Haim Savan - an entrepreneur that I admire

I listened to a great podcast today with Haim Savan 

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this

The Narrative

As a refugee growing up in Tel Aviv, Haim Saban remembers not having enough money to eat. As an adult, he hustled his way into the entertainment business, writing theme songs for classic cartoons like Inspector Gadget and Heathcliff. But producing the mega-hit Mighty Morphin Power Rangers put him on track to becoming a billionaire media titan. 

First Major Break 

Haim  recognised opportunity in providing music for cartoons. 

A Sitcom -   needs  3 minutes of music . 

A Cartoon - needs wall to wall music . 

Why not focus on music for cartoons (Seichel- sense) 

Ended up with 12 studios making music for cartoons !!

The power rangers 

In 1984 stretching on bed in Japan - he was watching a cartoon with the  power rangers in Japan and secured the rights for The USA (chutzpah) . 

How can you use the action sequences and americanise for a little money - he knew it could work 

He “shlepped” this for 8 years - no luck 

It was successful for 20 years in Japan - why not in USA? 

People said it was cheesy. Chaim saw this as a fun show  - he was convinced people would love this  - why can’t people see this?

He kept at it! (Zietsvleis - Passion and Persistence) 

A fox representative, Margaret Nash, gave him a break and did a deal for a series - the programme went off the charts (a metzia or a maichal - a miracle or a lucky break ) 

Chaim Parlayed this programme and his business into doing a 50/50 JV with Murdoch . (Chutzpah) . They bought the family channel for a little - turned it into a 24/7 kids channel - grew it and sold to Disney for 5.5b .

A few takeouts 

You need Seichel - common sense - that is what is sense to you 

“What is luck - (mazal) recognising when you are lucky and taking action to max that potential “

“Go with your kishkas (gut in Yiddish - more expressive) . If you believe something is right - give it a go - if people say it won’t work - or are cynical - you are probably on the right track” 

“You gotta have zietsvleis  - Passion and persistence- Chaim saw power rangers - knew it was good - stayed with it 

“You gotta have chutzpah” - Chaim parlayed  the rights of a cartoon programme to a $5b sale netting him $2.5b 

When u look in the mirror who do u see - Mogul or displaced refugee 

“I see me - A guy hurrying up to his next meeting “

So who is Chaim Savan ? 

• He is a great deal maker 
• He goes with his gut - kishkas 
• He finds a win win
• He is authentic - real and down to Earth 
• He Negotiated a 50/50 JV with Rupert Mordoch - and built a business that sold to Disney for $5b - boom 
• He is a philanthropist - he gives back to countries and people that looked after him - Israel and USA

“You gotta have Tsedeka - giving back to community - life is more than making money and you.”

Some interesting  answers 

Question :- If you sell something for 500m or 2b why do you care? 

“It’s not about the money - it’s about what’s fair ! Money is used as a marker”

Question :- why do you still work? 

“I don’t collect stamps and I don’t play golf . This is my hobby “

He Recently Sold rights to power rangers 500m 

SenSen raises capital and backdoors at a $36m valuation

It was great catching up with my mate Zenon yesterday at a BBG Mastermind Lunch yesterday. Zen is a founding investor and mentor of SenSen Networks.

Subhash Challa, a professor of computer systems engineering at Sydney's University Of Technology (UTS) started SenSen in 2007 and raised his initial capital  and found his founding investor at our BSI Investor forum. 

Last year it  backdoored  into a $36m ASX backdoor listing .

The technology was a spin-off of the UTS, who transferred the IP into SenSen in exchange for equity. ( A great example of how A university can commercialise its technology)

A video analytics start-up which claims its camera systems can catch as many parking cheats in a day as a council's inspectors can in a year raised $4.5 million for an ASX listing.

Its video analysis software  powers one-third of NSW's speed cameras, and counts customers for Crown Casino as well as the sizes of their bets.

It’s  ability to interpret video and manage the “big data” will hopefully scale globally.

"Video images contain so much rich, business-related information, if an algorithm can extract it and present it to you in the right way."

Applications for Councils “Robocop”

Thirteen city councils or state governments (local and overseas )  now buy SenSen's video analytics as a software-as-a-service .The automation of parking inspection has proven the most popular application with councils. Users include Manly in NSW, Brisbane, Ipswich and Logan in Queensland, Maribyrnong in Victoria, Subiaco in WA, as well as Calgary, Copenhagen and Singapore.

SenSen puts its software behind existing CCTV cameras (or installs its own where necessary) and uses character recognition to 'read' every parking sign and audit every zone in the customers' desired area. Its algorithms can then apply the appropriate rule to cars interacting with the zones.

