Attacks On Economic Agency Unfair

Posted on Friday, 10 February, 2012 by Paul Spence

Grow Wellington may have failed to trumpet its successes loudly enough, but it doesn’t deserve the criticism that is currently being heaped upon it as the seriously flawed Wellington regional economic strategy (WRS) has undergone review. The economic development agency has done a relatively good job of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear within a recessionary environment in which the central government focus has been on other parts of the country.

It beggars belief that plans are afoot to abscond with $600K of the agency’s annual budget to fund the WRS office to “administer” the strategy. It’s not clear how creating another layer of bureaucracy will enhance the region’s economic performance however. Past complaints by the Wellington Chamber of Commerce demonstrate a deep ignorance of the outstanding network building and facilitation work that Grow Wellington has undertaken and the cheap attacks look like nothing more than a desperate attempt by the Chamber to remain relevant.

Last year’s Rugby World Cup was a pleasant distraction for some, but an economic fizzer for the region overall, as predicted by every study looking at the long term value of such large scale events. But sound academic research and global best practice has never been the basis for the regional economic strategy, a document that was prepared by local management consultants. At no time did the strategy charge Grow Wellington with researching and advocating on regional infrastructure and accordingly the organisation does not employ researchers or economists. One would have thought this was in fact the Chamber’s role, hence their criticism should be directed inwards.

Wellington needs better public transport, an infusion of entrepreneurial culture plus more and ongoing investment into productive and high value parts of the economy, including facilitating foreign capital. On the other side of the ledger, we also need to preserve the quality of life that we currently enjoy because this is the basis for skilled migrant attraction. Look around – at least half of the technology start-ups in the region have been created by recent arrivals. That is an economic success story that should be told far more often.

You can follow the author on Twitter @GeniusNet

Mega Takedown

Posted on Wednesday, 25 January, 2012 by Paul Spence

The Coatesville police raid and subsequent removal of the MegaUpload site should serve as a reminder to us all about how powerful governments and corporations now intend to exercise increasing control of the wild west known as the Internet, through both new legislation and legal prosecutions. It would also be foolish to continue assuming that tiny, remote New Zealand is immune from the growing American political appetite for punishing the alleged purveyors (and consumers) of pirated material.

Irrespective of what you think about Mr Dotcom and the legitimacy of his business, it’s important that the matter be given due process through the Courts and that we do not prejudge the outcome or bow unthinkingly to the will of foreign governments. There are powerful forces at work as witnessed recently with the U.S. senate coming under heavy lobbying pressure from the entertainment industry.

It’s clear that our government want to be cooperative, especially with increasingly frequent connections being made between favourable trade outcomes and the protection of intellectual property rights for American companies. What better place to exercise a show of force than in a small, compliant island state in the south-west Pacific. Why else would such an over-the-top para-military style operation be permitted in the Prime Minister’s own electorate on an individual who had recently received approval for New Zealand residency? It’s astounding.

The SOPA debate and the moral panic around piracy in the United States has largely arisen because of the ongoing failure of the media and entertainment industry to innovate its distribution channels rapidly enough. The rise of file sharing and related sites is simply a symptom of that failure in the marketplace. Without question, creative individuals deserve to be fairly remunerated for their efforts and creative industries should be allowed to make a profit, but not at the expense of Internet freedom.

Police raids and draconian legislation are ultimately more likely to inflame than to discourage. An intolerant approach towards content sharing enterprises in general may also have unintended consequences for “law abiding” users caught up in crackdowns. Perhaps the hackers and hosters should be invited to provide a technological solution to the digital creative sector that everyone can live with?

Building Our Innovation Ecosystem

Posted on Friday, 9 December, 2011 by Paul Spence

Innovation, incubation and competitiveness are firmly back on the political agenda. 2011 has been a busy year, with the government setting about reforming publicly funded scientific research and reconfiguring IRL in an effort to drive more commercialisation activity in the technology sector. The government funded trade agency has also been talking up successes from its incubator programme. In the meantime, the recently formed Productivity Commission has quietly begun developing an academic framework to address infrastructural inefficiencies in the New Zealand economy.

In this context, it was unsurprising to see some recent commentary that was highly critical of the manner in which government gets involved in innovation and business. More specifically, Rowan’s comments alluded to some deficiencies in the methodologies being employed by business incubators when advising software start-ups. Notwithstanding the fact that incubators are generalists and lack the huge depth of experience and background of success that Rowan brings to his own web and software ventures, there were some fair criticisms which pleasingly generated a lot of intelligent follow-up discussion.

