'It was 20 years ago today' the Beatles famously sang on Sergeant Pepper in 1967. Well, more than half a century later I'm reminiscing and musing about 1999, 20 years ago...Read More

Valuing a tech startup is one of those ‘how long is a piece of string‘ questions (which is no help at all), but it’s still an important factor in trying to raise money for your early stage venture… Naturally, both sides will look at valuation in opposite ways. The plucky founder will want to give...Read More

Every year since the mid 1990s, Mary Meeker has presented the latest internet trends in the US and globally. You can view her here delivering the latest trends for 2018 (she speaks for 33 minutes). In typical style, she speed clicks through no less than 294 slides at a rate of 1 every 6 seconds. Don’t blink, as it’s...Read More

If you build it, they will come. Nonsense. If they come, build it. That’s pretty much the message I try to ram into new startups, imploring them to use the lean canvas, or some such method, to ‘just get out there’ and be nimble and responsive to customers’ needs, building up their business along the...Read More

Reverse psychology can be powerful. Be kind when friends stuff up and they’ll be  shamed into doing better next time. Tell a family member “I’m fine!” through gritted teeth when clearing up and they’ll be honour bound to help. And so it goes with early stage (seed) capital raisings for startups.  The best advice I was...Read More

When we were contemplating the best revenue model for aussiehome.com, the online real estate portal we established in 1999, we considered the following main alternatives: Subscriptions – real estates agents pay regular fees to list their properties Advertising – advertisers pay for display ads on the website eCommerce – home seekers can buy/rent directly off...Read More

Last week I got the chance to listen to Jerry Hausman, an economics professor from MIT, who spoke on ‘Startups – will their economic models take over?’ – a topic close to my heart. The 70 year old econometrician started by pouring scorn on Twitter (‘I mean, don’t you have something better to do?’) which I...Read More

Google “I like lawyers” and the top results are articles such as “Why do people hate lawyers so much?” and “People like lawyers less than you think”. Even Google can’t find a positive result. It might be easy to knock them, but finding a good lawyer or accountant is critical to the success of any business. I...Read More

Last week I did a talk to BloomLab, the university based co-working space for student startup folk here in Perth, WA. My slides are visible above (and also here). Here is my 10 “flearnings” (learning from failures) – hard won advice from making the wrong decisions (many times), but learning from them. Startups are easy...Read More

Tomorrow TPG take over Perth’s (as yet only) billion dollar tech startup, Australia’s #2 internet service provider iiNet, with financial settlement on the deal. Founded in his Mum’s Padbury garage in 1993, because newly graduated Michael Malone wanted to continue to use the internet post university, the rise of iiNet is testament to Michael’s audacity, vision and hard work,...Read More