Tim Calder

The Our Stadium Supporters Club received an unarranged win yesterday as the Dunedin City Council public notifications to the land rezoning submissions were published with 108 for the stadium and 107 against. Even after heavy negative campaigning by the ‘Stop the Stadium’ group over these past few weeks, a positive outcome was achieved for the Carisbrook Stadium Trusts development. It was the decision of our committee that we reframe from rallying the support of our 3500 strong membership database as this would only slow the already delayed rezoning process. The intention was to produce quality submissions, not quantity, whereby submitters were able to be present to speak to their submission.

It was a sad day for University Rugby yesterday as Tiari won the promotion relegation game that allows them to play in the Premier Metropolitan Division. This is the end of an extremely long era of both University A’s and B’s playing in the same premier division. The University A’s is our clubs top team which has been made possible by the support they have received over the years by University B’s players. Now that the B’s will more than likely be dropped a division to the prem II’s our club will find it increasingly difficult for us to attract competitive players. On the flip side, I think that the creation of this new division in the club will allow for a wider range of skilled rugby players to play for a team that will suit their ability. I know this because every year, for the past 6 years, I have sat at the University Rugby stand in Tent City over University Orientation week and watched students being turned off because they are over 21, and cannot play Colts Rugby, which means they have to play open grade, premier division, University B’s rugby. This is often a big ask for our international students whom have only played rugby in less developed rugby nations. With this in mind, our club might gain some strength from appealing to a wider range of abilities which they were never able to before as the high standard of rugby in the division did not allow it.

EZY STOR Self Storage has reached the stage where we require dedicated storage software. Storman is professional storage software designed to improve the operations of your storage facility by keeping better track of your customers account details, tracking customers in’s and out’s, and by producing several detailed facility/business reports. We have tried the demo and have looked at other software packages on the market before we made up our minds to go ahead with the software. One aspect that held us back for a while now was the high cost of this software, it seems that all industry related companies are taking advantage of the strong growth in New Zealand self storage by charging huge amounts for relatively simple software. Where Storman have the monopoly is that most other software is largely related to the US self storage industry whereby Storman is the only prominent software in Australasia.

The one thing that I have been searching for in Self Storage Software that I haven’t found anywhere is the ability to operate it online. EZY STOR Self Storage has four facilities across Dunedin, and are constructing another site as we speak, which are all run out of the same head office located in the center of town. If we were able to access all of our facilities remotely from any location this would enable the ability to sign up customers, check accounts, and open the security gates while onsite at any facility. As internet is becoming more accessible via iPhone and other portable systems the ability to operate online is becoming more important. Unfortunately I don’t think that this feature is on the cards for the next few years as there is no real push for Storman or any other software company to provide it. Most self storage facilities are run by owner/operators which generally manager their own single facility so don’t have the problem of having to get across town to meet another customer. And of course as there is very little competition with self storage software providers there is no need to innovate to remain competitive.

Kickstart is an excellent promoter of Entrepreneurship in Dunedin and has helped a surprisingly large amount of students in from the University of Otago and the Otago Polytechnic. Kickstart representatives are present at all the major business seminars held in Dunedin by either the University, Polytechnic, Chamber of Commerce, or other organisations like BioSouth. With the support of the University of Otago School of Business, Kickstart has a ‘Start-up’ lounge where students have access to business material, meeting rooms and internet. ‘Start-up’ is a great place to meet like minded people, share some ideas you’re working on, and make some good business contacts. I am encouraged to read how many students have taken advantage of Kickstart’s resources and setup their own business.

Some statistics to date (as at November 2007):

• Over 2700 students spoken to at lectures across a wide range of departments
• 1505 one-on-one student consultations since February 2005
• 230 have started a business alongside their study
• Wide range of study majors (45% Business, 36% Science, 19% Humanities)
• 61% of the general student population has considered their own business
• 31% of the general student population knows of the Kickstart service

Kickstart also runs the NBR Audacious Otago Business Plan Challenge which is held annually and makes available prizes to the value of $50,000 to launch student business ideas and plans. More valuable than the money is the UPSTART Business Incubators services which includes professional mentoring from very experienced current business people who can also put you in front of Angel Investors when your business is ready.

Our new Otago University Student Association (OUSA) President for 2009 is Jo Moore, who beat off 7 other candidates, all male. Jo’s main campaign platform was that she and her incoming committee would investigate the Otago University moving to a four day a week tuition programme which would mean that students would have day free whereby they could work, study, or focus on other endeavors. This move would allow the Otago University to reduce their carbon footprint by not requiring to heat, clean, and administer tuition areas on this day. I think this is an innovative idea to improve the Otago University Education. This concept would promote a far more efficient use of time in an age whereby costs are increasing, time is becoming far more valuable and student allowances are remaining the same.

