Aussie Bloke Gets Help From Us Women's Group
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday June 20, 2000
Financed by the City of San Francisco and a handful of charities, the Women's Technology Cluster aims to break down barriers between venture capital and the digitally disenfranchised.
Hilary Clinton dropped by the incubator a few weeks ago to talk e-philanthropy with founder Cate Mather, a former Cisco exec whose Three Guineas Fund is named after a Virginia Woolf essay on women's financial independence.
Research shows that only 4 per cent of high-tech companies that received venture funding in the US last year had a female chief executive. So the cluster was set up to foster Internet companies that have a female founder.
So how did Andrew Coates, the Australian chief executive of Melbourne software maker Agent Arts, wind up in residence down the corridor from MsMoney.com and RosePlace?
It's a temporary arrangement says Coates, who sleeps in the loft during two-week stays every couple of months.
AgentArts, based in Melbourne, has developed a software referral system to help Internet users find the music and films they like from the flood of digital entertainment products now coming online.
Coates' co-founder is Ms Kerri Lee Sinclair, one of 27 entrepreneurs selected to pitch a business plan to Springboard 2000, the first female venture capital forum, held in Silicon Valley in January.
The head of Panasonic Ventures liked what Sinclair had to say. Dreaming of smart stereos that fire up your favourite CD upon arrival home from work, he invited Agent Arts to move into Panasonic's Digital Concepts Centre in Cupertino.
It was a great recognition for the founders, who had been bouncing back and forth between Australia and the US since winning $1.25 million in angel funding from Sydney venture capitalists Tinshed.
But while Sinclair has committed to spending at least a fortnight in the US every two months, Coates has drawn the straw of setting up office there. And so the young company established a part-time office at the Panasonic-sponsored cluster.
``A lot of the other tenants are one or two women with a business plan but no money. We are classified as an advanced company," says Sinclair.
The incubator is not-for-profit, charging a minimal administration fee on top of rent to cover costs. To encourage philanthropy, the cluster takes a small slice of equity from each start-up, which will be donated to charity once the company has a valuation placed on it.
Combining living and office space saves on accommodation for the Australians until Agent Arts raises its second round of funding. Coates says it is a stop-gap measure but there are quite a few tenants doing it, including a team of Indian software developers on loan to start-up Vistify from Bangalore.
Agent Arts is seeking to raise $US10 million ($16.6 million). Partnerships have been formed with Phone.com, AvantGo, and Ericsson, which is looking for rich content to deliver over mobile phones. Agent Arts also wants to tap this style of strategic investor for funding to expand its music service into film.
Hosken explains: ``If you know what you want, you are fine on the Internet. If you like Mariah Carey, you can go to Napster and get it. We are solving the problem of how to find things if you're not sure."
Artificially intelligent software tries to understand what Mariah Carey means, he says. ``We sift through editorial content and clumps of data. If you purchased Mariah Carey, Mariah Carey is sort of like Britney Spears, and there is a high correlation between Britney and Aqua ..."
Sites such as Telstra, f2 and Sanity have begun using the software for a split of revenue on purchases.
Over at the women's cluster, Coates is receiving coaching on pitches, recruitment and marketing issues from a network of female venture capitalists, lawyers and other professionals.
``Everyone's in this together, so there is a lot of effort devoted to helping secure VC contacts and other useful information," he says. ``The recent technology correction has meant that straight VC is now a little harder to come by, so everyone is more focused on securing strategic deals with established companies like Intel."
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald
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