24 Startup Weekend - Where Are They Now? ... A year ago we started NZ
Entrepreneur, we're glad to see ... Short and sharp, New Zealand Entrepreneur is
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NEW ZEALAND’S E-MAG FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESS OWNERS
December 2013
Bootstrap Your Startup Startup Weekend Where Are They Now? IP Strategies For Startups On A Shoestring
10 Questions with
John Campbell of Gopher Entrepreneurial Intelligence With Sandy Geyer Profile on #nzentrepreneurs KidsGoMobile Plus heaps more inside!
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Contents 4
From the Editor
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Bootstrap Your Startup
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IP In Action: IP Strategies For Startups On A Shoestring
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10 Questions With John Campbell Of Gopher
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Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs
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Taking The Plunge: Benjamin Clark
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Entrepreneurial Intelligence With Sandy Geyer
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Ecosystem: Auckland Startup Weekend
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Startup Weekend - Where Are They Now?
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Profile: KidsGoMobile
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Sustainable Business Network Awards
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Parting Shot
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ABOUT / Short and sharp, New Zealand Entrepreneur is a free e-magazine delivering thought provoking and enlightening articles, industry news and information to forward-thinking entrepreneurs. EDITOR / Nick Harley ART DIRECTOR / Jodi Olsson GROUP EDITOR / Nick Harley CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER / Alastair Noble CONTENT ENQUIRIES / Phone Nick Harley on (021) 052 9770 or email
[email protected] ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES / Phone Jennifer Liew on (027) 4398 100 or email
[email protected]
From the Editor
ADDRESS / NZ Entrepreneur, C/- Espire Media, PO Box 99758, Newmarket, Auckland 1151, NZ WEBSITE / www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz
ISSN 2253-5683
Well, it’s that time of year again, time to look back and reflect on 2013. For some readers it may have been a great year filled with big business growth and good things happening all round. For others, things may not have been so rosy, you may have failed entirely or the things you tried so hard on and wanted so badly didn’t turn out as expected. Pick yourself up and be proud that you gave it a shot, dust yourself down, let
NZ Entrepreneur is a GREEN MAG created and distributed without the use of paper so it’s environmentally friendly. Please think before you print. Thank you!
it go and try again. There also may be some readers who yet again didn’t get round to starting that business idea they’ve had for ages, seriously, get started! A year ago we started NZ Entrepreneur, we’re glad to see it has become so popular and hope it brings you a monthly dose of inspiration. Although entrepreneurship can be lonely at times, the sheer amount of entrepreneurs we’ve featured this year proves there are many amazing people doing some amazing things. We’ll be back in February next year, but for now, try to have some time off and recharge those batteries. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Nick
Email
[email protected] LinkedIn http://nz.linkedin.com/in/nickharleynz Twitter www.twitter.com/nickharleynz
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Bootstrap Your Startup By Nick Harley - Editor
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s there a funding shortage in New Zealand?
I think the answer to that could be yes, and no. We see many early stage companies struggling to survive that first few years. There is a real funding gap at the seed investment stage in New Zealand, and very few investors on the ground actively searching for those deals, if of course we compare it to places like the US. The truth is, we can’t really compare the two markets. You wouldn’t be able to justify a comparison of the housing markets between Auckland and Silicon Valley, so we shouldn’t compare funding markets either. Simply there are less investors on the ground and therefore less money floating around. But we see no shortage of funding for later stage NZ companies who have proven their products and have paying customers, looking to reach that next stage of growth by bringing in outside funding. Often these rounds are heavily oversubscribed. If you’ve not got any paying customers yet and are still fleshing out your product, you’re going to find it extremely tough to raise any substantial funding unlike overseas markets, who sometimes may appear (whether the case or not) to be simply throwing money at founders. Initiatives like the Lightning Lab are a disruptive influence to what has been commonplace on the funding scene, but more and more founders are bootstrapping their businesses, continuing to do so until they reach the point to attract further funding. Some continue on with bootstrapping, never needing to raise outside investment, why raise money from outside investors if there is no need to? And funding is to be used for growth, not just to pay your salary. Here we talk to three founders who have bootstrapped their way through those early years and find out what they learned along the way.
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I pay everyone much better than I pay myself 6
Tarik Mallet CEO and founder of Mobi2Go Mobi2Go is a platform that provides integrated online and mobile ordering solutions for the hospitality industry and allows a client with 1 or 1000 stores to provide a branded and integrated ordering experience to customers without sending them to a third party website or mobile app. Mobi2Go has been bootstrapped from the start and this has been a conscious business decision. We have had a number of opportunities to explore external investment, however, until recently we have not had a structure and strategy that we believe would have allowed us to maximise the value of external investment. I have seen numerous companies take on investment, in my view too early. This investment often creates more issues than it solves as the business is now responsible to investors and desperately trying to implement a strategy, define a product and generate revenue whilst being forced down a path that is not necessarily the right one. It has only been in the last 6 months that we feel have ‘cracked’ the product strategy and put in place a sales and marketing programme that we can easily replicate and scale globally. As a result we are now in a great position to explore investment opportunities and use this money to put our foot on the gas and accelerate growth globally. Had we taken investment earlier we would have struggled to work out where best to spend it, and, most likely it would have been a huge distraction and taken our focus away from building a robust global offering. Just like starting a business, bootstrapping is not for the faint of heart and not something I would recommend easily. Think many sleepless nights, long hours working out where to find the next dollar, and many sacrifices. As an example I’m yet to take a salary from Mobi2Go. At the beginning it was out of necessity, and now, every time there is an opportunity to
take a salary, the benefits of hiring an additional team member and growing the business further always manages to outweigh my needs. A big advantage to bootstrapping over outside investment is that you are not beholden to anyone other than yourself in the early stages of your business whilst you are working out what it is you do and defining strategy. However, there is a time when bringing in smart people / money to help drive your business forward is critical to growth. Bootstrapping a business comes with a number of challenges and forces us to be creative when dealing with challenges that in other instances you could easily ignore and throw some investment capital at. At Mobi2Go it has taught us to have a laser like focus on driving revenue from day one. One of the decisions we made at the beginning was to discontinue our services and bespoke development work to focus one hundred percent on Mobi2Go. This saw a significant amount of revenue disappear literally overnight, and whilst tough at the start, has removed a number of distractions from the business. We turn down requests weekly to help organisations develop websites and mobile apps.
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The advantage of bootstrapping is that you can control the direction of the product.
Greg Nixon
www.mobi2go.com www.twitter.com/mobi2go
Anna Guenther Chief Bubble Blower and co-founder of PledgeMe We’re a crowdfunding platform focussing on New Zealand fostering an offline community around the online platform. We (perhaps naively) thought that we had all the skills we needed ourselves, so didn’t think we needed to seek outside investment. My co-founder did all of the technical development work, and I operationalised the business, coordinated the branding, marketing etc. Our focus on New Zealand, and being a social enterprise, would have made the conversation of investment a bit harder as well, so we just decided to go our own way. I pay everyone much better than I pay myself, without fail. We’ve all done long hours, especially at the start to get the word out there about PledgeMe and what crowdfunding is. The good thing was keeping control of the direction of the business, allowing us to include social impact in our decision making. Also, not having a lot of money to spend meant we were pretty considered about all our financial decisions and figured out interesting ways to get our brand out there (flash mobs, talking at events, brand ambassadors). What we’ve achieved with our initial personal capital, sweat, blood and tears is pretty amazing.
Co-founder of EzPSA I have been in the software business for close to 20 years and have created a few businesses along the way. EzPSA was originally built to fill a need I had to manage my IT service business, but always with the intention of letting others get the value from it. It is a total business management package and includes a services desk to keep track of client tickets which can be emailed or posted through a customer portal with time recording, quoting and invoicing. I enjoy creating software and businesses. Taking funding is a different sort of business approach to bootstrapping, and consumes a lot of time and money that I would rather invest into the product. I’m not against funding, but I wanted to see what I could do to validate my idea before considering this approach. Bootstrapping allowed me to put all my energy into product development rather than on investor relations, for example. For the last three years I have not paid myself anything as all the investment goes into building the product. I am in the lucky position of being able to run my IT service business at the same time and while this doesn’t allow a lot of time for anything else (like sleep), it puts food on the table.
