Drop me a line if you’re interested in being put in touch with him.

The Pitch:

LiquidID is a unique and innovative extension to single sign on (SSO) systems (such as OpenID) that provide guaranteed email protection. OpenID allows a user with a single identity to logon to any OpenID enabled sites (“consumers”). LiquidID is an extension to OpenID which seamlessly distributes unique email aliases to OpenID consumers. The LiquidID server forwards received emails to the real user. If however it is determined that the alias has been compromised then the LiquidID server will reject the email.

Since LiquidID is a portal for each and every login, significant revenue can be generated by presented targeted advertisements specific to the users interests and the sites they are logging into.

This concept is protected by provisional patents but requires investment to fund full filing. Furthermore, additional provisional patents have been submitted for an alternative but similar idea in which email aliasing is applied to any outgoing email message from a standard email client or web based service to provide absolute unsolicited email protection. More information can be found online at http://liquidid.net and a business plan is available upon request.

Accomplishments to date:

• Patents filed
• Site developed and launched

Development plans:

To further the provisional IP protection with a PCT patent and market the service using online media. Extensions and refinement to the service are planned.

Key Challenges:

The main obstacle for LiquidID will be mainstream adoption of SSO (OpenID) by the general public. However assuming OpenID becomes mainstream, the primary challenge for LiquidID is ensuring people are aware of it and how it is differentiated from other OpenID providers. Alternatively if the IP is to be licensed then appropriate parties need to be made aware of the benefit and understand it’s value proposition.

Principals & Previous Experience:

LiquidID has been developed solely by Jeremy Wyn-Harris, under the privately owned entity of Epic Digital.

Jeremy has 10 years experience with start-ups. In 1998 he co-founded Epic Digital which developed an intelligent standalone Internet camera for low end security applications that was mass produced (10K units) in Australia and Singapore. Joint ventures with Hills Industries (forming Epic World Australia and SingTel (forming Epic World Singapore) were established. This was accomplished in all within 4 years and began on a shoestring budget from a garage setup. Since 2003 Jeremy has established three other significant ventures, namely The OpenSauce, Builderscrack, and UpStartGo. Builderscrack is a commercial venture that has rapidly become a profitable business, whereas The OpenSauce is a non-profit venture that has received international media attention from BBC World.

Jeremy has three published patents and one recently submitted PCT application and holds a Bachelor (Hons) and a Master degree in Electrical Engineering.

What they want from an investor:

NZD 25K is required to in the near future to further intellectual property protection. Overall a total investment of NZ$100K is being sought.

Dave’s Commentary:

If you’re keen on this kind of technology, $25K is a low buy-in price to take part in a company that has protected IP, an up-and-running product, and an entrepreneur with a track record. Jeremy seems a personable chap with a good mix of technical and business skills. From my conversations with him, he seems focussed on the desired outcomes, not afraid of hard slog, and willing to take risks.

Contact details:

JeremyWyn-Harris
Email: investment@liquidid.net
Mob: 021 0479528

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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

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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!

Celsias is the online marketplace where companies sponsor social entrepreneurs to create and fund corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. Celsias offers companies the opportunity to sponsor CSR projects and promote their corporate citizenship globally via the growing Celsias community. Celsias offers social entrepreneurs the oportunity to describe their projects on Celsias for free, and then attract a corporate sponsor. The main market is SME’s that need to implement CSR programs to satisfy customer, stakeholder, or contractual requirements but do not have the staff or budget to manage a CSR program in-house. Revenue is based on subscriptions.

Accomplishments to date:

Site traffic has been growing at a compound rate of 65% per month since October 2006. The site has over 90 projects listed, and growing. The Wall Street Journal says that it reads the Celsias blog regularly, and the Times (UK) named Celsias in the top five climate change websites in the world. Celsias recently closed a sponsorship deal with Ricoh and is in negotiations with a major US-based technology company.

Development Plans / Key Challenges:

The trick now is to win a handful of high-profile Fortune 500 clients to validate the offer, and help them to achieve their CSR goals and whilst combatting climate change. At the same time, the site needs to continue to attract high-quality projects, and continue to build the Celsias community and traffic.

Principals & Previous Experience:

CEO: Nick Lewis

• Former CEO of Energy Intellect
• Investment banker and group head at JP Morgan and CIBC World Markets in New York
• Founder and CEO of NADE Corp (outsource drug and alcohol services provider)
• Nuclear engineer at ABB
• Peace Corps volunteer in Yemen
• Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)

COO: Matthew Wright

• UK-trained information architect and web strategist
• Formerly with Shift in Wellington, and Saatchi and Saatchi in London

What they want from an investor:

• NZD 300,000 to lead sales efforts and land corporate clients in USA and New Zealand
• Experience in working with US-based corporates

Dave’s Commentary:

A trust in which I am a trustee purchased Celsias shares when they were first issued a couple of years ago. At the time, they were building a platform for carbon credit aggregation trading, but were soon gazumped when the New Zealand Government decided it was such a great idea they’d do it themselves through Landcare Research’s carboNZero programme. No problem for the team though, they reinvented their value proposition and came up with something much more compelling – how to engage corporates in working toward a more sustainable world.

