startups – Startup Daily

ATP-Innovations-NIC-hub

Sydney-based startup incubator ATP Innovations and the NSW Office for Health and Medical Research have announced the opening for applications into their Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program (MDCTP). The three-month program, now in its second year, aims to help participants develop the skills needed to commercialise medical devices. Participants will learn about entrepreneurship, medical device design, development, and commercialisation. Jillian Skinner, NSW Minister for Health, said of the program, “It is vital we bring to market medical devices which can enhance the quality of life for people living with a range of medical conditions.” While Australia has always been a medical innovator - after all, this country developed penicillin and the disposable plastic syringe - due to a lack of sufficient early stage investment capital and hands-on expertise to guide the development of new medical technologies, commercialisation has long been an issue. The MCDTP, a Lean LaunchPad Plus program, aims to change this. It has a focus on learning through experience and immediate feedback, also pushing students to search for the right business model by talking to customers, partners, and competitors. Up to 20 participants will be selected to take part in the program, with post-doctoral researchers and clinicians, doctoral, PhD, and Masters candidates eligible to apply. Applicants must demonstrate interest in medical device innovation and commercialisation, and ideally, access to their own intellectual property or that of their educational institution or organisation. The program has defined ‘medical devices’ as any medical or health technology that isn’t considered a drug, which could include non-invasive devices, instrumentation, diagnostics and therapeutics, and mobile health and software products. The program will end with participants showcasing their technology to an audience of industry stakeholders, investors, and peers. A number may also be given educational scholarships, seed capital to launch their own startup, or sponsored opportunities to explore global markets. Graduates of last year’s program have started companies, raised capital, received $1.2 million in development grants, and engaged industry partners. Two graduates were also selected to take part in a program at San Francisco's Rosenman Institute. Applications for this year's program close on June 25.

Townske

Seeing the Eiffel Tower is great and all, but travellers these days seem to be more keen on avoiding the tourist traps and exploring and getting to know a city like a local. But with established travel guides and sites often constricted by the types of trips and destinations they can write about, bloggers are sometimes the best source of information when looking for the local experience. Sydney startup Townske has taken this idea on board, aiming to help travellers get that real experience by providing them with city guides from locals. Daniel Clark, co-founder of Townske, said the idea for the platform came when he and co-founder Joe Vuong were in New York on business. Like many desperate Australians overseas, they were searching for good coffee and failing, often ending up in a chain café. “We were going so often that one of the baristas noticed us on the street one day and started up a conversation with us. If that was happening, we were going there way too much and things had to change! So we went on a mission to find the best coffee spots all over the city,” Clark said. He said that while they did end up discovering good cafés, the apps they were using were too complex and time consuming to use, with their recommendations hit and miss. “Finding amazing cafes really enriched our NYC experience and our trip was so much better as a result. When we knew where to go, it felt more like we were locals. The existing solutions that we tried to use just didn’t do what we needed, so we started to design the platform we wanted to use.” Essentially bringing travel bloggers together on one platform, Townske already counts over 1300 user-generated guides from 2000 registered users. These range from travel and city event bloggers and Instagrammers that the Townske team hand-picked, with the ability to create guides set to open to all users when the platform officially launches on June 10. The guides already on the platform range from an exploration of dessert houses in Jakarta to a guide of Toronto through the lens of an urban planner. As well as insider tidbits, the guides are underpinned by beautiful photography. Each also includes a map showing all the locations highlighted in the guide, helping travellers map their exploring. Townske will face a lot of competition from both other startups and established names in the travel space; publications like Lonely Planet are trying to incorporate more local guides, while apps like Wunderwalk are also looking to help travellers find the road less travelled. TripAdvisor could also create competition. However, Clark said, “Competing products didn’t meet our needs for getting to know a city so we're building the product that we'd want to use ourselves. We found that the problem with review sites was that you didn’t know who was giving the review and an opinion is only relevant if you trust the person who is giving it. This is one of the key problems that Townske is going to solve and one of our differentiators.” He also believes that the community Townske is building will help set it apart. With the development of the platform thus far funded through Clark and Vuong’s established ecommerce business RushFaster, the pair will be looking to find investment and secure partnerships with a number of big brands. Advertising is also being considered for a revenue stream. For the moment though, the goal for Clark is simple. “We want to help people have fun and feel like a local in any city in the world.”

Gamestarter.io

Gaming can be one of the most exciting and profitable sectors to start a company in. However, unless you know what you are doing and have some semblance of a following before the launch of a game, it is easy to get lost in the noise. Gamestarter, founded by Mark Major, is a startup based out of Wellington, New Zealand that is looking to change that. The new venture is a crowdsourcing platform that brings people who create games and people that play games together. At the moment, Major says that game creators are not building the amount of games they used to unless they are going through a direct publisher or are developers that are naturally motivated and know what they are doing. The inspiration to first create his own game came seven years ago when Major fell down a nine-metre deep hole whilst walking in Beijing and fractured his spine. Major says that he always wanted to do something around that story and when he ended up being made redundant, he decided to pursue it. Unable to code, Major used sites like 99designs to crowdsource the imagery and character illustrations for the game. He then asked for feedback on the idea on social media and outsourced the development of the game, after which his flagship game Plummet was born. The game, in which you literally fall down a hole and avoid obstacles on the way down, has been downloaded over 350,000 times and is monetised by advertising. It is being played by thousands of active users a day. This process that Major went through became the blueprint of what has now become Gamestarter. Gamestarter envisions its solution being the Quirky.com for the mobile gaming industry, solving a huge problem when it comes to validation of game ideas. For those unfamiliar with what Quirky does, it is a social invention company that uses a crowdsourced model to invent new products and sell them. Just say you had an idea for a particular product that you thought would make people's lives easier or is just cool and new, you would upload that idea to Quirky and users of the platform would evaluate that idea and vote on whether that would be a product they are interested in. From that feedback, the team at Quirky chooses which items they will actually invent from those ideas and create them. The user that submitted the idea gets to be part of that process; and once ready, the product is sold through Quirky.com and both the inventor and the website share in the revenue. A similar process takes place on Gamestarter. Users submit their ideas for games and then the community on the platform will upvote or downvote the ideas based on the games they would actually purchase and play. From there, Gamestarter will use that information to pursue the games. Although the final revenue model is still being ironed out, Major has told Startup Daily that it will most likely be a revenue share model with the game creator similar to Quirky. "What we are doing is validating [these game ideas] to make sure the creators don’t spend six months of their life building a game and releasing it to find nobody wants it," says Major. "Working with Gamestarter, they will be building their game with a market in place. It will be a game that people want and will delight a small niche". As we all know and as evidenced by the hyper-growth of games like Flappy Bird and Crossy Road in recent months, games that follow this method of targeting a small group of hyper-engaged users, usually end up going viral to a wider market.

