Week 11 Wrap-Up! River City Labs Startup Accelerator

A visit to Apple Australia’s HQ, a UX/UI workshop with the design teams from Telstra Digital, a visit from ABC’s Innovation Teams, Tank Stream Labs, That Startup Show, and the muru-D Xmas Party – these are just some of our adventures (in between coordinating lawn mowing jobs) from week 11 in our River City Labs startup accelerator…

River City Labs Accelerator Teams go to Sydney

Thanks to the generosity of River City Labs and muru-D, our five startup accelerator teams (GreenSocks, ProcessPA, Outbound, ParkFit and Puntaa) received a nearly-all-expenses-paid trip to Sydney this week. Thankfully combined the work with the play and had an awesome week. Thanks to everyone who made it happen!

Puntaa, GreenSocks, ProcessPA and Outbound flying to meet ParkFit in Sydney

Pitch Workshop with Jo O’Reilly

Jo O’Reilly, a highly experienced theatre and communications guru, spent six hours (were we that bad?) with our startup accelerator teams, teaching us how to Pitch Perfect. Thanks Jo, you were fabulous!

Apparently this will help our pitches on Demo Day! © GreenSocks

‘Welcome to Sydney’ dinner

Thanks to muru-D, River City Labs and Steve Baxter, our accelerator teams enjoyed a wonderful ‘Welcome to Sydney’ dinner on the first night. Why were we out so late? Mostly because we were waiting for that full-sized chicken that @PricingBen ordered. He swears there was something magical in it and it that wait was well worth it. Hope so.

Telstra Digital’s UX/UI experts visited

All teams were honoured to spend half a day with some incredibly clever members of Telstra’s Digital Team to help us with UX/UI and to more generally organise our design path. Special thanks from GreenSocks to the brilliant Anet Redmer, Gwyn Evelyn, Gowri Penkar and Angela Puri.

Apple Australia HQ

Thanks to ~~Dale Rankine~~ an anonymous agent, we managed to sneak into Apple’s Australia HQ to get some feedback on our product offerings so far. We received some excellent insights and advice. ~~Then we had to sign over our firstborn children.~~ (Joking!)

GreenSocks eating apples at Apple HQ in Sydney with our fellow accelerator teams! © GreenSocks

That Startup Show at Tank Stream Labs

Matt Rowan, Josh Anthony, Richard Eastes and I visited Tank Stream Labs to hear Ed Husic MP, together with tech journalist David Swan (The Australian) talk about the state of startups, before we all watched a live screening of That Startup Show.

Ed Husic MP and David Swan (The Australian) speaking to the crowd at Tank Stream Labs © GreenSocks

Ed Husic MP and David Swan speaking to the crowd at Tank Stream Labs © GreenSocks

I confess that I misread the invitation. I thought we were going to be in the live audience of the actual screening of That Startup Show. Déjà vu for me… the same thing happened when I was aged five and we went to see Kamahl sing ‘live’ on Young Talent Time. Never mind. Thankfully the show was good!

Yes, that was me taking a photo of the screen. Not me taking a photo of people in the flesh, sadly. © GreenSocks

That’s a photo of the screen, not people in the flesh, sadly. At least the show was good! © GreenSocks

Visit from the ABC’s Innovation Teams

The muru-D Sydney office enjoyed a visit from the employee Innovation Teams at the ABC. Our startup accelerator teams got up and pitched, then fielded questions from the audience. It’ll be exciting to see how the ABC teams go on their internal innovation program.

River City Labs Accelerator teams pitching to Innovation Teams from ABC © GreenSocks

ParkFit visited Commando Steve

Jacob ~~joined in~~ stood in awe at a Commando-Steve-led-fitness-session at the popular 98 Riley Street Gym, thanks to ParkFit advisor Todd Liubinskas. And in case you were wondering… yes, they are all real people, not action figures.

ParkFit’s Jacob visited Commando Steve and his muscle buddies

muru-D Alumni Growth Hacking Session

Our five Brisbane-based teams joined some of the teams from the first two Sydney muru-D cohorts in a round-table sharing session on what growth hacks have and have not worked so far. Thanks go to FreightExchange’s Cate Hull and Disrupt’s Gary Elphick for facilitating.

muru-D Xmas Party

We had a blast joining muru-D staff, alumni, advisors and investors in the muru-D annual rooftop Xmas bash. Great views, scrumptious food, great conversation and some heated table tennis rivalry made it a truly awesome evening. Special thanks to the muru-D Sydney team for organising such an epic event!