Twice a year, my calendar gets very quiet. In the few weeks prior to a DEMO event, after I’ve nailed down the demonstrating class and written the program notes, my attention turns to answering emails from nervous demonstrators, ironing out the last details before we all meet on site in the days before the conference. Most people, though, expect that I’m my busiest just before DEMO, when in truth my work is done and I’m mostly biding my time before the start of the event.
So, each year for the past three, I’ve slipped away with the ANZA Technology Network (www.anzatechnet.com) to do a quick tour of Australian and New Zealand’s promising startups. In five cities throughout the region, I participate in one-day workshops designed to hone presentation and pitching skills in preparation for these companies’ trip across the Pacific to present at ANZA’s annual Gateway program in October.
It’s fun to see these companies and to compare and contrast them to the zeal of Silicon Valley compatriots. Typically, what I find are solid, humble, and very capable young companies ready to come across and make an impact on the U.S. market. This year’s been no different. Just a few cities into the tour and this is what I’ve already seen:
Tralee Software Group is tackling the tough problem of date integration among enterprise applications. If you can’t move your data, you can’t move your business. And while XML and other approaches have proved effective, if cumbersome, solutions to extracting, translating, and loading data from application to application, Tralee Software’s patented etlmessagner software is reducing the cost and the time to application integration by a significant margin. Proven with Australian financial companies, the company now intends to come to the U.S. market in search of go to market partners there.
TagYou.com is still in its early days, but the company may be on to something extremely significant in the world of consumer generated content. In its first incarnation, TagYou enables individuals to drag and drop icons and tags onto photographs. For example, one might drag lipstick marks or a beret onto an image. These iconic tags can be associated with marketers, creating a platform for user-selected brand associations. It’s the tip of the iceberg, but TagYou may well be to tags what keywords are to Google Adwords.
Perkler.com recognizes that the typical American belongs to a dozen loyalty shopping programs on average. Yet consumers collect ten times the loyalty points they redeem, mostly because there is no easy way to track, manage, and redeem points. Perkler aims to be that single point of loyalty program management, and is putting together a proposition that is tremendously valuable for both consumers and points programs.
Amethon Solutions provides the analytic tools to measure consumption of mobile content regardless of network operator or content publisher. The company, in effect, is to mobile content what Web analytics tools are to Web pages. The market here is wide open and this company seems well poised to help network operators and content publishers understand how and when their networks and their content is being used.
These are just a few of the companies I’ve met so far on this multi-city tour. I’m off to Brisbane, Adelaide, and Melbourne this week and will report more of my findings to you next week, as I fly back to the U.S. and set my sites on an awesome DEMOfall 08 event.
