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As one of the hottest startups from the Asia Pacific region, TranscribeMe represented Auckland in one of the most popular startup shows on the web — This Week in Startups hosted by Jason Calacanis. Leading startups from Sydney locked horns with top 3 startups from New Zealand. Result — A pure tie. That’s right! Watch the show below or read the transcript.
Speakers in the audio file:
S1: Jason (TWIS)
S2: Lon (TWIS)
S3: Ned (GoCatch)
S4: Jessie Black (Teacher Time)
S5: Ken (ICEHOUSE)
S6 Tom Frazer (Process Go)
S7: Chris White (Bit Little Bang)
S8: Chirag (TranscribeMe)
S9: Simon (Rezdy)
S10: John Graves (SlideSpeech)
S11: John Menance (Snackle)
Transcription results
S1: 00:19 Hey everybody, hey everybody it’s our international meet up competition. This week the Kiwis versus … what do we call them?
S2: 00:28 The Ozzies.
S1: 00:28 The Ozzies. The Ozzies versus the Kiwis, it’s Auckland versus Sydney, who will reign supreme on this week in startups; who has the best startup companies? We’re going to find out on this episode of this week in startups, stick with us.
00:39 [music plays]
S1 1:20 Hey everybody, hey everybody it’s this week in startups. As you know the program here we focus on startup companies. Startup companies in the internet space, they’re not limited to just the United States anymore, the biggest companies are coming from outside of the United States in some cases. And we’ve been hosting a city versus city like a … “what will you call them Lon?” Like a ladder system, a bracket system if you will.
S2: 01:41 Hey, yeah. A tournament, tournament style.
S1: 01:43 A tournament style, where different cities go up against different cities, London, Paris, Berlin, everybody is been fighting it out to see who’s got the best startup companies. And it’s really great, this format because it requires … what’s great about this format as opposed to the other formats we’ve had is it creates a sense of drama.
S2: 01:58 There’s a lot of tension, yeah.
S1: 02:00 Yes. And Tyler can’t make it because I think he’s got a girlfriend, they’re in Sweden or Switzerland or whatever he is.
S2: 02:05 He’s left the country under mysterious circumstances.
S1: 02:08 It’s very weird, I mean it almost feels like he’s fled the country.
S2: 02:12 I feel a little bit like yeah, there is some sort of federal charges. The government is bringing a legal case against him.
S1: 02:19 Or maybe it’s like some sort of wiki leak kind of situation and he you know I don’t know what the story is …
S2: 02:23 No wait. You know if you put on some white hair, you can … you can almost pass.
S1: 02:26 We should get a … we should get a gray wig for him and have him play …
S2: 02:31 He is …
S1: 02:31 Who’s the guy from wiki leaks?
S2: 02:33 It’s Julian Assange
S1: 02:34 Oh god, I hate that guy.
S2: 02:35 Yeah, if we’ve thought of that before, you’re not fan
S1: 02:37 Such a huge …
S2: 02:38 It seems like … you know I like the …
S1: 02:40 You love wiki leaks
S2: 02:41 cars. One, I’m a fan of what he’s doing,
S1: 02:44 True.
S2: 02:45 … but not necessarily the man himself. It’s almost like how you feel about Polanski films, brilliant, not a fan of the guy,
S1: 02:52 Yes.
S2: 02:52 … terrible guy.
S1: 02:54 Right. Do you think in all honesty, Julian Assange, do you think he’s … there’s three or four versions of the truth here in terms of what happened with the rape case or the rape allegations.
S2: 03:06 And clearly none of us have any way to know what really happened.
S1: 03:08 But you do have your own judgment.
S2: 03:10 He strikes me as …
S1: 03:11 A rape kind, you think?
S2: 03:13 a guy with a … there is a sinister uneasiness to him, I’m not saying he’s guilty of those particular charges.
S1: 03:19 Of course not but if you had to pick totally fabricated conspiracy theory, very outright mischievous … outright crime …?
S2: 03:29 I would say on the spectrum of his complete … this is completely made up versus he’s guilty exactly as charged, it’s always somewhere in the middle. I don’t think too many people are completely inventing total fabrications.
S1: 03:42 It’s really a bizarre situation. Anyway we’re going to have a great show today and I really love these episodes. And so you know what to do, Tyler has done this in the past I don’t if you’ve actually done the Auckland and the other ones but …
S2: 03:55 I think I’ve been on some of these international … I was producing the show still when we started doing it.
S1: 03:59 Doing international shows.
S2: 04:00 Yes.
S1: 04:00 So here is what we have to do, you have to keep score of how good of a pitch it is and how good of an idea it is. And then at the end we’re each going to make our list of the top three and then I guess we do some sort of math between them and then we figure out who won or lost.
S2: 04:11 So you and I, it’s just you and I, it’s upto us?
S1: 04:14 That’s us, it’s still a lot of responsibility.
S2: 04:15 It is.
S1: 04:16 Hey and if you’ve got a lot of responsibility for your mobile future of your company you need to get source bits at source bits. They are the leader in mobile app, cloud and web development. They built Sequoia Capital’s website and they do design, LED engineering. I’ve got a bunch of companies meet with them and tell me that these guys are great. And they’ve done a ton of great apps out there and here is a great deal for you. If you meet with them, you get a free meeting with me; that’s kind of cool so go ahead and email sourcebits@thisweek. And if you wind up using source bits, you’ll actually get a demo, your app live on the air with this week in startups. So that’s pretty awesome as well.
They’ve done Hercheys, they’ve done work for Hersheys, Coke, GE. You know the mobile web is just … it’s getting incredibly competitive and the reward for doing mobile apps is unbelievable, people are seeing a magnitude more commerce, a magnitude more social engagement on mobile and these guys are experts at it. If you’re not working on your mobile strategy right now, by default, logically you’re falling way behind. There are people out there who are going to eat your lunch and source bits is going to help you catch up. Go talk my friends at source bits, they do a wonderful job.
Let’s go, now we did a coin toss, is that correct and which city gets to go first?
S2: 05:33 Sydney I believe, Sydney is going first.
S1: 05:35 Okay, let me get Sydney on the line, Sydney are you there?
S3: 05:38 Yes, Jason we’re here.
S1: 05:40 And who I’m I speaking with from Sydney?
S3: 05:42 This is Ned.
S1: 05:43 This is Ned; Ned how are you doing?
S3: 05:45 Co-founder of a startup here called GoCatch, and I’m very happy to be MCing the event here today.
S1: 05:49 Great, and it looks like you had a nice turn out and where are you right now; are you in like a co-loft or something, a co working space?
S3: 05:55 Yes, we’re in a co working space called Fish Burners and it’s the largest co working space in Asia Pacific, we’ve got about 140 people that work out of here.
S1: 06:02 Wow 140 people.
S3: 06:04 It’s a four level converted warehouse. So it’s a good spot to be based out of.
S1: 06:08 Awesome, awesome. And now you’ve got a bunch of companies, who is the first?
S3: 06:12 Okay, so we’ve got Jessie Black from Teacher Time, he’s going to be up first and then we’ve got Tom Frazer from Process Go and Simon Linor from Rezdy. Three of the hottest up and coming start ups in Australia right now.
S1: 06:26 Awesome. So let’s have Teacher Time come up, let’s meet Jessie.
S4: 06:31 I love to get the flag back there and actually I didn’t … I saw a flag graphic at the start of the show; I didn’t realize Australia and New Zealand had almost identical flags
S2: 06:38 Is that correct, I didn’t know either?
S4: 06:39 That’s what … I mean they look like it’s … one has an outline of the stars and one has the stars like filled in with color.
S1: 06:44 I didn’t know that.
S2: 06:45 But essentially they’re very similarly flags. I would thought, you know sort of countries with a rivalry like that; that is friendly rivalry, you’ll think that they will … they’ll have more differences in their flags.
S1: 06:54 You know if you really want to make people crazy, if you call somebody from Australia a Kiwi,
S2: 06:58 Yeah they hate that. They don’t like that.
S1: 06:58 … or if you call somebody from New Zealand an Aussie, that just …
S2: 07:03 It will be like if somebody called you a Canadian; you’ll be like I’m not a Canadian.
S1: 07:07 Right, Jessie are you there? Check your audio there, check one two, one two
S2: 07:17 Yeah, we lost sound.
S1: 07:19 Yeah he’s got to … I think he probably has himself on mute there.