Gamestarter is currently based in the Creative HQ incubator in Wellington, which requires companies to prove that they are global, scalable and reputable businesses that could reach a $100 million valuation in order to be accepted. The program attached to the incubator is called the Global Growth Program, an 18-month program that takes startups from concept and vision to creation. The program places a huge emphasis not just on product-market fit and validation, but also ability to execute when it comes to user growth and sales.

Gamestarter has been bootstrapped to date, but plan on opening a seed financing round in August to the tune of NZ$300,000 to NZ$500,000, which Major says the company has already started receiving commitments for. Right now, the team sits at around eight people passionate about what Gamestarter is doing and the seed financing will allow the company to continue to build a world class product and engage in growth activities.

An official launch date for the platform has not yet been set in place. Gamestarter is currently BETA mode and is currently crowdfunding its second game via Pledgeme.

Bruce

It's a truism to say that the best government policies are those that, when implemented, add benefits to a community. The worst policies, when implemented, are often followed by unintentional consequences and, in some cases, prove to be fatal to sections of a community. When it comes to the development of government policy, policymakers rely on the assistance of particular groups of individuals within a community to help them formulate it. It is not uncommon for governments to work closely with institutions like universities where some of the most intellectual minds reside. In some instances, governments will also reach out to key people or businesses within a community because they have subject matter expertise on a particular issue. Although this process sounds a little more community focused, it doesn't happen as often as it probably should, which is why when new government policy is introduced at a local, state or federal level, members of the public are often left bewildered, harbouring feelings that decisions that affect the public were made behind closed doors without true community consultation. Brisbane based startup MindHive, founded by Bruce Muirhead, is looking to flip this process on its head with a new crowdsourced platform that brings together expert thinkers to work on particular policy challenges or business strategy challenges - or bring together various stakeholders to solve a problem. The service could be described as a platform that's a bit like Freelancer or Upwork, except instead of a website needing to be built, there is a problem that needs to be solved, and it's not just an individual working on that issue, it's a team of people contributing to the solution. It is important to note that the platform is not a petition-style operation. While it does bring good ideas around policy to the forefront of conversation by raising awareness, at its core, MindHive is about collaborative strategy. The NRMA has used the platform recently, as it's trying to develop public and private infrastructure models for the future of Sydney. The challenge being faced is that nobody in both the public or private sectors can afford to build what is needed, so the company is crowdsourcing ideas from experts like researchers and consultants that have worked within international or national infrastructure projects, hoping that potential models could be presented to the Federal Government in a discussion paper. When the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet had concerns about productivity and employment numbers, it also used MindHive to reach out to experts to help them re-think the issue and introduce some new cut-through, disruptive ideas. Unlike your traditional crowdsourcing model platforms, MindHive does not have a limitation on how long a project sits on the site for; some projects may last for two to three weeks whereas others may run for two to three years. It depends on the size and depth of the problem that is trying to be solved. "The person or company who buys the license to use the platform might be like 'I'm going on a retreat in two weeks and I want my staff to come up with a number of different ideas for me'," says Muirhead. "So you might use the site to crowdsource internally and knock up a few different ideas within the platform with a number of templates we have created based on influential think tanks." MindHive's revenue model is through membership and licenses. For governments and corporations, that fee is $24,000 a year; and if you are a not-for-profit the fee is $12,000. The platform is free for project contributors on the platform. However, not just anyone can do this. In relation to contributors, they either have to have an 'edu.au' for universities or '.gov.au' email addresses from federal, state or local government. "We have used those mechanisms just to do initial employee checks," says Muirhead. However, when a company signs up to use the platform and its tools like the NRMA, employees within that organisation with that official email address can participate in those projects. There are, of course, experts that don't fit into any of these categories. Such people are put through a check process where they are asked about their background and they present an argument for why they should be able to join 'The Hive'.

Obviously, being such a niche product, MindHive had to come up with a unique way to launch the platform and grow the user base quickly on both the subscriber and expert side so at launch the platform had some substance. It did this by signing up 34 foundation members consisting of universities, private companies and government departments with a slightly discounted registration cost to help co-create the platform. This negated the need to raise capital through angel investors or a venture capital firm. All these companies not only invested in the platform as a customer, but were also important in providing the feedback needed to refine the platform.

MindHive now has almost 1900 members which is a mix of free users (contributors) and paid organisations with licenses. Muirhead told Startup Daily that about half of those members have come via paid membership to the site, which is growing at a pace the company is happy with.

Next steps in the business after the new website goes live, is all around scaling. This will mean that there will be some changes to the mix of staff which, at the moment, Muirhead says is quite 'public policy-heavy' in terms of backgrounds. This phase of scale will see investment made in the product and platform and a number of development roles added to the team.

"The Mind Hive initiative is about two years old but it launched this time last year. In the past, it was a team bringing people together physically, and face-to-face has a high cost associated with it. People have started using technology more and more, so we changed and cannibalised our business plan about two years ago and decided to implement our methodology online. It's a model that's very scalable," says Muirhead.

"We're starting to gain traction and have discussions outside of Australia already in places like Africa and the UK."

Featured image: Bruce Muirhead.

Daily Jocks Founder

Melbourne-based Daily Jocks is the perfect example of how using content based marketing to build an audience can end up creating a highly scalable and financially successful internet business. Founded six years ago in 2009 by Nicholas Egonidis, Daily Jocks was launched as a blog showcasing men and men's underwear and was monetised via advertising. Three years ago, Egonidis decided to pivot the company and become an online retailer selling the very products he has been showcasing. The result a sports-inspired menswear ecommerce business that sells underwear, swimwear and sportswear. Daily Jocks also has a unique value proposition that sets it apart from other competitors in the space: a subscription service called the Underwear Club. Underwear Club is a set-and-forget product where users choose the types of underwear they like and indicate their size. They then get sent a new pair of "jocks" to their door every month up to the value of US$40. Every month, subscribers get to try out a new brand for USD$21.95 a month, a bargain considering the products are often from bespoke or luxury brands. Daily Jocks has customers from all around the globe. In fact, Egonidis says that he sends over one tonne of underwear overseas each month. The global approach was strategic and reflected the readership of the original blog which helped Daily Jocks accumulate over 600,000 Facebook fans and a newsletter database that sits at over 270,000 subscribers.

