Venture Capital in Australia: A map of the Australian innovation ecosystem

Venture Capital in Australia: A map of the Australian innovation ecosystem: (Note from Ivan Kaye .... www.bsi.com.au are proud to play a part in helping innovators access grants and capital and www.bbg.business h...

The Philippines' growing middle class is on track to outspend Italy’s by 2030

https://www.weforum.org/

"The global middle class is forecast to expand to more than 5 billion by 2030, and most of that growth will take place in Asia."

29 Nov 2018

1. Johnny Wood Writer, Formative Content

The burgeoning middle class in the Philippines is set to exceed the spending power of Italy’s middle class by 2030, in a sign of the Southeast Asian nation’s growing economic might. 

Along with many of its neighbours, the Philippines has a growing tech-savvy population, an exploding digital economy and an increasingly integrated regional trading network, all of which is helping to fuel the emergence of this new wealthy demographic. 

Digital, social and mobile uptake in Southeast Asia - 2018

Image: ASEAN Up

Digital penetration has reached well over half of the nation’s population with 67 million internet usersand the same number of social media users. This rapidly expanding digital culture is facilitating online businesses both domestically and throughout the region.

The country’s growing affluence is attracting attention from global businesses keen to invest in dynamic emerging economies.

For example, IKEA is bringing its flat-packed world of self-assembly furniture to Manila. Covering 65,000 square metres in the prestigious SM Mall of Asia, the new outlet will be the world’s largest IKEA outlet. The Swedish retailer also aims to appeal to online shoppers with an ecommerce facility.

Business is burgeoning on the homegrown front too. Just last year, the country had its first unicorn in Revolution Precrafted, which was valued at more than $1 billion. The company makes homes that snap together like Lego blocks, which is helping to address Asia’s population boom.

The rise of the middle class in the Philippines is indicative of wider global demographic changes.

Have you read?

• What just happened? 5 top stories from our ASEAN summit 2018
• 5 charts that show what is happening to the middle class around the world
• This bookstore in Malaysia is open 24/7

Rising out of poverty

For the first time, more people around the world are now living in middle-class or rich households rather than in households deemed to be poor or vulnerable to poverty. The global middle class is forecast to expand to more than 5 billion by 2030, and most of that growth will take place in Asia. .

Image: Brookings

Consumption by the middle class accounts for more than one-third of global demand, according to think-tank Brookings. 

At current growth rates, Asia will command more than 50% of global middle class consumption by 2030. 

No wonder then that global businesses are starting to pay attention to this rapidly expanding market.

The Ultimate Cheatsheet for Critical Thinking

For every problem or project.... ask
Who, What, When, Where , Why and How


How do you solve a problem?

Listen to our children

Young people our hope carriers 

You Inherently know what’s right!

You give us hope 

You know what is right

And you are taking the baton

We need to rely on the spirit of the young and listen to them 

So to our children 

Keep believing

Keep marching

Keep questioning 

Keep raising your voice 

You are the future - you have the opportunity to remake the world

You have the opportunity to right the wrongs

You have the powers when aroused of bringing down the towers of oppression and what is wrong. 

Now’s a good time to be aroused 

Now’s a good time to be fired up

This is your future

(Inspired by Obama’s talk at Madiba’s 100 anniversary )

Solving the graduate unemployment problem

A great idea from  Jaryd Raizon  - social Entrepreneurship in action 

The Pain

There is a 52.5% youth unemployment rate, and near 28% graduate unemployment rate between the ages of 15-24.

The graduate unemployment problem is an age-old, catch-22 situation:

 In order to get a job, you need experience, but the only way to get experience is to get a job. As a result you have these super smart to inexperienced graduates - bursting with fresh ideas ready to start their careers - unemployed - finding gigs driving Uber’s , working retail and waiting tables to pay off their student loans, while struggling to take that first step along their chosen career path. 

“One of the biggest pain points in running a business has always been talent. It’s not just about finding the right people but keeping them, growing them, empowering them,” said founder, Jaryd Raizon.

At the same time companies are not actively investing in the long term by hiring and educating the youth. They’re allocating their budgets towards ‘experienced individuals’, which is further perpetuating the unemployment problem.”

Employers are clueless when it comes to hiring youth with little-to-no experience. 

