A piece of wisdom that nearly all financial advisors relay onto their clients is “small change, over time, can add up to big savings.” Millennials seem to embrace this philosophy more than other generations according to a study by UBS. Some old-fashioned folks still use piggy banks or coin jars to store loose change and keep our wallets light. But over the years, what they end up with is a heavy collection of 5-cent, 10-cent and 20-cent coins that sit quietly on shelves gathering dust or in drawers beneath a pile of other items. The rest of us have probably ditched the piggy bank and are harnessing the power of mobile apps to manage our expenses. But 50 cents here and there rarely make it into our investment plans. This is where Acorns comes in.

A UBS study published in January 2014, called Gen Y the “most fiscally conservative generation since the Great Depression.”

“Millennials seem to be permanently-scarred by the 2008 financial crisis,” said Emily Pachuta, Head of Investor Insights, UBS Wealth Management Americas, in the report.

"They have a Depression Era mindset largely because they experienced market volatility and job security issues very early in their careers, or watched their parents experience them, and it has had a significant impact on their attitudes and behaviors."

Millennials hold the bulk of their assets in cash and prefer saving over investing. Acorns Grow, a FinTech startup founded by father and son team Jeff and Walter Cruttenden in Newport Beach, California, wants to change the attitudes of the current generation, transforming them from post-recession conservatives to savvy risk-taking investors. 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.

This is how it works: after providing their name, DOB and address, users link the mobile app to their bank account and/or credit card; they then choose their investment portfolio (from low-risk to aggressive), and select how they would like to deposit. As users make purchases they can invest the virtual spare change by rounding up transactions to the nearest dollar. For example, if they purchase a t-shirt that costs $29.50, this can be rounded up to $30 with 50 cents going into the investment portfolio. Or, if preferred, the user can set up recurring deposits.

Although Acorns Grow Inc. was founded nearly two years ago, the app was launched in the US in August 2014. The startup has since raised US$32 million to date, the most recent raise being a Series C round of US$23 million from Greycroft Ventures and e.Ventures, Sound Ventures, Garland Capital, and MATH Venture Partners.

A month after the close of the round, the startup is now making its way into Australia. Yesterday it was announced that Sydney based investment firm Instreet Investments has entered into a 50/50 joint venture with Acorns Grow. Australia is the first country outside of North America to secure a partnership to co-develop and launch a localised version of Acorns, which already has a 750,000-strong subscriber base.

Commenting on the Australian expansion, co-founder and CEO Jeff Cruttenden said, “Acorns has always wanted to take the app to international markets and do so with a company that has strong local knowledge in the financial services sector. We were introduced to Instreet and quickly realised they shared our vision of solving the worldwide savings and investment problem, through simple technology.”

The Australian operation is being led by George Lucas and Tony Fay. Since establishing the joint venture in March, the company has hired a dedicated Chief Operating Officer, Brendan Malone, former CAO for RBS’ APAC investment banking presence, and will invest in further talent in the coming months, including marketers, programmers and customer service staff.

In a short period of time, Lucas believes Acorns has “revolutionised how people perceive investing in shares, making it simple and making it appealing to those either new to investing or those who don’t want to deal with a broker or financial advisor.”

He told Startup Daily that saving and investing is on many people’s ‘to do’ list, but “slips by the wayside as it takes time and discipline.”

“The beauty of Acorns is that it is a simple way to invest as it links spending, which comes easily to most of us, to saving. By linking the app to a bank account and/or credit card, users can develop their investment portfolio with minimal effort every time they make a purchase,” Lucas added.

The reason why Acorns is so ‘disruptive’ is because it offers a completely new approach to investing that appeals to younger generations, without being an either/or proposition.

“Acorns is a disruptor within the financial services sector and this will be no different in Australia, where smartphone penetration is high and where there is room for a micro investing platform like Acorns. Dubbed the new millennial savings and investing strategy, Acorns provides a unique, low entry-point for anyone to get started saving and investing,” said Jeff.

“[Acorns] complements current investment and saving strategies that people use, such as share trading, saving and superannuation.”

For the uninitiated, an index groups together the largest companies and tracks their movement in the overall market. Most index funds identify an existing well-known index that is usually maintained by a third party - like the ASX Top 50 - then build a fund that either owns every asset in the index or achieves the same end by holding similar securities. An index fund aims to replicate the performance of a given index of stocks or some other form of investment. When investors purchase shares of an index fund, they are purchasing shares of a portfolio that contains the securities in an underlying index. This is a form of passive investing.

Performance of an index fund, however, does not usually match the actual index's performance. This is because index funds charge management fees, which decreases returns. Also, the fund's weighting in particular securities may not match the weighting of the securities in the actual index.

Lucas explained that there are two traditional ways to buy index funds. The first is buying from a fund manager. But this requires an account minimum of around $10,000. The second option is to buy an Exchange-Traded Fund (EFT) on the market. This requires setting up a broking account and also incurs broking fees, which eats into returns.

The benefits of using Acorns are that there are no account minimums and no commissions charged on trades. For the first AU$5,000 in an account, the flat annual fee is $15, and users can add or withdraw money without incurring extra costs. For savings beyond $5,000, a fee of 0.275 percent (for $6,000, that would be $16.50) will be charged.

With Acorns, users have access to diverse investment portfolios created in consultation with Nobel Laureate economist, Dr. Harry Markowitz. Dr. Markowitz is the father of modern portfolio theory, which is now the basis of what many fund managers use globally. The investment portfolios consist of Australian listed exchange traded funds covering Australian, International and Fixed Income markets.

Lucas believes Australians aged between 25 and 35 will be early adopters, though insisted that the app can be used by everyone, depending on their aspirations and goals, “from young families using it to build a nest egg for the future, to people in their twenties looking to fund an overseas trip, or grandparents using it to create a savings fund for their grandchildren.”

“We strongly believe Acorns will be a game changer in Australia. The Australian financial services market is focused on superannuation and advice around superannuation, whereas Acorns is concerned with investing outside superannuation for small and large investors,” said Lucas.

“It is fast becoming an educational tool for younger or new savers and is an easy way to start building wealth.”

The Australian version of Acorns is currently in its beta phase, and will be available to download via iTunes and Google Play early 2016.

Featured image: Acorns co-founders father and son team Jeff and Walter Cruttenden.

Image: Workforce.com

Featured image: York Butter Factory.

Image: Fitbit bands. Photo credit: Justin Sullivan.

Imagine a world where you can hear what you want to hear. Sounds impossible, right?

The startup’s flagship product, which was only unveiled last month at the Wearable World Congress in San Francisco, can be described as a hybrid between assisted listening devices, Bluetooth earplugs and noise-cancelling headsets without cables or wires.

Whether it’s augmenting speech in social environments, listening to music in stereo, or connecting to voice enabled apps like Siri or Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, Nuheara’s aim is to give the consumer the power to orchestrate their hearing experience via the Nuheara app and with the tap touch functionality on the ear buds.

At some point in the past decade or two, wearing earphones and headphones became socially acceptable and then mainstream. The widespread adoption of such products led to the emergence of a new experience: the private public experience. By wearing a pair of headphones or earphones, people instantly disconnected from the physical world despite them being physically present in it. By splitting 'physical' and 'mental' events, headphones and earphones have allowed people to privatise public spaces and coincides with our growing desire for personal space.

However, there are downfalls to this. For instance, if a person is crossing the street while listening to audio at a volume that overpowers environmental noise, they may not hear cautionary sounds like car horns or ambulance sirens. This could lead to - and has led to - accidents. Or, if someone is listening to music while walking back home from the local train station on a quiet night, they may not be able to identify or respond quickly to danger in their environment.

With Nuheara, the user can adjust the volume and clarity of the various sounds in their environment. If they’re listening to a playlist on Spotify, for example, but still want to be able to hear what’s going on in their physical environment, they can push the music back into the background, so it’s less prominent than, say, the sound of footsteps approaching the user or cars driving by.

Nuheara’s tehnology can also be used to cancel out sounds that are bothersome in particular circumstances. For instance, if the user picks up a phone call while travelling on a noisy bus and can barely hear the person on the other end of the call, they can open up the Nuheara smartphone app and tune out the chatter in the background and focus on the phone conversation. Or, if the user is having coffee with a friend at a busy cafe and finds it difficult to keep up with the conversation due to background noise, they can augment that person’s speech.

The processors inside the ear buds can recognise what is and what isn’t speech, allowing the user to adjust surrounding sounds to their liking. The technology is effective to the point where users can be at a football game and turn the volume of the cheering crowd down and focus on the commentary, while still being able to converse with the friend sitting in the adjacent seat.

