Entries from June 2008 ↓

The Pitch:
PlaceMate is a guide to find shops and services (like hairdressers, fitness centres, beauty salons etc), with an abundance of personal insights. It is informative, welcoming and fun. It enables users to find shops, services, night entertainment and restaurants using various search criteria, rated and ranked by real customers. PlaceMate also links users to users with a similar taste: “Users that rated this service high, also liked….”.

Business Model:
Based on selling low cost advertisement spots ($9.99/month), highly targeted by publishing them on the relevant pages. Unlike other websites, the advertisement spots are estatically integrated in the site; adding to the usability instead of anoying users.

Technical details:
Includes an extensive CRM system, making data import, editing and maintenance easy. It’s easy to expand to other cities by the import function, allowing databases bought from local yellow or white pages to be
imported. Currently it contains about 7000 restaurants covering all of NZ and 1200 shops (in Wellington). PlaceMate is still in the process of being developed, though in its final stages.

Next steps:
Due to family circumstances, the entrepreneurs are moving back to the Netherlands, where they will continue expanding the PlaceMate model. However, in NZ the site really needs to be brought to the next level. They have put the business on a TradeMe auction.

If you have a CEO who would like to take this on, it could make a nice investment with an interesting business model at a very low buy-in price.

Contact:
Debra Aurich
Tel: 021 1904605
Email: debraurich@gmail.com

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

The DomPost recently published a very interesting article on Neville Jordan, who was the founder of MAS, which bypassed the NZX and went straight to the Nasdaq. He later went on to establish Endeavour Capital, which has invested in a number of local tech startups.

Jordan says that in the intervening ten years, NZ markets have matured to the point he’d now recommend that people get funded locally in NZ.

He also states that he’s in the process of setting up a new fund that will aim “to expand science and technology companies to the point at which they are ready for a trade sale or a listing – preferably locally.” The new fund will “be a lot bigger” than Endeavour’s existing funds.

That’s good news for local companies working their way up the investment food chain.

Australian superannuation fund Westscheme has created an AUD 30m fund to support early-stage commercialisation of intellectual property at three Australian universities and Auckland Uni.  The Trans Tasman Commercialisation Fund is supported by the NZ Government to the tune of NZD 200k per year.

The fund is committed to making 25% of its investments through Auckland Uni, and that “NZ-based angel and seed investors are offered the same level of equity in the spin out companies as that taken by the Fund itself

More co-investment and prequalification … that’s all good!

For more details, see the press release or the Herald story.

The NZ Herald reports that TradeMe founder Sam Morgan has teamed up with MOVAC, his original angel investors, to invest NZD 1.25 million into Auckland-based film and television production software company ebus.

The Pitch:

Over 6.6 million US households of buyers, designers and sellers spent US$1.5 billion on DIY jewelry in 2007, up 19% on 2006. More importantly they are rushing online, spending $100m, up a whopping 100% on 2006. Ponoko is in a unique position to service this large and rapidly growing online market.

The problem these designers and sellers face is the cost and complexity to make and sell their creations. And this is leading to a lack of unique jewelry easily accessible to mass market buyers.

The Ponoko solution to this is an online supply chain service that makes it easy and affordable to buy, make and sell designer crafted jewelry. Their online marketplace delivers a DIY jewelry buying, making and selling service at 50% less cost than the equivalent offline process and saves 90% of the time traditionally involved.

Over time they hope to expand into other vertical markets – eg, the overall US craft vertical is worth about US$50 billion per year.

The underlying excitement about Ponoko is that its unique ‘buy/make/sell’ online marketplace earns 5x more per sale than traditional ‘buy/sell’ online marketplaces. This is because they provide an on-demand product making and delivery service in addition to the traditional marketplace sales service. In short they are redefining how products are designed, made and delivered – and riding on a new wave people are calling the post industrial revolution and web3.0.

All performance indicators are trending upwards and revenues are flowing at a sustained 3.8% online sales conversion success rate. This innovation and traction continues to attract high profile investors, partners and media.

