Archive for the ‘investment’ Category

Australia social media company MOKO to list on the NASDAQ

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2014
Photo credit; Richard Patterson on Flickr

Photo credit; Richard Patterson on Flickr

Australian app development company MOKO Social Media will soon be listed on the NASDAQ.

The company’s public offering price is set to be between $US7.50-9.00 per American depositary shares (ADS), with each ADS representing 40 ordinary fully paid MOKO shares. That is equivalent to a price range of $A0.20- 0.24 per share.

MOKO’s flagship app REC*IT uses data provided by colleges through an exclusive agreement to help organise student recreational and sporting activities.

The free app is to be adopted across 700 colleges by the end of September, with a reach of 10 million possible users. This will allow advertisers to directly target a highly attractive and segmented audience.

Chairman Greg McCann said the possibilities of this audience are part of the reasoning behind the ASX-listed company’s decision to dual list.

“[The US] is a very big market, and it’s a very sophisticated market — We really wanted to give American investors the opportunity to invest, because they were probably more likely to put a truer value on the stocks that you would in Australia,” he said.

“There’s not a lot of technology stocks here, particularly doing what we’re doing,  which is really pushing the boundaries into a new area.”

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$5 million up for grabs for the right Australian digital startup

Friday, May 9th, 2014
Photo credit; vagawi on Flickr

Photo credit; vagawi on Flickr

One Australian digital startup will be selected to receive $5 million in funding, thanks to The Big Pitch, a competition run by Melbourne venture capital fund Oxygen Ventures.

In addition to funding, Oxygen Ventures is offering mentoring and operational support to the winner. Applications close on June 5.

Five finalists will be selected to pitch in front of an audience and an expert panel that includes Dodo founder Larry Kestelman, Network Ten executive general manager Russel Howcroft and BlueChilli founder Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin.

Oxygen Ventures investment director Ilya Frolov says the Big Pitch judges are looking for digital start-ups at the pre-commercialised or newly launched phase that are globally scalable and offer innovative technology.

“The Big Pitch is a great forum for these start-ups to showcase a game-changing concept,” Frolov says.

For more information on this story, click here.

New crowdfunding platform opens in Australia

Wednesday, March 12th, 2014
Photo credit; David Pacey on Flickr

Photo credit; David Pacey on Flickr

VentureCrowd, an Australian online equity based crowdfunding platform, has officially opened for business in the country.

The VentureCrowd platform allows investors to receive equity in high growth-potential startups, making them shareholders in the startup ompanies.

It opened Feb. 20 with over 200 registered investors and 36 startups which have been pre-screened by the best Australian accelerators, incubators, angel groups and university programs.

Artesian Venture Partners, one of Australia’s leading early stage venture capital firms, developed the platform.

According to Artesian managing partner Jeremy Colless, there are a very large number of sophisticated investors in Australia who have not previously invested in the startup space.

“The wholesale investor market in Australia is large with 207,000 wealthy individuals in Australia sitting on $US625 billion ($684 billion) worth of assets,” Says Colless. “Until now there have been major barriers to entry for investors in startups. An investor either had to have a large amount of money and time available to screen and review each potential startup investment personally, or had to commit as much as $250,000 to a venture capital fund to qualify as a limited partner.”

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Freelancer.com founder a business winner in 2013

Friday, January 3rd, 2014
Photo credit; Snap on Flickr

Photo credit; Snap on Flickr

Freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie has been named a business winner on Yahoo! Finance Australia’s list of business winners and losers for 2013.

Barrie enjoyed one of the year’s most successful IPOs when shares in the online freelancing network shot as high as $2.60 on their first day.

Coming off a 50 cent issue price, the Freelancer frenzy briefly made the company a billion-dollar concern.

Barrie holds 46% of the company and, even with Freelancer shares now trading around $1.30, his stake is still worth approximately $260 million.

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Freelancer.com makes strong debut on stock market

Monday, December 2nd, 2013
Photo credit; Andreas Poike on Flickr

Photo credit; Andreas Poike on Flickr

Australian online freelancing website Freelancer.com made a strong debut on the ASX Nov. 15, surging by as much as 400%.

Freelancer raised about A$17.55 million by selling 35.1 million new shares or only 8.1 percent of the company, capitalising on a revival in the Australian IPO market and strong interest in non-resources stocks.

The stock was offered at A$0.50 per share and traded at A$1.60 by 0243 GMT, valuing the four-year-old Sydney-based company at A$697.6 million.

“On the face, the price is telling us that this float is underpriced,” said CMC Markets strategist Michael McCarthy.

“But because they only sold a small amount of the 436 million shares, that’s not a problem for them. What they’ve essentially done is establish a market value of this company.”

CEO Matt Barrie holds 46% of the tightly held business, a stake worth about A$321 million after Friday’s jump in the share price. Investment fund Startive Capital owns another 39%.

