Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category

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ION e-Letter Jan/Feb 2010

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

GeniusNet is proud to host the ION e-Letter. ION is New Zealand’s original virtual community forum for innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors. February and March are looking like hot months for tech, business and innovation events all over New Zealand.

ION is kindly supported by EGL, Revera and iWantMyName.

Collaboration with Start-Up Digest

We are thrilled to announce that our New Zealand biz/tech event listings will be shouted out globally from this month.  TEDxSV social media strategist and Silicon Valley based entrepreneur Chris McCann also runs the highly acclaimed The StartUp Digest and has now included New Zealand event listings within his service offering. It’s more important than ever for New Zealand tech companies to connect offshore and especially in the U.S. market, so if you have an upcoming event or are a technology start-up with a launch announcement – please contact ION about it so we can share.

Don’t forget to sign up for The StartUp Digest to find out about global biz/tech events if you are heading offshore to promote your business.

Webstock – Wellington – 15-19 February

Design, development, mobile, usability, content, community, open data, innovation & inspiration. 5 full-on days. 13 hands-on workshops. 24 kickass international speakers. 24 must-see presentations including Kevin Rose (Digg) and Eric Ries (Lean StartUps guy).

http://www.webstock.org.nz/

Eric Ries Workshop – Webstock – Wellington – 15th February

The Lean Startup: a disciplined approach to imagining, designing, and building new products. Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy.

http://www.webstock.org.nz/10/programme/workshops.php#ries

NZICT Meeting – Wellington – 16th February

Andy Lark is a director of technology venture capital firm No 8 Ventures and sits on the board of Xero. He also chairs the NZTE technology beachhead in the U.S. market. Andy will speak about a number of themes covering ICT, marketing and communications.

http://www.ict.org.nz/index.php/02022010_wellington-members-meeting/

SKANZ 2010 Conference – Auckland 16-18 February

Reviews recent developments with the Square Kilometre Array, a next generation radio telescope project aimed at probing the universe with a much greater degree of resolution than before. 

http://www.aut.ac.nz/study-at-aut/study-areas/computing–mathematical-sciences/skanz-2010-conference

Accelerate 2010 – Hawkes Bay – 17th February

Interactive one day session for management, founders and investors of high growth New Zealand technology companies. Features ex-pat Kiwi Andy Lark (senior exec at Dell). Good food, wine and music plus workshops covering strategy, marketing and funding. [Sold out - but may consider individual late applications]

http://www.0to60.com/
 

Escalator – Power Pitching – Various venues from 18th February

Interactive workshop where you will learn what investors are looking for in an investor pitch. The course helps you to refine your company “pitch”.

http://angelassociation.trainingplatform.co.nz/courses/1-power-pitching

Mentors Needed for E-Day – Wellington – Tuesday 23 February  

The Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) needs some mentors for an E-Day. The E-Day will kick off this year’s YES programme in the Wellington region. About 60 student companies are taking part and they need 30 mentors. YES in Wellington is managed by the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce.

1.30- 2.45pm. Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Ground Floor, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Victoria University.

Distiller Event – Dunedin – Thursday 25 February

Technology start-up incubator Distiller is holding a meetup with guest presenters at South Bar, Frederick Street, Dunedin.

http://thedistiller.org/

Activate Networking Event – Wellington – Thursday 25 February

Want to activate your business or idea? Activate’s mission is to find Wellington’s most talented entrepreneurs and give them the skills, know-how and networks to get their dreams off the ground and their businesses humming. Mingle with Wellington’s best and brightest entrepreneurs and hear from some amazing businesses already on the journey.

Venue: Smith the Grocer, Old Bank Arcade  RSVP: By Monday 22 February to: activate [at} growwellington (dot) co [dot) nz

2010 Shanghai Expo Workshop – Wellington – 26 February

The Wellington City Council invites interested parties to attend a workshop on the 2010 Shanghai Expo. The workshop is a chance to learn more about Wellington City Council’s ideas on sending a delegation to the Shanghai Expo – and the potential opportunities for your business. RSVP by 19th Feb.

