Mike Nicholls Australian Inventor + Entrepreneur working with a small team of engineers building prototypes from Inventions including two medical devices. Publishes Startup88.com and has assessed/reviewed +500 inventions and +200 startups in the last 3 years. Mentors Sydney Startups via Incubate and other incubators and helps members of the Australian Startup Community via the Startup88.com website with free publicity and advertising. Experience in numerous industries including Digital Publishing, Cloud Computing, Apps, Hardware, Aviation, Real Estate & Finance and Health/Medical Devices.
Just because its the weekend and I love craft beer.
Startup Name
Barrel Backers
What problem are you solving?
America should have a place where people can come together in support of the amazing craft beers they want to get their hands on and experience.With 3,400+ Craft Breweries around the country creating great beers, people should have the opportunity to discover and appreciate them by joining together in voice with the support of technology.
What is your solution?
Barrel Backers is a powerfulcrowdfunding & discovery community for craft beer.Craft beer fans from across the country are using Barrel Backers to rally around the beers they’re excited to drink. When enough people support a beer, an order is placed and the beer will be delivered to their doorstep!
Additionally, fans are also making their voice heard by submitting beers on their wish-lists and voting for the ones they want to see featured in the future.
There are a lot of talented breweries making amazing beers, but they are often hard to get at the local store.
We love great beer and believe people should have a place to join others in expressing their desire for a beer that may not be available to them. We’re thrilled to see Barrel Backers bringing people together around craft beer experiences in a new and innovative way!
Target Market
Consumers
How will you make money?
We currently have two different offerings: 1 People select & pre-order individual beer campaigns which vary in price. Prices range from $35-65 per pack of unique beers most likely unavailable at the local store. 2 Subscriptions – Customers receive packs of great beers selected by our team. Plans start as low as $40 and increase up to $47 a month. This is excellent for people & office teams that want to sit back and discover new beers!
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Co-founded by 2 sets of brothers – all of whomhave a passion for craft beer and entrepreneurship:Dan Rivette: -West Point class of 2001 -Served as a Ranger-qualified Infantry Officer in Iraq from 2003-2004 -Attended Business school in France and worked professionally as a consultant in Europe -Business Development at startups Gojee (Acquired by XO Media Group) & TheRealReal (San Francisco)
Adam Rivette: -West Point class of 2003 -Served as a Ranger-qualified Infantry Officer in Iraq from 2005-2006 -Attended Business school in Italy and was Vice President of Entrepreneurship Club -Product manager for web-based platform in Georgia -Business Development at startups Gojee (Acquired by XO Media Group) & TheRealReal (San Francisco)
Mike Trisler: -West Point class of 1990 -Ranger qualified Infantry Officer – Winner of the Army’s Best Ranger competition in 1995 -Member of Team Earthlink, number one ranked Adventure Racing Team in 2001, 2002 -Professional stuntman and coordinator in numerous Hollywood productions – recently doubled Bradley Cooper in American Sniper
Brian Trisler: -Columbia University class of 1992 -Started and managed multiple businesses in Eastern Europe -Co-founded a business in the elder care industry in 2000 (www.aplaceformom.com) – successfully sold a majority stake of the business with his partners in 2010 to Private Equity firm Warburg Pincus
Ed: Funny how things get screwed up, I nearly didn’t feature this pitch, the details as submitted were a little incoherent and I thought that perhaps someone had let the intern do PR for their company.
But I went and had a look at Pipefy and blow me down but it’s actually excellent, both in idea and execution.
Business processes are one of the toughest things to get right in a new business and if you happen to find yourself in charge of a fast growing business you almost always end up writing custom software to make those processes work properly.
This usually happens when you are stretched for both resources and cash. So if Pipfy can live up to their great looking app this promises to be an excellent way to help startups and businesses keep track of a lot of processes that are currently manually done, kept on spreadsheets or spread between numerous systems.
Good luck guys, great idea.
Startup Name
Pipefy
What problem are you solving?
