Sydney is a city where an entirely un-special parking spot can sell for A$120,000, so there's clearly a lot of room for a clever startup to come and shake things up.
Divvy is hoping it's that startup. While it began with a similar peer-to-peer model to Airbnb — connecting people who have a spare car space and would like to earn some extra cash, with those in desperate need of somewhere to park — it's now planning to expand the service and help corporate buildings manage their parking assets.
SEE ALSO: This Sydney startup wants to reinvent your boring old Word docs
Nick Austin, founder and CEO of Divvy.
IMAGE: DIVVY
Launched in 2011, Divvy announced Tuesday it had closed a A$2.5 million funding round and formalised relationships with corporate property owners DEXUS Property Group, GPT Group and Knight Frank, among others, who will use the platform to manage the parking available in their Australian buildings.
Besides investment funding, Divvy makes money by collecting a commission on transactions.
Currently, once users have signed up to Divvy online, they can enter their destination and adjust the maximum distance they're willing to walk from that spot. If a monthly space is available, they can book right away. Otherwise, Divvy will SMS or email them an alert when one opens up.
However, the startup will be releasing a mobile app in the next few weeks to book hourly and daily spaces around Australia, before pushing out to Asia and Europe, Nick Austin, CEO and founder of Divvy Parking, told Mashable Australia. "We want to move into the short term parking market across cities globally to improve access to spaces that are sitting empty," he said. "Not just on a monthly basis, but hourly or daily."
While it operates in greater Sydney, the company is starting to expand in Melbourne and Brisbane, and plans to ramp up in those cities over the next couple of months thanks to the cash injection.
The partnerships with some of Australia's largest property owners suit the way workplaces are changing globally, Austin said. As more employees are teleworking from home or coming to the office only three or four days a week, more dynamic work arrangements are necessary. At the moment, city parking is generally booked on a monthly basis in commercial spaces, he said, so it doesn't suit these emerging trends.
Screenshot of the Divvy platform.
IMAGE: DIVVY
As an average citizen, it can also be hard to figure out where to park at all. "If you look at the Sydney CBD, there are around 1,200 buildings and about 65 public parking lots," Austin said. "They have completely different access systems, so we're creating a common system across the market, much like Uber."
By offering a standard platform, people can access parking at a broader footprint for 30-50% cheaper than a traditional parking lot, he claims.
Austin is positive city trends will work out well for Divvy. "There's very little all-day street parking left in Sydney and little parking being built into new premises," he said. "There are a lot of macro elements working in our favour."
You might not think fashion and the hoodie-dominated world of technology would mix. Technology is often focused on efficiency, while fashion is about self-expression and exuberance.
A number of Australian entrepreneurs are working on bringing fashion, beauty and technology together, from helping women customise shoes online they actually want to wear, to streamlining the process of booking salon appointments with a mobile app.
SEE ALSO: A new algorithm for Instagram helps you make your friends jealous of your fashion sense
Three Aussie women using their business and style savvy to unite fashion and technology include: Jodie Fox, cofounder of shoe design platform Shoes of Prey, Jessica Wilson, cofounder of fashion discovery app Stashd, and Lauren Silvers, founder of salon appointment booking app Glamazon.
Jodie Fox, Shoes of Prey
Since it was founded in Sydney in 2009, Shoes of Prey has gone global.
The multi-platform app, which lets women design shoes online down to the shade of leather and have them mailed to their door, just opened a global headquarters in Los Angeles and announced a partnership with the U.S. department store, Nordstrom.
Founded by Jodie Fox, 33, along with Michael Fox and Mike Knapp, the business broke even in about two months, Fox said. That's when the founders knew they were onto something. "We were giving women the opportunity to be stylish, and to have something they were comfortable in," Fox told Mashable Australia.
With a background in law and advertising, Fox said she had always wanted her own business. Mixing fashion and technology, however, was left of field. "We used to go head to head about whether [Shoes of Prey was] a technology company or a fashion company," she said. "We didn't realise we were both."
Jodie Fox, cofounder of Shoes of Prey.
IMAGE: SHOES OF PREY
The company believes the fashion model is broken. "We see all these extraordinary designers put in the position of having to manufacture thousands of collections that people may or may not want to buy," she said. "It ends up causing this huge challenge in terms of waste, and ... people regard things in this disposable manner."
Technology fits perfectly into this equation — with its digital platform, Shoes of Prey is able to give people access to the exact product they want, without bulk manufacturing.