The Celsias blog is a fantastic source of information and seems to be amassing readers at a remarkable rate. The projects area is growing quickly. Climate change isn’t going to go away anytime soon, and Celsias has established itself as a leading authority on the issue. There would appear to be huge upside potential, and hey, if you get involved you’re deploying your resources to help save the planet and that has to be good on both an individual and a societal level.

How enthusiastic corporates get about climate change CSR, and whether they’re really willing to “walk the talk” remains to be seen. Platforms like Celsias will lower the barrier for companies and people who are truly concerned to do something about it. I’m glad that Nick, Celsias, and New Zealand are leading the way.

Nick says that this will be investors’ last chance to get in on the act as angels, as their next investment round will be VC likely out of the USA. In fact, an angel who can help them achieve US-based VC and/or sell into the Fortune 500 will be very attractive to them.

Contact details:

Nick Lewis
Tel: +64 21381361
Email: nick.lewis@celsias.com

Listen to (or download) the podcast [audio http://nzangels.com/files/2008/04/nzange...]

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We’ve seen some so-called hyperlocal social networking sites overseas, such as i-neighbors, EveryBlock, outside.in and Yelp. They all function mainly as news or review sites, and do little to build real local social capital. If we want to live in a connected society, then we need to actually connect with each other as individuals and as groups. Enter USPLUS, a web-based initiative which aims to encourage groups, clubs and teams to list their focus purpose and associated details, promote their activities, network and grow.

The Pitch:

USPLUS is a place on the Internet for groups, clubs, and teams that provides:

• A free listing service, and over time a valuable resource for finding local activities worldwide.
• An easy to use solution for people to seek out group-based activities.
• A website (or add-on to their existing website) for groups to promote their activities and events.
• A Social Network to meet friends and make connections around real common interests.

Unlike many other social networking sites, USPLUS focuses on and captures group dynamics. People can be active or passive group members but still get value from and feel like they belong to their USPLUS community.

Accomplishments to date:

• Company set up in December 2007
• Appointed Board of Directors and Management Team
• Domain name secured
• Beta web site launched

Development plans:

• Market the site to an Australasian user base
• Develop features to maximise usability and stickability
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Target potential local interest groups with national exposure
• Develop premium service with subscription system
• Develop localised advertising system
• Get grassroots traction

Revenue model:

Advertising and subscriptions

Key Challenges:

• Establishing “street cred” with grassroots communities
• Scaling quickly enough before competition develops
• Pricing model in an untested market

Principals & Previous Experience:

Peter Cahill, Managing Director: Peter has experience in introducing digital technology into an analogue world, having done so in the prepress industry. Peter has also run a small full-service advertising agency, Fraser-Cahill Communications, and has experience in business management and the comms industry.

Ben Marino, Technical Director: Ben is a certified Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer, and has worked for Telecom and Sky City. He recently achieved a Media Design School Diploma of Internet Architecture and Development, graduating with honours and gaining an industry award for database design.

What they want from an investor:

• NZD 300,000
• Mentorship around Social Media and Marketing
• Access to networks which will help get exposure to at the right time

Dave’s Commentary:

USPLUS is a young company with a big vision. There is a huge gap in the market for local communities to integrate online, and for groups and clubs to communicate with their members. As the print-based news media’s demise accelerates, people will increasingly look online for local information. USPLUS has the opportunity to become the go-to resource for this kind of information.

Contact details:

Pete Cahill
pete@iqd.co.nz
Tel: (09) 3599 005

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The Pitch:

PlanHQ is a web-based subscription service that allows business to create, action, track and achieve their business plan. The whole team is focused on execution, completing actions, achieving goals and tracking progress against financial projections. Team members are reminded of – and held accountable for – reaching targets. Board members, investors and advisers are kept informed with regular progress reports. A completely up-to-date comprehensive business plan document can be downloaded in Word or PDF any time.

Accomplishments to date:

In 2007, PlanHQ launched version 1 of their product, reached 100 paying customers, presented at DEMO (see the video), hired a US VP Marketing, and has signed up VC and Business Coaching companies to help these companies better manage their clients. They’ve received NZD 300K in angel funding to date.

Development plans / Key challenges:

PlanHQ plan to expand their NZ market this year, as well as big push into the US market this year, which will require significant resources. Meanwhile product development will continue apace, to continue to add functionality to adapt to clients’ needs and scale for both numbers and sizes of businesses.

Principals & Previous Experience:

See the team profiles on the PlanHQ web site.

What they want from an investor:

• NZD 300-500K
• Experience in closing deals in the US

Dave’s Commentary:

PlanHQ has a real chance of developing into the killer app for managing growing businesses. It’s no secret that business discipline is traditionally a weak point for rapidly growing tech companies in particular, and PlanHQ is sexy enough to make planning more interesting, relevant, transparent and even fun. From my investor’s point of view, anything that increases buy-in and accountability of an entrepreneur has to be good. They’ve clearly captured the imaginations of a number of players in their key target markets, so the challenge is to build on their successes.

Their board of Tim Norton, Rowan Simpson, and Rod Drury can only be described as a Wellington Web 2.0 Dream Team. They’re smart people with a successful track record with great resources bent on making PlanHQ successful. And it all comes from their own experiences trying to get the business plan working for you rather than vice versa.

Contact details:

Tim Norton
Tel: +64 21 463 331
tim@planhq.com

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