Like our users, we also struggled to find a good solution. All options available were too expensive and hard to adopt. Beyond license costs, It was required to spend thousands of dollars with IT consultants to customize and implement the available solutions. We know the problem like the back of our hand and know the pain points of our competitors. All of us worked in the field for years modeling processes, with management consulting, ERP implementations and BPM implementations.
What is your solution?
We’re a workflows & process management tool for startups. We help them to organize and run their processes in one place, without the help of IT guy or consultants. We have free templates based on the best practices of A/B Testing, Agile Software Development, Bug Tracking, Content Marketing, B2B Sales Pipeline, Product Roadmap and others… Instead of running your operation with spreadsheets, forms or a patchwork of vertical softwares, you can keep everything organised and running in just one place with Pipefy.
Target Market
Businesses
How will you make money?
$15 per user / month
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Alessio Alionço I founded, raised money, grew and sold my first startup, a local services marketplace called Acessozero (1MM users) acquired by Apontador.com in 2012 (www.apontador.com). Before be an entrepreneur, I worked with M&A and turnarounds at Go4 (www.go4.com.br), a brazllian M&A consulting firm. I acted as a product and sales management specialist, recruiting, training and managing sales teams across different industries like foods, services, b2b, logistics and others.Leandro Johann More than 15 years of experience on software architecture & development, working on implementation, development, automation and integration ofERPs,CRMs andBPMs like Microsoft Dynamics AX, MSSharepoint,Salesforce,TOTVS,FLUIG andDatasul on multinational companies in Brazil and Mexico. I master and teach agile development methods like Scrum, XP (Extreme Programming) and TDD (Test Driven Development).Magnus Varassin Arantes As a entrepreneur have completed the cycle from starting to exit a company a few times. Is a global board member of HBS Angels, a group of angels of HBS alumni. Also an angel investor by his own and professional VC, running a seed stage fund in Brazil. So, he have also completed the complete cycle again as investor. One of this cycles was with Alessio’s first company called Acessozero, where he was investor. Due to the good experience they keep working together and joined Pipefy, as angel investor again.
Ed: Hard to know what to call this app but essentially it provides a management template, process and place to capture a set of key processes for startup’s namely validating your startup’s hypothesis, raising capital, getting press for your startup and tracking key traffic/user/revenue metrics.
Great idea, I particularly like how they have taken the hack work out of of a lot of these tasks by using the APIs from Angellist and Linkedin to find investors and press who might be prospects for your activity and then allowing you to track them in your dashboard.
Startup Name
Foundersuite, Inc.
What problem are you solving?
Entrepreneurship is hard and many founders are first-time entrepreneurs. We help keep them focused and to “do it right the first time.”
What is your solution?
Foundersuite helps entrepreneurs ideate, raise capital, manage PR, track competitors, and update investors.Foundersuite also contains 80+ templates and spreadsheets. Included are pitch decks, models, cap table wizards, term sheets, NDAs, hiring plan builder, sample contracts, and much more.
Target Market
Startup founders, entrepreneurs, “wantrepreneurs,” students and startup consultants. Also incubators and accelerators.
How will you make money?
Subscriptions/Advertisement
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Nathan Beckord previously ran VentureArchetypes LLC, a leading startup advisory firm. Gerry is Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance. Investors include early execs from Facebook, Twitter, Tencent, and more.
Ed: Another move to productise and scale services.
Startup Name
EDLOUD
What problem are you solving?
Coaches, trainers, teachers and experts who want to successfully market and sell their products online, have no simple tool to do that.
What is your solution?
EDLOUD helps coaches, trainers, teachers and experts to grow their business online. The team has created a simple shop system, a strong marketing engine and a powerful network of supporters – all to help education and training businesses to sell online courses, webinars, live training sessions, ebooks and other products through their own websites. Think Shopify for Education and let us turn your knowledge or skill into online revenue.
