Email security is a perennial concern, and OpenID is an up-and-coming technology that’s set to become universal over the next few years. Jeremy Wyn-Harris has come up with LiquidID. an innovative way to marry the two technologies, and has successfully built and launched the service. He is looking for investment to complete his patents and market LiquidID.

The Pitch:

LiquidID is a unique and innovative extension to single sign on (SSO) systems (such as OpenID) that provide guaranteed email protection. OpenID allows a user with a single identity to logon to any OpenID enabled sites (“consumers”). LiquidID is an extension to OpenID which seamlessly distributes unique email aliases to OpenID consumers. The LiquidID server forwards received emails to the real user. If however it is determined that the alias has been compromised then the LiquidID server will reject the email.

Since LiquidID is a portal for each and every login, significant revenue can be generated by presented targeted advertisements specific to the users interests and the sites they are logging into.

This concept is protected by provisional patents but requires investment to fund full filing. Furthermore, additional provisional patents have been submitted for an alternative but similar idea in which email aliasing is applied to any outgoing email message from a standard email client or web based service to provide absolute unsolicited email protection. More information can be found online at http://liquidid.net and a business plan is available upon request.

Accomplishments to date:

• Patents filed
• Site developed and launched

Development plans:

To further the provisional IP protection with a PCT patent and market the service using online media. Extensions and refinement to the service are planned.

Key Challenges:

The main obstacle for LiquidID will be mainstream adoption of SSO (OpenID) by the general public. However assuming OpenID becomes mainstream, the primary challenge for LiquidID is ensuring people are aware of it and how it is differentiated from other OpenID providers. Alternatively if the IP is to be licensed then appropriate parties need to be made aware of the benefit and understand it’s value proposition.

Principals & Previous Experience:

LiquidID has been developed solely by Jeremy Wyn-Harris, under the privately owned entity of Epic Digital.

Jeremy has 10 years experience with start-ups. In 1998 he co-founded Epic Digital which developed an intelligent standalone Internet camera for low end security applications that was mass produced (10K units) in Australia and Singapore. Joint ventures with Hills Industries (forming Epic World Australia and SingTel (forming Epic World Singapore) were established. This was accomplished in all within 4 years and began on a shoestring budget from a garage setup. Since 2003 Jeremy has established three other significant ventures, namely The OpenSauce, Builderscrack, and UpStartGo. Builderscrack is a commercial venture that has rapidly become a profitable business, whereas The OpenSauce is a non-profit venture that has received international media attention from BBC World.

Jeremy has three published patents and one recently submitted PCT application and holds a Bachelor (Hons) and a Master degree in Electrical Engineering.

What they want from an investor:

NZD 25K is required to in the near future to further intellectual property protection. Overall a total investment of NZ$100K is being sought.

Dave’s Commentary:

If you’re keen on this kind of technology, $25K is a low buy-in price to take part in a company that has protected IP, an up-and-running product, and an entrepreneur with a track record. Jeremy seems a personable chap with a good mix of technical and business skills. From my conversations with him, he seems focussed on the desired outcomes, not afraid of hard slog, and willing to take risks.

Contact details:

JeremyWyn-Harris
Email: investment@liquidid.net
Mob: 021 0479528

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

The Pitch:
PlaceMate is a guide to find shops and services (like hairdressers, fitness centres, beauty salons etc), with an abundance of personal insights. It is informative, welcoming and fun. It enables users to find shops, services, night entertainment and restaurants using various search criteria, rated and ranked by real customers. PlaceMate also links users to users with a similar taste: “Users that rated this service high, also liked….”.

Business Model:
Based on selling low cost advertisement spots ($9.99/month), highly targeted by publishing them on the relevant pages. Unlike other websites, the advertisement spots are estatically integrated in the site; adding to the usability instead of anoying users.

Technical details:
Includes an extensive CRM system, making data import, editing and maintenance easy. It’s easy to expand to other cities by the import function, allowing databases bought from local yellow or white pages to be
imported. Currently it contains about 7000 restaurants covering all of NZ and 1200 shops (in Wellington). PlaceMate is still in the process of being developed, though in its final stages.

Next steps:
Due to family circumstances, the entrepreneurs are moving back to the Netherlands, where they will continue expanding the PlaceMate model. However, in NZ the site really needs to be brought to the next level. They have put the business on a TradeMe auction.

If you have a CEO who would like to take this on, it could make a nice investment with an interesting business model at a very low buy-in price.

Contact:
Debra Aurich
Tel: 021 1904605
Email: debraurich@gmail.com

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

The Pitch:

Over 6.6 million US households of buyers, designers and sellers spent US$1.5 billion on DIY jewelry in 2007, up 19% on 2006. More importantly they are rushing online, spending $100m, up a whopping 100% on 2006. Ponoko is in a unique position to service this large and rapidly growing online market.

