. for putting together another great event.

As we highlighted in a post yesterday, Mobile Social Networking company Xumii has been acquired by Global Mobile Software powerhouse, Myriad Group.

Cunchbase says Xumii had raised US$5.5M in funding from Aussie VCs Southern Cross Venture Partners(SXVP) and CM Capital(CM), so the deal is also a good win for the local VC industry as well.

I managed to track down SXVP Managing Director, John Scull, for a quick chat and this is what he had to say:

The deal is good for the company (Xumii)…we’re very satisfied with the outcome

As for the reason for the deal, he said:

We felt it was a great opportunity to connect with a larger company and benefit from its sales & marketing and networks, particularly Telco networks as they were becoming Xumii’s key customers

Of course I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t try to pry some information about the terms out of Scull, but he did well to repel my efforts!

There’s no official information from either side about the size of the deal, but I thought this would be an interesting one to try and work out without their help.

So what can we figure out about the deal?

• SXVP policy is to take “ a meaningful minority position” in their investments
• SXVP were equal partners with CM in the funding round, meaning we can assume that jointly, CM and SXVP took a meaningful position (rather than both of them taking one)
• What’s meaningful? Let’s assume somewhere between 30-40% particularly for early funding rounds
• Scull wouldn’t divulge the consideration paid by Myriad as part of the agreement (dollars/equity/something else) but the fact that he feels the deal is a great opportunity to partner with Myriad would suggest that there’s still some skin in the game for SXVP and CM
• On that point, however, when asked if it was an “exit” for SXVP, Scull said that there was a sale to a company so in their mind it was an exit.
• As explained in an earlier post – venture funds need to average 4x Gross Returns from exits to make an “acceptable” 2.5x net return to LPs. If that is the case, and considering this has been viewed as an exit, the valuation would need to be around $55M-$75M for the number to be acceptable to the VC firms.
• That 4 x Gross is an average, however. Xumii was becoming a star in a high-interest industry,  so you’d think that SXVP/CM would have viewed it as one of the 2-3/10 winners in their portfolio rather than one of the 5-7/10 failures & walking dead.
• This would mean that they’d expect on average a 6.5x Gross return (according to Fred Wilson)pushing the acquisition valuation to somewhere between $90M-$120M assuming the VCs took somewhere between 30%-40%.

So a valuation of between US$90M-US$120M?

There are a bunch of things that might increase or decrease that though. One interesting factor is the risk still surrounding Xumii as a business. Let me explain:

• Myriad says that the deal won’t materially affect their ’09 Fiscal EBITDA.
• Last report put Myriad’s EBITDA at US$3.3M, so it would seem that anything that doesn’t materially affect that number (even considering growth for ’09) would be pretty small.
• This suggests that the deal, as Myriad says, really is to round out their portfolio of software with a leading solution in a growing segment, rather than trying to add to the company’s bottom line immediately post-acquisition

The risk still inherent in Xumii as a business may have kept the price down.

Then again, Xumii was doing really well in a growing segment, so there may have been some premium above the 6.5x GR needed to get them to sell.

There are other things, no doubt…other offers, the ability of the company to grow without Myriad’s help, synergies within Myriad’s business and so on.

All things considered though, $90M-$120M seems like a fair guess at the range based on expected results (even though my feelings say it’s probably too high)

What do you think?

More great news for Aussie startups with the European-based Myriad Group, a global leader in mobile technology with software in over 2 billion phones, announcing that it has acquired the brand, technology and 17 employees of Xumii.

Xumii is a mobile social networking service that we’ve covered a few times over the past year.

I’ve always thought the technology had great potential and a great team of both employees and advisors, so it’s good to see them move to the next level.

There’s not much information circulating beyond the official press release, but I’ll post another story which looks into the detail of the acquisition later on today.

In the meantime, congratulations to Xumii CEO, Jennifer Zanich and the team.

I was glad to receive an email from long time TechNation Australia supporter, Kain Tietzel, the other day, explaining that the startup he’s been working on, PhotoMerchant, has finally launched.

PhotoMerchant is  “a complete online solution for managing your photography business”

The idea for PhotoMerchant was conceived 2 years ago when Derek Clapham (co-founder and CTO) was swamped by the process minutia of running his own photography business. Having spent many, many hours managing the print orders from 300+ high school students he realised there had to be a better way. He searched for an online solution but only found a disparate array of online photography services that were either expensive, had limited functionality or required a lot of technical knowledge. And so he set about building a solution with the idea of offering it available to other amateur, semi and professional photographers.

Two years (and 2.5 Million lines of code) later, and after being joined by Elmar Platzer as Director and co-founder and Tietzel as Creative & Marketing Director, the startup from the Sutherland Shire officially soft-launched last Monday.

Initially targeting the Australian photography market, PhotoMerchant is due to launch in the United States in mid October, with grander plans to roll the service out to UK, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa by the middle of 2010, and then on to the rest of the world.