S2: 07:22 Something like that.
S1: 07:24 Yeah. Here he comes to chat, Jessie, Jessie, one more time to
S2: 07:27 Here we go.
S4: 07:27 Hi can you hear me?
S1: 07:28 I can hear you fine. Yeah let’s turn up the sound in here a little bit.
S2: 07:31 Sure. Okay but it can be a little … a little louder.
S1: 07:33 A little louder.
S1: 07:34 A little louder would be better.
S2: 07:35 Well I’ve found the button.
S1: 07:38 Crisp and clear. Okay you know the rules; you have 60 seconds, go.
S4: 07:42 My name is Jessie I’m the founder of Teacher Time, I’m a primary school teacher, I’ve been teaching for eight years. And last year; I will tell you a quick story, I was taking attendance in my year three classroom and I called out one of the names of my students but someone else answered. And she said oh Mr. Black; this person is not going to be at school today. And I said how on earth you can know that it’s 7:50 in the morning and she said oh Mr. Black we Skype every day before school, and that really hit me. The very essence of what it means to be a teacher is fundamentally changing and until teachers start sharing on the same level that their students are, we’re going to be wholly unequipped to each the next Bill Gates or the next Steve Jobs or Jason Calacanis of the future. So I love my job but I quit to found Teacher Time.
We’re a cloud-based platform that allows teachers to share their own resources. There is so much pain in education, I had to reinvent the wheel every single day but now I can access resources from teachers down the street, in another state or around the world. We launched our prototype in February; we’ve just hit 550 users in over a 100 schools in Australia. We serve hundreds of resources but we’re also continuing to innovate with an online daybook. You know how teachers plan with pen and paper but now they can plan in the cloud. Now I just want to pause and let that sink in because there is some really exciting stuff we can do with that data. We’ve got a fantastic team and a great group of advisors including Mark Pashie, Jason who wanted me to say hi to you personally, so.
Our goals with this, its time for teachers to demand technology that supports them at least as well as the technology that supports the students. It’s time for teacher time. Thank you.
S1: 09:12 Awesome very well done; a big round of applause. So I have an affinity for education obviously and this is … anything that can help teachers find resources is great. There is a website in the United States, I don’t know Jessie if you know the name of it but where teachers teach teachers or teachers help other teachers and they share lesson plans. What’s the name of that product Jessie?
S4: 09:35 That’s called teachers pay teachers.
S1: 09:36 Teachers pay teachers
S4: 09:38 And I think what they’re doing is fantastic. They are the kind of the iTunes module so a teacher can upload a resource, put a price on it and some … another teacher can pay for it and download, fantastic; where I see kind of the next it’s not one to one resource selling but actually as a service so you pay a monthly fee but have access to everything.
S1: 10:03 Yeah, that’s great, so you see there is the teachers pay teachers, a really cool site where people can put up lesson plans and you’ve got a little bit of a fuller CMS, it looks like but this idea is one that the time has come for and the design looks great and the idea is great. What do you think, Lon?
S2: 10:21 I mean I think it’s … I think it’s really interesting and I think anything that like helps teachers and also sort of forces their hand a little bit to accept some of these new tools is awesome.
S4: 10:30 Yeah so they need all the pushing they can get I can guarantee you that.
S2: 10:33 Yeah I mean, I think that’s what, if you give them a really easy to use, really simple kind of fun engaging interface like a CMS for that, I think that could really go a long way. I guess my only thought is do you sell this directly to the teachers, do the schools buy in, I mean it’s a tough sell to get like a teacher to pay you monthly for a tool that they use for class.
S1: 010:52 Yeah how does that work Jessie, what’s the model there?
S4: 10:53 Oh no I agree we struggle with that very question and what we’ve realized is that while teachers are the users, the customers are really the schools. It’s the principals who have access to the discretionary funds so what we’ve done is we’ve target the private primary schools here in Sydney, private simply because they have a bit more leeway with what they can do with their money than the public schools and so we’re going that route where we sell to the principals but it’s the teachers who are the users. If the teachers don’ love our product, it doesn’t matter, you know they need to be the ones who fall in love with what we’re building.
S1: 11:30 I think the pitch was okay and I think the product is in pretty good shape it’s obviously emerging, I will go ahead and give the pitch about seven and I give the product about a seven five. What do you think Lon; You gotta a give it a score on a scale of one to ten?
S2: 11:46 for the pitch I give him a six because I thought I like the anecdote about you now the girl Skypeing and they Skype every morning, I didn’t really think it tied in too much with the actual product, which is less about collaborating …
S1:11:59 It’s more like it was an anecdote that was indicative of something has changed but better will be to have the slam dunk example of somebody using your own platform.
S2: 12:08 I would have liked to see the tools more, he mentioned that we can do all sorts of great stuff with this data, I would have liked one example about what we can do with that data.
S1: 12:17 Yeah, you want to say what do you do with that data, I mean that’s critical.
S2: 12:18 The idea I go seven, I think it’s a pretty solid idea and it’s something that I think will be really useful if it was done correctly.
S1: 12:24 Well done Jessie. Let’s go to New Zealand, New Zealand, good job, cheers? Okay and in New Zealand we have our host Ken. Ken, are you there?
S5: 12:33 [xxx]
S1: 12:36 Wow we’ve got a great crowd in Auckland. Ken big startups there in New Zealand or is everybody working on the Hobbit?
S5: 12:45 I’m sorry you’re fading in and out there but I think the answer is we’ve got a heap of startups here and a vibrant startup community.
S1: 12:50 Are you including the Hobbit films in that
S5: 12:53 I missed you again there but it looks like a nice cup of tea you’ve got
S1: 12:56 It is a great cup of tea and I was making a joke about that
S2: 12:59 He is making a Hobbit joke,
S1: 13:00 I’m just making jokes about Lord of the Rings, you know Yoshire, Hobbits
S2: 13:04 Middle Earth.
S1: 13:05 Yes Middle Earth, yes. Okay so the first company where are you guys, I guess you’re hosting at Icehouse, it’s Icehouse a co working space?
S5: 13:14 Icehouse is a business incubator and business growth centre we currently work with around 38 start ups and have a track record of10 years working in early stage companies and established business. So we’re a well-known entity and part of a vibrant startup community here in Auckland.
S1: 13:30 Well thanks a lot Icehouse for hosting us. I think that’s pretty awesome of them, a big round of applause for the Ice House, everybody. What do we do with the applause, I was like this is a little bit of applaud there, you know.
S5:13:44 And also I’ll like to say thank you to Kiwi Landing pad who are based over in San Francisco for putting on the food and booze as well for enabling this to happen too, so.
S1: 13:52 Oh, and they’re based in San Francisco, the landing pad for Kiwis, I like it. All right so you’ve got some great companies there, the first one is Big Little Bang, can we get Big Little Bang up, Chris White?
S2:14:01 Sure we can.
S1:14:03 Awesome, thank you.
S7: 14:04 Hi there.
S1: 14:06 Hey how are you doing, you know the rules; you have 60 seconds or so. Three, two, go.
S7: 14:11 Okay, hi everyone my name is Chris White I’m the founder of 3D virtual world called Biglittlebang.com that lets kids make music together online. Kids virtual world is a multi billion dollar industry funded largely through subscriptions and micro payments. You know up until now there has been no virtual world that enables musical collaboration. Why is this? Well for music collaboration to be successful, all of the players need to stay in time, something that’s very difficult to achieve across a broadband network. At biglittlebang.com, we solve this problem right at the outset, we file the patent for our solution and we build a commercial release. Already we have a community of over 90,000 children in our beta program and we’re seeing revenue growth of over 50% month on month. Whereas kids play the game, it’s parents that pay for it. For parents we offer the peace of mind that their kids are playing in a safe, supervised environment that encourages musical creativity. So we’re not some shoot them up game.
For kids we offer an ever expanding universe of new music, new games and new friends to meet and have fun with. Thank you.
S1: 15:12 Awesome, well done. Now the only problem I have with this is I’m trying to see the game here and it’s like forcing me to sign up and there’s a whole process. I’ll love to just see what it looks like on the website.
S7: 15:25 So US federal law means we need the parents’ permission to sign up so it’s a little bit of a process, maybe jumping to the video is the best way to take a look.
S1: 15:32 All right, there is a video
S2: 15:33 Watch the video tour yeah
S1: 15:35 Where is that, I don’t see the video tour?
