Grow Your Business - David Reid Group Perth - Strategy, Marketing, Sales, People, Technology, Consulting and Coaching

Matthew Macfarlane
Co-Founder, Vibe Capital

We’ve all heard of Wikipedia, MySpace and Facebook. Forums such as these have become hugely popular due to the social online wave that has seen the internet become as common a form of communication as the telephone. The popularity of such sites has made them household names around the world and made terms such as Facebook’s ‘poking’ an everyday turn of phrase. In the wake of the success of these online communities, a Perth Based company Vibe Capital is emerging as another player in the field of online information sharing. Last week we talked with one of the founders of Vibe Capital, Matthew MacFarlane, to find out what the vibe is all about.

With a somewhat unusual beginning, the idea for Vibe Capital arose from the feelings of a new mum keen for advice. As any first time mother would attest the desire to hear other’s experiences with the challenges of infants is pretty strong – but where to access information can prove a problem. Matthew explains “Vibe Capital originated as an idea of one of the co-founders, Rachel Cook, who as a technologically savvy new mum discovered that there wasn’t much good advice online and was getting better advice down at her local mothers group. So she thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could use the internet to allow mothers groups to communicate with each other, parent to parent.”

Armed with this idea, Rachel Cook and her husband Clay sat down with Matthew MacFarlane to discuss the intricacies of financing and ensuring content on this new site. At the time, the success of Wikipedia was only just beginning, but it was clear that there was a market for this type of information sharing amongst the online community. By selecting the best pieces of technology available, the group developed the parents site Minti - an open forum for mothers and fathers to exchange ideas and advice on all matters of parenting.

Since its inception two and a half years ago, Minti has achieved much success and is frequented by many parents in Australia and around the world. As Matt describes, the success of the site has led Vibe Capital to broaden its direction;

“Since then we’ve changed the direction of the company a little bit, in that the technology we developed we have used for not only parents to share advice with each other, but we have turned it into something that can be used for any community which is oriented around sharing advice with one another. We have added a lot of other Web 2.0 features to that piece of technology which we now license to others.”

Setting up a business within the online community is not an easy task. Growing any new business is a challenge, but one that seeks to operate in the global and almost limitless sphere of the internet presents its own unique set of difficulties to be overcome.

The first challenge facing Vibe Capital was one of geography. Being a company based in relatively unknown Perth trying to gain global acceptance was a big challenge, but location was a factor the founders were not willing to change. The second challenge to overcome was raising money, an aspect where Matt MacFarlane’s experience in fundraising became invaluable.

The final challenge was more unique to an online company as Matt explains:

“I think the next challenge was really in the fact that the online space is very cluttered and busy and it’s hard to get noticed and to get traction. Online is about as busy as it can possibly get, and when you’re trying to play in the global space, it’s a real challenge to get noticed.”

One of the latest innovations on Vibe Capital’s Minti website that’s attracting attention is the introduction of Minti Moulah, a new rewards system technology created by the team. “People participating in the community can earn Moulah for referring friends or writing articles, filling in surveys and all other kinds of things. They can then turn that Moulah into cold hard cash through our link with PayPal. So it’s marrying a social community with an ability to earn something. It’s pretty innovative. Facebook does it in a limited manner, but what we’ve got is a very automated system for this.”

So what does the future hold for Vibe Capital?

“We are now looking to get the attention of some of the bigger players in the market, people like Fairfax, News Corporation and other large online players in order to take our technology further. We are hoping to enter into discussions with them about either licensing or using our technology in a broader context. So we’re very open to partnership approaches or discussions.” No matter what the future holds, the general vibe we get is that it’s going to be great.

Check out Vibe Capital’s website at www.vibecapital.com where you will find links to both Minti forum for parents and Refurber, a site for Home Improvers.

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