Category Archives: Career Development

University Challenge – #Startup Victoria’s Student #Pitch Night

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There were around 500 people in the audience for last week’s #StartupVic University Startup Battle, which either says there was nothing better to do on a chilly Melbourne evening, or that this new Meetup format is working – or that the students of today are less interested in finding a job, and more interested in building their own career opportunities that connect with their purpose. (Our political leaders should take note….)

A sell out audience for the University Startup Battle (Image by Stefan Welack sourced from Twitter)

A sell out audience for the University Startup Battle (Image by Stefan Welack sourced from Twitter)

After a series of campus competitions, the finalists on the night were representing 6 of Victoria’s universities, and revealed a wealth of talent, ideas, innovation and inspiration. In order of appearance, the pitches were:

InternMe – (Victoria University)

With a tagline of “Experience the Experience”, this is a 2-sided market for graduate recruitment, that revealed some interesting stats about the student employment market.

Revenue is expected to come from fees for successful placements, and job advertisements. The business plans to cover work experience, internships, part-time and temporary work during study, as well as permanent and full-time roles.

Currently sourcing leads via LinkedIn and social media (notably Instagram), the founders say they may include psychometric profiling tools for better matching applicants with opportunities.

The pitch was to raise $100,000 for website development, but as the judges commented during the Q&A, the biggest challenge is engaging employers. As regular attendees to these pitch nights will recall, this mismatch or disconnect between students/graduates and employers continues to provide startup opportunities.

Printabox – (Swinburne University)

This website is designed to reduce the time, cost and complexity of ordering short-run branded boxes. Basically a self-serve model, the founders have spent $500,000 in development costs, primarily on a proprietary design tool. The resulting products come in 3 standard sizes – perhaps more customisation will become available?

The target clients are the 44,000 online stores in Australia who often need small numbers of branded boxes for sending out customer orders. But as the judges noted (based on a quick online search) there does appear to be a lot of competition. And although Printabox claims that their source code is protected, they have not applied (or are unable to apply) for a design patent.

Mech X Innovation – Project Ora – (Deakin University)

The founders have developed a hardware device that fits on standard tablet computers, and is designed to help children reduce and prevent eyesight damage caused by too much screen time, and by being too close to the device.

Essentially a Bluetooth-enabled accessory linked to an app, Ora monitors the amount of user screen time, proximity to the device and ambient lighting, and can be used in conjunction with “time outs”, scheduled messages and reminders to “go and do something else”. It can be semi-customised, so that parents can create a reward system, for example.

According to the designers, the competitor products (Appomate and samtime) are app-based only, and focus on time and distance – not lighting. Ora may also integrate with other devices, e.g. FitBit, but the target market is children and teenagers up to age 18, and their parents.

Asked about their path to market, they are planning a crowdfunding campaign. The key to adoption, though, will be via schools (who either provide or prescribe what devices pupils use) and schools suppliers (e.g., digital text books and e-learning tools).

ICallDibs – (Monash University)

This idea grew out of direct user experience, namely how can overseas students coming to Melbourne buy and sell furniture? The business is aiming to provide a market place for “Second Hand Furniture, First Class Deals”.

The biggest challenges faced by international students when buying/selling furniture are transportation, timing and finding buyers/sellers. The business will offer bundled services, including storage and removals/delivery, via partnerships.

The company aims to target international student agencies, and will ensure better matching between buyers and sellers (although they may want to consider changing the name unless they can trademark it….).

Rather than an “Ask”, the team offered a “Give” in the form of a customer discount for the evening’s attendees.

When asked about logistics and insurance, the founders clarified that the counterparts (buyer and seller) bear the direct risk. The business takes their commission upfront, then release the order details to the customers.

Assignment Hero – (Melbourne University)

It felt that this app, a collaboration tool for group work (sort of Slack for education?) was speaking to the converted, given the audience response. In short, having access to lots of different collaboration tools sounds great, but they each only do one or two things (albeit, really well). And if you use more than one app, you end up with too many tools and too many notifications.

While students may hate group assignments, they’re an important aspect of learning how to work with other people and acquiring other soft skills. They also seem to comprise a greater component of student assessments – possibly because they require less direct teacher-student face time?

Rather than build a whole new system, the founders have opted for native integration with Google Docs, plus some dashboard reporting tools (including the amount of individual input to a project).

The app is free to end users, but will generate revenue from education providers (enterprise sales) and on-demand services and commissions. When asked about existing tools like Moodle and Blackboard, the founders noted that these were designed for teaching, not collaboration.

