http://sxsweco.com/startup-central. 

… I’ve reviewed hundreds of startup pitches and I can tell you that everyone makes the same types of errors. Because of this, those who avoid just a few will already stand out from the masses. To help you get an edge, here are the most common pitfalls and what you can do to hack those summer startup accelerator applications.

1. Building for Yourself Instead of a Market

“Scratching your own itch” is how many great ideas begin, but it’s not a business strategy. Often you assume your customer is the same as you — sees the problem the same way, wants to solve it your way, and wants to pay for it. But this isn’t the case. It’s easy to let your idiosyncratic preconceptions prevent you from observing what the larger market will accept. If you stumbled on your idea because you had the pain yourself, that’s fine. Make sure, however, that you have real market validation behind your proposal.

2. Lack of Any Market Validation

It’s no exaggeration that most applicants have not found a single person willing to pay money for this product. Sounds bleak when it’s put that way, right? The other mistake is saying that a dozen friends have told you it’s a great idea and they’d use it too. Of course they will, and they might mean it, but that’s not a market, that’s a fan club.

Almost no one does this: Spend no more than $100 on AdWords to drive traffic to a landing page where you describe the service briefly and request an email address. In exchange for the email address, you promise not only early access, but free service for life.

Even if you collected only 20 emails, it represents infinitely more value on your application. It isn’t complete marketing validation, but it does satisfy one of the most obvious objections: Does anyone care?

3. One-Sided Competitive “Analysis”

Most competitive analysis charts look like the one at left, with your product winning every category. While it may seem impressive, constructing one-sided analysis like this will ultimately do a disservice to your app.

The point of “competitive analysis” isn’t to say: “I’m better than everyone else.” Rather, it’s to define your niche in the market and explain how you own that niche better than everyone else.

That means admitting the strengths of the competition — who has great customer service, who has more features, who already owns their niche unquestionably?

Only by truthfully defining the landscape do you earn the credibility to claim the territory you’re planning to own.

4. No Route to Customers

If your marketing “strategy” is to run split tests on landing pages and generate a buzz on Twitter, it’s an auto-fail. Why? Because everyone does that. It’s not unique, it’s not an advantage, and as a result it doesn’t work very well.

You should have one (or more!) routes to customers which are more under your control and more likely to stand out from the background noise on the web. Though it’s a tiresome cliché, having viral/social/sharing as an inherent, required behavior of the system is one of those routes. (And no, putting retweet buttons on web pages doesn’t count.)

But there are others. A less-glamorous but highly effective way is to find where your potential customers are already congregating (online or off) and strike a deal with whomever controls that place, either because you’re increasing something they already value (e.g. pageviews, loyalty), adding to their bottom line (rev-share), or giving them something new to talk about.

5. Claiming False Competitive Advantages

The following are not competitive advantages: “We’re better at SEO;” “We’re better at social media;” “We’re good at design;” “We have a unique feature;” “We’re passionate;” “We’re less expensive.”

Why? Because every one can be matched or surpassed by any competitor, today or tomorrow, in very little time. So don’t mention it, or at least not in the context of a long-term competitive advantage.

Here are some true advantages: “We have a unique combination of high-tech talent and insider experience;” “We have a model that is unprofitable for established competitors to copy;” “Our resumes prove we’re able to execute;” “Celebrity X has endorsed us;” “We’re willing to be worse at everything except X;” “We have an exclusive partnership with an important player in the space.”

In the end, it’s actually OK if you don’t yet have a solid competitive advantage. That’s one of the things we might develop during the summer program. Just don’t claim one if you don’t have one, because then you just look ignorant.

6. Winging the 60-Second Pitch

We’ve all heard of the elevator pitch, but last year, when asked to produce it, only two succeeded in delivering one in under a minute, and that’s among the select three dozen startups invited to do in-person interviews. This isn’t important for showmanship. It’s important because the act of cramming everything important into 60 seconds forces you to make strong choices.

Choices like: Who exactly is the target market? What do you do in five words — for example, the headline on your home page? How will you make money? Why does anyone care?

When you can’t do it, it’s either because you haven’t really decided what you’re pitching, or that you can’t be bothered to articulate it to anyone. Both are death for startups.

Of course, it’s OK if by the end of the summer program the pitch is completely different. Having clear thoughts doesn’t mean unchanging thoughts. It just means you’re aware of what you’re doing at any given moment.

7. Ignoring Your Faults

You might have all sorts of shortcomings — it’s your first startup, you’re inexperienced, ignorant about how “sales” works, you have buggy software, etc. None of this is a problem if you’re willing to acknowledge and cope with it, but if you persist in lying to your customers about it, that’s a problem. (And a lie by omission is twice the lie.)

App reviewers know when you’re fudging it. It’s OK. Remember, we’ve built several startups with our own hands. That means we were in your shoes! We get that you might have shortcomings.

One of the most impressive things you can do is clearly and succinctly enumerate your gaps in knowledge, your holes in product concept, your bad design, and what you still don’t know about your market. Professing this ignorance proves you’re ready to fix it. You’re jumping at the chance to learn both through your own trials and from us, the mentors. That means you can grow and improve by leaps over the summer, which means you’re the perfect candidate.