"From day dot, I wanted a global concept, something that doesn't discriminate where people live," says Egonidis. "We always offered free global shipping on the Underwear Club. It was a strategy that worked really well because we essentially wanted to eliminate anything that would stop somebody from joining the club. Often shipping fees are deterrents to people proceeding with an order."

"Also, currency was an important factor as majority of our customers are based in the US. Hence why we sell in US dollars. We've just recently started our Australian version of the site too so we don't discriminate against Australians."

At the moment, the ecommerce startup ships between 8,000 and 9,000 packages a month, which equates to one tonne of underwear as previously mentioned, with volumes continually growing. Egonidis says the key to Daily Jocks' growth has been the focus he has placed on building the company's mailing list. This has become an important tool allowing Egonidis to drive traffic to the site to get subscribers to purchase products. According to Daily Jocks' data, once customers have placed their order and receive their purchase, there's a high a conversion rate to them becoming monthly subscribers to Underwear Club. It's also worth noting that Egonidis does not spend money on running Google Advertising or SEO; a majority of customers are driven to the site via Daily Jocks' Facebook community and EDMs.

Most of the imagery on the site is provided by the brands whose products are being sold on Daily Jocks. However, Daily Jocks will be moving into new premises soon that will have a studio set up so the company can do their own photo shoots and keep everything on the site uniform in terms of its look and feel.

Although the vast majority Daily Jocks' customer base are men, between 13 to 15% of the database are women who are purchasing products presumably for their male partners. Egonidis admits he has received a lot of feedback from these customers and other women in his life that want him to start selling products (specifically the Underwear Club) for women. However, this is not on the cards in the immediate future.

The Underwear Club has turned out not only to be a valuable point of difference between Daily Jocks and its competitors, but also a highly scalable source of revenue for the company. Right now, the club boasts 6,000 paying members and growing. The biggest challenge around this, according to Egonidis, is trying to find the units of stock to fulfil all those orders.

"We generally have around a four to six-month lead time with brands. We're already booking our brands for next year because a lot of the brands we work with need time to produce stock. We'll often get their new styles before they hit the stores, so they'll design it to according to what we need," said Egonidis.

Egonidis says the Underwear Club is growing at around 2% month on month which he says is sustainable. However, he says the fastest growth is coming from the online store.

Raising capital is not on the cards for Egonidis who has bootstrapped his entire operation from the very beginning when he launched the site with only $500.

Egonidis says he's found it quite fulfilling learning how to run a business and turn over a profit. He also admits finding it a tad baffling that companies raise millions of dollars in investment without turning over anything in revenue.

"I'm a bit more old school I suppose in my thinking," Egonidis says. "I believe you have got to make a profit by selling something for more than what you're paying for it."

As the demand for tech labor grows, ambitious teenagers are flooding into San Francisco. There’s no official tally of the number of teens who work in tech, but Fontenot estimates that there are as many as a hundred recent high school dropouts working on startups in the city. Some were too distracted by programming projects and weekend hackathons to go to class. [Source: The California Sunday Magazine]

Clippable

In the cut-throat world of consulting and professional services, it can be hard to stand out amongst the crowd, but being seen as a thought leader in your field is critical. Marketing yourself as well as trying to attend to clients can often leave a person consistently falling short, stuck in the rat race of just getting by, with no significant growth within their business. Sydney based startup Clippable, founded by Schuman Zhang and Nikhil Sreedhar, is looking to change that with its recently launched content curation platform for finance professionals. Clippable acts as an automated marketing assistant that helps users aggregate and distribute content as well as capture leads off that content. If you're a financial planner, most of your day would likely be spent attending to your clients and you wouldn't have a lot of time to come up with content ideas that could help market your firm or engage in new personal branding activities that would help build you up as a thought leader within your industry. This is where Clippable comes in. The platform allows you to discover content and then layer your own commentary around it, adding value on top of that content in a very short amount of time. This can all be embedded into your own website, allowing you to build a sound content strategy and thought leadership profile off the back of industry news, opinion pieces and other types of content. On top of that, Clippable also has lead capture tools such as surveys, polls and widgets that can be added onto content to drive sign-ups and leads for your business as well as get to know in greater detail who is engaging with you online. At the moment the startup is in closed BETA. "We've been talking to a number of advisors and giving them demos and letting them use the system," said Zhang. "At the moment the software has the core functionality of aggregating trending content. The content aggregates all the users' preferences: say I want trending news on a particular topic, [all I need to do is] enter my parameters and preferences and the system looks for content that is trending around that topic." The algorithm running in the background of the Clippable platform searches for content that has the most social media shares, are being talked about the most online and is getting the most comments. "The system looks for this trending content and then the user can add their own value using their own commentary on top of the content," said Zhang. "[The user can then] distribute that content across all their channels including their social media and their own website. The purpose of our closed beta is to see what functions to build into the system over the next few months. We've got a lot of interesting feedback that people want such as newsletter functionality and different client engagement functions". It could be argued that this type of business would be suitable to much more than just the financial services industry. It is most likely that as the startup grows it will begin to expand across other industry verticals. However, the current focus on finance is extremely strategic considering both Zhang and Sreedhar work in the financial industry. They are also the cofounders of professional services matchmaking site Pro Advisor; the cofounders have been able to leverage their audience of finance experts in order to gain early traction with Clippable.

"When we spoke to advisors and people in our target market, they told us that they have big problems with things like content marketing, lead generation and getting their voices out there so they get qualified leads," said Zhang. "So that's the biggest question, how do I get qualified leads? And that's the big question in the industry that is hardest to solve. That's why we've decided to do something about it".

When Clippable launches to the wider public, it will operate on a SaaS model that charges users a fixed monthly fee. While pricing has not been set in stone, Zhang has told Startup Daily that once a few more feature sets have been built out within the platform that it would most likely make sense for there to be a tiered subscription model."

Both Zhang and Sreedhar are bootstrapping the startup and plan on continuing in this path for the time-being, though Zhang has said that once Clippable reaches a point where it is ready to scale, funding is something they will begin to look into as an option.

Featured image: Clippable cofounder Nikhil Sreedhar | Source: Supplied.

