In the “good old days,” angels invested in seed-stage startups and teed up promising companies for subsequent venture capital financing.  If the company was successful, this quickly led to an IPO – a very happy ending for the entrepreneur, the angels and the venture capitalists.  My, my…how the world has changed.

 A ramble of thoughts on how to move the cheese - a little to reactive 

 Auckland, 21 December 2011 - UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) announced today that it has appointed the founding CEO of one of New Zealand’s most successful incubators, the Icehouse, to its judging panel for the prestigious GO UK competition where New Zealand companies are invited to submit business plans for a chance to win a $30,000 prize package

 Update from the NZVIF team on the year that was ...

Check out the presentation I did to the Technopolicy Network a couple of weeks ago, focused on the problem we are trying to solve.. enabling networks into a cluster.

The top ten finalists for BNZ Presents: The Virgin Business Challenge have been announced, in the next step towards finding New Zealand’s best entrepreneurial talent.

Sir Paul recently gave this preso on NZs position and path forward. Some fantastic insight here.
 

See link to the top 15 who vie for the finalists place, out of 263.

 

Check out this presentation I did to New Zealand institute of chartered accountants (NZICA)- development specialist group a couple of weeks ago.

Reporting to the Sales Manager, your responsibilities will include the management of referrals and follow-up of leads in order to maximise conversion.  You will utilise your excellent communication and interpersonal skills to build rapport and develop ongoing relationships to ensure the business continues to deliver exceptional service to their clients. Your commercial acumen will assist in understanding client requirements and enable you to identify and offer appropriate solutions.

It is with great pleasure that The University of Auckland Business School announces the introduction of a new qualification in Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship for 2012 that could have a significant impact on your business, your employees and economic growth in NZ.

Following a successful and impactful visit by Bill Payne, the ICEHOUSE has identified the opportunity to tighten the connection between its start-up incubator and angel investment network in order to enable more of its start-ups to become investment ready

NZTE have recently made an in-depth overview and analysis of China's policy blueprint for years 2011-2015.

Presentation on outcomes from the recent Mayoral Think Tank forums

A run accross the players in the innovation system ..

China is New Zealand’s second-largest trading and export partner and is on track to be the world’s largest economy by 2020. In 2010, China’s outward foreign direct investment flow reached US$57.9 billion, nearly 20 times it’s 2003 levels, Investment activity with China is now set to increase dramatically, driven by the country’s latest 5-year plan and fuelled by easing constraints on trading and expatriation of the RMB.

Earlier this week, we headed to Wellington for our annual presentation to Parliament. How did this come about and why are we doing it, what did we discuss?

 #iceideas generated lots of motivational moments and from the evidence post it really was more than a day - but if we don't identify and execute initiatives one by one, it will just be assigned to history - so with some people, not just the icehouse we are now forging ahead and here is a longer version of the summary piece that appeared in the NZ Herald earlier today - read the article here on the Herald site or the longer version here

Here follows a summary of the second nugget based on the 300 hours of literature research conducted by Institute for Strategic Leadership earlier this year.  The full 2-page article, which is attached, draws on evolutionary biology and poses a number of important questions that leaders need to address in order to lead strategically in the new post-2008 leadership paradigm.  

Great news of Kiwi entrepreneurs, the team at Movac have just announced a new fund for investing

Sam Morgan and friends are setting up a cool landing pad in San Fran for start-ups

Being sustainable is being productive, thriving and built to last. From people to processes, it's about being around for the long haul and helping grow the New Zealand economy.

Sustainable 60 promotes, showcases and rewards sustainable business practice in New Zealand through an awards programme and workshops.

Make sure you have a read of this World Class New Zealand Member Directory. You have visibility of a number of New Zealanders in different industries!

Report prepared by the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund - The Valuation of Early-stage Investments in New Zealand.

Perspectives from a Silicon Valley Executive, Martin McKendry.

I got this from a friend, awesome quote! Everyone should have a read of this and take it on board! Pass it on to your team, family and friends.

Check out the latest update presentation from CEO, Peter Chrisp about the changes and going forward - excellent progress.

See note from Peter Chrisp, CEO on the changes in the team.