On the flip side, we probably could have grown faster with a cash injection. We could have focussed some more man power on some of the issues we’ve had along the way.
The advantage of bootstrapping is that you can control the direction of the product. When you get investors involved you lose a lot of the control and, depending on the quality of the investors, you can be sent off on a tangent. From past experience with a different start up, I’ve found that disagreements between the founders and the investors can cause a major breakdown in getting the product to market. A lot of time can be spent in investor meetings chasing money when all I want to do is get the product out the door and provide value.
www.pledgeme.co.nz
www.ezpsa.com
www.twitter.com/pledgeme
www.twitter.com/ezpsa
www.facebook.com/pledgeme
https://plus.google.com/103032514782882014918
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I P / I nno v a tion
IP Strategies for Start-ups on a Shoestring Smart ways to manage early-venture IP that should be on every entrepreneur’s reading list.
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he reality faced by entrepreneurs is that legal services can be expensive and intellectual property (IP) protection may not necessarily be an initial priority.
However, technology-based startups depend on their IP to convey a competitive advantage and to act as a value container for the products and services which they create in the market. So what should financially-strapped entrepreneurs do to get the most from their IP while minimising pitfalls and legal expenses? IP by itself will not make a company succeed, no more than writing a song will make someone a rock star. The value of a technology-based venture lies primarily with the founding team, their know-how and then their IP assets. However, future investors or purchasers of the company will most certainly consider the company’s IP as a core business asset. Entrepreneurs should initially focus their time on developing their venture and business strategy, while understanding that having an IP strategy will allow them to make informed business decisions, identify opportunities, improve negotiation positions, while avoiding long-term negative consequences. Therefore during the early stages of a venture, entrepreneurs should work closely with their attorneys to formulate an IP strategy that is aligned with their business strategy. This is done by identifying the different types of IP assets that may exist in the venture and looking at how they can best be used by the business while incurring minimal legal expenses. Trade marks Trade marks serve as a badge of origin for a startup’s goods and services and may accumulate a significant amount of value over time through commercial use. It is smart to select a mark and use it consistently. Also make sure to use marks together with their appropriate symbols (™ for unregistered trade marks and ® for registered trade marks). Using the appropriate symbols serves as a notice to others that the brand names are being used as trade marks—as badges of origin; and over time common-law rights will accrue. There is nothing wrong with using unregistered trade marks to save costs during the early stages of a venture. However it is important to understand that registered trade marks are deemed valid and easier to enforce should a third party decide to use a similar or identical mark for similar or identical
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goods or services. On the other hand, unregistered trade mark rights will need to be proven first before they can be enforced. This in itself is an expensive legal step. Registering a trade mark also ensures freedom-to-use and the best way to prevent trade mark hijacking in civil-law countries such as China. Further, registering trade marks worldwide has become much more affordable thanks to cost savings made possible with New Zealand joining the Madrid Protocol in 2012. A major pitfall for startups is to have their chosen brands slapped with a court injunction just as their goods or services are being launched into a market. Entrepreneurs working on a limited budget simply do not have the resources to recall and rebrand their goods or services in such a case, therefore whether or not a startup could use their trade marks in a given market could mean the difference between success and failure. A cost-effective tip for ensuring peace of mind for both entrepreneurs and their investors alike, is to always check with trade mark attorneys that their chosen trade marks are available for use, not only for the New Zealand market, but also for any other major foreign markets the startup wishes to enter into in the future. Patents Patents may or may not turn out to be crucial to the success of a technology-based venture, but they definitely can be a key asset for a number of companies. Their importance depends on a number of factors including the nature of the technology, the business model and the type of funding required. Many startups rely on patents for the defensive aspect of establishing and protecting their core technological competency, and as a valuable asset for valuation purposes, while others use patents more aggressively to seek out joint ventures and licensing opportunities.
Without a doubt, filing and pursuing a patent application to the stage where the patent is issued can be an expensive undertaking. An appropriate IP strategy may not require you to rush in to obtaining registered IP protection during the early stages of the venture. However, entrepreneurs should keep in mind that, when the time is right, it may become worthwhile from a business standpoint to obtain registered protection for their IP assets. The smartest strategy for a company with a limited IP budget is to ensure they do not prevent themselves from obtaining patent protection at a future date. Unless, for example, it is a deliberate tactic for the company to publish a specific technology into the public domain to ensure it cannot be patented by anyone else (i.e. one way to ensure freedomto-operate). Otherwise, a company should never publicly disclose their invention to anyone without a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). This means a startup should always treat a potentially patentable invention as confidential information or a trade secret. Even if it is not part of a startup’s strategy to pursue patent applications, it is always a smart idea to carry out “freedom to operate” (FTO) checks to identify potential infringement of pre-existing patent rights before charging in blindly. The cost of having a clearance search done by attorneys is minimal compared to having a company’s goods and services completely shut out of a market by their competitors. The real kicker is that grant funding is available from local business development agencies (such as ATEED in Auckland and Grow Wellington in Wellington) to cover up to 50% for such legal expenses. Companies should also understand that not all patents are created equal. The scope and strength of a patent protection hinges directly on how new and inventive a given technology is relative to what is already known in the public domain. So before committing serious resources to a patenting strategy, companies should check with their patent attorneys that
the scope of patent protection for their technologies is likely to be broad enough to be commercially useful; i.e. it would be difficult for a third-party to work around their patent protection. This will likely require attorneys to conduct what is known as “prior art searches” before evaluating the likely scope of protection for a given technology. What is less known is that patent attorneys can also use data from the same search to ascertain other useful IP intelligence such as possible partners/competitors as well as patenting trends specific to a given technology. Copyright Copyright is an incredibly useful form of IP protection for start-ups because it is free and covers a wide range of IP assets. Copyright arises automatically as it is created and applies to assets including software codes, design drawings, logo designs, packaging designs, web pages and various forms of marketing materials. Make sure to use the copyright symbol © along with the year of creation and name of the owner. It is also wise for a startup to keep a record of its copyright assets. Ownership Finally, if there is one item that’s worth spending money on during the early stages of a venture, it is to clarify ownership issues for IP assets that belong to the company. The cost of resolving IP ownership issues becomes exponentially more expensive as the venture starts to enjoy commercial success, and could even prevent the company from obtaining registered IP protection for disputed IP assets. Therefore ownership of all IP should be clearly documented in writing for both employees and independent contractors. If in doubt, companies should check with their attorneys before the ownership issue gets out of hand.
Written by Anton Blijlevens & Jack Shan from AJ Park
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ISNETC ER W T VI IOE N
10 Questions with
John Campbell of Gopher Great businesses are started everyday when people act upon an opportunity. We talk with John Campbell about his journey with online business, Gopher. Tell us about Gopher, what’s the story behind the business, how did it get started and why? How did the founders meet? Gopher is a Digital Advertising Technology company specialising in providing low cost, high value, fixed price digital advertising solutions to small and medium businesses (SMEs). We have offices in Auckland (servicing NZ and Australia) and Jakarta (servicing Indonesia). BJ Sveistrup and I founded the company in 2007. We met at school 30 years ago and have remained best of friends since. Gopher is now 6 years old, with around 130 staff, and going strong. Everyone who comes to visit Gopher’s offices is struck first by the buzz. The noise. We move fast in here - motion creates emotion. The majority of our staff spend the majority of their day talking to our clients - business owners. Our team are passionate about helping business owners take advantage of the burgeoning digital ad space, and capitalise on the surging online usership. There are more people than ever online, and this huge and growing pool of users are searching, finding and transacting, both online and offline, more than ever before. Our team connect these customers to businesses. It’s that simple really. Gopher has a range of digital products across multiple platforms, all tailored to drive more customers to our clients. How did you survive those early days? Did you have any money? Did you make
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any sacrifices? How did you pay the bills and keep growing your business? Survival is a good way to put it. Money? No. Sacrifices? Yes, plenty. And they are still being made. Paying the bills? Yes but not always exactly on time. Thankfully we’ve dealt with compassionate people for the most part who understand the trials and tribulations of a new growing business, and supported us on our growth journey. The early days were tough I have to say. There’s no pretending there. We started Gopher on a shoe-string. But what we lacked in money, we made up for in effort and ambition. BJ and I worked 18 hours a day, mostly 7 days a week for at least the first couple of years. And while these days we might get to enjoy the odd full weekend here and there, and the hours aren’t quite as long, we do continue to work hard. And there are also sustained patches where those longer hours are required, especially with a business in Indonesia which is 5 hours behind NZ. The kicker is that we expect the same from our team. We let people know that when they join our team they are expected to do whatever it takes in order to get the job done and satisfy our clients – of which we have thousands. People who don’t have this work ethic, just don’t make it. When you are trying to grow a business quickly, especially cashflow funded like we’ve done it (so far), you need the people you work with to be attached to working hard to build the business. If they’re not, and they’re not coachable on this point, then they need to go. A good friend put me onto a book recently, which explains that if you
The Gopher team’s office
don’t remove uncoachable people from your business fast, that can become a million dollar mistake. I agree.
