Fastbrick Robotics has topped Techboard’s startup and tech company ranking this fortnight, following its win at the 2016 WA Innovator of the Year awards.
Fastbrick Robotics has topped Techboard’s startup and tech company ranking this fortnight, following its win at the 2016 WA Innovator of the Year awards.
As well as picking up prize money of $75,000, the robotic bricklaying innovator received broad press coverage, and multiple nominations from Techboard’s panel of experts.
Carnegie Wave Energy dropped one rank to second this fortnight. The cleantech remained in the headlines as it was awarded grant funding of $15.5 million from the European Regional Development Fund towards its planned project at Wave Hub in the UK.
Shark Mitigation Systems, ranked third, scored highly in social media engagement and press coverage, after it announced a collaborative research project with the NSW Department of Primary Industries and the University of Technology Sydney.
Bikeboookings, ranked fifth, was the highest trending unlisted company.
It saw strong social media engagement, and announced its international launch with some stores in the US already using the 30 day trial the startup is offering.
"Going international is a significant milestone for our product," according to Bikebookings CEO Kristen Britz.
"We have some significant updates in development that will complete our quest to offer an all-inclusive software solution for bike shops by early 2017."
The company is also in discussion with the two leading bike shop software solution companies to white label Bikebookings' solution to their approximate 2,000 stores.
Other startups trending this fortnight include Power Ledger (ranked sixth), which signed an MoU with New Zealand’s Vector to to deploy Power Ledger’s energy trading platform, and CourseGenius (ranked seventh) which launched new compliance training courses.
Instatruck (10th) and ePAT (15th) both picked up prizes at the WA Innovator of the Year.
Other noteworthy startup accomplishments and milestones this fortnight include Moodle‘s Martin Dougiamas being announced as a finalist for the 2017 WA Australian of the Year, Proteomics International winning the WA Industry and Export Awards and The Stock Market Guru‘s soft launch of its product to the Australian market.
Gone in 360 seconds
Virtual Guest has released a 360-degree virtual reality film called Gone in 360 Seconds, which immerses the viewer within the action of a dramatic heist that takes place in a car workshop. The immersion will be released as two separate films produced in association with Curtin University and directed by FTV and Screen Arts researcher Dr Stuart Bender and Virtual Guest’s Brandon D’Silva.
“Gone in 360 Seconds is a unique piece of creative-practice research. It uses the technical and artistic challenges of live-action VR production as an opportunity to draw upon contemporary film studies methodology to understand viewer perception and cognition with respect to this new mode of storytelling,” explains Bender. “Using biometric analysis of audience behaviour and interaction with the viewing experience, as well as psychometric attitude tests pre and post-viewing, we intend to explore how actual viewers engage with a variety of cinematic and non-cinematic devices in our short VR experience.”
Star performance by Stargroup
ASX-listed financial payments provider Stargroup is on track to deliver its 12th consecutive quarter of record revenue after posting yet another ground-breaking month in October. Stargroup, who have over 350 ATMs across Australia, said their best-ever monthly revenues were largely driven by the ATM hardware and software sales division.
Trading game launches
The Stock Market Guru has announced the soft launch of its trading game. The game sees players use their ASX knowledge and trading skills to outsmart each other to win. In trials, a A$50 note was auctioned off to the crowd, with a winning bid A$2.03 reached, when the auction closed. Over 500 bids were placed, from India, UK and Australia in the 15 minute auction, with the winning bid being placed with 5 minutes and 4 seconds into the game.
Smartbeat measures real conversions
SaaS startup Engagement Coach has changed its name to Smartbeat – but with the company’s focus remaining on customer engagement for hospitality and retail SMEs. Initially starting out with a social media integrated WiFi provider called Freedom WiFi, co-founders Paul Trappitt and Todd Sainsbury realised the real opportunity was combining data from multiple sources to create marketing actions and measure real conversions - not just likes or hits but footfall and engagement.
“When we started pitching the idea to small business owners and investors, we realised that a lot of the words we were using were ‘fluffy’ or jargon,” explains Todd Sainsbury. “Even words you may not consider tech jargon, like engagement, wifi and connection would get us glazed eyes or blank stares. Smartbeat has no preconceptions and allows us to tell the story.”
Inhouse brings Manners to the board
Inhouse Group has appointed Alice Manners to its board of directors. Manners has a successful track record building digital agency networks during her 15 years working across Asia, ten of which were based in Singapore. Currently Manners is the Chief Digital Officer at Marketforce, Western Australia’s oldest brand and marketing communications agency, and she was voted one of Australia's top 30 Women in Media in B&T's Awards in 2014 and 2015.
"It’s exciting to be working with an award winning organisation whose flagship product is so relevant to marketers today,” said Manners. “With data playing such a pivotal role in marketing, this leading edge analytics platform monitors customer behaviour to deliver real-time trends on traffic volumes, dwell, path, opportunity, engagement, conversion and loyalty.”
Inhouse trades as Trendwise, and brings internet-style visitor analytics to the physical world.
Frugl compares supermarket pricing
Groceries comparison site My Local Savings has rebranded to Frugl (rhymes with Google) and soft launched its new website. The service automatically finds the lowest supermarket prices for certain products. Customer-led product optimisation will continue in the months ahead.
CourseGenius introduces compliance suite
Online learning platform CourseGenius has released a suite of online compliance training courses, with home fragrance and bodycare company ECOYA one of the first to sample the new suite of courses. CourseGenius enables SMEs to create and deliver their own custom online training programs. The CourseGenius suite of compliance courses provides training in three core areas: workplace health and safety fundamentals, workplace bullying and harassment, and social media and electronic communication.