More details here >>

Damsel’s Den – Wellington – 9th March

Unlimited Potential  and Angel HQ matchmake angel investors with technology geeks and cool startup founders. Special guest Bill Payne, engineer, entrepreneur and technology investor.

http://up.org.nz/damsels-den-201/

Planet 2010 Conference Launchpad – Auckland 12-13 March Telecommunications industry event offering 10 start-up companies the chance to pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges. The winner will receive $70,000 worth of IT, marketing, legal and accounting services.

http://www.planet2010.co.nz/launchpad/

Spark 2010 Launch – Auckland – 18 March

The University of Auckland Business School Entrepreneurship Challenge kicks off with a launch event on 18th March 5.30pm. 

http://www.spark.auckland.ac.nz/


NZBio Conference – Auckland 22-24 March

The annual showcase for New Zealand’s life sciences sector. Attracting innovators, entrepreneurs and investors from across the agriculture, food, health and biofuel industries.

http://www.nzbio2010.co.nz/home

CloudCamp Wellington – 26th March

CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas.

http://www.cloudcamp.org/wellington

Want to add your tech/biz/startup event? Contact us @ Twitter or post a comment below.

Posted in Community, Entrepreneurship, ION, Innovation, Technology | 1 Comment »

Kiwi iWantMyName Continues Product Evolution

Monday, February 1st, 2010

ideegeo’s successful launch of iWantMyName as a global domain registrar site and the opening of sites for Germany and the Netherlands last year were exciting milestones in the evolution of iWantMyName into a highly scalable industry-wide platform solution and in the development of our company.

Although our focus was global from day one, we felt it was now time to turn our attention to home. We had many requests from our friends to establish in the New Zealand market, because of our unique service offering, friendly user interface and great customer support. Finally we just had to say yes and so we now have a dedicated Kiwi site offering fixed prices in New Zealand dollars.

The Kiwi iWantMyName has by far New Zealand’s widest range of domain extensions, many of which are unavailable from other local domain registrars. Examples of exclusive domains include the recently launched .TEL and .ME suffixes plus interesting country code top-level domains from all over the world such as .LI (Liechtenstein), .IO (British Indian Ocean Territory) and .FM (Federal States of Micronesia).

Customers from the existing site can use the same login details to access their accounts across the iWantMyName platform suite. We also offer the same free services on our Kiwi version so that you can hook up your own domain to customise a wide range of great web applications such as GMail, Blogger and Zoho. In the very near future we also plan to add some cool new Kiwi-made services that we really want to support.

We think it is appropriate that the launch of a new product should be celebrated with some special offers. So until the end of February we are offering new .COM, .NET, .ORG and .NAME domains for only $19.90 NZD plus .INFO for $9.90 NZD. We are also able to offer a FREE one year extension if you transfer your existing domains across to iWantMyName NZ. Transfers can be handled from your personal dashboard once you join up. Please note that all domain prices quoted on the Kiwi site are GST exclusive and that we provide full GST invoicing to all our valued customers.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Management, Technology, Web 2.0, domains, ideegeo | No Comments »

Plug ‘n Play in the USA

Monday, January 25th, 2010

The state government of Victoria in Australia has recently taken up space at Californian tech incubator the Plug and Play Tech Center. The Australian contingent brings the number of nations represented to a dozen or so. New Zealand is not amongst them.

Plug and Play operate a private full service technology incubator at a handful of physical locations on the West Coast. The incubator is deeply embedded in the Silicon Valley entrepreneur ecosystem with linkages to local universities, major corporations, angel investor groups and leading venture capital firms. In less than four years, companies involved with Plug and Play have raised an astounding total of $450 million in capital.

For technology firms that are serious about scaling up, engaging meaningfully in the North American market is a necessity and there is simply no better way to do this than being in the company of peers and mentors. To help firms connect offshore, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise runs an excellent global programme called Beachheads. The North American advisory board is headed by the very able and well connected Bridget Liddell and is a virtual offering rather than a physical incubator. But selection criteria are tight and they won’t look at any company doing less than $5 million revenue per annum.

So where does this leave early stage firms? Going it alone is simply not an option. The U.S. is a huge and complex market with many distinct sub-regions. Without proper advice, attacking the West Coast alone could burn up many years and a wad of capital. But testing the water with the assistance of a locally networked incubator is an affordable commonsense approach for smaller firms. Unfortunately, unlike our friends in Victoria, I don’t expect to see our government making this option available anytime soon. So it will be up to individuals to take the initiative.

Technology firms with global growth ambitions must be looking to engage within Asia-Pacific over the next few years.  Apart from the sheer size of this consumer audience, at least half of global capital market activity springs from the region. New Zealand also occupies a privileged position with its free trade status with China and likely eventual agreement with the U.S. We must find effective ways to plug New Zealand technology firms (of all sizes) into this space now.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Investment, Technology | 1 Comment »

2009 – A Year of Challenges

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

pohuIt’s fair to say that, in more ways than one, 2009 was a year full of challenges. But it was not without its rewards.