back and shooting for the stars, (and they support you through the occasional tough time), then anything is possible.
We have a loyal and close-knit team and, thankfully, the survival SOS calls (as we call it) are few and far between for us now, however, when we send it out, our team are quick to respond and will do whatever it takes to achieve whatever is required. We’ve had some close calls, so I’d like to think that we are better at identifying potential issues before they become problems.
Is the business vision you have today the same as the one that you started with?
Have you experienced any bad times? What was the most painful lesson you’ve had to learn in business? Sure. Lots. In our case, some of our near catastrophic failures have turned out to be some of our biggest learnings. And there have been plenty, so selecting “the most painful” is difficult. I strongly recommend you pay your tax on time. Also, when it comes to staff, for 99 percent of people the way they live their lives outside work is the way they will behave as a representative of your company/ brand. Be aware of how people are impacting your company perception in the market. Oh, and the “always pay yourself first” thing, I don’t know whose supposed key to success this was – but in our experience, with a growing loyal staff base, this is often impossible. I guess, if I had to choose one today, the biggest lesson we’ve learned is; make sure your bank understands your business. And even when you think you have a great story and the evidence to prove it, double check and triple check with your relationship manager where you are at in the bank’s eyes. Often some people just don’t understand your business or industry as well as you do, especially in the tech sector. We are not a bricks and mortar business, and we need to carefully and regularly explain how our sector and indeed business operation is slightly different to most. Often your bank is your lifeline, and for a young growing business this can sometimes be uncomfortable. Always deal with your bank in good faith, showing forward planning and through open and honest communication. The upside is, if your bank is supportive and they allow you to focus on growing your business, pinning your ears
Yes… mostly. Our original vision was simply to level the playing field for New Zealand businesses in the advertising space. “Advertising” was dominated by large companies spending money with large companies. Our goal was to give the small and medium sized businesses in New Zealand a voice so-to-speak, within the advertising space and an opportunity to be seen and heard for a fraction of the price agencies andJohn the like wereTim charging. From left to right: Banks, Alpe, Dan Alpe The internet provided the perfect platform for us. We were also tired of seeing New Zealand money being siphoned off-shore by large multinational corporations, so we set about changing that. Gopher started as just a business directory more than six years ago, however the digital landscape has evolved significantly since then and Gopher has always been at the forefront of this evolution. In addition to our national directory, we launched 19 local directories, social media and websites services, including Google AdWords for which we are an official Google Premier SME Partner in New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. The Australian Gopher/Google partnership is fairly new, and we are looking forward to growing this significantly in 2014.
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what we lacked in money, we made up for in effort and ambition 11
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INTERVIEW Almost all of our systems and technology are proprietary (everything except our customer care platform Zendesk), from our sales methodology to our CRM right through to our highly automated Google AdWords platform. Our mission is to become the dominant market leader in low cost, high value, fixed price digital advertising solutions for small and medium businesses through world-class sales and technology. Something, we believe, we are achieving. Do entrepreneurs need lots of money or external funding to build a big business or be successful? If you’re offering…I’ll take some thanks. It helps, certainly. And if you don’t have any money, you’d better find a very, very understanding bank. But money is not a prerequisite for entrepreneurial success. There are other prerequisites though. The clichés are hard work and determination. The old chestnut “success is a combination of hard work and preparation meeting opportunity”, or something like that, is true… but in my view it’s simplifying, or sugar-coating even, the reality. In my opinion you must decide what you want, what your definition of success is, and then you must decide what you are willing to pay for it. Not in money terms, but in life terms. It will mean time away from your family and friends, physically and mentally. You must be prepared to work harder than you could ever expect or prepare for. Long hours, stress, while often feeling alone in your quest as no-one will truly understand what you’re going through, and perhaps the worst part - your golf game will turn to crap. (The old misconception that business is done on the golf course is rubbish – in my experience anyways. And besides this is five hours out of your weekend that you could be working on your business). If you believe you are an entrepreneur and a big business is what you want, decide what you’re willing to sacrifice for it, and then get started paying your dues. Money or no money – go for it. Just don’t kid yourself, and know at the outset that you’ll definitely pay for your success somehow. Now, saying that... providing your business doesn’t destroy everything good in your life (I’m kidding, mostly) “success”, whatever the definition is for you, can be hugely rewarding. Achievement, satisfaction, victory even – these are a little like opiates that dull the memory and sometimes harsh reality of what it took to get you there. They won’t hide the scars – but if you’re not earning your scars then you’re not pushing hard enough.
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Money or no money, go for it. 12
Gopher were ranked the 2nd fastest growing Tech Company in NZ in 2010 AND 4th fastest growing Tech Company in 2012 in the NZ Deloitte Fast 50 Awards
What are the three most important business skills you would advise up and coming entrepreneurs to develop? Learn sales. Every business is selling something. And anyone trying to run a business, needs to know how to take their product to market and get clients to part with money in exchange for your product or service. The majority of problems in your business can be solved with increased revenue. Either solved with increased cashflow, or because you can use these funds to hire the expert in the particular field you need. If you’re weak in a particular area: learn it, or hire it. Hiring it is faster, but can be costly. Increasing revenues through sales makes this easier. Be passionate about what you are doing. Not really a business skill, but something that will increase your chances of success. If you don’t enjoy the business you’re trying to build, then you’re mad. Get out. Life is short. Have faith in your decisions. If you’re running the show, then you have to make the calls. Stand by them. If you make decisions with integrity and you know in your heart, or your gut, that it’s the right call, then that’s really all that matters. It’s just a life rule that not everyone will agree with you. You can’t please everyone all the time. When appropriate, check in with your trusted management team or support crew. Most often your decision will be consensus based. But you’ll also have to make tough calls from time to time. And when that time comes, make the decision, implement the actions, then try not to lose any sleep over it (good luck with that one). If you feel it’s right, then it’s right. What has been the lowest point you’ve faced in your entrepreneurial journey so far and what do you do to keep yourself going when it all gets too much? Hmmm, there have been a few tough times. But one in particular was a restructure. Some years back we enjoyed a period of significant growth and during this time we employed at a rapid rate, growing from 20 staff to 100 in less than a year. It became clear
The team have fun with company events towards the end of this growth phase that we had not been tight enough on the recruitment parameters for some teams. We ended up too heavily weighted in some areas and the business could not sustain the headcount. We needed to make some changes. Some decisions needed to be made in order to protect the future of the company. As a result, some good people lost jobs as their roles no longer made financial sense. This was a tough time. The decision was the right one. But this didn’t make it any easier.
There’s a motivational video I watched recently in which a mentor tries to teach a lesson to a student, by making the student walk out into the ocean with him and he then promptly tries to drown them. Just when the student thinks it’s all over and they’re about to die, the mentor lifts them out of the water gasping for air. The message was that if you do not want “it” as badly as a drowning man craves oxygen, then you won’t make it. This resonates with me. You have to absolutely crave success.