TechInAsia

Last week startup and technology publication TechinAsia revealed the latest in a series of changes to the site that has transformed it from being a publication and events company to a media technology platform. According to Willis Wee, founder of TechinAsia, last week's changes to the platform were by far the most significant, as it opened the platform to anyone interested in writing about the Asian technology community and publish the articles on the homepage of TechinAsia alongside the publication's daily editorial content. The homepage will now display 'trending' content in a move that gives the UI / UX a similar look and navigation feel to that of Hacker News or Reddit. Users will still be able to search for latest content written by TechinAsia authors using the site's navigation options. TechinAsia already has a reported 1 million plus unique monthly browsers visiting its site, so this move is ideal for individuals playing in the startup and technology space that want to begin positioning themselves as thought leaders within particular verticals. The other interesting aspect to note is that it does not appear to be a move that aims to save money on journalists. In fact, the TechinAsia editorial team are one of the fastest growing media teams within the region. Engagement and stickiness seem to be the main drivers of this new move. Earlier this year, TechinAsia launched the BETA version of TechList Asia, a platform that's essentially Asia's first online tool enabling investors to track startups across the region. We are seeing a major shift in the media space in the way value is placed upon media organisations - something we are all too familiar with here at Startup Daily. While we are making some moves in the background to stay on top of these changes, all smaller media players would do well to take a page out of TechinAsia's book and look at their own diversification strategies, especially if acquisition sits in the back of those organisations' minds as an end-game. Just last week, we saw the value that Vox Media placed on tech publication Re/code's event arm which reportedly was poised to generate USD$12 million this year in revenue when it acquired it for a rumoured $15 to $20 million. Over the next five years, scalability via readership alone will not be enough to make media companies profitable and attractive as an acquirable asset. The game has changed and TechinAsia is on point.

Untitled design (32)

In November 2013, John Locke and Nate Niparko, two members of the investment team at the U.S. venture capital firm Accel Partners, got off a plane in Sydney and jumped in a taxi. They told the driver to take them to Erina, a sleepy coastal town 57 miles north. Erina was an unlikely home of one of the world's most popular invoicing apps for small businesses, Invoice2go, created by Chris Strode, a 40-year-old programmer with a passion for surfing. [Source: SMH]

unicorn article

With the number of companies becoming unicorns doubling between 2013 and 2014, a new report from KPMG has found that Sequoia Capital is the firm with the most unicorns in its portfolio. Sequoia counts 13 unicorns - companies that have reached a valuation of $1 billion or more prior to an event including liquidity such as an IPO, acquisition, or any other form of exit - in its stable, including Stripe, houzz, airbnb, and Dropbox. KPCB follows with 12, counting Slack, Snapchat, and Uber in its portfolio. According to a report from KPMG, in addition to investing in the most unicorns, Sequoia is more likely to invest in these companies in their early stages. Accel Partners also invested in five of its ten unicorns early, while Khosla Ventures invested in five of its seven early. Forty companies joined the unicorn club through 2013 to 2014. 2015 is set to surpass previous years, with 15 hitting the $1 billion valuation mark from January to April this year. While some investors across Silicon Valley and beyond believe that the number of billion dollar valuations could be hinting at a potential bursting of the tech bubble, others say these valuations are justified. As Mat Beeche wrote in a recent article for Startup Daily:

“Venture capitalists know that eventually there will be some kind of market-dip. Things go in cycles; investors have been through many of them and so it makes perfect sense that in order to protect themselves and their investments, that they would encourage startups to raise more new money than is needed. It allows startups to manage their “burn-rates” more effectively and plan the money out over a longer period of time, just in case there is a future bubble-burst. At least, there will be capital to continue building the business.”

While no Australian startups other than Atlassian have hit the magic $1 billion mark yet, the 2015 Crossroads report estimated that Campaign Monitor is worth $1 billion, while Canva and The Catch Group could also be close to unicorn status.

Lightning Lab

New Zealand based digital accelerator Lightning Lab has officially opened for applications for its new Lightning Lab Manufacturing accelerator which will run from August to October this year in Wellington.

Lightning Lab has a reputation for being one of New Zealand's premier accelerator organisations. It is currently in its third year; and the last two classes resulted in over NZ$4.4 million of investment being made in the participating companies.

Creative HQ is the team behind Lightning Lab; and they have been working behind the scenes to adapt the current acceleration format of intensive mentoring, networking and business up-skilling to make the programme suitable for physical products and hardware.

This upcoming programme will still run within a similar framework to past programmes in that it will last for three months and conclude with a Demo Day, giving teams the chance to pitch their companies to a room full of investors and key stakeholders within the New Zealand startup community.

Lightning Lab is supported by Callaghan Innovation, Hutt City Council and Grow Wellington. The Lightning Lab Manufacturing programme has been designed to give hardware a 'dose of acceleration mojo' that to date has only really been applied to digital ventures within the New Zealand startup ecosystem.

"Globally, accelerator programmes have proven success in stimulating opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs," says Cath Hopkin, Innovation Business Acceleration Manager at Callaghan Innovation. "I am looking forward to [seeing] this unique platform of intense support and validation applied to the product and manufacturing sector".

A major coup for the programme is that Shawn O'Keefe, Producer of SXSW Interactive for 14 years, has moved to Wellington to take on the manufacturing accelerator's Programme Director role.

"3D printing, hardware hacking, biometric sensors, the internet of things, so many new technologies are becoming much more available, particularly in the product and manufacturing space," says O'Keefe. "I'm excited to see what happens when we combine these developments with the creativity and spirit of invention so prevalent here in the Wellington region."

Creative HQ’s CEO, Stefan Korn says he is stoked to have Shawn become part of the Creative HQ family: "With his impressive background with SXSW, extensive network and phenomenal experience in this space, Shawn will be an asset to the Lightning Lab Manufacturing, Creative HQ, and the region.”

The focus of the accelerator programme will be on turning prototypes into successful businesses. Design and product development partners are currently being brought on board to assist with the production methods at a variety of stages. It is most likely that the ventures already producing in small volumes or that have a fully functioning prototype will be the companies to gain the most out of the accelerator.

Lightning Lab Manufacturing is currently working with Makers Org NZ to run HardHack NZ on June 6th – a 12 hour hackathon which will give tinkerers a taste of what the programme will involve as a part of Hutt City’s STEM week this week.

Lightning Lab Digital Auckland will conclude with their Demo Day on June 4. Lightning Lab Digital Christchurch is currently accepting applications until June 12 and Lightning Lab Manufacturing is currently accepting applications until June 26. For more information on the manufacturing accelerator or to apply for the program, visit the Lightning Lab website.

