ATP Innovations is pleased to present the latest newsletter showcasing our clients, updating you on our activities and reminding you of important event dates.

Click on the front page to view the newsletter online.

Download PDF version here.

LX Group has been recognised for its business innovation, passion and entrepreneurial prowess by winning the Australian Small Business Champion Award 2012 for Information technology category.

LX Group is a multi-award-winning Australian electronics design house specialising in wireless and low-power electronics designs. LX’s motto, “we take your concept and make it a reality,” reflects their passion for innovative electronic product development.

The Australian Small Business Champion Awards is a prestigious and comprehensive program that recognises successful small businesses across Australia.

LX Group has also been listed as a Company to Watch by StartupSmart, an online news hub for the Australian startup community. The 2012 StartupSmart Awards, celebrates Australia’s most innovative and fastest growing start-ups.

For further information contact LX Group on +61 2 9209 4133 or visit www.lx-group.com.au.

LX Group is a client of ATP Innovations, Australia’s leading business incubator.

Ignition Labs, Australia’s first clean technology accelerator has been launched by a group of startup founders and industry experts. The aim of the accelerator is to help early stage businesses secure initial customers and capital investment.

Launched by ATP Innovations, Ignition Labs with join 50 technology businesses and their 300 staff inside the incubator in inner Sydney. The founders are applying their knowledge gained as Startmate mentors, Sydney Angels members and US investment advisors.

Andrew Stead, Director Business Development at ATP Innovations says, “the clean technology sector is an exciting space with huge interest from entrepreneurs, investors and government. I was surprised at the response from such high quality mentors.”

Ignition Labs has gathered a mentor group with extensive experience in developing early stage businesses, excellent clean technology credentials and the skills required for successful business incubation.

The mentor group includes Peter Le Lievre and Andrew Tanner who sold thermal solar company Ausra to Areva for $275m in 2010, Neill Miller, an early investor in PCTools and Seek, the founder of car sharing company GoGet Nic Lowe, and Ben Peacock founder of sustainability strategy and PR firm Republic of Everyone.

Ignition Labs will select five high potential clean technology IT and low-infrastructure businesses with strong coachable teams. The accelerator will look for businesses that have at least validated its concept. Businesses that reduce the use of finite resources or increase the use of renewable resources are encouraged to apply.

Ignition Labs is applying the model developed by Y Combinator in the US and proven in Australia by Startmate. The time is right to apply the accelerator model to industry verticals.

Despite the risks of early stage investment, Ignition Labs has raised $200,000 with the aim of emulating the success of Startmate with Grabble being sold to Walmart and Bugherd raising $500,000 from Starfish Ventures.

Entry into the Ignition Labs is a competitive process with applications closing in May. The three-month program will start in June, with businesses gaining access to $25,000 in seed capital, intensive hands-on mentoring and participating in an investment roadshow in Australia and the US.

Shortly, this year’s Startmate companies will head to Silicon Valley, San Francisco and New York in the US for three weeks of intensive pitching at forums such as 500 Startups, and for networking and capital

Startmate demo day (Photo credit: toolmantim)

raising.

Supported by ATP Innovations, Startmate is a Sydney based, mentor-driven seed fund that invests in high potential web-based startups. This year’s 8 startups were chosen among 164 applicants. They are Moojive, Flightfox, Happy Inspector, Invc.me, Ninja Blocks, Scriptrock, Setkick and Young Republic.

The 2012 program began in January and will culminate in early April, with the companies meeting potential customers, partners and investors in Sydney, Melbourne, Silicon Valley and New York. The Australian leg of activities begins this week.

This year’s startups will aim to emulate the success enjoyed by last year’s Startmate companies in the States. Grabble was acquired by Walmart, Bugherd and Chorus secured further angel funding and Chorus is now based in the US.

Startmate companies have been based here in the ATP Innovations building.

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• Demo Days at 500Startups can be a tough crowd (bugherd.com)
• BugHerd receives a $500K investment from Starfish Ventures (bugherd.com)
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• Walmart Labs acquires point-of-sale startup Grabble (venturebeat.com)

ATP Innovations is pleased to present the latest newsletter showcasing our clients, updating you on our activities and reminding you of important event dates.

Click on the front page to view the newsletter online.

Download PDF version here.

Early stage IT diagnostics company, Scriptrock has secured deals with major financial services firms, no small feat for a fledgling startup. Co-founder Michael Baukes of Scriptrock shares tips on how startups can successfully negotiates sales deals with large companies:

Establish a relationship. Use a warm lead-in, someone to organise an introduction for you, or to help you to understand how to connect with them via their title or role, or responsibilities.