Perhaps the greatest personal satisfaction for me was the huge amount of progress we made with iWantMyName, our first (and by no means last) spin-off project from ideegeo. But during 2009 many establishment organisations simply ran out of good ideas and took short-sighted decisions to make layoffs, rather than use their existing human capital to innovate and prepare for the upturn.

So it was a great source of pride at ideegeo that we not only earned some export dollars this year, but we also added employees and extended our product offering. All this was achieved without needing to raise capital and under the dark clouds of the harshest global economic conditions that most of us have known.

Clearly, recovery from the recession in 2010 will not originate at the hands of tired, greedy old firms that treat their human assets like factory farmed cows. The recovery will come from small, agile, innovative new ventures that can grasp opportunities and quickly add value. The corporate model is dying a slow death as internal divisions, failure to innovate and lack of a sense of responsibility to the community eats away at its heart. 

This fact was illustrated powerfully in 2009 as traditional media corporations struggled to come to terms with the new environment and as morally corrupt financial institutions paid bonuses to managers, even as governments were bailing them out of irrecoverable losses. In short it was a sorry state of affairs for big business and hopefully we will see some better leadership on this front in 2010.

Another major theme for business in 2009 was the coming of age of hosted software. The “cloud” services scene was boosted by aggressive competition from Google, rapid improvements in the scalability and reliability of hardware and an enthusiastic user base. Fortunately, at iWantMyName we were able to leverage this sea change by offering free customisation for our customers across a wide range of popular applications. 2010 looks exciting too as we add more services and scale up through partnerships and organic growth.

All the very best for a safe and enjoyable festive season and thanks for reading @GeniusNet.

Posted in Economy, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology, ideegeo | No Comments »

Bookhabit Acquisition Strengthens Web Venture Value Proposition

Monday, December 14th, 2009

The reported acquisition of Wellington based Bookhabit by Los Gatos company Smashwords is an encouraging development. It demonstrates that we can incubate attractive, high value web-based ventures and get noticed globally.

About 18 months ago I was involved in some consulting at Bookhabit, working on building their user community. It was a great experience and a good lead in to my next project, which was of course, starting up ideegeo and then launching our domain registrar software platform iWantMyName. Perhaps the most useful lesson from that experience was observing just how much hard work is needed to to gain traction with a start-up business.

On that basis I’m tremendously pleased for Clare Tanner and her partners at Webfund, who I know put in a lot of hours to build their business. I’m also pleased to hear from Webfund that the company remains strongly committed to supporting the Wellington technology scene and that they are keen to work with Clare and others on future projects as they look to reinvest.

But, last week I was reading the painful story of a New Zealand biotech start-up that flushed tens of millions of dollars down the drain through mismanagement and bad luck. Why aren’t we playing to our strengths? The set-up cost for a web technology venture is a fraction of that for biotech and the innovation wavelength on the Web is a lot shorter. We can spread the risk by funding 50 Bookhabits for every single biotech punt. That is why ICT specifically needs to be back on the national economic development agenda.

Posted in Community, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology, Web 2.0, ideegeo | No Comments »

W2W Tech Showcase Gains Traction

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Unlimited PotentialUnlimited Potential’s W2W is the only event that brings together New Zealand’s technology innovators, entrepreneurs and investors under one roof for a half day of demos, presentations and networking. W2W attracted a stellar speaker line-up this year as well as increased interest from the investor community.

W2W is all about strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem for emerging tech firms by facilitating conversations between ICT researchers, business entrepreneurs and technology investors. The event focuses on specially chosen emerging ventures that have the potential to scale globally.

Entrepreneur presenters included Dan Lee, who discussed Beetil an I.T. management and compliance SaaS product and Jody Bullen from Yonix who provide software for business analysts. Both Lee and Bullen are recently arrived skilled migrants, underlining the importance of migrants to the regional economy. John Mitchell showed off Learning Source, a great tool that helps manage and administer training programmes, and Ben Nolan demonstrated the impressive capabilities of digital rendering software Indigorenderer.

Keynote speaker for the event was local hero Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb, and one of the world’s most influential tech bloggers. Richard spoke about how he operates a virtual business. Other speakers included entrepreneur and author Ben Young and John Watt nanotechnology researcher and New Zealand Young Scientist of the Year.

Support for W2W’09 by Wellington City Council, Grow Wellington, UK Trade & Investment, Summer of Code, CafeNet, VicLink and iWantMyName was greatly appreciated. If you would like to support W2W 2010, please contact Unlimited Potential co-chair and W2W event project manager Paul Spence:  paul [at} up [dot) org (dot} nz

Posted in Community, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investment, Technology | No Comments »

Ready, Fire, Aim – How Kiwi Culture Impacts Value Creation

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Despite exceptional rates of entrepreneurialism and a highly innovative culture, New Zealand continues to lag in terms of economic performance. But a new study commissioned by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise points to some of our self limiting cultural attributes.

