Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

iWantMyName Alive and Kicking

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I’m grinning from ear to ear right now. We flipped the switch on ideegeo’s first online venture today. Not only that, we satisfied our first online customer and began earning export dollars for New Zealand. It’s a good feeling after many long hours of hard work.

iWantMyName is an international domain registrar site offering a wide range of domains for sale to the public. It’s a highly competitive industry to enter, hence we are differentiating ourselves from day one. Helpful functionality and friendly usability are hard to find amongst existing registrars, so we’ve gone the extra mile to make the site as clean, sharp and easy to navigate as possible.

We will also be progressively adding functionality that assists users to “personalise their experience of the Web”. So for example if you want to hang all your cloud hosted email, documents, work spaces and social networks under your own domain, we think you should be able to do exactly that without any fuss. Now iWantMyName can help you make that transition. With all the buzz around hosted solutions and portable universal IDs lately, we think this is where the digital world is headed already.

Check out the site and please do feel free to give us feedback.

The Final Countdown

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Pretty boy rockers from the band Europe released a cult classic over twenty years ago with a triumphant keyboard riff that still thrills listeners today. Glam rock may now be confined to musical history, but we sure hope ideegeo’s new domain registrar site will roar up the sales charts and still be a number one hit in a couple of decades too.

It’s now only a few days to until we launch and I must say, it’s been most gratifying to see all the hard work evolve into something tangible. The smooth lines and easy functionality of the site belies the many hours of hard work that have gone into the project. Offering an iPhone interface for the site from day one has also proven to be a winning decision, as consumer recognition of the Apple platform grows by the day.

Our tech guys may not be as good looking as the band members from Europe, but they sure as hell work just as hard to satisfy their audience. We’ve had to overcome a few hurdles along the way, like banks who don’t want to know about start-up companies in the current economic climate and bureaucrats who don’t understand the pace of life in a fast moving new company and take two weeks to return your calls and emails. But with dogged determination we’ve pressed on.

Things move fast on the Web and online enterprises must continually reinvent themselves and reinvigorate their business model – especially when economies are faltering. That’s why we don’t want to be just another “me too” web venture. Differentiating our product is important, very much so. That’s why we are planning semantic search functionality and a whole host of value added services that other registrars do not offer.

ideegeo has a vision for the future that is both user-centric and grounded in the realities of cloud computing and hosted service offerings which are now coming of age and launching daily on a desktop or mobile platform near you. Web users of the near future will demand mobility and portability. Owning and managing your own personal domain will become as ubiquitous as owning a car or a refrigerator. In fact your car and fridge will probably soon be delivered complete with their own IP addresses! As our lives become increasingly web-centric and the domain industry opens up, individuals will want to personalise their web experiences. That’s when you will hear the people demand – “I want my name!”.

We’ll release more very soon, once we’ve signed off on our final testing phase. Stay tuned.

W2W W0Ws

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Last week Unlimited Potential successfully launched Wellington to the World (W2W) an annual demo-fest for technology innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors. Four local technology entrepreneurs and four tech researchers from Victoria University pitched their projects to an attentive audience of almost 100 guests.

We always figured that combining a live networking event with a global video showcase would be a really cool way to promote Wellington’s digital technology to the world, and early feedback indicates we certainly struck a positive note with this concept, especially amongst the investor community. New Zealand has too few events that celebrate entrepreneurial success so it’s important that we grow W2W in the future.

It’s also important that we open up the event to a wide audience. With KEA’s help we will be circulating the presentations to over 25,000 ex-pat New Zealanders plus distributing the content around the NZ Trade & Enterprise network. Amazingly, one of the presenters received an approach from offshore the same day we posted the content online. Who knows what can be achieved once we actually begin to share the material out there.

A lot of people and organisations contributed to the success of the event. In particular I should mention both the Wellington City Council and the Wellington Convention Centre who were very supportive. Notably our video crew from Ocular Films went the extra mile to package the presentation content nicely. Unlimited Potential is also supported by career agents 920 as well as Gen-i and Grow Wellington. Thank-you all.

I’m also very proud that our company ideegeo Group Limited supported Wellington to the World with our time and resources. As a small technology start-up we are very mindful of the barriers facing New Zealand companies when it comes to connecting to markets offshore. We intend to continue our association with the event and encourage others to get involved as well.

Prime Time for iPredict

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I was so pleased to see iPredict’s Matt Burgess fronting up on the TV3 Leaders Debate this week with a demo of a political market trend forecast using their software product. Getting their website address in front of a few hundred thousand eyeballs won’t have done them any harm at all.

