Blog - Page 24 of 29

Win an award that says something about YOU

03/11/201607/12/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

This week's guest blogger is Charlie Gunningham, CEO of Techboard's major Western Australian distribution partner, Business News. Before working at Business News Charlie founded his own startup Aussiehome.com which Charlie sold to REIWA.

When I ran my tech startup, back in the 2000s, I found that one of the best ways to promote my business was to win awards. I had little money for marketing, and found the editorial coverage and PR advantages from award winning immensely powerful.

When our business was a fragile 6 month old we won the ‘Best E-Commerce Innovation’ award at the grand sounding (but now defunct) WA Asia-Pacific IT&T Awards.

Startup Weekend is on next week, and tickets are selling out fast!

27/10/201627/10/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Startup Weekend takes place at Spacecubed in the CBD on November 4th-6th. The event’s judges have just been announced:

Kate Raynes-Goldie is a future oriented thinker, game designer, researcher and innovator. Kate has won multiple international awards for her work, including WAITTA Incite’s Achiever of the Year 2015/2016.

Matt Birney became Opposition Leader in WA at age 35, and later founded the Bulls N Bears ASX release distribution platform. Matt was appointed as a director of Perth Racing and the 500 Club and as a director of Cannings Purple, the largest public relations firm in WA.

Charlie Gunningham is passionate about innovation, transformation, startups and helping businesses make the most of the power of digital. He cofounded aussiehome.com and is CEO of Business News.
Matthew MacFarlane is a venture capital investor and tech entrepreneur. Matthew is cofounder and Director of Yuuwa Capital and on the board of AEGIC, iCetana and Agworld.

Visit http://www.swperth.org/ to sign up.

Morning Startup M2K Party

18/10/201618/10/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Last Friday Night Morning Startup held a great party at the Claisebrook Design Community. Techboard was pleased to present a panel session on the night comprised of founders of companies who have topped Techboard’s fortnightly startup ranking.

A big thank you to the Panelists:

Marc Berryman from Rhinohide,

Sue Bahn from Tap into Safety

Anthony Manning Francis from Gigger,

Geoff Pocock from Hazer Group; and

Russell Francis from Velpic.

If you didn’t make it to the party or if you want to catch the panel session again you can see a video taken by our friends at Niche Interview here. Thanks so much Jurgen.

The Techboard Team

18 October 2016

Early Stage Funding Recap: 7 Marketplace Startups That Have Raised A Seed Round in 2016

18/10/201609/11/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

The team at Techboard are very pleased to bring you this article by Guest Blogger Paul Towers, the founder of one of Techboard’s media distribution partners, Startup Soda.

Australia has a love affair with marketplace startups. We were one of the first countries to see significant adoption of platforms such as eBay and have had our fair share of home-grown success, with the likes of Freelancer, AirTasker and DesignCrowd all gaining mainstream appeal. It is only natural then that Australian entrepreneurs and founders continue to discover new opportunities ripe for disruption using this model.

In this post we focus on seven Australian marketplace based startups that have raised funding in 2016. This ranges from early stage startups still seeking product market fit, to those have raised well into six figures from some of Australia’s top ranked VC’s.

BDO Leading the Pack for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

07/10/201601/11/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Our friend Marc Loftus and his team from BDO’s Perth office have been celebrating recently after securing the first ruling from the ATO under the new Innovation Tax Incentive legislation. The ruling was obtained under the principles based test for Epic Delivery who are also listed here on Techboard. This article was first published by BDO.

The world today abounds with rapidly expanding opportunities for innovation, turbo charged by developments in the digital space. Businesses, governments and individuals alike are turning their attention to the significant benefits that technology and innovation are creating.

New markets and products, accompanied by a better understanding of consumers, in addition to the ever increasing number of channels available to connect with end users, makes for exciting times as an innovator or entrepreneur.

BDO is committed to supporting our home grown innovation community and stakeholders by utilising our skills, knowledge and expertise in this sector to assist members of the highly collegiate and motivated start-up scene in WA. Thereby jointly contributing to the bigger picture in raising the profile of Australia on the global stage, as a centre for investment in innovation and technology.

TechInvest Magazine Update – to feature Techboard’s quarterly Startup Ranking

29/09/201629/09/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Back in August we announced that in line with our increased emphasis on investment and repositioning of Techboard as an investment discovery platform we had partnered with TechInvest Magazine a new quarterly technology magazine produced by leading Public Relations Firm PPR.

The first edition of TechInvest Magazine will now be circulated in late October 2016 with approximately 70,000 copies being inserted into the Australian Financial Review (AFR) nationally. The magazine will also be distributed directly to more than 1000 leading institutional fund managers, brokers, analysts, retail investors and key technology/ business media in Australia.

