Wellington
Having been lucky enough to be around a couple of startup things in the past few weeks – I'lltake the opportunity to reflect.
The first occasion was a Skype interview at Wellington's Creative HQ with George Smith, thefounder of Glass Jar , an app that helps makegroup payments (such as in a flat) easier. Glass Jar was one of Lightning Lab's acceleratorgraduates from last year.
They successfully pitched at LL's Demo Day , and then relocated the USA.
George and his teammates spent three months doing the meet and greet with would-be investors inAmerica, and then were
One of the interesting comments from George was that investors didn't think much of the Glass Jaridea for the USA (flatmates over there have a completely different way of looking after sharedbills).
But they did like the Kiwi team, and it was this that was backed at Y Combinator – which couldbe likened to being a Lightning Lab on steroids, where the participants are more worldly in abusiness-sense than some of the participants you see in New Zealand.
Nick Churchouse, the head of customer engagement at CreativeHQ made a passing comment that hequite often hears, and hears of this comment from USA investors. Mind you, given the courage itwould take to relocate yourself to the States to pursue an unknown future, and given the can doattitude these coders, designers and entrepreneurs would display, it shouldn't surprise us.
It is perhaps related to the apocryphal stories you sometimes hear of New Zealanders (oftenengineers), leading teams in overseas locations. For example, my brother leads the ground team ofthe International Space Station and helps look after oxygen, waste and water. (Like me, he's aSouthland farm boy by upbringing, with no engineering training as such, but with the ability to keepa team of brainiacs on task with a minimum of fuss).
Then again, all countries, all peoples are going to feel they're special in this way.
However, as we continue the Startup Weekend business training exercises, our designers,developers and puller-togethers' ability to work together could be viewed as a specific Kiwi trait,something that should be encouraged, a way to move beyond our sometimes too-self-effacingattitude.
Or perhaps that's trying to put a gloss on something that can only happen by luck andcircumstance.
What does anyone else think?