Smart 100 2011

A good client asked for a unique team-building program that would enhance the team's ability to think creatively, collaborate towards a result that created a legacy, embedded the team's purpose and values and led to a deep level of understanding between team members. I combined my corporate team-building experience with my songwriting and recording capability and designed the team song experience.

Be There came about from a combination of the Black Saturday bushfires, the devastating flooding that occurred in Queensland, and the feedback from Silicon Valley for Jasondb, our new NOSQL database. Be There was an initiative designed to allow people access to information in real time from a combination of "verified" organisations as well as crowdsourced individuals.

Mouse Eye Tracking enables online marketers, webmasters, web designers and developers to analyse and generate actionable insights that drive online marketing strategy. This is achieved via three key features: Heat Maps, Mouse Tracking and Page Navigation. These features give Mouse Eye Tracking the unique ability to record and display user interaction on each web page.

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 won the tender to handle an Event for 500 people with no experience other than a sheer will to deliver an awesome experience. After much frustration with the industry and service levels, supported by a programming background I set out to change the world. I wanted a system with no boundaries of language, currency, time or location. A platform that could give productivity back to organisations and reduce costs by improving processes.

We had problems keeping our Twitter accounts uncluttered from users that added little value to our tweet stream. We also were having problems seeing who we were following and who was not following us back, and vice versa. There was no easy way to bulk unfollow people based on a set of criteria, so we developed a web-based application that would assist in improving the signal/noise ration of a user's Twitter account.

Recognised as a world leader by the ATS program and featured in A Faster Future by Brad Howarth, BigTinCan and BuzzMe Beats have attracted world leading artists like Jessica Simpson, and leading music management guru, and former VP Sony Music Jerry Blair to join the team. BigTinCan believes that the future of music on the smartphone can be compelling, yet simple and easy to use. With a fundamental patent pending on the use of mixed alerting on smartphones, BigTinCan is well placed to globally grow our market.

Aviator is a venture spun out of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. Leveraging UTS’ proprietary software around thought classification for controlling electronic devices, the venture is developing a wheelchair control solution to respond to the needs of the severely disabled and paralysed.

We realised many businesses were failing to take full advantage of the power of software to improve their business, despite a compelling business case and many options available. We explored many different ways to serve end-users directly and get paid by them, but eventually concluded they generally lacked enough budget for software selection support. At the same time, we were being inundated with approaches from software vendors keen to find new customers. The light bulb went on...

David Scholes, a noted Real Estate auctioneer, and myself [Brian Edmonds] decided it was time to take one of the world's oldest professions and introduce it to the digital age. We wanted to use the opportunity to create a better way of buying and selling property, one that is transparent and less stressful than the normal auction process.

I became fascinated by Khao Larm when living in Taiwan. I wanted to try my own recipes in it, but never saw it being prepared. Moving to Thailand, I am fortunate to have a neighbour, a lovely old lady we call Yai Yu (Aunty Yu), who prepares Khao Larm by the traditional method. Having observed Yai Yu making Khao Larm by the traditional method for some years, I wanted to use my industrial design and ethnotechnology studies to solve some of the apparent problems.

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.

I realised that mums attending my networking events were leaving inspired but still didn't have the technical know-how to move forward. However, they also had limited funds to access business support and advice. Brainstorm in a Teacup solved both these problems. Bringing together six biz mums (and myself), the session utilised the skills and experiences of women who were formerly in marketing, sales, IT and more to advise, connect and feedback to one another, all for the price of a coffee and a magazine.

Kogan invented LivePrice when we realised there were shoppers around the world pre-paying for goods but not receiving any benefits for doing so. LivePrice creates a win-win situation for both retailers and shoppers. It rewards customers who jump on great deals quickly.

I realised that there were women all over Australia who wanted me to host our events which we were then hosting in restaurants, in their regions. However, after doing Sydney one month and then Melbourne the next I became burnt out. I realised I needed to come up with another concept so that I could expand our events in a way that could be easily replicated -- but realising it had to be very different from how we were currently hosting them.

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.

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.

My professional background as an accountant collided with small business ownership when I bought a surf shop. I knew I needed to get my tax completed just like any small business owner, so I took my “folder” to my tax accountant. He was gobsmacked by how organised my tax information was. I was also developing my own clientele as an accountant, and clients’ tax accountants commented on how easy it was to complete their tax returns as all the information was at hand, so I researched producing a commercial version of the system I was using for myself and clients.

We saw the cost of energy rising, the growing frequency of major destructive climate events, the crazy behaviour of office staff wasting electricity by leaving things on overnight and on weekends (74% of the week), the overly complex solutions available....

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.