The five most popular Aussie startups from March on Product Hoist

It was March Madness on Product Hoist with more fantastic innovative startups being posted every day.

They say knowledge is power, and these top five startups from March put that power in the palm of your hand – literally.

From a tradie’s must-have app to maximising your solar hot water heater with the cloud, March has you covered.

1. HERO.WORK App: All all-in-one app for tradies

For customers, HERO.WORK lets you find a trusted & verified trade, receive a quote and book a job with ease.

But the real magic is what HERO.WORK does for tradies – which is just about everything. The HERO.WORK website/app manages jobs, clients invoices, send bills and doubles most importantly as an advertising platform; connecting service businesses with local clients. Unlike job posting sites, service providers only pay until after they’ve finished their job.

There’s also a bunch of nifty features like Google Calendar and XERO support, and even more on the way including online quote estimation and call center services. For a one or two person team, the free service works fantastically, however more advanced features for larger businesses are available with HERO.WORK’s subscription based model. If you manage a small service business, this one’s a must have.

2. Morph.io: All the power of web-scraping in one place

Web-scraping – a data extraction technique of “trawling” through websites to gather a bunch of data – is immensely useful in today’s age. From journalism to academic research, getting reliable, live data feeds from the internet is an absolute requirement.

Coding and maintaining your own “scraper” program is a pain though, which OpenAustralia realized and decided to do something about with Morph.io. Simply login with GitHub on Morph.io and you can get your personalized web-scraper up and running in no time.

There’s support for many popular coding languages including Python, Perl, PHP and Node,js. Morph’s user-friendly API also lets you access over 5000 publicly available scrapers, with over 43 million rows of data on everything from completed IndieGoGo campaigns to postcodes in Slovakia.

Whatever data you can imagine, it’s out there waiting for you, and Morph.io is there to help you get it.

3. Saru: Taking the hassle out of hot water

Attach a couple temperature sensors to your hot water heater, connect to the cloud and you’re ready to get saving with Saru.

Most people have solar hot water heaters installed these days, but unfortunately not many people realize that there’s a lot to be desired in ways of efficiency. Changes in weather mixed with complicated usage patterns means solar hot water systems struggle to keep up without well timed auxiliary boosts. Sounds nuanced right? That’s why Saru’s smart advisor is awesome – it takes in temperature data from your hot water system, and with the magic of cloud computing, lets you know exactly when you need to turn those auxiliary boosters on or off.

At the end of the day it means you use less electricity and save even more with your solar hot water. If you have a solar hot water system, Saru is absolutely a no-brainer.

4. CommercePipe: A single pipeline for Australian corporate data

If anyone has use for big data, it’s big business.

CommercePipe gathers data from Australian corporations and government open sources which are crucial to successful business deals and sales, and makes it readily available for corporations to use. From risk management and investments to sales leads and client searching, CommercePipe has the data for it in its gigantic database of 2.8 million Australian companies.

CommercePipe utilises state of the art AI and machine learning algorithms to make information easily searchable with simple search criteria, making it an incredibly powerful service for people using big data. If you know you need quick access to business research data, and you’re tired of sifting through Google late into the night, give CommercePipe a try.

5. Storekat: Airbnb for storage so you can make money from unused space

With all this talk about data and digital information, let’s not forget about our physical stuff. Perhaps you have a spare room or garage – some space that you just don’t quite know what to do with. Or maybe you’re on the flip side; moving out, travelling, or one parking spot short and need to store your things in space you don’t have.

In either case, Storekat is the perfect solution. With the fantastic success of Airbnb, it only makes sense that there’d be a similar service for things rather than people. If you’ve got some room, Storekat enables you to make that space generate revenue for you by renting it out to people who need storage. Or if you’re in a position where you need to store your things, say a caravan, surfboard or wine collection, just search for storage spaces near you and there’s your problem sorted.

With both commercial and private listings, simply compare location, price and features and bam – Storekat has you covered for all your storage needs.

This piece was originally published on Ideas Hoist.

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