A match made in brand heaven: startup to help likeminded businesses hook up

There’s more than enough startups out there that help people looking for a romantic partner, but when it comes to businesses looking to develop relationships with other businesses, there’s not too much on offer.

Sydney startup Collabosaurus launches on Thursday hoping to change that. Collabosaurus is an online match-making platform for brands and businesses to “source and foster strategic brand collaborations”.

The service is particularly aimed at startups, small businesses and event organisers. Users sign up to the Collabosaurus platform, answer a few questions, and then are presented with a list of potential partners. The goal of the questionnaire is to narrow down the brands and businesses that are the right fit.

Users have the ability to remain anonymous right until both parties accept the partnership request. It’s a subscription-based model that starts at $30 per month for five connection requests and one active project, or $90 per month for a subscription with no limits.

The startup, which was founded in August last year by Jessica Ruhfus, has raised about $90,000 in funding from external investors. While working in public relations and marketing, Ruhfus says she often found herself looking for partners for clients and wondering why it was so hard.

“Last year I was running an event and I was trying to source partners on a super tight budget. I was trying to find anyone that was interested and what they might be able to offer. It was super time consuming and very frustrating because a lot of them came back and said they were not interested,” she says.

Unlike marketing collaboration tool like Hypetap, which targets a slightly different user, Collabosaurus does not include any sort of project-management features. Once a match is made and the businesses and brands are connected, it’s up to them to manage that relationship away from the platform, as they normally would.

“Collabosaurus is purely the matchmaker,” Ruhfus said.

“There’s not really a matchmaker out there at the moment. There’s small communities of people, networking groups, but nothing that offers anonymity.”

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