One of the things that we’ve learned, is that timing can be cruel. Just when you think everything is the best that it’s ever been, revenue is strong, growth is steady, and all the lines are heading in the right direction – someone or something will come out of the blue and blindside you. And it will inevitably happen at the worst possible time for the business. For example, right before Christmas. This can be tough on the company and its key human drivers. During tough times we rally. All of us. We have a great team, and they are all enrolled in the success of the business. When someone or something comes at you or throws up a challenging situation, we gather around to take a look at the situation and put it into context. Then we make a plan and execute on it. Execution is key. The journey of growing a business has its ups and downs, and it’s how you and your team respond to the downs during challenging times that will inevitably determine your success.
Too often people say they want it, and they claim they’re willing to work hard and do whatever it takes, and then when it comes to the crunch, when they’re required to stand and deliver, they can’t. People want the trappings without the effort. They’re just not willing to grind it out. And I see it almost every day. For example, we run many interviews at our office, and many of them are young Gen Y types. Many of them that I meet, just don’t get it. (And now I feel old talking about the young kids these days, but anyways….) There’s this mentality in many of the young recruits that we get through our offices, that they can swan into an office, demand a six figure income with little or no experience and then try and prove they’re worth it after the fact, or not. There is this strange, and often clumsy, aura of entitlement about some of them. I personally find it amusing and disappointing at the same time, and you can see it a mile off. Some will even come to interviews in jandals and shorts. I mean, really?
What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? Drive. You have to want it, whatever your definition of ”it” is, with every fibre of your being. You have to eat, sleep and breathe it. You have to be prepared to get up a lot, because you’re going to get knocked down almost as much, and it’s your drive that will help you up when this happens. But you can only have drive for something, once you decide what “it” is. And everyone’s is different. Whatever “it” is, you must want it more than you’ve ever wanted anything.
In my humble opinion, this is what will separate the new breed of successful entrepreneurs from the rest. They’ll crave “it”, have the work ethic and drive to go after it and win even in the face of repeated defeats, and they’ll present themselves appropriately when required, including to the people that matter. Another thing you need on the journey with you …is a great customer base. The challenging and rewarding thing about the tech game is that rapid change is constant. The goal posts are always
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INTERVIEW
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changing and re-arranging themselves and new opportunities are always presenting themselves. The particular challenge that this presents for us, with an exclusively SME customer base, is that digital advertising is new for a lot of our customers. A decent chunk of our customers have never been online before, or only dipped their toes in at best. So it sometimes takes some explaining and convincing of new direction. They just get their head around one direction, then we have to call them up and discuss a new idea. Just like software companies launch betas and apps are always updating their offering; we are constantly evolving our products and services. It is all for mutual benefit, but it is quite a pace change for some. So you really do need a customer base that is with you on the journey. Neither of us can do it independently. A simple change in tack and a bit of wind in the sails can bring some massive gains (too soon for sailing analogies?) I read somewhere that the difference between a “new company” and a “start-up” is that start-ups have a compass that always points to growth. And it is a challenge to keep this focus on growth and please 100% of customers, 100% of the time. Sometimes the pace of change is too much for some, sometimes the digital advertising world is too big a step and sometimes to be honest…we get it wrong. As CEO my job is to make the boat go faster AND to minimise the wake. There will always be customers that don’t like the product or the service and we work super hard to prevent that being the case. But the drive I mentioned earlier, remains to have a happy customer that keeps coming back, and raves to their friends about us. What do you think are the things New Zealand needs to improve upon when it comes to creating more successful businesses? That’s easy, killing the “tall poppy” syndrome. It seems that New Zealanders have somehow developed an amazing ability to cut down anyone who is achieving. Anywhere. Whether it be in business, sport, or entertainment etc. It seems that when anyone starts achieving something extraordinary there are this bitter group of people, who have likely never achieved anything remotely like the people they are criticising, who feel the need to cut them down.
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“
You have to be prepared to get up a lot, because you are going to get knocked down almost as much This behaviour speaks more about the accusers than the victims. And I do find this unusual. New Zealand as a nation is, by virtue of geography and population, often the underdog. Kiwis strive and battle and achieve on a global stage despite being a small, remote country. Sometimes we are in full support of the underdog, willing them on and supporting them as a country. Yet when someone actually achieves something, the jealousy and resentment displayed on the airwaves or social media etc is often bewildering to me. You’ve already achieved so much in terms of business success. What’s next for you? Thanks. Sometimes BJ and I have to stop and look around, and take stock of what Gopher has become over the years. And when we do, I have to say it’s a good feeling. But it would not have been possible without the support of a great team, loyal customers and other clients and suppliers who have stuck with us over the years. Somehow we have managed to surround ourselves with some amazing people. Our loyal team is stronger than it’s ever been, and the company continues to grow. I am hugely grateful to everyone, including staff, clients, suppliers, and family, who have helped us get to where we are. In particular my business partner BJ, and my wife Jen. Gopher is at an exciting point in its journey. A tipping point you might say. We have some very exciting projects coming to a head, and more people are starting to notice what we’re achieving. And not just in New Zealand, but internationally. The coming year is going to be transformational for Gopher, our partners and our clients. What’s next? In my opinion, one of the key things about being successful is not trying to do much at once. Not starting another job before the one at hand is complete. Some can do it, but most can’t. Besides, men are rubbish at multi-tasking (or so my wife tells me). I am 100% committed to achieving what we set out to do with Gopher before committing to what’s next. But let’s just say I’ve got a few ideas. To find out more about John and his business visit www.gopher.co.nz or www.gopheronline.co.nz
case study: stray
“I’ve forgotten about reliability issues because there are none.”
Brett Hudson Operations Manager, Stray
Stray
Stray Limited is an adventure bus company taking travellers to out-ofthe-way places around New Zealand. We caught up with Operations Manager, Brett Hudson to talk about 2degrees and their business.
Adventure Travel 50 staff 41 mobiles Around NZ Joined 2012
Why does stray need mobiles?
Our tagline is “off the beaten track” so we’re not staying at your main destinations. We’re getting out there to the extremities of New Zealand and our sole way of being in contact with our drivers is through phone communications. We have changes happening all the time and we need to be able to contact our team in real-time.
What Was your old provider like?
There were large phone bills and if we had a problem like a phone outage it seemed they were either busy or they weren’t organised, and couldn’t get back to us. It was very frustrating and it became a constant problem within the business.
and What impact is 2degrees having?
It saved us $60,000 in the first year. In the second year, it’s going to save us that again. All this will go back into marketing campaigns or growing other parts of the business. The other impact is having an Account Manager I can get hold of to get solutions to my problems when I need them.
What difference do mobile devices make? Our drivers are now able to use their smartphones and other mobile devices to show videos, photos and information about other tour packages and options available, like our operations in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. We couldn’t do that before and it has made a huge difference. Of course, they’ve now got email and internet access too. “You need damn good partners for successful business, and 2degrees I put in that category.“ Brett Hudson, Operations Manager
hoW is the coverage?
The coverage is fantastic. Regularly, I’m on road trips across New Zealand and off the beaten track and haven’t experienced issues with coverage. With our old provider there were a lot of black spots around Auckland and I don’t get those with 2degrees. And the bus drivers could be at Cape Reinga, they could be at Stewart Island, they could be down the West Coast; so in all sorts of different coverage areas and 2degrees works well for us. 3 x $89 plan
37 x $49 plan
1 x $149 plan
hoW reliable is the netWork? Since I’ve been with 2degrees I’ve forgotten about reliability issues because there are none. Previously I regularly had issues. I would be on the internet and it would drop out and when I sampled a 2degrees SIM card in there, I was amazed at the speed, how much quicker it was. I would regularly be on the phone with the last network and it would just drop a call. I don’t get that any more. As I said, the word reliability has disappeared from my vocabulary because it is so reliable.
