Startup & Entrepreneurship

I've said it before, earlier this week in fact, and I'll say it again. Science is the new sexy. How sexy? In less than 20 hours,...

This week marks two years since I dissolved my successful band management company to focus full-time on my startup. I'd just completed my first large fundraising round where 21 individuals had written me personal cheques to invest in the business. These angel investors came from a variety of backgrounds. I found them through speaking at pitch events and by presenting my PowerPoint deck an estimated 700 times over the previous year. Raising the first round of capital was the hardest thing I'd ever done. It required a huge amount of personal energy and growth, and at the end I had a massive sense of achievement from pulling it all together. Now, I thought, the fun could begin!

Now, other than immersion in the athleticism, is there anything else we can take from the recently concluded London 2012 Olympics? Well, there's plenty! The lessons our athletes have provided, some by having it the hard way on the world stage, are fully applicable in the business world. Some of the athletes will show you the right moves and others; well, they will show you exactly what you should avoid.

The Business Monitor, which surveyed 1,004 SME operators, found online business activity such as online transactions, email marketing and social media to be in decline. Less than a quarter (24%) used search engines to promote their business, down from nearly one-third (31%) in March. Social media activity on Facebook, YouTube and Google+ fell three percentage points to 15% and professional networking on LinkedIn fell six percentage points to 13%

A strong focus of the app platform is the ability to engage and reward users. That has come from Al-Attas’ belief that “an app is useless if it doesn’t add value to the life of the user.” He also held the view that current apps “weren’t offering fans anything more than what they could find online.”

When: Wednesday 5 September 2012, 1PM Where: At your laptop, Mac or PC! Cost: Complimentary* Have you ever heard of content marketing? It has lots of fancy definitions...

Crowdsourcing – or involving multitudes of people in a project – is not as new as many might think. For decades, much before the Internet came into being, The Oxford English Dictionary was driven by thousands of people writing in with word suggestions, etymology, usage and more. In more recent times, the human genome project used crowdsourcing, and leveraged the computing power of thousands.

Israeli designer, Izhar Gafni cycles as a hobby. While buying parts for his bike, he heard about someone who had built a canoe out of cardboard. At that was it. The idea was in his head. He wanted to build a bike out of cardboard. So, he did.

Australian CEOs are sceptical about the next six months. Many were doubtful that overall business and economic conditions would improve by the end of the year. Less than a third (31%) thought they would be better in six months’ time, while almost one in four (22%) thought they would get worse.

Call our SMEs old-fashioned but they would rather pursue the traditional channels. Email was the most-favoured with 47% backing, face-to-face networking scored 30% and 25% preferred direct mail.

More than 5,000 entrants have submitted designs to the latest DesignCrowd contest. Using the innovative Sydney-based DesignCrowd crowdsourcing service, TimesSquare.com, has offered up a $10,000 prize for anyone who can provide a new logo. Check out the current logo, it really needs to be changed!

It’s a question asked by many: How do you become an entrepreneur? Becoming an entrepreneur is easy. Becoming a successful one takes work. It’s more than just having a good idea.

In this edition of the Anthill Quickfire Question, I sat down with Nick Smoot, Co-founder of Here On Biz. Nick and his co-founder Allen Hartwig have only been out of stealth for a couple of months but, in that time, they've secured meetings with companies such as Seqouia, HP and LinkedIn. They are currently raising their series seed round.

Ignition Labs, an ATP Innovations-backed clean technology accelerator, is giving a much-needed jumpstart to some of Australia’s newest, cleanest startups. The five teams chosen will join the 50 companies and over 300 staffers already in the ATP Innovations incubator. Each team accepted to the accelerator will be given three months to build a business plan, validate technology, and produce a working prototype. Did I mention that each startup accepted into the program is given $25,000 in seed capital?

Jecks is launching Naked Wines with $1.5 million to cut sweet deals with winemakers, and choice words for the supermarkets that he alleges have undermined both consumers and winemakers.

This week, Anthill has undergone a massive facelift, along with the addition of a whole bunch of new features. And we're slightly embarrassed about it. Here's why.

Could Australian business be shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring real, and available, opportunities for growth?

For some time now, Germany has been on 99design’s horizon. Even though it had only an English-language site, European small businesses and startups accounted for about 15% of the 155,000 graphic design contests, reflecting strong potential. Today, 99designs considers Germany its top non-English language market, its fifth largest overall and one of its fastest growing.

At Anthill, we actively encourage world domination while wearing just your underpants. Some might say we are little obsessed with underpants references. I say, piffle. Tim Morris, a self-confessed 'underwear delivery specialist', spends a lot of time advising startups on starting up. Here he explains the seven questions every good business pitch should answer.

Roy Morgan Research has found that companies that went online earlier benefited the most – not just in online growth, but also offline, reflecting the synergies with traditional brick-and-mortar business. Over the past year, businesses that already had online sales grew 5% but those that didn’t – or didn’t for at least 12 months – saw revenues decline 4%. Also, nearly one out of two (49%) businesses that sold online for at least a year saw higher revenues whereas that was true for only one out of three (36%) businesses that didn’t engage in e-commerce.