GoReception

When Adelaide tech entrepreneurs Steve Barrett and Chhai Thach first launched their nanosocial app Oi! last year, a few startup watchers - including one at this very publication - rolled their eyes. Like its American counterpart Yo!, at its simplest Oi allowed users to send each other an ‘Oi’ sound. However, Barrett and Thach always had a big picture plan for Oi, using its API in their visitor management GoReception app (at the time called Reception for iPad). “When the Yo! app came out to the market, we were looking for something we could use for GoReception that would notify employees that visitors have arrived to see them using a smartphone app, which is really simple to use and lightweight,” Barrett said. “We saw that Yo! had a real purpose in terms of a business case usage, as opposed to just some silly app that says Yo! to people. So we built the Oi! app around the same context, basically messaging through sending an audible tone and emoji to a person.” The pair recently relaunched Reception for iPad as GoReception, a completely visitor management system that aims to complement the company receptionist rather than replace them; the system can print visitor passes, send notifications to the employees they want to see, customise language, take photos of visitors, and provide on-screen non-disclosure agreements. However, for Barrett, the system isn’t just about visitor management, but productivity and visitor safety. “When I pitch GoReception, I talk about visitor safety, visitor security, visitor privacy and workplace productivity - productivity meaning where can we save time for businesses and where can we save time for their employees, and obviously automating processes leans towards solving productivity solutions which, in the end of the day, saves time and saves money,” Barrett said. When it comes to safety, the company can collect any kind of information they want from a visitor, which is then stored securely in the cloud. The app can track in real time who’s on site, who they’re there to visit and, in turn, potentially where they are in the building, which can be invaluable in the event of an emergency evacuation. “We’re also working on a companion app which will let visitors and employees manage their own details, including adding things like next of kin or emergency help information which can be accessed by an organisation,” Barrett said. He explained further, “If a visitor is checked in and you're meeting with someone that has an anxiety attack, you'll be able to look up what's wrong with them while you're waiting for an emergency service to arrive. You can know that they've got their pills on them, which means you know how to give a certain level of care to that visitor.” The startup is actively looking for sponsorships for GoReception, hoping to sell the product to big companies that can then offer it as a freebie or bonus to their clients. Barrett is also not too concerned about competition; he believes GoReception is “the kitchen sink of solutions” that not only improves productivity and keeps track of visitor safety, but also can help improve brand image. He said, “The good thing about this product is it markets itself. If you can imagine for example, we're actually in McDonald's Belgium head office. So imagine the type of executives that go to that site meetings and see our products; they'll want that in their office as well.” “It's not just about improving processes internally, it's about improving your brand and your image. If you can be seen to be forward thinking, digitally savvy, then that makes you a much more modern business.” GE, Rackspace, Sydney Airport, and iinet are also using GoReception, which Barrett and Thach developed and launched without taking on investment. “This has purely been built and marketed by building our own runway, essentially. We're a big believer in building an app as best as you can and growing through revenue,” Barrett said. As well as GoReception, Barrett and Thach are currently working on a couple of other projects: they’re in the process of launching payment system Payhero, and are also developing MVPs for other startups through their company Furio.

Salesforce

It's another Friday, so here's the mergers and acquisitions round up: Salesforce acquires Tempo Salesforce acquired smart calendar app Tempo for an undisclosed sum. The app, which will be incorporated into the Salesforce platform, will be discontinued at the end of June. Founder and CEO Raj Singh stated in a blog post, "We started Tempo to build an assistant for the mobile business professional. The calendar was the perfect interface, since it’s the beat of our professional lives. With Tempo, we created a smart calendar, using artificial intelligence to enable the next generation of mobile productivity. We brought context to your events and automated many of your tasks, just like a real-world assistant, saving our users millions of minutes." Microsoft acquires 6Wunderkinder GmbH Microsoft has announced its acquisition of Berlin-based startup 6Wunderkinder, the creators behind the to-do list app Wunderlist. Microsoft stated that the app, which has amassed 13 million users, will remain free in all of its existing markets, with no price changes to come for Pro of Business users. The app will also continue to support third-party apps and integrated services, and the 6Wunderkinder team will continue working in Berlin. IBM acquires Blue Box IBM has acquired Seattle startup Blue Box, which provides OpenStack private cloud services. OpenStack is an open source computing platform that allows people to create public and private clouds, and was established in 2010 as a way to limit Amazon's domination of the cloud services market. Jesse Proudman, founder and CTO of Blue Box, said in a blog post on the deal, "For IBM, acquiring Blue Box is a way to turbo-charge their cloud strategy: Our technology and business model will become a formational kernel for the IBM Cloud organization to rally around for private cloud. Add SoftLayer’s global footprint and IBM’s OpenStack upstream capabilities, and I can’t think of an organization better suited to tackle this challenge." Cisco to acquire Piston Cloud Computing In another OpenStack cloud-related deal, Cisco has announced its intent to acquire San Francisco-based startup Piston Cloud Computing as part of its plans to develop the Intercloud, a 'globally connected network of clouds'. Hilton Romanski, Cisco's head of corporate development, wrote in a blog post, "The acquisition of Piston will complement our Intercloud strategy by bringing additional operational experience on the underlying infrastructure that powers Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud. Additionally, Piston’s deep knowledge of distributed systems and automated deployment will help further enhance our delivery capabilities for customers and partners." As TechCrunch wrote, though the OpenStack project originally launched with much hope, adoption has been slow and startups in the space have been forced to consolidate.