Preferences for each scenario can be saved for future reference so that users don’t have to constantly adjust the settings when they’re in different environments. If the user is on a bus, they can select the settings that were saved previously for when they’re on a bus. Or if they’re in a noisy cafe, they can select the settings that were saved previously for when they’re in a cafe.

Many more hypothetical scenarios can be presented, but essentially, Nuheara has reimagined the future where consumers have the power to hear what they want to hear, literally.

Nuheara was founded by Justin Miller and David Cannington who have 50 combined years of experience commercialising hearing technology. Miller, who is based in Perth, was the founder and CEO of industrial hearing technology company Sensear. Cannington, who is originally from Melbourne and relocated to San Francisco 20 years ago, was the Global Chief Marketing Officer of the same company.

During their time at Sensear, Miller and Cannington were approached numerous times by people wanting to find out how they could get their hands on the company’s technology for personal use. Because Sensear’s technology was designed for the industrial market, it got Miller and Cannington thinking of how they could potentially bring that technology to the consumer market. It wasn’t long before the wearables industry began to explode; and Miller and Cannington recognised an opportunity.

International IT research organisation, CCS Insight, forecasts 250 million wearables to be in use by 2018. According to a report titled produced by Nick Hunn titled The Market for Smart Wearable Technology, Hearables will be worth $5 billion by 2018 - roughly the same size of the entire wearables industry currently.

Nuheara is also straddling other multibillion markets: the hearing aid market ($6 billion per annum) and the headphone market ($8 billion per annum). Added to that, thousands voice-enabled apps like SIRI and Google Now are becoming more mainstream. Nuheara is looking to capitalise on the intersection of these high-growth markets.

Nuheara’s hardware and software is being built in partnership with Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia. The university has a strong background in the research, development and testing of advanced audio digital signal processing technologies. Professors Sven Nordholm and Kevin Flynn from Curtin University of Technology are joining the company as co-founders and will be part of its management and development team. Nuheara, however, will retain 100 percent ownership of all IP developed as result of the partnership with the university.

Nuheara has been in stealth mode up until last month when it revealed its prototype at the Wearable World Congress in San Francisco.

Cannington said the response at the conference was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging: “Hundreds of people at the conference came to our booth and were just blown away by our technology.”

“It’s really exciting. We’d like to think that in a couple of years from now, we’re going to be the most talked about wearables company to come out of Australia.”

Adding to this, Miller said, “We’ve spent a lot of time in the last six months proving the concept. What we’re doing is fairly difficult, and we didn’t want to put ourselves out there if we weren’t sure we can do it. We came out in confidence knowing we’re on track to building what we [envisaged].”

Miller, who lives in Perth, also mentioned he was amazed by the wearables ecosystem in Silicon Valley. Cannington on the other hand, who is based in Silicon Valley, said he lives and breathes wearables every day, so it was hard for him to believe consumers in other parts of the world are only beginning to understand and adopt wearable technology.

Nuheara was accepted into the Wearable World Labs accelerator. Wearable World will become a shareholder in Nuheara, and is currently assisting the startup’s market development programme.

Last month, the startup also announced its plans to reverse list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) later this year. Wild Acre Metals (ASX: WAC) is set to acquire 100 percent of Nuheara, making the startup the first wearables company to list on the ASX. The news was announced ahead of major wearables player Fitbit opening up its Initial Public Offering later this week.

Miller told Startup Daily they weren’t actively looking to list on the ASX; rather it was a matter of circumstance. The ASX  only had 14 mining IPOs last year, and is expecting fewer this year. With the focus shifting away from the mining boom and towards the tech boom, many shell companies are looking for ways to survive. By acquiring tech companies, mining companies have a chance to capitalise on the growth of the technology sector in Australia.

Miller also highlighted the speed of the reverse listing process compared to the time it takes to pitch to one investor after another for the same amount of money.

“When you’re in an emerging tech company, speed is absolutely critical,” said Miller.

Cannington said Nuheara will also be looking to raise additional funds later this year on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. This will help the company generate traction ahead of its launch, and also assist the company as it moves to the next stage of mass production and commercialisation. By the time the company launches its product into the market, they would need to have spent at least couple of millions of dollars on research and resources, according to Cannington.

“What we’re doing is extremely difficult. We’re not just a software company that can be started and launched fairly quickly. The team we have in Perth are made up of some of the world’s best audio technologists and digital signal processing gurus, if you like. We’ve got a great team building technology that cannot be easily replicated. There are a lot of different layers of expense, mostly resource-based. That’s why we’re raising capital,” said Cannington.

Adding to this, Miller stressed the company is not out to create another cool widget or gadget. The company’s strategy is not to simply create a product that integrates with, and extends the utility of, existing technology, but to build a platform ecosystem. The vision is, in many ways, similar to that of Apple’s before it launched the first iPhone. Apple didn’t just create a hardware product, it created a platform, allowing developers to then create apps that are compatible with Apple’s mobile operating system.

Similarly, Nuheara’s plan is to reach critical mass and encourage app developers to create and deliver voice-enabled solutions across a range of consumer-driven needs and associated smart devices.

“Our aim is to be a platform that will enable people to run their own software - whether that’s voice recognition software, translation software or something else. We’re allowing app developers to be creative. For instance, if you think about translation on the fly, where Chinese speech hits the plug and English comes out on the other side, that’s where we’re moving to,” said Miller.

“On top of that, we [as a society have] become very visual. We’re always looking down on our phones. Our aim is to bring people’s heads back up so they can speak out their text messages, or use speech to do other things.”

The co-founders believe Nuheara ticks the three key boxes required for growth and longevity of wearable companies. Nuheara spoke with the International Data Corporation (IDC), who said there the first of the three factors are to go beyond the smartphone. Wearable technologies need to offer functionality that's independent of the smartphone.

The second is: make something that looks and feels cool.

“We’re not about providing some hearing assistance; we don’t want our technology to be categorised as a hearing aid. I think industrial design does a fantastic job of delivering coolness. What we want to do is deliver a product that people feel proud of wearing,” said Miller.

And the last is: solve a problem.

“Things like the smartwatch are going to end up at the back of people’s drawers, because they’re not necessarily solving day-to-day problems,” said Miller. “We believe we tick all three boxes.”

The co-founders also acknowledged the importance of having a global mindset, a sentiment that well-respected Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur Steve Blank has communicated many times.

Blank’s article, Born Global or Die Local – Building a Regional Startup Playbook, reflects on the attitudes of Australian SportsTech entrepreneurs who, he found, were more focused on local dominance than achieving global scale. From his interactions with Melbourne-based founders, he realised that “most of the founders who said they wanted to grow big hadn’t given much thought about how they would go about building size and scale.”

“The biggest mistake for most of these startups was not understanding that optimizing their business model for the 24 million people in the Australian market would not prepare them for the size and scale they needed to get to big,” Blank writes.

“Instead of beginning with just a focus on Australia, these startups needed to use the business model canvas and articulate which of their hypotheses should be tested locally and what would require getting on an airplane to test by watching someone’s pupils dilate face-to-face.”

Agreeing with this view, Cannington said the challenge for many Australian companies - even funded ones - is that they’re not thinking globally from the get-go.

“Generally, they (startups) are not as comfortable making that big leap into the global market, whether it’s through Asia or the US,” he said.

“What helps us (Nuheara) stay ahead of everyone else is we’re already there (in the US). We’ve already tapped into global networks. The learning curve for us is smaller than most other Australian startup founders.”

Cannington added, “We are an Australian founded audio wearables company. But where is the wearables ecosystem in Australia? It’s non-existent. We’re fortunate that we’re smack bang in the middle of the biggest wearables ecosystem in the world (in Silicon Valley).”

Miller said that many Australian startups say that they’re globally-oriented, but their words don’t ring true when it comes to practice, because they’re not implementing a global strategy.

“Quite often that means establishing a physical presence in other countries. To say you can do everything from here (in Australia), it’s actually not that easy,” said Miller.

Moving forward, a big challenge for Nuheara will be educating the market about the capabilities of its technology.

“It’s not necessarily going to be easy for us to explain what our technology can do. Unless they physically test it out, it’s going to be difficult to understand. This is because the experience is going to be different for different people,” said Miller.

“But we believe in the power of social media and the power of peer reviews. That will educate the market quicker than anything else.”

Nuheara plans on taking its product to market by the end of 2016. Nuheara’s ear buds will cost around $300, not all that different to a pair of Beats ear buds, while Nuheara’s smartphone app will be free to download from iTunes and Google Play.

Featured image (L to R): David Cannington & Justin Miller, Co-founders of Nuheara.

Featured image: UX artwork. Credit: Chris Labrooy.