It was also noted that existing productivity apps are not easily accessible by students (although no doubt, as with education content providers, enterprise app vendors will make student versions and pricing available). Plus, the “edtech” sector is of particular interest when linked to life-long learning, professional development and self-directed study.

Eat Up – (RMIT)

Finally, Eat Up is a social enterprise trying to address the number of school children who turn up at school without anything for lunch – estimated to be as many as 1 in 8 schoolchildren. Personally, I find this an indictment on our society – why should anyone in Australia need to go without basic food? – but the causes/reasons are far too complex to address here.

Essentially a partnership for sourcing, assembly and distribution, Eat Up has created a service model which they hope to roll out in more and more schools. They tap into the established Food Bank network for supplies, engage TAFEs to prepare the lunches, and use OzHarvest and SecondBite for logistics. There has also been support from Virgin Australia, ygap, Karma Canteen and Education Changemakers.

Eat Up aims to avoid passing on the costs to kids, parents or schools, and in part takes inspiration from another social enterprise, Thank You Water.

During a panel Q&A, the founders were asked about the apparent lack of technical skills or resources on their teams. In response, it was noted that there are many open source apps, available templates and market places for code and plugins. One founder commented that despite studying computer science, he used very little of what he learned to develop his app.

Revealing another apparent weakness in their pitches, the founders were quizzed on their respective sales models, costs of acquisition and pathway to revenue. The responses suggested that the startups risk being limited by their own inexperience, and that they each need to do more market analysis, assessment of customer willingness/ability to pay, and identify the best ways to scale their businesses.

There was also a lack of clarity around near-term goals and milestone planning.

In the end, the winner was Assignment Hero, no doubt reflecting the needs of the audience, plus the fact that the business has gained traction with some universities.

Next week: ASIC’s new regulatory sandbox for #FinTech #startups

Challenging Monocultures via Crop Rotation

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Agricultural scientists are advocating a return to crop rotation. They argue that if farmers diversify what they grow each season, they can achieve more sustainable environmental and economic outcomes. Whereas, industrial-scale, intensive and single crop farming depletes the soil, and requires the use of expensive (and potentially harmful) pesticides and chemical fertilizers. In short, monocultures are self-limiting and ultimately self-destructive.

Indoor salad garden, Itoya department store, Ginza, Japan (Photo © Rory Manchee, all rights reserved)

Indoor salad garden, Itoya department store, Ginza, Japan (Photo © Rory Manchee, all rights reserved)

The same concept applies to teams and organisations. If we only associate with people who look, talk, sound, think and act like us, we not only risk group-think, we also promote unconscious collective bias. While it might seem comfortable to only deal and interact with “people like us”, it creates unrealistic cognitive and cultural homogeneity.

I understand why we often talk about “finding our tribe”, but for me, I find connections and shared values among several tribes: partly because no single community can provide for all our needs; partly because at their worst, monocultures can result in in-breeding….

One antidote to organisational monocultures is to promote diversity (especially cognitive diversity), so you mix up the elements that make up a team or an entity. Another solution (a bit like crop rotation itself) is to alternate and rotate roles on a project, within a team or at the executive level. (Some corporate boards already practise this.)

I once had a marvellous CEO who liked to boast that he had worked in every department within the company, from editorial to production, from sales to marketing. Not only did he have a more complete view of the organisation, he also had a much better understanding of how to get each department to collaborate.

At the individual level, alternating roles within the organisation can help them to acquire new skills, develop fresh perspectives, build different networks, gain valuable experience, and avoid going stale.

If you are uncomfortable with the horticultural or biological analogies, then perhaps the work of Michael Simmons is more palatable. From his research, “simply being in an open network instead of a closed one is the best predictor of career success”.*

Another way of looking at this notion of “crop rotation” is through the lens of a corporate turnaround, or a company trying to move from start-up to scale-up.