The problem these designers and sellers face is the cost and complexity to make and sell their creations. And this is leading to a lack of unique jewelry easily accessible to mass market buyers.

The Ponoko solution to this is an online supply chain service that makes it easy and affordable to buy, make and sell designer crafted jewelry. Their online marketplace delivers a DIY jewelry buying, making and selling service at 50% less cost than the equivalent offline process and saves 90% of the time traditionally involved.

Over time they hope to expand into other vertical markets – eg, the overall US craft vertical is worth about US$50 billion per year.

The underlying excitement about Ponoko is that its unique ‘buy/make/sell’ online marketplace earns 5x more per sale than traditional ‘buy/sell’ online marketplaces. This is because they provide an on-demand product making and delivery service in addition to the traditional marketplace sales service. In short they are redefining how products are designed, made and delivered – and riding on a new wave people are calling the post industrial revolution and web3.0.

All performance indicators are trending upwards and revenues are flowing at a sustained 3.8% online sales conversion success rate. This innovation and traction continues to attract high profile investors, partners and media.

Accomplishments to date:

• Revenues have grown at a compound rate of 42% per month since September 2007.
• Website traffic has grown at a compound rate of 46% per month since January 2007.
• Nearly 10,000 personal factories have been opened.
• Highly successful US businessmen have been appointed to their advisory board (see ‘Principals & Previous Experience’ details below).
• 2 manufacturing nodes have been established – San Francisco, USA and Wellington, NZ.
• Selected to launch the world’s first ‘buy/make/sell’ marketplace at the prestigious TechCrunch40 event in San Francisco, USA.
• Selected to launch at the prestigious DEMO events in both San Diego & Palm Springs, USA.
• Selected to present at the world’s mass customization and personalization conference at MIT in Massachusetts, USA.
• Supreme winner of TUANZ Business internet awards.
• Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, BBC News, WIRED Magazine, BusinessWeek, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch.com, Engadget.com, VentureBeat.com, Makezine.com, Core77.com, Idealog, NZ Herald.
• USA accounts for 70% of revenues.

Development plans:

• Focus on marketing, particularly providing online marketing tools to empower our marketplace designers and sellers to tell their stories and engage in ‘social selling’.
• Providing tools that make it simple for anyone to design a product that can be made at the click of a mouse.

Key Challenges:

• marketing – engaging more users, more often at more profit.
• product – making it super simple for the novice ‘designer’ to design products they can click to make.
• operations – bedding in the next make-on-demand technology, beyond laser cutting of plastics and timbers.
• finance – cash to fund growth.

Principals & Previous Experience:

• David ten Have (founder/CEO) – previously co-founder/CTO of Provoke, NZ’s #1 design led web development firm.
• Derek Elley (founder/CSO) – serial entrepreneur, previously co-founder/CEO of First Rate (NZ’s largest Internet marketing agency, sold to ASX:QXQ in 2006), co-founder / CEO of Calcium Software (NZ’s first email branding agency), co-founder/CEO of Sparkbox (NZ’s leading angel investment company).
• Fred Durham (Board advisor) – founder/CEO of Cafepress.com, the world’s largest personalized goods marketplace hosting 11 million unique website visitors per month, adding 2,000 new shops and 45,000 new products daily.
• Graham Hill (Board advisor) – serial entrepreneur, founder/CEO of Treehugger.com, the world’s #1 green blog, sold to Discovery Channel (NASDAQ:DISC) in 2007.
• Ross Stevens (Board advisor) – one of NZ’s leading industrial designers, previously with Philippe Starck and Fisher & Pykel.

What they want from an investor:

• NZ$1.25m.
• Minimum investment NZ$10,000.
• Offer closes 26 June 2008.
• Ideal for investors looking to invest in US focused online marketplaces, user generated content websites, online retail of digital or physical goods, online supply chain solutions, manufacturing-on-demand, digital or industrial design.

Dave’s Commentary:

Ponoko has the ingredients to make a great New Zealand success story. I remember talking to David ten Have a couple of years ago, when he said he was bored with the virtual world and wanted to use the Internet to enable making real things. He teamed up with Derek Elley, and they’ve gone on to build a very strong team … if you view Angel investment as investing primarily in people, you’re off to a great start right there. … if you view Angel investment as investing primarily in people, you’re off to a great start right there. They’ve managed to put together a string of successes which any NZ startup would envy.

