Tag Archives: #VR

Pitch X’s Winter Solstice

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The latest Pitch X event, organised by Academy Xi and hosted by YBF Ventures, was held a few days before the (Southern hemisphere) mid-winter – there may not have been any mulled wine, but there was still a warm atmosphere on a cold and wet Melbourne evening. The judging panel was drawn from YBF, Melbourne Angels, Linfox and Clearpoint Ventures.

The usual format applied: 11 startups were each given 90 seconds to pitch, followed by a 90 second Q&A with the judges. The top three were then brought back for a 5-minute pitch, and 4 minutes of Q&A.

The pitches, in order of presentation were (links in the names where available):

Startup 101

A self-styled online startup school, targeting university students and recent graduates. The core premise is that entrepreneurship is not being taught to undergraduates. The judges asked about the MVP, which was not clear, nor was there a breakeven forecast based on the number of students. The founder is offering a freemium model, based on memberships and services. Looking $500k for software development and marketing in China (a key demographic for this business).

Studio Ninja

This is a cloud and mobile PaaS solution for professional photographers. I first covered Studio Ninja in late 2016, when they pitched at a StartupVic event – and it’s great to see that they have managed to bootstrap themselves this far.

Professional photography is competitive, but margins are low. Studio Ninja offers an end-to-end platform for scheduling, contracts, payments etc. They have now integrated with Xero, QuickBoooks, Google, PayPal and Stripe, and have built a community via their chat app, Facebook group and Instagram account. At a basic $29.95 per month, they now have 4,000 paying subscribers, mainly in Australia, UK and US. but need to reinvest in product development, scaling and building further efficiencies. Users are offered a 30-day free trial, with an average 25% conversion rate, thanks to the hook of discounts for early sign-ups, plus a referral program.

RoamingDuck

Calling itself the “Uber of travel”, RoamingDuck offers travelers access to curated itineraries, based on their personal preferences. Using freelance resources (along the lines of Upwork and Airtaskr), the service uses a travel planning dashboard on which the customer and the curator can collaborate. With a quick turnaround, RoamingDuck can help customers build and review an itinerary within 12 hours. With the ability to consolidate and share, the content is easily accessible to users, who can plan anything – even supporting “self-plan” users with a search function.

Freelance curators come from the ranks of existing travel bloggers and services like Travelo, and are subject to a vetting process. There is also an escrow system, so freelances only get paid when the customer is satisfied. Normal travel agents are quite restricted on what they can access or offer, and services like Skyscanner are great for searching individual fares – RoamingDuck is solving the planning issue, and building the itinerary. Asked whether RoamingDuck can support actual bookings, the founder will likely implement this via APIs.

Wastr

According to the founder, households waste about 20% of the food they buy. Wastr is an AI-powered app that is designed to help consumers use what they purchase, rather than letting to go to waste. The solution allows subscribers to scan their grocery receipts, and in return they will receive recipes, notifications on expiry dates, plus other reminders. The app is offered under a freemium model, with a paid service starting at $2 per month.

VRWalker

Described as “VR for your foot” (or the “mouse” for VR), this is a motorised shoe device that allows wearers to experience”walking” within VR applications, without actually moving.
It’s an idea that has been around for a while, but the founder claims to have filed key patents. The shoes work on the concept of intuitive locomotion (linked to the dantian, or our centre of gravity), and are intended to be much cheaper and much more convenient than existing treadmill-based solutions. The founder hopes to have a working prototype by the end of this year. Likely customers will come from areas like construction, engineering and gaming. The judges asked about how insurance would be handled, and the device could be bundled with existing VR headset devices.

The Nurture Project

The Nurture Project is designed to teach life skills to deal with anxiety issues, which according to the founder, affect 30% of the population. Unlike other solutions, this treats the causes as well as the symptoms, using a well-being model built on 5 core pillars, and delivered via a 12-week online program. It is currently aimed at women in their 30s and 40s.

Natural MedTech

Designed to boost the immune, hormone and nervous system naturally, this has come out of a CSIRO project, with a scientific basis that has been peer-reviewed.

Magicast

This is a decentralised online podcast recording and editing service. Existing podcast software is either too complex, or too expensive. Instead, Magicast uses web-based programme development, publication and distribution, offering a two-sided marketplace for content, sound effects, music etc. The judges asked about international competitors, given that podcasting is very much a cottage industry, with relatively few barriers to entry.

Turtle

Something akin to an Uber courier service, Turtle enables customers to obtain goods from overseas that are not available where they live. Targeting expat and diaspora populations, the platform has an escrow function to provide a level of trust. It was not clear who would be responsible for tax, customs and quarantine issues.

Young Shaman Foundation

Having run a number of leadership development retreats on country for women in indigenous communities, the founder is now seeking funding to develop and extend the program she currently offers.