World Mentor NZ is a charitable trust that connects aspiring young high school students with volunteer mentors, and this year we are looking for mentors for students in high schools in Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, and two schools in Christchurch. We already have mentor volunteers from World Class NZ Network, KEA, The University of Auckland and various industry associations, and are looking for you to join us.www.worldmentor.net/nz

The ICEHOUSE is looking for a passionate Marketing Manager who loves the start-up and SME sectors of the economy.

Very interesting information about facebook, and where it is taking the world.

A recap of the Year in Digital Media. 2010 represented yet another exciting year in the evolution of the U.S. digital media industry. It was a year that saw renewed optimism, continued innovation, and the increasing fragmentation of the media landscape.

Mobile Trends, rapid growth and disruption. Have a read!

Skylight is able to offer the following support for  New Zealanders, businesses , and for their staff, families and clients.

An opportunity has come up, 5 companies to meet with Karl Feilder (see profile) on the morning of the 28th of March. This will be in 30mins slots as Karl is flying out of the country later that day.

Karl would like to meet with companies that promote better lighting and cooling systems for warehouses and industrial cooling units which are ready to go to market now.  Also any ‘over the horizon’ technology companies and he is happy to sign a non-disclosure if any require him to do so.

Low Flying Kiwis are looking for someone who can help us at a very initial stage to both assess the feasibility of various tourism projects and help those that pass muster in the early stages of their development. They have several projects in various stages of development from loose concepts to fully worked up proposals.

Project manager required for short term project (approx 10 days) to help scope, detail and manage a IT/email integration project for a large corporate in the Finance sector.

ICEHOUSE intern reports funded by Ministry of Science & Innovaiton: Danny Robertson, Mark MacLeod-Smith & Yun Jae Lee.

Have a look at these ediited presentations of speakers at the Better by Design CEO Summit 2010. Very interesting!

Could I please impose on you for a short time – one of the stars of the ICEHOUSE team, Josh Rea has decided to move from NZ to India and is chasing his dream. From sometime, Josh has been of a view that India is an entranching land full of great potential and he just wanted to be amongst it. So Josh has moved there, is staying with friends in Mumbai and is open to exploring opportunities ....I have cc’d Josh here, I could not say enough about Josh’s ability, his values and results – a great person who is very talented. He is young, which is good, because that provides him with a lot of energy!

Marc Andreessen and his longtime business partner, Ben Horowitz, have raised a $650-million second fund for their venture capital firm, giving them a checkbook to match their ambitions.

A great opportunity to do a mini-MBA on entering your life science company into the US market

The Japan New Zealand Business Council is looking to support a group of the next generation together who are interested in business with Japan

World Wide Access sells New Zealand products on-line in the United States. It's the quickest, easiest, lowest-cost, lowest-risk way to enter export markets. Your products can be in-market and in front of American customers without needing to 'bet the business' on overseas expansion and without the compromises inherent in conventional distribution arrangements.

If you are one of those creative Kiwis who have an idea for a world-changing product or service this year, how do you go about approaching large companies in New Zealand to support you?

Regardless of how hard it is, large Kiwi companies provide a great testing ground and credibility-builder for entrepreneurs in their early days.

While much has been made of the fact that we are a nation of small businesses, we are not very different from other countries.

The distribution of our businesses is made up of the thousands of small firms with a few large ones.
 

After hearing about so many people doing the Lake Heron walk over the last couple of years, I think it is about time that we pulled together a group of people to take on the challenge. We have a core group already committed to going including Andy Hamilton (icehouse), Duncan Shand (Young & Shand), Tom Mullholland (Healthy Thinking Institute), Joshi Kawamura (George Hotel) and are looking for a 2 interesting people to fill out the group of 8.

The New Zealand Institute’s latest discussion paper proposes 14 policy directions to improve the success of businesses trying to establish themselves in international markets.

What a great way to finish the year with a bunch of motivated, energetic and global angel investors. Early in November, I was fortunate enough to attend a 2-day conference in Nelson on angel investing followed up by 2 magical days in the Abel Tasman Kayaking with 3 Aussies, 2 Americans and 3 Kiwis.

Last week I was really fortunate to attend an intimate speaker series at Telecom’s new offices in Auckland. Here are some takeaways I got ....

Thought I would share this with you, rather interesting. It is a statement from the Japanese government.