Fox thinks fashion, beauty and technology will need each other, especially as wearables develop. "Technology can make these amazing products we put on our body like Google Glass," she said. "But it needs fashion to make it something we would actually wear."
For others hoping to enter the fashion and tech space, Fox has some advice: Do everything before you're ready. "You learn a ton more by doing things than you ever do by planning," she said. And don't be afraid to admit you don't know what you don't know. "People are generous in giving you time and advice if you're confident enough to go and ask for it," she added.
Jessica Wilson, Stashd
Business and fashion both come naturally to Jessica Wilson, 23, cofounder of fashion discovery platform, Stashd. It was technology that was the steep learning curve.
A "global, virtual mall on your mobile," the Stashd iPhone app (with Android and Windows Mobile apps in the works) lets users swipe through clothes, save images and make purchases.
Wilson's entrepreneurial spirit started early. Growing up on a farm in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, she founded a company when she was 16 hosting formal after parties for different local high schools, she told Mashable Australia.
She later worked at the Australian, New York and Paris fashion weeks for different designers and PR companies, but decided to take a career U-turn in 2013 and booked a one way ticket to Silicon Valley without knowing a single person. "It was about putting myself in the right situation," Wilson said. She went to launches and networking drinks and even met one of her main business mentors in the girl's bathroom at an event.
IMAGE: STASHD
On her return to Sydney in 2014, she moved into the technology coworking space, Fishburners. That's when she got started translating the process of browsing in a brick and mortar store to a smartphone. Now working with over 3,000 brands globally, including Net-A-Porter, Asos and General Pants Co., the app aims to change the way people shop online.
Until this point, the startup has been funded through sales — depending on the store, Stashd makes between 8% and 20% a sale — but the company plans to raise investment cash in the coming months to fund further expansion.
Wilson's even shooting a pilot for a reality TV show about her journey as a female startup founder. "I want to show how real it is being an entrepreneur," she said. "It's not just all the hype people see in the media. You have extreme highs and extreme lows and you pivot almost weekly."
Jessica Wilson, cofounder of Stashd.
IMAGE: STASHD
When starting out, Wilson advises entrepreneurs to ask questions of people who know more than them. "When I entered from the fashion space, I didn't know much about tech," she said. "Meet people in the space and ask them questions you think are stupid."
"The fashion industry has problems to solve, and tech can solve those problems," she said.
Lauren Silvers, Glamazon
Lauren Silvers, 25, came up with the idea for Glamazon in early 2013, when she found it frustrating to connect with salons for last minute haircuts or manicure appointments.
While working in PR in New York, she was using apps like Seamless and Uber, and that gave her the idea for a platform that connected clients with beauticians on-demand, Silvers toldMashable Australia.
Before launching the Glamazon iPhone app in June 2014 — you can also book on the company's website, with an upcoming Android app — Silvers spent months learning about the startup scene.
While having always been business minded — she started a dog walking service at age nine — she didn't even know what the term "startup" meant when she developed the idea for Glamazon. "All I knew was I had this vision of how girls could connect with beauty salons," she said. "I'm not a tech person, but I believe in outsourcing all your weaknesses."
The Glamazon app.
IMAGE: GLAMAZON
Within six months of launch, after working with part-time developers on the app, she had more than 140 vetted salons signed up across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Now Glamazon has over 5,000 customers, with most located in Sydney. The company takes a 15% commission off every transaction, but salons don't pay to be on the platform and the app helps them fill empty session times.
The goal in 2015 is to launch GLAMfit, Silvers said. The company has found users of Glamazon are also interested in fitness and health, so the platform will help people book last minute yoga, pilates or personal trainer sessions.
Glamazon owes a lot to a collaborative approach, Silvers said. Her advisory board, with members who are involved in companies like Uber, Peasy.com and H2Coco, has been integral to the startup's growth. "Without my mentors and advisors, it would have taken me longer," she said. "I would have gotten there, but these are people who have seen it all before, so why not tap into their knowledge?"
Lauren Silvers, founder of Glamazon.
IMAGE: GLAMAZON
Word of mouth marketing has also paid off for Glamazon. She's found reaching out to Instagram celebrities with the offer of free appointments, such as Australian actress Charlotte Best and health blogger Jessica Sepel, really helpful. "There's so much marketing out there these days, a personal endorsement really cuts through," she added.
That's not to say startup life has been easy. "You can kiss a nine-to-five, five-day-a-week lifestyle behind," Silvers said. "You work whenever you need to work." While putting everything into Glamazon means she's living with her parents, it's still been immensely rewarding. "It's so fulfilling to see what I'm doing come to fruition," she said.
