bootstrappr by Renai LeMay

From boom to bust, from unconference to BarCamp and beyond, Renai LeMay tracks the fortunes of Australia's startup community. This blog is syndicated from ZDNet Australia, keep fully up to date with Renai at bootstrappr's home

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Nov 28

Social news start-up Streem shuts down

Sydney social news start-up Streem will shut down this afternoon, according to a heartfelt notice posted on the site this morning by its founder Elgar Welch. The start-up formally launched in July, saying it would differ from traditional media outlets by paying readers a small fee for any content they submitted. It also had a number of in-house editorial staff and used wire news services to supplement [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: credit, mumbai, financial crisis, start-ups, elgar welch, scopical, streem, twitter

Nov 20

BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. As I made my way around, taking photos and joining in the sporadic and free-flowing conversations engendered by the 'unconference' format, I heard the words "economic" [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: barcamp, financial crisis, pubcamp, unsw, webjam, start-ups, sydney, students, web 2.0

Oct 08

StartupCamp Melbourne: The review

The StartupCamp phenomenon has struck again: three new Australian start-ups — marketbeagle, bitofpluck and iSportster — were quickly conceived and created in Melbourne over the weekend. (Credit: marketbeagle)Like previous Sydney-based StartupCamps, the effort saw 20-odd people with various sets of skills congregate, this time in the Fitzroy offices of kisla interactive, to take several [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: marketbeagle, bitofpluck, isportster, start-ups, techcrunch, melbourne, web 2.0

Oct 01

Spellr.us needs a new dictionary

One of the only Australian start-ups to present at the recent round of conferences in the US was Sydney-based spellr.us, which has launched a Web-based tool to check and monitor websites for spelling mistakes. (Credit: spellr.us)Founder Kevin Garber, who is also founder and general manager of spellr.us parent company Melon Media, told bootstrappr that the self-funded start-up grew from the need [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: melon media, spellr.us, start-up, sydney, web 2.0

Sep 25

Plugger.com.au gets Wotif backer

Australian business news aggregator Plugger.com.au will re-brand as 'Wotnews.com.au' following a licensing and investment deal with high-profile Wotif.com founder and local multi-millionaire Graeme Wood. Graeme Wood(Credit: Wotif.com)The deal, announced last night, appears to have seen Wood purchase a 50 per cent stake in Plugger at an unannounced valuation. "Wood controls 50 per cent of Wotnews, [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: plugger, graeme wood, start-up, wotif.com

Sep 23

ExitReality's CEO exits, really

Melbourne-based technology start-up ExitReality confirmed yesterday that it had lost its chief executive just before it formally launched last week. ExitReality founder Danny Stefanic (Credit: ExitReality)The company, which purports to allow users to view the entire World Wide Web in 3D through a browser plug-in, had been led by long-time Australian internet executive Dean Jones (the founder and [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 2 comments

Tags: exitreality, ansearch, dean jones, 3d, plug-in, start-up, browser

Sep 22

Omnidrive website vanishes

Questions are being raised this morning about whether high-profile Australian Web 2.0 start-up Omnidrive has closed its doors, with the company's site being replaced by what appears to be some form of newsletter service offering financial rewards. Omnidrive's website(Credit: Renai LeMay/ZDNet.com.au) Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: nik cubrilovic, omnidrive, techcrunch, clay cook, phil morle, start-up

Sep 11

StartupCamp comes to Melbourne

In early October, Melbourne will get its own version of the StartupCamp project that saw three new technology start-ups launched last weekend. (Credit: Steve Woods)The Sydney StartupCamp event was held from Friday night until Sunday afternoon last weekend, and saw 20 would-be entrepreneurs congregate in the offices of Sydney tech incubator Geekdom. It took three start-ups through the whole process [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: startup camp, ups, weekend, writer, start-ups, event, melbourne, web 2.0

Sep 09

Cinergix waves Australian flag

Just one Australian start-up appears to have made the final cut for the US-based DEMO and TechCrunch50 conferences this week: Melbourne-based firm Cinergix, which has produced an online collaborative process design tool dubbed Creately. Each conference sees a host of early stage technology start-ups present to an audience composed of their peers and others such as potential investors and venture [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: demo, techcrunch50, spellr.us, cinergix, creately, bootstrappr, start, conference