Ponoko have been very successful in building up a community (in the true sense) of users, and the underlying technology is very cool. Laser cutters, Rails, plenty of AJAX … yum. But the key source of confidence for me came from Ponoko taking the jump and opening an office in San Francisco. One of their key learnings, according to David tH, is that “you have to be there to be there”, ie there’s no substitute for actual presence in the North American market if you want to do business there. Many New Zealand startups could do well to learn this lesson.

Disclosure: I’ve invested in Ponoko in a previous round. The share price is up, which is a good reflection that they’re starting to realise their early promise.

Contact details:

Derek Elley
derek.elley@ponoko.com
Tel: +64 21 88 66 81

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

Dunedin-based TracPlus has developed some really sexy technology that lets you track nearly anything, anywhere. Recent high-profile examples include those poor Aussie kayakers who nearly didn’t make it to New Plymouth earlier this year and a team climbing Mt Everest. But the same technology is being used by the military, rescue services, and commercial aviation all over the world, including Antarctica.

They’re ready to expand rapidly now, and are looking for investment to make this happen.

The Pitch:

TracPlus is a global tracking service that allows you to keep track of your aircraft, vessels and vehicles, no matter where they are in the world.

TracPlus is a proven, secure and mission critical tracking solution that seamlessly integrates global tracking data from diverse land, sea and air assets in real time, and delivers that information to wherever it is required. TracPlus delivers a single, comprehensive and real time “big picture” view of all relevant mobile assets and external data sources, to enhance safety and dramatically improve overall mission effectiveness.

TracPlus is hardware, network and software independent, allowing customers’ complete freedom of choice in how they use TracPlus and how they share their data with the world. TracPlus is now a proven technology in the aviation and emergency management and coordination markets.

Accomplishments to date:

• Initial Product Launch in August 2007
• Secured excellent set of customers including US Department of Defence, Resource Coordination Centre NZ, St John Ambulance, Australia Search and Rescue, Coast Guard NZ, Dallas Aviation
• Currently operating in 12 countries including Antarctica
• Mission Critical infrastructure, only NZ provider to guarantee 99.999% server uptime
• One of only 14 NZTE sponsored companies for CEBIT Hannover 2008
• $100,000 NZTE grant approved for US market development
• NZ country winner of the Technium Challenge, the Business Planning Competition for High Growth Technology Businesses

Development plans:

• Formally establish US office and support resource Develop high quality North American and Australasian map sets
• Develop strategic relationships arising from trade presence at CeBit Hannover 2008
• Launch officially in North America at National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) 2008 trade show in Orlando, Florida in October
• Scope revenue and operations model for other potential channel partners
• Develop TracPlus™ 2.0 to secure a market leading position
• Create significant new sales growth in the North American and Australian markets
• Finalise strategic relationships currently in negotiation
• Pay for IP purchased from Daestra

Target markets are:

• Commercial aviation tracking and flight following;
• Commercial and recreational maritime tracking;
• Commercial terrestrial tracking;
• Rescue operators and coordination services;
• Military support (Naval and Air & Surface elements)

Key Challenges:

• Achieving traction in overseas market, especially USA
• Absorb hardware centric competition by supporting their hardware and “complete their package” with software and service
• Absorb solution-centric competition by replacing their Iridium/Satamatics providers so they can retain margin and improve their offering
• Develop recurring revenue stream from software and services

Principals & Previous Experience:

Chris Hinch: CEO/CTO and Founder – BSc (ComSci) Held key technology positions with Dunedin City Council and Animation Research Ltd, securing national and international Innovation awards for those companies and their customers. Qualified pilot and published aviation photographer.

Mike Hanning: VP Sales and Marketing – spent the last 15 years in Australasia, holding senior positions with Bridgestone (Japan HQ), Sportstec Ltd, and his own company MPN Kaimanawa Ltd.

Harlan Hamlin: President, TracPlus USA – private instrument, multi engine rated pilot with over 5,000 hours of flight experience. Held senior positions with Satellink Technologies, AT&T Wireless, and Verizon Wireless.

Patrick McLauchlan: Regional Manager – twenty years experience in business development, sales and marketing in offshore markets including USA, Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, UAE, and Iran. Experience and expertise in dealing with Fortune 500 customers and Governmental agencies.

What they want from investors:

NZD 2,000,000 in this round. Chris Hinch says they’re particularly interested in “shareholders who bring passion and experience to the table” who will become engaged.

Dave’s Commentary:

These guys seem to have a lot going for them: world beating technology, the right kind of awards, a seasoned management team with extensive international experience, established international market demand, and a reliable first-generation product. $2M might seem a lot for the Angel market, but they’re under no illusions about how much it’s going to cost to make this product fly globally, and they claim to be able to achieve a revenue stream of $30M without further capital. So it might be time to pick up the phone my friends, and start aggregating …

Contact details:

Chris Hinch
 read the disclaimer.