SecureStack

Helping companies to secure the cloud, with a focus on cyber security, the founder pointed out that key problems are caused by “cloud sprawl” – the uncontrolled proliferation of content, services and applications hosted and running on cloud-based servers. Using a proprietary cloud infrastructure security design, the startup has already secured two clients and $100k in revenues. Now looking to raise $2m, for an 18-month runway, in order to gain 100 clients. The solution is agnostic as to which cloud service clients use. Traditional cloud management and compliance is saturated, whereas SecureStack’s value proposition is in the security layers.

After much deliberation, the winners were:

1. StudioNinja
2. RoamingDuck
3. VR Walker

Next week: The Metaphorical Glass Jaw

Gaming/VR/AR pitch night at Startup Victoria

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Building on the successful format that has been the mainstay of Startup Vic‘s regular meetups for the past few years, February’s pitch night kicked off a scheduled programme of thematic events for 2017. First up was Gaming, VR and AR.

Photo by Daniel C, sourced from the Startup Victoria Meetup page

Hosted as usual by inspire9, the event drew a packed crowd, no doubt helped by the impressive panel of judges assembled by the organisers:

Dr Anna Newberry, responsible for driver-assistance technologies at Ford Australia; Stefani Adams, Innovation Partner at the Australia Post Accelerator; Tim Ruse, CEO of Zero Latency; Rupert Deans, Founder and CEO of Plattar; Samantha Hurley, Co-Founder and Director of Marketing Entourage; Gerry Sakkas, CEO of PlaySide Studios; and Joe Barber, a Commercialisation Advisor to the Department of Industry and Science, a Mentor at the Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP), and angel investor.

Maintaining the tradition of this blog, I will comment on each startup pitch in the order in which they presented.

Metavents

This niche business offers an event planning app for festivals. At its heart is a tool that allows users to build a 3-D simulation of proposed events, combined with an AI capability to simulate risk management, logistics and team communications, plus a digital time capsule where event attendees can upload photos and other content.

Once licensed to event planners and organisers, the platform charges clients $1 per ticket sale, plus a 2.5% fee on donations and fees for other content and services such as the digital time capsule. In addition, Metavents is building strategic partnerships, and announced a relationship with the Vihara Foundation and its Rock Against Poverty programme from 2018.

All good so far. Then, things got a bit confusing. For example, in addition to festival and event logistics, Metavents claims to offer humanitarian support services in response to natural disasters, and emergency management capabilities for smart cities. There was also talk of a global network (linked to the UN?), and an impact investment fund.

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that the pitch was a bit disjointed and suffered from a lack of focus. But the pitch did reveal something of the founders’ core passion, and incorporated some impressive graphics – it just felt like a case of form over substance.

Second Sight

Second Sight is a game analytics service that “unlocks the secrets in player data”, by enriching existing big data sources with social media interactions. It does this by profiling players based on their behaviours, and providing this feedback and insights to game developers and product managers. Focusing on the mobile game market, Second Sight is initially targeting independent developers, and will then move on to corporate game businesses.

Second Sight’s own development path is to build automation tools first, then create a library of tasks and insights. With an estimated 1 million users (based on game statistics), 3 paying clients and another 27 beta clients, this startup is showing some promising market traction. However, there are a number of established competitors, including Omniata (which is more of a general user analytics engine, like Mixpanel or Flurry), GameAnalytics, deltaDNA and Xsolla, some of which offer free user services.

In response to the “ask”, ($500k in seed funding in return for 20% equity), the judges suggested that Second Sight might want to address the needs of a specific game sector.

Dark Shadow Studio

This presentation featured an application called Drone Legion, that merges drone experience with VR. Part simulation game, part training software, it was nice to see a demo of the app running in the background, without detracting from the pitch itself.

A key point made by the presentation is that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), which is responsible for regulating drones in Australia, is in danger of falling behind other countries. For example, Drone Legion could be adapted to provide user training, testing and licensing before a customer buys a physical drone.

Although there are drone simulators available via Steam, they are not aimed at the general public. Drone Legion is also compatible with a range of gaming consoles.

The judges suggested that this pitch was more an individual game, rather than a business, so it was suggested that the founders should try to get funding from HTC or Oculus to build their first game. And given that one of the judges works for Australia Post (ostensibly a logistics company with a growing interest in drone technology….), there was the offer of a personal introduction.

Phoria

Phoria describes itself as an “immersive media business”, offering rapid 3-D visualisation (especially for the property development sector and the built environment),  and other services such as digital preservation.

But tonight, the pitch was about a plan to use “VR for social good”. Under the moniker “Dreamed”, Phoria is developing a niche health care solution, designing “patient experiences” to help them get out of their current care or treatment environment.

Predicated on an immersive therapy platform, Dreamed will offer a distribution service for cloud-based content, designed to be used alongside other, related assisted therapies that feature Animals, Nature and Music as stimulants for patient engagement and therapeutic outcomes. While not exactly a MedTech solution, Phoria’s “IP special sauce” is the use of VR as a constant dynamic feedback loop, which presumably learns from and adapts to user interaction and monitoring of appropriate patient diagnostics.