PhotoMerchant allows a photographer to build a dedicated portfolio website to showcase their craft and enables them to then sell their photos through the build in e-commerce engine. Transactions are conducted in local currencies and cater for all local taxation requirements. Order management tools allow the photographer to automatically generate invoices and emails to keep their clientele informed of the process.

The PhotoMerchant service also offers financial management and reporting tools to enable the photographer to manage their entire business online.

PhotoMerchant currently services “self-fulfilment” meaning the photographer is responsible for managing the ordering process with their print lab. But in the near future, PhotoMerchant will enable “direct-fulfilment” via their print lab partners Nulab in Australia and Burrell Colour Imaging in the United States, meaning orders will go directly to the print lab and be drop shipped directly to the customer.

For AU$19.95 per month, plus a 10% transaction fee, photographers get unlimited hosting, unlimited galleries, unlimited transactions and a comprehensive (and growing) set of business and marketing tools.

That pricing model, and the functionality made available, tells me that while they claim to focus on everything from amateur to professional photographers, their user-base will come more from the professional end.

PhotoMerchant see their main competitors as being SmugMug and Zenfolio. There are local sites that cater to photographers like Photo Art Gallery and RedBubble, but Tietzel tells me they don’t see them as direct competitors.

There’s currently a 14 day trial on, so if photography is your thing, PhotoMerchant might be worth checking out.

Many of you may know the name Gary Brewer from his succesful BuiltWith site.

As a serial tech entrepreneur, however, Gary has worked on a bunch of other sites – some with greater success than others.

I had a chance to grab Gary and ask him a few questions about himself, his sites and his thoughts as a tech entrepreneur.

Check it out…

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So Gary, what’s your background?
My main skill is programming and writing Microsoft C# web applications. I have a financial media background and have worked on enterprise and small business web applications for various companies in London and Sydney. I became interested in the entrepreneur tech scene after a few of my work mates and I went to STIRR Sydney in 2006 which was really the spark which motivated me to start thinking of ideas and putting them into action.

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How do you decide to start a new project?
I try not to start a new project at all now because there’s so much that can be done with existing projects. Previously the ideas come around from finding a problem that doesn’t really have a solution or none that really solve the problem.

My main focus is BuiltWith.com as it is the only one that has a steady revenue stream, everything else are just small projects of my own personal interest that I like to share with everyone else.

TwitTruth.com for example came about when I sent tweets to various people and not getting a response so that set me wondering about what the chances were of people replying. When I looked into the API there were loads of other interesting stats that came out of that, the entire project didn’t take more than two evenings to build.

Global Surfari came around because Google Maps API had just come out and I wanted to have a go at that and I was really into surfing but living in London so I had some time to spend building that. I am lucky in a sense that programming is not only an occupation but also my hobby.

Creating a web application and putting it on the internet is the easiest part of any project, getting people to visit the site and marketing it is much more difficult for me personally, especially as my background is programming, so it’s a learning curve for me as I go along, having to be a sales person, a marketing person and the customer relations person all at the same time and learning how to do those roles.

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What are your goals for BuiltWith?
The goal for BuiltWith.com  is to grow its subscription base and improve the core optimization product by introducing new features that increases its value for money for the customer. I also plan to expand the white label customer base and hope to work with some companies who would be interested in trialling it and using the optimizer as a SaaS solution for their own customers.

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How you going numbers wise?
The website optimizer has over 28,000 registered users at the moment and web traffic  top sources are Google, direct visits, Yahoo and Bing (in that order).

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Do you think you’ll keep working on all of the sites?
I work on BuiltWith.com the majority of my spare time, the other sites don’t change very much unless I get feedback about them. For example, for TwitTruth.com I recently added profile updates and previous profile comparisons after a few people on Twitter thought that would be a good feature.

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Any of them generating revenue?
Yes, BuiltWith Optimizer has a freemium business model that allows website owners who are interested in improving their site to upgrade to basic and pro subscriptions. The site also has white label and affiliate options which are being used by a few companies mostly located in the United States.
Global Surfari has a subscription XML/JSON API which has customers and Google Adwords integration.

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Care to share how much that revenue is?

I’d rather not give exact figures but it’s not enough yet to work on full time, which is what I’d really like to do.

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What are some words of advice you give other tech entrepreneurs?
The main thing I’d tell other entrepreneurs who haven’t got things off the ground yet is to just get on with it. This might be easier said than done and difficult for different types of situations. Personally my projects require very little financial outlay with the only outgoing cost being to pay for a dedicated web server, the rest of it is just time spent working on the ideas, if your idea fails then you can move on and take away whatever you’ve learnt to the next idea. I normally ask myself the following questions before doing anything new

• What is it? – The answer must be a described in a single sentence.
• Why will people use it? – Must have at least two reasons.
• Are there any competitors? If so why will it be better?
• What is its BUY IT NOW button? Basically how is it going to make money? Ads aren’t normally going to be enough to support a website unless it’s huge. I normally try to stop myself if I can’t think of a solid revenue stream, with TwitTruth.com and TwitLinks.com being exceptions.
• Why, how and where will it get press coverage? Knowing how you’re going to promote your project is very important and you need to be realistic about it, will tech blogs be interested in your idea or if not do you have a niche which you can target?
• Silver lining if it fails? What will you be able to take away from it if it all fails? For example, will you have a new skill to put on your CV?