In the former scenario, the owners, board and CEO recognise that they need to bring in different people, even if only on a short-term basis, to help them:

  • Review the status quo objectively
  • Identify new ideas and fresh thinking
  • Enhance in-house skills and resources
  • Apply a circuit-breaker to unblock the stalemate
  • Join the dots between different parts of the organisation, the market and the client base

In the latter situation, bringing in specialist advisers, or “pop-up boards”, can:

  • Provide an injection of strategic focus
  • Develop a dynamic business planning process
  • Ramp up capacity or capability in a very short space of time
  • Open up new networks or provide access to capital, resources and markets
  • Expand the team’s “bench strength” at critical times

As an independent consultant with a portfolio of interests, I provide an interim resource to my clients, fulfilling different roles depending on their specific requirements. I also serve on pop-up and advisory boards.  And because I am naturally curious, and like to immerse myself in different ideas, I am an “open networker”, meaning that I engage and connect with different people across the various groups of which I am a member. Where I increasingly add value is in joining the dots between otherwise unconnected or seemingly disparate elements.

Next week: Latest #FinTech Round-Up

* Thanks to Jessica Stillman at Inc.Com for bringing this article to my attention

Finding purpose through self-reflection

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We hear a lot about “finding your purpose” these days, whether it’s to develop a personal career plan, or to validate a business idea. My colleague Carolyn Tate, founder of the Slow School of Business, spoke on “purpose” at the recent Huddle Design Fest drawing on her TEDx talk for Telstra entitled “Profit on Purpose”. During her presentation, Carolyn referenced the Japanese concept of 生き甲斐 (“ikigai” = “a reason for being”) which is sometimes represented in the following diagram:

Ikigai-EN-optimized-PNG

“Finding the purpose of your life”. Graphic representation by @emmyzen (Emmy van Deurzen). Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Variations on this theme include, for example, the work of Lianne Bridges and Susan Biali. Earlier, more prosaic, interpretations might be found in the work of Richard N. Bolles (“What Colour is Your Parachute?”) or Spencer Johnson (“Who Moved My Cheese?”).

What it all boils down to is connecting with your values and interests, and finding a balance between what motivates you, what rewards you, what you can contribute, and what people want from you.

For me, a the starting point is developing a personal narrative, to understand how you have arrived at this particular point in your life and/or career, in particular your influences, achievements, challenges, experiences and insights. Through this self-reflection, some common themes should emerge that can form of the basis of defining your own purpose. This should include your core values, the things that are important to you, and your own particular passion.

Where I may differ in my interpretation of “purpose” is that I believe that our purpose can change over time. I don’t see purpose as singular or even linear – it’s multi-dimensional, dynamic, situational and contextual. Our needs and our circumstances don’t stay the same. Likewise, our relationships and the the external environment are constantly changing. So our purpose will likewise be different at different points in our life. For example:

  • Early in our career we may be technically qualified, but without relevant experience we may not be able to command the most senior roles or the highest pay – so our purpose may be to hone our skills and knowledge
  • Later, we may find that our focus on things like marriage, children and a mortgage means we may be willing to get well-paid for work that we don’t actually enjoy – someone I was coaching recently stated that “I’m caught in a job” which was preventing him from pursuing his passion (thankfully, he has since decided to pursue a portfolio of interests, rather than stick with a single job he no longer enjoys)
  • During the “third act” of our career, financial or material rewards may not be so important, but we still need to be engaged in work that we enjoy, that motivates us and which can still sustain us at more than just a basic level of food and shelter
  • Throughout, I think it is essential to keep connected to our true passions (especially creative outlets), in part to provide a counterbalance to work/financial/external imperatives, in part to explore alternative ideas, find linkages between our other interests, and even to connect with new technology – for example, in my own case, my interest in electronic music has led me to recording an album using iOS devices, releasing it via social media sites Soundcloud and Bandcamp, getting it broadcast on the ABC, and beta-testing new music apps

When working with clients to help them re-connect with their business or their career purpose, I like to do an audit of where they are now, and where they could be in 3-5 years time. Through a process of exploring what might be possible, and reframing the present to re-position it for future growth and development, we can discover ways to regain balance by prioritising what’s important, reconfigure or even abandon what isn’t working, and re-establish goals and objectives.

While it is important to strike a balance between the “four pillars” of the ikigai model, my experience is that rarely will all four be in equilibrium – at times they may even be in conflict with one another, or at least in a state of flux. But it’s the resulting points of friction, when we look at them objectively, that can be the source of ideas, context, clarity and resolution. Making time for regular self-reflection enhances our pursuit of purpose, and allows us to take stock of our current situation, without undermining our core values or abandoning our particular interests.