Sep 08

Startup Camp Sydney: The review

LinkViz's graphical displayThree new Australian technology start-ups, uTag, TrafficHawk.com.au and LinkViz, were conceived and launched over the weekend in a lightning initiative dubbed "Startup Camp Sydney". The project saw 20 would-be entrepreneurs congregate in the offices of Sydney tech incubator Geekdom, a division of marketing and communications firm the Photon Group, with the aim of creating [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 2 comments

Tags: bootstrappr, linkviz, traffichawk.com.au, utag, start, site, start-up, web 2.0

Sep 02

2Vouch refers well

Melbourne-based Web start-up 2Vouch yesterday launched the first public beta of what it dubs its "social recruiting platform". 2Vouch CEORiges Younan2Vouch aims to help companies find great staff faster and cheaper through enlisting the power of peer referrals, according to the company's founder and chief executive Riges Younan, who outlined his firm's ideas in an email interview with bootstrappr. "Over [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: 2vouch, recruiting, careers, jobs, start-up

Aug 27

MyPerfect.com.au has potential

After 12 months in stealth mode, Drysdale-based start-up My Perfect this month launched what it described as a new type of online search service: a "choice engine". (Drysdale is on the Bellarine Peninsula, just out of Geelong in Victoria, Australia.) Founder Andrew Ballard told bootstrappr the service was like having "an expert in your pocket". "Traditional search engines start with one [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: search engine, seo, my perfect, geelong, victoria, startup, web 2.0

Aug 06

Australian twitterati talks malware

It was inevitable that micro-blogging service Twitter would become infested with malware, according to a number of high-profile Australian users of the service. In the last week Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a fake Twitter profile created solely for the purpose of infecting people's computers with rogue software. Security researcher Avi Raff has also launched a website devoted to Twitter security [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: stephen collins, stilgherrian, gavin heaton, twitter, kaspersky

Jul 28

Silicon Beach Australia

A group of Australian Web technology thinkers and entrepreneurs have started a new Google Group to build the Down Under version of California's famous high-tech development locality. They call it: Silicon Beach Australia. PricewaterhouseCoopers staffer and DataPortability.org founding member Elias Bizannes started the group, registering the domain name SiliconBeachAustralia.org to go along with [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 1 comment

Tags: dot com, entrepreneur, start-ups, google groups, web 2.0, google

Jul 23

Omnidrive: Alive and kicking?

Troubled online storage start-up Omnidrive late last week said it was continuing to develop its products and was examining the potential to merge its technology with that of other companies. Speculation has run rife in Australia's start-up community about the company's future since its chief technology officer, former Kazaa executive Phil Morle, quit in August last year after just six months on [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 1 comment

Tags: kazaa, nik cubrilovic, omnidrive, techcrunch, clay cook, phil morle, storage

Jul 18

Is Streem just Scopical take two?

When I wrote about Sydney-based social news start-up Streem earlier this week, the group was less than forthcoming about the real history behind its operations.The old Scopical website Last week Streem spokesperson Elgar Welch, representing his company as "Streem", told me the group had on 15 July this year launched its Streem.com.au site with support from a number of private investors, who had [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: elgar welch, startups, social news, scopical, streem, sydney

Jul 17

Sydney start-up Streem launches news site

Sydney-based start up Streem yesterday formally launched a new online news site, saying it would differ from traditional media outlets by paying readers a small fee for any content they submit. Streem spokesperson Elgar Welch said the site currently had about eight editorial staff, and also supplemented its content with wire feeds from companies like Australian Associated Press (AAP). However, [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: aap, news, streem, norg media, perthnorg, startup

Jul 17

Bootstrappr comes out of stealth mode

When Apple supremo Steve Jobs was interviewed for the famous 1996 PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds, he clarified exactly why people get involved in technology start-ups. "I was worth over a million dollars when I was 23, over $10 million when I was 24, and over $100 million when I was 25," he told interviewer Robert X. Cringely. "It wasn't that important," Jobs continued. "Because I never [...] Read more »

-- posted by Renai LeMay | 0 comments

Tags: realestate.com.au, startup, wotif, wotif.com, ben barren, ninemsn, steve jobs, apple

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