Accomplishments to date:

• Revenues have grown at a compound rate of 42% per month since September 2007.
• Website traffic has grown at a compound rate of 46% per month since January 2007.
• Nearly 10,000 personal factories have been opened.
• Highly successful US businessmen have been appointed to their advisory board (see ‘Principals & Previous Experience’ details below).
• 2 manufacturing nodes have been established – San Francisco, USA and Wellington, NZ.
• Selected to launch the world’s first ‘buy/make/sell’ marketplace at the prestigious TechCrunch40 event in San Francisco, USA.
• Selected to launch at the prestigious DEMO events in both San Diego & Palm Springs, USA.
• Selected to present at the world’s mass customization and personalization conference at MIT in Massachusetts, USA.
• Supreme winner of TUANZ Business internet awards.
• Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, BBC News, WIRED Magazine, BusinessWeek, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch.com, Engadget.com, VentureBeat.com, Makezine.com, Core77.com, Idealog, NZ Herald.
• USA accounts for 70% of revenues.

Development plans:

• Focus on marketing, particularly providing online marketing tools to empower our marketplace designers and sellers to tell their stories and engage in ‘social selling’.
• Providing tools that make it simple for anyone to design a product that can be made at the click of a mouse.

Key Challenges:

• marketing – engaging more users, more often at more profit.
• product – making it super simple for the novice ‘designer’ to design products they can click to make.
• operations – bedding in the next make-on-demand technology, beyond laser cutting of plastics and timbers.
• finance – cash to fund growth.

Principals & Previous Experience:

• David ten Have (founder/CEO) – previously co-founder/CTO of Provoke, NZ’s #1 design led web development firm.
• Derek Elley (founder/CSO) – serial entrepreneur, previously co-founder/CEO of First Rate (NZ’s largest Internet marketing agency, sold to ASX:QXQ in 2006), co-founder / CEO of Calcium Software (NZ’s first email branding agency), co-founder/CEO of Sparkbox (NZ’s leading angel investment company).
• Fred Durham (Board advisor) – founder/CEO of Cafepress.com, the world’s largest personalized goods marketplace hosting 11 million unique website visitors per month, adding 2,000 new shops and 45,000 new products daily.
• Graham Hill (Board advisor) – serial entrepreneur, founder/CEO of Treehugger.com, the world’s #1 green blog, sold to Discovery Channel (NASDAQ:DISC) in 2007.
• Ross Stevens (Board advisor) – one of NZ’s leading industrial designers, previously with Philippe Starck and Fisher & Pykel.

What they want from an investor:

• NZ$1.25m.
• Minimum investment NZ$10,000.
• Offer closes 26 June 2008.
• Ideal for investors looking to invest in US focused online marketplaces, user generated content websites, online retail of digital or physical goods, online supply chain solutions, manufacturing-on-demand, digital or industrial design.

Dave’s Commentary:

Ponoko has the ingredients to make a great New Zealand success story. I remember talking to David ten Have a couple of years ago, when he said he was bored with the virtual world and wanted to use the Internet to enable making real things. He teamed up with Derek Elley, and they’ve gone on to build a very strong team … if you view Angel investment as investing primarily in people, you’re off to a great start right there. … if you view Angel investment as investing primarily in people, you’re off to a great start right there. They’ve managed to put together a string of successes which any NZ startup would envy.

Ponoko have been very successful in building up a community (in the true sense) of users, and the underlying technology is very cool. Laser cutters, Rails, plenty of AJAX … yum. But the key source of confidence for me came from Ponoko taking the jump and opening an office in San Francisco. One of their key learnings, according to David tH, is that “you have to be there to be there”, ie there’s no substitute for actual presence in the North American market if you want to do business there. Many New Zealand startups could do well to learn this lesson.

Disclosure: I’ve invested in Ponoko in a previous round. The share price is up, which is a good reflection that they’re starting to realise their early promise.

Contact details:

Derek Elley
derek.elley@ponoko.com
Tel: +64 21 88 66 81

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

With petrol costing $2.06/l this morning, it’s bleedingly obvious that technologies that improve fuel efficiency are increasingly attractive. Venturebeat reported that cleantech investments topped USD 3 billion in 2007, and the trend is upward.

Enter Revolutionary Engines Limited, a New Zealand startup with a new design which claims up to 60x more power than a standard car engine while halving fuel consumption.