Next week: Challenging Monocultures via Crop Rotation

#StartupVic launches new-look #pitch event

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The team at Startup Victoria have been working hard over the summer: not only have they brought on a whole bunch of new commercial sponsors, but they have also launched a new format for their pitch nights. The idea is to invite startup founders to register their interest in pitching to a panel of judges. The contestants get the opportunity to compete in front of a live audience, for a chance to win face time with local VC’s, along with some other startup goodies.

global_446720634It’s not Shark Tank (there’s no hard cash on offer), nor is it an open mic night (there is a pre-screening and audition process) – but it does enable entrepreneurs to test their pitch, get some early exposure, and receive some great feedback and advice. It also doesn’t matter what stage the startups are at, although businesses that already have some market traction or have built and tested an MVP are probably in a better position to compete.

The launch night saw pitches from four startups, who are at various stages of development. In no particular order they were:

Ad Hoc Media with Passenger Pad, a digital Out Of Home advertising medium for taxis, using interactive touch screens inside the cab. To date, there has been a low take-up rate of this technology by the taxi industry in Australia, mainly due to regulatory issues, but the landscape is changing. With a background in taxi electronics and hardware, the founders are about to launch with 400 taxis in Melbourne, and plan to expand to other cities. There is no doubt that using a combination of passenger, location and fare data (duration, time of day, pick-up and drop-off points), the screens will be able to offer brands and their media buyers targeted audiences and in-depth customer analytics. The challenge will be to offer advertisers a competitive rate card, especially as this is essentially a new medium: it offers viewer choice like TV, can serve up targeted content like web or mobile, and is ideal for special offers linked to location and time of day.

Global Patient Portal offers a free platform for e-health records. Having already launched in Kolkata, India with 40,000 users signed up in 11 weeks, GPP is aiming at lower socio-economic communities and emerging markets. The initial business goal is simple: to support ownership of e-health records by users. Using a combination of bootstrapping and NGO funding, GPP has been able to hire a team of “scribes” in India who sit in on patient consultations and capture the medical notes, which can then be referred to at the next consultation. (Currently, a lot of time and resource is wasted because patient records are captured on paper, which is easily lost once the patient leaves the clinic.) Commercial revenue will come from selling anonymized patient data (subject to legal compliance, privacy obligations and data accuracy) for research and policy planning purposes. In choosing to launch in Kolkata, GPP was aware that in some more affluent urban communities in India, the favoured means of patient communication is WhatsApp?, so they would be less likely to adopt a separate platform. Also, in Australia, having talked to GPs about the various government attempts to establish the e-health system for patient records, I am aware of a reluctance within the medical profession to buy in to the scheme: first, there is no financial incentive for them to capture patient data via a common e-health platform; second, why would they want to share patient data with their competitors?

prevyou is aiming to disrupt a large part of the recruitment and job ad market, by directly connecting students with job opportunities at SMEs. The two-sided market effectively crowdsources available jobs from SMEs, who typically do not have access to the hiring market or to full-time and dedicated HR resources. The goal is to streamline the hiring process, and to offer a mix of standard and premium services (e.g., video resumes, applicant screening, skills matching, personality profiling etc.) and later to add validation of applicant credentials and qualifications. In return, the business will take a commission once a job has been offered and/or candidate hired. While the focus is initially on capturing the market for casual and part-time jobs, the judges urged them to look at the enterprise HR market (under an outsourcing or white label model?). Looking ahead, there is the opportunity include student internships (although, like the legal issues with Year 10 work experience, internships and placements present additional challenges such as achieving student learning outcomes and other employment law issues).

OurHome is an app to help families manage, share and track household chores, so that children learn to take some responsibility around the house, and they can get rewarded for their contribution. It emerged out of an earlier app, Fairshare, that was aimed at shared houses. Apparently, people living in shared houses don’t care enough about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom, or are happy with paper charts and lists on the fridge door. Describing itself as “an integral household tool with indirect network effects (i.e., like Google, not Facebook)”, OurHome also claims to be the #1 chores app. Using advanced algorithms, and other features such as customisation and Dropbox integration, the app also introduces an element of gamification through rewards (intrinsic and extrinsic). For busy families, it replaces those fridge notes and task charts (although, as the judges noted, there’s no calendar yet). Of particular interest is the very positive feedback the team have had from families who have children with ADD.

Despite a few technical glitches (concerning mics and audio quality), the first new-look pitch night was a success, and Global Patient Portal won the on-line audience vote. I was luck enough to meet with one of the teams a few days later. They thought it was a useful experience, but they hadn’t quite known what to expect, and they had anticipated more of a grilling from the judges and tougher questions from the audience.

Next week: More In The Moment