Hub Adelaide has welcomed its recent round of Spark Program participants!
The Spark program is supported by Renewal SA, Hub Adelaide, and the New Venture Institute, and provides an opportunity for South Australian entrepreneurs to develop their business or business idea in an accelerated environment, supported by program facilitators, peers and experienced entrepreneurs.
This round we’ve welcomed five very different organisations with great goals.
Read more:Â Top Resources To Help Kick-Start Your Business
1. Jason Nikolas – Grapes of Mirth
What is your business mission?
At its core, Grapes of Mirth is the bringing together of comedy and wine.
Through shared experiences and the powerful medium of comedy, we aim to introduce more people to wine and grow their understanding of the greater wine world.
We will do this by:
• Building an online community of people that have an interest in wine and/or comedy, creating/sharing engaging online content and executing amazing experiences (digital and face-to-face events).
• Demystifying wine through comedy, creating a fun and honest platform that informs and entertains
• Engaging wine brands to consider a new platform to promote themselves, in a non-traditional way
• Attracting wine and tourism bodies to showcase their local wineries and regions through events and online campaigns”
What are you hoping to achieve through the Spark Program?
Like any start-up, it’s easy to feel isolated and stuck in your own bubble. This program will give me the opportunity to get our business idea out in front of as many diverse business and start-up people as possible, to gain valuable feedback, and test what we think we know.
Also, following a strategic and proven start-up process will benefit our thinking. Our concept could have many pathways, and ideally, I would like to narrow those pathways down to focus on the one(s) that will give us the best chance at early momentum.
2. Tobias Crush – Willbits
Willbits aim is to utilise blockchain technology to secure your last will and testament and other estate related documents in the form of a smart contract to streamline the administrative process. Â Our mission is to make your will and estate a truly living document that can be amended and administered in a frictionless way
What are you hoping to achieve through the Spark Program?
Our goal in the Spark program is to develop and test our market to validate that people will pay for our service and to make connections to build out a minimum viable product.
3. Todd Hamam – Coleman Collection Watches
What is your business mission?
At Coleman Collection Watches our goal is to redefine the luxury watch experience. By reducing our margin and sourcing high-quality components in a specific way, we’ve been able to provide a higher end watch buying experience at a fair price to the watch buying enthusiast who usually wouldn’t have $1,000s to purchase a mechanical watch.
What are you hoping to achieve through the Spark Program?
The Spark Program has come at an opportune time. After gaining initial traction in the marketplace since launching and opening the feedback look with our customers, I’m hoping that the mentoring component of the program will be perfectly suited to us that data to help us make informed iterations as we move closer to the product/market fit we need to scale confidently.
That coupled with the amazing work environment provided by Hub Adelaide – I’m looking forward to being around other business owners and making valuable connections.
4. Jan Klan – Redifi
Redifi is a Customer Experience Platform helping individuals and businesses of all types and sizes generate, create and capture more value through improving their interaction with their customers.
We’re currently running our first market-ready version in many different types of venues (cafe, beer bar, restaurant, fast food, hotel lobby, holiday resort etc.) around the world, testing our fit to different types of businesses and cultures.
We found that Redifi fits perfectly to any business proactively caring for their customers by offering loyalty programs and hosting community/social/entertainment events. We help those businesses to leverage their repeat business potential with an economy of effort.Services we compete with are either too complicated and expensive or are built around abusing end-user privacy and selling personal information. We exist to challenge the current status quo and to bring tools of the giants all the way to the small and micro business.
What are you hoping to achieve through the Spark Program?
The Spark program is a perfect opportunity to meet like-minded people. I’m hoping that working with mentors through the Venture Dorm program will help me see Redifi from a new angle, through the eyes of people way more experienced than myself. I think that at the end of the process Redifi will be a more round offering and I will have grown as an entrepreneur and a person.
5. Eduardo Cardenas-Cruz – TopChopGames
What is your mission?
I am an independent game developer looking to start a game development studio here in Adelaide. I currently spend most of my time making casual mobile games, with time I am hoping to move on to larger-scale projects and help generate jobs in Adelaide’s video game industry.
What are you hoping to achieve through the Spark Program?
I want to meet like-minded people as well as learn from those that have successfully started their own business.
Hub Adelaide has brought together these wonderful businesses to continue to grow and succeed, with the help of professional mentoring, education, and a supportive business community.
Read more:Â 7 Ways a Small Business Community Can Help You Grow
If you’re looking to join your own national network of growing businesses, contact Hub Australia today.