Powerhouse companies like Apple and Google can certainly attribute some of their growth to having an open Application Programming Interface (API). APIs are not only powerful customer acquisition tools, but are relied upon by hundreds of thousands of startups globally, whose business models can boom or bust on the back of tweaks or changes to the ‘mother’ company’s API. A simple change in the ability to access an API can cause a crushing blow to any startup. For example, Meerkat, a live video streaming application, was heavily affected when Twitter decided to choke off access to its API, following the acquisition of Meerkat’s competitor Periscope. Although these changes can have an impact on businesses dependent on APIs, a newly incorporated consumer hardware company, the IoT Group, believes the way forward is to create products that are ‘ecosystem agnostic’.

Founded by Simon Kantor, Ian Duffell, Sean Neylon and Valery Lipkin, the Sydney-based company is the amalgamation of three existing businesses - OK Watch, a company that creates affordable smartwatches, ROAM Systems, a technology design and development company, and InnovativePTV, an internet-based TV network. The company is now gearing up to release a set of new products in the upcoming months - a smart watch for tradies called the ‘Trademaster’, a sports luxury smartwatch, a selfie drone and augmented reality headsets - ahead of listing on the ASX at the end of the year.

Although brands like Apple want to bind consumers to their technology ecosystem, IoT Group’s CEO Kantor believes that, ultimately, everything is connected and there are ways to move past those boundaries.

“Everything is already connected behind the scenes - through the cloud, through apps, through APIs, and so all we do is we make little software modules that take care of the difficulty in that connection. Most people don't know how to set up a VPN channel between one device and another; to get two devices talking to each other is difficult. We make that process simple,” said Kantor.

He didn’t deny that creating wearable and smart devices that are ecosystem agnostic is a growth strategy for the company, but felt it was more about removing restrictions at a time when large companies are looking at ways to ‘own’ a large portion of the consumer market.

“Every company tries to get you into their ecosystem, so if you have Apple products, they want to bind the consumer to their ecosystem. If you have an Apple phone, you need an Apple watch; if you have a Macbook, you need Apple TV; you need Apple Air for your wireless; so everything becomes Apple. That being said, it's quite similar with PC as well, so if you have PCs and you're running Windows, you need to have a Windows compatible router, and so forth,” said Kantor.

“That being said, Microsoft is actually taking leaps and bounds forward by making an operation system that works across mobile devices as well as desktops, so essentially they're also moving in the same direction. But obviously they're trying to target their consumers into the Microsoft ecosystem, so with in-app purchases, there’s this whole sense of ‘we'll give it to you for free, but then you have to buy all these other things online for it to work properly’. We're the opposite; we give it to you for an affordable price, and you don't need to buy anything. It all works for you straight away.”

Though it may appear that the IoT Group is taking on the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft, Kantor said the company is not looking to threaten their ecosystems or undermine their interests.

“We want to complement [them] and actually get more people using their products by removing barriers to entry. Apple may be stricter than Android, but I think we’ll work well together. At the same time, if people want to use a Windows product, our devices could link the ecosystems together," he explained.

"That said, if Apple really wanted to, I’m sure they could find ways to cut us off if they consider us a threat. When you want your apps to be on Apple App store, you have to submit your code and all your intellectual property for Apple to approve it, so they can definitely find ways to do it. But we’re not worried about that.”

Kantor believes the value in the company’s offerings lies in their affordability. In fact, the company is firmly positioning itself as an affordable, mass-market consumer hardware supplier, with most of its devices costing under $300. Kantor said IoT Group’s mission statement is “to make tomorrow’s technology affordable today”.

The company doesn’t necessarily invent new technologies, but recreates what already exists and makes it accessible to the general consumer.

“We have innovations that have been concocted and thought of in the past six months or so, or cutting edge technology that’s just coming out, and make it available to the general consumer at an affordable price. Google had a similar model with their early devices, however with the latest Nexus they've obviously gone with the high-price model,” Kantor said.

Kantor said the devices the company chooses to create are not necessarily based on what’s trending in the market, but rather are based on the actual needs of the market.

“Trends allow us to capitalise on the market. But the needs are what allow us to create products that impact our audience,” said Kantor.

“We want to the give the consumer the latest tech, but with [vital functionality]. For our devices, wireless charging is standard. Interactability between environments is standard. The ability to sync multiple cloud accounts is standard. We put all that functionality into simple devices.”

To identify high-value consumer needs, the IoT Group does extensive market research. Kantor said a lot of companies talk about being consumer-focused, but they don’t actually embrace the practice of consumer-led innovation.

“We'll go out and talk to a thousand people in different focus groups and see what it is they do on a daily basis and what they use their phones for. We ask them: if they had a smartwatch what would be the main function they would use it for?” said Kantor.

“All the larger companies are releasing smartwatches for the sake of releasing smartwatches, whereas we're bringing out two smartwatches that would help people in their everyday lives.”

It may have been one of the most eagerly awaited products of the last few years, but a couple of months after it launched, the Apple Watch saw a steep decline in sales: about 90 percent, from 1.5 million in the first week following its launch in April to less than 20,000 a day since June, according to Californian analytics firm Slice Intelligence. Though it’s not certain why the Apple Watch has become progressively less popular, some have speculated that it might be because Apple’s advertising doesn’t clarify how the Apple Watch would be useful to consumers.

Prior to creating the smartwatch for tradies, the IoT Group spoke to tradies to identify high value pain points. All of the tradies said the same thing: they constantly break their smartphone screens and they can’t use their smartphones when their hands are dirty. From that, the company deduced that what a tradie need is a waterproof and shockproof phone on their wrist - that is, a smartwatch that can withstand falling into a bucket of water or cement, and even has a laser tape measure.

“An Apple watch isn't that. You're not going to wear an Apple watch if you're laying bricks for a house. You may wear one if you go out at night, but then it becomes a fashion accessory as opposed to a device that's useful,” said Kantor.

The sports luxury smartwatch targets the active consumer who doesn’t want to wear a watch and a Fitbit band.

Kantor said the IoT Group’s augmented reality headsets, called Focus Head Up Display (HUD), are significantly cheaper than the Oculus Rift - the former will be under $200 as opposed to $2,000. He admits however that while theirs may not be as advanced as the Oculus Rift, it will be functional.

“There are many companies that are working on augmented reality headsets - Microsoft, Oculus Rift which Facebook now owns. They've been talking about it for two years, and nothing has come out. And if you really want it, you can order it on Kickstarter but it will cost you an exorbitant amount of money and your functionality will be limited,” said Kantor.

“What we say is, we may not be as good as the Oculus Rift, but we're going to be pretty close and it’ll allow you to do things that you want to do on a daily basis. If you're an architect, you can visualise your new creation. You don't have to wait for Microsoft to release theirs.”

Currently, the IoT Group has a portfolio of 25 to 30 devices - including its range of OK Watches which costs between $89.00 and $399.95, sold online and at selected Coles stores - and has plans to release another 20 in the next year or so.

It may not sound like a lean operation, but Kantor believes otherwise. There are 15 people working at the company’s Sydney City headquarters, including engineers and product specialists who are well-versed in the manufacturing process, having built things like naval vessels. The company also has a network of consultants, engineers, and industry specialists that it refers to when needed.

“We’ve put together a really lean company from the point of view of production and overheads. We do the design, we do the engineering, we do all the clever and intricate work that goes into innovation, but we don’t get bogged down and stuck on trying to come up with new ways to deal with everyday solutions. We take that from the industry,” said Kantor.

An example he presents is the wireless charger, which has been around for a few years now but is only starting to be integrated into the latest devices.

“It should have been in all devices made in the last four years. There’s new technology where you have passive radio frequency charging, which is where you actually take power from radio signals in the air all around us. For low power devices like our tracking card, we can actually power them indefinitely from ambient radio frequency," said Kantor.

"That’s not something we came up with; that came out of TechCrunch Disrupt this year. But we’ve gone out to find out how it works, we’ve spoken to the company that has invented it and we’re developing a partnership so we can give the consumer affordable innovation.”

The IoT Group is planning to open up its IPO in December, or in the first quarter of next year, depending on its revenue and run rate in the coming months. This will help the company raise the capital it needs to make some key acquisitions, hire talent, and accelerate international growth.

“We need capital to accommodate our growth plans overseas and to allow us to set up a strong manufacturing production line. There are also a couple of acquisitions that we'll be looking at to bulk out the rest of the company's divisions, primarily in home automation and energy. We want to be the leader in the Internet-of-Things space, particularly in the Asia Pacific region.”

As to why the company would rather list on the ASX than raise capital from venture capitalists, Kantor said the funding pool is “limited” in Australia and the deal terms are “quite fierce.”