We will be if we don’t get our act together. However beautiful our city & country are, how amazing our people are, if we do not create more success in global markets we will become these peasants and porters, even in Auckland.

The key to me is firm growth, 1st, 2nd and 3rd – yes we need infrastructure but that is not going to be the driver of economic wealth we need from Auckland to help our country catchup to the rest of the leaders in the world like Australia.
So with that in mind, here are some ideas of change:

NZCS Innovation Day 2010 is a mini-conference packed full of keynotes, presentations, panels, and discussion about innovation and ICT.

Biomatters graduated from the ICE Accelerator in 2005. They have just launched a new software package called Geneious Server which is a powerful sequence analysis software package for high-intensity computing such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), Phylogenetics and Sequence Analysis.

We are pursuing is a short and focused show-casing session when we bring the Japanese Trading Houses together with innovative high tech companies.

United Kingdom Trade and Investment (UKTI) are running a competition to help Kiwi companies enter the UK market. Registrations close 1st October.

Great slide deck on our issues and how we might think about solutions

Slides on the state of NZ through NZ Institute and some stuff about the ICEHOUSE

An opportunity to work with our Japanese partners in unlocking that market ...

Helpful papers on the tax, legal and commercial implications of using convertible notes for angel investing

Some good reminders from the experiences of the Dropbox people

A world-wide study by Andrew Stead of ATP - funded by the Winston Churchill Trust, on Proof of Concept Funding Programmes

Funding focused internship opportunity at The ICEHOUSE - supported by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.

An article written for the Herald on Sunday which gives a positive view of what is happening in the New Zealand economy. X8DJ4KUFS9UR

Finally we can properly showcase some leading edge technology to over 150 people per month coming to meetings, events and workshops at The ICEHOUSE. A huge thank you to our Partners gen-i for helping us make a step change in the feel of our meeting spaces. This is an AMAZING day for The ICEHOUSE 

A paper by Export New Zealand that looks at our productivity challenges

Reminder entries for the 2010 AmCham-DHL Express Annual Success & Innovation Awards for companies doing business with the USA close 30 July.

A big ups to the supporters of the Forbes Party @ The ICEHOUSE

Interesting to see how Corporates are making waves around entrepreneurship

Templated Agenda and Board Minutes

Templates to follow in reporting to Boards and Shareholders

A very cool piece of Kiwiana ...

Pernik Capital Looking to Invest

Tiffany Leeder recently finished her MBA at Auckland Uni, and as part of this completed a research piece on market entry of high tech companies into the Japan market

We are celebrating being recognised as a Forbes.com Top 10 Incubator

An informed paper on how to get a better return on Government investment in R&D

One of our top former members of The ICEHOUSE, M-Com is growing like anything - they need talented .Net c# developers, business analysts, project managers and more .... are you up for working with a top global company?

Going global from New Zealand - perspectives from New York

Some of my observations of what companies need to do 'on-shore' to get offshore ...

Much debate is occuring on the role of Universities and CRIs in New Zealand - even though most of these issues have been dealt with overseas, there is a seemingly raft array of 'new arguments' being created - time to set the record straight ....

10 Tips for Networking - someone asked me for some tips for networking, I found this quite hard, but here are the 10 tips I dreamed up while having a wine tonight.

A study has been conducted on our Kiwi manufacturers measure up - a study focused on 100+ FTE firms is very interesting ...

Rod Adams, legend on Market Validation for Start-Ups and New Product Development, Video Overview....

I recently read this book, after a suggestion from one of our business partners that I needed to get some ‘self-reflection’ time. Marshall is a bit of a guru on management development and coaching and this book is really about exploring how you impact on others. It is an easy read, and I enjoyed it a lot – would recommend to any manager who wants to get better, and stop to think about why some people think you are a wanker!

Just finished this book – what a great story, told well in an amazing format. I love how it is presented, I love its honesty and I think it is a very worthwhile couple weekends reading. What did I get out of it..

Anzatech Forum offers free webinars on US market expansion – a good way to pick up some tips

Some lessons in here that may be of value

Startup incubator and SME business growth centre The Icehouse has an ambitious plan to triple its achievements in the second decade of its existence.
 

Dropbox - start up lessons learned