Finally attended a Silicon Beach Australia Virtual Pitch Night!

Silicon Beach is Australia’s largest network of startup communities and it is a community I have wanted to stay connected to for some time. Yesterday, I was finally able to attend one of their pitch nights!

There were some great pitches from people trying to solve some real, pressing problems. The one I related to the most was Wirl App. Just because I often use food to keep myself functioning. Not great for the waist line but beats not being able to get out of bed! Wirl was one of the winners from the night.

The other winners were Diana’s Closet, which is a curated online clothing store. I loved her personality and her style is great too! I can see myself buying from her.

The other big winner was GoMicro which allows you to assess food quality using your mobile. As someone who struggles to judge fresh food lifespan, this is something I would buy if it were to become a consumer item. Although right now GoMicro seems to be focused more on large scale businesses.

Of the other pitchers, I noted MyAxis as someone who appeared to be post-revenue, which is always a strong selling point for a startup. Also, Terran Industries is trying to tackle climate change and currently raising capital. While Coat’d startup is trying to market a long-term disinfectant.

Other pitches were delivered from:

• Gowell

• Nutribe

• Harpoon Analysis

• Query Law

• Silfresh

• Real Fringe Hair Bands

I have definitely missed a few and my apologies to the ones I missed. My notes were not exhaustive. Anyway, a good time was had by all and I look forward to the next pitch!

UQ Ventures Entrepreneurship Bootcamp - MVP Development + Kalvitree

A new experience for December and Thursday, I got to have a nice “fireside chat” style session with Marvin Fox for the MVP Development Workshop as part of the UQ Ventures Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Business Bootcamp for Australian alumni and ex-pats in Mumbai. The BootCamp is delivered in partnership with the Australian Consulate-General in Mumbai.

The session went for two and half hours, during which I discussed my experience developing MVPs, pitfalls when developing and releasing MVPs, finally engaging in the philosophical discussion of what even is an MVP!

It was a great experience and I hope to do more of these types of sessions and give back to the university and startup communities in 2022.

Another thing I am looking forward to in 2022 is continuing to assist in the growth and development of Kalvitree as their tech advisor on their brain trust. Subha Chari and the Kalvitree team had a big win recently by being chosen as one of the recipients of the Techvista, Catalysr Migrapreneur Activate Grant (MAG). Here’s hoping for more good things for Kalvitree in the new year to come!

SEVENTEENx Brisbane '21

I have signed up to attend a few events in November and already I missed one but this time last week, I did manage to attend SEVENTEENx at QUT’s Room Three Sixty.

I didn’t know what this event was about, all I knew was that Tom Allen was speaking at it and since it’s been some time since I got to hear Tom speak, I thought, why not! The event featured four speakers who talked about how they are incorporating and addressing the UN’s Global Goals into their business. It was a great event with inspirational speeches and really made me want to get back into the social impact space.

The featured speakers were Danielle Duell from People with Purpose, Tom Allen from Impact Boom, Larissa Rose from GG Enviro, Billie Murphy from Solar Buddy and Dan Allen from Trade Mutts. I also ran into my Impact Boom Elevate+ cohort mate Sameer Punde or EcoWeeders.

It was a great way to spend a humpday evening. I am glad I made the effort to attend and I look forward to attending the rest of my November events!

Implementing Digital Transformation to be more Efficient and Effective

As part of my effort to give back to the communities that have helped me, I presented a free webinar for Sarina Russo Entrepreneurs. So here's me giving an introduction to digital transformation.

I hope I brought some value to the attendee. I am in talks with Sarina Russo Entrepreneurs to do a webinar on more specific implementation steps that business owners can act on. So watch this space for more information!

Group Mentoring with Nyree McKenzie

I spent the first Friday of March by attending a group mentoring with Nyree McKenzie, the founder of Bidhive and a fellow MIT Bootcamp Alumni. She also won the AWS 2019 Founder of the Year.

It was a great session that covered Nyree’s journey and the lessons she learnt along the way. She emphasised the need to have your personal life aligned with your founder dreams. She talked about how her previous business, Thought Bubble, that she spend 16-year building was both a source of inspiration that lead to Bidhive but also something she now has to exit to commit to Bidhive.

She pointed to some tech she found very helpful. Namely Canny, which she is using to gather customer feedback to help her map out a product roadmap that will lead to her releasing exactly what her customers want. It’s a great idea. I will note that tool down for future use.

Speaking of tools, and a slight aside, I don’t think I ever mentioned Kiite.ai, which can be used to create a sales playbooks. It was recommended to me during a sales workshop I attended. But I don’t think I ever blogged about it. But I think it’s worth noting here. Because sales strategies were something Nyree covered at length. She mentioned that from day 1 she only went after enterprise, using language that would cause small businesses to self exclude. Enterprise can be a mixed market to go after but it has its downsizes. Namely, procurement processes for Enterprise are long and complex. So the conversion takes time. Also, per Lewl Jury’s mentoring talk last month, Enterprise customers are very needy when it comes to customer care attention.

Nyree has earmarked Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a way to help ease some of the pressure currently on her small group of staff. RPA is something I am familiar with through my work with Comprara. I will definitely watch Bidhive to see how Nyree’s strategies workout.

Overall, it was a great talk. I am glad I attended. I asked a bunch of questions. But I left straight after and thus missed the River City Labs, First Friday Bytes. I wish I stuck around but I was “peopled out” as they say. But maybe in April, I’ll get to attend the First Friday Bytes!