Anthill Magazine

Sad news this week that INNOVIC, the support organisation for innovative Victorian startups, will be restructured due to lack of government funding.

In further evidence that there is investment capital available for innovative Australian companies in this bear economy, Adelaide-based seed investor Playford Capital succeeded in generating more than $12 million in innovation investment during the 2008-09 financial year.

The use of viral advertising in marketing campaigns is nothing new, however the power of this advertising vehicle appears to continue growing at a phenominal rate.

The use of viral advertising in marketing campaigns is nothing new, however the power of this advertising vehicle appears to continue growing at a phenominal rate.

In part three of our series on the capital raising cultures in Australia and the US, San Francisco-based Steve Anderson explores the five things Australian and US venture capitalist must see before they will invest in an early-stage company.

A serial entrepreneur at only 24, Phillip Kingston is the embodiment of drive and ambition, spurned on by a desire to prove his sceptics wrong. With 3 start-ups under his belt while at university his current success story, Kingston development, is taking the Australian software and website development industry by storm.

Anthill contributor Dave Birchall recently caught up for coffee and an interesting chat with Sydney-based Tim Ayling, CEO of Platform 46, an internal online social network for businesses.

Today we welcome Michelle Matthews, of Deck of Secrets fame, as our new iPhone app reviewer. She is a self-confessed iPhone junkie, with well over 250 apps on her iPhone, so she’s well qualified to give you the inside running. First up: the productivity app, Instapaper.

Spencer Maughan is an Australian expat based in California. When not consulting to Silicon Valley venture capitalists (including Top 10 VC firm Venrock), he spends his time attempting to free the world of Malaria. I caught up with Maughan three weeks ago, just as his Facebook application, Fight Malaria, was entering Beta Testing.

The plan to put a paper-thin interactive screen inside subscriber copies of Entertainment Weekly is a creative stunt of impressive magnitude, but hardly likely to be a game-changer for CBS, Time or Pepsi.

A little over one week ago, the Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, issued a call for public comment to help inform the development and operation of the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute. Over the past seven days, we have been pressing our readers to get involved and provide a 'private sector' perspective (after making the seemingly unpopular suggestion that commercialisation in Australia has been hijacked by public servants with MBAs). Today, we're turning our attention to the last section of SmartForm, which requests suggestions for the delivery of funding.

China might have surpassed Japan as Australia’s number one trading partner, but the land of the rising sun still represents a large market opportunity for Australian companies who produce products in demand. Steve Dowling reports on the recent boom in organic food in Japan, and the opportunity that lies therein.

The Australian business community is still reeling from the news that a Clive Peeters employee managed to embezzle $20m before anyone noticed. The obvious question arises: is anyone safe from this kind of fraud?

These days virtually all industries and sub-industries are ripe for reinvention online. Take the ultra-physical world of dance, which 2009 30under30 winner Clint Salter is doing his best to jazz up online with his specialist directory and social network, DanceLife.

Jack Delosa, one of Anthill’s 2009 30under30 winners, begins a new series today about Gen Y and entrepreneurship. In this first column, he takes aim at an education system that is inadequate for 21st Century, leaving his generation with a reputation for preferring facebook and playtime to hard yakka.

It's not an easy game standing up in front of a crowd of 120 people and pitch to a panel of hard-to-please angel investors, as 11 brave entrepreneurial souls did recently at the Melbourne Pitch Club event (held 25 June).

There's no denying the decline of print media and the move to digital publishing.

Most employees can’t articulate the business mission statement. They don’t know what the business is trying to achieve. They come in every day and work in their own little world. Oh yes, and whose fault is that?

With a simple change in policy and little additional investment, MySpace would no longer be the place where people simply try and get famous enough to make it to TV or newspapers. It could become the destination. Mark Cameron thinks he knows how to save MySpace from terminal decline.

The Federal Government has just launched a new grant for third party service providers to help small and home based businesses with: • ‘free or low cost’ IT skills development • training and mentoring services • improved web presence and e-business capability Funding is available up to $500,000.