Asking your friends what they think of your idea is also a great way to get feedback and when you’re building the site open up the homepage in front of them and don’t say anything, watch what they do and you’ll learn loads about your user interface.

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Ever had a project fail?
I’ve had ideas that I’ve started working on that have not taken off, this is more down to me either not doing enough research or not being 100% passionate about the subject, which is something you need to be as you’re going to dedicate a lot of time to it, this is a recurring theme that people will tell you all the time and its very true! However I’ve always been able to take something away from a project that never takes off, in that you learn and have experiences that you know to avoid next time.

GENNIT.com for example, a code generation website that uses industry standard frameworks, is an example of a project I am no longer actively working on. It is an extension of my own personal tool I use to rapidly prototype websites but requires far too much work as frameworks change more frequently than I have time to spend updating all of the code. However, I learnt lots of new techniques building that website and how to manage customer expectations which I then used when building the BuiltWith website optimizer site.

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A big thanks to Gary for taking the time to chat and for sharing his thoughts.

It seems that some of the most common questions I see tech startup founders asking have to do with setting up a business properly and how/if to protect Intellectual Property.

With that in mind, it’s great to see 1Place has put together an “expert system” to help guide startups through some of these difficult decisions.

Many of you will know the 1Place team as they make themselves available to answer questions from startups at many of the regular tech events around town.

The system is free and super-easy to use.

Check it out

Adobe has finally posted some information on their acquisition of Business Catalyst (BC).

Here’s the official word on why they made the acquisition

The BC platform enables web professionals to build online businesses for their clients at a fraction of the traditional time and cost, without programming. BC is a great complement to Adobe’s existing tools and services for web professionals, who are increasingly looking to hosted services to deliver websites and online businesses.

Other than that the message is a consistent “business as usual…for now”

Check out the annoucement here.

Business Catalyst, the owners of e-commerce software suite, GoodBarry, announced a few days back that they’ve been acquired by Adobe.

Congratulations to co-founders Bardia Housman and Adam Broadway.

Only problem is that Adobe hasn’t made an announcement and the team still aren’t responding to questions about the deal (hence the delay in reporting) so it’s a bit hard to tell how good the news actually is.

Did they post the announcement a little too early?

TechCrunch seems to think that might be the case, but if they did surely Adobe would have asked them to pull the blog post.

That having been said, my experience, even with the at times super-secretive Google, is that it’s unusual for there to be such a large amount of radio silence post agreement.

No doubt more news will filter out over the coming weeks, but for now this is what we know from :

• It’s a complete acquisition of the business by Adobe
• Good Barry branding will shift to the Business Catalyst brand
• Distribution focus will change from direct to a partner/reseller
• The team assure current customers that it will be business as usual…for now

You can find out more from the official Good Barry post here.

On a personal note I remember speaking with Bardia and Brett from Good Barry at one of the first Open Coffee Sydney meetups 2 years ago.

They spoke about the business and their plans. It’s been great to see those plans put into action, including making the jump over to San Francisco. It’s also been great to see the support they’ve given other Aussie tech entrepreneurs along the way.

For Bardia, this, his second successful startup, surely puts him in the top echelon of Aussie web entrepreneurs. The first, start.com.au, was acquired by Looksmart back in 1999 for around $5 Million. Looksmart was a serious web player back then as, of course, is Adobe now.

We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on his future projects.

In the meantime, we’ll update you with any news on the acquisition as it comes through

Good news to hear that Web Directions has announced Australian Web Week, to run from October 2 to 9, as a showcase of the strength and creativity of the Australian Web industry.

John Allsop from Web Directions had this to say:

The Design industry has its Design Festivals, Fashion has Fashion Week, now our industry also has a week to come together, acknowledge and celebrate our successes, connect, learn and share.

Already the team have got well over a dozen events lined up for the week. Many are free, though they are likely to be very popular, so make sure you RSVP for events you really want to attend.

To stay up to date you can also follow on Twitter @webweek

Some of the events for the week include:

• the first ever exhibition by YiYing Lu, designer of the iconic Twitter Fail
  Whale.
• A Mozilla Labs night featuring Ben Galbraith, developer of Bespin and founder of Ajaxian.com. It’s free, but numbers are strictly limited.
• The hugely anticipated return of WebJam!
• Common Ground, celebrating the Commons on Flickr at the PowerHouse Museum
• Ignite Sydney
• WE Rock, an evening for educators focussing on Web Education.
• Web Futures, a student focussed event, mapping out career pathways and opportunities for University and TAFE students.
• Numerous Parties including Web Blast, The Opening Night Party, and closing party for Web Directions.
• Social Climbing – indoor climbing for web folks – experienced or the complete opposite.

The Week begins with the Oz-IA conference October 2 and 3, and also features Web Directions workshops October 6 and 7, and Australia’s WebIndustry Conference, Web Directions, October 8 and 9.

Check it out.

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