Growing internationally successful tech businesses from Christchurch

Morning everyone - great to get this started….I’m excited. We’re going to feed in a few questions over the next week or so to get a wee bit of structure to the discussions.
To start things off - New Zealand tech businesses have a reputation for being great innovators, but not so successful at making money from taking these innovations to market.

Do you think this is true?

What do you think is causing this?

Anecdotally I would certainly agree. Maybe it's not quite tech but the Popstars example is what I think of when I think of NZ businesses not properly capitalising on international opportunities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popstars).

What's causing this? Well, (anecdotally) I think culture is a biggie. I'm not talking about the tall-poppy thing which people love to blame, I mean the more practical support system we have (the culture) of encouraging and supporting our budding tech entrepreneurs to think HUGE.

I'm constantly amazed by the low awareness among NZers about the success stories of some of our more successful brands (suggests our success stories aren't being told, or not well enough, at least). Our success stories need to be told to inspire, encourage and create culture.

On a more specific note, access to capital is difficult. If it wasn't then companies like Martin Jetpack wouldn't be going to Australia for investment. If Chch develops a reputation for innovation, investors will be more inclined to come here - rather than our entrepreneurs having to head overseas to find capital which surely increases their drop off rate.

I think we have great innovators and ideas. I do agree that as a culture we have a tendency to set our sights low in terms of success (the boat and a Bach = success), but if we could match the innovator with the funding and then add experienced management/governance from people who know how to grow a business then that combination could change our success rates. All those functions tend to come from very different types of people and capabilities are diverse and helping to match the set all together could result in more success

@tobyburrows - how could we better lift the profile of the local tech sector and success stories and who could be doing this? How could tech companies better promote themselves? Thoughts @geoffbrash @andyhamilton @jenrutherford @owenscott ?
@benreid and @jasonbishop did a great bit of profile work on the sector with Flux but what else and next?

I think one of the problems is that we (small hitech companies with great "potential") start off totally under resourced so we end up spending all our effort on staying alive. If you look at the standard USA model, 1. Have idea, 2. Raise $200 million, 3. Hire 100 staff (of which 40 are Marketing & PR), 4. Build product, 5. Go to market .... that differs totally from our No 8 wire process which is 1. have idea, 2. find customer to get some revenue, 3. enhance product, 4. Do something different (contract work) to get revenue to continue to develop product, 5. Can't afford marketing or PR so remain unheard of.... 6. Struggle...

Spot-on Terry. I await a solution with great interest.

What you describe @terrypaddy is common :)

Are there any strengths that come from our NZ way of doing things?
What do you and @phildriver think would make a difference?
What do others think are the issues and opportunities? We have a focus group this afternoon on "what makes an internationally successful tech business" so it would be good to get some input from this discussion for us to take back into that.

@helenshorthouse I'm loathed to jump straight to the "MONEY" answer so lets put that aside. I think a weakness from our Kiwi way is our inability to promote ourselves and tell a good story about our vision, to stay under the radar. Would more emphasis on promotion and PR about the hundreds of small HiTech businesses in our region attract more interest from potential investors, employees & entrepreneurs?

As previously discussed, the promotion aspects of our businesses is poorly done (or actually non existent) then maybe this is where an outside (funded) agency could help by actually being the PR company of a thousand startup's (sort-of-thing!)

We spent a couple of years in a relatively low cost but tiny office in the UK's Oxford Science Centre surrounded by university spin-offs. The day-to-day rubbing shoulders with entrepreneurs within a large UK/European market stimulated us and helped us think and operate more globally. Entrepreneurs feed off each other when they are immersed on a common low-cost space, especially one in which key players are thinking and operating globally.

We find it much easier to operate in the UK than in NZ. The UK is surprisingly more open to ideas, especially ideas from NZ. We've worked with the UK Cabinet Office, the UK Environment Agency, Unilever Head Office, The UK Sustainable Development Commission, British Telecom etc. I've been contracted to lecture in Germany and invited as speaker in London, Paris, Cologne, Hannover and Sydney but we struggle to even get an audience with NZ government and local authorities. So if NZ government and local authorities want to help the hi-tech sector then buying the sector's services would be a good place to start.