The focus on this is relentless," he said. "You talk to users, and you build a product they want to use. In Silicon Valley, it's all about the ideas and the product. "In New Zealand, a lot of young start-ups focus on getting the fundamentals of a company established - good advisers, a structure, a business plan, which is exactly what we did. It is now a much broader payment app, going from helping students manage their finances to all people managing shared costs in a range of situations - from dining out in a restaurant to going on holiday together. Smith said the product has changed significantly since they've been in the US due to how payments processing is set up there. The Glassjar team - Smith, Matt Galloway, Sebastian Petravic and Nelson Shaw - entered the Y Combinator bootcamp in January and have since remodelled their app and launched the new version into the US market. The start-up's chief executive George Smith spent time with the Lightning Lab accelerator and the company has also had $200,000 in seed funding from Sparkbox Ventures and the NZ Venture Investment Fund. Glassjar was started in 2013 by a group of University of Canterbury students as a way for flatmates to more easily sort out paying the bills. It's the first kiwi company to have been accepted into the accelerator which has helped develop companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. The former Christchurch company is now based in Silicon Valley in the US start-up accelerator Y Combinator, which provides US$120,000 in seed funding to every start-up it invests in. – If you are a list/organization nerd like me you will probably love this free online time management tool.Glassjar, the kiwi software start-up whose app provides people an easy way of sharing bills, has launched in the United States. It is great to be able to share the equipment and resources with so many talented people. We have had several local artists working in the printmaking studio this past month. Plus it’s even better when we can sit outside at the extra large picnic table! I love group dinners and am happy to be home eating amazing food with the residents. The image for each month with be designed and printed by the participating artists and the month will be printed at our studio using the Vandercook. Together with a group of nine local artists we will be creating a 2015 calendar. Just after arriving home from our month away we began a new project with the folks at Blizzmax Gallery. Born in France but currently residing in London, UK Alexia is here to work on a series of photographs documenting the surrounding area which she will then use as inspiration for a corresponding fictional narrative. We also welcomed photographer Alexia Villard. During their stay they worked on an upcoming piece which will be exhibited as part of Nuit Blanche this October. Most recently we spent a wonderful week with Toronto artists Christine Leu and Alan Webb ( LeuWebb Projects). During her residency she took in the local sights and painted in the sunshine bringing to life the playful spirit of her cat. Travel writer and student at OCADU Jill Rigby brought her bright, Rousseau inspired paintings to the country for a week-long residency in early July. In between the tedious cutting she adventured around the area capturing images using the many cameras she brought with her. Cutting and stacking a number of photographs she made four sculptural images that exaggerated depth and found new ways to bring the viewer into her images. Gabby Trach came to work on a series of three dimensional photographs using a process often referred as paper tole. Using human hair and horse hair as mark-making tools she works spontaneously to create quiet and memorizing prints, which she later works into with pencil or ink. New Zealand artist Emma Mudgway arrived at the beginning of the month ready to work on a series of monoprints and drawings.
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