In a  test for one council, SenSen Networks notified the client of every breach its system detected in a single day, as minor as a one-second stop in a no stopping zone. The fine revenue that could have been raised exceeded what the council's human inspectors had booked in the entire previous year, Mr Challa claimed..

Video analytics for casinos 

Gambling has become SenSen Networks' other focus. It convinced Melbourne's Crown Casino to install Microsoft Kinect cameras, which are single point cameras capable of detecting three dimensions.

"That's allowed us to detect the heights of chip stacks, which we can marry with the chip colour information to calculate how much is being bet," Mr Challa said.

Crown is using the information to determine in real time which games it should be running in which areas of the casino. The system can also recognise patrons' faces and ensure they have earned an appropriate number of loyalty points.

James Packer's business had helped SenSen develop the gambling offering to the extent it will receive a royalty on sales to casinos elsewhere, Mr Challa said.

Self driving cars

Imagine the analytics that SenSen can capture and analyse tlfrom the data obtained from self driving cars. 

Onwards and Upwards

We at BSI are looking forward to follow the progress of Subhesh and the SenSen team! Well done!

 

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An inspiring talk on branding - let me know if you would like the ebook?

Adobe acquired Marketo for $4.75b

Adobe will acquire B2B marketing automation software company Marketo for  $US4.75 billion.

Marketo is owned by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners who bought the company for $US1.8 billion in 2016.

Adobe is entering into Dalesforce’s marketplace 

Salesforce and Marketo have partnered together for years, though that relationship was complicated in 2013, when Salesforce acquired Marketo competitor ExactTarget for $US2.5 billion. ExactTarget eventually became the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Adobe has made several strategic acquisitions in recent months, including the acquisition of the e-commerce platform Magento Commerce for $US1.68 billion in May. 

In April, Abode acquired the computer vision software company Uru, as well as Sayspring, a platform for creating voice-enabled apps.

Interesting times for Software Automation companies - good time to exit?

Gardiner’s of Jelix to raise a $30m seed fund

afr

Local VC Jelix Ventures targets $30m raise 

September 24 2018 - 3:00PM

Australians Ian and Andrea Gardiner are looking to raise a $30m seed stage Vc  fund Jelix Ventures after the seed-stage investors scored their first home run exit from the sale of StorReduce to $9 billion US company Pure Storage.

              

Having invested just $180,000 in StorReduce in 2014 when the business was still pre-revenue, Jelix investors have banked a 10-times return from the sale of the company, which de-duplicates, manages and migrates data.

For 16 years they have been running Innovation Bay and at one of the functions in May 2014 Vanessa pitched her company - StorReduce. 

Pick and choose

Jelix has provided other investors in the fund with the ability to pick and choose which companies they invest in, similar to the model of Israel's iAngels. 

With the raise of its first VC fund, for which it already has some multimillion-dollar commitments, it will also provide a "set and forget" investment option.

The Gardiner’s share some gems with Yolanda Redrup at AFR 

"We want to give investors access to this asset class in a more curated way and I'm on a personal mission to get more financial fuel into the best Australian start-ups and strengthen the ecosystem, as well as building a global investor base."

Investments

Jelix other investments include 

•  mixed reality technology company tagSpace, 
• on-demand photography start-up Snappr 
• inclusive-recruitment platform Enabled Employment.
• podcast platform Whooshkaa 
• fintech start-up Trade Ledger. 

"We hypothesised [when we started] that there was a lack of leadership and appetite to invest in these high-risk assets and there needs to be a leader for other investors to feel confident in their judgment. It was after that realisation that we started Jelix."

New focus

Mr Gardiner, who was previously the founder of streaming service Viocorp, has more recently been the head of the Australia and New Zealand start-up division at Amazon Web Services, resigned from that role last week in order to dedicate time to Jelix, as well as Innovation Bay.

Traits that the Gardiner’s look for 

"[I look for] tenacity. It's a brutal journey in the start-up kingdom. The first day you wake up and get smacked hard in the nose, you need to be able to get back up and go again," he said.

Ms Gardiner added: "I look for intellectual firepower, a voracious appetite to learn, someone without an ego that will stop them from learning 

and 

I look for someone passionate that can attract people and engage them, so they can build good teams and the relationships needed to drive growth." 

Innovation in Australia: The top 20 Internet Companies - 9 in China!

Innovation in Australia: The top 20 Internet Companies - 9 in China!

