Tim Calder

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

John Gardener has today launched his new ‘Dance Dunedin‘ Ballroom Dancing School website. John is a first class, certified ballroom dancing teacher and has been teaching Dancing in Dunedin for over 30 years. John’s new website will now take over the old (and inadequate) Finda.co.nz and with the ability to offer more photo images his new site will be far more interesting. I am now into my third year of dancing under John’s guidance and have learnt far more types and styles of dances than I ever thought possible.

This evening Students of the University of Otago were fortunate to participate in Public Policy discussions with the New Zealand Business Roundtable Executive Director, Rodger Kerr. Unfortunately much of the discussion seemed to circle around the recent event of Winston Peters and the undeclared donation of funds to the Spencer Trust.

It was good to see however the range of different diciplines the students came from and how each of their questions related to policies that would potentially effect their future careers. There was a good turn out of business students, many of which had recently competed in the Audacious Business Plan Competition who had some excellent questions for Rodger Kerr and the MP’s that attended the event. These questions brought about great discussions on Entrepreneurial incentives and support and challenged the MP’s that attended to pay more attention to this growing area of activity.

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.

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.

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…