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New Startup Hub Perthcolator launches workshop series

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

New startup hub Perthcolator is running a workshop series designed to teach new entrepreneurs how to start their business. Replicating the educational content of Startup Weekend in a workshop format designed to fit around a day job.

Startup Weekend is a great education for new entrepreneurs. It teaches people how to go from an idea to a business. But Startup Weekends only happen twice a year, and for some people taking a whole weekend out is impossible.

There are other reasons why Startup Weekend isn’t a great start for an actual business: the team is formed of randoms wedged together in an hour on Friday evening. The tech is usually slapped together hackathon style from anything that looks like it would do the job. The goal of the whole event is the pitch, not the business. It’s a great education, and nothing in this criticism should be taken as meaning that it’s not utterly fantastic. But there’s room for more.

We sat down with a few startups and did some extensive interviews about what the experience of starting a business in Perth is actually like. We found that there’s a big disconnect between the people who have done it once (and usually failed) and the newbies. People who have never actually started a business here have no idea how it works.

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Techboard’s Highest Ranked Startups for Q2 2016

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Yesterday we held a lunch to congratulate the highest ranked startups on Techboard for the second quarter of 2016. These were the companies (unlisted and listed) with the highest cumulative total points in our fortnightly Startup Ranking for the 3 months to 30 June 2016. The lunch hosted by our generous sponsors PWC gave the winners the opportunity to have a private discussion with members of Techboard’s Panel of Experts (on this occasion Charlie Gunningham and Sheryl Frame), Scott James and Ben Berthon-Jones from our sponsor PWC and Techboard co-founders Peter van Bruchem and Rafael Kimberley Bowen.

Topics discussed over lunch

A very interesting and useful discussion was had on issues including:

  • startups obtaining funding from public capital markets and the importance of investor relations.
  • the role of intellectual property, exclusive manufacturing agreements and scientific and clinical validation on commercialisation strategy and company valuations
  • the use of crowdfunding by startups and listed companies as a way of generating funding, getting market validation and raising market awareness for a product.
  • changes to the approach taken by the ATO on auditing R&D claims.
  • the new innovation tax incentive.

We won’t be going into the details of those conversations here but will hope to address some of these issues in our Techboard interview series.

So who were the highest ranked startups?

ePat was highest ranked unlisted startup. Nuheara and Shark Mitigation Systems were equal highest ranked listed startups. Here are Craig Anderson from Shark Mitigation Systems, Mustafa Atee from ePat and Justin Miller from Nuheara accepting their awards from our very own Peter van Bruchem and Raf Kimberley-Bowen.

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28 July 2016

Investing in Australian Startups and Technology Companies – An Introduction

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2016-07-15 at 1.12.50 PM

This is the first in a series of pieces on investing in Australian Startups and Technology companies or Early Stage Innovation Companies under the new Innovation Tax Incentive legislation. At Techboard we have been actively exploring how we can support WA companies in raising money and enable investors to discover, research and invest in Australian companies. We thought it might be useful for us to share some of our thoughts and learnings through a number of pieces which might shed some light on what can be a complex area.  Consistent with Techboard being a conduit between companies and company watchers we will be looking at the issue from both the perspective of companies seeking investors and prospective investors looking for their next investment.  

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Perth tech startup to transform Australia’s voting system

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

For almost a week after the recent Federal election the nation waited while millions of postal votes travelled at the speed of paper to their home centres to be counted. A group of young Perth entrepreneurs are creating a secure, anonymous and verifiable end-to-end voting process that would see an election result being announced on the same day as the last polling booth closing.

Adrian Petersen and four friends founded veri.vote after the news in 2014 that more than 1300 ballots had been lost in a state election in 2014. The team operates out of the BloomLab at St Catherine’s College, next to the University of Western Australia.

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Techboard and BDO – Investing in WA’s Future – Investor event 3 August 2016

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2016-07-07 at 10.52.02 PMTogether in One Place – Innovators, Investors and Business Insight

Are you:

  • Interested in finding out more about investing in Australian Start-ups and Technology Companies?
  • Looking to learn more about the new Tax incentives for investment in early stage Innovative Companies? (These are accessible by both sophisticated AND retail investors).
  • Interested in managing the risks of investing in early stage innovation companies?

Then join BDO and Techboard along with special guests Vocus Upstart (a tech accelerator program for Perth start-ups) as we explore investing in Australian start-ups and technology companies and discuss the new Tax Incentives for innovation.

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Introducing the 2016 Vocus Upstart Cohort

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

Vocus Upstarts are excited to announce the seven startups who have been selected to join the 2016 Vocus Upstart program, commencing August 1st at Spacecubed.

This years cohort have developed ground-breaking technology concepts and applications; ranging from a secure online voting system to entertainment experiences, and online student job markets to virtual reality training programs.

Focused on supporting and encouraging the WA startup community, the program will challenge its seven startups to launch and build their businesses over 12 weeks at Spacecubed.

For more information on the companies and to keep up to date with all company announcements click here.

Will the Innovation Tax Incentive increase investment?

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

I was at an Egroup meeting earlier this month and Marc Loftus from BDO was presenting on the new Innovation Tax Incentive. For information on the Innovation Tax Incentive see my earlier post here. A question came from the floor on the subject of what impact the Innovation tax incentive was likely to have on levels of investment.  The UK has a similar Innovation tax incentive called the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). The EIS was highly influential on the new Australian Tax Incentive legislation. I was in Scotland from 2006 to 2009 working in the startup and innovation space. I had a fair bit to do with Scottish Angel investors who I knew were using the EIS.  I also remembered reading reports on the impact of the EIS on the levels of investment.  So I thought I would dig those up and share them.

The UK government introduced  EIS in 1992 with the purpose helping types of small higher risk unlisted companies to raise capital. So there is a fair bit of data available to gauge the impact of that scheme.

 

What do the UK studies reveal?

The earliest report I have found was produced by NESTA in May 2009. That report entitled “Siding with the Angels Business angel investing – promising outcomes and effective strategies” found that:

“Eighty per cent of investors surveyed have made use of the Enterprise Investment Scheme, at least once. And 57 per cent of their investments had made use of the EIS.”

and

“Investors said that 24 per cent of their investments would not have been made without tax incentives.

In January 2015 the Enterprise Research Centre released a study called “A Nation of Angels: Assessing the impact of angel investing across the UK”. In their report it was stated:

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So… tell me about Techboard’s Announcements Platform

Peter van Bruchem Leave a comment

SONY DSCWe are working hard here at Techboard to help raise the profile of Australian startups and technology companies.  One key way we do this is by providing free access to our Announcements Platform. We have been getting some questions about how our announcements platform works and as to what benefit a company can get from making announcements we have also just made some improvements to the system to make it work how we had always intended and make it easier for people authorised by a company to make announcements. So we thought it was time to do a post.

Our Announcements Platform enables any Australian Startup and Tech Company, listed or unlisted to make announcements and increase and enhance its profile.  Companies can make an announcement on any big or small developments they want to share with their audience and the Techboard audience. We have a bundle of different announcement categories so companies will probably find the right one for them. This also makes it easier for our readers to find an announcement that is interesting to them.

Companies shouldn’t limit themselves to news that traditional media channels are interested in
. your fans are interested in your little steps, and your incremental progress as well as your huge ‘newsworthy’ wins.

Check out the latest announcements that have been made on Techboard

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