Being a nation built upon successive waves of largely working class migrants, it comes as no surprise that practical self reliance and a tendency to under-value intellectual assets and capabilities, feature strongly in our national psyche. Sometimes the very attributes that make us strong, can also be our undoing.

Perhaps that it is why I have found it refreshing to work with some recently arrived skilled migrants. It has forced me to confront some of my own self-limiting behaviours and to adjust my success horizon. In fact it has challenged me to redefine exactly what success looks like.

The NZT&E report suggests that it’s not just about working smarter to create more economic value, it’s also about capturing that value. It is not sufficient simply to be innovative (which we are already). I think what they are trying to say is that we undervalue the intangible assets like intellectual property and customer relationships.

The report author proposes adding value by not only addressing the cultural peculiarities that sometimes afflict us but also by ensuring that we create value through other channels such as licensing and transfer of intellectual assets. For example at ideegeo we not only provide domain management through iWantMyName, but we also license out the software to other registrars.

It is also suggested in the study that we have deeply embedded cultures within our organisations and a “commodity trading psyche” that sometimes impedes us from getting to know our offshore customers. We need to get better at relationship building. Perhaps the producers of goods, targetted by this report, could learn from how web based businesses create value through open communication environments, knowledge-sharing and the construction of social capital as a means to building intangible value within business.

Posted in Culture, Economy, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Society | No Comments »

Euro Doppleganger for iWantMyName Platform

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Speaking of taking Kiwi tech global. It was with a huge amount of pride that that we announced the launch of two new registrar sites over at ideegeo this week. In conjunction with a great partner in the Netherlands we’ve created Ben ik Vrij a Dutch language version of our iWantMyName site. With all the functionality of our existing platform plus full Euro currency integration Ben ik Vrij allows us to enter one of the largest domain markets in Europe.

benikvrij

But we aren’t just stopping there. We’ve also opened a wholly owned and operated German language site and we called it simply Mein Name. The German site is a special achievement because ideegeo in part has its origins in an idea that began in Germany. Mein Name is a little bit like a return home for us.

meinname

The new sites demonstrate how ideegeo can powerfully leverage the underlying technology behind iWantMyName and how we can make other partnerships work in new markets. Expect to see further rollouts and cool new services in the future as we change the face of domain name management.

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Posted in Entrepreneurship, Technology, domains, ideegeo | No Comments »

W2W Taking Kiwi Tech Global

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Unlimited PotentialIts that time again already. Next week’s Wellington to the World event (W2W) picks up where the inaugural event left off in 2008.

W2W is the leading annual showcase for New Zealand’s digital innovation at a time when strengthening our entrepreneurial ecosystem has never been more important and topical. The event gathers technology innovators, entrepreneurs and investors for product pitches, new ideas and networking.

The theme for the event is “Going Global with Your Tech Business”. If you are a technology entrepreneur or investor you should be at this event. Speakers include Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb and one of the world’s most influential tech bloggers. Nanotechnology researcher and Young Scientist of the Year, John Watt will also be there. MC for the half day event is Ben Young, author, entrepreneur and marketing wunderkind.

Registration is essential. You can find programme details here:

http://up.org.nz/w2w09/

Posted in Community, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Animation Digerati Illuminate Capital

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

As an already highly respected world centre for games, animation and visual effects, it is only fitting that our capital city plays host to AnimFX ‘09, an event that has emerged as an increasingly noteworthy gathering amongst the global digital animation and movie effects community. 

The main conference programme kicks off on Friday November 6th and includes talks by none other than Weta Workshop founder Richard Taylor. His colleague Matt Aitken, who was visual effects supervisor for District 9, will also be speaking. If that weren’t enough, the impressive international line-up includes Sander Schwartz, formerly president of Warner Brothers Animation, and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences stalwart Jeff Okun who masterminded the terrifying “nano-bots” in the most recent rendition of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Having such luminaries under one roof represents a huge opportunity for the New Zealand industry to form valuable network linkages into what is arguably the entertainment production capital of the world. Now in its fourth year, success stories from previous AnimFX event remind us how important it is for local technology firms to reach out globally and incidentally how we can leverage our natural attributes to lure highly acclaimed individuals to our shores.

W2W’09 is another event that aims to build capability and connect technology entrepreneurs globally. Focussing on web-based and ICT enabled ventures, W2W runs on the afternoon of 17th November. More about this next week…

Posted in Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Innovation | No Comments »

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