Our turn: Learning to talk the talk

By SIMON COLLINS

New Zealanders need to learn Chinese if we want to earn a living from the technology we create, says Singaporean investor Seow Khoe Lay.

Seow, managing director (Singapore) of Auckland-based IT Capital, arranged the $600,000 investment in Hamilton's Deep Video Imaging by Singapore's National Science and Technology Board and Plan-B Technologies.

He says New Zealand's strength is in our "IP" (intellectual property).

Plan-B chairman Lim Soon Hock, a Singapore powerbroker who also chairs other leading companies and the country's Institute of High Performance Computing, says he is also "impressed by the technology and technical expertise of New Zealand."

But both men say New Zealand information technology (IT) entrepreneurs need to be better linked into the world market.

"They have failed to do a proper global market study," says Seow. "If you understand the market, the key players, the consumer behaviour, then you have a fair idea of how to pitch yourself in the marketplace."

For Deep Video Imaging, this meant linking with key companies such as Seattle's Appian Graphics which can use Deep Video's unique three-dimensional screen software. Seow and Lim see Singapore's role as being plugged into world business networks to help make these links, especially in China.

"My advice to New Zealand companies is, if you really want to expand, try to find good partners in Singapore who will bring in an international extension of your New Zealand operation," Lim says.

Seow says China, with 1.3 billion people of whom 500 million have television, will soon be New Zealand's biggest market.

"China has bypassed the personal computer and jumped straight into doing their internet through their TV," he says.

He says some American companies are doing well in China because they speak Mandarin.

"If you want to do business in Asia, go and learn the language, even if it's a smattering of it."

He says New Zealand also needs to develop better business financing - especially "securitisation," where the investors lend money to a business as a group, but can sell their share of the loan to someone else when they need the cash.

"If you go to a bank to do a syndicated loan to take you through the next 12 months, in New Zealand they think you are a conman," he says.

"An overdraft is ridiculous. An unsecured overdraft is hard to get [so borrowers have to put their houses up as security].

"In the IP world you need high capitalisation but no bricks-and-mortar security. In the US, technopreneurs are not secured by their homes. They have debt instruments."

Lim, an investor, says IT investors need to be willing to take "high risks."

"For me personally, the moment I put in the money I write it off. I don't want to worry about it," he says.

"I do not allow the money I put in to stand in the way of rendering the support to start-ups to succeed. I want to be able to focus on what is to be done, and I find I can sleep better at night.

"Of course that presupposes that you do your homework first!"

Links

IT Capital

Planb

Our turn

Send us your feedback:

Simon Collins

Letters to the editor (newspaper)

Other stories in this feature


Related features:

The jobs challenge

Common core values

href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?reportID=57032">The knowledge society

Official website:

Catching the Knowledge Wave