We’re either turning into a really angry, shouty bunch, or it’s just getting easier to untap our anger and put it on show for the world to see thanks to social media. Either way, it’s been fun to see the rise of online stores this year that are helping users send their enemies glitter, bags of dicks, or musical cards that won’t stop playing.
Most people stopped using the Yellow Pages to find a tradesman a decade ago. Since then, the number of websites looking to help consumers connect with the right plumber or electrician has grown exponentially, but the battle is now on between apps looking to corner the tradie market. Despite the competition, Melbourne startup Mr Tradie believes it has the tools to do it.
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.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin, a small leak will sink a big ship. The 20c change from the $4 we hand over for a coffee every morning can add up over time but, thinking them useless and wanting to get rid of heavy coins, most of us routinely waste our change.
This year seems to be the year of the self storage startup. First we got Melbourne’s Boxly, then came – and went – Rocket Internet’s SpaceWays, and Boxbird. Now Melbourne startup Spacelli wants to take a stab at the market.
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.
German home cooking delivery startup Marley Spoon has officially landed in Australia, adding another player to the booming food space as it launches its service in Sydney.
Ask the Australian Government about our nation’s healthcare system and it will tell you that it is broken. From WellOne’s healthcare membership system to health job search platform HealthcareLink, the number of Australian startups that have emerged in the sector over the last few years confirms that there are quite a few problems to be solved.
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.
Local services marketplace Oneflare has today announced that it has raised $3 million in funding and plans to IPO over the coming financial year.
The Australian online restaurant booking market is set to heat up, with Quandoo launching in Sydney this month. Founded in Germany in 2012, the startup expanded around Europe before identifying Australia as an expansion target late last year.
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.
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