Final Thought: Honesty Wins

I don’t care that your resume doesn’t prepare you for a startup — mine didn’t either. I know your pitch won’t be polished — that’s not important. We both know there are gaps in your startup and you want help — that’s why you’re applying.

The best thing you can do is be honest. In fact, if you review the points above, everything from “faults” to “competitive analysis” is really about just being honest.

In the end, we’re mentors, and we want to work with people who are not just hardworking, passionate, and have a really cool business idea, but also introspective and genuine. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fun and fulfilling to mentor. Sure, we’re investors. But most of the mentors will agree that if it wasn’t for the thrill of mentoring, we wouldn’t be doing this.

So be honest, throw everything out on the table as concisely as possible, and let’s see if we’re right for each other.

Open Shed is a website that matches people’s unused tools and belongings to others who need them. It’s based on a movement called collaborative consumption, which is about people sharing goods and services. Collaborative consumption enables people to buy and sell houses without an agent, lend money to each other without a bank intervening, share products without the cost of purchasing and find places to stay sans a costly hotel.

The deal involves Stockland paying a licence fee to Open Shed to roll out its model across the five ready-made communities. It will cover Open Shed’s set up costs over the past two years. Co-founder Lisa Fox says the business will make a profit if the pilot schemes work as she expects.

Prior to this deal Open Shed’s business model was struggling to overcome the tyranny of distance. With 1600 members spread across Australia, it was not always possible to match a drill needed at one end of town with someone offering it from another end. To work, the site needs close-knit communities such as schools and councils to offer and share goods and services. Stockland’s ready-made estates solve this problem.

“Together we have been able to create a lightly co-branded Open Shed for each community, which allows Stockland to say they are helping the communities they are working in,” Fox says. If the pilot works, Fox says there is potential for Stockland and Open Shed to roll this out nationally.

Stockland makes nothing from the venture but sees it as offering a service which places them ahead of other property development companies. The company’s national community development and partnerships manager Amanda Steele describes the venture as “enlightened self-interest.”

“We’ve surveyed 10,000 households in our communities and consistently the feedback is people want to feel more of a community connection and live with a village feel rather than a suburb. The Open Shed platform will facilitate those connections,” Steele says.

Steele said a lot of younger people were keen on collaborative consumption. Now, the pilots need to show older demographics will participate too.

Links with other businesses is what is also driving Rod Bishop’s Jayride, which matches people with transport links of all kinds. Co-founder Bishop says Jayride’s growing links with major events and desirable destinations is its major money spinner. The site makes nothing out of simply filling empty car seats with people, which is more of service than a business, Bishop stresses.

The company’s speciality is enabling mass transportation for people wanting to attend major events. A recent example is Splendour in the Grass, a big rock concert held in Byron Bay. Jayride also ferried people to the Eclipse festival outside Cairns. “We worked out that we saved 310 tonnes of carbon dioxide by ensuring the people who went there did not drive their own cars,” says Bishop.

Jayride works with events on a subscription basis, and with professional transport companies such as taxi services and coach lines either through commission or subscription.

Only four months old, the Sydney-based Car Next Door is a genuine peer-to-peer car sharing service. Founder Will Davies’ model differs from rival car share firms GoGet and Hertz on Demand in that the business doesn’t operate its own cars. It simply matches local residents with cars to those without them. Davies believes that without the cost of maintaining and replacing fleets, the firm can easily compete on price with its more conventional car rental companies.

So far the business has been trialled in Bondi and to a lesser extent in Paddington. Some users pay a monthly fee, which for car owners includes comprehensive insurance, plus damage cover for borrowers. Car Next Door takes 25 per cent of rental proceeds. Davies says the average rental charge is about $6 per hour which is capped at around $30 a day. Users pay an extra 29 cents per kilometre direct to the owner which contributes to petrol and wear and tear.

With just 32 cars on streets, Davies says the business needs about 200 cars at the ready to make decent money. But without fleet costs, he is confident profitability will be sooner rather than later. “We could be profitable now if we shut down marketing – but then we wouldn’t grow…and I’m planning on growing,” he says.

Adam Courtenay

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/stocklands-collaborative-consumption-experiment-20130404-2h7x7.html#ixzz2PYeNpa4p

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The company has raised this round to continue its growth; it’s now shipping 40,000 to 50,000 of its learning thermostats per month. If the company’s growth continues at this current rate, Nest could reach a shipment rate of 1 million thermostats per year by the summer, say our sources. Note, that’s shipments, not sales, though the figures are clearly closely related.

A considerable amount of that growth is happening in Europe, in addition to its shipments in the U.S. Nest sells its thermostats through big-box retailers like Lowe’s and Best Buy, as well as through the online Apple store and its own online website. It’s also struck some initial partnerships with utilities like service provider Reliant.