Image: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Source: Seattle Times

paulbennetts

The following is a response to an article Startup Daily's editor Tas Bindi wrote titled Are the deal terms that Australian VCs ask for actually ‘unfair’ to founders? To Startup Daily, I read with interest the super detailed commentary on the open sourced seed financing documents that we (with Niki Scevak from Blackbird Ventures and Dan Atkin from Sparke Helmore) have worked on and agreed with a large number of industry participants to both publicise and support. Standardised seed financing documents that have been open sourced for investors and founders are common in more mature markets particularly the US. Australia has been slow to get to the same level of maturity and openness. This has resulted in legal fees of up to $20,000-25,000 per fund raising. Those legal fees represent a massive leakage of investment dollars reaching startup teams. Think about the typical scenario of two co-founders coming together to test an idea by raising as little as $100,000 from family and friends as well as angel investors. In this scenario, the team would only receive $75,000-80,000 in investment dollars after accounting for legal fees. In creating these template documents we borrowed heavily from the precedents used in the US for seed financing rounds. As we recommend on AVCAL's site, we suggest all co-founders and angel investors read "Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist" by Brad Feld of Techstars fame in the US. In his book, he goes into more depth about how these clauses work (in plain English) and how they are currently being used and drafted in the US. Breaking through the noise, the underlying purpose of these open sourced documents is to allow a set of angel investors, family and friends to come together and be able to complete a seed financing round as efficiently, quickly and cheaply as possible. These documents are not meant for later rounds such as Series A and beyond which are predominately done by venture capital funds. These are solely for the benefit of co-founders and the first outside investors usually angels, family and friends. Open sourcing any profit driven exercise will always disrupt (and likely upset) the existing establishment. By open sourcing these documents, we are seeing lawyers' fees being reduced to $5,000-10,000. I worry about contacting six lawyers for their view on this open source initiative. As Warren Buffett says, "Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut". But just to be clear though, these documents have been drafted as version one. This first version understandably borrows heavily from the precedent of standardised docs in the US. If co-founders, angel investors, family or friends feel strongly about how a particular clause should work then they can easily change the clause to reflect what it is that they, as a group, want to achieve. Our hope is that these documents will continue to evolve as we learn what works well for everyone over the next 5 to 10 years of startup successes and failures. And let's agree to keep the discussion to actual clauses rather than just throwing rocks at the whole process. As one person involved in trying to herd everyone together to make this open source initiative possible, let me respond to your commentary on specific clauses below. A liquidation preference is used for every deal I've seen in the US. In plain English terms, it is used to protect investors in the worst and most common outcome of a startup - it fails. If a startup needs to be liquidated in a bad scenario (through administration or sale) those leftover dollars should probably go to investors before founders. In most cases, there's not much left in the way of assets to liquidate, but I think it's fair that the ping pong table should go to investors first. In a bad scenario, once investors have recouped their investment then the balance of the proceeds goes to founders. In a good scenario, the liquidation preference falls away and investors participate alongside founders in sharing the proceeds of the exit. Seems pretty fair to me. Founder vesting is another term stated as controversial by the lawyers you contacted. Vesting of 50% of a co-founder's stake is there to protect co-founders against each other first and investors second. The most debilitating scenario and unfortunately a common occurrence is co-founders fighting amongst themselves. If that fight results in one co-founder leaving, say the technical co-founder, the other co-founder is stuck with a large co-founder stake that can't be used to recruit a replacement. We've seen too many startups fail due to this issue. It's not fair to co-founders if one leaves but benefits from the ongoing work of the other co-founder while they can go off and start another startup. Founder vesting is there to protect co-founders first, investors second. In your article, you state that full ratchet anti-dilution is less friendly and less common than broad based anti-dilution. We agree. As such, the open sourced documents contain broad based anti-dilution. The open source documents organise decision making such that the Board is made up of the co-founders and one representative of the investor group. There are some critical business matters that should require the approval of the investor group, such as a major change in business plan. These matters are outlined clearly in Schedule 2 of the Shareholders Agreement. These are not related to day-to-day matters. Some people get confused and believe this puts “entire control of the company in the hands of the one director representing the interest of the investor". To illustrate, investors are investing significant sums of money based on a proposed business plan. They don't want to wake up and find out that their software startup is now selling ice cream to Eskimos. Don't laugh it's happened many times before. This clause means that if a team proposes such as change of business at a Board meeting they should involve the investor Director in that decision. The last point made in your article is that legal expenses are paid out of investment funds. We agree this creates the wrong incentives for both parties. If legal fees were coming out of a founder's and an investor's pocket; founders, angels, family and friends would probably have come together long ago to agree on a set of open source documents. It's never easy to balance the interests of co-founders who contribute their best ideas and their every waking hour to their startup, with the interests of investors who are contributing their life savings to an enterprise that in 9 times out of 10 fails resulting in those savings vanishing. Both parties have so much to lose, so let's work together on this open source movement and not let those being disrupted muddle the water between all of us.

DoubleBud

Social media is full of people living glamorous lives that are always better than your own. Instagrammers are perhaps the worst offenders, always going on holidays to exotic locations and eating brunch at hip cafes and actually making use of their gym membership. It’s all been enough to get The New York Times waxing on about ‘the agony of Instagram’ and ‘Instagram envy’. A Melbourne app may just be the antidote we’ve been waiting for. DoubleBud doesn't discourage users from posting that post-marathon selfie - but it also wants photos of the moments that came before, like the first time you ever went to the gym and couldn’t make it through a workout. As founder Ag Lacey describes it, DoubleBud wants users to come together to be motivated and inspired by the before and after photos being shared. The idea for the app came to her as she watched her children playing together after Christmas two years ago. “My mind reflected on images of the kids from years gone by. This running series of photos started my thought process off in regards to capturing, storing, reflecting and sharing these series of photos, these ‘before and afters’,” Lacey said. “Our lives are very much made up of many ‘before and after’ moments of time. The scope of ‘before and after’ is really quite limitless, as well creative.” She checked that afternoon whether the kind of app she was thinking of already existed, and when she found it didn’t, she decided to make it herself. Users can create ‘photo strips’ of minimum two photos. They can choose to show a simple before and after in two photos, or to tell a longer story with more photos. The photos are sorted into categories like Style, Fit Fast and Strong, Animals, Foodies, and Party Time. A user’s profile page archives their own photo strips, those they have commented on, and strips they have been motivated by. The focus is very much on motivating and inspiring rather than leaving someone envious - instead of simply pressing a ‘like’ button, users can let a strip creator know they’ve been motivated by a journey. Lacey and her husband Scott have been funding the startup themselves. With Lacey responsible for design, user experience, and marketing, they brought on a developer to work on the technical side. With the app having launched at the start of May, Lacey said they saw an initial surge of users and are now tracking around 12 to 15 new users a day. Given the number of photo apps that have launched and been no match for the unshakeable Instagram, there is a tough road ahead for DoubleBud if it is going to be just another photo sharing app. However, Lacey said she doesn’t see it as a competitor. “DoubleBud has a niche in the sharing of photos, as it is focused on before and afters. It can sit comfortably alongside other photo sharing apps, rather than trying to compete against them,” she said. This differentiating factor is also where the path to monetisation lies; Lacey sees DoubleBud partnering with other apps and platforms and being used in business. “There are countless businesses that would benefit from showcasing in an app before and after images: hairdressers, builders, landscapers, interior designers, artists, tilers, plastic surgeons...the list is endless,” she said. Lacey will be looking to find investment in order to expand the app’s capabilities over the next few months.