Where I parted company with this debate however was when the tone shifted towards questioning the necessity for providing events to engage the start-up community. Most readers will be aware that I’m deeply involved in organising such activities in addition to my role as a co-founder of a couple of tech companies. One of these companies is pre-revenue start-up, the other is growth phase and profitable. Being involved in the community is a deliberate strategy which is partly altruistic (because it’s fun), but also good for business. We are only as strong as the people around us.

The government’s moves to redefine how we approach identifying and commercialising high value science and technology based ventures are oxygen for our economic flame; so too are the various contributions made by formal incubators, informal “innovation hubs”, university commercialisation offices and the various business related events and competitions. The Ministry of Science & Innovation’s report on Powering Innovation even talks about “…the creative connection of talented minds across discipline boundaries“. We do not need to emulate Silicon Valley, but we should learn from that ecosystem model.

Around the world, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as both a legitimate career option for young people and a growth spark in an otherwise dull economy. At a time when youth unemployment stands at around 30% in New Zealand, we cannot afford to ignore the opportunity of infusing young people with an entrepreneurial spirit. I recently attended the 30th anniversary celebration of the Young Enterprise Trust. This organisation provides entrepreneurship programmes for high schools and counts such luminaries as Rod Drury and Seeby Woodhouse amongst its alumni, demonstrating the importance of a community approach to entrepreneurship education.

Building an entrepreneurial and export focused culture has never been so important as now, with traditional models breaking down faster than ever. Knowledge sharing and relationship building within and amongst our specialist communities is foundational to strengthening our innovation ecosystem. We can no longer afford to operate in silos or to make the assumption that there is only a single approach to building cool businesses that solve real problems and generate economic returns.

The Day After

Posted on Monday, 28 November, 2011 by Paul Spence

On Sunday we woke up to – well pretty much the same flavour of government we had the day before, thanks to voter apathy and one or two quirks of fate. Although Prime Minister Key has predictably adopted the position of “business as usual”, the next three years look anything but usual.

Saturday’s election outcome was fairly consistent with what the polls had been predicting in the week prior. But the returning National government will need to tread warily and not drift too far right. With 48% backing from two thirds of the enrolled electorate meaning only 32% of the adult population has their support. If parties on the Left can better galvanise voters in 2014, the outcome may be very different.

There was some good news in that potentially disruptive, extremist political parties ACT and Mana had their support base obliterated. The one exception was Epsom where greed and stupidity seems to have prevailed. Even the Labour voters in that electorate wasted the opportunity to excise their controversial and divisive former mayor. It may be a moot point, with the ACT party imploding on election night and Banks set to become a National minister in all but name.

The other piece of good news was that the Greens achieved their goal of topping 10% in party votes. An astounding effort after intelligently repositioning themselves over the previous 18 months since the departure of some of their looney fringe elements. The Greens deserved these gains and I hope Key will continue the relationship which has already seen the adoption of some of their more sensible policies. The Greens were also the party that proposed a clean technology fund for New Zealand companies in their manifesto and who have made a commitment to clean up our cow shit infected waterways.

It’s clear that Europe isn’t out of the economic woods yet and China may be on the verge of deflating. A steady hand will be needed on the tiller in the medium term. National would do well to form an inclusive government that sets a cooperative tone for the challenges that lie ahead.

A Day In The Life

Posted on Friday, 4 November, 2011 by Paul Spence

I’ve been doing a lot of writing for other blogs lately to help promote the Wellington start-up and innovation scene. So I thought it was about time I posted something on GeniusNet for a change. It has been a crazy but exciting time.

We are about to have our first Wellington Startup Weekend, the Bright Ideas Challenge has just drawn to a close and it has been a busy year at Unlimited Potential. We are also working with a couple of young entrepreneurs through our pre-incubation initiative at ideegeo and of course there is the day-to-day operational side of iWantMyName to take care of.

Fortunately we take our community role very seriously at iWantMyName and are pleased that we are now in a position to contribute some time and resources to various tech and innovation events around town. It’s part of our business DNA, so to speak. I’m also involved with another initiative called 100Plus that aims to deliver an exciting regional technology innovation event in 2012. Early days, but we already have some good partners on board. Watch this space.

Part of the reason the start-up scene has so much energy at present is that our local economic development agency Grow Wellington have put in a huge effort over the last couple of years. There’s a growing understanding that community building and knowledge sharing are pivotal to developing (and maintaining) an entrepreneurial culture. As a society we also need to be prepared to take some risks and make investments in research, science and technology related businesses, full in the knowledge that only some will succeed.

