Bootstrapping your business? Get great deals on market research

At the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), we are still looking for a few good companies who are interested in entrepreneurial interns for this summer. In brief, YOU get access to a pre-screened selection of some of Australia's highest achieving and motivated undergraduates who have a keen interest in entrepreneurship. THEY get experience on a project related to business development (e.g., market research, product design or launch, sales and marketing, etc.) and make a living wage.

While the internships are designed to happen for 10-12 weeks over the (Australian) summer, we are aiming for commitment from companies by mid-July, in time for an exclusive match-making session in August.

All you have to do to take advantage of this unique opportunity is contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au for a copy of the latest guidelines, let us know how many interns you would like, and pdf back a signed copy of the agreement (Appendix 1 of the guidelines).

Australian Angel data

Reposted from http://naoangelinvestor.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/australian-angel-investors-release-2009-data
(Link to original source not provided.)


"For the second year running, the Australian Association of Angel Investors have conducted their National Angel Survey, with the following results:

• Angels nationally invested $1.4 billion in more than 5,000 entrepreneurial companies.
• These investments fuelled 26,500 Australian jobs.
• Angel groups invested $1,166,700 in 6 new deals.
• In these Angel group deals, groups leveraged a same-round co-investment in excess of $887,800 on a collective pre-money valuation of $8,393,000.
• 54% of Angel investors in Australia are investing between $100,000 and over $500,000 a year.
• The most popular sectors for individual Angels were Biotechnology and Information Technology.
• Most Angel investors spend over 40 hours per month on their Angel investment activities.
• Formal appointments occurred in over 80% of investments with 50% being non-executive directors.
• The number of Angel investor groups in Australia has grown from three in 2006 to 12 by the end of 2009."

So what do these number mean?

It looks like individual angel investment outstrips angel group investment by 1,000:1. What this means for entrepreneurs is that pitching to a group of angels and following up one on one (and asking for referrals) is probably better than pitching to an angel group.

The other stats indicate that these angels aren't just friends and family willing to pitch in, but real high net worth individuals for whom angel investing is a serious occupation; not just sprinkling their cash around. Most of the investment appears to be from active or controlling angels, according to Bob's classification scheme (see bottom of http://www.angelforum.org/main.cfm?cid=77&nid=5858 for details).

I'd still like to know how many angels were invited to the survey, and what is their percent of population in comparison to other geographies?

Great TED talk on raising kids to recognize opportunities and think entrepreneurially

TEDxEdmonton, Filmed Mar 2010; Posted Jun 2010

Random Hacks of Kindness 1.0 from Sydney is going strong!

[reposted from an email moments ago]
Hello from Sydney, Australia!  

We've been busy hacking away for RHOK 1.0 Sydney and we're still going.  RHOK Sydney has people from Christchurch, New Zealand, Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Australia, Chicago, USA, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. One of our special guests is Gavin Treadgold of Sahana Foundation (http://sahanafoundation.org/). Gavin is one of three Emergency Response experts (including Tom Worthington, a professor at the Australian National University and Mauritz van der Vlugt of NGIS) helping developers create with the real world of NGOs and Emergency Response.

It is looking like an all nighter for some of the projects.

We have 6 core groups:
 1. Help Stays - a bed finder for volunteers in disaster regions
2. Task Turks - aggregating tasks for disasters
3. Money Tracker - building a donation
4. People Finder - helping match people with their families during emergencies
5. Bushfire connect - Helping people crowdsource  information in fire struck regions (using Ushahidi)
6. UAV - finding real-time Geo-referenced imagery

Our wiki link with all the docs, github, links to projects and content:
http://wiki.rhok.org/RHoK_1.0_-_Sydney

Also check out:
Our Ustream channel : http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rhok-sydney

We've posted some great shots on the flickr account for RHOk.
Pics from #rhok1.0 Sydney are up on Flickr http://bit.ly/a7sr2S


youtube videos on some of our projects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmrptULmPLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCpVnUSNjf0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEPmK9lkbtI

Stay Tuned!  We will have more videos and be streaming all night. Also follow our ustream chat, twitter @heatherleson or @rhoksydney for real-time updates. For our partner cities, we will see you  on ooVoo video conference.  We had a nice chat and collaboration with folks from Nairobi about Ushahidi and Bushfire Connect.  Looking forward to more synergies.

Here's to taking it Globally.

RHOK Sydney, hosted by the CIE at the ASB / UNSW