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2 months ago | 
smartcompany.com.au | Tegan Jones |Steph Clarke |Jessy Wu
Carbar has announced its intention to merge with the ASX-listed Carly Car Subscription in a $3.8 million deal. The move marks further consolidation of Australia’s car subscription sector. Back in January 2022, Car Next Door — which rose to fame after appearing on Shark Tank — was acquired by Uber. This became Uber Carshare, a part of the business that only lasted two years. In 2024, Uber shut down Uber Carshare in favour of a partnership with Turo – another car-sharing platform from the US.
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2 months ago | 
smartcompany.com.au | Tegan Jones |Steph Clarke |Raff Ciccone |Jessy Wu
Welcome back to Neural Notes, a weekly column where I look at AI and its effects on Australia. In this edition: Did you know Google Maps started life as a tiny Australian startup, run out of an apartment? I spoke to co-founder Stephen Ma about their journey and his new fledgling AI startup. Twenty years ago, Google Maps was launched to the world. Today, it’s a core part of daily tech life. Beyond pure navigation, it’s integrated into countless other industries and platforms.
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2 months ago | 
smartcompany.com.au | Tegan Jones |Steph Clarke |Jessy Wu
Telstra has partnered with ConnectID to offer a streamlined digital identity verification service for businesses, beginning with its prepaid SIM customers. The solution, developed in collaboration with Australian Payments Plus, aims to reduce the complexity of onboarding customers while minimising the amount of sensitive data businesses need to store.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
smartcompany.com.au | David Adams |Steph Clarke |Sonia Mcdonald
You can’t learn everything about a person by the watch they wear. But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to wear a US$900,000 timepiece, while announcing the end of fact-checking on Meta platforms, shows the billionaire’s changing relationship to physical displays of power and wealth.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
smartcompany.com.au | David Adams |Steph Clarke |Raff Ciccone |Jessy Wu
The federal government plans to impose new competition rules on platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon, and will consider if the digital giants unfairly wield their market power to the detriment of small business users. The proposal is an “encouraging step” to address the potential power imbalance between SMEs and the digital platforms they are now reliant upon, said Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO) Bruce Billson.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
smartcompany.com.au | David Adams |Steph Clarke |Raff Ciccone |Jessy Wu
Accounting platform MYOB has unveiled its Solo app, promising the nation’s independent contractors, freelancers, and gig workers a new way to handle their expenses and reporting duties. The new app, designed for smartphone use, allows sole traders to send and receive invoices, create automatic invoice reminders, upload receipts, and take payments through Tap to Pay.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
smartcompany.com.au | Steph Clarke |Jessy Wu |Tegan Jones |Catherine Roberts
It’s almost the most wonderful time of the year; Spotify Wrapped time. This must mean it’s also time for a slew of wrap-up articles and newsletters in your feeds. Because I’m no better than that, I’ve pulled together a few of the most interesting signals of change that I came across in 2024; stories you might have missed, and the ones I can’t stop thinking and talking about. But wait, there’s more.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
smartcompany.com.au | Steph Clarke
In last month’s piece, I asked if we are in the middle of squandering the future of work gains made during the pandemic. I closed with the statement that climate change, falling fertility rates, and more complex geopolitical issues are going to create some interesting (and some potentially quite dark) realities and conditions for workplaces in the near future, and that leaders are going to need to make decisions and policies on topics that they haven’t ever considered before now.
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Sep 12, 2024 | 
smartcompany.com.au | Steph Clarke
The future of work was just around the corner. It was so close we could almost touch it. In those dizzy post-pandemic days people were choosing their own locations and hours (remember the four-day work week?), on the rare days anyone actually went to an office they were bringing all of their pets with them, guys were wearing shorts, and half your team were ‘quiet quitting’. But then things got messy (okay, messier).
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Jul 24, 2024 | 
smartcompany.com.au | Steph Clarke
What would you do if your business suddenly became illegal? It’s June 2024 and the US looks like it’s set to ban drones made by Chinese company DJI. It’s July 2024. Chinese company DJI announces the Avinox; a new power system for electronic mountain bikes. There is no way DJI turned on a dime to create a whole new product line in less than a month.
