IPitch Interviews Archive
Green Lane Digital: New Resident Profile
By Guest Author on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Written By Irina Belsky
Corplite founder and recent acquirer of Aweelectrical Bradley McHugh is the newest resident of the Green Lane Digital space.
Ipitch chatted to Brad about his background, the challenges of running two businesses at the age of 21 and his plans for the future.
Educating Entrepreneurs The Frank Way
By Guest Author on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Written by Irina Belsky
For some, becoming an entrepreneur is like learning a new language. It’s foreign territory and help is a must.
This is where The Frank Team roll up their sleeves and get to work, providing entrepreneurs with advice and practical skills to help them along the way. The entrepreneur focused education and training company began as a startup ten years ago and like any startup it was born from a need.
“While we were at university someone gave us a brief to do an event and when we started we realised that we had no skills to put an event together,” says Natasha Munasinghe, director of The Frank Team, “That was a bit of a light bulb moment when we realised that when it came to practical skills and life skills, there really wasn’t much training.”
The desire to help others avoid the same pitfalls motivated Natasha and co-founder Jessica Schebesta to continue growing The Frank Team. It is now a fully fledged company with partnerships in the government, public and private sectors.
Natasha spoke to us about her involvement with The Frank Team and about the opportunities offered by the organisation.
Startup Profile: Wyngle
By Guest Author on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
Written by Irina Belsky
Wyngle is waging a war on the traditional group buying sites with its new concept of ratio shopping. The startup has devised a way to let shoppers purchase goods for a mere dollar without taking away profits from retailers.
IPitch chatted to Wyngle founder Sebastian Langton about what Wyngle can offer to businesses and shoppers.
The offering
“The easiest way to describe Wyngle is it’s products, goods and services at the same price you’ll find anywhere else in the market but with the unique opportunity to potentially purchase them for a dollar.” says founder Sebastian Langton.
Each product on the Wyngle website has an attached ratio such as ‘1 in 3 for $1′. This ratio dictates your chances of purchasing the product for one dollar. If the ratio is 1 in 3 you have a 1 in 3 chances of buying your item for $1. If lady luck’s not on your side you simply commit yourself to paying the regular retail price.
New Accelerator Program Launches in Sydney
By Guest Author on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
Written by Irina Belsky
What can Santa give your tech startup this Christmas? A new accelerator program, obviously.
Pushstart has picked the festive season to launch a three month accelerator program for early stage tech startups.
We chatted to Pushstart co-founder Kim Heras about the program.
Program overview:
Ten successful startups will receive $20 000 funding to propel the development of their business ideas, collaborate with mentors and pitch their ideas to investors during a series of demo days at the end of the program. In return Pushstart will take 8% common equity in each startup.
Startup Profile: goCatch - the innovative taxi catching app
By Guest Author on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
Written by Irina Belsky
Introduction
The app, which launched on the 23rd of June, allows passengers and taxi drivers to see each other’s location on an real time GPS map. Passengers can request the closest cab by selecting it and making a booking while taxi drivers can pick them up, using the GPS signal on the map.
The app’s goal is to make the taxi system more efficient by providing passengers with a faster service and taxi drivers with more jobs.
We spoke with co-founder Andrew Campbell to learn about the start up process of goCatch.
Conception Of The Idea
goCatch is the result of a partnership between Andrew and Ned who first met at a networking event last year. The pair decided to create a taxi catching app when they realised that there was a need for a service that would provide passengers with a more effective way to catch taxis.
“Ned was doing mobile apps at the time and I thought well what about a mobile app for catching taxis … turned out Ned was thinking about a similar idea as well where you could watch taxis approaching at the time” says Andrew.
Bookkeeping and Accounting when Starting a Business in Australia
By Gareth Rose on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
This interview is with Emile Koskinas, director of Your Empire Business Services. Your Empire Business Services specialises working with startups and SME’s providing bookkeeping and accounting services.