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Nikolaus Thomale, CEO, was COO & Investor @Luxodo.com (luxury e-commerce, later sold to ISA), helped to build sales at DailyDeal (deal site, later sold to Google), founded @Jurio (Germany’s largest e-learning platform for law students) and started his first business (a rental company for modern art) at age of 16. Jan Zimmek, CTO, was CTO @Localleads (online marketing), CTO @TopTarif (one of Europes largest price comparison sites, later sold to Holtzbrinck), Software Architect @Jamba (Europes fastest growing startup ever) and has not seen a day without writing a line of code since 1989. Moritz Hunsdiek, COO, was MD @Jurio (Germany’s largest e-learning platform for law students), Assistent to the CEO @Langenscheidt (German publisher), worked for Hanse Ventures (Hamburg based incubator) and is our perfect link into the publishing and education industry.
Ed: I believe this an underserved market, development finance is really tough to get, but there is a reason for that.
Property development is a highly risky game with massive rewards once you get it right but so many things can go wrong during the process.
Development Application delays from the council, legal action from neighbours, building delays due to weather and every day you lose comes off the bottom line.
Its a tough market and it has a high failure rate but this problem is real, the banks do a crappy job, my biggest concern is that developers are probably a lot sharper and have a highly honed sense of survival, far more than startups.
The toughest thing is for the investor to ensure they get their share of the profits and the investment vehicle has some methods to enforce this, its not a game for young players.
I note that each project is ASIC regulated which is a step in the right direction.
Startup Name
Estate Baron
What problem are you solving?
We are giving everyone the chance to be able to invest in expensive Melbourne real estate, while providing project developers with the financing they need.
What is your solution?
We provide users with a list of development projects and allow them to invest as little as $2000 for a share of the property, using the model of crowdfunding.
Target Market
Our target market are primarily Men between 25-54 years of age.
How will you make money?
We take a percentage of the returns on each investment.
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Real Estate Crowdfunding has grown to become very popular and successful in the American, European and British market and Australia has just started to catch on. We are one of 3 companies in Australia who provide this service. Crowdfunding is a new and popular way to bring people together to fund a communal project instead of depending on Banks for financial backing all the time.
Accomplice solves the difficulties of creating, executing, and measuring digital marketing campaigns across different channels to produce real business outcomes.
What is your solution?
Accomplice is a digital marketing software and services company that helps you find and execute the optimal mix of digital marketing efforts that drive business results.Our SaaS platform brings marketing and measurement together, improving conversion rates across organic social, paid media, and search advertising. Our services team works with brands and agencies on digital marketing projects ranging from digital strategy to campaign execution to advanced analytics and reporting.
Target Market
Marketers, Media Buyers, Marketing Analysts, and Brand/Media Agencies
How will you make money?
Subscriptions/Advertisement
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Dr. LiorTamir, CoFounder & CEO – Lior is a serial entrepreneur. He advises on innovation, digital marketing, growth, and strategy.Brian Lewis, PhD, CoFounder, President, and Chief Data Scientist – As President, Brian manages the overall business at Accomplice.Andrey Yruski, Chief Technology Officer – Andrey is an entrepreneur and inventor, having co-founded multiple companies, including BigBand Networks, VoloMedia, AudioFeast, and Chichin.
Rachel Wolkowitz, Chief Revenue Officer – Rachel Wolkowitz oversees revenue generation and business development at Accomplice.
Shaun Porcar, CoFounder, VP Business Operations & Growth – Shaun is a seasoned customer success leader and full stack marketer. Idan Benaim, CoFounder, VP Product – Idan is responsible for managing Accomplice’s product roadmap.
Radio lacks a social listening experience and its own live nature makes it very hard to share (the content is ephemeral and requires an ephemeral sharing mechanism).
What is your solution?
