Less than an hour before I was due to do my Innovate final pitch, I was in the doctor’s surgery with my third child with a soaring temperature. Things don’t always go to plan in life or in business, but I believe success is all about overcoming obstacles and remaining focused.

I’m aware that more women are becoming entrepreneurs these days, but I’m also aware that a large number give up because of family commitments. When I talk about Epic Writer being my identity, that’s because it is; it has to be part of my family lifestyle, otherwise it wouldn’t work for me.

As I sit in the passenger seat of my car, I log writing prompts that I will use in my site, which my children recite in the car with my husband.

As I push my toddler’s pram, I’m reciting my pitch to potential investors.

As I wait for my kids at school pickup, I’m doing admin, banking, writing blogs, scheduling social media post – the list goes on…

These day-to-day experiences exemplify how Epic Writer was created. My office is my life and that makes it a lot easier to justify the sacrifices I make every day.

Every minute of my day is scheduled. I even plan for that spare three minutes that I may be waiting in a queue, for a phone call, or at traffic lights. My lists seem to get longer and longer each day. Sometimes I take a step back and wonder if it’s mathematically possible to fit it all in. But some how, I always do.

So much to learn, so much to do, so little time. And ultimately time, including my time, costs money.

Despite the chaos, I’m enjoying being an entrepreneur. It’s exciting and different in my new world; full of opportunity, new ventures and interesting people every day. Building my innovation gives me so much self-confidence and also an attitude that anything is possible. Results like that are priceless. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to explore and pursue my passion and I can’t understand why others don’t if they can. The benefits of taking the leap are much more than just money.

I sometimes get overwhelmed with business plans, projections, milestones and suchlike, so I think it’s essential to take five minutes out of my day and just reflect, alone, on what I am doing and why. These are probably the most powerful five minutes of my day, where I determine and justify the decisions I make and consolidate my vision – never losing focus.

Epic Writer is making huge strides and is due to go back out to schools for more trials in the next week. I now have Dr Brian Finch from Massey University as my literacy adviser; Mark Easton from Nodero as software adviser; and Sharon Bryant from Movac as governance adviser. After a long, drawn-out board set-up process, I am now starting to see the overwhelming benefits of having such knowledgeable and specialist board members. I don’t think I have ever been more excited – and yes, that’s ahead of winning Innovate – watch this space!

By: Tina Faulkner

Time to put on your thinking caps – entries are now open for Innovate 2015, the annual competition run by BCC that gives entrants an opportunity to turn their ideas into cold, hard cash and a viable business.

Entries are open until 17 May but don’t wait until the last minute – get cracking on your application now.

How it works:

Stage 1 involves submitting your idea and a quick summary of the potential business.

If your idea makes the first cut, you will progress to Stage 2, which includes the completion of a detailed online survey.

In a new twist for 2015, everyone who makes it to Stage 2 will be required to attend Startup Weekend – where you can build a business in 54 hours. “Contestants will not be able to work on their Innovate idea, but will spend the weekend gaining hands-on experience in market validation, business plan development and pitch making,” says Dave Craig, BCC marketing manager. “It’s a way of identifying talent and gaining skills,” says Craig.

BCC expects to invite up to 50 entrants from Stage 2 to make presentations to the Innovate 2015 judges, who will choose the top 10 finalists.

Over the subsequent 10 weeks, the Innovate Top 10 will complete a market validation course that has a value per person of $3000. Final presentations will be made to the judging panel in August and a supreme winner – who will take home $10,000 in prizes – will be named. Will that be you? Each of the 10 finalists will receive $500 in cash and a goody bag filled with helpful resources for growing a business.

For more information and to enter, visit Innovate 2015.

On a Monday afternoon this month a workshop was held at the Manawatu Golf Club. This was just one of twelve being held in different regions around the country by the MBIE to try to determine if business innovation and economic growth could be catalysed by new institutes. These institutes would operate as private, independently governed entities that would collect commercially focused and industrially exploitable research.

“In some places in the economy access to external research is lacking,” said workshop facilitator Stephen Howard, “however not all regions will get a research institute, it depends on their value for each region.” According to Howard the knowledge capitals of New Zealand at the moment are in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. One of the aims of the MBIE is to try to alter this knowledge landscape to exploit economic opportunity in other areas around the country.

Around 80 attendants from the Manawatu region attended the workshop including researchers from Massey University and Crown Research Institutes, people from economic development agencies, the chamber of commerce, and various business leaders and experts. BCC was also asked to participate and both our CEO and two of our technology transfer advisors went along to offer their own expertise.