Changes to the R&D Tax Incentive - 2018 Budget

http://www.bsiinnovation.com.au/?p=4005

Changes to the R&D Tax Incentive (RDTI) announced in Tuesday night’s Federal Budget are heavily focused on cost reduction and enforcement, and may risk further depressing the level of business investment in R&D by Australia’s private sector.

In summary, the major changes include:

• Changing the rate of refundable R&D tax offset to a fixed 13.5% premium above the claimant’s applicable company tax rate;
• Amending non-refundable R&D tax offset rates to provide increasing benefits to companies with a higher levels of “R&D intensity” (being R&D expenditure as percentage of total expenses);
• Introducing a $4 million annual cap on cash refunds forR&D, with amounts above the cap converted into non-refundable offsets, which can be carried forward to future periods.  Refundable tax offsets for clinical trials will not be capped;
• Increasing the $100 million annual R&D expenditure threshold to $150 million;
• Strengthening anti-avoidance rules, and providing additional resources to the ATO to help ensure ineligible R&D claims are denied;
• Publishing details of companies claiming the RDTI and the amounts they claim; and
• New binding Innovation and Science Australia guidance on the scope of eligible R&D

The introduction of a new $4m cap on the maximum annual cash refund will not effect most startups and smaller SMEs eligible for the refundable tax offset.

(Ivan's comment - If someone is prepared to spend millions of dollars on R&D- why limit this benefit? 
Surely these are the companies that the Government should be encouraging to continue to invest in R&D? )


The decision to change the rate of refundable tax offset to the company tax rate plus a 13.5% “premium” does represent a reduction relative to current refund entitlements.  Whilst arguably a small decrease, this will be keenly felt by loss-making startup-ups trying to maximise available cash during their R&D phase. 

For larger company groups accessing the non-refundable R&D tax offset, the impacts are more significant.  The introduction of a sliding scale of non-refundable tax offsets pegged to a new measure of “R&D intensity” adds yet more complexity, and all but removes any meaningful support for larger company groups where R&D investment forms less than a significant proportion of their overall business activities.  The government is presumably seeking “additionality” at the recommendation of the Chief Scientist and Innovation and Science Australia, however, this measure risks driving those making the most significant investments in R&D in dollar terms to other, more supportive tax jurisdictions.

The foreshadowed revision of anti-avoidance rules specifically for R&D combined with increased resourcing of the ATO is welcome, as is the proposal for new binding technical guidance to be issued by ISA.  However, the plan to publicly disclose the name of each applicant and the amount they claim is commercially sensitive information to many companies and may act as a further deterrent for firms to disclose their activities to access R&D support.

Long-term integrity of the program is critically important, and the government is to be commended for recognising it was past time to act.  But taken together, these latest changes reduce the benefits available for most applicants, and appear contrary to the original intent of the Incentive itself. 

Negative media coverage and increased complexity and compliance risks already sit uneasily with companies wishing to validly access the program.  With apologies to Ken Henry, from these trenches it is difficult to see this as the self-assessment incentive program it is intended to be.

Australian Business Expenditure on R&D (BERD) is in decline, and the “end of the mining boom” excuse for the downward trend is losing its legitimacy.  We fear the impacts of these changes and the consequent reduction in support for companies taking the big technical risks on behalf of us all will be felt for more many years to come.

Please see the fact sheet (https://www.budget.gov.au/2018-19/content/factsheets/6-tax-integrity.html) for further details on the changes announced in Tuesday’s Federal Budget.  BSI will provide a further detailed outline of each change as the relevant Bills are released for consultation, or otherwise introduced in the House of Representatives.

Tags:
#Grants #Innovation #News #R&D #R&DTaxIncentive #Research and Development #Tax

Related Posts

• Australia 2030: prosperity through innovation’ report released February 9, 2018

• R&D Tax Incentive – Have you thought about your 2016/17 claim? January 30, 2018

• Taxpayer Alerts – Incorrectly Claiming the R&D Tax Incentive February 17, 2017

Innovation does not happen in isolation. It requires the entire economic ecosystem– small, medium and large organisations – to be playing their part. Stable support is needed at all levels. 

The Government should make it easy for  those that have the motivation, authority and desire to innovate and invest R&D to access the relevant R&D Incentives. 

Innovating and investing in R&D is risky enough without The Government continuing to changing of the rules and make the definition of what R&D is - which leads to fear, uncertainty and doubt!!

What do you think?

Ritesh Agarwal and Oyo - the next Unicorn?

Ritesh Agarwal (23 years old) - college dropout - entrepreneur and founder & CEO of OYO Rooms 5 years ago - a disruptive hospitality business and app - with a network of 2,200 hotels operating in 154 cities across India - with monthly revenues of $3.5m and 1,500 employees. 