Ill-equipped the students fund it difficult to transition from the tertiary world to the real world. 

The system is broken and needs to be fixed

Jaryd Raizon talks to Shan Radcliffe of  Bizcommunity http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/536/184362.html

On how he is solving this problem .

Jaryd Raizon, founder of Trusted Talent and Trusted Interns

So Jaryd - what is Trusted Interns ?

 Trusted Interns is an online platform that connects graduates and first-time job seekers with start-ups, corporates and agencies looking to onboard fresh talent. 

We realised that we could only solve this problem at scale by removing friction with technology and making the system so efficient that we could charge stupidly low fees. And so the Trusted Interns platform was born.

How does the platform work? 

Think LinkedIn Jobs or Indeed, but for internships. Interns and employers create accounts (for free) and populate their profiles with their basic info. 

For interns, this would be their name, photo, gender, DOB, where they live, willingness to relocate, will they accept cryptocurrency, etc. Then they need to create a very basic online CV. For many, this just includes adding their tertiary education information. There is also the option for them to add work experience, a portfolio, honours awards and a list of proficiencies or skills.  

Once the interns have completed 80% of their profile, we approve their account, add them to the marketplace and they can start applying for internships. 

For employers, it’s much the same. They create their free accounts and add their company logo, description, location etc. (takes five minutes). They then load their internship opportunities and open themselves up for grads to start applying. We charge a flat fee for every intern hired. Good hiring decisions are made, no bank is broken and everyone is happy.

Funds generated from the Trusted Interns platform are reinvested into the development and roll-out of other career progression offerings which include the job preparation workshops, mentorship programmes and The Bursary Lottery.

R5m in bursaries available from Bursary Lottery

The cool part is that companies are encouraged to be proactive and not to sit and wait for grads to apply. We are trusting the concept of transparency and allowing them to view all graduate profiles and if they like what they see, to reach out and invite them to engage. 

What have been the driving factors behind its creation?

The frustration of not being able to deliver on our clients’ demand for interns; the lack of greater purpose associated with only assisting senior talent get better jobs; the realisation of how valuable an intern with no experience can be in a business; and the reality of how bad the youth unemployment situation is.

Our mission has always been to add value across the entire career progression lifecycle; this is just the first opportunity we’ve grabbed to do so for a much greater pool of talent and a much stronger focus on using technology. 

What are some of the challenges you've faced getting started and how did you overcome them? 

This is our first attempt at solving the problem - it’s a minimum viable product (MVP). As a result, we’re facing new challenges every day, but to date, the biggest challenge has been educating grads that the platform exists and then getting the ones who sign up to complete their profiles. We’ll only approve a profile once they’ve completed at least 80% of it. This ensures that employers can view a detailed picture of the graduate before shortlisting them or inviting them for an interview.

We’re educating the students about the platform by delivering talks and soft-skills workshops at the colleges, and we’re doing collaborative social media campaigns with the likes of Job Advice SA, I Need Someone Who… (jobs) and RecruitSharper. 

To solve the issue of grads not completing their accounts, we’ve introduced Ted the Bot on the website (a chatbot that helps students along the process) and we also have a human online (almost) all day to help out. We’ve implemented in-journey ‘instruction’ messages and have made boatloads of minor UX fixes to improve the experience. Baby steps. There’s still so much we can do. 

What has been the initial reaction to the initiative?

Incredibly positive - that’s what keeps us going. We’re hearing daily that this is something that South Africa so desperately needs, how people wished they had this when they were graduating, how the grads are so happy to finally have a single place to view internships and how we’re providing some of the best grad options to clients, despite them undergoing their own recruitment efforts.

People from the industry have also reached out to say 'how can we get involved and help?' which is super encouraging.

What’s at the top of your wish list for Trusted Interns?

The short answer? That we are disciplined, smart and lucky enough to take off to the moon before hitting the end of the runway. 

More seriously, I’m confident that we can contribute greatly to solving the issues of youth unemployment, so that’s not my wish. What we need is the right team with the right tech so that what we build is scalable and sustainable. I think we’ve proven the concept. The grads dig it and the beta clients are loving it; now we need to iterate and improve rapidly enough to keep up with the demand and our roadmap. 

