Australian Startup Tweaky is Growing Well and Giving Back

A few months back we wrote about Australia-based Tweaky.com, an online marketplace that connects web designers and clients, which at that time had just raised a seed round of $468,000. The service helps small businesses make small changes (or tweaks) to their webite, and after they specify their request, a designer or developer can take up the task in exchange for the specified fee.

So what is Tweaky up to these days? The former Startup Weekend Melbourne winner tells us that over the past month or so, they’ve seen a 65 percent increase in new projects, amounting to a 46 percent revenue increase for the startup. The company is also planning to grow its client base in the Asia region in the first quarter of 2013, and then hopes to follow with a push into American and European markets later in the year.

Another initiative that Tweaky has undertaken recently is dubbed ‘The $500 Dollar Startup,’ which aims to help a few select small businesses develop their ideas and their respective web presences. Here are the ideas that made the grade for Tweaky’s first batch:

• Furniture designer Paul Eterovich and his flat pack standing desk design

• Pharmacist Natalie Collard and her electronic peer review website to help increase compliance rates across hospitals and pharmacies in Australia

• Sarah Moran and her company to help people rollover their superannuation into a single account

• Jess Genevieve Brown and her lifecasting / goal setting platform

• Athan Didaskalou and his subscription coffee business.

It’s interesting to see the possibilities that are available these days to small and medium businesses thanks to creative new web services. Earlier this week we featured Fivepager, a service in the Philippines that is trying to make simple web development available for small businesses. Similarly, even web giants like Google and China’s Baidu recognize that there’s a demand out there for initiatives that can help businesses come online.