Nest also plans to use the funds to offer a more comprehensive smart home service along with its product, which could include lighting and alarm systems, too, we’ve heard. I don’t know too many details about this, but will add more if I hear more.

We’ve reached out to Nest and are waiting to to hear back on these figures. Venrock investor Matthew Trevithick responded in an email and said “Nest doesn’t comment on funding.” Other investors that have backed Nest include Kleiner Perkins, Al Gore’s investment fund Generation Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Shasta Ventures.

Nest previously raised tens of millions of dollars before this round. Earlier this month Nest announced that it had brought in a new CFO, Tom vonReichbauer, last at Tesla.

Nest only officially launched in late 2011, with a plan to sell its sleek learning thermostat designed by former Apple designer Tony Fadell, who developed multiple generations of the iPhone and the iPod. The thermostat, which costs $250, learns its owner’s behavior and uses smart algorithms to shave off 20 percent to 30 percent of energy used for heating and cooling. The team that built the learning algorithms included Yoky Matsuoka, the former head of innovation at Google, and Stanford Professor Sebastrian Thrun is an adviser to the company.

Nest launched the second generation of its thermostat a few months ago, which has a slimmer body and is compatible with 95 percent of heating and cooling systems in the U.S. They’re also now on version three of the software.

Nest’s growth is one of the few success stories to come out of the cleantech sector in awhile.

Source: http://gigaom.com/2013/01/29/exclusive-nest-has-raised-another-80m-now-shipping-40k-thermostats-a-month

By Michelle Hammond 

Australian start-ups located in incubators raise an average $175,379 more in funding than those located in co-working spaces, according to new data from Perth-based research start-up Floq.

Floq, founded by Jonah Cacioppe and Mike Kruger, is a web application that allows users to gather feedback via surveys, ratings and polls.

In May last year, Floq released the first set of findings from its Startup Nation survey, which is ongoing. It initially attracted responses from more than 150 Australian start-ups.

New survey data, which encapsulates almost 400 start-ups, shows the ability of a start-up to raise funds can be influenced by where they work.

For example, start-ups located in an incubator raise an average of $220,008, compared with $44,811 for those in a co-working space.

But of the start-ups surveyed, 57% don’t share an office space. For those that do share an office, co-working spaces appear to be the most popular.

More than 20% said they work from spaces such as Fishburners or the York Butter Factory, while 13% work in a shared office space.

Approximately 9% of the start-ups surveyed work out of incubators such asBlueChilli or Ignition Labs.

According to Floq’s findings, start-ups can also increase their chances of raising investment by increasing the number of mentors, advisors or investors in their support network.

For each new mentor, advisor or investor, start-ups raise an additional $69,059, the survey shows.

“The median number of mentors, advisors and investors for a startup – those that hadn’t raised money — is seven,” Kruger told From Little Things.

Encouragingly, more than half of the start-ups surveyed collect some revenue, although 56% of those start-ups are earning less than $100,000 a year.

In the past year, more than a quarter of start-ups made less than $5,000.

The survey shows 30% of start-ups are working on a web application, while 20% are working on a website and 19% are working on a mobile application. Only 10% of respondents said they are building “stuff you can touch”.

Meanwhile, more than 70% of the founders surveyed are aged over 30, while approximately 17% are female.

Lisa is co-founder of openshed.com.au, a new website that offers a place for Australians to rent each other’s stuff with confidence. She is also the winner of the Nokia In Hindsight Entrepreneurship Competition.

Lisa and Co-founder Duncan have created a secure and reliable community marketplace that helps Australians live a more resourceful and sustainable life.

Check out Lisa’s video interview with Orsi Parkanyi on STARTUP SMART

Awards were presented to the best performing companies in the Australian green industry.

“We introduced these awards to give recognition to the wonderful companies and people who are leading the charge toward a cleaner and greener living environment,” said Emma Bowden, Editor of Green Lifestyle magazine.

Open Shed is an online peer-to-peer rental platform to encourage collaborative consumption. Whether you want to borrow a power drill for your home renovation, a bike for the weekend or a travel cot for the holidays, Open Shed provides individuals, groups and communities with a safe and secure rental platform. The benefits are hiring items at a fraction of the cost of buying new, making a few extra dollars and reducing the hyper-consumption of goods.

Open Shed is one of five clean technology companies taking part in the competitive Ignition Labs accelerator program.

Under intense mentoring and with the aid of $25,000 seed capital, all teams are working furiously to develop their value proposition ahead of the Australian and U.S. roadshow starting 29 September. Once in the US, the companies will attend the prestigious SXSW Eco in Austin, Texas.

Tech23 2012 – to be held in Sydney on Tuesday, October 23 – is sponsored by NSW Trade & Investment, Commercialisation Australia, the CSIRO and a handful of other organisations.

A total of 23 tech start-ups will vie for $100,000 in cash prizes. Another major draw card of the event is the impressive lineup of ICT industry experts who will be there to lend them a hand.

This year’s list of industry experts includes serial entrepreneur Bill Bartee, SEEK co-founder Paul Bassat and Yuuwa Capital co-founder Matthew Macfarlane.