The ODT reports today yesterday:
Dunedin-based technology company PocketSmith is one of six finalists in the BNZ Start-Up Alley competition.
The competition is to help grow New Zealand’s web and technology start-up businesses.
Pocketsmith has a competitive personal finance management tool that allows users to track their expenses.
Pocketsmith is part of the University of Otago’s Centre for Innovation Distiller community.
I first visited Pocketsmith at the Distiller about two year’s ago. They were starting to make an impact then. The Distiller is a group of people (they call themselves technopreneurs) who work on their own projects, but work co-operatively and sometimes collaborate. They share space, ideas out of their creative enviroment comes great ideas. They call it social entrepeneurship.
NBR wrote about them mid last year;
PocketSmith co-founder Jason Leong told NBR his company’s success was all down to the power of open source development, the software-as-a-service (or SaaS) model for delivering your product over the internet, and the viral power of social networking and professional community sites.
Read more about how they have become a success story here.
Good on them.
Have had a quick look at it. Initial comments for the developers:
1. You need a demo account with transactions in it so people can play around with it and see if they like it.
2. Comparisons with Xero – you have a free version, Xero doesn’t. Your paid version links bank account feeds. Xero’s doesn’t for their personal (not last time I looked anyway). And their smallest business one which does do automatic feeds is significantly more expensive and unusable because of the transaction restriction.
But with just two accounts, your free version might also be a bit unusable.
3. Your paid version of personal is more expensive than Xero’s personal one.
4. I like the emphasis you put on no personal data. Also the “future” emphasis.
5. Is it usable on a smartphone? Any android or iphone apps?
6. Glad to see the NZ competition. Will investigate further.
And what this employer (below) is saying applies here, too.
Too many pieces of paper. Too little experience (the ‘leaky homes’ didn’t come about as some sort of instant quirk.) Too few employers able to expand effectively.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12285810
Could Labour start getting all the ducks in line long before the next election through using the influence they currently have? You’d likely find allies in several of the other parties to do so. And you don’t have to be on the Treasury benches to work at grass roots.