S7: 15:36 I’m checking it out if they can pull up … I don’t know if they can pull up on mine.
S1:15:39 Is your screen ….
S7: 15:39 you just go to the front page, get out off sign up and then go down and see…
S1:15:42 Watch the video tour is here, I should have done that, there you go.
S7: 15:45 Yeah I’m watching it’s cute.
S1: 15:48 Oh wow that’s very cute, look at that.
S7: 15:49 You’ve got little characters there, you can give them crowns
S1: 15:52 All right, so I went first last time you go first this time, what do you think of the pitch, what do you think of the give me, give m your thoughts when you’re listening to it and you’re watching the video?
S2: 16:00 I like the pitch, I’m interested in the so you’re really trying to make songs with a bunch of different people so that’s like the real time element is really important. So are there lagging issues I think when I’m trying to watch a like video, I get slowness is that going to throw everybody off when they’re trying to like actually record a song …
S1: 16:16 Good question Chris, what about lag, and syncing?
S7: 16:25 You’ve got all the bits of music when you start off so only the musical decisions that we’re passing back and forth.
S2: 16:30 Oh okay so you’re not actually playing, you’re sort of telling it that “KY” sort of thing?
S7: 16:36 That’s right and you’ve got a drum kit so you are making, you’re playing sounds and the instruments on the fly …
S2: 16:40 Awesome.
S1: 16:41 See one thing I don’t like about this, I will be honest is why is it limited to music? Like I sort of feel like a virtual world should have a little bit of everything for everybody, like I understand like maybe some kids are interested in music but what if I’m interested in chess or you know something else, math or fashion. I don’t know if it’s artificially narrowing the market by focusing on music. I think …
S7: 17:07 That’s right, that’s something that we realized quite early on in our Market Validation, so we’ve been building up a whole suite of creative tools, today you can build an entire city in space if you’re into design, you can create your own social games with your friends and we’re releasing features every week.
S1: 17:23 It’s a good answer and so Mochi Monsters obviously did very well, Club Penguin, young kids love this kind of stuff and for parents it seems like you know as a parent myself now I don’t think I will feel too bad about my daughter going in and interacting with people and building and like interacting …
S7: 17:42 It seems yeah, I mean it seems fairly harmless from that perspective yeah.
S1: 17:45 Yeah, what did you think of the pitch, what did you think of the product?
S2: 17:49 I mean I thought that I think the product is really cool like I like the graphics, I like the look of it, I like the idea of you know all this sort of collaborative gaming coming together. I mean I think one thing I’m always interested in with these sort of educational apps is you guys have a … I know I’m not supposed to asking you questions but is there like a person who is an expert in child development an education actually work on this or is this just like we’re a bunch of 20 something dudes and we’re going to figure it out.
S7: 18:17 So we reached out to advisors every step of the way, it’s a very iterative process so we started off obviously with the music and brought on music specialist and now as we extend it, we’re trying to bring in specialists from all types of education using a university type model so we’ll be bringing in science and math and English, history, everything you can imagine.
S2: 18:38 So I think yeah for the pitch on this one will probably go maybe like a seven
S1: 18:42 M-hm
S2: 18:42 I thought it was pretty solid, I think maybe in retrospect it was a little focused on the making music collaborative when really it’s more like a gaming platform for kids.
S1: 18:49 Yeah, a little bit bigger than that, yeah.
S2: 18:50 But the product I’ll probably give it eight, I think it’s pretty cool looking, like it definitely seems the sort of things kids will enjoy.
S1: 18:55 Yeah, I think the pitch I gave a seven as well and although it was a serviceable pitch, it didn’t have like a very inspirational or emotional hook to it which sometimes it’s good to have in a pitch. Like here is a kid who suffered from autism, they used the platform and they became very social and it made them more social off. Or here is a kid who you know was very shy and lacked confidence and then they used the product and they’ve gained confidence and now they’re actually had in interest in making music offline and now they’re you know pursing that. So there is got to be a story like that out there and you want to really make some emotional connection with your examples. That didn’t happen in the pitch but the pitch did mention the revenue opportunities in this market and described the product fairly well so I’ll give it a seven. And as a business I’ll give it like a seven and half, eight. I almost feel like this should be an iPad app, not a website, kids want to use iPad, they don’t want to use computers, my daughter has the option to use both and she goes right for the iPad. So I think that this on iPad will be amazing. I’m sure that’s going to be in the works but let’s hear it for Chris and Big little bang.
S7:19:54 Great thank you.
S1: 19:57 We gotta keep this moving because I’ve got to do one company every 10 minutes and we’re on pace which is good. Hey let me just take a moment and thank our sponsors here in the United States, GoToMeeting. I was just on a GoToMeeting today and it was flawless. And I’ve got to tell you when I’m doing this angel investing potential deals, I have to have perfect clarity, I have to have the screen sharing working and it was working perfectly so much so that I had a couple of boxes on my desk and the person who read the logos on the beautiful HD camera of what was on my desk and we had a funny conversation about what was on my desk, it was a game, anyway. And they were pitching me on the game and the game they were pitching me on was based upon a game, I can’t say which one but also I had another game on my desk that was similarly related called Cards against humanity; have you heard of that?
S2:20:47 Oh yeah I have heard of that
S1: 20:53 It’s funny, I have it upstairs, I will show it to you later, but anyway the product is so stable and so awesome, it works on Mac, PC or iPad … you’ve always got the right version running on your computer and it’s got HD and it works on iPads and you can try free with the promo code START. It is the best most solid product out there; I use it literally every day. And I don’t let other people set up meetings for me anymore because you know what; they never start on time, there is always problems and I need that screen sharing and I need that HD to work perfectly and the audio and everything. And that’s GoToMeeting, thank you so much, so much GoToMeeting for making my life really easy. And go ahead and get your 30 day free trial at GoToMeeting. Just click try it free button and use the promo code, START. Thank you GoToMeeting.
All right let’s go back to Sydney and talk to Process Go. Process go are you there?
S3: 21:13 Jason I would just handed over to Tom, I just want to point out to our friends over in Auckland as well, we’ve put a picture of a nice wooly sheep up on the wall here. I hope it’s not too much of a distraction for them but I know that …
S1: 21:53 Oh my gosh, it really, wow.
S2: 21:53 They are cross town rivals, island rivals
S1: 21:55 Unbelievable. Look at that, there is a taunting going on and maybe do we need to have a taunting penalty or
S2: 21:56 I don’t know.
S1: 21:57 I kind of like a little taunting.
S2: 21:59 I think it’s acceptable.
S1: 22:02 There you go. Okay Process go is that Tom; is this Tom?
S2: 22:08 All right Tom, you know the rules. You have about 60 seconds to explain to us what process go is. Three, two, go.
S6: 22:15 Great. Well thanks for having me on the show guys. My name is Tom and I’m the CEO of Process go and we’re simplifying one of the most stoic markets on the planet. I’m talking about enterprise business process, so let me give you an example. Bring your own device is hugely popular enterprise right now but the adoption has been quite slow. And largely that’s because companies struggle to assess the impact that it represents in their business. They also struggle to compare the different ways of doing it so their internal staff have some ideas, their existing partners have some ideas and there is this whole world of people out there, the supply network that they don’t even understand how the solution work, much less how they fix there business. So we’re trying to solve that. Process go is build to web application to simplify the discovery and selection of any business process.
So our service will help compare both the financial impact, the return on investment and let these companies make educated choices about things that impact the core parts of their business. So companies around the world do this about a 100,000 times a year to the tune of $300 billion. And our big hairy audacious goal is to help these enterprises find and compare solutions for any process within as little as 30 days. So again I’m Tom from Process go, thanks for having me.
S1: 23:36 Very well done, okay. So business process analysis is kind of wonky it includes things like HR, IT, I know about this stuff, it’s wonky but it’s important. Big companies spend a lot of time thinking about how this business operates and how do we change it and model it? Let me ask this, what will the normally use to do this?
S6: 23:56 That’s the fantastic question. Today there is no way to Apple to Apple compare things like outsourcing to automation to process re-engineering. So usually what happens is they will spend $500,000 on consultants to come in and evaluate this for them, and therefore there is an inbuilt bias to that system. So our solution is just a neutral platform to make that easy.
S1: 24:22 And you’re almost making like scripts for people like making almost like spreadsheets or models that they can plug their data into and understand how business changes might work if they were to change staff size or I don’t know, IT or delivery of products or something, is that right?
