Lightning Lab 2013 saw nine startups pitch theirdigital products to would-be investors last week, seeking expansion capital for ideas that 12 weeksbefore mostly existed on paper.
The Wellington Demo Day saw highly polished presentations, with clear development plans and justas clear ‘here’s how we and our investors are going to make money’ to about 300 people at TePapa’s Soundings Theatre. About half the audience were financiers.
Any investment secured goes to the next stage of development and expansion into globalmarkets.
My initial underlying thought was jealousy.
Why? Because the participants have obviously learned so much.
Tui Te Hau, CEO of Wellington startup incubator Creative HQ up summed this rationale better thanI can.
“Lightning Lab is turning out 30 entrepreneurs with a harder edge and keener andsmarter drive to succeed than many. How far they go is up to them, but these companies are 12 weeksold and they already have more scars than most get in several years.”
These nine companies were whittled from 87 applications to LL late last year, and each received$6000 per head from a set of founding investors. By being part of a three month intensiveacceleration programme, their digital concepts have been validated, built and established with earlycustomers.
The startups have been mentored by local and international advisers, faced hard deadlines ingrowth targets and a structured model for accelerating early stage business growth based oninternational best practice.
When Te Hau talks about scars, she’s not exaggerating – but obtaining them so quickly andwith the ability to ask advice such as “what should we do now” in such a concentrated manner –is something so valuable it really can’t be priced.
What is patently clear is that the 30 participants, and their wider networks, have had such aninjection of entrepreneurial spirit and possibilities that multiplier spinoffs and benefits can onlyresult for Wellington and New Zealand.
Put another way; this programme, with its hand-holding, arse-kicking and question-askingintensiveness will create a virtuous circle of increasing wealth.
And sure, like all of us, these startups have, and will make mistakes.
But, they know what needs to be done to get back on track, or alternatively how to fail-fast (andthen get on with another project).
Because the Demo Day was asking for money, what can be reported publicly is limited.
Suffice to say that (and you’d have to imagine that the mentoring has been also strong in thisarea) the investment dollars being asked for by the startups seemed reasonable and appropriate.
Many of the companies had potential exponential growth rates, but realism ruled.
It is now up to the individual companies themselves to reveal if or what investment(s) have beenmade in them – and as this becomes known Lightning Lab will have its own raison d’etrevalidated.
For the record, those presenting were:
LearnKo – delivers online learning programsto English language organisations in Asia, harnessing Australasian tutors, training them andproviding them with content to deliver through an online classroom
Publons – platform for crowd-sourcedpeer-review of academic articles, where academics build a reputation for their contributions. Analternative to the extremely slow, expensive and closed status quo of the past 300 years of academicpublishing
Adeez – specialist mobile marketing platform,enabling brands and their agencies to increase their ROI on mobile marketing
Expander – tracking and analyticsplatform that protects brands by providing them with powerful tools to combat counterfeit, whileconnecting manufacturers and consumers
teamisto – turn a typical businesssponsorship donation to an amateur sports club or team into an effective advertising channel withmeasurable results
Questo – works with organisations byproviding a platform to create activities with incentives and rewards to engage their visitors. Amobile app and analytics engine provides the ability to track, measure and evaluate theirvisitors’ behaviour
promoki – social media platform thatgamifies photo and video contests. Help brands co-create advertising campaigns with their audienceand distribute crowd-filled media across multiple social networks
Kidsgomobile – software device tohelp parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. Tool thatnotifies parents if their child engages in potentially risky phone behaviour and helps them resolvethese issues
WIP – platform that enablesprofessional video makers to share their work-in-progress videos with their team and clients togather precise and meaningful feedback
Without doubt, some of these startups will go on to become much larger businesses. Without doubttoo, most of them would not have got to this ‘go’ position without Lightning Lab.
The learning has been immense, and a thumbs up to those investors and sponsors who put theirhands in their pockets from the get-go to kick the whole thing off.
Applications for the next Lightning Lab 2014 will open in September this year.