We are pleased to reveal that Techboard’s quarterly Startup Ranking for the quarter ending September 2016 will be featured in TechInvest Magazine, aiding to increase the profile of Startups with the highest cumulative ranking scores over the rankings conducted in the quarter.

The Techboard Team

Australian Accelerators: who offers the best value?

22/09/201619/05/2017 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Techboard’s Chief Data Nerd Rafael Kimberley-Bowen takes a look at the comparative valuations of Australian seed accelerators.

An accelerator is a cohort-based program which offers mentorship and education to startups to help set them up for solid growth once they complete the program. More specifically, a seed accelerator takes a small share of a startup’s equity in exchange for a modest capital injection and an educational program with access to mentors.

Techboard Supports Morning Startup M2K Party!

21/09/201613/10/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Techboard is pleased to be supporting Morning Startup in its upcoming celebration of its 2000 member milestone. The Morning startup team will be hosting the biggest, baddest startup party Perth has ever seen! Morning Startup M2K!

Techboard is going to be helping Morning Startup to showcase the thriving Perth startup scene. At the event we will be hosting an interactive 'fireside chat' session with a selection of top-ranking Perth Startups taken from our Startup Ranking which last week celebrated its first birthday with the release of our 26th fortnightly ranking.

With any luck this event will encourage more budding entrepreneurs to pick up tools, and more investors to dig deep and give flight to the next generation of successful Perth companies.

The organisers are promising:

1. No boring speeches

2. Real stories from real people creating real innovative companies

3. Beer & wine included in ticket price

4. Food trucks

5. Everyone who's anyone in the Perth Startup community

6. Embarrassing stories about your co-workers and friends to tell the next day (or for many months to come!)

For more information and to buy tickets for the event visit the event page on TidyHQ (a great startup founded by Isaak Dury... one of the Morning Startup founders).

Invest in Australian Startups – Investor Registration is LIVE!!

14/09/201601/11/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

At Techboard we have been actively exploring how we can support Australian Startup companies in raising money and enable investors to discover, research and invest in Australian startups.

Techboard was already a platform which enabled companies to promote themselves generally to an audience which included investors. So we decided it was not that big a step to take to enable the same companies to promote their capital raisings and make Techboard a true investment discovery platform.

The promotion and publicity of capital raisings by unlisted private companies is tightly regulated in Australia by the Corporations Law and we are not able to distribute information on private capital raisings publicly on the Techboard Platform. The law requires that we only make such information available to users that have first subscribed to receive such information and who have also been exposed to investor notices.

So the first step in enabling us to help companies promote their capital raisings and to facilitate investment in Australian Startups is to get investors to register on the Techboard platform. We are pleased to announce that we have activated Investor Registration. Investors can now sign up to receive notifications of opportunities to invest in Australian Startups and Tech Companies.

The recent introduction of the Innovation Tax Incentive provides tax benefits to both Sophisticated and Retail Investors and we are keen to enable all interest investors to find investment opportunities that fit their preferences and risk profile. We anticipate that many opportunities which will be promoted on Techboard will only be available to sophisticated or s708 Investors, we are however exploring options to enable retail investors to invest in startups (whether direct or indirect) so they can access the Innovation Tax Incentive in way suitable to their needs. We will therefore be accepting registrations from any interested investors.

We are continuing to make changes to the Techboard platform over the coming months to enable companies to promote their capital raising and will keep companies, readers and registered investors apprised of all developments.

The Techboard Team

Tremendous response to our call for State Community Managers

09/09/201609/09/2016 Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

We’ve had a tremendous response to our call for State Community Managers to help Techboard get established across Australia, with responses so far from NSW, Victoria and Northern Territory. It’s great to see that the passion we have for supporting local startup ecosystems echoed across the country, and we look forward to working with those local communities over the coming 12 months.

It would be great to hear from representatives of the South Australian and Queensland communities though – if you know of anyone who might fit the bill, please get in touch.

This is a unique and exciting opportunity, for people who are passionate about startups and tech companies, well connected to their local communities, and who are keen to support their local startups. The role primarily consists of staying abreast of new and trending startups, attending startup events, reading the business press, collating metrics on companies, all in order to generate ecosystem reports and Techboard’s startup ranking, and to encourage engagement by companies with the platform. The role is best suited to a methodical, data-driven type of personality, balanced with an appropriate amount of enthusiasm, people skills and willingness to tackle challenges head-on.

Expressions of interest should be emailed to Raf Kimberley-Bowen at raf@techboard.com.au. Alternatively, you can call Raf for more information on 0439 829 898.