For video case studies about Stray and other businesses who have made the move to 2degrees Business, please visit 2degreesmobile.co.nz/business
better 0800 022 BIZ (249)
2degreesmobile.co.nz
[email protected]
BUSINESS
15
T So EC mToI rOrNo w ’ s E nt r ep r ene u r s
Taranaki st udents named National Champions for 2013 Two students from Taranaki have been named as The Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Company of the Year
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Danielle Watt and Sarah Mount – the two directors of Exposure, who won The Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme Company of the Year award for 2013.
E
xposure from New Plymouth Girls’ High School won the national title, as well as the MOVAC Award for High Growth Potential. Sarah Mount and Dani-
elle Watt are the two directors behind the winning team. The pair created the Exposure Band – a UV monitoring wristband that is calibrated to change colour when the user is required to reapply sunscreen. The company has been promoted in national and international newspapers and websites, and has attracted interest from organisations such as the Australian Skin and Cancer Foundation. The duo recently signed a non-exclusive contract with Eco Springs, who will distribute the first 1000 units of their product in New Zealand stores. Exposure were the Taranaki regional champions and had to fend off competition from 18 other Young Enterprise companies at the National Final. All regional champions had to pitch their business to a panel of judges including Xero board member Graeme Shaw and Trilogy founder Sarah Gibbs. Exposure’s win was announced at the Young Enterprise National Awards, which more than 300 guests attended, including the Governor-General and the Deputy Prime Minister. The runner’s up were Shepherd from St Thomas of Canterbury College, who created a personal safety alarm called the Angel; while ABC Dogs from Pakuranga College won third place for their ‘Peanut Paws’ healthy dog treats. Danielle said they took the invention process step by step. “We did an amazing amount of research finding out if something like this is possible.”
Once Exposure had created the UV monitor they then had to find a wristband that would be good for children to use. “We made so many prototypes working out what would work. It was a challenge,” said Danielle. It was important to them that they were innovative and came up with their own product rather than import something from overseas, Danielle said. Young Enterprise Trust CEO Terry Shubkin said the achievements of all Young Enterprise students are truly inspiring. “In just a few short months, more than 3000 young people have created 600 new businesses and sold amazing new products and services. Along the way they’ve learnt about key business concepts like financial planning, marketing, production and sales. Individually they have gained confidence and self-belief, which I’m sure will help them wherever their future takes them.” The full list of winners is available on the Young Enterprise website Young Enterprise Trust is dedicated to growing a more prosperous New Zealand through enterprise. Our aim is to ensure all New Zealand students participate in experiential enterprise education and financial literacy programmes. Young Enterprise also runs the NZ Business Hall of Fame, which recognises New Zealanders who have made outstanding contributions to business and the community.
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T o m o r r o w ’ s E nt r ep r ene u r s
Young Enterprise Terry Shubkin, CEO Young Enterprise Trust
W
e have had a wonderful 2013 and have worked with tens of thousands of students across the country. Teachers and students are now taking a
well-earned break before gearing up for the 2014 school year. If you want to help our next generation of entrepreneurs, I’d encourage you to volunteer with us now. There are lots of ways you can connect with our young people: Join us for 90 minutes in a Speed Coaching session at your local E-Day in February/March – this is a one-day introductory workshop for students taking part in The Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme. You can spend just 3 hours judging at a BP Business Challenge event (45 challenges are held across the country and we need four judges at each one). Mentor a team taking part in The Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme – this generally involves 1-2 meetings per month from February to November. Students get the maximum benefit from our programmes when they get to connect with the local community – email our Support Team (
[email protected]) to put volunteering with us on your list of New Year’s Resolutions.
Support Young Enterprise Trust at Givealittle
We make business insurance easy, leaving you to focus on what you do best Click here and let us show you how insurance is done the easy way 18
ADVERTORIAL
Am I going to be a business that is born on the cloud? Getting started in business these days could not be easier for getting your technology requirements up and running. The ability for businesses to buy key services when they want it, how they want and on a per monthly basis allows for start-ups or even established business to control their costs and to maximise functionality of the latest and greatest parts of technology.
F
or me, I am seeing a seismic shift from the traditional ways that a business would have normally set up. This has moved from a client/server model to the cloud
based implementation based on business requirement. This shift is similar in importance and impact to the transition from mainframe to client/server. Speculation abound on how this new era will evolve in the coming years but we all have an amazing opportunity to leverage, provide input and even craft what the future looks like but also how customers your will interact with you. As we accelerate through 2013 and with 2014 getting nearer by the day, the focus on the cloud and how technology is an enabler to this next generation of business is driving a level of interest or opportunity greater than anything we have seen before. The cloud and what it is and how it can benefit an organisation are driving tough conversations, but it is also providing new opportunities for companies to evolve or break through into new areas and add value in a way that would have been too hard a few years ago. For companies and partners, the cloud allows them the ability to transition seamlessly from their current software and/or server to a new environment – whether that be on premise, hosted or in the cloud. As I mentioned above, the cloud offers organisations a means to reduce total cost of ownership of their technology, while increasing business agility and decreasing maintenance costs. In the same way that virtualisation can help free up resources and maximize efficiency within an organisation, the same can be said for certain aspects of cloud services. It provides large scale data center environments to organisations that are just in the infancy. This is all working to free up time, capital and
provide you with greater efficiency. As a result, organisations that have undergone a cloud transformation will find it easier and be more competitive on the local and world stage. Organisations stand to benefit greatly from moving into a cloud environment – starting or moving your business in the cloud should provide benefits quickly including reduced costs, greater agility for remote or mobile workforces, the ability to better share resources, greater efficiency and reliability, as well as removing the issues associated with maintaining and updating IT infrastructure. To get there, start by looking around carefully; there are some extremely good local based providers that can deliver key services. There are of course the larger players like Amazon, Google and Microsoft that can provide you a “Business in Cloud” that is ready to go, when you want and how you want. If you need guidance or help then look for a partner that is embracing the journey to the cloud by providing you with choice. If you can get your business into the cloud then you will find it easier to compete on the world stage. It will open doors for the future and provide opportunities that would have in the past not presented themselves. Bradley Borrows is the Microsoft New Zealand Azure and Server Business Group Lead for Microsoft New Zealand. He has been with Microsoft for almost 10 years working both in the UK and New Zealand. Locally he presents on New Zealand’s only online Tech TV show called GeeksphereTV where they discuss Film, Gadgets and Technology. Email:
[email protected] Blog, Radio & TV: www.geeksphere.tv
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T SAEKCI NTGI OT H NE P L U N G E
Hard at work - Benjamin Clark
Benjamin Black Goldsmiths Each month, we talk to up and coming New Zealand entrepreneurs who have set about turning their idea into a real business. Here we speak with Benjamin Clark. Briefly tell us about your business. How did you first come up with the idea? My girlfriend and I decided to create an online jewellery business, which is where it all began. We never envisaged it would grow so quickly. We only launched in October 2012 and due to demand we decided to open the retail studio and workshop in Nelson in July this year. We’re so grateful for all the support we have had so far, it’s been a really exciting journey. What is the big goal for your business? We want to build the Nelson retail store over the next few years while continuing to grow the brand online. Eventually we would like to set up stores in other cities in NZ and overseas when the timing is right. What inspired you to take the plunge? I gave up my ‘day job’ in order to concentrate on my business so that there was no other option than to make it work. I was inspired by my friends, family and clients who were all encouraging me every step of the way. Just knowing they were right behind me and wanting me to succeed was really encouraging. What have you found to be the most challenging aspect of building your business so far? Developing processes and systems that work. There are so many aspects to running a business which you don’t know
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about until you’re in the thick of it. Having a good business plan helps, but so does being willing to learn and listen to advice. Creating systems to ensure smooth processes and a good level of customer service is so important to maintain the integrity of the brand. What keeps you going when you feel like giving up? Every time a customer sends a thank you email, or posts a nice comment about one of my designs on Facebook, I’m reminded of why I’m doing this. I love creating pieces that people will treasure for generations, and making people happy is what keeps me going. What advice would you give to any people reading this who are thinking of starting a business? Get a good support network around you. What really helped me was talking to people who have been successful in business before. Have a well prepared and researched business plan, but be prepared to be adaptable - sometimes things can happen more quickly or go in a different path to what you predict.