Build credibility. Show that you know what you’re doing, and take on the role of trusted advisor.

Avoid the hard sell approach. Sell but don’t seem as though you’re selling.

Be transparent & inform. Let them know what you are doing, some of the products you are building.

Set realistic expectations. We explain that we’re small and starting out so that they are mindful of that.

Have a positive mindset. You must believe you will be successful.

Teamwork. If you have a good team then everyone will pull as much as they can to get across the line.

Patience is a virtue. Think of how long you expect it take, and then triple it. That will be closer to the actual time the deal takes to cultivate.

Be flexible. A lot of big businesses expect you to have other things in place too, which you normally don’t need if your business is solely online. For example, we had to arrange insurance to go onsite to train. I was surprised about that but as long you can work with it, it’s all good.

Set manageable goals. We want a small amount of customers that love the product, rather than a huge number of customers, it’s about quality. Because our clients are enterprise, we don’t need a thousand (of them) to break-even, and we can focus on providing more value to those clients.

Know when to walk away, but leave the door open. If, after all your hard work, you are still not getting commitment, it’s time to walk. When the response doesn’t go beyond “could be” or “in the future”, just exit. But do so on good terms, as you never want to close the door on a future opportunity.

Scriptrock is one of the Startmate companies based here in the ATP Innovations building.

Related article

• Ideal Startup Team Composition (startupiceland.wordpress.com)

Asia’s leading news authority in biotechnology, BioSpectrum, has awarded the HypoMon® from AIMEDICS the fourth Asia-Pacific (MedTech) Product of the Year Award 2012.

An independent panel from BioSpectrum Asia, has chosen the HypoMon as the fourth BioSpectrum Asia-Pacific (MedTech) Product of the Year 2012. The product was chosen for its uniqueness in addressing a critical health condition. Victor Skladnev, CEO of AIMEDICS accepted this award at the BioSpectrum annual dinner recently in Singapore.

AIMEDICS Chairman, Martin Greenberg said, “This award was won by the HypoMon because it will positively change the lives of those living with type 1 diabetes around the world.

This award is of special significance to AIMEDICS given the market and environment within which it was won. Asia is rapidly becoming a major player in the medical device market space.”

“HypoMon, an original technology platform developed by AIMEDICS, has real clinical application and (is backed up by) a strong business model. The HypoMon is creating a new market in ‘non-invasive and accurate detection of nocturnal hypoglycaemia’. It identifies and alerts the user and carer to this life threatening condition and positions AIMEDICS as the leader in this new market space,” Mr Narayanan Suresh, Chief Editor, BioSpectrum said.

“The market opportunity for HypoMon in Asia is large. There are over 80 million people with diabetes in China and India alone. This award confirms the HypoMon will be positively received in the Asian markets,” Victor Skladnev, CEO, AIMEDICS said.

The HypoMon has CE approval and will be released to the UK market mid 2012.

BioSpectrum Asia is the most authoritative and influential source of information for the life sciences industry in the Asia Pacific region. It is uniquely positioned as a specialised business-to-business information platform.

For more information, please contact:

Sean Gray

VP Sales & Marketing

AIMEDICS PTY LTD

Email: sean.gray@aimedics.com

Mobile: +61 416 110 935

AIMEDICS is a client of ATP Innovations, Australia’s leading business incubator.

Related articles

• AIMEDICS receives an Australian International Design Award (atp-innovations.com.au)
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Microsoft Corp has adopted CarbonSystems’ Enterprise Sustainability Platform (ESP) cloud application as its new global standard for managing its energy, efficiency and environmental-performance reporting, underpinning its commitment to the environment and a sustainable low-carbon economy.

CarbonSystems, a global provider of environmental and energy management solutions, was selected based on its ability to use cloud computing to simplify and streamline Microsoft’s global greenhouse gas management and reporting to stakeholders.

CarbonSystems’ ESP will be implemented across Microsoft’s global operations, which comprise over 600 facilities across 110 countries.

Analyst firm Verdantix says Microsoft’s adoption of a single software platform to manage its sustainability performance underscores a global trend to standardize the capture and management of disparate nonfinancial data such as energy, emissions, and other environmental metrics.

Verdantix CEO David Metcalfe said: “Many organizations struggle to capture and integrate sustainability data sourced from different localities as they strive for a single version of the truth. By adopting the CarbonSystems’ solution Microsoft will have one platform for managing and reporting non-financial sustainability.”

