Publons, a company that came out of Wellington’s Lightning Lab accelerator in 2013, and of which I was the first investor and (until 31 May) Chairman of the Board, has been acquired by Clarivate Analytics. Publons provides a platform that gives academics credit for the peer review work they do, and whose mission is to…
Continue reading →I recently took on the role of Entrepreneur in Residence at the Kiwibank Fintech Accelerator, powered by Lightning Lab. Consider me the “Mentor-in-Chief” – as well as advising the ventures and helping them make great connections and destroy roadblocks, my main job is curating the relationships between the ventures and their mentors, and later in…
Continue reading →The great folks at the Access Granted podcast published a wide-ranging interview with me today on “the mosaic of my life”, which you can listed to below: I cover a quite a lot of ground, including: Why shit just keeps getting better Startup Weekends and how you can create a business in 54 hours The…
Continue reading →What do angel investors like me look for in investable early-stage companies? It’s all about: You and your team Your market Your startup Your progress Your financial plan Your investment terms Your other investors (and a few other things too). Watch the video of a talk I gave on the subject at CreativeHQ‘s Startup Garage…
Continue reading →There’s only one thing I want to say today: Christchurch, you beauty! When people ask me what I’m about, I tell them I’m building the future I want to live in. We’re all doing that today, here at Lightning Lab Christchurch Demo Day. Look around you. The New Christchurch is filled with diversity and entrepreneurial…
Continue reading →I’m planning on being very involved in the Lightning Lab Christchurch accelerator programme that starts next week, mainly as a mentor. As I look back on both Lightning Lab Wellington accelerators where I mentored in 2013 and 2014, I felt that most of the teams could have used their mentors more effectively. With that in…
Continue reading →I organised a Lean Startup Meetup today exploring New Zealand political parties’ policies related to startups. Jonathan Young (National), Gareth Hughes (Greens), Vikram Kumar (Internet Mana), and Clare Curran (Labour) all presented their parties’ positions. I made an audio recording of the session, which you can either download (mp3, 21MB) or play right here: Photo…
Continue reading →An introduction to the startup ecosystem in New Zealand and particularly Wellington. I was invited recently to attend a workshop organised by Brian Monahan, Matthew Monahan, and Yoseph Ayele who have recently decided to come to New Zealand and help turbo-charge our local startup scene. The purpose of the workshop was to help strengthen ties…
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