The world is changing. Radio is heard by 94% of the United States, but its live nature makes it really hard to share. So we’ve created Hitch Radio: The World’s First Instant Messaging App For Live Broadcast Radio. Type in anything you want to hear and Hitch Radio will search 20,000 Radio stations globally so you can Hitch-a-Ride on the Radio station playing it right now. When you find something great you can send an instant message to your friend. When they open the message they’ll hear everything you’re listening to in real-time. If they Hitch-a-Ride with you, then you become their Driver and can take them from Radio station to Radio station around the globe.Imagine driving down the street listening to the app through your Bluetooth speakers and all of a sudden your Radio station changes, but you didn’t change it… Katy Perry changed it, because you can Hitch-a-Ride on a celebrity – we call them “Star Drivers” – and they can take you with them as they Hitch Rides around the world!
Target Market
Bloggers, journalists, investors, early adopters
How will you make money?
Subscriptions/Advertisement
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Ayinde O.Alakoye is the CEO of Hitch Radio, the world’s 1st instant messaging app for Radio.Awarded the “2013 Emerging Emancipator” (New Media/ Digital) by the 50th Anniversary March on Washington Board of Directorsalongside Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Congressman John Lewis (GA), Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and the Reverend Al Sharpton.Ayinde’s been a live satellite guest on AriseTV (reaching 120M households in NYC, Johannesburg and London); a panelist at USC’s Marshall School of Business discussing Brand and Content Marketing; an on-air guest for KFWB; a guest of The Bill Handel Show (KFI-Los Angeles); an in-studio guest with Dr. Drew’s Loveline Show; and a frequent technology panelist (RadioInk C13, DigitalLA, CEDIA).
Before Hitch Radio, Ayinde was a speech contributor and advisor to Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama, and managed a GOTV office in the crucial battle ground state Ohio for the general election in 2008. A decade prior, he began his media career as the 1 ad sales executive at the 1 billing Radio station in the country, WTOP, and was then recruited by Clear Channel and CBS (Howard Stern), respectively. Ayinde went on to be one of the original creators of iHeartRadio after founding Thumb Radio in 2003.
Ed: For those still practising the dark arts of Search Engine Optimisation this platform is probably about 5 years too late. While Google is the only game in town at least in US & Australia, manipulating your pages to achieve SEO rankings just doesn’t seem to have the juice it did 5 years ago.
I can hear SEO people screaming. While I acknowledge there are some things you can do to really break your search engine visibility, I think the days of playing SEO games are going away.
Only this morning I received a message from Google Webmaster telling me that they couldn’t crawl all my CSS and JS files due to a Theme upgrade and robots.txt rules. They know more about my site than I do.
I think SEO is one of those industries that Google will make redundant in their quest to extract maximum advertising revenue from a search page, already 1/2 the links on a Google search page are either sponsored or Google factoids via other sites.
Google knows a lot about your pages, their composition, layout, CSS, Javascript how well they are laid out, where the advertising is and if there is too much, not much is getting past them.
But that doesn’t mean these guys won’t have a good business for another 5 years, it will take a long time for the rest of the world to realise that SEO, once upon a time when SEO was the best way to earn new leads for my first business I would have liked access to a tool like this.
Startup Name
AgencyPlatform
What problem are you solving?
Most clients complain that SEO agencies take money and then run away or do not communicate. Sharing our dashboard with their clients will increase transparency and help build trust between agency and their client. Plus we have some killer presales audits which help agencies convert leads into customers.
What is your solution?
White Label Software + Digital Marketing service. Dashboard features include Presales SEO Audits, Call Tracking, Web Lead tracking, Live Chat Tracking, Business Review Tracking, Facebook and Twitter Analytics, Social Post Scheduler, Twitter Lead Generator, KPI reports for SEO, PPC & Social etc. All of this powered by our white label service. We do all the work for your agency and you and your clients can track all of our work using the dashboard.
Target Market
Web design agencies, SEO Companies, Web development companies, Digital Agencies.
How will you make money?
Subscriptions/Advertisement
Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity?
Since this is a white label product, do not want to share too much details about founders/ company. Agencies do not appreciate it.
