Pacey & Co win NZ’s largest Business Startup Competition

Media release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
31 March 2015

Pacey & Co win New Zealand’s largest Business Startup Competition

New Zealand’s largest Business Startup Competition, Innes48, is complete for another year. However, the journey for teams and businesses that pitched during the weekend has just begun.

The winning team Pacey & Co. wanted to solve the problem that all socio-economic demographics face these days - being left without fresh, healthy and organic food options.

The team’s idea gives people who can’t afford to buy healthy food the chance to grow their own with ‘Grow Start Kits’ and supply their excess produce to Oooby, their partner organisation.

An elated member of the winning team, Pacey & Co, told the crowd this was “totally unexpected - none of us knew each other before this weekend”.

Event organisers Rachel Adams and Bianca Angel had earlier last week interviewed all 42 teams to pick the top 15 to compete over the weekend.

“Pacey & Co. and Volcanic Epiphany were originally two separate teams. We liked both teams but individually they didn’t have all the skills necessary to make the most of the opportunity.So we gave them one of the 15 spaces on a condition they merged,” said Rachel.

Nick Pacey of Pacey & Co says he found the experience invaluable, and “liked interacting with the mentors and being around so many likeminded people”.

The team’s intention is to keep the momentum going and begin developing the business.

The most innovative award for the night went to Ten Four Digital with their worldwide streaming platform called Crowd.

Crowd is a mobile app that gives the participant of an event the power to live-stream their experience and share it with the viewer through a social dashboard of aggregated video streams.

Viewers are sent a push notification and invited to choose and watch trending streams of real time moments that they are interested in.

The best pitch award went to 4Bit who developed a social app called Wraptor that uses a proprietary algorithm to enable easy and cost effective gift giving.

Four years in, Innes48 is the largest of its kind in New Zealand with an ever-growing prize pool of $25,000 cash and $10,000 business services on offer.

Innes48 provides participants with a massive learning experience and all the necessary resources to launch quickly if they choose to build their company after the event.

Judge Craig Stephen mentioned in the feedback to teams - ‘you should be honoured to have had such an opportunity, you just completed a mini MBA’.

The high calibre judges Graham Gaylard, Jill Tattersall, Chip Dawson and Craig Stephens had two hours to read 15 team submissions that included executive summaries, business models and financial projections. Judges had to choose the Top 8 teams who would pitch at the Closing Ceremony.

The judges were looking for how well the teams detailed the viability of their business, if they had an innovative approach to a customer’s problem, sustainable revenue streams and evidence of market validation.

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies were well attended by over 400 guests where they heard from world-class speakers including Melissa Clark-Reynolds, Mick Liubinskas and Robett Hollis, who entertained the crowd and inspired the participants.

The event could not have taken place without the support and backing of sponsors such as ASB Bank, 2Degrees, Gallagher and Stainless Design as well as the 25 highly experienced mentors.

Major sponsor ASB recognises the importance the event plays in building and educating the New Zealand entrepreneurial community.

Event organisers are already planning for a $50,000 cash prize for winners next year.

ENDS

NOTES:

Pacey & Co with ‘Grow Start Kits’ – Winner Most Viable Business

Grow start kits is an innovative movement to promote and encourage home grown vegetable production. Our mission is to provide kits complete with everything the customer needs to kick-start their backyard organic veggie patch. Tailor-made fact sheets, along with an integrated community-based online network, will support the customer through knowledge sharing and location-specific tips and information.

Grow start kits is an official partner of the social enterprise Ooooby, Out Of Our Own Back Yard. This successful service was founded to tackle the issue of excessively priced fresh and organic produce. Grow start kits has developed products to enable more growers to join and supply Ooooby with homegrown organic produce as well as addressing the recent surge in backyard veggie growing market. Three products and a supportive online network will support the existing and new growers’ community as well as provide the convenience and simple instruction to begin your very own budding career as a back yard grower.

Ten Four Digital with ‘Crowd’ – Winner Most Innovative

Our purpose is to create a platform for users to stream REAL TIME moments in their life so others can share in the experience. CROWD is a mobile app that allows users to watch global geo-located streams in REAL TIME. Viewers are sent a push notification and invited to watch trending streams. Alternatively, viewers can login and globally view an area of interest – a geo-location, where multiple users are using CROWD and streaming REAL TIME video. While watching, the user simply swipes to change to the next closest view from another streamer in the geo-located area.

4Bit with Wraptor – Winner Best Pitch

Wraptor takes the pain away from long distance gift giving by providing an easy and cost effective gifting service. When you sign up, you tell us what friends you would like to send gifts to. Using a proprietary algorithm, Wraptor scans your friends’ information, likes, location, etc and matches them to unique gift ideas from our network of suppliers, based on how much you would like to spend. When those friends have a birthday approaching, Wraptor prepares a personalized gift and prompts you to send it to them. Wraptor is a convenient solution that yields a physical gift in a digital world

We tested this solution and launched a survey that received 146 submissions validating our hypothesis. We then launched a website and gained 29 signups in just 5 hours. Facebook ads received between .5%-.9% CTR – far higher than the average of just .36%, giving us some excellent data validation points on both the pain and the best demographics.

Head Judge – Graham Gaylard | CE of MEGA

SPEAKER BIOS:

http://startup48.org/Speakers

JUDGE BIOS:

http://startup48.org/Judges

MENTORS:

http://startup48.org/Mentors

MORE PHOTOS:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kp3qomeev69kwgh/AAAlIEF-v_tiqQvi_-jdm1Rra?dl=0

HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcv_DYnF_Bg

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