Governmental agencies are sometimes criticised for spending public money on “picking winners”. That’s a little unfair. The alternative approach is not to celebrate our successes. All of us in business need a little inspiration and encouragement periodically, especially in these challenging economic times.

iWantMyName – The Next Steps

Posted on Thursday, 22 September, 2011 by Paul Spence

A lot of people have been asking me recently how iWantMyName is going. The short answer is that it’s going great! We’ve been profitable this year and have had our heads down working hard laying both the technological and business organisational foundations that we need to grow. The challenge has been in making the transition from a small start-up business to a fully fledged, high growth technology story.

I certainly won’t say that it’s been easy. Everyone on the team has made sacrifices and we even had one or two nervous moments during the early days when we wondered if we would make budget and be able to pay salaries or rent. It comes with the territory. Being a start-up entrepreneur is like being on a mad roller coaster ride. It can be both thrilling and terrifying, especially if you are bootstrapping.

I meet a lot of budding web entrepreneurs and one of the first questions I ask them is, “are you ready for 2-3 years without a proper income?” It can easily take that long to carve out a niche for yourself and get meaningful revenues going. That’s without factoring in the vagaries of foreign exchange rates.

Notwithstanding the challenges ahead, we’ve got big plans for lots more features and fresh content on our New Zealand domain registrar site plus a major makeover of our search functionality across all four of our sites globally. There are also new and popular hosted services being posted almost weekly, so users can have smart one-click DNS set-up on their domains. We’re positioning iWantMyName as a next generation domain and DNS management service with an eye on future opportunities emerging with the new top level domains and internationalised domain names.

In addition, we’ve also started a new venture to advise young web entrepreneurs and share some of the experience we have gained on the journey so far. In fact we continue to be actively involved in supporting tech community events such as through Unlimited Potential, Startup Weekend, PXLJam and Perl Mongers to name but a few. We think it’s an exciting place to be as technology entrepreneurship continues to gain a greater profile as a career and lifestyle choice.

Keep in touch with us on Twitter @iWantMyNameNZ

100+ Rewiring The Productive Economy

Posted on Saturday, 3 September, 2011 by Paul Spence

We live in interesting times. Last month I attended a seminar looking at productivity in the New Zealand economy and how we can improve. The most overwhelming aspect of the event however was that most of the attendees were white, male and aged 50 or older. Furthermore, much of the focus was on making changes to macroeconomic settings, rather than making an attitudinal shift. If we are to address this issue in a meaningful way we need to engage with a far broader church, including politicians, scientists, entrepreneurs and investors from across the spectrum who are committed to change – not just economists.

With our over-dependence on high volume, low value food commodities to generate income and an over-investment in non productive assets such as property, we have seen per capita income dropping rapidly over the last decade. The flow-on effect has been a return to net outwards migration at levels unseen in the last thirty years. New Zealand is close to entering a death spiral, in terms of an inability to pay for social services in the future, if we don’t fix this right now! Within the next thirty years we will reach a tipping point at which a minority of the population is working to support the dependent majority.

Each speaker at the seminar was tasked with presenting a simple, yet radical idea that could move the goalposts on productivity, in an effort to stem the flow of emigrants and ensure we can fund our future. Some of the ideas were downright batty, but at least people were thinking and talking – which is more than successive governments have achieved so far. In fact, perhaps the single biggest issue is leadership inaction in the face of political expediency. It will take more than speeches and a cup of tea to solve these problems. So here’s my ten cents worth.

It seems we can easily find $10 million to build a temporary booze hall for rugby patrons on Auckland’s waterfront, yet we continue to struggle to provide a coordinated approach to identifying and commercialising world class science in New Zealand. If the government lacks the gumption to look beyond a three year electoral cycle, then the private sector must take a stronger leadership position on the matter.

There’s plenty of cash sloshing around in superannuation funds, but if it means accessing foreign capital and connections to get on with the job, so be it. Endeavour capital see the opportunity, why not others? We should aim for 100+ Lanzatech or Endace type companies. That requires making project opportunities transparent and going big, whilst retaining a NZ Inc. stake in the intellectual property. It means identifying top talent to lead commercialisation. It will also require a complete change of mindset in some of the more conservative knowledge silos around the country.

Where Are We Going?

Posted on Monday, 15 August, 2011 by Paul Spence

I’ve been trying to make sense lately of an avalanche of economic news and social data that has overtaken us and in particular has implications for the young and disenfranchised worldwide.