“In Silicon Valley, there is a much bigger appetite for technology companies and there are endless rounds of investment. Whereas here, it's quite different. In order for us to keep the company in our own hands, and to propel our vision forward, an IPO is the way to go,” said Kantor.

“Unfortunately, this (going public) is the only option for tech startups if they really want to stay in Australia.”

If all goes to plan in terms of listing on the ASX, the IoT Group would be the second wearables company to list on the ASX, following Perth-founded startup Nuheara, which created augmented ‘Hearables’ (ear buds) that allow people to control their hearing experience with the help of a smartphone app.

Kantor also believes Asia is going to be one of Blrt’s strongest markets, especially countries like like India that’s experiencing increased levels of digital penetration and where there’s a need for affordable consumer products. When it comes to rapidly growing and emerging economies like India, smaller players like the IoT Group may experience greater success than the likes of Apple and Samsung.

IoT Group has certainly doubled down on its retail strategy. In addition to Coles, their smartwatches will soon be sold at mobile kiosks in Woolworths stores, with expansion into 10 other retail chains planned by the end of the year. The company has the capability to produce up to 10,000 watches a week; and a non-exclusive logistics deal with Brightstar will see global distribution taken care of.

IoT Group’s products will also be sold online on one website once it consolidates its digital presence. It is also open to the prospect of running a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign later this year to boost market awareness and generate pre-orders.

Pureprofile, an online profile marketing and insights technology company, was born just as the dot-com bubble burst and companies folded. Fifteen years later, the company is set to open up its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and completely change the way consumers experience advertising.

Prior to founding Pureprofile in 2000, Sydney-based entrepreneur Paul Chan was working in Silicon Valley and noticed that companies were raising eye-watering amounts of capital - like $50 million - and spending about half that on marketing material (e.g. online banner ads and television ads) that weren’t well-targeted. Even today, many companies are designing ads to reach large and wide audiences as opposed to targeted customer segments.

Now that we’re nearly always connected to the internet, there is no easy way for people to monitor and control their global data footprint. When we visit websites, fill out forms and purchase products, we leave a massive data trail with countless companies; and companies are using that data to deliver targeted advertising.

In the grand scheme of things, being able to consume advertising material relevant to your interests is a good thing. However, advertisements are delivered based on assumptions about users; and those assumptions are informed by people’s online behaviour, social media profiles, and so on. But rarely are internet users being asked what their preferences are in regards to advertising consumption. What ends up happening all too often is they get stalked by ads they don’t want in their lives.

A hypothetical example is you come across an article on healthy eating, and you curiously click on an ad on the side of the article screaming ‘Lose 20kg in 20 days with this new method!’. As you suspect, the page you're directed is advertising a scam. But worse, that ad is now following around the internet.

Consumers are now exposed to more advertising than ever before - about 3,000 a day - thanks to being always-connected, however they have very little control over what they consume.

“Now that we have the internet, you should be able to an individual dialogue with every person, even if you’re just asking ‘Here’s my idea. Would you buy it?’ If you get an absolute answer, you can change the way you spend your marketing dollars. Rather than spending on TV or direct mail, those dollars can go directly to the individual for their participation,” said Chan.

What Pureprofile provides is a platform that enables consumers to create and manage their online profiles; and Pureprofile’s data enables its clients - including global brands, market researchers, publishers and advertisers - to match surveys with, or show marketing material to, relevant consumers, based on the profile the client is looking to target. Consumers are then financially rewarded for filling out those surveys or consuming marketing material (e.g. by watching a video).

Pureprofile can be used to validate any type of product and throughout a product’s entire lifecycle, from wireframe to v.10. Brands can ask consumers about what a product’s next feature or flavour should be; they can determine whether existing ads are conveying the right messages; they can even identify new channels (or paths to customers).

Chan stressed that Pureprofile delivers more than just standard online surveys; consumers get to watch videos, listen to audio snippets, read content and visit websites. This way, consumers get a rich experience and brands get thorough responses. Pureprofile essentially acts as the ‘attention or data broker', according to Chan.

“We have two types of clients: individual participating consumers and brands. The brand, the brand’s researcher or the brand’s agency wants the attention and opinion of the consumer and we take a margin of the interaction fee. So if you want to ask a particular consumer [segment] five questions and that costs a dollar per person, then we could charge anywhere between 30 and 50 cents of that dollar. Once the consumer accumulates $25, they redeem that directly into their bank account,” Chan explained.

Filling out survey after survey may sound like too much effort, but Pureprofile has found that two to four percent of the population are highly opinionated and love sharing their opinions on politics, popular culture and other subject matters through whatever means possible, be it social media, a blog, or Pureprofile.

“You could be a mother, a doctor or a lawyer, opinionated people come from all walks of life. If you are a person that gives your opinion - it's not dissimilar to the person that is inclined to complete or build a wikipedia page - you’ll probably find us somehow. Effectively, a majority of the people that have signed up to Pureprofile have found us because we're the best in terms of consumer experience. We also pay out the most, and we want to be much more than just a survey company,” said Chan.

“We want to make sure that people see the value of having a profile and most importantly that they see the value of their opinions affecting decisions that governments, businesses and academics make. It could be helping the government decide on a traffic policy, commenting on a new election promise, helping a beverage company decide on the label they should use on a beer bottle, or talking to academics about the quality of your life and what could be done to improve it. It’s pretty straight forward. People are just commenting on their own lives and sharing their opinions.”

Chan said Pureprofile has always focused on the consumer first when it came to UX design. This is because obtaining survey data has been traditionally been annoying and invasive; researchers had to interrupt people while they were having dinner or stop them as they were leaving the shopping centre. Even today, many of Pureprofile’s online competitors blast emails or use pop-up windows to generate feedback.

Since its inception, Pureprofile has amassed over 500 clients, predominantly large companies like News Corp, Australia Post and Audi, though Chan is looking to capture a larger portion of the small business market as well as startups in the future.

Pureprofile also has more than one million registered users globally, of which ‘tens of thousands’ are participating in surveys or consuming marketing material every week, according to Chan. Pureprofile has paid out over $20 million to its account holders, a majority of which was paid out over the last five years.

Although Pureprofile was launched in 2002, after two years of development, Chan said it wasn’t until 2008 that the company reached profitability.

“Why should businesses only be paying TV and radio stations, newspapers, direct mailers, telemarketers and search engines for your attention?”

Pureprofile believes the best marketing profiles are written, published and controlled by the people who own them: consumers. Although search engines have their own agendas as suggested by their ever-evolving algorithms, Pureprofile believes search engines can drive the 'reverse the search' movement. They can help businesses get instant access to relevant consumers by indexing their profile pages.

“We want businesses to work for you because you have that profile. This might mean matching content or the latest restaurants that are relevant and interesting to you, or making recommendations because of your profile and the information you've put in personally as opposed to their guesses,” said Chan.

He believes there’s an opportunity to remove unnecessary and complex algorithms and instead incorporate simple question-and-answer features. For instance, it would be very difficult for an algorithm to predict whether a person is looking to purchase car insurance in the next few months, yet it’s just one question that can be asked and answered easily. It would also be difficult for algorithms to identify a person’s brand preferences; even the Googles of the world would struggle with that one.

“Obtaining this kind of data and making sense of this kind of data make will change the marketing world completely and make advertising less frustrating and poorly targeted. It will also open up opportunities for publishers to invent whole new ways of delivering content, which is really exciting,” said Chan.

In the Reverse The Search video, the speaker sums up Pureprofile’s big vision: “For the first time, marketers of all sizes can now redirect billions of their advertising to reach and pay for the most relevant profile page publishers to interact with them. Marketing, for many, will now resemble a personalised friendly conversation between real people.”

“Profile pages are also available to market researchers and innovative businesses so they can develop better products and services using the opinions of millions of people who again are paid to participate. The money received from these marketers and researchers is used by people who purchase their music, video content, pay-for-subscriptions and charity donations. Exciting new media models will emerge to cater for these profile page publishers and their content demands.”

Although market research industry is big - valued at about $700 million - and arguably overcrowded, Chan said Pureprofile is moving towards a vision that far exceeds market research, and only sees three or four companies as competitors.

“Market research is really just one of the fundamental revenue drivers, and it's certainly valuable. But I think personal data and profiles are really the future of all marketing and research and that's really where we're focused. We want to make sure this proposition make sense to the consumer, while also making sure there's commercial value for publishers and brands,” said Chan.

Chan doesn’t deny that Pureprofile is competing with tech giants like Google, but believes that most businesses are to a certain extent. He said it’s important for competing businesses to maintain a ‘frenemy’ relationship where possible because there may be opportunities to collaborate. For example, when people search for something on Google, the search results could be added to their profile and they could benefit from the value of that secondary market. There are also opportunities for businesses to talk to consumers based on their searches, but in a way that’s invited by the consumer.

“Imagine sitting in the middle of 10s of 000s of different surveys for everything you can imagine, whether it’s for market research, academia or political polling. Pureprofile has been involved in all of that, so we've got designs and architectures around profiles that really give us an unfair advantage. Most importantly, you need to pimp out your profile because of the rewards it delivers you,” said Chan.

Given interruption advertising is commonplace even when people are paying for their content, there is a big opportunity for consumers to take full advantage of their profiles if companies like Pureprofile drive the 'reverse the search' movement forward. An interesting strategy would be for Pureprofile to work closely with content publishers, particularly ones that have built electronic paywalls around their content, to deliver content and advertising based on people’s profiles.

But if the advertising industry generates over $500 billion in revenue a year, Pureprofile’s mission is nothing short of ambitious. Chan believes listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) will propel the business forward and is a better long-term strategy than raising venture capital.

“We have a fairly large vision: to make sure that everybody’s got a profile and that we can connect them to what matters and is relevant to them. This will extend far beyond market research and into things like content and recommendations. But in order to enable all of that growth we need to make further investments in technology and hire really great people. Listing on the ASX allows us to do that. Plus, I want to build a company that's going to be around for a long time. We’ve already been around for 15 years, but I can [envision] the next 10 to 15. Raising private equity would have only given us a three to five year window.”

Pureprofile raised $2.5 million from high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors in November 2014, in addition to $2.5 million since its foundation in 2000, though this is a ballpark figure due fluctuations in currency over the past 15 years. As of Monday last week, Pureprofile had raised $10 million of the $12.1 million it had planned to raise on listing. The company has not disclosed how much was ultimately raised.

In addition to accelerating growth in Australasia and other international markets like North America, Asia and Europe, the funds are being used to acquire Australian programmatic media buying company Sparc Media and its subsidiaries in India and Poland. According to the prospectus lodged by Pureprofile last month, the Sparc acquisition will allow the company to provide: 1) managed programmatic campaign services to advertisers and agencies, which involves using data, algorithms, computers and human expertise, to buy and sell online advertising inventory through advertising exchanges to advertisers and agencies; 2) media trading, which involves the buying and immediate resale of ad inventory programmatically; and 3) performance marketing/lead generation campaigns for education providers and other performance focused advertisers.

“The Sparc acquisition gives us the opportunity to start to unpack and deliver a valuable consumer solution by making your ‘uncleaned profile’ something that you can clean. Consumers have so many profiles out there, and they just don’t know where and how the data is being stored. There are a lot of ugly things happening in the background. We want to make sure we're making that as transparent as possible,” said Chan.

“Transparency isn't necessarily always what an industry wants; the industry is thriving without transparency. But we'd like to make sure that programmatic [trading] is, from an efficiency perspective, the way forward. Transparency helps the consumer make advertising a better experience for them, while also improving yield for publishers.”

The acquisition will cost between $2.5 million to $6.6 million, according to Pureprofile’s prospectus. The newly raised funds will also be used to help build a publisher-side platform for the management of a publisher’s audience-base and acquire additional databases, sources and channels.

Pureprofile is forecasting pro forma revenue for the 2015 financial year to total $20.6 million; this is expected to grow to $28.1 million in the 2016 financial year. Annual profits in the 2016 financial year will sit around the $2.5 million to $3 million mark, based on the numbers presented in the company’s prospectus.

Currently, Pureprofile employs 75 people globally and has offices in Sydney, New York, Los Angeles, London, Mumbai, Poland and Greece, with plans to open an office in Auckland. It also boasts a strong board, which includes Cliff Rosenberg, Managing Director of LinkedIn Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Featured image: Paul Chan, Founder and CEO, Pureprofile. Source: Provided.

Patrick de Laive, best known for co-founding one of the world’s top tech media and event companies The Next Web (TNW), has recently unveiled Index, a business intelligence tool that tracks thousands of tech companies around the world. Chris Messina, inventor of the hashtag and a closed beta tester of Index described the tool as “what [he’d] always wanted Crunchbase to become”.

In similar spirit to Palo Alto-based startup DataFox, Index claims to do for private companies what Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters do for publicly-listed companies. It uses algorithms and natural language processing to analyse content from hundreds of A-list tech sources - like NY Times, TechCrunch, The Verge, Recode, Wall Street Journal Digital, Wired, TNW and Tech in Asia, among others - and presents the data in an understandable format so that people can find structured information on private tech companies. Upon using Index, it clearly also tracks large public companies like Google and Facebook.

Up until recently, Index was an internal project built to help TNW’s editors and journalists easily track companies they want to cover and source new story ideas. Given the volume of pitches TNW receives daily - in 2014, TNW received 50,000 pitches from 20,000 unique companies - the tool would, at the very least, help journalists stay on top of everything under one digital umbrella. de Laive also notes that it’s difficult to keep track of the tech industry when just as many tech companies close their doors as they open every month.

“With so many startups out there and so much publicly available information on social media and in the tech press, I wanted to build a product that helps our editors in scouting startups that do particularly well, are remarkable and show traction,” de Laive tells Startup Daily.

Index’s aim is to make tools for gathering information on tech companies “previously only available for Wall street and the Fortune 500 companies - for the 'Main Street'.” de Laive insists that, before Index, there was no great way of tracking everything that happens in tech, at least not for free or at an affordable price for the general public.

Right before its public beta launch, de Laive and his team decided to make Index an entity of its own, rather than a subsidiary of TNW.

“Five months in, with a dedicated core team, we came to the conclusion that what we were building deserved more than just being an internal tool, so we started to work on what eventually became Index, the easiest (and most gorgeous) way to track tech,” says de Laive.

Index was tested privately by 7,000 tech professionals over a period of four months; and through that time, the team behind Index identified additional use cases. As originally intended, editors, journalists and bloggers have been using Index for research and discovery purposes, while investors have been using it for deal prospecting. Tech entrepreneurs have been using Index to track competitors and to get noticed by investors and the press, while corporates have been using it to identify potential partnership opportunities with startups and M&A targets. Those who are generally interested in the global technology ecosystem have been using Index as their go-to filter and funnel for the vast amount of articles being published every day.

The current version of Index is free to use with or without an account. However, by having an account, users can customise their feed to contain stories, funding rounds and acquisition events about the companies and locations they want to monitor.

On the home page, users get two information streams - one that’s personalised based on the companies and locations users are following and global trending news.

There are additional pages that allow users to look up details on Companies, Investors, Markets and Locations. On the Companies page, users can find out five key pieces of information about companies: the country they’re headquartered in, the year in which they were founded, total funding raised, number of employees, and social media followers. On the Investors page, users can find out, for instance, where a VC firm is based (city and country), how many investments have been made by the firm, and total amount raised since inception. Those who are interested in, say, education technology (EdTech), can go to the Markets page and click on ‘education’ to discover all that is happening in EdTech. The locations page is similar to the Markets page in that it allows users to find out what’s happening in particular locations.

Tools like Index, however, can only gather publicly available technology-related content. Unless companies have publicly released information - e.g. announced a funding round - Index cannot extract data points, add them to its database and match them to tech companies globally. Private companies that like to stay in stealth mode or don’t get press coverage won’t appear on Index’s personalised or global news streams. de Laive did state though that Index aims to track companies that are generating traction - specifically, companies that are being featured in reputable publications.

“Basically we track the most important tech news outlets in the world and filter out data points from the content by analysing what the article is about and how fast it is spreading on social media to determine its importance,” says de Laive.

In locations like Australia and New Zealand, as more and more respected publications seek to cover startups, and as startups receive mainstream press coverage, the value of Index will also increase. Having used Index for the past month, it’s clear the Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) news streams are growing quite rapidly, so it will be interesting to see how Index influences global and local perceptions of the ANZ tech ecosystem.

Apart from Crunchbase, Index has been compared to LinkedIn’s newsfeed and TechMeme. de Laive understands why those comparisons have been made and admits that it combines functionalities of all three, however feels there is something more powerful about Index - namely, its engine.

“Users of the first hour have compared it to CrunchBase, Linkedin newsfeed and TechMeme, which already explains that we’re not just a startup database. Index has a bit of all, data on tech companies like CrunchBase, a feed of the hottest news on tech like TechMeme and a dynamically updated personalised feed based on your interests,” de Laive says.

“What makes Index so powerful is the engine behind it that is analysing articles and extracts data combined with user generated info from the companies that are on Index. So unlike Crunchbase for example, where anybody can edit any company profile, on Index only people who work at the tech companies can update their company profile. Once you have set up a company profile on Index, it takes care of 90 percent of the further updates through its engine.”

de Laive says the current version of Index will remain free, but the company will likely introduce a premium version in the upcoming months that will offer more information on companies than what is currently shown. The company’s intention is to continue testing the market and improving the product before deciding on and executing a business model.

