Wellington
We may be inventive and entrepreneurial, but it doesn’t mean that New Zealand’s innovationecosystem is as optimized as it could be to develop ideas to living, breathing businesses.
From an IT point of view, Wellingtonian American Dave Moskovitz thinks we can do a lot more toget good internet initiatives cranking quickly.
As chairman of seed investor/incubator WebFund , Moskovitz ismore aware than most that while there are strong points in the start up ecosystem, there’s alsogaps.
Moskovitz (as befits a man also deeply interested in linguistics) isn’t short of a pithyanalogy.
Larger markets such as the USA have a random mutation, a natural selection dynamic where all thecomponents of a successful ventures can fit together.
“There’s the sperm of an idea, the egg of execution and the womb of resources where elementscan combine randomly, if there are lots of each as they have in overseas markets,” he says.
“In a place like Wellington, because of our smaller scale, there’s not the luxury of naturalselection or random mutation. What we’re proposing is to genetically engineer our start ups togive them every chance of success to enter overseas markets.”
To this end, Moskovitz has spent the past 18 months looking at overseas models such a
The result is ‘HyperStart’, which will be preceded by a ‘
HyperStart will take place next February and March in Wellington as an intensive – well, forwant of a description - hands-on degree from the school of hard knocks probably works the best.
The first two weeks will be significant course work, including Eric Ries’ lean start-upmethodology which Moskovitz sees as a “real enabler to get something off the ground quickly.”
Lean start-up works on the principle of a minimal period to get a “minimum viable product”out to the (internet) public, and let users decide what works, what they’re willing to pay for.This compares to a new company building an internet product to something that is perfect (at leastin their own eyes).
“The most expensive development for a product is to put in features that people neither want oruse,” says Moskovitz. “Done is better than perfect.”
With a lean start-up, the initial product can be relatively ugly, but is a way of finding outwhat people might want to use, find out what works.
“One element of the lean start-up methodology is smoke tests,” he says. “You can put a linkon a page to a feature you don’t know whether you should develop. That landing page for the linkis a dummy, saying that the feature is in development and people should come back. If there’s noclicks, it isn’t worthwhile spending time or money on it, and you might as well test otherfeatures. You can measure what people are actually doing, compared to what you think the marketmight want.”
Lean methodology is the cornerstone of the coursework which also covers market validation,product and customer development; intentional expansion, and funding.
An important goal of the Hyperstart Programme is for the companies to get customers onboard. Ifpeople can’t get customers, “they’re obviously barking up the wrong tree.”
Entry to HyperStart will be competitive, with entry opening in October, closing in late November.The best 20-30 ideas will present five minute pitches, and around 10 of these selected to enter theprogramme proper.
“They will receive investment immediately on acceptance into the programme,” says Moskovitz.“The best one, two or three that get through will have another $225,000 invested, to prepare themto do a local angel round or Series A and to launch overseas.”
The expectation is that within nine months of finishing the six week course, the start-ups willbe ready to launch, fully invested, overseas. WebFund will work very closely with those selected todo this he says.
WebFund is managing this particular exercise as a separate fund, taking out no other fees otherthan legal and accounting – a model that’s different to overseas examples where management takesa fee at the beginning and during the start-ups’ development.
There will be a performance incentive for WebFund, once the investors investment and a statedrate of return interest is provided via a trade sale or IPO,
“The key is, there is not a fee at the start,” Moskovitz says. “We’re investing our ownmoney, and we obtain an upside only if the start-up succeeds. That’s new for the New Zealandmarket.”
Moskovitz says that many parts of the start up environment are present in Wellington and NewZealand. Examples such as Grow Wellington’s ‘Bright Ideas’ programme, TechNZ funding,incubators, and investors such as Angel HQ and Movac are all strong points.
“But often we’re operating as islands in a sea, some not very far apart, but still somewhatsiloed,” he says.
“We want to fill that sea in, become an archipelago, ideally connected to one another as onebig long diving board. When people make the jump overseas using New Zealand technology and knowhowthey need to do it in a sustainable way.”
“HyperStart’s a way to bring together the ideas, capability and the resources in order toenable the businesses of tomorrow to take off in Wellington.”