Adopting ESP complements Microsoft’s goal of leveraging technology to reduce its energy use, emissions, and waste by harnessing data to make more informed decisions about the company’s resource use. CarbonSystems’ chief executive David Solsky said:

“Our business offering will mature as we collaborate with Microsoft to advance the value that data and cloud computing provides our customers. The scale and reach of their diverse, global infrastructure – from corporate real estate to data centers – will drive ongoing enhancements in our software platform.”

“More broadly, I think there are opportunities to jointly foster greater efficiency in the business sector by bringing data-centric applications like ours to address issues such as enterprise resource accounting, energy optimization, and smart building technology.”

“Microsoft is committed to measuring, transparently reporting, and minimizing the carbon footprint of our operations,” said Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft.

“We view CarbonSystems as a key part of our effort to achieve Microsoft’s business and environmental sustainability goals. CarbonSystems’ ESP will enable us to efficiently collect, analyze and share environmental data, delivering new levels of understanding about the resources we use.”

Deployment of CarbonSystems’ ESP application will allow Microsoft to track key environmental indicators and performance across its portfolio of real estate and data center assets. This will enable the company to accurately assess the impact, payback period and return on investment of its efficiency initiatives in the built environment.

Source: http://www.globalcarbonsystems.com/News/2012-03-12/Microsoft-adopts-CarbonSystems-software-environmental-reporting.cfm

CarbonSystems is a client of ATP Innovations, Australia’s leading business incubator.

From go to $: ordering and paying for goods by app

In-app transactions – from ordering to payment – may finally give m-payment the push it needs to become an everyday habit.

Low-value payments via a e-wallet – be it using near field communications (NFC), tap-and-go or in-app technologies – have been hailed as the holy grail to finally eliminate the cash economy, but local developers are instead focusing on the shopping and ordering process as a way to usher in the digital future.

Taxi booking developer Ingogo has adopted a different strategy to that used by recently launched m-payment options by the Commonwealth Bank (Kaching) and the credit card companies’ PayPass. It added electronic payment to its existing taxi booking app.

Users need to register a credit card with their Ingogo account, then use the app to book a taxi and to approve payment of the fare at the end of the trip by entering a four digit passcode.

Hamish Petrie previously founded the moshtix ticketing website as an alternative market to buy and sell tickets, and he said the experience taught him the need to integrate new payment channels with a consumer purchase.

“You’ve already got the app to request the cab, had the experience of seeing a cab on the map and you can complete the process with the payment,” Petrie said. “It’s a continuation of that experience.”

He said their main focus was to make the app convenient and secure (it is PCI compliant, a credit card industry standard).

“If you look at something like the PayPal app with their mobile payments, they’ve already had half a million people use it but it’s really clunky, the time it takes for it to transact, it feels clumsy compared to this.”

“We’ve gone to great lengths to make sure we’re PCI compliant we’re not exposing credit card details, they’re all fully encrypted in the way the banks are comfortable with.”

Source: Mahesh Sharma,  March 13, 2012, http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/from-go-to–ordering-and-paying-for-goods-by-app-20120312-1utoh.html

Ingogo is a client of ATP Innovations, Australia’s leading business incubator.

Marathon Targets has signed a new contract with a NATO member country. The deal, which took place in November 2011, follows Marathon’s success with the United States Marine Corps (USMC), who placed their second order recently, this time for Marathon’s new breed of (four-wheel) smart targets. The order follows a test run of Marathon’s second generation two-wheel smart targets.

Originally catering to a niche market in the armed forces, Marathon Targets is expanding its business globally.

“We initially created smart targets for elite Australian snipers but they can also be used for regular troops, and to train skills such as escalation of force decision-making and judgment training in addition to moving marksmanship,” said Dr. Alex Brooks, Director of Marathon Targets.

“Military and law enforcement agencies globally are seeking new tools to make live fire training as realistic as possible,” said COO and co-founder Dr. Tobias Kaupp.

Empirical evidence coupled with a study conducted by US-based DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) on the causes of combat casualties, found that the first three months are the most dangerous for new troops, likely due to lack of experience.

Marathon’s smart targets are the most realistic in the market, equipping snipers, marksmen and highly trained soldiers with experience that can be crucial to their survival and the overall success of the mission.

Dr. Brooks is confident in its ability to address the critical shortage of realistic moving targets in many defense training programs.

“We definitely see further potential to increase sales worldwide,” said Dr. Brooks.

Phone: +61 2 8090 7202

www.marathon-targets.com

Marathon Targets is a former client of ATP Innovations, Australia’s leading business incubator.

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