Entrepreneurial attitude encouraged at Startup Weekend

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Auckland, New Zealand, June 13th,2012

Entrepreneurial attitude encouraged at Startup Weekend

This Friday, entrepreneurs, designers and developers will gather in a unique collaborative 54 hour event to develop their ideas and transform them into new businesses. Prizes for the winning team at this year’s event include a place on the ecentreSprint programme (valued at $4,500), $1,000 worth of MYOB products, and a trip to the Kiwi Landing Pad in San Francisco.

There have been 578 Startup Weekends around the world and counting. This will be the third Startup Weekend to be held in Auckland. Participants can become part of New Zealand’s wider entrepreneurial community and connect with a range of startup initiatives in the New Zealand ecosystem. The ecentre, the business innovation centre on Massey University’s Albany campus, will host the participants in an action-packed event that is part of the global Startup Weekend movement.

Beginning with pitches on Friday evening, teams form around ideas to see how far they can work towards being a real business in 54 hours. At the end of the weekend, great prizes will be awarded to the winners. These prizes will help their business grow to ultimately benefit New Zealand’s economy, and inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs.

The ecentreSprint programme is designed to assist entrepreneurs in developing both their own capability and validating their idea and business model . Sprint’s objectives are to focus on building the entrepreneur to the point where they are ready to scale & grow, and establish themselves offshore. The leaders of the winning Startup Weekend Auckland team will receive a 4 week trip to explore offshore opportunities at the Kiwi Landing Pad.

Kiwi Landing Pad CEO John Holt states “Our objectives at the Kiwi Landing Pad are to help NZ entrepreneurs create connections and credibility for their business ideas in the USA and by doing so increase their confidence to execute which is a huge part of being successful in any venture.”

Encouraging tech entrepreneurship as a viable career path to a wide variety of people is important for all New Zealanders to consider. This is why initiatives such as Startup Weekend and the Kiwi Landing Pad, and programmes like ecentreSprint are so important.

Female entrepreneurs are underrepresented in New Zealand, which is an issue Startup Weekend looks to address. There are some stellar role models such as Minimonos’ Melissa Clark-Reynolds and Wildfire Interactive’s Victoria Ransom, and we’d like to encourage more women to take up the challenge.

Helga Sonier is the Public Relations manager for 2011’s Startup Weekend winners TranscribeMe. “We trusted our instincts, took a leap of faith and threw our hearts and souls into the project.” Sonier says of the business. Helga started off as the only female member on the core team, and hopes more women become part of initiatives like Startup Weekend. “Places like Startup Weekend are perfect training grounds to nurture entrepreneurs, but especially future female board members, as New Zealand has a shortage of those.”

Holt says “ A massively disproportionate number of purchasing decisions are made by women and yet we still see very few working for or creating start-ups in New Zealand. Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem with diversity is extremely important in my opinion.”

Historically, Kiwis’ risk aversion holds the country back from reaching its full potential as an entrepreneurial nation. We need to develop more serial entrepreneurs who want to do it all over again rather than be satisfied with the three B’s – boat, bach, and BMW. Judges for this weekend’s event are: Candace Kinser- the Chief Executive Officer of NZICT, Nick Gerritsen- Owner at Crispstart Ltd, and Brett Roberts- Chief Executive Officer of Wharf42.

Any business ideas are eligible, however the event is strongly tech orientated because early prototypes are able to be generated in the short time frame of the event.

Startup Weekend is a non-profit organisation supported internationally by the Kauffman Foundation. Local sponsors include MYOB, Microsoft NZ, Massey University and the ecentre. All of the organisers are working on a voluntary basis, working together to build the future NZ economy.

Tickets are almost sold out so get in quick! Please visit the Auckland Startup Weekend web site at http://auckland.startupweekend.org/ for more information.

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