In this interview we discuss the perspective of the founder just starting a business in Australia. We discuss what is required to establish correct bookkeeping and accounting systems, software and practices within the business. There’s a lot of startups that are setup by founders who have very little or no idea about bookkeeping, financials and accounting.
Perhaps you are a technical founder, or a business founder focused on sales and marketing. For many founders it’s very easy to focus entirely on technical development, marketing, sales and developing the product further trying to grow the business while completely neglect bookkeeping and accounting. That’s a big mistake, it’s vital for a startup to get their bookkeeping systems and accounting set up correctly from the start.
Read more
Chris Shipley - Startup Interview - Guidewire Group
By Gareth Rose on Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
This interview is with Chris Shipley, CEO of Guidewire Group. Chris has been analysing and advising startups and early stage tech businesses for nearly 25 years. Based in the San Fransciso Bay Area, she’s now CEO of Guidewire Group, which developed the G/Score and now helps accelerate tech startups.
She was in Australia for the ANZATech Pitch Slam events. For her speech to the Australian tech community, during her ANZAtech visit, click here.
Founded in 2005, Guidewire Group provides startups, their supporters, and those who do business with them with the tools, data, networks and programs they need to discover, monitor, benchmark, compare, and promote early-stage companies.
The interview begins with Chris Shipley describing investors’ desires to invest in numerous companies at a time. She later provides key tips to early stage founders looking for a new entrepreneurial venture.
Read more
James Sugrue - Entrepreneur Interview - Mobeseek
By Gareth Rose on Friday, June 3rd, 2011
This entrepreneur interview is with James Sugrue, founder of Australian startup Mobeseek. Mobeseek was one of the winners of the 2010 iPitch i10 Awards.
Mobeseek focuses on creating long-term ROI-driven marketing outcomes for top-500 companies and government agencies by building, maintaining, and advertising permanent mobile websites for their brands. With the explosive uptake of 3G mobiles and therefore consumers searching the internet on mobile platforms, many top brands have been left relying on their traditional websites, providing their mobile users with an unoptimised and often poor experience. Mobeseek solves their problem by working with the top brands to develop and implement mobile strategies, ones that provide clear marketing ROI to the brands and allow users a greater, optimized experience in relation to their mobile technology.
In the interview we discuss how how James got started with Mobeseek, gaining early big name clients and selling strategy, growing the business, the difficulties of being a sole-founder and more.
Matt Barrie - Entrepreneur Interview - Freelancer.com
By Gareth Rose on Monday, May 23rd, 2011
This entrepreneur interview is with Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com and BRW entrepreneur of the year.
Freelancer.com has grown quickly into the world’s largest outsourcing marketplace after Matt acquired the base business (getafreelancer.com), rebranded it to Freelancer.com, fixed up the business model and then acquired and merged 12 other outsourcing websites/domains.
The interview kicks off with Matts background and experience over the last decade starting up and running tech businesses and how that led him to see the opportunity with outsourcing. We then chat about how Matt acquired Freelancer then proceeded to acquire and merge a number of outsourcing competitors in order to accelerate the growth of the business. We continue on to cover marketing, business models and more.
Dean McEvoy - Entrepreneur Interview – Spreets
By Gareth Rose on Thursday, May 5th, 2011
This interview is with Dean McEvoy, cofounder and CEO of Spreets.com.au. Spreets is a group buying company in Australia that sold to Yahoo!7 back in January for around $40 million! What’s most incredible is that Spreets had been in operation less than a year before it was sold.
The interview covers: Deans background and how that led him to starting Spreets, sales and marketing particularly in the early days when they were just starting up, the dynamics of the merchants and consumers in the group buying model, making assumptions, testing and iterating quickly, as well as capital raising and more on their $40 million dollar exit to Yahoo!7
The full interview, (in audio) can be downloaded here: Entrepreneur Interview – Dean McEvoy - Spreets