What would the success of a regional research institute look like? This was one of the several questions put to us for discussion as we sat in our groups around our tables. The institutes should be self sustainable, attract investment facilitate connections between research and industry. Others were of the opinion that successful institutes would need to leverage what already exists and not be just another type of Crown Research Institute. “It’s a good start to get some dialog going around the idea,” says BCC tech transfer advisor Jaspreet Kaur.

So – what’s next? Workshops will continue to be held around the country into October. For the next stage a registration of interest process will open. This will be followed by a business case development over February to April next year.

For more information go to: http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/regions-cities/investigating-regional-research-institutes

How’s this for the nub of a new business? Develop an app aimed at a known user group that is technically savvy, regenerates annually and is the target of a limited – but very competitive – industry.

That’s basically what Jeff King and Wasim Talim have created with NCEA Pal. Within weeks of launching last August, NCEA Pal was gaining more than 1000 downloads a day and nearly all New Zealand universities – as well as the Health Promotion Agency – were paying for advertising space. To date, there have been roughly 35,000 downloads.

The app allows students to track and manage their NCEA progress by logging subjects, assignments, credits and grades received. The idea came from a conversation King, the deputy principal at Rangitikei College, Marton, had with his principal.

“Having no way for students to monitor their NCEA progress is a constant frustration for teachers and senior education leaders,” he says. “It’s particularly tough at the end of the year when students really need to know [where they stand] and they are in the dark.”

King approached Talim (whom he taught at Rongotai College in Wellington). “Wasim and I had worked together on other ventures and he seemed the obvious person for this one.” They worked on the app on and off for about a year and launched it in August 2014. Shortly after, the pair approached BCC and, in mid-January, embarked on BCC’s 90-day intensive accelerator programme.

“Jeff and Wasim approached us because they wanted to turn the NCEA Pal app into a business,” says James Bell-Booth, BCC start-up manager. “We’re working with them on all the typical accelerator topics: tightening up key business processes, identifying goals, smoothing out how they work with customers and putting systems around how they manage cash flow.”

Working with BCC is really helpful, says King. “My background is education – we don’t deal with this sort of thing! BCC is helping us develop our business plan for the next two to three years. I have good contact with the users – I can find out what students want – but I don’t have any experience in building a business.”

Bell-Booth says that the pair is really motivated to create a great product for students and sure, they need money, but they want the way they monetise the business to also be beneficial to students. Consequently, tertiary providers are a main advertising focus and, while generic ads are present in the current version, future versions will be targeted by student interest and NCEA achievements.

“One thing a lot of people don’t realise is that while the universities are all competing with each other for the top students, we know who those students are and what they’re interested in,” says King. “We did the first version on a shoestring budget but now that we have more money [through advertisements], we’re working on tightening the analytics for the next releases.” That will be even more valuable for students and tertiary education providers.

Fingers crossed, the next version will come out around the same time as this issue of BCC News; among other things, ads will be targeted to student subjects. Currently, students need to fill in data and credits; future versions will be self-populating.

Talim, who has nearly finished his bachelor’s in e-commerce and information systems at Victoria University, and King have plenty of ideas for how to further develop the app into an even more useful tool for students. Some of the ideas are around how the app can help students plan their education, and how it can be useful in conversations with teachers and parents.

Entrepreneur Ben Neal is one step closer to a helping farmers feed their calves more efficiently.

Neal will be demonstrating the Calf SMART automated, cloud-based calf rearing system at Central Districts Field Days on 12-14 March and will be accepting orders for June-July delivery. Raising product awareness is the goal for the outing; a formal launch of the product will be at Mystery Creek Fieldays in mid-June.

Things are going well and Neal says he is happy with the progress to date. As of mid-March, two units will be in place on farms. Information gathered from the in-situ units will be used for fine-tuning prior to Mystery Creek. Already he’s ahead of the plan: there is more functionality in the machines than planned for at this stage of development.

Calf SMART is specifically designed for New Zealand conditions and is, says Neal, a superior system to the international systems that are currently available. Not only is it able to feed a very large numbers of calves, but it can also provide up-to-date, accurate management information through cloud-based web integration.

Neal completed both the Accelerator and the Angel Investment Preparation programmes at BCC and has investment through Smart Solutions, MIG Angels and the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund.

Hot on the heels of their successful 2014 livestock field trials, The Factory resident PolyBatics has announced an international collaboration to further assess their bovine TB skin test reagent Assign-bTB as a potential tool in the global fight against the disease.

PolyBatics’ unique polymer particle, or biobead, technology has been central to the development of the novel reagent, which is designed to eliminate false positives and speed up the TB vaccination process in cattle and deer herds.

Five groups, including PolyBatics, New Zealand’s TBFree (OSPRI) and AgResearch, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), are each testing the reagent and sharing their respective results.