The Pitch:

“Revolutionary Engines Limited” (REL) is a company with a design for a fuel efficient, powerful rotary engine. The design is radically different from anything seen before and is truly revolutionary. It’s early stage, but competing with a standard car engine which can sustain 5,000 RPMs, potentially this engine may have 60x the power to weight ratio due to two unique features, sustainable high RPM (50,000+RPM) = 10x more power, multiplied by it firing 6 times per revolution = 60x more power.

The principle of this design is the same as existing 2-stroke combustion engines. Draw air into the engine, pre-compress the air for fast loading of the combustion chamber and purging of spent gases, inject fuel directly into the combustion chamber, ignite it, and harness the power as the combusting gases expand. Existing engines utilise a piston sliding inside a cylinder to achieve this. They lose energy and have limited spinning potential due to the piston stopping at the top and bottom of each stroke. This design utilises a completely balanced rotary system, so no energy is lost to reciprocation, and no such RPM limit is imposed.

Existing engines fire only once per rotation of the output shaft, producing output torque for less than half of the cycle. This design fires six times per revolution of the output shaft, producing 6x the output power during 75% of the engine cycle, so it will have power at low RPM.

The applications for the design are diverse, however this design is especially good for vehicles due to its massive power to weight ratio. All vehicle manufacturers are going to want this engine, currently they are happy to sink huge R&D budgets into refinements that achieve 5% gains. The design is expected to halve fuel consumption in vehicles through a combination of gains, will be cheaper to produce than current technology, will suffer minimal engine wear, and will be capable of burning less potent alternative fuels with fewer and less toxic emissions.

Accomplishments to date:

• Company set up in March 2007
• Provisional patent lodged in August 2007 with assignment to company
• Domain name secured
• January 2008 – Positive report received from invention evaluation panel including two engineers
• May 2008 – Offer of partnership with mechanical engineers

Development plans:

• Do computer-aided design and analysis work
• File PCT patent application
• Construct and test a prototype, and get performance data.
• Analyse data and construct second prototype
• Provide performance data to vehicle manufacturers and take orders
• Approach engine manufacturers to license the technology
• Make technology available to all manufacturers

Revenue Model:

Licensing and Royalties

Key Challenges:

• Overcoming technical issues such as sealing the combustion chamber and dispersing heat
• Financing mass production

Principals & Previous Experience:

Phil Carter, the inventor, has experience in many aspects of the construction industry and running a small company. As a hobby Phil has been working on this engine design for twenty years, as well as spending several years developing a controllable ski sled, which features steering, braking, and suspension. Phil recognises that this is a major project that will need very capable business people behind it. Assembling a team that can develop this design into production models, protect the intellectual property, and license the technology to manufacturers is the priority.

What they want from an investor:

• NZD 100,000 seed funding, with capacity for further funding
• Mentoring and governance expertise
• Mechanical design/engineering commercialisation experience
• Connections in the automotive industry

Dave’s Commentary:

Most of the inventions we see these days are related to software or biotech, and it’s refreshing to see ideas like this come through which relate to physical things in everyday life, could radically change the way we work, and have potential in the manufacturing space.

This is clearly a high-risk seed funding opportunity, but if you have experience in the area it could be very rewarding.

Contact details:

Phil Carter 03 443 8683
info@revolutionaryengines.com” title=”mailto:info@revolutionaryengines.com\”>info@revolutionaryengines.com“>info at revolutionaryengines.com”>info@r…

Note: If you plan to act on any information on this site, please be sure to read the disclaimer.

VortexDNA have graduated out of the Angel space, and are now looking for offshore VC.  Stuff.co.nz ran an article today saying that VortexDNA are ready to take the jump overseas, and are looking for USD 10M to do so.  The money will be spent on “expanding and opening offices in New York, London, Moscow and Singapore.”

VortexDNA have built an engine that analyses human behaviour and encapsulates “purpose, focus and life values” in a 7-digit number, which they claim is an accurate predictor of future behaviour.  Their current main target market is the insurance industry, but they say their technology is applicable to e-commerce, advertising, television, search, and just about any area where the prediction of human behaviour would be useful.

They’ve also been kind enough to publish their detailed notes from X|Media|Lab Wellington on their blog.

Good work, guys!