Wellington
Scale, as anyone starting a business realises, is a key, if not the key to growth andsuccess.
Even in IT-related commerce, achieving scale from a New Zealand base is pretty darndifficult.
Enter, drum-roll please, Free Range Farm – a startup helpingstartups start up and stay up.
It’s the brainchild of Linc Gasking and Josh Feast , andits goal is to help entrepreneurs grow 1,000 Kiwi startups.
Gasking’s been a bit of a serial entrepreneur himself, and helped launch
Part of the rationale behind FRF is grouped offerings of what will often be businesses focused onsolving global problems, have a better story and offer when seeking advice, talking to would-beinvestors and dovetailing into others’ networks to spread around the world.
Aligning itself with a social enterprise philosophy, FRF’sadvisors are Derek Sivers, Suzanne Snively, Preya McMahon and John Harthorne.
Feast, a Kiwi, is mostly based in Boston – so right from its own beginnings, FRF has aninternational outlook.
A just announced development, and large increase in FRF’s virtual footprint is the associationit now has with Los Angeles based Larta Institute .
Larta’s web-stated mission is to:
‘help regions around the world maximizethe commercial potential of publicly funded R&D by supporting entrepreneurs in theircommercialization efforts and nurturing the innovation system’.
FRF will take a small clip of the ticket for successful hatching of their free range startups,though, given its values (as seen here, below), there’s a fair degree of collectivism ofspirit.
This strikes sticK as being an excellent initiative.
The startup world can be lonely and extremely poorly sign-posted. Having others alongside whohave travelled the same paths, and indeed with whom you might be able to hitch a lift is eminentlysensible for a place like New Zealand.
FRF’s given themselves some ambitious numbers in looking to grow 1,000 startups – and even ifonly a small percentage really take off, it will all be fantastic for the business acumen, financialfortunes and spinoff benefits of local companies doing good for themselves and the rest of theworld.
So far Free Range Farm has 104 startups under its wing – and, at the risk of a bad pun, youcould call it organic growth even!