A great time to be a start up

The Icehouse CEO Andy Hamilton talks to Brierley Penn about the innovation challenge for entrepreneurs.

What are the major challenges that New Zealand businesses face in their early stages, which The Icehouse seeks to assist with?

When you are starting a company, the hardest aspect is finding customers who are prepared to pay you for solving their current pain point. Of course, in this process there are a number of challenges, including building the product, getting it tested, improving it and continuing to develop it. Building a team, raising money and then getting into key global markets are key challenges along the line.

How do you see that incubators can help NZ innovators convert their ideas into successful businesses?

An "incubator" is another word for a verb that describes the process of helping a start-up get established, validate their market, build a product and team and turn a bright idea into a business. So they are just one of the options available to help you do this - the entrepreneur could do it themselves or come to an incubator, attend a Startup Weekend, raise funding from seed funds like Global from Day One or venture funds like Movac, work with groups like UniServices at the University of Auckland or be a part of an "accelerator" like Lightning Lab. There is a range of organisations out there, like The Icehouse, which help start-ups with this phase in their organisation's life. What we do first of all is help the start-up work out whether their "idea" is actually viable and worth spending time on, and then if there is a green light, help them take it to market with early customers.

Are you noticing any new trends in the way that New Zealanders are using business incubation services? Is this an increasingly popular way of building a business through its early stages?

Of course, it is a great time to be a start-up entrepreneur. There are so many options to help you build your company, both in Auckland, wider New Zealand and offshore. The competence, networks and funding is there to help you if the "dream" is big enough and good enough to convince these groups that you can start the company successfully. So what is "on trend" is this optionality - you could come to an organisation like The Icehouse to help you move into a co-working space like Biz Dojo in Auckland or Kiwi Landing Pad in San Francisco, join an Accelerator (a 100- day programme like Lighting Lab in Wellington or JFDI out of Singapore), seek investment from the Global from Day One Seed Fund or a group like Ice Angels or just "do it yourself".

Are there any industries which you are particularly focusing on at the present time, or industries which you think lend themselves particularly to incubation?

We all move with the trends and opportunities that are about the future - the markets that will demand delivery of products or services to meet their needs. Often, we are working with people who are probably one step ahead rather than one step behind. Right now we are seeing opportunities in so many markets, particularly in developing apps or web/social products, technologies in the food and beverage markets, and those markets that have "big data" which can be analysed, processed and returned back to organisations to deliver insight.

How can innovative financing strategies add value to NZ entrepreneurs attempting to get their ideas off the ground?

An entrepreneur is probably not too fussy about where or how the money comes from, as long as it turns up when they need it. The great thing right now is that there are quite a few options available in the market. These include government funding programmes like Callaghan Innovation, start-up challenges like Spark at the University of Auckland or the AUT Venture Fund, seed funds like Global from Day One Seed Fund, groups like Ice Angels or venture groups like Movac, as well as accelerator programmes like Lightning Lab or crowd funding groups like Kickstarter or Pledge Me.

Do you have any standout examples of businesses that the Icehouse has assisted in recent months?

At The Icehouse, we are about helping both start-ups and established entrepreneurs take their company to the next level. In the start-up world, we have recently worked with some fantastic entrepreneurs, who have massive dreams and aspirations to see millions using their products. A couple stand out for me. Parrot Analytics was founded by three young guys from the University of Auckland, led by Wared Seger. They help organisations that purchase content like films or TV series to deliver to the likes of you and me, by understanding and delivering insight into future demand. They are providing the first empirically based predictive model in the market around future demand. Another cool new start-up is Snowball Effect, which is delivering an equity crowd funding portal to help Kiwi entrepreneurs raise money for growing their business. New regulations have been approved by the Government that mean that this area of the market will open up from 1 April. It is very exciting to see that Kiwi entrepreneurs will be able to raise small amounts of funding from the wider market.