Aussie entrepreneurs willing to risk all  

They call themselves the Aussie mafia and, fed up with the lack of funding for entrepreneurs in Australia, they’re pooling together at least $20 million to invest in themselves.

The success of Australians in Silicon Valley - there are at least 65 Aussie tech startups over there - has created a new crop of millionaires who are sharing their knowledge, capital and couches with the next generation of hopeful founders.

Shared via The Age. Read the rest of the article here. 

New reality for digital start-ups 

Craig Barber is a chart-topping Apple app developer competing neck-and-neck in some markets with the popular Angry Birds game despite the fact the 35-year-old from Coogee doesn’t even know how to write a single line of code.

Barber is one of a number of entrepreneurs who outsource the computer programming of their technology ideas online. His music app, Car Audio Deck, was funded $US6360 by backers on crowd-funding website appbackr.com and made by a Chinese woman he’s never met who bid $US2500 on outsourcing site Freelancer.com to make his idea come to life.

Shared via The Age. Read the rest of the article here. 

Boot camp for startups 

The Y Combinator offices sit at the dead center of Silicon Valley, in Mountain View, on a street called Pioneer Way. Outside, the traffic hums along CA-z85 headed either south to Cupertino or north toward Google headquarters. Inside, the decor of the main room combines modern office (big whiteboard, bright orange noise-dampening panels) with camp dining hall (long trestle tables). Y Combinator shares space with a company called Anybots—which makes robots that can be controlled remotely—and occasionally a droid will motor through the room on a Segway-style base.

On this November day, the Terminator itself could be roaming around the main room and the young men (and the occasional woman) gathered here wouldn’t notice. They are attending Interview Day, a chance to compete for a spot in what has become the tech world’s most prestigious program for budding digital entrepreneurs. The interviewees include former product managers at Google, a Midwestern accountant, and a 17-year-old high school student. They hail from Philadelphia, Minnesota, Greece, Russia, England, Spain, and San Francisco. And like would-be starlets flocking to Hollywood, they have come to Mountain View in the hope that Y Combinator will turn them from nameless coders into Silicon Valley celebrities.

Shared via Wired. Read the rest of the article here. 

Just ask ‘Why?’ five times 

To accelerate, lean startups need a process that provides a natural feedback loop. When you’re going too fast, you cause more problems. Adaptive processes force you to slow down and invest in preventing the kinds of problems that are currently wasting time. As those preventive efforts pay off, you naturally speed up again.

Let’s return to the question of having a training program for new employees. Without a program, new employees will make mistakes while in their learning curve that will require assistance and intervention from other team members, slowing everyone down. How do you decide if the investment in training is worth the benefit of speed due to reduced interruptions? Figuring this out from a top-down perspective is challenging, because it requires estimating two completely unknown quantities: how much it will cost to build an unknown program against an unknown benefit you might reap. Even worse, the traditional way to make these kinds of decisions is decidedly large-batch thinking. A company either has an elaborate training program or it does not. Until they can justify the return on investment from building a full program, most companies generally do nothing.

Shared via Eric Ries’ blog. Read the rest of the article here. 

Five smart companies using tech for good 

In our social entrepreneurship series, The World at Work, Mashable interviews the faces behind the startups and projects that are working to make a global impact.

By harnessing the power of the web and digital technology, these organizations help children with autism communicate, match volunteers to their perfect charity and fund classrooms all over the country. While the companies are diverse, they are all on a mission to change our lives for the better and improve society.

Shared via Mashable Business. Read the rest of the article here. 

Paint turns walls into whiteboards 

Two years ago, WhiteyBoard founders Saachi Cywinski, Sherwin Kim and Jason Wilk set out to re-think those clunky, inflexible whiteboards found in classrooms and offices around the country. They developed a portable, flexible alternative: An inexpensive, “instant” plastic board that weighs less than two pounds and adheres to any surface without screws.

The idea, and the fact that co-founder Jason Wilk was (at the time) hard at work on a Y Combinator backed startup, attracted offers from people like Bill Liao, the co-founder of Xing.com. The startup turned down the offer but continued developing their whiteboards, along with a new product, called WhiteyBoard Paint, which they launched late last year.

Shared via TechCrunch. Read the rest of the article here. 

Children of the revolution 

More in relation to The Age article we shared the other day.

It’s midnight in San Francisco and i’m out on the tiles with one of the most successful Australian entrepreneurs you’ve never heard of. Most of the city is shutting down on this cold and dreary Tuesday, but Gower Smith is determined to kick on. And so here we are at the Penthouse strip club and steakhouse, a palace of sleaze where New York strip comes with a side of lap dance.

Smith, the founder of ZoomSystems, has a shiny bald head, porn-star moustache and the cheeky, confident smile of someone living the dream. He cashed out of four successful companies in Australia and moved to the heart of the tech world 10 years ago to launch Zoom, raising $100 million from investors soon after arriving. His fully automated Zoom shops - don’t call them vending machines - dispense the latest high-end gadgets from the likes of Apple and HP in almost every major US airport and in department stores like Macy’s. Now the company is going global and Smith is leading the charge into Asia.

Shared via The Age. Read the rest of the article here.

US startups: half founded by immigrants 

The venture capital community argues the study, completed by research group National Foundation for American Policy, proves the need to overhaul rules governing how entrepreneurs can immigrate to the United States to spur job development.

“It’s a gamble whether an entrepreneur should stay or leave right now, and that’s not how the immigration system should work,” said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, on a call with reporters. “What we need is legislation that helps these entrepreneurs from outside the United States.”

Of the 50 top venture-backed companies, 23 had at least one immigrant founder, the study found. In addition, 37 of the 50 companies employed at least one immigrant in a key management position such as chief technology officer.

Shared via Reuters. Read the rest of the article here.