I look forward to speaking with Jo, once she settles in to her new role, on her views of the Awatea Street Stadium development and to see whether her committee of executives support or are against this topical subject in Dunedin. This years President, Simon Wilson, was on the fence of the stadium proposal stating that the Otago University’s enrollment numbers are looking to be capped so any additional benefit from the stadium that would attract more students to Dunedin would be ineffective, although agreed that as a student he could see what an attraction this could become. Under Simon’s presidency, OUSA moved that they (the student body representative) were against the stadium development as many students believed that this joint venture with the Otago University, City and Regional Councils, would result in their fees going up… It is a fact however that the Otago University are looking to invest over $150m in purchasing land & buildings in the coming 5 years. I believe that the figures that they have indicated they will contribute to the stadium development would be better spent than competing with other investors for the limited supply commercial property.

Although I have banked with Rabobank for as long as I can remember and still use them for my personal and trust accounts, I am pleased with my decision to start using The National Bank as my specialised business banker. I have enjoyed working closely with Business Banking Manager Matthew Elliott who has supported me with the right advise which has allowed me to move forward productively. With Matthew’s authority as a Banking Manager and ability to easily access, I have avioded costly delays in waiting for approvals to be made, instead additional short term funding has been promptly provided. Matthew has also been quite flexible with bank charges over the first 6 months of operations and continues to assess charges depending on our business situation. Matthew’s genuine interest the businesses I am involved in supports The National Bank’s image as a bank that works for your businesses best interests.

Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners have combined their investments and have given LinkedIn a $53 million round of funding which creates a valuation of $1B.

I use Linkedin frequently and have found the professional applications of this site useful when making, sharing and recording contacts where Facebook isn’t suitable. I have recently added my Linkedin profile to the footer of the Bio page of this blog so that colleagues can add me to their network and share my contacts. I feel New Zealander’s are only slowly catching on to this Professional Networking Application as many of the people I deal with are still yet to register. Many of my older (and often more valuable) contacts don’t even check their own email so would battle with the concept of joining an online professional network.

“If LinkedIn is able to achieve its goals and objectives in the coming years, this valuation of a billion dollars will be looked upon as very cheap,” stated Mark Kvamme, Sequoia Capital partner/LinkedIn Board of Director.

I believe that Linkedin will continue to be successful as they have managed to obtain a strong first mover advantage with no known competitors. Although people may have several social networking profiles in order to fit in with different sets of friends, everyone will only require one professional profile, and that will be with Linkedin.

The UPSTART Business Incubator is an excellent facility for all developing entrepreneurs to receive support and guidance for their high growth businesses. UPSTART was initially formed and funded by the Dunedin City Council, University of Otago, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE). Within only four years UPSTART has produced many successful companies that have gone on to continue growing which is a positive testament to their incubation programme.

I have been fortunate to work with both Norman Evans (CEO) and Murray Downes (GM) on business ideas that partners and I have had. The team at UPSTART are very good at what they do because they too are entrepreneurs so know exactly what needs to be done with any developing business. I have just finished speaking with Norman about a business I am developing at the moment called NetPosition. After I gave a fairly average pitch, Norman was quickly able to establish the strengths of my business and some potential areas of difficulty.

This years NBR Audacious Business Plan Competition has finally arrived. Dunedin is very fortunate to have well organised business competitions like this. Last year I was a finalist in this Business Plan competition with my business Foot-Print-Free which attempted to develop a system whereby paper based receipts would be replaced by digitally chipped cards which transferred the detailed information produced at the point of sale to an online storage system. I have taken the advice from last years Judges on board in this years entry by attempting to produce a simpler, more cost effective solution. Last year’s winner, Craig Smith, is developing his own software company called LanguagePerfect which designs Language learning tools to assist with NCEA.

After a little bit of configuring I have now setup up my Twitter account. I first came across Twitter in the new STARTUP magazine which reports on new innovative web based businesses. Wikipedia’s definition of Twitter is:

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users (also known as twits) to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”

Twitter is very easy to use and is following the growing movement of blogging in general. Until I get an iPhone, and can remotely use Wordpress, I will use Twitter to make micro posts which can be read by followers on Twitter or on my Facebook page through FeedFinder. As technology develops so does the need to change ones current habits, instead of writing a new idea down you can send a ‘tweet’ to Twitter to hear what your followers think…