Tim Calder

Last week I met with Pierre-Em and Jason over drink at South Bar to catchup with how our ventures are progressing. Pierre-Em is the co-founder of G-tours which is developing a cross platform software solution that combines GPS technology and data management on mobile devices for the tourism industry. Jason is the co-founder of PocketSmith which is an online cash flow management system used to help you budget for future purchases/savings goals.

At this meeting we talked about forming an ICT network of young entrepreneurs around Dunedin who would meet regularly to discuss our highs & lows, successes & challenges. We would also use this opportunty to allow people to network with other companies in related industries and to listen to guest speakers and angel investors. This would also provide people like us with a chance to discuss the support they require as many new business ventures are not aware of what organisations can help them.

One of the main objectives of forming this group would be to endeavor to gather together enough like-minded people that have great ICT ideas which need developing so that we can establish New Zealand’s first Y-Combinator which we would call The Distiller.

Y Combinator is a new kind of venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups. We help startups through what is for many the hardest step, from idea to company.

We invest mostly in software and web services. And because we are ourselves technology people, we prefer groups with a lot of technical depth. We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan.

The Y-Combinator has experienced huge success overseas with a range of great investor ready businesses coming out of incubation regularly. We believe this can be replicated in Dunedin as there is already the key components of this concept in place;

• Kickstart Entrepreneurial support,
• UPSTART Business incubator,
• New Zealand’s most valuable Angel Investor network,
• Otago University’s Centre for Innovation and research,
• and five supportive regional mayors which make up the Otago Forward Economic Development Strategy

In the next few weeks we will be approaching these different organisations and others to try to establish ways that we can all work together to achieve success. At the same time we need to start our regular meetings at the Dunedin Club where we have been allocated conference rooms and more importantly the bar.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Blogging, The Distiller, The Otago MBA, Web.