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How winning Startup Weekend kickstarted a Perth startup

Charlie Gunningham
Charlie Gunningham
// // In April last year Appollo won the Techstars Startup Weekend. The team has since moved forward with four committed founders and released their app.

// In April last year Appollo won the Techstars Startup Weekend. The team has since moved forward with four committed founders and released their app.

Winning the 13th version of Startup Weekend last year kickstarted an idea that has led to the release of an MVP (minimum viable product) in both app stories, ten months later.

Appollo is a virtual queuing platform that allows users to avoid waiting in long queues to enter their favourite entertainment venues.

Users can book a time to arrive, access a VIP priority entry option or skip the queue entirely with a premium product called ‘QPass’ (#SkipTheQueue).

The app is also a venue and events aggregator so users can find exactly what venue or event they are looking.

The app has been launched for Perth users only, but the idea is to roll the service out to the rest of Australia and go global from there.

“The idea is that you could land in a city you are unfamiliar with and find somewhere that fits your mood and preference using Appollo’s detailed venue filters,” co-founder Ben Dazkiw told Startup News.

“The front end of the app UX is pretty much done, but there is so much more we can do for Appollo partner venues.” 

Ben Dazkiw

For venues, the team want to provide a detailed dashboard of user data and metrics. This includes but is not limited to;

  • age demographics
  • gender demographics
  • time spent in venue
  • where users are going when they leave the current venue

This venue management portal will provide valuable insights and trends to enable those venues the ability to make better and more optimised business decisions and monetise assets they already have.

How winning Startup Weekend kickstarted a Perth startup
QPass on the Appollo app

This should then reduce the need to rely on alcohol related sales, which is on a downward trend globally. 

“We also have an exciting product rollout that will provide even more features to streamline a users’ night out and partner venue operations,” said Ben.

“Our technology is being built on Google’s new Flutter development framework by our expert software engineer Dr. Alex Schneider from Germany (currently living in Perth). Alex has many years of development experience and completed a PhD in Computer Science at the world class Technical University of Denmark.”

The company is now looking for seed investment so they can start building their development team.

~~

For more, download Appollo on Google Play or the App Store.

Read more of the latest news from the startup ecosystem here

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Charlie Gunningham

Charlie Gunningham

Former co-founder aussiehome.com, GM reiwa.com, CEO Business News and Accelerating Commercialisation adviser. Charlie has spent 20+ years in Perth's startup scene, as founder, mentor, adviser, writer and investor. There's nothing he likes more than helping early stage tech startups ... and drinking coffee, shiraz or playing in a blues band. Email Charlie here.
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