To find out more visit www.benjaminblack.co.nz Would like to tell our readers your own story? Get in touch with Nick at
[email protected]
P E R S O N A L T RA I N E R
Entrepreneurial Intelligence with Sandy Geyer How Much Validation is enough? By Sandy Geyer
I am always reading about validating your ideas, but I still don’t know where to start. I’m confused — at what point do I know if my idea is going to work?
I
n entrepreneurship the term validation ultimately translates to “how much is this idea going to make me?” or “will it make me the money that I want it to make me?”
Therefore, validation really comes down to a dollar value, and this is where your focus needs to be when reviewing the results of your research. Have a very close look at what each part of the transformation process will cost, from the idea stage to the product sold stage so you can structure your company accordingly. Be aware of the need to work with cold facts and not with emotionally skewed hopes. When we really want something to work, our minds tend to maximise the positives and minimise the negatives of a scenario without our realising that we are doing so. Also, from my own experience, even when this validation is done extensively, I think there is seldom an all-or-nothing, “yes” or “no” answer to, “Is this going to work”? It’s often more a question of, “How is this going to work?” There is a saying that no battle plan endures past the very first encounter of conflict, and it’s exactly the same on the entrepreneurial battleground. Any confrontation with reality that erodes your profit margin represents a dangerous opponent. A thoroughly researched plan solidly linked to a
financial outcome is therefore a crucial start, but this should not lure us into thinking that reality will measure up to our expectations in all areas as we progress. Validation will only take us so far, and we still need to be prepared to adjust, radically at times, when our results don’t match our forecasts at any point along the way. I came across an article on validation that you might also find has some useful tips. In each issue Sandy will be answering commonly asked questions from new entrepreneurs. If you have a question for Sandy to do with entrepreneurship, building successful businesses or the challenges and difficulties faced by entrepreneurs, email the editor at
[email protected].
Sandy Geyer is an entrepreneur and mentor and teaches the principles of entrepreneurial intelligence (EnQ), to entrepreneurs in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. You can visit Sandy’s website at www.enqpractice.com
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E Y SI TOEN M S CEOCS T
S
tartup Weekend is a global grassroots movement
The participating teams were:
of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are
Garden Genie - your perfect personal gardening companion
learning the basics of founding startups and launching
Handpicked - connecting people and ethical food
successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate
Pop Up Parking - Finding you a park near you
entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries
CrocLoc - Safety for your laptop
around the world. The basic format of Startup Weekend is as follows: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekend then culminates with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback. Startup Weekend brings together creatives, innovators, techies, designers, and essentially anyone with an idea and a willingness to make it happen. It is an awesome experience with great networking opportunities – everyone is guaranteed to leave the event with new skills, new contacts, and better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of start-ups.
Link My Life - Looking out for your loved ones via in home motion detection More Moorings - Win-win for moor owners and boaties Sweet Child - Parents will never have to worry about what their child wears next The Roster - Making it easy for schools to find relief teachers Combinr - Bridging the gap between graduates and businesses Ripplr - Helping business grow through easy and real-time customer feedback Lead Foot - Gamifying the driving experience to make our roads safer The Judges Dan Khan - Entrepreneur, Investor, Accelerator Director
The most recent event was the 18th Startup Weekend in NZ
Shona Grundy - CEO and Co-Founder of Trigger Happy
and the 5th in Auckland. Over 80 participants plus mentors, organisers and volunteers attended.
Neil Richardson - Business guru
The Prize Pack: Winner •
Startup Law Prize Pack
•
Sprint e-centre mentoring programme
•
$10,000 advertising from TradeMe
•
One year Business Xero Account (medium)
•
USD $200 Amazon Web Services voucher
•
10 days at the BizDojo (AKL or WLG)
Runner Up •
One year Business Xero Account (medium)
•
USD $200 Amazon Web Services voucher
For Everyone: •
TeamWorkPM - one year business plan for all teams
•
Microsoft BizSpark - over $15,000 worth of goodies
•
USD$100 Amazon Web Services voucher
•
Free .CO domains
•
90 days free SEOMoz Pro
•
6 months free of UserVoice
• 2 2 $200 MongoHQ Credit
Vaughan Rowsell - CEO and Founder of Vend
The Garden Genie Team
Winner Garden Genie Garden Genie - making it simple and easy for you to grow your own fruit an vegetables by providing you with access to the reminders, instructions and supplies you need through an app. Why did you come to Startup Weekend? As a way to explore starting my own business - something I’ve always wanted to do. How did you find working with a team of strangers over the course Startup weekend? It may have just been good luck but we had a fantastic team. Fun, collaborative, supportive and hard working. What do you think were the key things you achieved that led you to win? The team’s ability to cover all parts of the lean canvas and that our product was easy to understand - most people can see the benefits and understand how they’d use it. What are you going to do now? Will your team stay together and will you pursue this idea? We are talking about that now, we have had such a great response to the idea that we are keen to see it come to life. The team have also stuck together through the Global Startup Battle - making a 60 second video the Monday after startup weekend (which took the full day) and then working with networks and media to gain votes that saw us through to the final judging round. We are awaiting the results.
Would you recommend other people to take part in a Startup Weekend? Absolutely, for anyone interested in starting a business. I’d also recommend employers encourage staff to go to. It teaches you a great deal about collaboration, prioritisation, communication, understanding customers and more. For more information visit www.gardengenie.co Startup Weekends run around the country on a regular basis. Check out www.startupweekend.co.nz for the latest events.
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SECTION
Where Are They Now? We often hear about teams and businesses that take part in Startup Weekend, but what happens afterwards when the dust settles? Here we talk to four companies about their experiences... Oliver Smith, Telecom Digital (Corporate Entrepreneur / Intrapreneur) I attended my first Startup Weekend (SW) in May 2013. I worked with the winning team called Arrive Supplied. Arrive Supplied was a ecommerce site for the inbound tourist who need things to be in their hotel when they arrive that they can’t carry on the plane or are too bulky, like toiletries, food, snorkel and fins, sim cards. We got on okay as a team on the weekend, we had a couple of character clashes, and with two people from Taupo and all of us with full time jobs it wasn’t something we were going to carry on with after the weekend. I always came to SW for the learning, rather than to walk away with a functional startup. I wanted to have the experience of things that I couldn’t get inside a corporate: fast progress, learning how to do things more quickly and not letting stuff get in the way, applying the 80/20 rule to make a decision and move on with things. What would I do differently next SW? I would be more selective with my team. I wouldn’t pick an idea I liked, but pick the people I wanted to work with and go with whatever the idea happened to be. The character clashes made things frustrating, although they made our product better at the end of the day. I would also recommend getting getting outside and speaking to customers sooner; validate the idea as soon as possible before getting too far down the development path. Back at the office my team and I have started using the lean canvas, kanban tool as well as the SW approach to market validation. We also focus on addressing the problem before creating the solution. Applying these tools has made a huge difference to our team’s ability to be innovative and deliver services faster.
Transcribe Me - Alexei Dunayev (Successful Startup that started at SW) I pitched the idea for voice to text at the August 2011 Startup Weekend. It was the first Startup Weekend team that continued to work on the business after the weekend finished. The greatest challenge of SW was the time pressure, but it gave us the advantage of a timezone change - San Francisco was available for validation! We had a team of four people at SW and we worked on Transcribe Me for a year after the event, and we still have two co-founders as part of the business. Startup Weekend helped me take this dream into a reality. I pitched the idea of converting voice to text in a reliable, simple and low cost way. We have come a long way in two years with better technology that I could have anticipated. We now have 10,000 trancribers in our system! We now use a hybrid voice recognition system with crowd sourced transcribers that work in parallel. In the past year we have added several languages to the system as well. With a new startup you don’t know which strategies will be successful, so you are doing two or three things where only one will work. Eventually you get better at identifying the strategies that will work through experience, but having a domain expert can help you identify those strategies earlier. With a startup you need to take an iterative approach, so if things aren’t working you change it straight away, its a troubleshooting and problem solving approach. With an established business you know what will happen so you can safeguard against those things. With a startup you aren’t solving known problems but a whole bunch of unknown problems, anything can go wrong at any time. The technology we have in production has gone through 2-3 major iterations, which we couldn’t have anticipated but it has made the system so much more sophisticated than what we could have designed at Startup Weekend. Its about figuring out what works and iterating through it. My advice for anyone becoming an entrepreneur is that you have to be passionate about what you are taking on. For me, voice to text has had a fair degree of interest from me for the past two decades. It’s still not at the stage I would like it to be, if we can contribute to make that faster, I would be really excited. That passion and interest is really important for any founder. Its fulfilling knowing you are getting a little bit closer to your dream becoming a reality.
