{"id":38441,"date":"2023-10-20T14:56:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/brisbane-startup-hash-raises-1-million-as-it-lays-the-groundwork-for-an-acquisition-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:56:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:56:32","slug":"brisbane-startup-hash-raises-1-million-as-it-lays-the-groundwork-for-an-acquisition-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/brisbane-startup-hash-raises-1-million-as-it-lays-the-groundwork-for-an-acquisition-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Brisbane startup Hash raises $1 million as it lays the groundwork for an acquisition – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hash<\/div>\n

A Brisbane-based news catch-up platform has raised $1 million to further develop its product and lay the groundwork for an acquisition.<\/p>\n

Hash, a platform allowing users to digest news stories in minutes, is a venture launched by Josephmark, a company specialising in developing digital offerings and then spinning them out or selling them off.<\/p>\n

Hash combines audio and visual snippers from other news publishers to summarise a story quickly and was launched at the end of 2014.<\/p>\n

\"07-Hash-Insitu-App-Stream\"<\/p>\n

The seed funding comes from private investor David Roberts, marking his first foray into tech investment.<\/p>\n

Standing out from the pack<\/h3>\n

Josephmark chief executive and Hash co-founder Jessica Huddart says the cash injection will be primarily used to grow out the news platform to further differentiate it from an increasingly saturated market.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter we launched we saw some really good traction and we got some really positive responses from the users,\u201d Huddart tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat validated that there was a need for a product like this. But over the last year there\u2019s been a lot more activity in this space and more competitors have entered it. There\u2019s still very much a need and an appetite for a very quick summary of what\u2019s happening in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

To stand out from the pack, Huddart says Hash\u2019s simplicity and user-experience is key.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs information is more and more easily accessible we\u2019re all becoming pretty overloaded,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a lot simpler and that comes down to the user experience. The funding will be going towards really building on the success of the initial launch, refining the product further, testing and adding functionality and growing the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The path to an exit<\/h3>\n

All this activity is building towards the primary goal of an acquisition, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see the potential for a large media conglomerate seeing value in that, especially with some of the technology we\u2019re developing,\u201d Huddart says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are definitely applications for it that could go wider than Hash.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Brisbane-based entrepreneur says this is useful advice for other\u00a0startup founders in the early stages of building a business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to at least know what direction you\u2019re heading in for an exit from the very beginning,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps inform decisions. One of the best skills to develop is decision-making and prioritising features.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s easy to keep adding new things but it\u2019s more difficult to keep true to the original intent of the product and listen to what users are saying, and having an exit in mind helps with the decision making.<\/p>\n

She also says that the first few months of building a startup a crucial, and the market appetite needs to be tested as soon as possible with an MVP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe traditionally work to validate the business case very, very quickly then create the vision and the MVP that is launched to a wider audience,\u201d Huddart says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to make sure that you have the right mechanisms to capture who that market is and keep talking to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hash team was talking to its private investors for more than 18 months, well before a funding round was open, and she says it\u2019s important to also start building these relationships as early as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all aspects of business it\u2019s about the relationships that you build,\u201d Huddart says.<\/p>\n

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A Brisbane-based news catch-up platform has raised $1 million to further develop its product and lay the groundwork for an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}