On the one hand bankers, politicians and media magnates in suits have got away with crimes that seem only to empower the apparatus of what is looking like an increasingly discredited and ailing economic system. On the other hand looters are venting their anger by targeting the very consumer goods produced by that system. It’s hard to separate the looming economic collapse from the steady erosion of morality across society in general, yet the traditional media at first seem reluctant to make that connection. Perhaps because they are entirely complicit.

Phone tapping and gross invasion of personal privacy were the hallmark of Murdoch’s now discredited tabloids. Perhaps the tattle tale gossip was a tonic aimed squarely at deflecting attention by the masses from the really big issues facing the world? At first glance there may seem to be no connection between double-dipping politicians, eavesdropping media and riots. But England is clearly a nation in crisis on many levels at present and where England goes others in the Eurozone are sure to follow. That has implications for global sentiment, which impacts on small trading nations such as ours.

Now Prime Minister John Key is promoting a poor card for young beneficiaries in an effort to curb welfare dependency and the misappropriation of state funds. Isn’t this precisely the kind of misdirected, pandering politics that brought England to its knees? More importantly, where is the leadership vision that will drive meaningful economic growth, promote education and create jobs for young people instead? There was one good news story however. According to a recent report on the economic cost of failing to invest in early childhood, it turns out we beat Turkey and Mexico in an OECD ranking of social spending in this area. That is simply embarrassing.

Where are we going?

CGT A Setback For Innovation

Posted on Sunday, 10 July, 2011 by Paul Spence

The Global Innovation Index judges nations’ progress against a basket of parameters including infrastructure, research output plus market stability and institutional strength. In 2010 New Zealand surged ahead to 9th place out of 125 countries after languishing at 27 the previous year. But in 2011 we dropped back a little to 15th place, or more correctly, we were slightly overtaken by our close competitors U.S., U.K., Ireland and Canada. Whilst there’s no need for alarm, we must remain vigilant that government keeps the right settings in place and that businesses continue to take advantage of global opportunities by leveraging our creativity and growing new knowledge. I remain optimistic.

Last week I attended the outstanding Ice Ideas conference presented by the much lauded Icehouse business incubator which has a close relationship with the University of Auckland and has been involved in raising $50 million in funding for high-tech companies in the ten years since its inception. The incubator has now set itself the goal of achieving 3000 new business launches over the next decade. It’s an unashamed grab for more deal flow and a call to action for the community to support the initiative financially, for the betterment of NZ Inc.

Incubation is certainly a valuable aspect of the overall innovation ecosystem and I applaud these efforts. But we must also ensure that other structural features are strengthened, not undermined. Not the least of these is ensuring that the spectre of a capital gains tax (CGT) on business asset sales never sees the light of day. On the other hand, some kind of modest taxation of gains on speculative property transactions certainly has merit, in order to encourage more productive forms of investment. Unfortunately the two issues, although related, tend to become intertwined in the minds of the public as politicians desperately seek to gain a foothold.

A capital gains tax on business sales would discourage investment and accelerate the loss of talent offshore by taking away one of the key competitive advantages that we have over other developed economies. It may also have a negative impact on New Zealand’s standing as an innovative and business investment friendly destination.

Speaker presentations from the Ice Ideas conference are available here.

You can follow the author on Twitter @GeniusNet

Brand Value + Cashflow = Win

Posted on Wednesday, 6 July, 2011 by Paul Spence

Despite some over cooked fund raisings causing a few ripples recently . A couple of high profile trade sales underline the value that a great brand brings to a business.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about whether there’s another tech bubble forming, but I see two separate themes emerging. On the one hand there’s companies like Color and Pandora that raised funding purely on the strength of an idea and a solid team. Neither company has revealed how or when they will generate revenue. There was much hand wringing after Color’s VC round and Pandora’s share price crashed almost immediately post IPO. These are worrying signals in a market where entrepreneurs are being told to go out and raise as much cash as possible, whilst times are still good.

On the other hand, there are solid companies with good revenues and little debt that are cashing up through trade sale opportunities. The Go Daddy transaction was a case in point. This deal had been in the making for some time and looks like a win-win for both the founders and the institutional investors in terms of timing. Obviously it was of great interest to us at iWantMyName because GD are the largest domain registrar on the planet, with around a quarter of the entire global market.

Closer to home, the $139M buyout of listed drinks maker Charlies by Japan’s largest brewer Asahi also looks like a big win. What all of these companies have in common are great brand assets. Where they differ is that some of them not only do not generate profits, but in some cases the value proposition is less than clear. Even a great brand cannot compensate for these failings. Winning companies have recognisable brands, high performing systems or technologies and a means of generating repeating revenues. You’d have to be a right Charlie to invest in a company that didn’t have these attributes.