S6: 24:37 Yes. So we’ve come up with a candid approach to do this and our approach is to let the baseline exactly what they do from both an action as well as all the steps. And we’re not talking about cataloging it operationally we’re talking about identifying the core areas of the business that provide the material impact. Then we publish that, the suppliers can look at exactly how it’s done and they can add, delete, remove activities, procedures, etc to showcase their solution against everybody else’s.
S1: 25:07 Yeah so this is a … I will say that this company is like an eight and half to me, I think it’s a really good idea. The pitch was a seven, it left me a little bit cold because again it didn’t use like really awesome examples of for this company, it saves this much time, this much money.
S2: 25:22 That’s the one thing I was going to say.
S1: 25:23 Whenever you’re doing a pitch, if you’re saying it cans … anybody can do this or everyone can do this, that’s not as strong as saying this person did this. Everyone doing something, anyone doing something, somebody doing something, you might be able to do this, you might be able to do that, it’s never as powerful as we had a client in this city who did this and it saved them this amount of money.
S2: 25:43 And actually I’m looking at the site and they have a lot of those samples scenarios, I mean it’s like you said, it’s a little bit like reading world problems for the SAT but there are plenty of scenarios that they’ve already envisioned like Q to Y, this will really be a kick ass application to use. And one of those in there that actually give me a better idea of what the …
S1: 26:02 Yeah. What do you give of the … what do you give the pitch then?
S2: 26:04 The pitch I give a six. The idea again I give an eight. I mean I definitely can see how this will be massively helpful and you know Calacanis companies aside, a lot of companies I’ve worked for have struggled with these exact sort of ideas that I find it a lot of guess work end up going into it.
S1: 26:19 Oh yeah.
S2: 26:20 And so the only way to really …
S1: 26:22 People go very much based on their gut and not everybody has a gut you know that is going to be correct or the self-awareness to say I went with my gut and I made a huge mistake.
S2: 26:32 Exactly, I think a lot of people think they’re going to know the answer for they imagine that they’re going to know the answer to some of these hard questions and they probably don’t without numbers in front of them.
S1: 26:41 Right, yeah I mean basically just try it is always the philosophy, let’s just try and see. If our gut tells us this is more likely the scenario, let’s try the one we think is more likely but that’s …
S2: 26:50 And that’s very startup kind of thinking like look if it’s broken we’ll fix it you know you just iterate iterate but big companies don’t necessarily work that way.
S1: 26:58 Yeah and they have a lot more at stake so a lot more analysis has to occur, very well done, let’s hear it for Process go.
S6: 27:04 Thanks guys.
S1: 27:05 Well done. And we will go back to New Zealand, back to the Icehouse, and …
S2: 27:10 Is that the name of like … I think that’s the name of a comedy club.
S1: 27:14 Icehouse?
S2: 27:17 … or something so when I hear Icehouse, I just think like oh I think Joe Rogan is going to be here this week.
S1: 27:20 Joe Rogan at the Icehouse for three nights. TranscribeMe.com is the next one
S8: 27:24 Sorry I can’t hear you.
S1: 27:25 Are you ready?
S2: 27:27 Like he can’t hear us. Can you hear us still, TranscribeMe?
S8: 27:31 … properly. Okay cool. You know when Siri was launched last year, I was really excited, I thought that I’m going to really increase my productivity massively but let’s be realistic, Siri falls over after just 2 sentences. It cannot record your meetings, it cannot transcribe your meetings. When you walk into your meeting next time, you start the TranscribeMe iPhone app. We will return a transcript to you within 24 hours with 98% accuracy. Unlike Siri, we use speech processing, speak recognition and a global pool of crowd sourced transcribers on our own platform.
TranscribeMe help you search, share and monetize your audio and video content. With a $10 billion opportunity, which is growing massively, we have a bit of a market to play with. With our immediate launch of our iPhone app and big channel partnerships comings into play we have growth opportunities in the next few months. We currently … we have raised two rounds of funding, we have one Auckland Startup Weekend part of the BizSpark program, and currently in beta. And we’re looking to raise another round of funding very soon. Thanks a lot.
S1: 28:36 Awesome, very well done. So you know we’ve seen a lot of transcription services out there, what do you think of this one, Lon?
S2: 28:45 Well I mean if it works like he says it works, pretty amazing. I use to do transcription for a living for a while when I was trying to be a journalist and it is a huge pain in the butt, so if you can get round and do it accurately, I mean better results, than something like Dragon or some of these other services, that will be huge.
S1: 28:58 Rights. Well it’s a multi layer service too so it’s doing the Dragon kind of thing, then having a human edited.
S2: 29:08 Right. Which is essential because a lot of those you know services, it’s disappointing when you see how well it actually comes out.
S1: 29:14 It is, it is. And so what did you think of the pitch?
S2: 29:17 You know the pitch I thought was a little like it didn’t really tell me beyond we have people doing it, like why is this so much better, it’s like secret sauce and we have magic in there that makes it better. I believe that its’ better, I would just be interested to know what specifically makes this better than you know every other sort of transcription service out there. And I also was intrigued by what he said that you know you can monetize this content. I would have liked a little extra sentence there about what exactly like what have people done to monetize their transcription content.
S1: 29:50 Well clearly, we transcribe this show and we put our pages for each …
S2: 29:55 Like put it into a book form or something like that?
S1: 29:56 Oh well you could do that, you could make a product out of it but if you transcribe the show and you just built pages, you could then get more SEO, I guess.
S8: 30:04 Yeah. That’s right, there is a lot … I mean there is a lot of ways you can do that but you know that’s why he said about SEO and Podcast doing a lot of advertisements, getting a lot of traffic and stuff like that.
S1: 30:13 Well you think about it, for 60 to a $180 per hour, like if you do this show will it cost a $180, it won’t perfect but it will be probably 99% good or 98% good and we can polish off the mistakes, it almost feels like I would pay for it.
S2: 30:28 We priced it out once before if you recall
S1: 30:31 Before it was much higher though. $500, $600 per episode, it was like that’s a …
S2: 30:35 That will be a good value. The one other thing I’m looking at on the site is the standard turn around time is 48 to 72 hours depending on the amount of content. How long do you think an episode of this week startups like an hour, that’s pretty much wall-to-wall talking. Will that be in that range of 48 to 72 because that’s pretty good?
S1: 30:54 Yeah, how long …
S2: 30:54 If I can get …
S8: 30:54 If I can jump in here, I’ll probably say that right now it’s 48 to 72 hours but we’re doing a lot of automation going forward in the next three weeks and we’re looking to probably cut it down to 24.
S2: 31:04 That’s pretty good, I mean if you can get good quality transcription of this podcast back in a day.
S1: 31:08 You know the thing that really didn’t come through was that this is an app. And that is a unique feature of it, which is you take out your phone and you pick record on the app and then it gets transcribed. So if I was doing this in a NPR kind of way, I can just take out my you know iPhone, do an interview with you and it will automatically magically be transcribed on the road and I can email it to people with the original audio file. It feels kinda powerful …
S2: 31:37 From a journalism standpoint, that’s ridiculously epic because right now you’ve got to run around, they still have like this little tape recorders and I mean it’s very 20th century, so this will be a huge step forward.
S1: 31:45 I kinda like that aspect too and if you’ve thought about like a Bloomberg or ABC news, somebody is going on the, you know presidential primaries or something, interviewing a lot of people. That idea of getting the video and the audio or just audio and transcript all done automatically and posted to a blog automatically that actually would … I think you put a blog publishing platform at the end of this, it gets even powerful. So I can record it, transcribe it and then when they are done with the transcription, it’s automatically posted to my tumbler or automatically tweeted with a link to my tumbler.
S2: 32:22 Right, think about your newsletter. I mean what if you’re in the car and you just hit a button, you can talk, dictate your newsletter and then it just send it right to MailChimp.
S1: 32:29 Yeah, the only problem with that is if there is an error.
S2: 32:33 Right yeah. I think that’s why they’ve got people.
S1: 32:36 I know but they don’t know the context. what’s your scores?
S8: 32:40 We are looking forward to do near real time transcription in the next few months so because of the way we’ve built the platform, so that might be really, really powerful.
S2: 32:48 Real time transcriptions, yeah.