I’m pleased for two reasons. Firstly, Matt is a good guy, with an intriguing product and is doing a great job as CEO of iPredict in getting the company market recognition through media, events and the web. Secondly, it validates our decision to select him as one of the presenters at the Unlimited Potential Wellington to the World event on Friday. iPredict fitted our definition perfectly in that they had a novel and scalable global opportunity but still with a relatively low profile. Moreover, iPredict is a great example of academic research that has crossed over into the mainstream business arena.

In fact the first half of our show on Friday is devoted to linking academia with entrepreneurs and investors downtown. It’s an area that we have traditionally struggled with in New Zealand. Academics normally deliver to other academics and are focussed on building a body of research during their careers. Commercialisation of research is generally a secondary consideration. That’s a shame, because more than ever we need to be moving away from selling milk fat and instead moving towards selling knowledge to pay our way in the world.

It’s a cultural issue. In southern California smart post-graduate technology students are queuing up to attend seminars on how to structure their start-up businesses and court investors. Sure, the days when even a half decent business plan would get some crazy 20 year old funding for his pet project are gone. But that’s a good thing. Money migrates to value in the end and that’s where New Zealand creativity has an advantage. But we first need to overcome the barrier of distance to major capital and consumer markets; which is why we’ve partnered with KEA to take the event global.

It’s perfect that iPredict is a successful Victoria University spinoff company. There are other interesting projects emerging from Vic that could go the same way if we can help attract entrepreneurs and capital in that direction. That is why we are taking some first steps with W2W to strengthen bridges between academia and business here in Wellington.

For an entertaining forecast of the election outcome from our friends at iPredict and a look at some other cool ICT projects around town, make your way to the Wellington to the World event from 3.45pm on Friday 7th November at the Town Hall in Wellington. Registration essential.

NetValue Makes the Connection

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Waikato technology group NetValue have recently demonstrated that New Zealand companies can connect with investors and major global players in the Northern Hemisphere. So why isn’t more being done to replicate this kind of success story?

That was the question we asked ourselves when we started thinking about delivering an event that would actually link innovative New Zealand technology firms with investors, mentors and new partnerships offshore. I don’t care what some people say about the “weightless economy” being the new economic paradigm. It is still bloody hard work engaging in markets that are a day’s flying time away from our little islands, especially so in the current investment climate.

NetValue is actually an umbrella for a number of different technology enterprises acquired progressively over a number of years. These include a software developer, hosting and web design services, a search technology venture and a company offering a genomic research tool. The latter arose out of research work into DNA sequencing conducted at Genesis Research which was originally spun out into a company called Cartesian Gridspeed. Bioengineering experts have described this astounding technology as “one of the most significant advances in sequence search technology to date”, although the company initially struggled to gain recognition despite its claim of a 10,000 fold improvement on processing speed over other systems on the market.

I remember seeing Cartesian Gridspeed company founder Leonard Bloksberg speak at a conference a few years ago and I figured his company would make it big one day. Let’s hope that their new found partnership with Microsoft will allow them to develop the product without altogether giving away the intellectual property to offshore interests. Unfortunately that is the quandry that all successful tech companies eventually face because of the lack of depth in the technology investment market at home.

I’m interested in NetValue’s progress for another reason. We’ve adopted a similar organisational model at ideegeo Group Limited. We are leveraging a core set of skills under one roof, with the aim of spinning out and commercialising new project ideas from R&D as resources permit. Mind you – our journey would be a lot more fruitful if we could spend more time on commercialisation and less on red tape. Dealing with the various government agencies that are supposedly supporting technology innovation and intellectual property protection is a bit like wading through treacle at present.

Wellington to the World to Showcase Local Tech Innovation

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I’m currently project managing Unlimited Potential’s Wellington to the World Event (W2W) to be held on Friday 7th November. There are so many really neat tech firms that are just bubbling below the surface that we thought we would create a great event around launching a few of them onto the world stage. If you are a technology firm based in the Greater Wellington Region and focused on growing through engaging with global markets, you need to be at W2W. With the support of its sponsors such as 920, Grow Wellington and Gen-i, Unlimited Potential are hoping to make this important event an annual fixture.

 

W2W involves live networking with angel investors plus business pitches from local technology companies that will be video-cast to a global web audience of innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors with the assistance of KEA the Kiwi Ex-Pats association. KEA now has over 27,000 members globally, many of whom are in business and want to help New Zealand businesses go global. There will also be some presentations of cutting edge ICT research from Victoria University that has commercialisation potential. The Wellington City Council, Wellington Convention Centre and VicLink are to be applauded for getting behind the initiative.

 

We are looking for new faces! Emerging technology companies wishing to raise their profile, can articulate their message well and which have the capacity to scale up and go global – now is the time to step forward.

 

Contact me directly, if you are an emerging technology venture with a great story to tell.

ION e-Letter August/September 2008

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GeniusNet is proud to host the ION e-Letter. ION is New Zealand’s leading virtual community for innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors.

