Venture Centre wants to make business easier

Venture Centre co-founders Pascale Hyboud-Peron and Steven Vincent are hoping their new website will make things easier for Tauranga business people.

Four Tauranga entrepreneurs have joined forces to help connect other like-minded people.

Jo Allum, Michael Doerner, Pascale Hyboud-Peron and Steven Vincent have launched the Venture Centre website to make it easier and quicker for Bay of Plenty businesses to find the people, spaces and training.

"It's too slow and time is money," co-founder Jo Allum said.

While still in its early stages, Ms Allum, also director of Yojo Designs, expected the site to become the go-to place for local business people looking for information.

"The Venture Centre is an online hub to connect the dots between all the innovative people and amazing stuff that's being done in Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty," she told the Bay of Plenty Times.

"We have a lot of communications and technology people working on some amazing products and projects with some amazing clients out of the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga. It's connecting the dots and promoting collaboration," she said.

"Across the year on average every week there are 30 to 35 courses that are run around Tauranga. That's not including courses that are run fulltime at the polytech or Waikato [University]. These are for business people. You wouldn't know that unless you subscribe to all their newsletters. This brings them all together."

The website aims to make the links between local business people "far more visible and far more tangible" and connect local students, teachers, employees, entrepreneurs, employers and investors, Ms Allum said.

"New Zealand is an amazing petri dish of entrepreneurs. Every one is entrepreneurial - I can do it, roll-up your sleeves - but what that means is we don't collaborate. We miss out on the power of the group."

The group has already formed partnerships with Tauranga Chamber of Commerce and about eight technology companies.