5 Startups I Can Feel
There has been a deluge of cool startups happening in our local community lately. So I thought I’d feature a few of them here to spread the love, as well as give my honest views on their potential.
Wealie (app)
Wealie is a digital loyalty card which can be used in and by multiple retailers. It’s an interesting space that is starting to emerge as we move closer and closer to the digital wallet. Which Bill Gates first spoke about in his book from 1995 – the Road Ahead. I really think that NFC (Near Field Communication) will open up a huge amount of opportunity in the app space. Anything that happens on a card or paper in our wallets, will be digitized. Early movers like Wealie, will have a big advantage as they learn from their mistakes before everyone converts to their digital wallet.
I’m totally in love with Cheatspeak. As far as I can tell it is a foreign language phrase book Wiki. So, so cool. Being someone who speaks a foreign language or two, it’s premise is very solid – Living language – that represents the spoken word, rather than a text book. The idea of creating a book or language guide with the ‘simplest way to say it’ is so ‘user focused’ it is revolutionary. I’m sick of have to learn 7 ways to say one thing in a foreign language – if the goal is speaking it, then cheat speak is on the money. It has smart exit options too.
Put simply Pygg is way to send and receive money through twitter – without any fees. Micro payments for a micro blog. Another smart startup which seems to flow nicely into NFC and the digital wallet. Another thing which just adds a level of goodness to it, is the fact that it is money in ‘public’. Good deeds and rewards are on display. I reckon this could really add a layer of fun to what Mick and the team are up to.
Started by all round good guy Mike Boyd – Cupstart is another ‘money remover’, in the sense that we don’t need actual dollars in our pockets to use it. Cupstart is a platform used to order & pay for coffee online at your favourite cafe, skip the queue and pick up your coffee on arrival. Which could move into all sorts of payment system / retail options. A web enabled retail POS system anyone? I like the idea of starting in cafes a lot, because the frequency of usage (buying coffee) moves the startup up the learning curve much quicker. (as a side note Mike is looking for a ‘tech’ partner based in Australia….)
TaskWant(app)
So the virtual assistant is well known and successful on-line. Get ready for the physical version. TaskWant is a geo-locating app to help you find people to do stuff for you. You can either be a task provider or doer. It’s a great way to take advantage of idle labour and get cashie jobs. I love it. I reckon this could blow McDonalds out of the water for teenagers and be a much better option – which is just one of the potential strong points. Not to mention Charlie the Squirrel.
Local Yocals
Another cool thing is that everyone of these is from people in our local startup community in Australia. The world is changing, the only question remaining is whether you want to be a change maker or change taker.
Get out there and launch!
60 seconds on the web
The world moves fast. When we we’re unconnected the speed of change went unnoticed. Now that we all have digital footprints, we can track all that happens. This amazing and statistically rich infographic is solid reminder of the world we live in. It’s also very cool that most of these business are startups that aren’t even teenagers yet. I’ve pulled out the numbers and got the pic below.
60 seconds on the web:
- 12,000+ new ads posted on Craigslist
- 370,000+ minutes of voice calls on Skype
- 98,000+ tweets
- 320+ new twitter accounts
- 100+ new Linkedin accounts
- 6,600+ photos uploaded to Flickr
- 50+ wordpress CMS downloads & 125+ plugins
- 695,000 facebook status updates, 80,000 wall posts and 510,040 comments
- 1,700 firefox downloads
- 694,445 google searches
- 168 million emails sent (of which 92% is spam)
- 60+ new blogs & 1500+ new blog posts
- 70+ new domains are registered
- 600+ new Youtube videos are uploaded. 25+ hours in duration
- 150+ questions are asked in Question forums
- 13,000+ iPhone apps are downloaded
- 20,000 new posts on Tumblr.
- I new definition added to Urban Dictionary
- 1,600+ reads on Scribd.
And here is what it looks like:
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