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Good Good Wonderful - Miles Thompson (Social Entrepreneur Social Enterprise started at SW) I had been thinking about this idea for at least a year before the Social Enterprise SW in August. It is actually a combination of two pitches - one for skill sharing and one for social gratitude. I pitched a social enterprise idea at a SW two years ago but it really felt like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. This time it felt like things had shifted and there is a recognition for startups to serve a bigger purpose as well as being financially sustainable. Startup Weekend is a great opportunity to dive in and get something it done. It’s like startup baking. Its an intense experience, but if you want to create a startup it’s a good way to find out how people manage under pressure and in those intense conditions. After Startup Weekend we lost two team members. This idea was something I had been dreaming of and thinking about for a while, but not everyone has the same expectations when coming to a Startup Weekend. We did our best to manage those expectation but the startup is still going ahead. Good Good Wonderful is about exploring ways to say thankyou online. We are currently working on an App called Thankful.as (to be launched early 2014). People will get rewarded for saying thankyou online and will receive a gift that they can claim or pay forward. Our long term goal is much bigger, but we have decided to start simple. The challenge for any social enterprise is having the resources and finances to make it sustainable. Its all well and good to have grand ideas to make a difference but that enthusiasm wanes when the money runs out. Startup Weekend is a training ground, go in with your best idea, one you are truly passionate about but be prepared to work on someone else’s idea too. As a programmer, I was expecting Startup Weekend to be a hackathon and its not about that at all. In fact it is nice to have a working demo but its far more important to have a refined business model. For social enterprises it’s easy to ignore the importance of financial sustainability, but its crucial, so any social enterprise needs to factor that in from day one. Wellington is a real hub for social entrepreneurial projects, we get that making a difference matters. When I visited New York, it seems that people are mostly in it for themselves. I think that’s a real point of difference for New Zealand. David Carr, Jump On Board (SW venture that called it quits after 15 months) It began at Startup Weekend Auckland 2012. Jump On Board is a way to plan group travel online. Once people have had the dream of where they want to go, how do they easily track everyone’s travel ideas, research, price tracking etc. Jump On Board was an online pinboard, planning and communication system for group travel. At SW we had a group of 7-8 people with great chemistry,
the group clicked, they all understood and had experienced this problem and had a passion for creating a solution. As the team clicked, we were all headed in the same direction, making it easier to focus on the problem. At my second SW, the team didn’t have that kind of chemistry making it much harder to coordinate and focus as more time was spent on coordinating communication. The greatest challenge of the first SW was not being sure what to expect and what we needed to achieve. But it made the second SW much easier, I understood what the judges were looking for, how to get a .co domain, how to setup streamlined team communications - I understood how to do less admin type things and focus more on the business problem at hand rather than get sucked into the noise. Really useful to come to more than one SW. SW is a condensed version of creating a startup, there is no time for fluff, by its nature it has to be focused. I also understood what it means to validate the market at the second SW, so that made it much easier as well, but we came across other challenges instead. After the first SW, we ran Jump On Board for 15 months. After the SW we lost a couple of team members as they came to SW only for the learning experience, so we continued on with four people. At SW we hadn’t done a lot of development, we had just used a landing page as part of our execution on the weekend. Afterwards we put more energy into development, possibly to compensate for that and possibly because we were trying to get a sense of what the validation should look like. Next time I would do this differently. I would spend less time on development and more on validation. Although now I understand more about how to validate than I did before. I would also ensure that all team members were able to and wanted to make the startup a priority. It takes more time and commitment than people expect and for it to be a success everyone has to be fully onboard. I would even think about using some form of Shareholders’ Agreement to consider the time and financial commitment of each person, the percentage of ownership and decision making roles. Not necessarily a super formal agreement but something written and agreed on. I think that would be very useful. We did some more validation and more development and ultimately decided to call it quits two months ago. A couple of people had moved overseas, and the rest of us weren’t making it a priority. We weren’t meeting the goals we had set, our passion for Jump On Board had dissipated and it was time to call it a day. I am working on a couple of hobby business and using those as an experiment to continue to build my knowledge about how to validate a market. I see this as critical to the success of a startup and I want to get clear on understanding the user, their problem and different ways to validate each market. Special thanks to Samantha Mackay for her help in creating this feature article.
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PROFILE
Pamela Ward (left) and Saskia Wallace (right)
KidsGoMobile Briefly tell us about your business. How did you first come up with the idea? Our founding team have been working together since 2011 although we have been working on the current product/ business idea since early 2013. The idea was born whilst talking to parents about the biggest challenges they face with their kids and technology – actually while we were out trying to validate a different product idea! Being technology natives, our team have a personal empathy for the challenges children face online and on their mobile devices. We are building technology that helps parents identify risky activity their preteens engage in and give them tips for managing these risks. Cultivating open dialogue about children’s digital lives has proven to be one of the most effective ways families can prevent issues like cyberbullying from persisting. What is the big goal for your business? The purpose of KidsGoMobile is to be a catalyst for meaningful conversations between parent and child about how to interact safely and responsibly online. Our goal is to be the go-to platform for digital parenting not only in the home but also in schools across the globe. But we do have a more immediate goal, we’re working towards raising $20,000 of crowd-funding on Kickstarter. Parents who pledge towards
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the campaign will be among the first to get their hands on our software. The funding will go towards completing the development of our beta product and put us in a better position to raise seed funding in early 2014. What inspired you to start the business? I feel like it was inevitable. Both Saskia and I come from successful entrepreneurial families who have been a huge inspiration and support. When given the opportunity in university to do an entrepreneurial paper we both leaped at the prospect and next thing we knew we had won our category in the Bright Ideas Challenge 2011 and secured funding grants to pursue our ideas. It wasn’t until the end of 2012 that we were really in a position to take a startup a little more seriously, at which point we were encouraged to apply for the Lightning Lab accelerator. Getting accepted into the lab was the tipping point upon which we set up our lives to endure the less-than-glamorous lifestyle of full time entrepreneurs. What have you found to be the most challenging aspect of building your business so far? Ahhh where do I start? Understanding what customers actually want, working with technical people (thankfully we’ve got a great technical team now), choosing what advice to
apply, and living with so much uncertainty about the future. But you have to be in it for the ride and there’s nothing else we could be doing that would enable us to learn at such a fast pace. What keeps you going when you feel like giving up? There’s a few things. One is seeing parents eyes light up when they hear about our product, especially since launching our Kickstarter we have received a bunch of emails and calls from parents saying they can wait to get their hands on it. Here’s an example: “Thank you this is just what we have been after for our son who is a nightmare to manage with devices and the Internet... I know so many of my friends and family are having the same issue. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep up the good work.” Another thing that really adds fuel to the fire is reading an endless chain of articles about youth taking their lives due to severe cyber-bullying, teachers grooming children via SMS and online messaging platforms, and cases where adolescents have been coerced into sending provocative photos of themselves followed by threats of posting these pictures publicly online. This is an indication of the severity of the problems we’re up against and the huge need there is for a solution. What advice would you give to any people reading this who are thinking of starting a business? Set out to solve a problem that you relate to and are passionate about, in an industry you understand. Before you do anything else go and speak to 30 people within your target demographic and find out what their biggest problems are – if you’re not solving the top one or two on the list than it’s unlikely people will pay for your product. Once you’ve struck a winning idea and built a winning team, my personal belief is that your level of your success will be dictated by your level of determination.
