This morning, Sydney-based Mad Paws, a fast-growing marketplace for pet services, has raised $1.1 million in an oversubscribed funding round. Investors that contributed to the round include Macdoch Ventures, cofounder of HotelsCombined Michael Doubinski, Commonwealth Bank Group Executive Matt Comyn and Managing Director of Amazon Web Services Paul Migliorini.
Design platform Canva today announced a USD$15 million Series A round of funding to continue expanding its platform, which is now used by more than five million marketers, designers and small business owners. This latest round of capital brings the total amount raised by the Sydney-based startup to USD$27 million and gives it a valuation of USD$165 million.
The idea for BuiltWith came in 2007, when Gary Brewer was visiting a lot of random sites, looking at their source code and discovering what platforms they were built with. He was researching elements like the writing of code on the site by viewing the source, seeing if they were made in PHP or if the company was using Windows and similar information in that arena.
This morning, Australia has woken up to a new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. This is a result many startups wanted. After all Tony Abbott did a fine job of making sure he was perceived as a luddite.
Last night, BRW revealed their annual Top 50 Best Places to Work list for the year. Call it a coincidence or call it the stars aligning, but there happens to be a little bit of crossover with our own list of emerging Australian leaders and some of the companies that were chosen by Fairfax. The message it sends is clear: there is a particular group of people breaking down barriers and building sustainable businesses and organisations. These people will no doubt serve as inspiration for the next generation of dreamers, creators and business builders, and that is something to be truly proud of. [Sponsored]
Without a doubt, Wellington-based startup StarNow is one of the most well-known global success stories to come out of New Zealand in recent years. The tech company is a casting and talent platform for the entertainment industry that connects aspiring and professional actors, models, musicians and crew with casting agents and production companies.
Yesterday, Luke Metcalfe announced that he had officially launched another big data play; a new real estate platform under his existing NationMaster brand that was designed to make it easier for people to make more informed decisions when it comes to property.
It shouldn’t have been surprising when I found myself sitting in front of so many women in tech during my visit to its capital Wellington last week, yet I did. The reason I found it surprising is because although Australia is only three hours away from this beautiful windy city, what I found was an ecosystem that was light-years ahead in terms of its diversity and celebration of its female founders and employees.
Over the last few years as our startup ecosystem has grown, it has become common practice for startups facing financial constraints to ‘offer’ unpaid internship opportunities to more often than not younger aged people. A lot of the time these ‘internships’ are built on the hope that it will lead to a paid job in the company, or at the very least give the incumbent ‘free worker’ some really great exposure on what it is really like to work at a startup.
I have mentioned a number of times before that FitTech is starting to become a crowded marketplace in Australia; it feels very similar to the the group buying trend of 2011, which ended in a handful of acquisitions and a truckload of closures.
In March, I wrote an article about Bidz Direct, in which I stated that the startup’s biggest challenge was going to be the bad press surrounding another startup playing in the same space Alphatise. I also said that co-founders Phil Tran and Zaven Matevosian would face some tough questions as they prepared to launch their platform and raise funds.
The Typewriter, founded by UNSW student Benjamin Cheung in 2013, is a global ‘citizen journalism’ platform, which aims to give its readers opinionated content written from a local perspective from individuals on the ground.
Today marks a significant milestone in not just the Australian startup’s journey, but the US drone industry as well, with Flirtey and NASA both anticipating the green light to conduct the first Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved deliveries by drones on US soil in Wise, Virginia as part of an event being labelled ‘Let’s Fly Wisely’.
Education startup Austern International, created by UNSW student Lily Wu and cofounder Jamie Lee, has been set up with the purpose of catapulting students into thinking global when it comes to business, broadening students’ mindsets and allowing them to explore the options available to them.
Melbourne-based Daily Jocks is the perfect example of how using content based marketing to build an audience can end up creating a highly scalable and financially successful internet business.
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