CapacityHQ

Online legal services startup LegalVision has announced the acquisition of Capacity HQ, a curated marketplace of consultant lawyers. The sum of the deal was not disclosed, though LegalVision CEO Lachlan McKnight told Startup Daily the deal was made for an upfront payment and a deferred payment which will be made based on volume of sales through the business. McKnight said Capacity HQ's position in the market as a provider of bespoke solutions complements LegalVision's process-driven, tech-enabled approach. "They have full coverage of specialists niches, such as tax law, which enhances LegalVision's offering. They focus on a different vertical, providing 'in-house' solutions to law firms and in house legal departments, which broadens our range of customers," McKnight told Startup Daily. "CapacityHQ lawyers have a minimum of 3 years' PAE [post-admission experience], come from top tier backgrounds and have experience in leading in-house teams. CapacityHQ enables clients to scale their team to cover a staff absence, introduce specialist skill-sets and provide additional support to permanent staff without growing fixed overhead." Capacity HQ was founded by Samantha Wong, formerly a lawyer at a top-tier law firm, after she witnessed too many lawyers leaving the profession after struggling to find a work-life balance. When Wong herself left to work at an online retailer, she realised how the internet could help drive cost and time efficiency and in turn solve some of the problems in the legal world, and launched Capacity HQ. Wong said in a statement on the acquisition, "LegalVision now have the scale, funding and team to provide our customers with an outstanding level of service, both from a quality and speed perspective. We're excited to combine our strengths to accelerate growth across the board.” The acquisition comes off the back of a $1.2 million funding round in March, which brought the total raised by LegalVision since its founding in 2012 to $1.6 million. The company highlighted plans to allocate the funds to developing a client-facing platform and mobile app, and expanding its team.

ThankBank

Social media has made a lot of things easier for us when it comes to connecting with people on the other side of the world and being informed. Unfortunately, it’s also made it easier for us to pretend like we’re doing more than we say we are, particularly when it comes to how much time, money, and effort we spend helping other people. It’s easy to like a Facebook page or sign a petition and think the cause has been won, all from the comfort of your couch. Brisbane engineering student Samuel Eden is hoping to get the so-called ‘slacktivists’ up and out into the world through his app ThankBank, which rewards people who donate blood with discounts and freebies from partner brands. “People are aware of good causes like blood donation, but ThankBank bridges the gap between awareness and action and encourages Australians to donate and save lives rather than just Like the cause on Facebook,” Eden said. “We provide public recognition as well as rewards and discounts from brands, which are given the opportunity to connect and thank their customers.” The app works by having a user check into the system after donating. They will be greeted with a list of possible rewards from various brands; they can choose three of these rewards to store in their ThankBank, which can later be accessed and claimed. Users can also choose to share their check in on Facebook for the chance to select more rewards - as well as get some public recognition, of course. For their part, rewards partners will purchase prepaid connection credits, with one connection credit equating to each time they are selected as a reward by a customer. “This way, they only pay when they know customers are choosing their brand as the one that thanks them for contributing to the social cause. The Red Cross simply benefits by having more donors at their door, all without them having to do any marketing or create any partnerships,” Eden said. Eden is launching a crowdfunding campaign on Letsact to fund the development of the app and the securing of rewards partners. “By crowdfunding, we’re proving that hopefully thousands of our ‘customer investors’ want our service on their devices. This will also help get more brands on board as we expand our outreach,” Eden said. The money raised through the crowdfunding campaign will be put towards developing the app, with Eden also looking for investors to help speed up the process. The app is scheduled to launch in Brisbane in August before going Australia wide. It’s clear ThankBank is an interesting idea with potential: it’s been selected to take part in Brisbane’s Impact Academy Accelerator and has been named a ChangeMaker for Brisbane’s Random Hacks of Kindness. While the idea that people need incentives in order to donate blood may make some despair, a 2013 study found that offering rewards does get the number of donations up. With Australia often having to import blood to meet demand, ThankBank could just be the app to streamline the donation/reward process and get young slacktivists off Facebook and rolling up their sleeves. If ThankBank proves effective in increasing blood donations, Eden hopes to expand the service to provide rewards for other socially positive deeds.

TidyMe_team_06

With its recent $750,000 round of seed funding from Australia's Airtree Ventures, Sydney based startup TidyMe is now in a position to begin competing with the likes of other well funded startups and online marketplaces playing in a similar space. TidyMe, founded by Stacey Jacobs in July last year, is an online marketplace that makes it easy for users to book a cleaner in Australia. At the time of launching, Jacobs said there was nothing like it in Australia, and there was no platform where you could easily just book a cleaner in 30 seconds online, especially one that uses 'green' cleaning products. Jacobs was no novice to the challenges of launching a two-sided platform, having worked a solid four years in other startup environments, including startup focused education company General Assembly. Tidy Me's business model is quite simple, the platform connects customers with a cleaner and TidyMe charge a $35 hourly rate to the customer. From there, incentives exist for the customer to do a more frequent clean. For a weekly clean, it's a 20 percent discount and a fortnightly clean is offered at a 15 percent discount. All crew members get paid a flat rate.

While the team at TidyMe may refer to cleaners on the platform as crew members, they are all actually independent contractors that have gone through "a very strict selection process" before being allowed onto the platform.

"This is how we maintain our quality control," says Jacobs. "We literally have hundreds of people applying through a very lengthy online form process. Once they pass that process, they get taken through a phone interview. Following that, we do reference and background checks, then an in-person interview, in-person test and then they can be qualified to join the platform. That way they get sent out jobs and they can accept or decline those jobs."

Although $750,000 in seed funding for a startup may seem like a lot of money to assist in accelerating growth, the market that TidyMe plays in is becoming increasingly crowded. In addition to Rocket Internet backed cleaner-marketplace Helpling, it is also competing to a certain degree with platforms like OneFlare and Service Seeking that also allow users to connect with cleaners. Even Fairfax, via its Babysitters and More marketplace, are dabbling in a similar space connecting its 250,000+ parents with house cleaners.

For TidyMe to become top dog in a space where its competitors are backed by millions and billion dollar entities, it needs to not just win over customers and keep them, but also needs to really understand its data, and leverage this to out-manoeuvre the other companies.

Big data is something that Jacobs said has been drilled into her since she began working for a Fashion Tech startup in London years ago. That company was using data to predict fashion trends in real-time.

Now, Jacobs is using many of those techniques to understand and predict certain trends within her own startup: "From a very top level perspective, we're a subscription business, so we are looking at how we can deliver huge amounts of value to our customers to get the biggest time value out of them."

"We want our customers to be with us as long as possible. So that's where data plays a really interesting part to look to where people might be turning, [when we should] re-engage them, and identify different things like trigger points of why people might churn."

Understanding these insights is going to be critical for TidyMe, as it strives to achieve the growth it is chasing. It also should be noted that Jacobs is more than aware she is up against some pretty big competition that also understands the data game.