“We have already tested Assign-bTB in more than 30,000 cattle and 3,000 deer,” says Tracy Thompson, PolyBatics chief executive officer. “The initial results have been very encouraging and now we are joining in this international effort to better evaluate the larger potential of this new diagnostic reagent.”

Assign-bTB can also be used for TB diagnostic blood tests and for human TB skin tests, as well as skin tests for TB in livestock. Closely related to human and avian tuberculosis, bovine TB has been greatly reduced within the developed world; however, some wildlife in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada are still affected, thus putting livestock at risk.

PolyBatics was created to commercialise biobead technology created by Professor Bernd Rehm at Massey University. For more information, visit the PolyBatics website.

Manawatu Investor Group (MIG) is off to a rollicking good start in 2015. It got down to the business of investment at its first meeting (26 February) when it received a pitch from Innovate 2014 co-winner Paul Linklater for his Strip Tillage start-up and heard from American angel investor John May.

This was May’s second trip to New Zealand but first time in Manawatu. He says that while he hasn’t had the luxury of watching MIG since they launched, he’s suitably impressed by its progress and metrics of success since it began.

He had been warned that there would be a different approach from what he was accustomed to on the East Coast of the US. After all, aren’t agritech and agrifood different industries to the software and the high tech deals in which he’s typically involved?

Not really.

“I could have been in Washington DC; I could have been in Georgia; I could have been in Seattle,” says May. “The investors were sophisticated and understood investment deals versus lifestyle deals.”

Investment needs to be in deals that provide a return that can be recycled and was impressed at the pipeline in Manawatu. But he reminds that this is not a quick turn-around game. “The main thing to recognise,” he says, “is that one has to be patient. We need to be very cognizant that we are building long-term mentor capital”.

Earlier in the day, Manawatu investors and companies had the opportunity to join May at a lunchtime workshop and Q&A session.

Chair-emeritus of the American Angel Capital Association, May is a lead instructor for the Power of Angel Investing seminars put on by the Angel Resource Institute.

A guest of the Angel Association of New Zealand, May really did write the book on angel investing. Two, actually: Every Business Needs an Angel and State of the Art: An Executive Briefing on Cutting-Edge Practices in American Angel Investing.

The managing partner of Washington DC-based New Vantage Group, May has organised five angel investment groups and has placed funds into more than 50 companies.

Previously, the Angel Association has hosted investors Bill Payne, Nelson Gray and John Huston.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) is hosting the 2015 New Zealand Agribusiness Investment Showcase to coincide with the Central Districts Field Days. The showcase aims to better equip innovative New Zealand agribusinesses for high growth.

Growth constraint is often caused by a lack of capital and helping companies overcome this limitation is a goal of the showcase. The nine participating companies will be put through NZTE’s Better by Capital programme, which helps them become more investor ready and better positioned to attract the right capital from the right source at the right time.

In its role as investment matchmaker, NZTE targets potential high-growth companies that have an international focus, and New Zealand and international investors that are looking for New Zealand companies and technologies. The companies will ready themselves to pitch to the investors.

Part of NZTE’s focus is to support economic development in the regions. The inaugural Agribusiness Investment Showcase was held at Mystery Creek Fieldays in 2014. Dave Craig, BCC marketing manager, says that BCC has helped NZTE to organise and promote the event and tell the Manawatu story to visiting investors and companies.

“Agrifood and agritechnologies are a strength of the Manawatu region,” says Craig. “Having the showcase here is part of the overall development of Manawatu as a hub of world-class food capability and industry knowledge.”

Lead partners for the showcase are Massey University and ASB – organisations that are both committed to the agricultural sector and the emergence of agritechnology.

The showcase, which will be held at Orlando Country’s Lake House in Palmerston North on 12 March is by invitation. Those interested can contact the Better by Capital team by email

Launching a start-up is a roller coaster ride. But that’s okay, says BioLumic CEO Warren Bebb, as long as you’re always going forward.

Having raised $1.1 million in funding at the end of last year, Bebb and the rest of the BioLumic team can strap themselves in for the next year.

BioLumic, which uses technology developed by Chief Science Officer and Massey University researcher Jason Wargent, develops light arrays that can accelerate or slow certain growth characteristics in plants by manipulating quantities and wavelengths of UV light.

“We’ve finished large-scale trials in New Zealand, are currently finishing a trial in Australia, and are about to begin one in California,” says Bebb.

All trials are done in collaboration with large-scale commercial growers and, while BioLumic is concentrating on lettuce, eventually the technology will be applicable to other crops.

The funding, gathered from a combination of existing shareholders and new investors will be used to reach milestones on the path to moving from prototypes to a saleable product. This includes financing everything from trials to personnel – BioLumic, based at The Factory, has been able to hire two additional staff and now employs 4.5 FTE.

The company is also working with a global agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation to further develop and validate IP.