 EGLRevera

DIY Online for Dad’s Day

Fresh from their debut Morning TV experience the Dad’s from DIYFather.com are on the final countdown to Fathers’ Day. The global website aggregates rich educational content tailored specifically for fathers from both New Zealand and abroad. The site promotes a sense of community around the important job of being a Dad in the modern world including linking to resources through the SKIP parenting skills programme. Site users can upload their own stories and articles, promote father related events and enjoy loads of multimedia content about parenting.

W2W  Showcase Kicks Off Capital Tech Fest

Creative Wellington Innovation CapitalWellington is blessed with a plethora of high tech events in November. First off the block on Friday 7th November is Unlimited Potential’s long awaited innovation  launchpad gig Wellington to the World (W2W). This event is aimed at showcasing undiscovered local technology talent and emergent university ICT research with commercialisation potential. Presentations will be videocast to a global audience. Expressions of interest to: paul (at} up {dot) org (dot] nz

The AnimFX conference and AFCI Cineposium follow later in the month.

Software Freedom Day ’08

Speaking of cool tech events, Software Freedom Day ’08 is almost upon us. The 20th September event will feature an ‘open source barcamp’ and ‘hackfest’. The event is an opportunity to develop code, share experiences, drink good coffee and celebrate the joy of open source software. Around 150 developers are expected to attend the half day event. SFD are urgently looking for one more co-sponsor for this event, an opportunity to put your brand in front of NZ’s leading developers. Contact organiser Jayne Wallis directly   jayne (at} up {dot) org [dot} nz

ideegeo Leveraging Developer Talents

ideegeo

Software development firm ideegeo Group Limited has its sights set on dominating the Internet domain name management space globally. Two of the co-founders are recently arrived skilled migrants who chose to reverse the brain drain and move to New Zealand for lifestyle reasons. Now the firm is building a services export business based around developing high volume, web-based transactional technologies for enterprise applications. In addition to building their own suite of products, ideegeo provides development consulting and software trouble-shooting in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby and also devises implementations involving databases such as SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle. Enquiries to paul {at] ideegeo (dot) com

Networking at Software NZ – 9th Sept

NZSA hold their popular monthly networking dinner on Tuesday evening in Auckland. The speaker is i-lign CEO Tony Crewdson. Learn from the mistakes and successes of his 30 year career in the New Zealand I.T. industry and enjoy networking with your peers at the Viaduct venue.

i-Phone Spawns Kiwi Innovation

With Apple anticipating global sales of its 3G i-Phone to reach 10 million units in 2008, Kiwi developers are launching mobile apps in all directions. Orsome let you watch the weather or track your TradeMe auctions, ideegeo will shortly launch a data management tool and Polar Bear Farm have already enjoyed huge success with their search app. It seems like New Zealand developers are rising to the challenge of this emerging market.

ION Member Profile – Tim de Jardine

Tim is a New Zealand based business consultant and technology entrepreneur who thinks outside the circle when it comes to management and innovation. Tim is also a director of Hirewall a start-up venture that offers online management of the employee recruitment process. You can check out his thought-provoking weblog here.

IONise Yourself

Starting a new tech venture? Want to promote your innovation event? Need to connect with innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors or investors? Post a reply on this blog, share about it on the ION forum or simply drop us a line.

ion [at} genius (dot| net {dot) nz

Please note that the ION forum is active but you need to be logged in to make the most recent posts visible.

www.ion.net.nz

Developing a National Innovation Blueprint

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Corporates such as Intel and Cisco naturally want to promote us becoming more e-enabled because there’s a buck in it for them. But large multinationals are the natural born enemy of innovation, when you think about patent litigation costs and the detrimental effects of technology cartels. So I take it with a grain of salt when I hear that they have been filling conference halls on the topic of innovation. 

Notwithstanding my cynicism, the idea of a national innovation blueprint is a good one. Improving broadband infrastructure would help, but even if we could open an electronic super-highway to the world tomorrow, it’s not a panacea on its own. The primary choke on opening up the commercialisation of technology in New Zealand is lack of capital, not lack of ideas or lack of broadband. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that geographical proximity has a lot to do with investment decisions in the tech sector and for that we suffer. Hence the plea for high growth ventures to get offshore quickly.

Kiwis also hate divesting control and this is an additional barrier to growth. In fact we’ve already had this debate amongst the founders of our new venture as we begin to develop a product suite with global reach. The antidote is better education, more mentorship and good role modelling by other entrepreneurs who made the leap and succeeded without selling their souls. You can build a great business whilst still enjoying the lifestyle New Zealand has to offer.

