Sydney Launch Festival + Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups

This time last week, I was in Sydney attending Launch Festival, hosted by Jason Calacanis (pictured above with yours truly). I can honestly say that I got more out of the two days then the cost of flights, hotel and meals! The ticket itself was free for me as a founder of Abide.

The free founder pass was a great motivation to go because even though I had to go to a different city, I could take the plunge because for me, at worst, I could have a bit of a mid-year break in Sydney. I didn’t attend Myriad or Qode because the tickets were so expansive. I did attend Startcon but only because I scored free tickets. Would I pay to go to Startcon? No, because the talks at Startcon weren’t anything special. But the majority of the talks at Launch Festival provided enormous value.

One the first day, the best talks were Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra’s talk on “The Product-Market Fit Engine”. The talk was about creating a leading indicator by asking users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percentage who answer “very disappointed.”, “somewhat disappointed” and “not disappointed”. The way to build a product-market fit then is to focus on the “very disappointed”, figuring out how to keep them. Also, figure out how to convert the “somewhat disappointed” into “very disappointed”. It also means forgetting about the “not disappointed” because there is a good chance that you cannot get to that group without compromising your vision.

I also loved the talk from Shaun Abrahamson on “Reimagining Cities: a Guide to the Future for Startups & Investors”. He used the words catastrophic climate failure in the context that there are already people building businesses under the assumption that we will have a catastrophic climate failure. Whether you believe that we are doomed or not, I am all for cities feeding cities and being more self-contained.

I also enjoyed the panel discussions on both day one and two. I enjoyed the in-depth look at how Masterclass became a successful startup during the fireside chat with David Rogier.

From day two, I learnt a lot from the presentation of Allen Chen of Fitbod who spoke about Growth Metrics that Matter. The talk was about the limits of taking user acquisition and other numbers at face value. Because if someone downloads your app, Fitbod is an app, but never uses it, do you really have a user? This is a simplification. I haven’t been able to track down secondary material on the talk. But I want to!

I also loved the talk from Charles Hudson of Precursor VC on “How Not to Mess Up Seed Round in 2019”. I am not in a position at the moment to raise a seed round with Abide, but it’s always good to be pre-prepared.

Speaking of which, following the festival, I listened to Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups by Jason Calacanis. It was an incredible look at the other side of the startup world. I am not about to become, but hopefully, Abide will soon be in a position where we will need Angel investors. So it’s always great to research ahead and be a bit better prepared.

Back to the festival. Launch also had a demo pit and a competition to get into Jason Calacanis’s accelerator. I enjoyed the pitches and the demo pit. I was able to make a small connection between the Bee App and my cohort mate from Elevate+, Bee One Third. Maybe something fruitful will come from that!

Overall, it was fun. I had a good time, learnt a lot and also got to have a little mini holiday in Sydney and spend some time with my cousin. So all in all, a week well spent!

Design Thinking, Sales, & Go To Market Strategies for Small Business

Last Friday I got to attend a lunchtime workshop hosted by the one and only Anthony Kuhlmann! Anthony is well known in the Brisbane startup scene but only recently launched Red Apple Consultancy.

Friday was a bit of an experiment. Not sure how it went from Anthony's perspective, but I got a fair bit out of it. Sales are probably my weakest aspect. So it's always good to learn as much as I can about this aspect of the business world.

Finally, the workshop took place in Christie Spaces. It's a co-working place I had never visited before. It was very fancy. I am currently in the process of cancelling my membership with Brisbane City Council's Brisbane Marketing, who took over my Little Tokyo Two membership. If I opt to get a new co-working space membership, I might look into Christie Space. But for now, I am sticking to QUT Foundry, which was fancy new space of its own!

Abide Completes Impact Boom Elevate+ Program

On the 6th June, Abide completed the Impact Boom Elevate+ accelerator journey. However, the name was too esoteric, so we changed it. As Abide, we applied for Impact Boom Elevate+ in January. We were accepted and officially started our journey on 5th February. So it's been almost six months of intense work and development that culminated into a pitching event in front of the Deputy Mayor, and nearly 300 other audience members drawn from business, startup and social enterprises from all over Brisbane and Australia.

I am going to write a Medium article about our whole experience. We have also come to the end of Abide's involvement with the QUT Capstone program, who lent us a team of four students to help build search and registration functions for our website. So there is a lot of ground for me to cover. So watch this space for details but for now, thank you to Tom Allen of Impact Boom for picking us. It was an awesome experience!

#WaiTALK A Tale of Two Countries: The AI Edition

On Wednesday, the monthly Women Who Code meetup merged for the night with the launch of the Women in AI’s WaiTALK series. It was also at the Brisbane office of WeWork, which I wanted to check out for quite some time. WeWork is in the old Mincom building, and it’s where I used to work when I worked for Mincom way back when! I have to say, and it was a pretty nifty setup.

Given that this was the launch of Women in AI, there was a bit of a lead into the talk. Max Kelsen, Queensland AI, Young Women Leaders in AI and WeWork It was great to learn a bit about all the organisations, especially since I didn’t know anything about Young Women Leaders and my knowledge of Queensland AI was limited. But then it was on to the main event!

Becks Simpson talked about her sabbatical year working in Canada and China. She compared the AI and innovation scene in those two countries against each other and to Australia. She emphasised the need for diversity, for governmental support and also of dreaming big. I loved how she didn’t shy away from the AI and ethics discussion either.

So I am going to do my best to attend more WaiTALK. I will also make more of an effort to attend more Women Who Code meetups. It should be fun!

Pitch Day for Abide: It's getting close!

We are close to the finish line for Elevate+ Accelerator Program! Here is the 1-minute pitch for Abide, which is our co-living platform that connects students in need of low-cost housing with baby boomers who have space to spare. Come see us and others at the social enterprise celebration and pitch night on 6th June at the Triffid, get your tickets today!