Whether you’re shooting hoops with Mark Cuban or scraping the barrel for a breakthrough, make sure you book your spot asap!

Take it from me as a personal recommendation – I’ve heard this inspirational knowledge bank speak startup gospel countless times and am always left thirsty for more.

Event Topic
When developing an idea, startup founders rely on a series of assumptions they’ve learnt from the world they live in. Despite the emergence of assumption testing methodologies like the ‘Lean Startup’ approach, entrepreneurs can fall into the trap of relying too heavily upon untested assumptions about issues that will likely have a major impact on their success. Colin will provide you with a simple sense making framework any entrepreneur can use when contemplating any type of venture.

About the Speaker
Dr Colin Jones coordinates the Entrepreneurship program at the University of Tasmania and has extensive experience starting up and operating a range of service related businesses, with varying levels of success and failure. He has been recognised nationally and internationally for his research, teaching and learning achievements. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and recently published his first book titled ‘Teaching Entrepreneurship to Undergraduates’. Dr Jones’s current research is focused on small firm survival, specifically looking at the interaction between independent firms and franchised firms. Dr Jones recently addressed the United Nations multi-year meeting on enterprise development policies and capacity building in science, technology and innovation. He has previously served on the International Committee of the Small Enterprise Association of Australia and New Zealand (SEAANZ) and regularly acts as a consultant to government and private organisations seeking to creatively solve problems and exploit emergent opportunities.

Event Details:
Catering: Finger foods and drinks provided
Location: The Typewriter Factory Loft (Level 3, 17-19 Castray Esplanade, Battery Point)
Date: Thursday, 18th of April
Time: 5:30pm for 6pm start (until around 7:30pm)
Ticket: $20 for Startup Tas members, $30 for non members (please pay appropriate amount via PayPal on meetup.com)

About the Author: Tim Polmear is a member of Startup Tasmania. He’s a lover of entrepreneurial web-based startups, branding and digital marketing.  tim@startuptasmania.com

Have numbers in front of you but not quite sure how to make sense of them? Can you afford to take that next step with your start-up? Looking at growth options this year? Want to learn how to use your numbers to make better decisions for your start-up?

Aaron Wallace and Emma Petroulas from Nudge Accounting in NSW will be visiting The Typewriter Factory to talk about using numbers to make better business decisions. They will discuss the key accounting metrics startups and small businesses should be focussing on, what they mean and how they can be used to increase business performance and pitch for funding.

This event is free to attend and open to the public, *and* The Typewriter Factory will even supply food and drinks! It starts at 5:30pm, so arrive a bit before that, and should be done by 6:30pm.

The Presenters

Emma Petroulas is the Client Happiness Director at Nudge, online accountants for small business. She sits on the Youth-Board of SME Australia, is a regular contributor for Shoe String StartUps and Dynamic Business Magazine, and also lectures in Small Business at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Aaron Wallace is the Online Operations Director of Nudge and lectures in International Accounting at the University of Technology, Sydney. He worked at KPMG and loves bringing big business ideas to growing start-ups and small businesses.

Nudge are online accountants for small business. Nudge helps start-ups and small businesses Australia wide use their numbers to make better business decisions. Their monthly packages include Xero or MYOB, monthly bookkeeping, monthly performance summaries plus your quarterly BAS’s, business tax return and financial statements. Everything that a growing start-up or small business needs. For further information, see nudgeaccounting.com.au/

Cost: FREE, food and drinks will be provided. Book your place through Eventbrite now.

LearnXpress (previously known as Adult Ed) are running a Business Startup Class on Monday 18th of March from 9.30am to 12.30pm.

Tuition will be provided by a small business specialist and CPA Sustainability Business Advisor.

The course will cover:

• Business planning
• Sourcing finance & cashflow budgeting
• Entity type & registrations
• Getting started (premises, licences, memberships, staff, stock, etc)

So if you’re looking to escape your routine 9-5 and make that idea a reality, take the first step and check out the LearnXpress website for more information.