Oyo is tipped to become one of the next start-up unicorns. It has raised a total of $125million of funding from the likes of the Softbank Group, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed India

At his company’s 38th annual general meeting, Son of Softbank which has invested in OYO through its $93-billion Vision Fund, was speaking in Japanese that was translated for viewers..

"It owns about 100,000 rooms. It is also growing exponentially. I think, on a per-month basis, the number of rooms, or net growth, is going to continue to grow at the pace of more than 10,000. It is a next-generation hotel chain using the internet service.” 

The comments come at a time when OYO has launched services in China, making it a rare instance of an Indian consumer technology company setting up operations in the world’s second-largest economy.

Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in 2012. Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget accommodation. Being an avid traveler, he soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Recognise sing the opportunity, he pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation.

Ritesh Agarwal was selected for the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship in 2013. The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program wherein fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors and scientists.

One big learning from Thiel fellowship was think really big and create an impact, without thinking if anybody has done it before,” said Agarwal, who decided to pivot the model to OYO Rooms, putting most of the Thiel grant into the business. 

Agarwal has won many awards and accolades for his work including the Business World Young Entrepreneur Award. He is a regular speaker at entrepreneurial conferences and institutes across India and the world and a fellow of the Thiel Institute .

Best

Ivan

ps.. Click link to view my profile and connect with me on referron https://members.referron.com/bsivc. If you update your profile on referron,  you will create your own virtual business card.

Ivan Kaye

Sent from my iPhone

Some Awesome Australian Startups

Source :- https://www.themartec.com/insidelook/50-top-startups-sydney

Incent Loyalty

Incent promise to be the future of loyalty, harnessing the blockchain to turbocharge merchant revenue in a way that traditional schemes cannot. Because Incent is a digital asset reward, merchants can outsource infrastructure costs and liabilities to the blockchain, while the consumer is rewarded for their custom instantly, with an incentive that has intrinsic value. Founded by Rob Wilson in 2016, Incent is the first universal merchant-backed loyalty platform. It’s better loyalty through smarter rewards. It was announced in November 2016 that the team have raised over 1 million in seed funding.

My Recruitment +

Founded by Anwar Khalil - physicist, computer scientist and entrepreneur... Anwar disrupted the job advertising industry in 2003, when he launched the pioneering job multi-posting platform Adlogic which has morphed into Myrecruitment + . 

MyRecruitment+ is a recruitment and on-boarding platform used by in-house and agency recruiters, to manage their job ads, candidates and their new-employee contracts & forms.

The company is growing at a rate of 200% per year with clients in over 10 countries.

https://myrecruitmentplus.com/clients/

HashChing

HashChing is Australia’s first online home loans marketplace that instantly connects borrowers to verified local mortgage brokers registered on HashChing using an AI-driven algorithm. HashChing has been created to empower people to share their grievance or positive experience and make an informed decision when choosing a financial product, in a simple and convenient manner. Founded in 2015 by Atul Narang and Mandeep Sodhi, HashChing has already gained great traction receiving over $7 billion worth of home loan applications, $6 billion of that in last 12 months alone. Moving forward HashChing’s target is to have 1,000 active mortgage brokers on the platform and $20 billion worth of home loan applications by January 2018. They are due to announce other partnerships in the coming months that will completely streamline the end-to-end home loan process.

BRiN

BRiN is the world’s first artificially intelligent business advisor & she’s able to provide support to millions of clients simultaneously. Founder Dale Beaumont, entrepreneur, author, speaker and businesses advisor, wanted to make education accessible, and support instantaneous to millions of business owners around the world. BRiN is a smartphone app that uses the power of AI to help you find information relevant to your business. In April 2017, Dale and his team released the next generation of BRiN, which knows the answer to more than 5,000 commonly asked business questions. All you need to do is type or speak your question and you’ll get back an answer from BRiN, instantly. The app has been praised by Forbes, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Gizmodo, The Next Web, GQ and Sky Business. You can find BRiN in the App store or Google Play.

Ignition Wealth

Ignition Wealth provides online investment and superannuation advice solutions for the Australian financial services market. Founded in 2014 by Mike Giles and Mark Fordree, Ignition Wealth provides automated advice, tools and calculators to Australian professional financial businesses and financial institutions. In its most simple form, the Ignition Wealth technology is an off the shelf, easy to use solution which is targeted at professional financial businesses including advice practices and accountancy firms. They are Australia’s largest robo-advice specialist. So far the team have successfully raised $4 million to help expand and grow out their offering.

