Whanganui Chronicle
  • Whanganui Chronicle home
  • Latest news
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Sport
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology

Locations

  • Taranaki
  • National Park
  • Whakapapa
  • Ohakune
  • Raetihi
  • Taihape
  • Marton
  • Feilding
  • Palmerston North

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • New Plymouth
  • Whanganui
  • Palmertson North
  • Levin

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Whanganui Chronicle

Seminar to turn ideas to into great businesses

By John Maslin
Whanganui Chronicle·
15 Apr, 2016 09:00 PM3 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

How to turn a great business idea into reality is the theme of a special day-long seminar being promoted by Whanganui and Partners.

The seminars will be held in the War Memorial Centre's concert chamber next Friday morning and afternoon.

Adrian Dixon, manager of Whanganui and Partners, the district council's economic unit, said the sessions would be headed by Adam Hunt, a director of Auckland-based company Liftoff, which specialises in raising equity capital through what's called crowdfunding.

Whanganui and Partners formed a partnership with Liftoff last year.

Crowdfunding is a relatively new activity in New Zealand but it lets companies raise funds by offering shares to the public via a website.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Mr Dixon said the board approached a number of operators in the crowdfunding area and from a handful of responses only Liftoff offered a genuine partnership.

He said crowdfunding would be the focus of the first workshop but others covering different topics would follow.

"We're trying to encourage UCOL students and secondary school students, indeed anyone around the city with a bit of an idea. This is the chance to kick those ideas around and see what could be done in capital raising that will see those ideas come to fruition," he said.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The workshops represented the first step in developing what was being called "the innovation quarter" for Whanganui, he said.

"In its simplest terms, it's about creating an innovation area within the city where innovative ideas happened," Mr Dixon said.

Some community workshops around this concept had been held and information gathered, and in the last few months Mr Dixon and a former colleague had been pulling together a model that they believed could work in a community of Whanganui's size.

Mr Dixon said that when he was working for Trade NZ, he spent time helping central government look at business incubators. They looked at international models and what was required "to help business startups take off".

"The two common factors were a population of about 100,000 and a research-based tertiary institution.

"We've got neither of those in our city so we've been working hard on a different model that might work."

He said one of the keys from the regional growth strategy the Government was pushing was getting access to capital, and the partnership with Liftoff provided that avenue.

"We're really excited there was someone in the marketplace willing to do a partnership with us," he said.

Mr Hunt told the Chronicle last year that crowdfunding put a business idea in front of 100,000 people or more.

"You could get 50 people liking it and you can get your money without going anywhere near a bank. There's always the flipside that no one puts up money but that's what can happen. The success is not whether you get crowdfunding or not. It's whether the business is still operating in a couple of years."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Whanganui Chronicle

Whanganui Chronicle

Police arrest 19 Hells Angels members, 72 charges laid

Whanganui Chronicle

'No significant changes': All calm after quake swarm at Ruapehu

Whanganui Chronicle

'Surprising' lack of property value growth in Whanganui region


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Whanganui Chronicle

Police arrest 19 Hells Angels members, 72 charges laid
Whanganui Chronicle

Police arrest 19 Hells Angels members, 72 charges laid

The Whanganui chapter's president and vice-president are among those arrested.

15 Jul 03:26 AM
'No significant changes': All calm after quake swarm at Ruapehu
Whanganui Chronicle

'No significant changes': All calm after quake swarm at Ruapehu

14 Jul 11:23 PM
'Surprising' lack of property value growth in Whanganui region
Whanganui Chronicle

'Surprising' lack of property value growth in Whanganui region

14 Jul 06:00 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Whanganui Chronicle e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Whanganui Chronicle
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • NZME Events
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP