Archive for April, 2016

YES: Horowhenua

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transparent-300x217Recently BCC pitched the Young Enterprise Scheme to the council as well as some key people in Horowhenua and convinced them to run the programme for their local schools for the first time. This is great news as it means 110 students from Manawatu, Horowhenua and Waiopehu colleges all get to go through the process and reap the benefits of the competition.

We are excited to bring on board Lucy Robertson, a YES veteran who will help us run the competition both here and in Horowhenua.

“I took part in YES in 2013 while I was at Palmerston North Girls High, my team designed onesies – back then they were a lot less common than they are now,” says Lucy.

“I was quite lucky because I was the director in my group and I got a heap of opportunities like EIA (Enterprise in Action), which is where 80 students go to Auckland for four days to take part in an international challenge. This gave me a real foot in the door with people up there and the connections I was able to make got me a job doing coordination for YES (before joining BCC).

I just love being part of the whole YES experience again, since I can’t actually go through it again myself it’s great to just be involved. Seeing the students on their first day is really cool because they develop and change so much throughout the year. I wasn’t really interested in business before YES but now i’m studying it at Massey!

We are replicating everything we do in the Manawatu, down in Horowhenua: Pitch Heats, Dragons Den, Trade Fair and their own Regional Final.

I am also hoping to organise a ‘CEO Day’ down there, with every CEO from each team to attend. We will organise speakers (preferably CEOs/Managers from businesses in the region) to give  talks with advice and tips and finish with a Q and A.”

With Lucy on board we are confident that the Horowhenua YES programme will be a big success!

Find out more about YES here.

 

MIG Fund Two Ready to Launch!

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mig logoBCC is excited to be launching MIG Fund Two, our second fund which plans to invest in around 20 early stage companies over its lifetime. The start-ups invested in by the fund will be focused locally around the Manawatu region, but will also come from other parts of the country, especially with access to our Sprout (Agritech accelerator) companies which come from all over New Zealand.

Mig Fund One, a million dollar fund launched back in 2011, has invested in 14 companies to date plus the Sprout Cohort (8 companies). Due to the riskier than average nature of a portfolio of this type, some of these companies inevitably failed. However, this has been more than offset by those which have been successful and are continuing to grow, such as BioLumic, Calfsmart, Booktrack, Aroa and CropX to name a few.

A central feature of the Fund is to provide an efficient mechanism for investors to gain exposure to a portfolio of early stage companies. This helps lower the risk of investing in only one or two start-ups and gives investors the chance to get away from business-as-usual and see new technology before anyone else.

Many MIG angel investors invest because they are helping to create a region that has interesting and innovative companies with higher value jobs. Sure, everyone hopes that at some point they invest in the next Trade Me or Xero, but along the way investors are growing the local and national economies.

In fact Angel investment activity has been steadily increasing its contribution to the New Zealand economy with angel networks and funds investing a record $61 million into 94 companies in 2015, up from only $21 million a decade ago according to the Angel Association New Zealand.

If you are interested in investing in start-up companies, now is a great time to get involved in MIG Fund Two. Please .

Sprout Moves Towards the Next Round

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For the 2015 Sprout companies’ pitching isn’t over yet.  Sprout is hosting an investment showcase on 11 May in Hamilton. This showcase is to allow Corporate Partners and Supporters of Sprout and invited Investors to hear about the companies’ progress and consider them as an investment opportunity.

Here’s a quick update about what’s been happening in the last month for our companies:

-AgriTrack and Bee’z Thingz are currently completing investment rounds.

-AgTract and are growing their human capital, with both companies looking to add specialists to their teams.

-There was a total of 82 ‘indications of investment interest’ across the five teams who pitched at the Agribusiness Investment Showcase in March.

-Nature Matters Milk Co. has increased their per month revenue as a consequence of being part of the Sprout programme.

-One team is in discussions with a national go-to-market partner.

-Another team is in advanced discussions with a potential agritech corporate collaboration partner.

 

We have now opened early registrations for the 2016 Sprout programme. If you wish to talk to one of the Sprout team members about your agritech idea, you must register first. This is a non-binding registration but gives you access to our team’s skills and knowledge before we start the application process.

As part of generating awareness for the 2016 programme, certain Sprout team members have been out and about at industry events.

James Bell-Booth and Stu Bradbury attended the MobileTech Primary Industries event in Rotorua and presented the Sprout programme to attendees. This is a growing event focused on bringing agri-tech developers and partners together to discuss innovation in agritech.

Stu, and Bee’z Thingz founder Julian McCurdy, attended the Silicon Valley Forum on AgTech last week and saw some of the latest agritech in action. Look out for Stu’s blog this week on the Sprout website.

Here’s a few images of the agritech, Stu and Julian saw while at the Silicon Valley forum.

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Tararua Business Hub

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Screen Shot 2016-04-20 at 3.16.52 pm
Louise Cooper, Business and Communications Administrator at the Tararua District Council had the following to say about the Tararua Business Network.

“We have over 1800 SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) in the Tararua District and we recognised that if we can grow business by one employee, we have a substantial business platform.  These small businesses have a distinct role to play in our economy and often provide a means of entry into business, new entrepreneurial talent and a career for those who value economic independence.

We facilitate their growth by enabling, linking and capturing the opportunities that can be derived by leveraging off local talent and the expertise available through our regional partners.   With a collective group of enthusiastic experts available to support small-to-medium-sized business in the district, the Tararua Business Network focuses on enabling, facilitating and linking our businesses to experts in order to support their growth and sustainability.

The relationships we have grown and developed with our business partners are vitally important and we have been referring both new and existing businesses to Dave Craig from the BCC on a fortnightly basis, for almost a year now.  Indeed one of the businesses referred to Dave, will be based in our Incubation Office in mid-April 2016 and is using the business model canvas to develop his value proposition.

Our office in Dannevirke opened in December 2014 and we could see from our geographical stats that we were missing opportunities to assist business in the southern part of the district, and therefore opened our satellite office in Pahiatua in February 2016.
We aim to replicate the services we provide in Dannevirke to Pahiatua and are currently targeting the agribusiness sector and encouraging them to contact us. We are keen to promote to this sector the support available through the BCC from their individual consultations, Sprout programme and the Innovate competition, which we are proud to sponsor each year.”