Startup Tas will now host guest speakers, Susanne Schantz and Matthew van Rooijen from Small Island Studio, at our next ‘Shots’ meet up next Thursday the 7th of March at Preachers instead of this Thursday at The Typewriter Factory.

Come, network with startup entrepreneurs, have a tasty beverage and get a free insight into how video and animation can be very effective marketing tools to convert consumers. What a night!

The video pitch experts will show you some clips, explain what works, what doesn’t as well as give you an idea into production costs and more. Bring along any questions you have, I’m sure they’ll be happy to help.

So what are you waiting for, rsvp today at meetup.com/StartupTasmania, get amongst the Tassie startup scene and be inspired to get off your butt and create the next big thing!

Thanks again to Robin for a much needed education into the importance of IP protection and commercialisation.

Before and after Robin’s talk, plenty of new connections were made and hands shook while Startup Tas members (and non members) networked over a drink, delicious sushi and my personal favourite, Thai pineapple stacks, in The Typewriter Factory’s very atmospheric co-working loft. It was great to see so many new faces hungry for startups in Tasmania bounce projects and ideas off one another.

If you missed out, get excited because we have another speaker event lined up for later this month! (details to come).

Our next networking meetup is breakfast at Jam Jar in Battery Point on the 21st of Feb from 7:45am. Hope to see you all there!

For this first event, we have guest speaker, Robin Fieldhouse, introducing us to the world of IP Commercialisation which is sure to be an important and insightful talk on how to secure and commercialise your business idea.

And due to the number of emails sent to us about whether others can still attend the event after RSVP has closed, the answer is yes, you can still join us on Monday but the “At The Door” price will be $30 across the board, which means members will miss out on the $10 membership discount.

So join us on Monday and start making 2013 your year to get focused, learn how to commercialise your idea, get involved, meet other entrepreneurial like-minded individuals and become inspired!

Steve Jobs and Richard Branson didn’t find success by fluke, and they certainly didn’t do it on their own. Successful entrepreneurs up skill themselves by building both a powerful network and knowledge bank so that they have key resources and know-how on tap.

So take action today and make 2013 your year to get focused, stick your neck out and take some risk. Get involved, meet other entrepreneurial like-minded individuals and become inspired!

Come along to Startup Tasmania’s “Startup Series” event taking place 5:30pm next Monday at the Typewriter Factory. For this first event, we have guest speaker, Robin Fieldhouse, introducing us to the world of IP Commercialisation which is sure to be an important and insightful talk on how to secure and commercialise your business idea.

We’ve had to bring the RSVP date forward to 5:30pm this Friday for catering purposes so register your spot today and start your path to entrepreneurial success!

Details for the full list of “Startup Series” events will be announced on Monday at our first event for the year.

So once again, we’ll be having our casual afterwork networking session at the Preachers Quarry Salamanca. They always look after us so we thought we should share some love back.

Do come along and join us for some beers, wines, softies, and more importantly, meet other startup entrepreneurs, and plan world domination! (Click  here to RSVP and for more details about time as well as venue)

Whatever it is, we can all drink to your successes and workshop those opportunities over a few cold ones.

On top of all that, there’s also lots to update about Startup Tasmania’s exciting future, developments and budding relationships with exciting entrepreneur movements in our wonderful Island State!

Besides, we might also run some short 30 second pitch practice sessions depending if there’s enough people putting their hands up for it on the day.

Either way, we would love to see you this Thursday, and it would be great if you could RSVP yourself and your +1(s) so we could effectively plan activities and space reservations accordingly.

Alrighty then… that’s all from me for now. Cheerio and we sure look forward to see you at Preachers the Quarry Salamanca around 5pm this Thursday!

About the Author: Byron Teu is one of the co-founders of Startup Tasmania. He is a serial entrepreneur and is addicted to building Startups. Byron is on Twitter! You can follow him via @byronteu