“[We] have a lot more data than we’re showing right now which could be the base for the premium version of Index. At the moment we’re figuring out which model to go after first, but ideally we would work another four to seven months on Index before introducing a business model,” said de Laive.

“We’re constantly working on improving our core engine which turns data into content and matches it with the right companies. We want to be able to offer the best stream of relevant tech content throughout the web to our users, this means that we also want to add content about the markets you care about. This is a very hard task to tackle but the first internal results of our approach are very promising.”

Index has been bootstrapped to date, though de Laive is open to the prospect of raising funds at a later stage to double the size of the team - Index currently has five staff - and speed up development. de Laive admits, though, that raising funds takes time and he’d rather that time be used to improve the product.

By the end of the year, the goal is to have Index tracking 100,000 active tech companies around the world. The two most requested add-ons from Index’s existing users is an API and mobile app, which de Laive admits are “very high on [their] wish list”.

Index is certainly promising, not only because of the track record of people behind the tech, but also because investors, entrepreneurs and media are looking for ways to monitor companies and the global tech industry as a whole. Though there are other offerings in the market like DataFox, CB Insights, Mattermark and Pitchbook, what will set the premium version of Index apart is its accessibility, pricing and UI/UX. The free version will grow organically - it’s already been highly praised by industry stakeholders - but the premium version is the real money maker and has the potential to be genuinely impactful.

One of the ways to think about product evolution, the evolution of marketing and communications, or perhaps more accurately, the evolution of the overall customer experience is through “push and pull” strategy. This is explained, specifically in a marketing context, very well here.

In 2007, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote “In a great market - a market with lots of real potential customers - the market pulls product out of the startup.”

Much has been written about the failures of pushing whole products and product messages to unsuspecting, potentially uninviting markets, with the expectation that “meaning” and “value” to the customer were things you could define through a set of assumptions and effectively deliver through a solid plan.

In fact, this is the very premise through which The Lean Startup and similar methodologies were conceptualised. Most products still find their beginnings through vision or insight, but rather than building the entire product, we build the minimal thing (i.e. the minimum viable product or MVP) that will enable us to validate the accuracy or inaccuracy of our assumptions. We then use this learning to drive our next assumption and set of tests.

As Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup (2011), writes, “We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”

The key thing here is learning, not dictating. We now actively engage in constant learning; learning about behaviours, about needs and about beliefs. Our ability to learn what we need to about the customers we aim to serve is driving the change or evolution I refer to.

This evolution of products and experiences, at least in chronological terms, started with us - the people building and marketing products - pushing whole products to markets. Think Don Draper. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t. We then began building products for people, people that existed within markets, and those people proceeded to pull the products they genuinely wanted directly from us.

The result of this, at least for many large enterprises, was a shocking revelation or “turn of the tide” as it were, where the customer or user became the boss. This turn of the tide, for some organisations, resulted in flipped org charts with the customer on top and the CEO at the bottom, challenging the assumptions about not only what products we should or shouldn’t build, but how we should interact with our customers throughout the entire customer journey.

At this moment, we are on the cusp of a move right back to push, where we once again take parts of the burden of choice away for the user. This may sound contrarian, however, the key difference is that this time the push from us to the individual people we aim to serve, within the market we intend (or may not intend) to serve, comes with context.

Context is of course, king.

In the future, the products we build and consume will be made for a market of one. What I mean by this is each and every product will be optimised for one individual person; constantly learning and constantly evolving. Pushing us what we need when we need it. 

An early incarnation of this can be seen through Meeco.me, a product that helps everyday consumers define their intent, and build context rich relationships with the brands and products that are meaningful to them. Users of Meeco are part of the early movement towards “market of one” experiences.

My understanding is Meeco users currently do this by defining their intent, however, I believe products like Meeco will begin to predict and push.

Coming back to context, you and I clearly care about different things and we are therefore willing to pay different amounts of money, at different times, for the things that we believe deliver us value. As an example of a current use case, two people may order the exact same product from Amazon, but one of the people has a serious sense of urgency, because they need to use it tomorrow for a specific purpose, and is therefore willing to pay almost whatever it takes to get that product ASAP.

Our context is what sets us apart, drives our behaviour and controls our propensity to pay.

Taking this further, consider the progression of the Quantified Self movement, the Internet-of-Things and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This divergence of market forces and technological capabilities can help us deliver context rich, predictive customer experiences with the user as the primary beneficiary.

What’s really interesting about the journey to this future “state” is that, at times, it feels to be taking forever. But when you think about it, the iPhone was only released in 2007, wearables are only now becoming valuable, and AI (depending on what side of the fence you sit) finally seems to be progressing.

In the words of Chris Dixon, “exponential growth curves seem gradual and then sudden.”

Singularity University frames it slightly differently, stating our perception of seemingly gradual progression is mostly deception. This deception, likely due to time our short-term inflated expectation, often results in disappointment.

This can perhaps be explained more simply using the below image:

Amara’s Law explains this deception perfectly: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

My prediction is that the somewhat linear growth we have experienced is coming to its end, and that exponential growth, as described above, is the phase in which “products for a market of one” can become a technical and commercial reality.

Imagine an interface, with a suite of “things” or capabilities that understand you? I mean really understand you. This “thing” knows what you care about, it understands your intentions, your desires and your goals, and, it helps you figure out the optimal way, each and every day, to achieve the things that mean the most to you.

What’s the market for such a thing? Does it help us achieve our daily jobs, both in work and in life? Does it eliminate fundamental pains or create new potentials for gain? What secrets are waiting to be uncovered? Who are the customers? Is it everyone who currently has a smartphone? How do you interact with it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What’s the experience and how does the experience differ from you to I? What’s the minimum thing we can build to validate the key assumptions we have about how this changes our experiences, our interactions or our behaviors? When might this become real? Are we way too early to even start thinking this way? Who are the early adopters? Which platforms will it integrate with, or will it create something entirely new?

What do these questions mean? Opportunity. Opportunity to find a secret truth, to ride or even drive this evolution, and create context rich products and experiences that genuinely delight people all around the world.

This is why people like you and I will have work in the future.

Featured image: www.commerce.gov.

It's so sad that even in tech and startup, which has nothing to do with advertising sexuality, female founders are portrayed as sex objects rather than Founders/CEOs. One step forward in announcing the increase in female founders and one step firmly in the dark ages with the way the story is advertised. What could have been an inspiring article is instead a visual example of sexism in tech. How many male founders do you see posing with their pants riding up their leg on the cover of an article celebrating leadership in tech? I promise you there are none. Why are there zero male founders in fashion or otherwise promoted in this way on the subject of successful startup founders? Whilst the choice of person is unquestionably awesome, the choice of image demonstrates how media outlets intentionally or not, select images of women that are sexy to sell stuff but that standard is not as true for men. For guys in startup, it's non-existent. When we celebrate male leadership, it's about the guy being the boss, without the need to deliberately highlight his sex appeal.

...this article is about female leadership and this topic is important to many people and the culture of tech, so I was direct. What was discussed at a recent meetup on diversity: stereotypes of women looking sexy is problematic in the industry because young females are getting the message that this is what they are expected to do to get attention as leaders and males are getting the message that this is what they are entitled to see in their female counterparts. Images such as these in this specific context, exacerbate that issue big time in a context where there are so few female founders as it is. I'm glad this conversation is being had because if people read it with the article, it unplugs that undercurrent and what I believe to be the wrong message to female founders both aspiring and current.

Gill, R. (2012). ‘Media, Empowerment and the ‘Sexualization of Culture’ Debates’. Sex Roles, 66, 736–745.

Featured image: Computer engineer barbie. Source: Associated Press. Credit: Mark Lennihan.

Recently, a colleague of mine sent me an article written by Theo Priestly on Forbes, along with a list of questions they had after reading it. The article, “Why Every Tech Company Needs a Chief Evangelist” certainly wasn’t the first to cover this topic, but when combined with the questions I was presented, it was the first time I thought about this role in great depth. 

Amongst other things, my colleague asked me:

• What is an evangelist?
• How do they measure success?

I initially answered these questions in person, somewhat indirectly, by saying the purpose of an evangelist is to help a company, a product, a technology or merely “a thing” go from zero to critical mass. Evangelists help find and leverage the most passionate early adopters so that these particular users are so compelled, they convince their friends, family and colleagues to use what they’re using.

This can be an internal or external endeavour.

