Rising startups and tech companies in Perth, Australia

Every fortnight we at Perth-based Techboard publish a startup ranking of Western Australian startups and tech companies. It seeks to provide a timely snapshot of Perth’s startup scene, and acknowledge those who have achieved greatness over the fortnight.

Techboard’s ‘scoring bot’ is looking for companies which have been active on social media, generated online traffic, won awards, and featured in the press. It also collects subjective nominations from a carefully-selected panel of experts (whose credentials can be verified here). It crunches a variety of different types of data, from a diverse range of sources, and by applying carefully selected weightings and a little bit of magic, spits out a score for every company, and ranks them accordingly.

This fortnight’s ranking is out – with video elearning startup Velpic topping the chart after gaining significant exposure as a result of its US$4m backdoor listing. Here are the top 5:

1. Velpic (up 8)
2. Norwood Systems (up 36)
3. Nuheara (up 55)
4. ResApp Health (up 10)
5. Hazer (up 310)
 
Velpic picked up two nominations from our panel of experts, and received widespread press coverage including BRW, the Australian and Business News.

Completing our top 3 are Norwood Systems and Nuheara. Norwood Systems provides roaming solutions, and is behind the hugely popular World Phone app. Last week it announced a deal with Booking.com where it will pick up a fee every time one of its users books accommodation through the app. The deal has attracted a lot of press, and Norwood has also picked up significant social media engagement.

Nuheara‘s ‘intelligent hearing’ products (a sort of augmented reality app-meets-earbuds, due to come on sale next year) picked up some press coverage and social media traction, and it was the only other company (other than Velpic) to pick up two nominations from our experts.

ResApp Health returns to the top 5, having topped the ranking a month ago. ResApp just announced positive clinical results on its respiratory disease diagnostic test for smartphones, gaining it coverage in the AFR and good social media engagement.

I spoke to the ResApp founder and vice-president Brian Leedman about the exciting announcements.

The clinical study results that we released last week demonstrate the veracity of our technology in the diagnosis and management of respiratory illness, based solely on a person’s cough via a smartphone. We’re excited by the commercial opportunities that this technology presents to the practice of medicine.

Half of the top 20 companies this fortnight are listed companies (or about to list), which is no great surprise given the extra coverage that can be generated by companies with more resources, but conversely a fantastic achievement for the other ten private companies that are keeping up with them in the ranking.

Making its way into the top 20 for the first time this fortnight is Hazer, as a result of its forthcoming $5m IPO, widely covered in the press including the AFR, Business News and the West Australian. Hazer has the IP rights to hydrogen production technology developed at the University of WA.

ResApp Health, CV Check and Paytradie are the only companies who’ve managed to remain in the top 20 since the ranking’s inception.