Personality and Place: Your Happy Place App

We know that our environment has a significant impact on our mood. But how aware are you of how the place you are in effects your mood? Also, are we designing for all personality types or only a subset who tend to be over-represented on urban planning boards? There are the questions Dr Nigel Cartlidge of Griffith University explores in his research. We teamed up back in July to turn his research into an app that’s usable and downloadable by all, which is where the Your Happy Place App comes in to play.

Currently available on Expo.io as a working demonstration of the concept. Nigel will be presenting the app and the broader plan for it at The International Urban Design Conference taking place right now in Sydney.

The idea has a two-sided market. One side of the market is everyone interested in emotional and wellness tracking and analysis. Ideally, users will use the app every day to record their emotions, taking into account the place they are in, and the app will provide feedback to them. The other side of the market is the urban design and planning community, who could use the data to better design and build urban spaces.

The ideas are still developing, and it’s all currently bootstrapped by Nigel, and his wife, Janet. I am on board as CTO and chief developer. Hopefully, we can drum up enough interest to start raising some seed funding. The website for the business side of things is Personality and Place. I cannot be at the conference, but I am sure Nigel is doing very well!

Short Update: Chatfor10 & DevStart

Earlier this year, I made a post talking about my involvement with Chatfor10. I am happy to say that Chatfor10 has been going from strength to strength. They are now going by ChatLoop, are part of UQ’s iLab germinate accelerator and working towards a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to build the Chatloop app. I am, however, have not been involved with ChatLoop for quite some time. I dropped out months ago when it became clear that they needed me to commit more time then I was willing or able to commit. But I am still a believer and supporter of ChatLoop and will be cheering them on when they participate in iLab UQ Germinate 12 Pitch and Investor Demo Night!

Speaking of Chatfor10, the last time I mentioned them on this blog, it was in the context of DevStart. I am sad to say that DevStart too is no more. Trish Khoo, the founder of DevStart did her level best to get the meetup off the ground, and I did my small part organising the May talk with Chatfor10, but the Brisbane meetup scene is just too crowded. The amount of effort it took to organise speakers wasn’t worth the turnout and Trish decided to call it quits. I considered taking over as the sole organiser, but I couldn’t think of what I could do differently to attract more people. Brisbane just has too many events, meetups and other things of a similar nature. So yes, it’s sad, but sometimes you have to pull the plug.

My write-up for IMNIS: Planned Happenstance

"Never underestimate the power of chance!" That's the message I wanted students to take away when they read the article I wrote about my journey for the Industry Mentoring Network in STEM. The chance to write the article followed on from the invitation I received to speak at the IMNIS breakfast event last month. I enjoyed writing the article. I hope the IMNIS members enjoyed reading it too!

Collider Accelerator Demo Day

Yester, I was able to attend the Collider Accelerator Demo Day 2018. With registration opening at 2:30 PM and the pitches starting at 3:15 PM, it was a nice change from the usual nightly affairs. I left straight after the pitches because I wasn't in the right head space for networking afterwards. But I had a lot of fun and got to exercise my critical evaluation skills by ranking the pitches by asking, "Who would I invest with?".  So let's start with a few start-ups I would definitely invest with, were a venture capitalist or angel investor. 

The strongest pitches on the night were new software-as-service platforms that seemed to address a clear gap in the market. In this category was Brandollo - they offer marketing advice and training to small business owners, who are shut out of the expert marketing advise due to pricing.

Also in this category were Prysim - a gig management platform and Tribefire that's catering to the online gaming and eSports industry. As a gamer, I am especially interested in Tribefire, and I think they are an early mover in competitive eSports, which may well be the next Formula 1! The Tribefire team also seem on the ball and to understand how the gaming community works. So I would very interested to see how far they go.

I guess I'll put Tixel in the saas category as well, although they are more a marketplace. But they facilitate the resell of eTickets. Due to the nature of eTickets, often just a picture or a PDF, fraud is rampant and disappointment even more so! Tixel validates before selling and blocks out users from reselling the same ticket multiple times. So based on the pitch, I would be onboard!

The platform startup I wasn't convinced by, still, is Lana. I heard their pitch for the first time during the Impact Boom Elevate+ event. I thought they might have issues then, I am more convinced than ever that they need to look at their start-up carefully. You see, the Impact Boom event was a celebration and there were no questions allowed. But this demo day was a pitch for investment. So there was a panel of expert asking questions, raising issues following the pitch. They pointed out that Lana might be trying to do too much. I think they should drop the sharing/renting aspect of their platform. I think there is a big market for high quality, designer maternity wear. While I am sure mothers will appreciate a secondary market within the Lana platform through which they could resell their clothes, I thinking the renting side is too much work for too little gain.

The other two platform startups I was not convinced by were Neon, who are trying to harness the power of VR to help you plan your wedding, and Birdee, who I would describe as constructing artificial memory for salespeople. Both are good ideas on paper but Neon needs to think outside the box to grow because their onboarding process does not seem scalable. As for Birdee, its cool on paper but I think they will find better uses for their technology in social services and healthcare industries.

Speaking of healthcare industries, apparently, we have already entered the era of companion robots! Exaptec doesn't make robots but take off the shelf programmable robots, and program them for use in aged-care, healthcare and I can also see them branch out in education. They are a startup I would like to know more about, and I am keen to see how they progress with their concept.

So this brings me to the last startup that I liked but wouldn't invest in because I am not sure if they have a future. BOP Industries is trying to make holographic projection technology, and they are doing well so far. But I don't know if they have a plan for when the novelty factor of their displays wears out. Because at the end of the day, marketing is the content, not the medium. Are they doing cool things with the content? I wasn't apparent during the pitch or based on the displays that were set up. 

Lastly, you have Can't Sleep App, which is another entry in the very crowded but ever expanding wellness genre of products and services. Given the crowded marketplace, I wouldn't invest in the startup, mostly because I am not sure the CEO realises that he has to turn himself into a wellness guru to sell the app/music service.

Regardless of what I think, my hearty congratulations to all of the graduates from the Collider 2018 accelerator program. I look forward to seeing what you do next. Well done and keep going. I look forward to hearing about your startups in the future.

The Collider 2018 Entrepreneurs

Kickstarter Woes: Antonia Saint NY

I posted a long article on my experience with Antonia Saint NY on Medium. It recaps and builds on the story that I have chronicled here. Check it out and let me know what you think!