Lastly, the vast majority of businesses will not receive any venture funding and may never grow beyond 5 or 10 employees. Yet, they pay tax regularly and put bread on the table of families. There is no certainly no shame in this. Perhaps one focus of a national innovation blueprint is that we need to better identify the really hot opportunities from amongst those hard-working small businesses and provide intensive practical support to build their value proposition and connect to the real world out there.

Do World Cities Have an Entrepreneurial Advantage?

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According to media reports, a recent study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) names Auckland as the OECD’s most entrepreneurial city. With all due respect, I beg to differ.

I could not find any recent reports by GEM specifically identifying Auckland as the most entrepreneurial OECD city, however I did locate a July 2008 paper exploring the hypothesis, proposed by the work of Prof. Richard Florida and others, that “world cities” attract creative people and enterprises and are hence more entrepreneurial.  Whilst I respect the idea that “creative class” and creative cities engender more entrepreneurial dynamism, I’m concerned by one or two shortcomings in the GEM methodology that seem to cloud some of the conclusions in the recent paper.

Firstly the GEM research questions subjects about their perceptions of entrepreneurial behaviours and opportunities and gives these values overly significant weighting, as opposed to assessing and reporting on actual levels of entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore it is assumed that regions with large numbers of aspirant or early stage entrepreneurs equates to economic success, when this is not neccessarily the case. An area with established and profitable businesses may be more economically successful than a region with many start-ups. The study is also a wee bit vague on defining exactly what a “world city” is. Finally, the research excludes a number of cities where high value technology entrepreneurship thrives such as Wellington, Adelaide, San Francisco and Taipei, for example.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, it is a shame that the GEM research has not received funding in New Zealand over the last three years. The data is useful as a benchmarking tool and the methodology should be made more widely available so that excluded cities could make their own comparisons. It is unfortunate that no New Zealand data is available beyond 2005, hence we cannot be sure of what the current position might be. What we do know however, looking at the data up until 2005, is that when we include non-OECD cities, Auckland ranks similarly to Santiago, Buenos Aires and Bangkok in terms of “early stage entrepreneurial activity”.  Is that really the company we want to keep? In other words, high levels of entrepreneurial activity do not neccessarily equate to high economic returns. But there’s worse news.

When we consider the data on prevalence rates of entrepreneurial activity by city versus national figures, Auckland actually demonstrates levels less than that of New Zealand as a whole -at least according to the research.

Almost Free Software – Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

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The debate over whether or not software should be made freely available has been around for a long time. Can we afford such idealism? Perhaps there is a middle ground.

There are two different threads when we talk about “free software”. The first involves releasing actual code for public use; the second discussion is about providing free access to an application but without giving away the code. The latter is obviously a lot more manageable these days because of the SaaS model. But why would you bother? If you have to pay for employees, premises and some hosting, you better make sure there is some revenue coming in.

On the other hand, the fact that I can even publish this article here today is a direct result of the “crowd sourcing” approach that has spilled over from the open source community into the development of social media. Also, I’m sure we can all think of plenty of businesses which gave away their software and then built a lucrative consulting revenue stream around it. So there are clearly some tangible benefits to encouraging the open source philosophical movement to flourish and grow.

There was a great discussion thread about the (non)monetisation of Web 2.0 over on Diversity recently. Giving your product away, before you can figure out how to make money out of it, is the quickest way to destroy value in any business argues Ben. I agree. Using venture capital to prop up an ultimately unsustainable business model with over-inflated valuations is an abomination only one step removed from pyramid selling. But, maybe it’s how you go about giving away your software that matters.

We have a couple of products in the pipeline at ideegeo but with two completely different marketing and monetisation strategies planned. The first is a mobile application targetted at a niche audience which we will sell for quite a low margin through an online store. I will be overjoyed if we break even on the time spent developing it. However, it will raise our profile and demonstrate capability. The second product will be given away completely for free through our own website. The hook is that we get paid a small amount every time someone actually uses it (which is often). The clients will happily pay because the application demonstrably drives more business their way. If the application needs improvement, we will also get very rapid feedback.

My point is that the Internet has completely revolutionalised both software development and marketing. If you develop “almost free” software and then make it available to a very large number of users at only a very modest cost, everybody wins.

Next month Unlimited Potential are proudly hosting Richard Stallman as special guest speaker in the lead up to the Geeks, Games and Gadgets ’08 event.

Stallman founded the GNU Project an open source software development project that contributed substantively to the genesis of the Linux operating system. At times controversial, the title of “open source guru” seems quite aptly applied in the context of Stallman’s thought leadership. Social media and especially Wikipedia had not even been conceived of at the time of this 1996 interview, but it illustrates his visionary abilities.

Whatever your position on open source or the debate around competing public licensing systems, this seminar is likely to be a thought provoking one. Registration is highly recommended for what will no doubt be a popular session.