S1: 32:48 Real time transcription is where this becomes much more interesting
S2: 32:51 Remember you tried to have us do that for the 2008 presidential debates
S1:32:55 We did yeah, we had like one person do a couple of minutes, one person do a couple of minutes, its too hard
S2: 32:58 It was a nightmare.
S1: 32:58 Yeah. Well that’s where I’m worried about, it’s … what did you think of the pitch?
S2: 33:03 Pitch I’ll give a six, you know I thought exactly what we talked about of all the really awesome … think about the crazy applications of this, would like more of that but I did get a pretty good idea of what it was about. Idea I give a seven, maybe seven even and an half. I’m debating …
S1: 33:16 I’ll give it seven and a half.
S2: 33:20 Yeah, because I do think it’s a really cool thing and as somebody who has struggled with transcription in the past, it seems like it will be a huge boom.
S1: 33:26 Let’s hear it for Chirag, very well done. And actually we’ve done four companies
S2 33:34 Yeah and it’s neck and neck so far.
S1: 33:36 And we really can start to see that we have parity between these two cities because we started with Sydney with Teacher Time which is right at that study seven area. Then we went to Big little bang which is right in the seven half area.
S2: 33:49 It’s more seven and eight, yeah.
S1: 33:50 And so you have like maybe New Zealand getting a little bit of a lead there
S2: 33:54 A slight edge there.
S1: 33:54 A slight edge and then you go back to Sydney and that was over the board with a seven and then we come back to New Zealand for TranscribeMe and he gets to seven and a half again. So you sort of half point lead for New Zealand in round one made up for by a half point lead by …
S2: 34:10 I think between six and eight on everything so far which is good.
S1: 34:13 Yeah it’s very tight, you have Sydney in … I think Sydney won … no I’m sorry, I think New Zealand won round one and I think we had a tie with a slight lead for Sydney in round two, so yes a slight lead for Sydney in round two. So this means that these last two companies are going to be …
S2: 34:26 We’re saying it’s anybody’s game. That’s what we’re saying.
S1: 34:27 It’s basically anybody’s game right now. Okay here we go. Let’s go back to Sydney and we have Rezdy.
S9: 34:37 Hi guys.
S1: 34:38 How are you doing Simon?
S9: 34:41 Simon from Rezdy here.
S1: 34:42 Okay you know what to do, three, two, go.
S9: 34:45 Thanks. So my name is Simon I’m the CEO of Rezdy is a booking engine specialized in tours and activities. Our clients are dive centres, city tour operators, wide watching companies, sky diving and so on. We provide a fully functional booking form allowing them to accept reservations directly on their own websites and manage their availabilities in real time. And so as we own the inventory in our database, we’re able to connect them to online distribution and this a way to understand what online distribution means is by going to your local travel agent and ask him to book something to do with your kids and I will probably be unable to help you and if you’re lucky I’ll pick up the phone and try to find something for you but there is no similar system in place like the one available for air fares and accommodation. To go faster we signed a partnership with a leading chain management company in the accommodation industry and we have access to hundreds of resellers like Expedia for example and thousands of concierge looking for a better way to do what they’re doing already which is promoting local activities to their clients. We have paying customers in 12 countries, with many currencies, many languages and we sign new ones every day.
Now we’re fund raising to open an office in the states, details on angel list, you can have a look at there for more information and I will be in San Francisco next month to meet you guys.
S1: 36:21 Awesome, very well done, let’s hear it for Rezdy. so this is the kind of business I’ve seen a couple of these over time actually, people doing all these tour operators, the tour operators I think are like operating out of spiral bound notebooks in most cases. They put up [xxx] pages and this kind of reservation system is really, really needed so I think it’s going to be successful and it seems like the business model here is to charge them a nice you know monthly fee and then get a little bit of transaction fees there which are not … it doesn’t look like those are too great. So what did you think of the pitch, what did you think of the business?
S2: 37:04 I mean I thought it was a you know what I would like from the pitch, I think it’s a great idea for a company and I actually was in … I went to London recently and this is a complete mess. I tried to figure out what do we do, should we take a boat on the Thames, should we go to the London eye and it’s I mean the sites were terrible, nobody can organize …
S1: 37:19 And you always feel like you’ve been scammed.
S2: 37:19 Yeah, and especially I think if it would give the people operating these tours a way to mange it easily. So it’s not like if they book … they’re full up for the day, they can quickly go and mark, okay this day is not available because you end up playing phone tag and there is all sorts of difficulty with the process. I think that’s one think I will like more from the pitch is like how customizable is this. So if I want like if you come on our tour we have three choices of lunch and I need you to pick which kind of lunch you want. Like can I do that if I’m a tour operator.
S1: 37:50 Yeah, Simon how easy it is to customize, you know because it seems like these guys do have a lot of options?
S9: 37:55 It is fully customized and we allow tour operators to cross sell and to up sell and they can sell very popular options like DVDs and shows and things like that, souvenirs.
S1: 38:08 Yeah, so that seem like a really good idea. And what about the reviews of the product, do I get to put any review I want on the product or is it up to the tour operator to get to decide who gets to put the reviews up?
S9: 38:21 So we provide them marketing tools as well so they can send an email and review request but we haven’t created a review platform yet because there is a few ones including Trip Advisor that are doing very well, so we connect with that and we haven’t created our own …
S1: 38:35 Yeah, I see that, I think that for me the real pain point is this sort of objective reviews people having to stand by the reviews so I kind of like that AirBnB and Get Around with some of these new systems are forcing the level of [xxx] if you rent that house, you know you have the right to write a review and the home owner can’t take it off. So I kind of like enforcing that even though
S2:38:59 For the business owners won’t like it, yeah.
S1:38:59 The business owners will fight it but it’s properly in their nest interest to be able to have an honest form for that because it will build credibility and drive people to the site. I think the pitch was solid, it was a seven and I think the product is a seven. I would have even gone closer to seven and half. Probably a little more mobile would have again; you know if these kinds of systems were mobile it’s going to be a big part of it.
S2:39:18 Oh yes. Especially if your product caters for people on vacation. So they’re out and about all day with their phone. Oh let’s do that, let me see if I make …
S1:39:25 I kind of see the person who makes. What was that?
S9:39:29 For last minute bookings, it’s very important, the mobile.
S1: 39:34 Yeah, so being mobile enabled is great and I think is a business here in being able to make mobile apps for people. So you could make you know the Sydney, you know or the Los Angeles app with all of your people in it for activities in Los Angeles and you can actually become a person who aggregates a little bit of demand for them in addition, so that’s always the case here, you know you just provide the software or you’re providing some demand and I think that the people who’re going to win this space can provide some demand and tools to get demand because its one thing to be a tour operator and have a better system for managing your people but to be able to get demand, that’s when things get pretty special, right.
S2: 40:13 Yeah, it’s really
S1: 40:14 what did you score him? I gave double sevens.
S2: 40:17 I gave the picture seven, I gave the idea, I think I gave it an eight.
S1: 40:19 Oh very good.
S1: 40:20 I like this idea and this had been a specific pinpoint I personally have dealt with basically so.
S1: 40:25 You have dealt with. Okay, very well done. Okay a big round of applause for nicely done. And now we’re going to go to New Zealand for our final company in New Zealand. Let’s go and have John with Slides … no Slides Speech. I almost said slide each.
S2: 40:40 … pressure on going last, everybody has been consistently really strong, I don’t want to make you nervous John.
S1: 40:43 You know this is like … it’s like the Olympics where nobody miss the landing, it’s like everybody is you know
S2: 40:51 That never happens, there is always two or three of them that don’t fit in.
S1:40:53 I know but we’ve got like five in a roll and everybody stuck in the landing. Nobody did .. No dogs.
S2: 40:58 The last … that last hop, that’s really going to determine.
S1: 40:58 It’s always like and this could be the one that fall flat on its face. I think [xxx] like run up …
S2:41:03 At least we’re now putting him at a distinctive place
S1: 41:06 You know when you hit the thing and then they run right into the horse you know and then you get mountain horse and then it’s like they are the guy to slam into the side of the horse, it’s brutal, totally slip and fall. Can you imagine if you did that in the Olympics, you just totally slipped, the world is watching you just totally hit it …
S2: 41:22 Like the Russian, those Russian gymnasts NBC didn’t show because they want to build tension.
