Grabble

Notable achievement: Being bought out by an industry giant soon after being set up.

Two mates from Wollongong, NSW, began tinkering with smartphone applications to “make shopping smarter” in December 2010. Stuart Argue and Anthony Marcar got their first win when their company Grabble was accepted to incubator Startmate’s inaugural class and then into 500 Startups in the US, both in the first half of 2011.

In November 2011, the start-up was acquired by the research and development arm of US shopping giant Walmart. Details of the deal, which was announced by a message on a holding page on their company website, are scant. The two founders have since relocated to Silicon Valley as employees of WalmartLabs and aren’t able to say too much about what’s happening next with their company or their idea – which is loosely based around getting rid of paper receipts and sending digital versions to customers’ phones instead.

By email, Marcar tells BRW the duo is working in WalmartLab’s mobile team – in a “fantastic environment”. The workforce is mostly made up of the founders of other US digital start-ups that have also been acquired by the company, he says.

One of Grabble’s mentors, US-based Australian serial entrepreneur Ryan Junee, can think of only one other example of a local start-up being acquired by a US firm so early in its life: the purchase of Where2 by Google in 2004, which went on to become Google Maps and spurred the establishment of Google’s Sydney office.

“This acquisition reflects the fact that Stuart and Anthony are thinking big,” Junee tells BRW by email. “Many Aussie start-ups focus (perhaps too much) on the short-term cash flow because that is what Aussie investors like to see. Grabble was either going to be a huge success or a spectacular flame-out but that kind of high-risk, high-reward is what excites people in the Valley.”

Jessica Gardner

BRW

Comments (0)