The capability of the management team is a key consideration for us when assessing new investments opportunities.  It takes talented, motivated people to make businesses successful.  You therefore need to prove to us that YOU can make this work – with a little guideance and support.  In our view a great team has three key characteristics. All […]

I had the pleasure of assisting with the judging for two of the Incubator New Zealand awards this week. The standard of innovations and businesses was truly exceptional with some fantastic results being achieved for companies in the first years. Below is the full press release, with details of the short-listed businesses / individuals for […]

David, from ReelClever, sent me this interesting blog post from Paul Graham at Y Combinator.  Y Combinator’s business model for investing in start-ups is really unique and worth a look for those involved in the investment industry.  Paul’s described some of the ideas that they’d like to invest in.  The challenge for us at Movac, is to […]

The National Party’s proposal of a “90 day trial period” for new employees hired into small businesses (less than 20 employees), is good for start-ups, in-fact in my view it’s an imperative.  I haven’t read the detail yet but the intent appears to be to give employees the right to dismiss new hires, no questions […]

What’s Angel Investment? Angel Investment is a relatively new term for New Zealand.  It’s a term, borrowed from the Americans, used to refer to those people or groups of people prepared to invest in very early stage business ideas.  Typically, Angel Investors are those people prepared to: take a punt, and work along side people […]

Well no surprises from Vodafone with their iPhone pricing announcement.  I’m sure there will be lots of fuming punters out there.  It seems the basic patter is “New Zealand is expensive (cell-phone duopoly after all) and we’re just pricing the iPhone at the same rate as other high end phones…in New Zealand”. That said, the iPhone is obviously […]

I came accross http://www.startup-review.com/ the other day.  The site is a collection of case study type reviews on successful web based startups – written by Nissan Gabbay of Silicon Valley VC firm, Sierra Ventures. The site features weekly, in-depth case studies on successful (global) Internet start-ups. The companies profiled have achieved either: a) significant exits, b) large revenue, and/or […]

Angel Association New Zealand Media release 1 July 2008 Angel industry group established Angel investor groups have formed a new industry body – the Angel Association New Zealand – to advocate for and to promote best practice within the fastgrowing investment sector. The association’s members consist of 15 angel groups from around New Zealand. Andy […]

Recently I picked up a book with the unlikely title – ‘Kauffman Thought book 2007’ intending only a quick and probably dismissive browse through the table of contents I discovered a chapter entitled Kauffman eVenturing.  Again a quick browse revealed that this chapter was effectively an advertisement for a website offering resources for entrepreneurs (http://eventuring.kauffman.org/).  Not just any resource […]