S1: 41:27 Oh they didn’t show them today
S2: 41:28 I don’t wanna. You didn’t hear about this? There were two Russian gymnasts who slipped and fell but they didn’t show the second one because it will make I obvious America is going to win. So they held on because
S1:41:37 God the manipulation …
S2: 41:38 … the wanted to build that reality show tension of will America pull it out?
S1: 41:41 It’s amazing, it’s like we’re living in this time where we get to see these moments when old media just like the last throws of all media spring up like they put out an iPad app for the Olympics. I downloaded it, they updated it like four times in two days, whatever. So it’s constantly updating and I still cannot watch the basketball games or find the highlights. I just want to see Carmela at the …
S2: 42:05 You can go, the online, you’ve got to watch … you’ve got to stream it online and it’s like eight in the morning.
S1: 42:06 I was searching and searching for it. I mean do these idiots know …
S2: 42:13 These guys must have had that same pane, nothing is ever online.
S1: 42:15 Somebody … I mean this is what drives stealing, it really is. When you make things this hard, why don’t they just let you watch anything you want at anytime anywhere …
S2: 42:25 Well because they want…
S1: 42:26 …and put huge ads on there?
S2: 42:27 … they want focus everybody on the three-hour blog in primetime when most people are watching themselves …
S1: 42:31 they will have five times this … but they will have five times of this.
S2: 42:33 Yes. I’m just telling you how they think about it.
S1: 42:36 But you still have … it would not …
S2: 42:37 It’s working, they’re getting amazing … they’re getting amazing ratings, they’re looking at killing …
S1: 42:40 I’m telling you … I know it’s working but it’s not, it will drive more people to it. I think it will …
S2: 42:47 Long term it would generate this sort of hatred and bad will towards your company.
S1: 42:49 But I think the ads on the iPad worth more for the Olympics than on TV, wouldn’t it be worth more if they have it click through.
S2: 42:55 I guess they’re making billions of dollars from that primetime ad campaign.
S1: 42:58 Osh, the advertisers are dumb then because you know if they …
S2: 43:00 Oh I agree to that yeah.
S1: 43:00 Those people on the iPads will be able to click and buy an app.
S2: 43:04 There are absolutely better ways to do it that will be more innovative, they can make it make more financial sense but they are just not keen on it.
S1: 43:11 Now that’s an interesting side, okay. John, are you ready?
S2: 43:13 Back to the pitches.
S1: 43:15 You’re ready, okay let’s hear it from John and Slide Speech.
S10: 43:24 What is the pain? I’ll tell you this is the pain, listen to Jason ramble on, presentations are hard, you’re scared even some people will rather die than stand up and talk. What is the solution? Slide Share says upload your slides and let people guess at what you might say. Businesses pay for this service; LinkedIn bought them for a $118,000,000. Now Slide Speech does more, we say upload your slide with a script in the speaker notes and let the computers talk for you. We deliver the whole story. Think Instagram with voice-overs or Podcasts with pictures, our team build this web service apps for iPad Android and Windows phones and a store which opens next week. We take 30% of sales but educational use is free. We’re seeking a new member of our team to invest in our growth and let computers talk for you with slide speech. Thank you.
S1: 44:37 Okay. All right very well done. Okay so I’m looking at the product here and I get the idea, you say you upload your presentation I guess and then instead of you, you put your speaker notes in and then a no gear, no crew, edit and add an update to the presentation just as easily, global reach today, translation service allows a much wider audience in the speech translation so if you’ve made a little speech about why, I don’t know this product is a great one or your feelings on something then somebody else will say it and they will put it to slides, is that right?
S10: 45:18 Jason, 42,000,000 Android phones shipped into China last quarter, Slide Speech can speak Chinese.
S1: 45:29 So if I made a presentation …
S10: 45:30 … and it talks Chinese at the other end.
S1: 45:34 So I’ll make a presentation about, I don’t know some new product I have and it’s 10 slides and I’m looking for partners in china and then you automatically do the … you have a human translator do it and …
S10: 45:46 A human translator, correct.
S1: 45:47 Got it. Okay so that makes a lot more sense, that wasn’t clear for me in your presentation.
S2: 45:53 Yeah, I was imagining …
S1: 45:54 I thought it was a robot.
S2: 45:55 … through Google translator and hope for the best.
S1: 45:58 Oh god, yeah and that will be a disaster. Okay so I’m starting to like this a little bit more because what you’re really doing, even though you’re presentation was terrible, the idea is great. Which is because the presentation didn’t make this … didn’t make a lot of sense. There was a lot of statistics about it that was superfluous. Here, let me do the presentation over again for you.
Hi, I’m Jason and I run Slide speech. The world is global and when you have a product or service and you give a speech on it, do you realize that there are 10 times as many people who don’t speak your language; who do if you’re an English speaker? Well we solve that, we take your presentation, you put in what you want to say and then we translate it into the top 20 languages and then send it to all of those people and make them hear your presentation. Your sales pitch, maybe it’s a human resources document or whatever it is to all 20 locations in 20 languages with beautiful human translation with a voice over that’s probably better than your own presentation. And you can do this instantly, this is something that could not exist before mobile and before the global internet and global workforce available to do this translations and it’s amazing we had one client who did this with their sales presentation and they immediately got customers in six other locations in Asia.
S2: 47:14 I think you’re … I think you came in just under a minute there. That was okay, that was all time.
S1: 47:17 Was it okay?
S2: 47:18 It was good, I mean I think there is two …
S1: 47:20 I think that’s better worth the product.
S2: 47:22 There is two pitches here. Because there is one that is hey you’re nervous about public speaking, let your computer just speak for you and then there is hey we can translate this to other people I other countries can see it and so you went for the second, he sort of went for the first selling point. I think you’re correct that the translation feature is a bit better selling point than like I don’t getting in front of crowds, I’m going to have this automated slide show and I mean but especially because as somebody runs public speaking events, I don’t think that will work for an audience. Well I mean that the presentation …
S1: 47:53 No, you’re not going get it … you’re not going to go up to the stage and hit the play button on stage
S2: 47:57 Right and so it seems like you could just make a video if you wanted to do that.
S1: 47:59 You could make sales pitch that you’ll share with people that could be another person’s voice, yeah.
S2: 48:04 I’m not sure what the difference is between just making a video or having somebody else in your office just read it as voice over with a microphone.
S1: 48:09 Maybe this is a more effective tool, what do you think of that?
S2: 48:10 But the translation part, yes like I definitely see immediately the value of that.
S1: 48:16 John whats your take on Lon and my feedback?
S10:48:19 I’ll say that the idea is to pair up with TranscribeMe, that way you can say what you need to say, have it transcribed and feed it into the slide speech and it comes out in Chinese.
S2:48:27 I like that. Can we guess in that way you don’t have to work on your presentation at all?
S1: 48:31 Yeah, how about a service that makes a brilliant presentation .
S2: 48:35 Get some guy to write your presentation for you.
S1: 48:36 All right, listen, the presentation was terrible but the product is good so I give it a five on the presentation but an eight on the thing. And let me tell you something, if you have to pick that’s what you want because you can improve your presentation but the product is very hard to improve.
S2: 48:47 I will have gone probably four on the presentation except that it was so fun and high energy that I knocked it up to a five because he was more a engaging speaker
S1: 48:54 He was, he was, he was.
S2: 48:54 The idea that, yeah, I mean I have to give it a six but I’m tempted to knock it up since we’ve talked about it because now I’m more excited about the translation possibilities but I think I will leave it at the six.
S1: 49:05 Okay we’ll leave it at six, okay. All right, so now comes the hard part, let’s get our hosts in each city up on the microphones and we’re going to Ned, are you there?
S3: 49:17 Yes, I’m here.
S1: 49:18 Ned how do you feel you guys did over there in Sydney?
S3: 49:23 Yeah, I’m very happy I think guys did a great job, we’re pretty happy with our performance.
S1: 49:33 Who do you feel in Sydney did the best job; Teacher Time, Process Go or Rezdy? Who is your favorite Ned?
S3: 49:40 Look I couldn’t pick a winner, I think they are all winners, I think they’ve all done an equally good job.
S1: 49:45 they did a good job but which one did the best job today?
S3: 49:47 Yeah, I’m not going to pick a winner here that one is up to you guys.
S1: 49:49 Come on Ned which one did the best job?
S3: 49:53 Which one did the best job?
S1: 49:54 Which one did the best job today? Yes, they’re all incredible entrepreneurs and starters but which one do you think did the best job today, Teacher Time, Process Go or Rezdy, which one was your personal favorite?
