It seems the co-founders are actually focusing on the more interesting side of alcohol delivery startup Liquorun: its logistics management platform. The software platform is now an entity of its own called Swift, which is growing fast and has customers from all over the world.
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.
The number of female tech startup founders in Australia is growing slowly but steadily, increasing from 16 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in 2013, with only a fifth of these founders coming from a tech background.
Sydney-based startup Simply Wall St, which makes the stock market easier to navigate, has just announced the closing of a $600,000 funding round led by Mike Quinn from Innovation Capital, with participation from Sydney Angels and their Sidecar Fund. This brings the total amount raised by the startup to $700,000, including the original investment from AWI ventures.
Caroline Woodhouse’s transition from office manager at a dead-end chiropractic clinic to tech entrepreneur has been rockier than anticipated. Like many non-technical founders, she decided to outsource the development of Where4Events, an event aggregation app, only to end up in a messy court battle, costing her $500,000.
Ten months after merging, Australian startups Beat the Q and Posse have announced the closure of an oversubscribed Series A $5 million funding round led by Westpac’s $50 million venture fund Reinventure and 12-year-old venture capital firm Exto Partners. The new investment will be used to fund product development – specifically, to improve the payment process for customers when dining out or buying coffee and to introduce new features – as well as marketing and scaling merchant acquisition.
This year has seen a boom in wearables. From the flop of the ill-timed (and ill-designed) Google Glass to the recent launch of the Apple watch, fashion and tech seems to be an inevitable match. We can no longer avoid being snobs around the fashion industry, leaving it to designers and manufacturers to figure it out.
But Nuheara, a startup based out of Perth and San Francisco, is set to make this a reality. In partnership with Curtin University in Western Australia, the startup is developing innovative augmented ‘Hearables’ (ear buds) that allow people to control their hearing experience with the help of a smartphone app.
Running has many rewards, including better brain performance, better mood, and better sleep. But if you’re not a fan of running or other vigorous physical activities, the post-workout panting and muscle soreness overshadow the health rewards. French startup Running Heroes has launched in Australia to not only reward avid runners for their dedication, but to also motivate non-runners to start hitting the pavement.
With grammar analysis, sentence rephrasing, word count targeting and plagiarism checking built into the app, GradeProof simplifies the arduous task of text revision. The app is available to use on iPhones and iPads, and targets both students and businesses.
In some ways, the Acorns app is the smartphone equivalent of the piggy bank. But there’s an additional element. It allows people to round up their daily purchases and automatically invest their virtual spare change into a diversified portfolio of index funds.
Despite objections from the startup community, many established and reputable media outlets and public relations representatives in Australia are still spelling startup as ‘Start-Up’ or ‘Start Up’. It may not seem like a big deal, but it’s 2015 and it’s no longer okay to insert a hyphen or a space in between ‘start’ and ‘up’.
Within the last 12 months the global tech startup ecosystem has seen more companies than ever before rise to the status of unicorn. Just this week hipster glasses ecommerce play Warby Parker joined the club with its new billion dollar valuation. In fact, it’s starting to become an occurrance that happens every other month with New York based marketing startup Sprinklr reaching a $1.17 billion valuation in March.
One of the most innovative wearable tech product to reach Australia is Hexoskin. Although founded in North America, Melbourne-based entrepreneurs Dean Delia and Mark Milanese have been able to secure the rights to distribute Hexoskin’s products across the Asia Pacific region.
If you’ve ever been to a bottle shop or boutique wine store and found yourself overwhelmed with the number of options available and the jargon used by salespeople, Sydney-based startup The Wine Gallery may just rock your world.
Daily startup news and insights, delivered to your inbox.
