Start-up businesses and entrepreneurs are thriving in greater Wellington as the result of Activate – a four month programme designed by Grow Wellington’s – Creative HQ.  ANDREW GREGORY explores the programme helping develop the business superstars of tomorrow.

John Poppleton - recent graduate of Activate

The Activate programme started in Wellington in 2007, with the focus of turning business dreams into reality.  Rewa Tomlinson, Client Manager for Activate says, before it was conceived, “we saw close to a hundred different individuals who had a great idea, who wanted to start a business – but, very little else.  We saw a real need for those people to be able to go somewhere and test those ideas, before mortgaging their homes.”

Activate also helps established companies looking to re-innovate or enter a new market. Regional business incubators and programmes like Activate are an important part of the business landscape.   New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) funds incubator schemes through-out New Zealand in the main centres, and recently received a funding increase of $1.8m.

Using a ‘concept viability’ first approach, Activate removes some risk of failure from the business start-up process. It consists of sixteen modules, over four months, focusing on the initial business concept, followed by establishing foundations of sound business practise. The programme covers money, marketing, media branding, sales, governance and intellectual property. And its track record since inception is impressive, with eleven high-growth companies having graduated, with others showing degrees of success.

For comparison Auckland’s business incubator, ICE House has a programme called Start-Up, lasting eighteen to twenty-four months and focusing on businesses in the start-up phase as opposed to the conceptual stage.   “A lot of people call [Activate] many different things, like a mini-MBA, or a mashed down version of incubation.  We offer all the same services we do for incubation – based on a tighter and more structured time frame,” says Rewa.

Activate is a positive addition to Wellington’s economy and region in terms of employment and growth.  In mid December 2008, Activate graduated twenty-one companies, “eighty-five percent of these weren’t previously existing before going through the programme.  This has immediate economic spin offs in terms of employment and generation of income for those people. We’ve also got a number of clients bringing in export dollars, which is amazing – considering they were only on the course four months,” says Rewa.

People like John Poppleton, CEO of newly formed inventors company Kiwi-Ingenuity is one of the latest graduates of Activate.  John was a fire-fighter for 23 years before deciding to work on his passion of inventing and took up the Activate course when he heard about it through a Porirua Chamber Commerce network event.  It “opened up the opportunity and so I gave it a bash. – I recognised there is little being done by government to promote invention in NZ. Therefore [Kiwi -ingenuity] aims to provide a service where we help inventors find the right knowledge, connecting inventors for brainstorming, problem solving and encouragement.”

Throughout the course John, experienced highs and lows, “the mentoring inspired me and allowed me to stay focused,” the low was, “being told I have to rethink my vision.”  The result of john’s rethink is www.kiwiingenuity.net designed to connect inventors “to professionals with the capacity to develop prototypes and manufacture the product.”  His future plans include working towards a National Inventors Expo.  “I believe there are inventors out there with inventions like mine and need a little bit of help.”
Not all of the participants who enter Activate find their concepts viable, with some ‘fast-failed’ if the initial concept is flawed.  Although it’s designed to promote business success, Activate takes a ‘brutally honest’ look at an entrepreneur’s ideas, with guidance from experts, to find out the viability of a business concept first.  Most participants agree though, it is better discovering a business concept is unviable in only 16 weeks, rather than 12 months or more of heavy borrowing and investment.

Graduate and entrepreneur of Runaway Weekends, Julia Morrison says joining Activate forced her to do cash-flow projections for a concept centred on a walking tour company.   “When I put in all the different costs for DOC, transport, paying contractors and so on there wasn’t much left for me.”  Julia felt it better to have found the concept unviable early on.  She re-defined the concept into pamper weekends for women around the Wellington region and is one of the successful gradates.  “[Activate] provided me with the tools and resources I needed for my research and if it wasn’t for that input, I might never have changed direction and be where I am today,” she says.

“We give people a business foundation, we don’t get involved in their craft or trade, they are the experts at that.  But, we give them business basics and break down the jargon.  Activate is very much structured around understanding the market.  We team the ‘activists’ up with one-on-one advisers and they basically roll-up their sleeves and get into the business as the executive management team.  Next is forming a structured tactical plan to carry on with once they leave the programme,” says Rewa.

After Activate the participants can apply to enter the Creative HQ business incubator, designed for eight participants at a time.  In a ‘Dragon’s Den’ scenario, Creative HQ picks the eight most viable, potential high growth businesses and invests in each start-up company.  Not all Activate graduates are selected for the Creative HQ incubator, other simply choose not to proceed further.  Kieran Donnelly, CEO of www.GYO.co.nz and pilot graduate says, “The new business model for the incubator made us rethink our possible future involvement, but we felt at least in the short term a move into the incubator in relation to the commitment we were making wasn’t justifiable.”

For others such as the progression from Activate to applying for the Creative HQ incubator has been a natural step. Kah Chan and Tristan Thomas, directors of Kickstart both agree, “Creative HQ incubator is going to be very important for us, we need business backing of which we have very little knowledge of, Creative HQ provides that platform for us to launch from,” says Kah.

Activate continues its own growth, and has extended the program to other regions, launching in Lower Hutt, Porirua and extending to Upper Hutt with the next series.  Activate is planning to launch in Wairarapa in March.   “We have spots already taken on those programs and a number of other companies are getting together applications,” says Rewa.

Anyone with a business concept can get expert help to test and develop it, “come and see us, we’ll guarantee to spend an hour with you talking about your business idea.  Our job is helping grow individual businesses in the Wellington region and we have a team of people who deal with different size and scale businesses. One of our big things is connecting people, which is one of the most important things as a new business owner.”

For more information check out the recently upgraded Grow Wellington website www.growwellington.co.nz