Smart 100 2011

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.

It came to life when we discovered how hard it is to keep a house tidy enough to be presentable at its best for a Home Open when we were selling it. We also noticed that many of the photos did not give a good impression of our home, its layout or feel. Home Open TV is a user-enabled site that allows anyone to list their own home free ... with video and a unique video email solution.

After starting Pole Dancing classes and travelling to Sydney each week, the need for my own Pole took hold, but my landlord at the time did not share this same enthusiasm for installing a pole. This predicament forced me to design and have made a freestanding pole that did no damage to the precious roof.

I was working as a Graduate Engineer on the construction of an onshore LNG Gas facility. We had to maintain extremely high safety standards whilst working at height during construction. I was surprised by the lack of innovation in the safety products available at the time. None of the existing products were able to provide the levels of freedom and safety that we required. I couldn't help but think that there must have been a better solution, which is when I came up with the fundamental concept for the T-Line -- a concept that remains today in the current version.

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 saw an opportunity to meld my passions of music and business. I knew that music created a connection between people, and could therefore be a foundation for an innovation in team building that would bring the energy back into companies and teams. Our approach is to understand the culture and drivers of a business and its people and then work out how that culture translates into a musical composition. The composition allows people to connect their energy with their company through music. It provides a physiological and psychological link and it’s fun.

My friend and I became new mums and quickly discovered the horrible customer service in baby stores in Sydney. We found how hard it was to find great baby gear and, moreover, nobody was making it easy to give feedback to improve products and services. As time-pressed mums, with consulting backgrounds from McKinsey & Company, we decided to apply our brains to solve this problem, fast. And, when we developed a mobile site for feedback we realised that it is not just baby stores but every single retailer and service providers that could benefit from customer intelligence. And so... CustomerUnderground was born!

A large global corporation, Westfield Group – the world's largest retail shopping centre owner – approached us to develop a global reporting system for their safety management. We worked with the client to develop a reporting system integrated with integrum Risk & Compliance system to automatically roll up safety data and reports from each site in four countries, to region, country and to head office.

Since the GFC, western investors -- large and small -- have heightened concerns about where their money is invested, and want to know that it's creating real value in the world. Lending as a Barefoot Angel delivers an unbeatable double-digit return, social impact and environmental benefit via a clearly tangible product and result, with short exit periods of 6-12 months.

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.

I invented a device to block drains and then automatically to draw water from drains. It was called the everydrop water harvester and appeared on the New Inventors and won the episode people's choice award. I then found it was difficult getting a pump that could draw water from below it and continue to hold prime. Such pumps that could do it like diaphragm pumps were more expensive, less efficient and not usually for the domestic market. Further, even these pumps were prone to shorter life when left to run dry for too long. Hence I developed this new product.

We were writing a news article on an indie game developer and noticed that their official website was a total mess. It had very limited pictures and no videos, and provided no effective ways to communicate with its existing and potential customers. Having browsed around in the iTunes marketplace we discovered a similar problem shared by many indie game developers: one- or two-man teams spend all of their energy on making a kick-ass game, and they don’t have the resource to build an awesome website to showcase the game. This inspired us to develop the Indie Hub.

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.

In 2009, we decided to find out what was happening inside Australian small businesses that was holding them up from getting online and participating in the digital economy. Our research showed us that for the majority of SMEs, getting a website was all too hard... too technical, too expensive and too time-consuming. We decided to change all that.

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.

We realised that many coupon or daily deal sites bombard users with unwanted offers which often become unmanageable and turn users away. Why not create a mobile app that allows users to pre-select the brands and types of deals they would like to receive? It creates a win-win situation with users receiving targeted offers and brands receiving higher conversion rates.

After working with companies that needed to store massive and growing data collections on computers that could no longer match their growth in I/O capacity each year, we realised that eventually all these companies must resort to parallel processing of their large data collections. They simply have no other direction to go in. Our approach was to bring together the best available technologies to make the world's fastest MPP system that permits simple expansion beyond the size of the largest systems in operation in the world today.

I was responsible for managing access to a "preferred supplier panel" for one of the big banks. It was a debacle. Suppliers worked really hard to get onto the panel and got little for it. Staff just used the same suppliers as always because they didn't have time to do a better comparison. Procurement had little visibility of what was going on. When I realised these issues were common, I started Magnetized Markets. Our goal: make it easier to do business with preferred suppliers with less time and risk.

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.

My innovation was hatched after fitting yet another misaligned shower tray. This time I was doing a renovation for a mate who always provided a drink after work. Bewildered by the task ahead, I knocked off and sat down to a bout of drinking and thinking. Do I pack the walls or do I jackhammer and shift the pipe? Then it came to me: Why doesn't someone make an adjustable tray with a waste that can be fitted through the tray from above?