Mad Paws

Mad Paws was created to fill in the ever-growing need in the pet boarding market for affordable, and local pet accommodation whilst still maintaining the care, love, and attention pets received at high-end, expensive, pet boarding services. It’s pet minding for the share economy. Founder Alexis Soulopoulos founded Mad Paws after graduating from University of Sydney Business School. After just eight months of operation, the startup raised its first venture capital round of $1.1 million to further accelerate its growth. Mad Paws is now Australia’s  number one pet services marketplace and is expanding fast. The platform has over 150,000 pet owners on board and secured themselves a partnership with PETstock and Bondi Vet.

Flare HR

Flare is Australia’s first all-in-one HR and Employee Benefits platform, which is completely free. Flare HR manages all of your HR needs from digital onboarding, connecting to payroll, leave management, performance reviews and more. Plus it gives your employees access to employee benefits that are typically enjoyed only by the largest companies. This includes a completely transparent choice of superannuation allocation and super consolidation, 2000 retails discounts, access to the best rates of life insurance and health insurance, cheaper mobile phone plans, novated car leasing, etc. Founded by Jan Pacas, Daniel Cohen, Saul Kaplan and Colin Mierowsky, Flare has signed up over 30,000 employees in its first year and has received initial seed investment Reinventure Group. 

How Blockchain Will Disrupt Loyalty Programs

Cryptocurrencies & PlatformsNews

 By Nadja Bester 1

Loyalty programs are broken. They don’t work because they offer only closed value.

When a business issues thank-you points, these essentially function as IOUs. A customer can redeem points by exchanging them for in-house goods or services. In reality, the fact is that – more often than not – they don’t bother. Only 24 percent redeem the rewards they earn. Since market research tells us that 50% of US shoppers have quit a loyalty program, it’s clear that businesses don’t always get it right.

The trouble with loyalty programs

Typically, points racked up are redeemable only through the business issuing said points. Points are usually not transferable, nor do they carry over beyond a set expiry date, and depending on the merchant, can even be limited to the extent of dictating which products or services it can be used for.

Nowadays, every second business seems to run a loyalty scheme. In the US alone, there are 3.8 billion loyalty scheme memberships. Sadly, there is often little overall value to the customer. This explains why growth has slowed. Consequently, loyalty programs are not nearly as effective at generating loyalty through incentivizing repeat customers as they are designed to be. Since administrating a loyalty program can be a resource-intensive operation, the return on investment often does not justify the promise of a seldom achieved gain.

For a business to compete in the global economy, it’s important to maintain a competitive advantage. Many businesses continue to view launching a loyalty program as a requirement for generating customer loyalty, even if it ends up costing more than what it generates in repeat business.

Rethinking Loyalty Points and Schemes

Blockchain technology, however, enables businesses to go back to the drawing board and rethink having an in-house loyalty program.

Also read: What is Blockchain Technology? A Beginner’s Guide

Thanks to the blockchain, loyalty schemes can be made more efficient, effective, and cost-effective. Blockchain startups like Incent are already doing great work in that space, bringing to the table new solutions to old problems.

How Blockchain Revolutionizes Loyalty

Incent, the world’s first universal merchant-backed loyalty business built on the blockchain, is changing the way we think about loyalty schemes.

Incent’s business model eliminates treating loyalty points as fiat currency that can be minted indefinitely. Instead, it likens points to gold, treating it as a commodity in limited supply.

Incent transforms the system from a closed value proposition that many customers deem as being of little value, into an open market economy.

When a customer makes a purchase, a percentage of the sale is used to buy loyalty points on the Incent system. These are sent to the client’s Incent account. In accumulating points from a variety of merchants, the customer is free to decide where and when to spend their Incent-powered loyalty points. No longer does a closer value loyalty scheme make them beholden to any particular merchant.

Thus, using blockchain technology, a business is freed from the heavy administrative burden associated with running a loyalty scheme. It’s also is able to bypass forward liability, affording a merchant zero forward liability, meaning costs are known and spent upfront.

By building a network of participating Incent outlets, Incent offers customers the ability to trade blockchain-based points that store actual value and, thanks to its open value nature, is transferable between a variety of stores

Creating a win-win

An open value system respects the customer as a self-governing individual who is best equipped to decide whether to spend, save or trade a loyalty token that has actual monetary value. And a business that respects its customer is bound to be awarded the customer’s loyalty in return. After all, isn’t that what loyalty schemes are all about?

This is an exciting blockchain use case, one that many consumers and businesses alike will be eager to see widespread adoption of.