To find out more visit www.kidsgomobile.com
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Sustainable Business SECTION Network Awards
Photo credit Dave Olsen Floating plant rafts, electric bikes and micro-finance were all part of the innovative mix of businesses ideas recognised at this year’s Sustainable Business Network Awards. An event that has gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2009. This year saw 220 entries across the 11 award categories for the judging panel to consider. Latesha Randall had a chat with three of the finalists … BioBrew - Mega Effiency Impact Award Finalist & Restorative Innovation Award Winner
the product and guided us to develop it to fit their needs – they’ve really taken ownership of it, which means a lot.
BioBrew offers a range of microbial products for the NZ agricultural sector. It provides a way for Kiwi farmers to eliminate costly and environmentally damaging chemical inputs such as antibiotics and synthetic fertilisers. Andre Prassinos is the company’s Co-Founder/Director.
I hear you reuse all your containers – are there other ways you ‘reshape’ or reuse resources?
What did you think when you heard you were finalists for two SBN Awards? We knew we had a good story, but the challenge is taking our very rural business and translating it in a way that urban business people understand and appreciate. It was exciting to realise that we’d managed to cross the divide! How was the idea for your business brewed up? In 2008 my wife started studying horticulture, and I met one of her instructors, Don, on the farm. We had a series of conversations while weeding; just two guys in a field, trying to figure out how to help farmers do things a better way. He had the science background, I had the sales experience. We decided to make BioBrew happen.
Yes, reusing the containers is a great way to reduce waste – when people need a refill, we just pick up the empty ones and bring them back. We also keep everything as local as possible, we’ve got four breweries in key locations which means very little long haul driving for deliveries. Do you think businesses being more sustainable is a smart decision from a financial perspective? I think in today’s world, you’ve got to show that your idea is profitable – doesn’t matter how green it is, you’ve got to find a way to save the planet while making it more prosperous. Is BioBrew something you see making a global impact? Yes, I believe it will. It’s the future, and this industry is going to grow. We’re just focused on working hard to earn our place at that table.
Would you describe yourself as an ‘entrepreneur’? I’ve always thought that the title ‘entrepreneur’ is one you earn over time – after you’ve successfully grown a business, not just started one. I guess you could say I’m on my way to earning that title as our business grows! Have you been mentored along the way? Who has been your main source of support as the business has grown? We’ve recently welcomed new Directors to our Board, getting in some real world grown-ups who have been there and done that. That’s added a lot of insight. But I actually think of our customers as our main mentors. They’ve taken
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Biobrew’s Andre Prassinos, and Rod Oram. Photo by Dave Olsen
Silvia Zuur of Chalkle
Chalkle ° - Community Innovation Award Finalist Chalkle° takes learning out of the classroom - it’s an online platform that allows people to sign up as both teachers and students for classes on any subject, and attend classes in real-life locations. Their aim is to share knowledge and allow people to curate their own life-long learning experiences. Silvia Zuur is the company’s Co-Founder/Director. What community need was Chalkle born out of? It was a dual need really – people wanting to share, connect, learn, teach, in a simple and easy way, combined with the ‘practical’ need of funding cuts. We realised that the learning sector needed a new approach with insufficient budget available to support it. How fast have people adopted the concept? What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve had from a chalkler? Ridiculously fast! We birthed the concept on 21st June 2012, launched via Meetup a month later, and now we’ve got a brand new website ready to go-live with the functionality to support our growth. It’s all the little stories that add up, but one of my favourites was hearing from the wife of a Doctor. She’d always been financially provided for by her husband and never made her own money. She taught a Chalkle class, earned her first ‘own’ money and was so excited! It gave her a feeling of empowerment and put a value on her skills. We also love seeing new ventures launch as a result of people meeting at classes. What three things do you feel Chalkle is giving to the community? •
An accessible way to teach and learn
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Opportunities for real world connecting
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A channel to enable life-long learning
Have you always been entrepreneurial? Any past ventures? Depends how you define that – I never used to think of myself as a ‘CEO’ type person. But I’ve always tried to foster new ways of thinking and questioning. I love improving and finding better ways to do things. I guess maybe I am! What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve learnt in growing Chalkle? Take the time to have a cup of coffee with people. You never know what will come of that crossroad of connection. Do you go to all the classes yourself? Picked up any interesting new skills? There’s too many now, but I did at the beginning. I’ve been to about 80 different classes so far, everything from Ethipioian cooking to event management, gardening, Maori lessons and how to manage emails effectively! Where to next for Chalkle? Our new platform launch is what we’re really excited about at the moment! It will allow us to grow, but we’re really conscious of maintaining our principle of ‘being of service’. Chalkle is all about building communities and we believe in doing that slowly, with great care.
Do you use Social Media in your business? I am looking for business people to assist with a research project to explore how many entrepreneurs, inventors and business leaders use social media to drive innovation within their organization. I am looking for a wide spectrum of responses, even if you do NOT use social media for any business purpose, so I can gauge the overall level of usage. It should only take between 5 and 10 minutes, and there is an iPad Mini as lucky draw prize for a participant.
Click here to take the survey!
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Te Radar and punters Photo by Dave Olsen Rebecca Mills - Sustainability Champion Finalist Rebecca is a well-regarded sustainability strategist who has dedicated the past 15 years to creating ‘catalytic strategies’ for maximum speed, scale and impact. She runs her own consultancy based in Auckland, Ministry of Green. Your consultancy is called ‘Ministry of Green’ – what do you want people to think when they hear it? In 2009 when I founded my consultancy many people were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the beige/non inspiring approach to sustainable development. I kicked off Ministry of Green as a marker for a new, positive evidence based but innovative approach to ‘green’. In 2014 I will be starting a newly branded consultancy, so watch this space – my clients will be on a mission and I will be helping them get there at scale and pace. Would you describe yourself as an activist? If you could get one message across to everyone in the world today, what would it be? We live in an era where powerful positive messages can zip around the world at warp speed and I see myself as an enabler for good rather than an activist for what is negative. I hope that entrepreneurs and leaders of the future will truly believe that it is both possible and prudent to do well by doing good … putting people and planet alongside profit. A message that has always inspired me is this from Anne Frank: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” I’ve heard you’re working with Derek Handley (Snakk Media) and Richard Branson as part of ‘The B Team’. What have you learnt from these guys? Derek and Richard are both incredibly inspirational entrepreneurs who I greatly admire. They are both masters at swiftly gathering whatever resources/people/approaches are needed to work at pace and are fearless about the need for priorities to stay on target. I have been lucky enough to work
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with Derek for some time now. One of things I have heard him say is ‘no pressure, no diamonds’, which inspires me when I am feeling under the gun. Tell me about a favourite project you’ve worked on. Why did it feel great to be part of it? I have worked on so many projects over the past 15 years that it’s hard to pick just one. Recently I was asked to find the smartest, most inspirational young people globally and canvas initial ideas on how to move towards better business with them for The B Team. The energy and opportunity present in the room on our first meeting in New York was incredible. If you were going to launch a new business venture, what problem would you want it to help solve? I would launch something that would solve a systemic social/environmental issue and that was sustainable from a financial/value perspective. Ideally it would be something that would be highly impactful for New Zealand and also relevant and transportable to a world stage. I am really excited in particular about a number of new ideas on how to turn waste into products and energy. Do you think Kiwis are conscious about their environmental impact? What could we be doing better? Most Kiwi’s I meet want to do what’s right for their families, businesses and communities. I think we could be better about telling our stories for the world and giving each other a pat on the back. Latesha Randall is an enthusiastic connector, entrepreneur, and writer based in Raglan - she enjoys working with start-ups and business owners as one half of Seb & Tesh, helping them create, clarify and implement their business ideas. www.sebandtesh.com
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“
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You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.”
Richard Branson, Virgin Group
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