Sydney is a city where an entirely un-special parking spot can sell for A$120,000, so there's clearly a lot of room for a clever startup to come and shake things up.
Divvy is hoping it's that startup. While it began with a similar peer-to-peer model to Airbnb — connecting people who have a spare car space and would like to earn some extra cash, with those in desperate need of somewhere to park — it's now planning to expand the service and help corporate buildings manage their parking assets.
SEE ALSO: This Sydney startup wants to reinvent your boring old Word docs
Nick Austin, founder and CEO of Divvy.
IMAGE: DIVVY
Launched in 2011, Divvy announced Tuesday it had closed a A$2.5 million funding round and formalised relationships with corporate property owners DEXUS Property Group, GPT Group and Knight Frank, among others, who will use the platform to manage the parking available in their Australian buildings.
Besides investment funding, Divvy makes money by collecting a commission on transactions.
Currently, once users have signed up to Divvy online, they can enter their destination and adjust the maximum distance they're willing to walk from that spot. If a monthly space is available, they can book right away. Otherwise, Divvy will SMS or email them an alert when one opens up.
However, the startup will be releasing a mobile app in the next few weeks to book hourly and daily spaces around Australia, before pushing out to Asia and Europe, Nick Austin, CEO and founder of Divvy Parking, told Mashable Australia. "We want to move into the short term parking market across cities globally to improve access to spaces that are sitting empty," he said. "Not just on a monthly basis, but hourly or daily."
While it operates in greater Sydney, the company is starting to expand in Melbourne and Brisbane, and plans to ramp up in those cities over the next couple of months thanks to the cash injection.
The partnerships with some of Australia's largest property owners suit the way workplaces are changing globally, Austin said. As more employees are teleworking from home or coming to the office only three or four days a week, more dynamic work arrangements are necessary. At the moment, city parking is generally booked on a monthly basis in commercial spaces, he said, so it doesn't suit these emerging trends.
Screenshot of the Divvy platform.
IMAGE: DIVVY
As an average citizen, it can also be hard to figure out where to park at all. "If you look at the Sydney CBD, there are around 1,200 buildings and about 65 public parking lots," Austin said. "They have completely different access systems, so we're creating a common system across the market, much like Uber."
By offering a standard platform, people can access parking at a broader footprint for 30-50% cheaper than a traditional parking lot, he claims.
Austin is positive city trends will work out well for Divvy. "There's very little all-day street parking left in Sydney and little parking being built into new premises," he said. "There are a lot of macro elements working in our favour."
You might not think fashion and the hoodie-dominated world of technology would mix. Technology is often focused on efficiency, while fashion is about self-expression and exuberance.
A number of Australian entrepreneurs are working on bringing fashion, beauty and technology together, from helping women customise shoes online they actually want to wear, to streamlining the process of booking salon appointments with a mobile app.
SEE ALSO: A new algorithm for Instagram helps you make your friends jealous of your fashion sense
Three Aussie women using their business and style savvy to unite fashion and technology include: Jodie Fox, cofounder of shoe design platform Shoes of Prey, Jessica Wilson, cofounder of fashion discovery app Stashd, and Lauren Silvers, founder of salon appointment booking app Glamazon.
Jodie Fox, Shoes of Prey
Since it was founded in Sydney in 2009, Shoes of Prey has gone global.
The multi-platform app, which lets women design shoes online down to the shade of leather and have them mailed to their door, just opened a global headquarters in Los Angeles and announced a partnership with the U.S. department store, Nordstrom.
Founded by Jodie Fox, 33, along with Michael Fox and Mike Knapp, the business broke even in about two months, Fox said. That's when the founders knew they were onto something. "We were giving women the opportunity to be stylish, and to have something they were comfortable in," Fox told Mashable Australia.
With a background in law and advertising, Fox said she had always wanted her own business. Mixing fashion and technology, however, was left of field. "We used to go head to head about whether [Shoes of Prey was] a technology company or a fashion company," she said. "We didn't realise we were both."
Jodie Fox, cofounder of Shoes of Prey.
IMAGE: SHOES OF PREY
The company believes the fashion model is broken. "We see all these extraordinary designers put in the position of having to manufacture thousands of collections that people may or may not want to buy," she said. "It ends up causing this huge challenge in terms of waste, and ... people regard things in this disposable manner."
Technology fits perfectly into this equation — with its digital platform, Shoes of Prey is able to give people access to the exact product they want, without bulk manufacturing.