S3: 50:05 Look, I know the Reiss D guys really well, I ‘ve worked with them for last year, I know Simon is a great guy and I know they’ve made some great progress in the business so
S1: 50:13 All right
S3: 50:13 Just on that basis on having known the Rezdy guys for a bit longer I would say I think they’re doing a really good job but
S1:50:17 All right, very good. And who’s going to win? What do you think, who is going to win, Ned?
S3:50:24 I’m trying to be very diplomatic here Jason.
S1: 50:25 Did you win Ned or not?
S2: 50:26 I think the guy who put up the sheep picture to make fun of the other country suddenly he is …
S1: 50:33 Yes and he’s all of a sudden.. Ned, do you think you won or do you think you lost
S3: 50:37 I think we won. I think… well..judged on your scores by average amount it looks like we came through there in the end
S1: 50:45 All right, let’s see what’s going on in Auckland, Auckland Ken are you there?
S5: 50:48 Hey, how are you doing?
S1: 50:50 Ken, we saw some great companies there you guys had big little bang, very interesting virtual world for kids we really liked that one, we saw TranscribeMe very well, that was a nice text to voice… voice to text over your IPhone app and of course Slidespeech there at the end, presentations translated all over the world, which one do you think did the best job representing Auckland.
S5: 51:17 I think out of the three I think Chris did the best job overall but I gave Chirag I thought he gave the best pitch.
S1: 51:23 OK so your favorite was TranscribeMe?
S5: 51:26 Yes
S1: 51:26 OK, all right. So now for what’s important, lot of nice opinions, here we go Lon
S2: 51:32 I had a
S1: 51:33 No, wait, wait, wait
S2: 51:33 Oh sorry
S1: 51:33 Before you do it
S2: 51:34 Oh my
S1: 51:35 We’re going to do two things here, we’ll see if this works. I’m going to try to guess your one, two and three
S2: 51:43 OK
S1: 51:43 And you try to guess my one, two and three, and that we’ll actually see the one, two and threes and then we’ll see…we’ll add up who gets more points right. So if….there is a possibility of a tie, which I don’t know what we’d do if there’s a tie but anyway you’re going to pick one, two and three, I’m going to pick one, two and three
S2: 52:02 I’ve got my one, two and three picked out
S1: 52:03 And if you pick two from Auckland and I pick two from Sydney there would actually be a tie.
S2: 52:16 On the winning city
S1: 52:17 Right because. three points and three points but then
S2: 52:20 But then we would look at what our number ones were and that would be the tie breaker
S1: 52:23 With the tie breaker. OK, sounds good. All right now hold on I’m going to also guess
S2: 52:27 You want to guess my top three
S1: 52:29 I’m going to guess your top three and you try to guess mine
S2: 52:31 All right, go for it
S1: 52:32 All right, so I think that you really liked, this is a tough one…I’m going to say that you picked big little bang, teacher time and then Rezdy, no, no I’m going to say big little bang, Rezdy, teacher time
S2: 52:51 You got two out of three
S1: 52:52 I did
S2: 52:53 Yes
S1: 52:54 OK so let’s go through your top three
S2: 52:55 My number one was big little bang which… I should have gone the other way for better suspense but anyway my number big little bang I thought I looked really cool, I thought it had a really solid pitch and it definitely seemed to be like something kids would enjoy and have fun with and those always seem to do well with finding audience
S1: 53:11 Yes
S2: 53:12 Well, number two I picked Rezdy, just a great idea and a real painpoint, and I love it when people pitch me or pitch companies and I’m like oh yeah that totally is a problem I really had but I never thought of as a solution for and then three I picked TranscribeMe because the more we talked about it the more I realized you know what there’s a lot of good potential applications for this. It’s a New Zealand number one, Sydney number two and New Zealand number three
S1: 53:41 Yeah so I…this is going to be interesting now because exactly what we thought would happen has happened
S2: 53:48 We got a tie
S1: 53:51 I liked in my third place I gave…hold on a second just making sure I got this right
S1: 53:59 You’ve got… he’s got graphs and charts, you know I can see the paper here
S2: 54:01 Yeah…no because I’m doing my scores here, I want to make sure I get this right
S2: 54:04 It looks like you’re trying to invent cold fusion
S1: 54:07 Well here’s the thing, I’ve got my three and I’m working on my rank. So did you guess my three?
S2: 54:13 I haven’t tried to guess your three yet, no
S1: 54:16 OK because my three are teacher time, big little bang and Rezdy.
S2: 54:24 So two out of three we were together on.
S1: 54:25 Right, but that
S2: 54:26 Big little bang and Rezdy which is one each
S1: 54:29 Right
S2: 54:29 Well what was your… what was the order because mine I had big little bang one, Rezdy two
S1: 54:35 I have teacher time, big little bang, Rezdy
S2: 54:36 So you have big little bang above Rezdy
S1: 54:39 Correct
S2: 54:40 And so did I
S1: 54:41 Right so let’s see how this works here because teacher time in Sydney so Sydney you picked a New Zealand company big little bang for your first, I picked Sydney as my first
S2: 54:52 Right
S1: 54:53 Then you picked Rezdy which is Sydney and I picked BLB, big little bang which is New Zealand so now we’re still in a tie. That I picked Rezdy as my number three from Sydney and you picked
S2: 55:04 And I picked a New Zealand company
S1: 55:05 God damn it, how is that possible. That means
S2: 55:12 It’s a mathematical dead heat; it was so close…they were all so close
S1: 55:17 We can’t have a tie
S2: 55:20 Well here’s how I’d try throw it to you and Sydney people please don’t hate me but my number one and your number two were both big little bang from New Zealand I didn’t even have your number one ranked so to me that it should indicate that one company should be the tie breaker as the winning company, that would be my pitch on how to settle this, sorry to my Australian friends
S: 55:43 I don’t know how to settle this now, let me get my guys on the phone here on that end
S: 55:53 Let’s go back to the scores
S2: 55:52 Surely somebody could have developed
S1 55:57 Ned and Ken what do you think, what’s the story here, Ned what’s your take on this virtual heat.
S3: 56:01 Jason I think we really have to go back to the scores, let’s go back to the scores, average amount and see what that leads us
S1: 56:11 And Ken what is your feeling from Auckland.
S2: 56:12 On camera which is not thrilling from the viewership standpoint
S5: 56:15 I think it was a really tight competition and the judges vote is final
S1: 56:23 See what you could do is you could look at the scores for first place
S2: 56:26 I might I got it, a lighting round. There is at least one other entrepreneur that has a startup in each of these locations right now
S1: 56:34 Is that true? Do you have another entrepreneur there? Do you each have one more?
S: 56:40 Yeah guys I’d like to pitch my startup Go Catch.
S1: 56:44 OK do we have one in Auckland as well, do we have one random company we haven’t heard from yet that could give us a 30 second lightning round pitch right now then we’d pick a winner
S: 56:57 Yeah we’ll find one just give us a second, between the ten companies that we had here, so we’ve got seven to choose from
S2: 57:03 We’re broadcasting professionals so give few minutes to do some thing and then we’d do a lightning round
S1: 57:08 They have 30 seconds.
S2: 57:11 We give the other people a 60 second pitch so these guys get a 30 second pitch. And you and I just collaborate we just pick a winner
S1: 57:17 Just pick a winner but you have to be blind, what if it ties again, if it ties again it’s a double tie.
S2: 57:23 If it ties again its a pure tie
S1: 57:28 So first up is Auckland won the coin toss, who do we have from Auckland
S11: 57:29 All right, my name is John Menace and I’m from Snackle
S1: 57:34 Tell me the name of your company, spell it
S13: 57:39 S-n-a-c-k-l-e
S1: 57:45 Dot com?
S13: 57:47 .co.nz
S1: 57:50 .co.nz?
S2: 57:51 .co.nz yeah
S1: 57:53 OK, all right here we go Snackle “zed” means “z” for those of you in the first world. We don’t say “zed’ here, I wish we said “zed”, “zed” is cool. All right here we go, Snackle three, two, go
S2: 58:11 Go ahead you’re on
S1: 58:12 Go ahead you’re on
S13: 58:11 All right so here we go. All right so big problem in marketing today is that a lot of businesses market their business but they push that information to consumers with no ability to get information back so what Snackle has done is has created some smart posters utilizing Near Field communication and QR code technology. So what happens now is that a company can now market their business but at the same time the consumers can send feedback back to that business and yeah that’s basically the… how the business works and yeah
S1: 58:53 Awesome, very well done.
