Smart 100 2011

The purpose of this innovation is to efficiently and effectively raise capital for early-stage businesses needing growth capital. This is done by increasing the competence of those seeking capital and matching them to those with capital to invest.

I had the idea that a community-based approach to energy measurement and control could better help people to save energy and money, to share and learn. And so, the Smart Energy Groups project was born.

I was trying to improve my surfing and kept on falling off my skateboard. I studied the biomechanical movements and pivot points of the human body and designed a prototype swingboard which was effective and safe to use. Once we ironed out some of the issues with the prototype we invited a sports physiologist along to make sure we were not going to injure a user. The physiologist was amazed at the freedom of movement and fitness benefits for general users in the fitness market for Core Strength Training, Balance Training and Rehabilitation.

There was a call from the male population for better personal care, but there was no one advertising the fact that they would do the male Brazilian wax. Enter Ouch Waxing Studio. We openly advertise that if you have hair there we will wax it with no embarrassment.

Clinton Larson and Emma Lo Russo, ex-Macquarie Bank colleagues, came together to explore the impact that the social web and changing technology were having on traditional businesses, especially those looking to compete globally. After testing the opportunity, they launched DIGIVIZER in July 2010 -- a solution that finds the digital footprint of people organisations know (their customers) or people they should know (prospects) on the social web.

The innovation came to light when Ruchir Punjabi, who had experience of serving more than one hundred clients with his expertise in web services and products, identified a few fair problems in the web site creation and management sector and decided to spend more of his energy on product development in key areas in the web space. He saw immense potential for the product in a seemingly unorganised web services market in India and elsewhere. He went head hunting for like-minded, passionate individuals in the same space and put together a motivated unit of web developers. This is his third venture.

We were working closely with one of our clients, a locksmith, who was having difficulty managing the day-to-day activities involved in a do-and-charge business: providing quotes, booking jobs, using staff effectively, and remembering to invoice. We saw that the issues with our client were not locksmith issues, but issues almost every small business faces. We knew that through the power of the iPhone and a clever web app, we would completely change how small business operated. ServiceM8 was born.

Two Harvard Business school students met and exchanged ideas about whether crowdsourcing could be applied to the fashion industry. We identified a way to leverage the internet to connect independent fashion designers with customers around the world, and have the crowds curate the marketplace.

I discovered how difficult it was to reach my powerpoint to turn off wasted standby power. The purpose of this innovation is to enable everyone to save wasted standby power or simply to gain switching access to one's powerpoints. And to provide a visual reminder for those of use who are forgetful.

This innovation initially came to life when I was working on my butterfly and insect farm. I wanted people to be able to experience various insect life cycles in their own home or at school, so that I could share something special with them. I chose a few of my favourites and came up with a prototype for an enclosure that would meet the housing requirements for all of them.

The three of us where completing our postgraduate studies at The University of Melbourne. We started to work out what could be done to make it easier for people to create diagrams that wouldn't just be pictures but could represent the real world. We entered the Melbourne University Entrepreneur Challenge (MUEC) and with our business plan and pitching won second prize.

This innovation came to life after seeing how poorly managed were many hundreds of keys held in businesses such as real estate, especially building managers' large premises as they used low-security-level paper records to keep track of these valuable keys. I have wanted to introduce this some years back, however my research needed to establish the best way to collect data from keys and their tags.

Brothers David and Barry O'Driscoll started Brightgreen, an LED lighting company developing products that match a halogen on brightness while using only a quarter of the power and lasting up to fifteen times longer. Brightgreen’s latest cutting-edge product is the DR700 -- the world’s first LED downlight replacement bulb to match the brightness of an average halogen and to be compatible with all existing transformers and dimmers. This means that LED replacement bulbs are now simple, fast and hassle-free to install, making them ideal for a mass market.

I was holding four cans of beer whilst waiting for the Jesus and Mary Chain to come on stage at the 2008 V Festival. Like all cans at festivals, the four cans had been opened at the bar. Someone bumped my elbow and the bottom can in one hand fell to the ground and the beer in it exploded out and covered me in beer. Two thoughts came into my head: "Crap, there goes seven bucks," and then, "I wish I could re-seal the cans after they open them at the bar..." And that's when I came up with the Spillah can lid.

Whilst in my hotel room at night I would search Google for "The best coffee in..." the city where I was staying. I found this process exhausting and it usually came up with mediocre results. So a couple of years ago upon arriving back in Melbourne I had a chat with coffee-loving friends James Crawford (Web Developer) and Adam Lowe (Psychologist) and the concept of Beanhunter was born.

Founders Sarah Taylor and Jeff Dusting realised how time-consuming and unsatisfactory it was to locate, book, and pay for home, health and beauty services, and how few service providers had access to efficient low-cost online trading. Unbooked seeks to create an online marketplace for the sale of available time-based services.

A major mobile operator in the UK approached our channel partner to see if they could help determine if smartphone applications (iPhone, Android, etc.) were causing congestion and outages in the mobile network. We quickly modified our mobile web analytics platform to analyse mobile application traffic and develop a series of new reports that provide unprecedented insight into smartphone application usage and associated network impacts.

After six years of success as Ecowash Mobile, we conducted market research into the consumer perception of the brand. We found that consumers were more interested in our technology. As a result of this research, we re-positioned our service and re-branded based on the unique and exclusive liquid nanotechology via which we provide our service. Whilst still having the same environmental credentials, the new Nanotek brand better conveys not only the technology but the unmatched quality of the service.

Over $23 billion is given out annually in grants funding in Australia by government, philanthropy, corporates and NGOs, and there is no standardised solution, application process or management and acquittal process. $23 billion and not one standard operating system. Started from the ground up after a series of "Grants Rage" sessions by grant applicants on the tragic state of technology, systems, process and learnings exchange, SmartyGrants was born.

Duc Ngo, inventor and CTO of JMango, got tired of re-writing every app he made to work on multiple mobile devices. Traditionally, developing apps for multiple operating systems took way too long and required specialist skills resulting to mounting costs. He found this to be inefficient and too expensive, not to mention tedious, repetitive and just plain boring. So he set out to create his own solution and the result was the JMango Mobile Platform.