wide-full

So, you're building a business and want to use external funding sources to accelerate its growth. While we can't promise that you'll achieve this notable feat (raise angel money or venture capital in seven weeks), we can promise to provide you with thought-provoking articles and videos -- every Thursday at 3pm -- for seven weeks.

Anthill’s ‘SMART 100′ Index was developed in 2008 to identify and rank Australia’s 100 most innovative products, proving to be one of the largest surveys of its kind in Australia. Nominations for the 2011 awards are now open. Do you know of an Australian innovation worthy of recognition?

Electronics retailer Bing Lee has caused a ruckus on the interwebs for pledging to donate $1 to the Queensland flood appeal for every user who became a member of the company's fan page. The strategy has been attacked on Twitter, with users adopting the hashtag "#charityfail". Brilliant marketing or worth a bollocking?

So, you want to start a business but have no time or money? That’s no excuse, according to Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin. For seven days, he blogged about his adventures (and misadventures) creating a business for under $500. Now, you too can learn from his journey, follow in his footsteps and discover that the road-blocks to starting a business are often all in the mind.

Every year, Anthill selects its Cool Company Award judges from a variety of fields, from venture capital to intellectual property. They are chosen for the diverse range of experiences and the different interpretations they bring to the concept of 'cool'. Meet Malcolm Thornton, Yvonne Adele, Marion Di Benedetto, Jack Delosa, Jacinta Coyne, Trevor Young, Justin Absalom and Devita Pathi.

At this year's Cool Company Awards, category winners were presented with a trophy that could be described as Australia’s biggest award in business — a 1.2 metre, individually branded bean-bag. Produced by Ambient Lounge, a winner in Anthill's SMART 100 earlier this year, the nine bean-bags, each branded with the award's logo and the category winner's name and accolade, were described by Anthill Editor-In-Chief as "perfect for the office, reception, pool room... or boudoir."

They narrowly missed out on a place in the Top 5 but are still hot in our books. Introducing Anthill’s 2010 5over50 Honourable Mentions.

ADVERTISING: We know what we're doing. We're offering our readers (yes, you) a selection of cheap advertising packages, to help business builders end the year with a bang. Boost your bottom line before the Xmas lull with an Anthill advertising package.

They narrowly missed out on a place in the Top 30 but are still hot in our books. Introducing Anthill’s 2010 30under30 Honourable Mentions.

Real-estate entrepreneurs have never featured strongly in the 30under30. In our opinions, entrepreneurship is not about personal wealth creation. It’s about the process of creation itself! This year, three real-estate entrepreneurs grabbed our attention, not because of the number of Torrens Titles stashed under their beds, but because each has built a business around the real-estate industry at a tender age.

Entrepreneurship and artistic endeavours have much in common. They involve imagination, following your dreams and creating something from scratch designed to make the world a richer place. These three "artistic" entrepreneurs may not have made it into the 30under30 Top 30, but we decided they deserve a place in this year’s broader gallery for their commercial creativity.

The following presentation was shared at the Anthill Online Masterclass Series held in October 2010. Please wait a moment for this presentation to load. Press...

Just because you’ve got visitors to your site, doesn’t mean you’ll get sales, subscribers, or leads. This eCourse is all about conversion – turning traffic into sales. Enter your details below to commence the series.

The moment Google unveiled its novelty technology Instant Search it inspired a young Stanford student Feross Aboukhadijeh to create an Instant search experience for Youtube. He posted his work on Hacker News and, within 24 hours, Feross received a tweet directly from Youtube CEO Chad Hurley asking "Are you ready to leave school?"

5over5 is an Anthill initiative that was launched to encourage and promote game-changing (and often life changing) behaviours, by recognising Australian entrepreneurs, who are over the age of 50 and have started a new business in the past five years.

FREE eBOOK: The latest in Geoff McDonald’s Book Rapper series, this distillation offers Dan and Heath Chip’s Made to Stick articulating how a successful idea gets to the simple truth – the core message. A successful idea, message or product works when its sticky.

"I don't know the figures for how many people are directly employed in automotive manfacturing, I'd guess about 10,000, and we don't know exactly...

Promotion: Does online marketing get you confused? Do you think you could do more for your business by getting your head around social media? Is your website not achieving all its supposed to? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions, you're not alone. That's why we created The Anthill Guide to Online Marketing for Small Business and Startups Email Education Series.

Why is this book upside-down? Because it turned our view on marketing on its head. We’re sending 10 copies of Dan and Heath Chip’s bestseller Made to Stick to the the next 10 readers to...

In the online world, it seems there is not much demand for large graphics of this nature, despite their effectiveness at explaining an often complex message or set of principles. (We know this because we measure traffic with the obsessive zeal of a quantity surveyor on speed.) However, when we received a polite invitation from OnlineSchools.org to post a big graphic on the rise of Facebook, we couldn't resist.