A couple of years back I was working in an evangelist role for a technology company that was fundamentally transforming its products, and along with it, their primary business model. At the start of my tenure, I doubt I would’ve had a succinct answer to the above questions. I really saw my role at the intersection of client strategy and sales, but wasn’t certain that was right.

Wikipedia solidly defines a technology evangelist as “a person who builds a critical mass of support for a given technology, and then establishes it as a technical standard in a market that is subject to network effects.” 

Based on this definition, which I mostly agree with, the measure of success for an evangelist is the month-on-month progress towards critical mass, however that is defined within a specific context.

For example, you might be working as an evangelist within a large organisation that’s shifting from being a desktop software vendor to a cloud SaaS (software-as-a-service) vendor. Your primary objective as an evangelist is to transition the majority (critical mass) of your existing client base from owning desktop software (paid for once, upfront, and are no longer delivering commercial value to the business) to using a SaaS product and charging them monthly for that privilege. (There are a number of reasons why a business would want to do this and a great overview of these drivers can be found here). 

When considering this measure of progress, it’s understandable that the lines between some sales and marketing functions are blurred. Both evangelists and salespeople are trying to drive adoption of their product or service, with critical mass being the ultimate goal.

Guy Kawasaki, the current Chief Evangelist of Australian startup Canva, tries to separate evangelism from sales using the table below.

As you can see, Guy separates these roles by their core drivers: sales people want to make money whereas evangelists want to make history.

I don’t think it’s quite that simple (although Guy is a wee bit more qualified than I in this space), however, I think the key premise or focus on the narrative is really important.

Sales and marketing have traditionally pitched what they do and how they do it, however, have mostly missed why they do it. Simon Sinek, author and speaker, managed to codify this distinction through the Golden Circle.

The core premise of the Golden Circle is that great leaders, whether individuals or organisations, start with why. They have a belief, a purpose or a passion that drives their actions.

Sinek’s famous line, “People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it” has become a mantra in various situations. In fact, I would say that it’s referenced between two and three times a day in the environments I’m currently working in.

When building products for real people, and then communicating and engaging with those people, it’s absolutely critical that your beliefs align with theirs, that your motives align with theirs and that they become inspired by your purpose for existence.

This can be seen clearly in this Apple Watch commercial. The watch is an extension of you and it exists to help you achieve what you want to achieve, to get the most out of your day. The ad isn’t about a product; it’s about the job that the person needs to get done. This is an example of a story that connects with people at an emotional, rather than functional level.

I’d suggest watching this video to learn more about the Golden Circle and why your why is so important. You’ll probably also note that Apple, the positive example used by Sinek, was also the first place Guy Kawasaki took up the role of Chief Evangelist. I doubt this is mere coincidence.

This brings us back to the first question I was asked: what is an evangelist?

An evangelist is the face and voice of the company mission or its why. They narrate a compelling story, engage via various channels, and build a community of user/customer evangelists who help their product or cause (providing the product has unique value) achieve a viral co-efficient of >1.

In a startup this might be the founding CEO, whereas in a large organisation it may become a specific role or business unit.

Regardless of the setting, a company evangelist starts with why and finds people who connect with that why. These people, who’ve connected based on common values and beliefs, then enable the company evangelist to scale by becoming evangelists themselves.

In the article I mentioned above, Priestly made the case that every company needs a Chief Evangelist. In theory this is great, however, when you consider what an evangelist is and what their metrics for success are, it becomes less compelling.

Scaling evangelism can only occur when a product is genuinely unique and useful to the people who are using it. If it isn’t, it doesn’t merit being spoken about passionately.

I agree that every company should aspire to have a Chief Evangelist, however, prior to hiring one, companies should be looking to their customers, to their pains and gains, and to the secrets in their market, focusing first and foremost on driving new, unique and compelling value to their customers through re-imagined value propositions and customer experiences.

By doing this, companies can create both internal and external evangelists, achieve viral co-efficients of >1, and drive their offering towards critical mass with a lot less effort and expenditure.

Featured image: Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist, Canva. Original source unknown.

Featured image (L to R): Anil Chatterjee & David Meldrum, Co-Founders, KevTech. Source: Provided.

Featured image: Joel Macdonald, co-founder, Swift. Source: Provided.

Image: Lily Team. Source: Capital Berg

The Startup Show, which announced its launch and six-episode schedule in July last year, revealed today that it will premiere its first season exclusively on BitTorrent Bundle. The television show, which was shot in front of a live audience at the Savoy Tavern in Melbourne and hosted by comedian and self-confessed technology geek Dan Ilic became a cult hit last year within the Australian startup ecosystem clocking up just over 120,000 views across its first two episodes which were available to view via YouTube and That Startup Show’s website.

The show was founded by media producer and lawyer Anna Reeves, startup communications and event management expert Sally Gatenby, founder of Larkspur Communications (Formerly head of Communications at Starfish Ventures) and Ahmed Salama an Executive Producer with a track record in the film space.

The That Startup Show Exec Team

The format of the show has a vibe similar to that of John Oliver’s ‘last week tonight’ and the ‘Gruen Transfer’ where issues and topics surrounding the startup scene are discussed with a comedic undertone, something which Ilic was able to take the lead on and deliver strong results.

Last year, in multiple news reports, it was stated that the team was shopping the TV show around to companies such as Channel Nine and Netflix, but instead has chosen to house the content on BitTorrent Bundle in a move that’s been deemed as ‘going against the grain’ by the company itself.

“We’re thrilled to call BitTorrent home for That Start Up Show. What’s really exciting about the Bundle platform is that for the first time, producers like us can connect with audiences on BitTorrent in a way that is meaningful on many levels for both the fan and producer,” Salama said in a media release.

“Sustainability is one of the great questions artists of our time face, and we hope to share some of the answers on our journey.”

BitTorrent, which originated as a peer-to-peer file distribution network has put a great deal of time and effort over the last year in becoming a legitimate ‘friend’ to the content creation and publishing space. It is worth noting that although the term ‘BitTorrent’ has been connected with music and piracy for many years, customers and users of the platform understand that BitTorrent Inc (the company referred to in this article) is different to the open source file transfer protocol used by torrent sites such as Pirate Bay. BitTorrent Inc uses the file transfer protocol in a legal manner.

BitTorrent Bundle is starting to gain a track record distributing content such as Madonna’s documentary on human rights and Moby’s remix album, which received 8.9 million downloads. BBC has also used the platform to sell a 10-episode series of Doctor Who. Having said that, all of these content plays had multiple broadcast streams aside from the BitTorrent platform.

Straith Schreder, Director of Content Strategy at BitTorrent, said that one of the primary reasons the platform exists is to help share the stories of emerging artists and content creators.

“BitTorrent Bundle was built to support creativity: our goal is to share the stories of emerging artists and innovators; to invite fans into the invention process. That Start Up Show provides an original and compelling look into innovation culture, the culture that moves and connects our global user base,” said Schreder.

In being a technology startup themselves, it is obvious why BitTorrent Bundle would feel connected to such a project. The vertical also has very little competition on the platform, with downloads already taking over The Startup Kids that documents the startup journey of the founders of SoundCloud, Dropbox and Vimeo.

At the time of publication, That Startup Show has experienced a combination of a little over 4,200 free and paid downloads. At $2.99 to view the premium content (the last four episodes of the series), there would need to be a decent amount of paid downloading happening for the production to bring in decent money and turn a profit on all of its production costs.

Having said that, unlike Spotify and YouTube, BitTorrent Bundle does actually pay creators and publishers 90% of the revenue made on downloads; and for those that experience paid downloads at a high scale can actually make some decent revenue. RadioHead frontman Thom Yorke proved this last year when he released his debut solo album on the platform; it was he made an estimated $20 million from over 4 million downloads.

While Yorke undoubtedly has a larger fan base than That Startup Show, a push by BitTorrent Bundle featuring the content on its front page which it claims is visited by 170 million users per month would at the very least have a considerable impact on the downloads of the premium content, especially considering that guests on the show at the back end of production are more internationally renowned than the first couple of episodes. Making that point clearer in the background artwork would also help reach a wider audience, especially because a majority of BitTorrent users are not Australian.

Readers can access the That Startup Show Bundle here.

Update: Since launching this morning, public data available by BitTorrent says the That Startup Show has received just over 74,000 downloads on BitTorrent Bundle. This includes a mix of free and premium downloads.

As technology pervades every corner of our lives, we’re producing data at a rate never before imagined. According to IBM research, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated each day; and analyst firm IDC estimates that all data created, replicated and consumed is doubling every two years. By 2020, it’s expected that there will be over 44 trillion gigabytes of digital data. But data is useless we’re able to understand it. It’s only in the past few years, that industries – from retail to health and fitness – have really begun to analyse big data and put it to productive use. One aspect if big data is lifestyle-based analytics (LBA). The ability to mine lifestyle-based data for specific variables that are indicative of a future health problem has allowed the healthcare and fitness industry to move from reactive mode to a proactive mode.