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Australia ranks 11th in ease of doing business

Friday, November 15th, 2013
Photo credit; Marc Falardeau on Flickr

Photo credit; Marc Falardeau on Flickr

Australia ranks 11th in the world for the ease of doing business and scores highly in terms of the ability to obtain credit and start a venture according to the World Bank/International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) latest annual Doing Business survey of 189 economies.

“Australia continues to rate highly overall and ranks among the top five economies when it comes to the ease of getting credit and starting a business,” IFC senior operations officer for the Pacific Jonathon Kirkby said in a statement on Tuesday.

Singapore continues to provide the world’s most business-friendly regulatory environment for local entrepreneurs, followed by Hong Kong and then New Zealand.

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iSelect to miss revenue target, CEO resigns

Monday, November 4th, 2013
Photo credit; Dan DeChiaro on Flickr

Photo credit; Dan DeChiaro on Flickr

Australian online comparison company iSelect Ltd said recently it would miss its revenue target for the first half of fiscal year 2014 and revealed that its chief executive, Matt McCann, who had been with iSelect for six years, had resigned just four months after taking the firm public.

iSelect has lost almost 30 percent or about A$120 million ($113.56 million) of its market value since its June listing as earnings missed prospectus projections, raising doubts about the firm’s management of its initial public offering.

“They missed the mark in terms of expectations. There are issues around the whole IPO process – over-promised and under-delivered,” said Peter Esho, chief market analyst at Invast Financial Services.

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Rural Australian businesses missing out on online opportunties, AgriFood Skills Australia aims to change that

Monday, October 21st, 2013
Photo credit; Richard Taylor on Flickr

Photo credit; Richard Taylor on Flickr

According to Tim Gentle, who has been developing web marketing strategies for ten years, nearly all country based businesses have a reason for not having an online presence.

Some of the excuses he’s run into include:

  • online is what kids do
  • the internet speed where I do business is too slow
  • my clients are local I don’t need to be on the web.

“You don’t have to be scared of it,” Gentle says. “It’s a lot of fun.”

“I had a gentleman who couldn’t even download a photo from his camera” he recalls. “Now he’s putting up YouTube videos onto his online store, and getting his wife to demonstrate things in his shop.”

Running a business is about being competitive, and Gentle suggests if you don’t have an online presence, you will be lagging behind.

And while internet speeds is definitely an issue, new infrastructures will change this and it’s important to be set to go straight away.

AgriFood Skills Australia will be hosting different courses in different communities in the next three months with Federal Government support.

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Kickstarter announces Australian launch date

Thursday, October 17th, 2013
Photo credit; David Pacey on Flickr

Photo credit; David Pacey on Flickr

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter will be live in Australia as of Nov. 13.

The US-based platform, which has helped raise more than $US800 million for creative projects broke the news recently via its online blog.

“In August we announced that Kickstarter would soon open up to projects based in Australia and New Zealand for the first time. Today we’re happy to announce that the day has finally come!,” the blog read.

The company said Australians could start building their projects now and would be able to launch those projects on Wednesday, November 13.

“We thought the month-long gap would give everyone plenty of time to build and tweak their projects before launching. Beginning November 13, they can launch and share their projects with the world.”

Crowdfunding is a modern alternative to traditional funding avenues such as bank loans. It enables people to raise money through pledges from a large number of people, usually through a web-based campaign.

Until now, Kickstarter has only been open to US, UK and Canadian citizens.

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WooCommerce presents Zapier integration

Friday, October 4th, 2013
Photo credit; Newtown grafitti on Flickr

Photo credit; Newtown grafitti on Flickr

Last month, WooCommerce announced that it had officially integrated the platform with Zapier, a service that makes automated updates for you.

The WooCommerce Zapier extension includes triggers that can be set up to send new (paid) orders to Zapier or when an order changes status. From there, you have many possibilities for automation.

The combination of a trigger and an action, on Zapier, is referred to as a “Zap”. Each time a zap is triggered, this is referred to as a “Task”.

Here is an example of some of the things you can do with Zapier in WooCommerce:

  • Create a new Xero invoice for new WooCommerce orders.
  • Create a new Contact in Xero when WooCommerce orders are paid for.
  • Create a new Freshbooks Client from a new WooCommerce Order.
  • Add a new row to a Google Docs spreadsheet when a WooCommerce New Order is received and paid for.
  • Send a notification email via your Gmail service when a WooCommerce New Order is received.
  • Send an email notification when a WooCommerce order changes status. Combine this with a custom filter if you want to limit the email to a specific status, for example, when an order status changes to refunded
  • Add a Highrise Comment when a WooCommerce Order changes status
  • Adds your paying WooCommerce customers to your MailChimp mailing list
  • WooCommerce New Order to Campaign Monitor List
  • Append a new line to a CSV file in a Drobpox folder when WooCommerce New Orders are received.
  • Send your customer an SMS notification whenever their order’s status changes.
  • Send your customer an SMS notification when their order has been received and paid for.
  • Create a ZenDesk ticket when a WooCommerce order changes status. Use this Zap with a custom filter to customise it for a specific status – for example, when an order changes status to refunded.

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