John Holt. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Local entrepreneurs need to cut straight to the chase and not place too much focus on telling "the New Zealand story" during meetings with Silicon Valley investors, says John Holt, the managing director and co-founder of San Francisco's Kiwi Landing Pad.
The business development organisation was set up to help
firms from this country gain a foothold in the United States.
Wellington-based Holt said US investors did not tend to beat around the bush and companies needed to quickly deliver their "killer point" - the problem their product could solve.
"People in a business context in the States, particularly the Silicon Valley, will take a meeting but it will be a half an hour meeting - it will really be for them to sound out what the opportunity or level of interest will be," he said. "We tend to have quite a conversational style that takes up most of that 30 minutes. You've really got to get to the punch quite quickly."
Holt said telling the New Zealand story helped, but it was not something Kiwi firms should lead in with during meetings with US investors.