But where do consumers fit into the picture? Wearable technology has allowed consumers to aggregate their own data, enabling them to make better lifestyle decisions and be self-directed in their self-improvement journey. The rich data created by wearable technology is driving the rise of what Angus Dorney, Director and General of Rackspace Australia, once called the ‘human cloud’ of personal data”; and with this comes countless opportunities to tap into this data – whether it’s connecting with third parties to provide more tailored and personalised services or working closer with healthcare institutions to get a better understanding of their patients.

Although we’re still at the beginning of massive mainstream uptake of wearable devices, the technology itself is advancing fast. Take, for instance, Hexoskin, which is undoubtedly one of the most advanced wearable tech products to reach Australia. 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.

Hexoskin’s biometric shirt may look like your average black tank top, but the inner lining of the shirt contains sensors that track an array of things like your heart rate in real-time, heart rate recovery, heart rate variability (an essential tool to measure stress and training fatigue), breathing rate, breathing volume, and real-time activity. It also monitors the quality of your sleep by capturing details like resting heart rate, breathing patterns, and sleep positions throughout the night. The sensors connect to a bluetooth recording device that sits neatly in the shirt’s side pocket. The data that is captured automatically uploads to Hexoskin’s servers; and users can login to their dashboard online to view their data, or download the Hexoskin mobile app for free on iTunes and Google Play.

Hexoskin biometric shirts

Delia and Milanese have been friends for 15 years. Prior to pursuing Hexoskin, they were working on building a data analytics platform for sports professionals and were searching for wearable technologies that could be plugged into the platform. During their research, they stumbled upon Hexoskin and very quickly realised “it was the best thing on the market”. They secured the rights to distribute the company’s products late last year and launched Hexoskin Oceania in January.

Hexoskin’s local launch is timely, as there are two trends in Australia that are working against each other. First, health is becoming less a priority to Australians. According to VicHealth, less than one-third of Australians are getting sufficient exercise on a daily basis, which in turn is putting them at greater risk of illnesses that are preventable. Research indicates that tobacco smoking, excessive alcohol intake, high blood pressure, physical inactivity and obesity accounts for almost a third of Australia’s total burden of disease. In 2010, preventable conditions accounted for approximately 20 percent of Australia’s healthcare expenditure (around $24.3 billion).

At the same time, the cost of healthcare in Australia is increasing at 5.4 percent per year compared to annual GDP growth of around 3.1 percent, according to Professor Stephen Duckett, Director of the Health Program at Grattan Institute. We now spend more than $147.4 billion (2012-2013) on healthcare, which makes up about 9.5 percent of Australia’s GDP. However, this is about the OECD average; and Australia fares well, ranking the lowest among wealthy countries in the OECD database.

Regardless of how Australia ranks, startups in the private sector have the opportunity to play a significant and constructive role in health promotion – especially at a time when healthcare in Australia has been deemed unsustainable by the government.

Cognisant of this, Delia and Milanese decided now is an important time to bring Hexoskin into Australia.

“It’s pretty scary to think that two-thirds of Australians are overweight or obese. This is the biggest threat to public health […] and recreational sporting injuries cost the Australian healthcare industry over $2 billion a year. Imagine if sports professionals and everyday Australians who want to be more proactive about their health could use a product like [Hexoskin] to capture data and share it with coaches, trainers and physicians and be able to individualise their training and lifestyles to prevent injuries and health problems in the first place,” said Delia.

Although Hexoskin’s initial target market is professional athletes, Delia and Milanese believe Hexoskin appeals to all kinds of individuals.

“The early adopters are either aspiring or elite sports people. This is because elite sports people or their coaches are really forward thinking in regards to using technology in meaningful ways to improve performance. But to be frank, we see this as a product that has huge opportunity across different range of markets and customer profiles,” said Delia.

“Although we do work with the elite, we see this as a product that allows Australians to know about what’s going on in their bodies and use that information in ways that are meaningful to them. If you are a person with a heart condition, Hexoskin will allow you to know more and share more about your body and heart with your doctors. If you are working on reducing your weight, you can use Hexoskin track and monitor the process in meaningful ways. If you’re a 40-something year old guy realising you need to start taking care of yourself better, Hexoskin allows you a way to do that. If you’re a new mother who wants to start getting back to focusing on health, you can do that. There really is quite a range of opportunities here for us which is why we’re really excited.”

Delia also pointed that people tend to focus on exercise as key to living healthier and happier lives. But sleep is also vital to our survival and quality of life. In 2010, the total health care cost of sleep disorders was estimated to be $818 million in Australia. Perhaps what’s worse is that there’s compelling evidence of a causal relationship between sleep disorders and other illnesses and injuries.

“There really isn’t much focus on quality sleep. The thing that really appealed to us is the fact that Hexoskin allows us to learn much more about our sleeping patterns. Not only does it tell you how long you’ve slept, but how many times you’ve woken up throughout the night, how many times you’ve change positions, how long you’ve stayed in each position. It will give you a sleep efficiency rating and it’ll tell you how long you were in REM sleep and non-REM sleep. It’ll also give you the minute by minute readings for other metrics like your heart-rate, your breathing rate, your lung capacity, calories burnt,” said Delia.

“It gives you a holistic picture of what your sleep was like and you can start to see a very clear pattern on where you’re at and a different stimulus that adds to, or takes away from a good night’s sleep.

“We want to encourage people to get a better night’s sleep. That way, they can make the best of the time they are awake – good sleep reduces stress, allows people to train better and just live happier, more rested lives.”

At first glance, Hexoskin’s products may appear expensive. The starter kit, which includes a biometric shirt, bluetooth recording device and USB cable, costs $569. However, there are no recurring fees, as the Hexoskin app is free to use.

“It is an upfront investment, but the benefits are ongoing,” said Delia.

When you consider the amount of money we spend on healthcare, $569 is not a big investment to make if it means savings in the long run. In fact, it costs about the same as a six-month gym membership. The data analytics platform is also constantly becoming smarter, at no cost to the end-user. This means that Hexoskin’s value proposition becomes more and more compelling over time.

Moving forward, Delia and Milanese acknowledge that they need to educate the market about why certain metrics are important to monitor.

“Because there are so many different applications out there, the biggest challenge and opportunity for us is educating people on what Hexoskin is and why this is important. There are very few people who understand the importance of metrics like heart rate variability and VO2 max,” said Delia.

For the uninitiated, this could be perceived as a problem. What are you supposed to do with metrics you don’t understand? Although Hexoskin’s platform doesn’t offer actionable suggestions at the moment, if Delia and Milanese can educate Australians about the basics, some of the advanced metrics can be passed onto professionals who can then create personalised health and fitness plans for their patients or clients.

“We’re providing doctors with individualised data, so they’re able to not only treat but assess and prepare us in meaningful and personalised ways for preventative health. The wearable technology that’s currently out there is starting to educate the market, but where we’re going is really next level,” said Delia.

“It’s a great thing that Hexoskin’s technology can capture the level of detail that previously required us to go to a clinic and spend thousands of dollars on. The mobile app gives a really good snapshot of a range of different metrics and is quite user friendly; but the online dashboard gives you a granular level of detail. For many people, it will be more information than they’ve ever seen in their lives. If they have difficulty interpreting the data, they can share that information and give professionals a holistic view of where they’re at.”

Hexoskin mobile app

Hexoskin online dashboard

Delia and Milanese is currently in talks with a number of universities as well as health, research and sports organisations to not only validate Hexoskin, but also to come up with ways to help educate the wider Australian population.

There is also opportunity for Hexoskin to partner with HR firms, as well as military and protective services. HR firms or HR departments in larger companies can partner with Hexoskin and offer a program to promote their employees’ health. It would make sense for corporations to invest in their employees’ health for the simple reason that good health can lead to better performance in the workplace, which ultimately works to the company’s advantage. Partnering with the Australian defence force and emergency services personnel is also an opportunity that Delia and Milanese are exploring, given the high level of performance that’s required of soldiers, police, etc.

Delia and Milanese also said that they’re looking to partner with AFL, NRL and other leagues; and is currently in the process of securing a partnership deal with Erebus Motorsport team.

As part of the company’s retail strategy, Delia and Milanese has secured a deal with Harvey Norman. Hexoskin’s biometric shirts are already available in over 60 Harvey Norman stores across the country. The duo is also planning to expand into Asia in the upcoming months.

It seems Delia and Milanese are set to replicate the success Hexoskin has experienced in North America in the Asia-Pacific region.