Silicon Beach Australia » Funding

Silicon Beach #8 Mick Liubinskas on start-up basics

siliconbeach — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:53:50 +0000

This week Bronwen Clune and Elias Bizannes talk to the fabulous Mick Liubinskas. There are not many people in Australia who have the sort of web industry experience that Mick Liubinskas and his business partner Phil Morle have, both having been involved in Kazaa and a number of Australian start-ups. Earlier this year, Mick and Phil launched Pollenizer - an advisory firm to help start-ups grow.

We talk to Mick about some of the basics involved in setting up and running a start-up and look at some of the issues that can plague those of us involved in this business, such as launching versus testing. Mick has done a post on this on the Pollenizer blog - which you should definitely add to your RSS. Mick’s advise is always practical and punchy so I hope you persevere through some of the jumpy sound and listen to the full interview. (We may have a Skype solution to hold on to your hats!)

In the meantime, go forth and innovate.

Silicon Beach #6 Rob Antulov on the challenges of bringing Web 2.0 into non-techy markets

siliconbeach — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:28:36 +0000

In this week’s show Bronwen Clune and Elias Bizannes talk to Rob Antulov from 3eep - a social networking solution for sports clubs.

We speak to Rob about how he and his business partner Nick Gonios came up with the idea for 3eep two years ago and all they have learnt since that time. One of the interesting challenges they’ve faced is getting the word out to sports clubs that aren’t always tech-savvy or aware of the benefits of social networking (or even what that is).

Apologies for the recording quality at times, but this was actually take-two after our first recording was barely audible.

Keep listening - we have some other great guests lined up in th coming weeks and let us know if there is anything you would like us to cover or anyone you think we should speak to.

Go forth and innovate. Oh and leave comments people - it makes Elias feel loved and we know every Greek god needs his adoration that and it would be great to get some more feedback.

Photo credit: VJZoo

Silicon Beach #4 Martin Hosking gives his insights into making it as an Australian start-up

siliconbeach — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:44:05 +0000

Martin Hosking has to be one of Australia’s best success stories in creating a vibrant and growing web community with Red Bubble.

RedBubble.com founders Martin Hosking, Peter Styles and Paul Vanzella Photo: Australian Anthill magazine.

Martin is also one of those rare (in the Australian scene atleast) web veterans, having been previously involved in LookSmart, he is also chairman of Aconex, a successful document management service for construction, along with being a co-founder and now chief executive chairman of Red Bubble.

Martin is a great thinker and has some excellent advice for anyone involved in a start-up or community managment. We talk to him about how Red Bubble was formed, the importance of being passionate about the service you create, how to survive the current economic situation as a start-up and whether people are becoming more willing to pay for web services among other things.

We hope you enjoy the show, as this certainly is a valuable listen that you will learn from. Meanwhile go forth and innovate.

Silicon Beach #2 Matthew MacFarlane on Australia’s newest investment fund

siliconbeach — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:58:02 +0000

In this week’s show we chat to Matthew Macfarlane one of the partners in a new investment fund - Yuuwa
Capital - which will concentrate on IT and Life Science oriented start-ups.

Yuuwa - made up of Matt and two other partners - were recently successful in their application for $20 million of matching Federal Government investment under the Innovation Investment fund (IIF) program and have already secured $20 million in private funding. That makes $40 million available for investment.

Matt has personal experience in founding and running a start-up himself, having been one of the co-founders of Vibe Capital behind sites Minti and Gurooze, and he will be looking at all IT focussed funding applications.

In the show we chat to Matt about the process of raising the money, what he hopes to offer anyone who receives funding, how to make a good pitch to him :), how the current economic climate will effect venture funding and what he is looking for in a start-up.

The fund will start looking at investments in February, so there’s time to have a good listen and prepare your pitch for Yuuwa if you feel so inclined.

In the meantime, go forth and innovate.