Marked by our relocation to Tasmania’s swankiest co-working space The Typewriter Factory, Polly McGee’s retirement from the Board, and the election of a number of new directors, the past four months has been both busy and challenging. I’m pleased to report however, that as a Board, we have come through it stronger than we went into it, and I am filled with optimism following our recent strategic planning day.

In a nutshell, Startup Tasmania’s mission is to foster innovation in Tasmania through exposure, knowledge and advocacy, and the Board has developed a number of initiatives aimed at seeing the organisation achieve its mission.

Initiatives already happening or about to happen include:

• Appointing a contractor to help with member advocacy and business development
• Major events with guest speakers
• Expanding coworking opportunities through partnerships
• Increased networking and professional development opportunities for members in the south, north and north-west
• Rebooting our website to include a members directory

There are some bigger longer term initiatives in the works too.  Top of our list is doing more work in the area of education and training.

The Board is very conscious of the need to meet the expectations of members and sponsors, and I encourage you to contact any one of us should you ever wish to discuss the future of Startup Tasmania. Contact details for all of the Directors can be found on our website about page.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Polly for the outstanding contribution that she made as a co-founder and director of Startup Tasmania. She left very big shoes to fill when she recently stepped down from the Board to pursue other interests, however she did so in the knowledge that the organisation remained in good hands. Polly will continue to be a member of Startup Tasmania, and an active one at that.

I look forward to seeing you at a Startup Tasmania event in the near future. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Oliver George
Chairman

The objects and purposes of the Association consist of the following:
(1) Basic objective: To create a dynamic, engaged and sustainable start-up community in Tasmania who are committed to supporting and fostering new ventures

 You can see the full constitution online here:  Startup Tasmania constitution

Search engines, social media, buzzwords! It can all seem a bit daunting.

The Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts is running a Digital Ready program to help Tasmanian businesses improve their digital literacy and engage with their customers via the web.

Two of the Startup Tasmania co-founders, Oliver George and Polly McGee, will be Digital Coaches as part of the program.

This is a great chance to get some great advice and hands on support to improve your website or get online.

There will be a workshops around the state in August for interested businesses so head along to find out more about it.

Download more details about the Digital Ready workshops

- Steve Blank, The Startup Owners Manual

Startup Tasmania’s aim is “to create a dynamic, engaged and sustainable start-up community in Tasmania who are committed to supporting and fostering new ventures”.  When I started reading Steve Blank’s new book, The Startup Owners Manual, the quote above was the first thing I read. It presented a challenge to Startup Tasmania’s vision: how can you build a sustainable community composed of “temporary organisations”?

After all, if startups exist to discover a business model then surely their focus will shift once they’ve found it. They should move on to the challenges of establishing a business to deliver on it. Why would they want to participate in a community anymore? Wouldn’t they just leave?

We know this isn’t the case based on what we see around the world and what we’ve experienced at Startup Tasmania over the last 12 months so I canvassed for some reactions from regular members.

The nature of running a startup business means you’re always looking for new ideas and opportunities. You don’t find these working in a vacuum or by keeping your business a secret. One sure fire way to improve your chances of success is to share, discuss, debate and collaborate on your startup with like minded folks. Enter Startup Tasmania.
- James MacGregor, BugHerd

I can see a key truth in this: the discovery process which turns ideas into business models is essentially a collaborative one. No entrepreneur has all the answers. In fact they probably don’t have all the skills or industry connections either. Add to that the need for fresh perspectives along the way and suddenly there’s a distinct upside to sharing.

In my experience, the term ‘startup’ is more about a way of thinking than it is about a stage in the business life cycle. For me, Startup Tasmania is a community of people interested in ‘starting up’ new ideas, new projects, new partnerships, new conversations, regardless of which stage their business is at. Innovation seems to be the common thread.
Daryl Connelly, Principle Consultant at Pricklebox

Innovation can happen in companies big and small. In fact, it’s essential to stay competitive and avoid being left behind. Schumpter [1] taught us this and we see it every day. Mary Meeker provides some fantastic examples of this in her latest state of the web presentation.  Thinking differently is easier for startups but much harder for an established business. Coming to Startup Tasmania networking events is a way to immerse yourself in creative ideas, different ways of looking at problems and to meet people who you might be able to collaborate with.

I think the last word should go to Daniel:

Forget what you’ve learned at uni, getting a startup off the ground to the point where you can quit your day job requires experience and support. Paying to get that from professionals is ideal but really expensive. Furthermore, experience and support only get you so far, after that you’ve got to network to get yourself customers – because cold calling just don’t work. Community organisations like Startup Tasmania provides and environment where you can get that critical knowledge and support from your peers who have been there before and may know some people you should talk too – all for the cost of a few beers and a bit of your time…
Daniel Harrison, Founder of QikID

I’ve seen Daniel’s idea evolve over the last 12 months building on ideas which came up over beers at Startup Tasmania – a perfect examples of cross pollination of ideas. But I was particularly pleased to hear him say it’s helped open doors and get in front of potential customers.  That’s critical and a happy segway into the next post I want to work on.  It’s based on the first challenging take home message from Steve Blank’s new book: “Get out of the building”.