Fox thinks fashion, beauty and technology will need each other, especially as wearables develop. "Technology can make these amazing products we put on our body like Google Glass," she said. "But it needs fashion to make it something we would actually wear."
For others hoping to enter the fashion and tech space, Fox has some advice: Do everything before you're ready. "You learn a ton more by doing things than you ever do by planning," she said. And don't be afraid to admit you don't know what you don't know. "People are generous in giving you time and advice if you're confident enough to go and ask for it," she added.
Jessica Wilson, Stashd
Business and fashion both come naturally to Jessica Wilson, 23, cofounder of fashion discovery platform, Stashd. It was technology that was the steep learning curve.
A "global, virtual mall on your mobile," the Stashd iPhone app (with Android and Windows Mobile apps in the works) lets users swipe through clothes, save images and make purchases.
Wilson's entrepreneurial spirit started early. Growing up on a farm in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, she founded a company when she was 16 hosting formal after parties for different local high schools, she told Mashable Australia.
She later worked at the Australian, New York and Paris fashion weeks for different designers and PR companies, but decided to take a career U-turn in 2013 and booked a one way ticket to Silicon Valley without knowing a single person. "It was about putting myself in the right situation," Wilson said. She went to launches and networking drinks and even met one of her main business mentors in the girl's bathroom at an event.
IMAGE: STASHD
On her return to Sydney in 2014, she moved into the technology coworking space, Fishburners. That's when she got started translating the process of browsing in a brick and mortar store to a smartphone. Now working with over 3,000 brands globally, including Net-A-Porter, Asos and General Pants Co., the app aims to change the way people shop online.
Until this point, the startup has been funded through sales — depending on the store, Stashd makes between 8% and 20% a sale — but the company plans to raise investment cash in the coming months to fund further expansion.
Wilson's even shooting a pilot for a reality TV show about her journey as a female startup founder. "I want to show how real it is being an entrepreneur," she said. "It's not just all the hype people see in the media. You have extreme highs and extreme lows and you pivot almost weekly."
Jessica Wilson, cofounder of Stashd.
IMAGE: STASHD
When starting out, Wilson advises entrepreneurs to ask questions of people who know more than them. "When I entered from the fashion space, I didn't know much about tech," she said. "Meet people in the space and ask them questions you think are stupid."
"The fashion industry has problems to solve, and tech can solve those problems," she said.
Lauren Silvers, Glamazon
Lauren Silvers, 25, came up with the idea for Glamazon in early 2013, when she found it frustrating to connect with salons for last minute haircuts or manicure appointments.
While working in PR in New York, she was using apps like Seamless and Uber, and that gave her the idea for a platform that connected clients with beauticians on-demand, Silvers toldMashable Australia.
Before launching the Glamazon iPhone app in June 2014 — you can also book on the company's website, with an upcoming Android app — Silvers spent months learning about the startup scene.
While having always been business minded — she started a dog walking service at age nine — she didn't even know what the term "startup" meant when she developed the idea for Glamazon. "All I knew was I had this vision of how girls could connect with beauty salons," she said. "I'm not a tech person, but I believe in outsourcing all your weaknesses."
The Glamazon app.
IMAGE: GLAMAZON
Within six months of launch, after working with part-time developers on the app, she had more than 140 vetted salons signed up across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Now Glamazon has over 5,000 customers, with most located in Sydney. The company takes a 15% commission off every transaction, but salons don't pay to be on the platform and the app helps them fill empty session times.
The goal in 2015 is to launch GLAMfit, Silvers said. The company has found users of Glamazon are also interested in fitness and health, so the platform will help people book last minute yoga, pilates or personal trainer sessions.
Glamazon owes a lot to a collaborative approach, Silvers said. Her advisory board, with members who are involved in companies like Uber, Peasy.com and H2Coco, has been integral to the startup's growth. "Without my mentors and advisors, it would have taken me longer," she said. "I would have gotten there, but these are people who have seen it all before, so why not tap into their knowledge?"
Lauren Silvers, founder of Glamazon.
IMAGE: GLAMAZON
Word of mouth marketing has also paid off for Glamazon. She's found reaching out to Instagram celebrities with the offer of free appointments, such as Australian actress Charlotte Best and health blogger Jessica Sepel, really helpful. "There's so much marketing out there these days, a personal endorsement really cuts through," she added.
That's not to say startup life has been easy. "You can kiss a nine-to-five, five-day-a-week lifestyle behind," Silvers said. "You work whenever you need to work." While putting everything into Glamazon means she's living with her parents, it's still been immensely rewarding. "It's so fulfilling to see what I'm doing come to fruition," she said.
