In typical fashion, BugHerd co-founders Alan Downie and Matt Milosavljevic set out to solve a problem that had annoyed them for years. Now web designers and developers everywhere have begun to sit up and take notice of their application, which aims to overcome the traditional tension between end users and web developers by making bug reporting and tracking seamless and easy.

The software cleverly tags, describes and assigns issues on a visual overlay of any web page. Bugherd also helpfully integrates with popular project management tools as well as accounting software service Xero.

They obviously cracked the solution wide open because the dynamic duo have been fielding a steady stream of offers from technology incubators and start-up funds both at home in Australia and in Silicon Valley. After a killer pitch at Tech23 the company went on to become the first Australian venture to be selected for the high profile 500 Startups accelerator programme based in Mountain View, California. BugHerd also recently secured $500K in funding from Melbourne based Starfish Ventures, the same investor that backed creative out-sourcing marketplace DesignCrowd.

BugHerd exemplifies the kind of lean, laser focused, problem solving web companies that have been emerging from Australia and New Zealand lately. In many cases founders are building upon experience gained with a previous related venture or have been able to bootstrap to the point of customer acquisition by consulting or working a second job. Founders are also finding more success as the entrepreneurial ecosystem evolves steadily Down Under and successful entrepreneurs reinvest their time and money into the next generation of upstarts through local vehicles such as Starfish and Webfund which in turn have links to markets in the United States.