So, who pays for the service? Hopefully, hospitals will, especially if they can demonstrate reduced therapy costs and patient treatment times. (Maybe there will also be a consumer market alongside existing meditation apps?) But with some early-stage and potentially high-profile research underway via the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Phoria and Dreamed look to be making steady progress, notwithstanding the normally slow pace of medical research. Key to the research outcomes will be user acceptance and ease of service and content delivery, although a large number of unknowns remain in the context of the medical benefits. Meanwhile, Phoria continues to serve its core property market.

Finally, something which I found somewhat surprising, according to the presentation, there is no VR content licensing model currently available. Sounds like a job for a decentralized digital asset management and licensing registry (such as MyBit?).

On the night, and based on the judges’ votes, Phoria took out first place honours.

Next week: The Future of Work = Creativity + Autonomy

 

What might we expect in 2017?

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On a number of measures, 2016 was a watershed year. Unexpected election results, fractious geopolitics, numerous celebrity deaths, too many lacklustre blockbuster films, spectacular sporting upsets (and regular doping scandals), and sales of vinyl records are outpacing revenue from digital downloads and streaming services. What might we expect from 2017?

Detail from "The Passing Winter" by Yayoi Kusama (Photo by Rory Manchee)

Detail from “The Passing Winter” by Yayoi Kusama [Photo by Rory Manchee]

Rather than using a crystal ball to make specific predictions or forecasts, here are some of the key themes that I think will feature in 2017:

First, the nature of public discourse will come under increased scrutiny. In the era of “post-truth”, fake news and searing/scathing social commentary, the need for an objective, fact-based and balanced media will be paramount. In addition, the role of op-ed pieces to reflect our enlightened liberal traditions and the need for public forums to represent our pluralist society will be critical to maintaining a sense of fairness, openness, and just plain decency in public dialogue.

Second, a recurring topic of public conversation among economists, politicians, sociologists, HR managers, career advisors, bureaucrats, union leaders, technologists, educators and social commentators will be the future of work. From the impact of automation on jobs, to the notion of a universal basic income; from the growth of the gig economy, to finding purpose through the work we do. How we find, engage with and navigate lifelong employment is now as important as, say, choosing high school electives, making specific career choices or updating professional qualifications.

Third, the ongoing focus on digital technology will revolve around the following:

  • The Internet of Things – based on a current exhibit at London’s Design Museum, the main use cases for IoT will continue to be wearable devices (especially for personal health monitoring), agriculture, transport and household connectivity
  • Fintech – if a primary role of the internet has been for content dissemination, search and discovery, then the deployment of Blockchain solutions, the growth in crypto-currencies, the use of P2P platforms and the evolution of robo-advice are giving rise to the Internet of Money
  • Artificial Intelligence – we are seeing a broader range of AI applications, particularly around robotics, predictive analytics and sensory/environmental monitoring. The next phase of AI will learn to anticipate (and in some cases moderate) human behaviour, and provide more efficacious decision-making and support mechanisms for resource planning and management.
  • Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality – despite being increasingly visible in industries like gaming, industrial design, architecture and even tourism, it can feel like VR/AR is still looking for some dedicated use cases. One sector that is expected to benefit from these emerging technologies is education, so I would expect to see some interesting solutions for interactive learning, curriculum delivery and student assessment.

Fourth, and somewhat at odds with the above, the current enthusiasm for the maker culture is also leading to a growing interest in products that represent craft, artisan and hand-made fabrication techniques and traditions. Custom-made, bespoke, personalized and unique goods are in vogue – perhaps as a reaction to the “perfection” of digital replication and mass-production?

Fifth, with the importance of startups in driving innovation and providing sources of new economic growth, equity crowdfunding will certainly need to come of age. Thus far, this method of fund-raising has been more suited (and in many cases, is legally restricted) to physical products, entertainment assets, and creative projects. The delicate balance between retail investor protection and entrepreneurial access to funding means that this method of startup funding is constrained (by volume, amounts and investor participation), and contrary to stated intentions, can involve disproportionate set up costs and administration. But its time will come.

Finally, as shareholder activism and triple bottom line reporting become more prevalent (combined with greater regulatory and compliance obligations), I can see that corporate governance principles are increasingly placing company directors in the role of quasi-custodians of a company’s assets and quasi-trustees of stakeholder interests. It feels like boards are now expected to be the conscience of the company – something that will require directors to have greater regard to the impact of their decisions, not just whether those decisions are permitted, correct or good.

One thing I can predict for 2017, is that Content in Context will continue to comment on these topics, and explore their implications, especially as I encounter them through the projects I work on and the clients I consult to.

Next week: The FF17 Semi Finals in Melbourne