"It is a very hot space at the moment. We were the first ones to market it in Australia but it's super hot. It's kind of replicating where the daily deals market was two to three years ago," says Jacobs.

"Everyone is rushing into the space. That to me basically validates what we're doing. Now that we're taking on this investment, we're in a really good position to break ahead of that pack. We've got not only the financial support from Airtree, but also in my opinion, they're the best VC firm in Australia. With their previous 'marketplace' experience, Daniel and Craig and Paul make a really formidable team."

With a few hundred subscription customers at the moment, the core focus for TidyMe is on growth and expansion within Sydney. Then the startup will begin to launch its operations across other cities on the East Coast, using its data as a tool to understand where it should launch next and the changing trends within the overall marketplace.

Kristy Chong ModiBodi

Underwear most likely isn’t anywhere near the top ten in most people’s list of things that first come to mind when they think of innovation, but Australian entrepreneur Kristy Chong thinks it should be. Chong created a new line of underwear that begs women to ask of their old stuff, “what has my underwear done for me lately?” The answer, she believes, is simply “not much.” Until now. The NSW-based entrepreneur launched ModiBodi in 2013 to combat some everyday problems facing women. Though it may not be the sexiest issue, light bladder leakage affects one in three women every day. Meanwhile, menstrual overflow affects one in two. ModiBodi underwear, which has a built-in panty liner, aims to help with both. “My ‘aha’ moment came about while I was out running. I realised my underwear was failing to protect me from those annoying but common unmentionables women face – sweat, periods, and light bladder weakness. I thought to myself, surely women deserved underwear that not only looked good and was comfortable, but could protect us when we needed it most,” Chong said. Chong discussed the idea with her husband, a researcher in cardiac therapy, and they began developing the technology. The process, which was self funded, took 18 months, with the pair consulting with over 100 design and textile firms across the US and Australia and conducting almost 1,000 tests. They created two technologies: the Modifier Air uses a one-way moisture-wicking gusset that moves moisture away from skin to keep you dry and eliminate odour, while the Modifier also has a panty liner built in. All the fabrics used are anti-bacterial and stain resistant. Unlike US-based competitor Thinx, which sells ‘period panties’ that can effectively be used to replace pads or tampons on lighter flow days, ModiBodi’s underwear is purely for light bladder leakage or menstrual overflow. Chong is in a tough market: the lack of competition in the space means women are pretty set with their regular underwear, and some who regularly use panty liners may find the concept of going without and relying solely on their underwear itself to protect them strange. Disrupting both big underwear brands and feminine hygiene brands will be tough, but Chong believes there is increasing demand for innovation. “We are challenging the notion that regular underwear is as good as it can be...market reports show that women are crying out for more premium, real-fit offerings in the feminine hygiene space and Modibodi has come along at the perfect time to fulfil an unmet need. There is an increasing demand by women for better health, more premium hygiene products, and for more eco-friendly brands,” Chong said. Chong said that the company has achieved month on month growth in sales since launching in late 2013, with this growth increasing significantly since February this year. The majority of sales are coming from Australia, with 5 percent coming from the UK, US, and New Zealand. The company is already looking to diversify, producing a maternity singlet, which replaces the need for nursing pads for breastfeeding mothers, and sports bras. Chong said the goal over the next few months is to expand ModiBodi’s offering. “We are currently in the growth phase and for the next year we are committed to continuing to sell to our customers online, as then we can keep our RRP lower. However, should the right opportunity arise we are also open to stocking our garments in traditional retail stores.”

Thrive Channel

This week, David Koch, founder of Pinstripe Media, and Perry Smith, founder of Brand New Media, announced their respective companies would be launching THR!VE a new business and success-focused media channel and weekly free-to-air television show. Pinstripe Media has been an expert in creating content for the business and finance sector for over 10 years, It produces Kochie's Business Builders, which is one of Australia's longest running business programs that has aired on Channel 7 every summer for nine seasons now. In addition to television, the company also manages the online assets for Kochie's Business Builders on the Yahoo!7 website and has a number of other publications in its media stable including personal finance site Money Saver HQ that is a joint venture with Newscorp, its own youth focused finance site The Hip Pocket, as well as stake in Startup Daily. Brand New Media is a global content company with offices in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia. It has played in the area of content development, creation, distribution and marketing for the past 15 years. The company has its own proprietary channelPLAY technology platform, which it uses to deliver solutions for clients that reach both niche and general audiences. The channelPLAY platform uses its data-centric features to provide insights that help to deliver an enhanced viewing experience for users. The company has its own free-to-air television channel 4ME as well as a number of digital television assets such as Surf.tv, Healthy Me and I Do - all of which cater to strong niche lifestyle audiences. THR!VE will join that suite of online channels as the first "business and finance" focused channel that Brand New Media will launch. The dual ownership with Pinstripe Media means that all the content that will sit on the platform will be a mix of THR!VE channel 'originals' as well as a curated selection of content from Pinstripe's various media assets. In addition to appearing directly on the THR!VE platform, selected content will be packaged together on a weekly basis and aired exclusively on the 4ME free-to-air television channel in a half-hour format show. Content on THR!VE will be a mixture of both long and short form content and appear under five distinct verticals: entrepreneurs, business, money, career and investing. Below is an example of content around investing on Thrive.

Disclosure: Pinstripe Media is a shareholder in Shoe String Media which owns Startup Daily.

ATP Innovations opens applications for medical device commercialisation program

Sydney startup Townske wants to help travellers explore cities like locals

Gamestarter is aiming to become the Quirky.com of the gaming industry

MindHive.org is a collaborative strategy platform used to help create government policy

Daily Jocks is the perfect example of how content marketing can help scale an ecommerce business

The Real Teens of Silicon Valley

Clippable is a platform that makes it easier for professionals to become thought leaders

Tech media should be paying attention to the transformation of TechinAsia

Australian Startups Lure Silicon Valley Money

Sequoia Capital counts the most unicorns in its investment stable

New Zealand’s Lightning Lab is launching an accelerator programme focused on hardware and product startups

GoReception is using Oi’s API to keep an office’s visitors safe

Mergers and acquisitions round up

Australian VC Paul Bennetts responds to Startup Daily’s critique of open sourced legal documents

New social networking app DoubleBud is like the Instagram for before and after photos

LegalVision acquires consultant lawyer marketplace Capacity HQ

Startup ThankBank wants to incentivise people to donate blood

The winner in the cleaner-marketplace race will be the startup that leverages data most effectively

ModiBodi is innovating women’s underwear to help with bladder leakage and menstrual overflow

Pinstripe Media and Brand New Media announce the launch of new business channel THR!VE