Airtasker Soars to the Top of the Techboard Ranking for October

By Rafael Kimberley-Bowen

Firstly, some stats and insights on startups and tech companies in October:

• Since last month we’ve added a further 100+ companies – we’re now profiling 1,814 Australian companies.
• Among other metrics, we captured 750 press mentions (globally) of Australian companies, 226 milestones, 46 funding milestones, over 28,000 tweets and 11,000 Facebook posts, over 300 iTunes apps and 250 Google Play apps, and employee counts at 1,170 companies.
• Five of the top ten companies are ASX listed. 94 (or 5%) of our total companies are ASX listed. The top performing (share price wise) ASX company in October was Wangle Technologies, up 80%.
• Four acquisitions during the month: REALas (ANZ Bank), Parkhound (Spacer), HomeHello (UrbanYou) and CreditorWatch (InfoTrack).

Airtasker was the top trending startup of September, as the peer-to-peer jobs marketplace raised $33 million in a round led by Skyfield Capital. Co-founder and Tim Fung commented: “we’re stoked to have hit the top spot of the Techboard rankings and whilst we’re still learning a lot on our startup journey, overall we’re really grateful for the opportunity that we’ve now got to have a positive impact on the future of work.” The Sydney-based startup also saw very strong news coverage, and improvements in its performance on Google Play (review score and number of reviews).

Energy trading platform Power Ledger was ranked second, remaining in our top three for the third consecutive month. The blockchain company completed its ICO and raised a further $17m, making it a total of $34m including pre-sales, and was announced as a finalist in the 2017 Talent Unleashed Awards (Best Idea – Social or Community Impact category).

Managing Director David Martin sees great potential following the successful ICO: “The support for the Token Generation Event gives us a significant body of resources now to press ahead with our vision of democratising the energy system both in developed economies like Australia and developing economies where rural microgrids have the potential to change the economic circumstances of entire communities.”

The startup continues to capture mindshare, with strong news coverage, strong social media engagement and two nominations from our Panel of Experts, while co-founder Jemma Green found herself unexpectedly elected as Perth’s acting Lord Mayor.

Medibio was the third highest trending startup in October. The mental health tech company raised $14m in a share placement to institutional investors including Fidelity Investments, IFM Investors and Regal FM, and entered into an agreement with Japan-based global healthcare company Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization. Medibio also signed a five-year clinical trial agreement with Mayo Clinic to develop its research and approach on screening and differentiating types of mental illness.

Storage space marketplace Spacer was ranked fourth, following its acquisition of parking platform Parkhound (itself ranked 21st). CEO and founder Michael Rosenbaum told Techboard acquisition consolidates Spacer’s position “as the premier online marketplace for self-storage and parking solutions.” Spacer also raised $2.7m in a Series A round to fund the acquisition, and saw strong social media engagement and news coverage, and very strong website scores (time on site and daily views per visitor). According to Rosenbaum, Spacer’s focus for the next 12 months “is to build out our national presence (including Perth) and grow our B2B and commercial operator supply, and be the digital demand channel to help traditional businesses reach an online audience.”

Family Zone was ranked fifth, following its acquisition of Linewize, a provider of cyber security and safety services in New Zealand.

“The acquisition of Linewize is a very significant moment for Family Zone,” according to Managing Director Tim Levy. “Not only does Linewize offer a major foothold into the New Zealand EDU market but we get access to a powerful stack of tech and innovation. An innovative cloud firewall, advanced machine learning capability and world leading classroom tools. Significantly though this acquisition also demonstrates that providers of connectivity related products and services are “buying-in” to our eco system vision and augers well for future partnerships and transactions.”

The cyber safety company also signed an agreement with Malaysia’s largest telco provider, Maxis Communications, and launched commercially in Indonesia with local provider Telkomsel. Family Zone continues to distribute though schools, now servicing 75 partner schools with $3.5m of contracted revenue.

Also in top ten were Linius, the highest trending Victorian company which completed a $4.5m capital raise and partnered with IBM for Village Roadshow anti-piracy platform, and Redback Technologies, the highest ranked Queensland company which raised $9m from the federal government’s Clean Energy Innovation Fund and Right Click Capital.

The highest ranked South Australian company was energy tech startup Buddy (40^th), which signed a worldwide agreement with US mobile operator T-Mobile and a distribution agreement with the Canadian arm of Ingram Micro.

The highest ranked ACT startup was wind farm developer Windlab (47^th), which partnered with Vestas and Tesla on a $160m, 60 MW hybrid wind, solar, and energy storage project, with backing from Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation.