"Can you tell someone in one ride in a lift what your business is about?"
If you can't, he says, you definitely need help.
Cunningham, a non-executive director of venture capital firm Caltech Capital and an advisory board member of Technology NewZealand, has set up Ignition Partner with former Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu partner Chad Wilkie to provide that kind of help and more to high-growth companies.
Unlike venture capital firms, Ignition isn't offering to put money into companies.
Rather, it advises small companies wanting to get a lot bigger on technology strategy, intellectual property, structure, capital planning and Government assistance.
Cunningham believes New Zealand's best path to economic success will be turning a number of smaller but established companies into big companies , rather than getting lucky with another Fonterra.
"How do you lift New Zealand into the top half of the OECD?
"You can try to create five Fonterras from scratch over the next 10 years, or take 20 companies making between $5 million and $100 million in revenue and grow them. I think that's do-able.
"All the focus recently has been on start-ups but getting the first $5 million of revenue is very hard."
And, he says, a company needs at least $100 million to penetrate overseas markets.
Most successful New Zealand companies define and own their intellectual property, export to niche markets, sell to industry rather than consumers and have at least a 30 per cent share of their niche market and a range of strategic innovation partners, he says.
Wilkie spent almost 20 years at Deloittes, and for the last two years headed its technology ventures business.
He is also a director of Auckland University's Icehouse business incubator.
Wilkie and Cunningham each own 40 per cent of Ignition and Deloittes owns the rest, making its international networks available to clients.
It's still early days for Ignition, which has been operating for only a month.
It has fewer than 10 clients, but has another 10 in the wings, waiting to take that high-growth elevator.