As I got up to leave the room, the CEO said, “I want you out of the building talking to customers; find out who they are, how they work, and what we need to do to sell them lots of these new computers.” Motioning to our VP of Sales, he ordered: “Go with him and get him in front of customers, and both of you don’t come back until you can tell us something we don’t know.”

And he was smiling.

My career as marketer had just begun.

http://steveblank.com/2009/10/08/get-out-of-my-building/

–

[1] “One important insight arising from Schumpeter ideas, though, is that innovation can be seen as ‘creative destruction’ waves that restructure the whole market in favor of those who grasp discontinuities faster. In his own words “the problem that is usually visualized is how capitalism administers existing structures, whereas the relevant problem is how it creates and destroy them”

http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/07/29/innovation-management-theory-part-1/

By my reckoning Daniel Harrison has raised more capital than any other Startup Tas member so far. His current venture, QikID, is quickly gaining momentum and is about to undertake a major customer trial in one of Australia’s busiest venues.

“I’ll be going through a presentation i have for investors which i developed. Point of the exercise is too show how the capital raising process went for me.”

This is a great chance to learn some lessons from an experienced entrepreneur and find out more about QikID.

[button link="http://www.acs.org.au/tas/index.cfm?action=event&area=9007&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10231233582580"]Find out more and register online[/button]

Just a quick update from the Lean Launchpad crew at Stanford. Looks big! 67,000 have signed up.

I’ll keep you posted.

cheers, Oliver

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Technology Entrepreneurship Course Staff
Date: 21 January 2012 15:16
Subject: Technology Entrepreneurship Class: Course Announcement
To: olivergeorge@gmail.com

Dear Oliver,

We’re very excited for the forthcoming launch of Technology Entrepreneurship. We’re sorry not to have gotten in touch lately – we’ve been busy generating lots of content, and the system is working really well. Unfortunately, there are still a few administrative i’s to dot and t’s to cross. We’re still hopeful that we’ll go live very soon – we hope not more than a few weeks late.

But since we don’t have a firm timeline right now, we’d rather leave this open and get back to you with a definitive date soon (rather than just promise you a date that’s far enough in the future that we can feel confident about it). We’ll let you know a firm date as soon as we possibly can.

We realize that some of you will have made plans around expecting the course to start in January, and we apologize for any difficulties that this delay may cause.

The good news is that the course is looking great, and we’re thrilled that over 67,000 of you have signed up – we can’t wait for the course to start!

See you soon online!

The Technology Entrepreneurship Course Staff

To quote from the Pollenizer blog:

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Here is a set of slides we use at Bootcamp, Startmate and other forums when we’re working with new startups.

The idea is to be able to quickly and succinctly tell the full story of the business without thinking about it too much.

You get 5 seconds per slide. Just finish the end of the sentence.

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I’d also highly recommend watching this TED talk: David S. Rose on pitching to VCs.

http://www.launchpad-class.org/

It’s an opportunity to make some new friends whilst honing your mad startup skillz.

This is among the first online classes launched by Stanford – by all reports they’ve put a lot of effort into making high quality learning experiences.

From the course website…

“In this class you’ll learn how to turn a great idea into a great company.

“We now know that startups are not smaller versions of large companies. Large companies execute known business models. They use big company tools – business plans, income statements, revenue models, etc. to help organized their execution. In contrast startups search for a business model. And all the big company tools are irrelevant in the early days of a startup. This class is not about how to write a business plan. It’s not an exercise on how smart you are in a classroom, or how well you use the research library. The end result is not a PowerPoint slide deck for a VC presentation. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works.

“You’ll learn how to use a business model canvas to brainstorm each part of a company and customer development to get out of the classroom to see whether anyone other than you would want/use your product. Finally, you’ll see how agile development can help you rapidly iterate your product to build something customers will use and buy. Each week will be a new adventure as you test each part of your business model.

RSVP on Meetup and we’ll keep you up to date

Ex ministerial advisor, and principal of xtp Consulting Tasman Stacey will deliver you the insight and skills needed to write clearly and succinctly to your audiences for a variety of media, ensuring your message hits the target on centre every time.

Martin Anderson, Business Owner of Ionata and Startup Tasmania Co-Founder and Senior Consultant of Ionata Oliver George will complement Tasman’s writing for humans with a session on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), so now you’ve got your copy right, you can ensure that the traffic to your website is flowing like a tsunami.

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Book online

What: Write Like A Human + SEO Workshop

When: Wednesday 19th October, 9:30am-12:30pm

Where: Basement, 71 Murray St, Hobart, Tasmania

Price: $25 for Members, $30 for Non-Member

Book online: Reserve you space by booking online

For More Information: tas@xtpconsulting.com, oliver.george@startuptasmania.com

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