S2: 58:54 Reminds me of somebody else’s company
S1: 58:55 This reminds of Tylers company a bit more technically advanced, he’s using Near Field I don’t think Tyler has got near field, I don’t think America has got Near field
S2: 59:03 I don’t think either but its a great idea
S1: 59:08 Good idea that’s a good looking company, let’s go back to Sydney to Ned, Ned are you there?
S3: 59:11 Yes, I am
S1: 59:14 OK, Ned what is your URL for your company
S3: 59:18 OK, my company is gocatch.com is the URL
S1: 59:21 Gocatch.com?
S3: 59:21 Yes. We’re a smartphone app so it’s really about the app itself
S1: 59:26 It’s not a porn site
S3: 59:29 No we have a website
S1: 59:34 OK, here we go. Three two go
S3: 59:37 OK guys Gocatch is a smartphone app that connects taxi drivers and passengers in real time using their phones, so once the drivers download the app using their phone we can pick up their location using the GPS on the device. And what that means is as a passenger when you need a taxi and you send out a request through the app when the driver accepts that you can see them approaching real time. You know exactly where the taxi driver is so there’s no more waiting in the rain, praying to the almighty taxi gods hoping that your taxi is going to show up. We’re a company that’s raised over $500,000 in funding which is quite a bit in Australia probably not too much in the states including $250,000 from Government and we’ve partnered up with Google, Microsoft and Nokia. We’ve got a great team with very experienced senior developers and what else can I tell you…and we’ve got a lot of attraction with over seven and half thousand drivers that have downloaded the app and all of the peer to peer taxi booking apps of our nature we’ve got the most drivers in the world and we’ve got over 60,000 passenger using the system as well so real progress with attraction.
S1: 1:00:42 I think you’re good on time yeah.
S2: 1:00:44 Wow, OK I can see there are a bunch of taxis here in Australia
S1: 1:00:51 These are unlike something like Uber which we have in the states, these are licensed taxis, these are like full time professional taxi drivers, these aren’t just people with their cars who sign up right?
S3: 1:01:00 That’s right, it’s licensed taxi drivers. And the thing about Uber, has gone for a real premium part of the market and its worked well for them. we think there’s a much bigger opportunity in the taxi industry, I mean if you look at the volume of taxi fares, that are paid versus straight high cars or town cars then the opportunity is much larger but the problem is a lot more complicated. Connecting passengers and drivers in real time in this nature is actually quite challenging and what we’ve done is introduce a lot of gamification into the app, where drivers get rewarded for picking up short fares during peak periods and that gives them access to the bigger jobs as they increase their status from bronze to gold
S1: 1:01:40 OK awesome. All right Lon I’m going to write on the back of my paper you write on the back of yours. [MUSIC PLAYING]
S2: 1:01:53 Do you want to show it together?
S1: 1:01:58 This is going to be so brutal, one, two, three. Arrggghhhhhhh tie
S2: 1:02:04 It’s a tie again folks
S1: 1:02:05 I picked Snackle
S2: 1:02:06 I picked Gocatch
S1: 1:02:11 OK, now take me through your thinking. I picked Snackle because I thought it was very unique and I like the Near Field communication and I thought it was very good looking. I thought Gocatch was great but I’ve seen that before and I thought Snackle just had a slight, slight edge in terms of just being a little bit newer.
S2: 1:02:26 I’ll tell you my thoughts of… and if Tyler is watching from Stockholm he’ll have to forgive me but I’m skeptical about Snackle in the same way I am/was skeptical of Squeel. Which is I think people like sharing on yelp because it’s a public forum and I don’t think people are that eager to just sound off to one person
S1: 1:02:48 Some people want to get their problem solved so I do think that one out of 20 people it does matter to a lot but anyway this has been amazing. Hey guys, I hate to break it to you Ned but its a tie
S2: 1:02:58 It’s a dead heat we could not, we tried our very best
S1: 1:02:59 Nobody wants to crush somebody’s spirit as much as I do, nobody wants somebody to be a looser and somebody to be a winner, trust me I love that but this is one of those few cases, where’s Ken? Ken get up here, I’ll get my split screen, I’ve got Ken, I’ve got Ned
S2: 1:03:18 Can we put them both through I mean
S1: 1:03:22 We’re going to do a wildcard or something
S2: 1:03:23 Because they both deserve to get through this was tough
S1: 1:03:24 This was great, everybody did well, Ken great job, Ned great job. Any final plugs for our sponsors, Ken go ahead plug the sponsors, Ken can you plug your sponsors
S2: 1:03:36 Your own sponsors, you don’t have to plug our sponsors
S1: 1:03:37 IceHouse anything
S2: 1:03:41 I’m sorry we’ve lost him
S1: 1:03:40 Any plugs? Final plugs?
S5: 1:03:43 Any plug? Well IceHouse is kind of a cool place to come so if you’re going to start up and you want to talk to some people that can help you could go a lot worse than the IceHouse.
S2: 1:03:50 Also The Hobbit: an unexpected journey opens this December
S1: 1:03:57 Yes the Hobbit opens in December and they’re going to make free movies. OK, Ned any final thoughts from Sydney
S3: 1:04:05 I would like to give a shout out to Ryan VN, good friends of ours, one of the fastest cloud computing platforms in the world. They were a startup that comes out of Fish Burners; I’d also like to thank Optus and Microsoft who have sponsored our co working space as well. Also anyone that’s visiting Sydney and would like to find out more about startup community, come and drop by Fish Burners we’d like to sit down and have a chart with anyone that’s visiting
S1: 1:04:27 All right, well I want to thank anybody. This has been amazing episode, we never thought we’d get a tie like this and then have a tie breaker tie it’s ridiculous but you know I’m not going to sit here and just pick a winner when its this close
S2: 1:04:37 No, that’s not fair
S1: 1:04:38 I do have some specific advice though for both cities, two things that you can work on for the next time. Amp up the design a little bit, all of these companies could have done a little bit of a design refresh and then a little bit…I do think that Gocatch actually at the end and Snackle both had the best design which was ironic because the tie breaker had the best design. But I just want to leave this with the folks there in the Pacific, design really matters people are making decisions based on design so the design of everything could have added an extra point and then also the reoccurring theme in the presentation the examples didn’t have enough gravitas. So those two things if you work on for the next time I think in the next round of this would really benefit you; work on design and really work on your presentation examples, examples, examples, examples. Somebody used this product and had this great outcome and they said this to us, this person used the product and solved this problem and their life got better for this reason. Lon congratulations you won a new job. You wanna plug it.
S2: 1:05:41 Sure, I’m going to be the head writer… I am the head writer and producer on What’s Trending, the daily web show Whats Trending
S1: 1:05:45 The (xxx) show?
S2: 1:05:46 (XXX) hosted, you know its a weekly run down on what’s going on on social media, the web, on YouTube
S1: 1:05:55 And she’s over the controversy with the Steve Jobs quote
S2: 1:06:00 There was… they had a social media hiccup…has happened to so many companies. They really adjusted their strategy I mean I was critical of them at that time because it was really kind of bone headed response. But they really have worked on
S1: 1:06:11 They basically…for people who don’t know they basically tweeted a couple of weeks before Steve Jobs did die, that they heard a rumor he had died
S2: 1:06:17 They tweeted that he had died as news and then when… I think the bigger issue actually was their…when they got called on it, when they realized it was a mistake rather than a very open honest transparent answer, here’s what happened, here’s why it happened, here’s what we’re doing to fix it, we’re very very sorry. It was a little flip; the response was a little flip. Live on I believe they tweeted and that read to people like they didn’t really understand the gravity of the mistake that had been made. Now they have done…they haven’t had any of those kind of errors, it’s even a less breaking news theme show and they brought on me to help
S1: 1:06:55 Listen you’re going to have (xxx) you’re going to make a little mistakes, what matters is you keep learning and iterating from them.
S2: 1:07:01 So youtube.com/whatstrending if I could I point that out. That’s the way to go, subscribe to the show there you can see what we’re working on. We had a video just today that went big so you want to be there to check it out
S1: 1:07:11 Awesome I’ll make sure, I’m always good for a tweet. Hey and we’d see you guys next time on this week in startups
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