To do this properly, in a reasonable amount of time, you need a great team of partners, contributors and collaborators. We’re grateful to everyone that has supported us on this journey thus far and hope to meet and engage with more forward-thinking individuals and organisations that are happy to help us along the way. 

Where do you see the platform in five years?

We’ll be a tech-based but human-driven ecosystem that contributes to greater employability across the whole value chain. At the moment, we’re only working with graduates who hold a post-matric qualification, but we’re mindful that it all starts in the primary and secondary education phases. 

In order to ensure that the youth of our country are employed 10 - 20 years from now, we need to go to the root of the problem and build up the pipelines of talent for future businesses. This goes far beyond graduate recruitment. It’s raw education, unique skills development, mentoring, coaching, incubation programs, and and and... It’s a long road and we look forward to journeying along it.
 

Australian top 50 technology companies of 2018

The 2018 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Australia Awards have led the way through innovation, delivering more than $1.5 billion to the economy, capturing global attention.

The list shows the way companies are disrupting the way we buy insurance, food, cosmetics, mountain bikes and real estate, as well as the way we recruit, hire and promote women in the work place.

The top 3 companies were 

Afterpay topping the list with average revenue growth of 8,134 per cent over the last three years.

Founded by young Sydney entrepreneurs Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, Afterpay launched its reverse lay-by model in 2014, changing the way people pay for shopping and exporting the platform to thousands of retailers and millions of customers across the globe.

Mate Communicate was placed second with 3,703 per cent growth, 

Mate is an NBN internet service provider with its ‘backyard’ call centre and community first approach.

and 

Superloop came in third with an increase of 1,860 per cent.

Superloop is an internet service provider offering cutting edge connectivity solutions in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. It has built secure, world class networks that telecommunications, media and financial institutions depend on.

Rounding off the top 10 was 

• Vamp (4 - 1,285 per cent); 
• Zip (5 - 1,245 per cent); 
• Swift Networks (6 - 1,211 per cent); 
• Koala (7 - 1,022 per cent); 
• PEXA (8 - 757 per cent); 
• Truck Dealers Australia (9 - 685 per cent) and 
• Megaport (10 - 637 per cent).

Other notable winners included 

• Cevo (14 - 461 per cent); 
• Adactin (16 - 403 per cent); 
• Prospa (20 - 308 per cent) and 
• Araza (28 - 200 per cent), alongside 
• Skyfii (32 - 164 per cent); 
• Idea 11 (36 - 137 per cent); 
• Over the Wire (40 - 127 per cent) and 
• Venn IT Solutions (43 - 114 per cent).

Barhead Solutions was named the 2018 Rising Star.

Delloitte’s Josh Tanchel noted that companies like Afterpay, Zip, Prospa and MoneyMe are genuine success stories for Australia and reminders of how fresh thinking fintechs are fundamentally changing the ways we pay for goods and manage our finances.

He went on to say that a key to their success was a customer focus and a ‘profit for purpose philosophy’.

Interesting Stats 

9 female founders made the list and 25pc of the top 50 companies were listed, 

The top 50 came from the following sectors:-

• 24 per cent fintech (including insurance); 
• 22 per cent software; 
• 20 per cent IT and communications; 
• 18 per cent online; 
• 14 per cent digital agency and 
• 2 per cent medical.

From a State perspective 

• NSW 27
• Victoria 11 
• Queensland 10 and 
• Western Australia (2), 

The next 12 months growth is expected to come from 

• fintech 
• AI development, in 
• 5G telecommunications and 
• implementation of cloud-based business systems

It’s fantastic to see that the collaboration of Universities, Government and Corporates, and the maturity of the Venture Capital community with the support of the major Superannuation fund’s, is providing the opportunities for this amazing innovation to happen, allowing Australia to continue to punch above its weight in this exciting evolution of change . 

Best

Ivan Kaye 

Ps feel free to download my business card https://members.referron.com/bsivc. 

Is consistency key?

19th-century philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, 

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." 

Bezos apparently agrees that consistency is overrated.

Bezos -

 “the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they'd already solved. They're open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking," 

That willingness to consider new information goes hand in hand with a willingness to admit your old way of thinking was flawed. 

In other words, to be super smart you have to change your mind a lot. 

Do you agree?