Andrew Lark

Dingo Deans Ought To Stop Whining

Australia didn't deserve to win. Their lack of finishing kept them way out of the game - as did the All Blacks defense. Moreover, they were awarded a dubious try on the basis of the Ref getting frustrated with the TV officials. Pathetic.

At some point here the Australians need to face up to the fact that Deans isn't quite cutting it right now. They have some remarkable players who aren't coming together on the field.

While we are on pathetic - why cant the NZ Herald keep their site up. Down again from over here. I'm guessing routine maintenance. Do they understand they have an international readership?

Lets also stop the nonsense about next years game being in Japan. When you consider that the population of the greater Tokyo area is 33 million, a crowd of 45,000 or so is equivalent to a crowd of about 1400 people in Auckland. So, a good turn-out but there are other places that need a spectacle like this - the US being one. Denver would be a terrible location though. Play the game in a major metro like LA.

Nice Site

I’m a big fan of Icebreaker products. So, tempted with a mate’s discount code I paid their US site a visit today and was really surprised. Most Kiwi sites are a mess. This is a terrific site that reflects the brand values of the company. Love the Baaacode idea.

Other great kiwi sites: Xero, the best online accounting software. Endemic world for kiwi things.

Let me know if you find others.

Flight of the Conchords

Classic... "wow, underscore is your middle name..."

Season 2 Online Premiere - Flight of the Conchords (US Only) - watch more funny videos

NZ Tech Icon Passes

Angus Tait - the founder of Tait Electronics, has passed. While some might not have agreed with his moving Tait into a trust structure similar to Bosch - a move that required considerable personal financial sacrifice - you can't deny the incredible impact he had by creating a lasting NZ export powerhouse. 

Angus epitomized all that is great about NZ entrepreneurs - unrelenting persistence, deep technical smarts, a belief in the team over the individual, and a commitment to building great NZ-based technology companies with a global footprint.

No matter how great the legacy he leaves - and it is great - he will be missed.

Bring Back The Cup

New Zealand are back at it, trying to bring the America's Cup to New Zealand. As much as I was disappointed to see Alinghi and it's crew of Kiwi traitors win the cup - one of the many good things to come out of it has been the America's cup web site. It's got everything you could want (well, it's close) and more.

Stunning graphics, real-time race scoring and radio, plenty of history and commentary - brilliant. What's missing? Well - most of the things I normally hold dear - stuff like focused RSS feeds, community (and related ranking of content), blog aggregation... The rest makes up for it though.

Compare this to Toyota's pathetic effort only available to Kiwi's onshore. Nuts! It's a global event with a global audience. What are you thinking!

Team NZ's presence it very light-weight also. Pretty much a standard site with little sizzle. The downside to this is probably going to be most felt in merchandising and growth of the TNZ community. You've got to activate the community through participatory technology or, excuse the pun, miss the boat. Ok, Oracle BMW racing has a bigger budget but that's no excuse - I know plenty of Kiwi talent that would have done the TNZ site for the privilege. Their site is a stunner. Blog, great photos, live racing and more. Still, in both cases, no apparent RSS -and TNZ has them on downloads and content. I hope they also take them on the water....


Technorati Tags: America's Cup, Team New Zealand

Turning CO into Ethanol

Very cool story in the New York Times about a Kiwi company - LanzaTech - that has secured funding here in the US to produce ethanol from an untapped source — carbon monoxide gas. Vinod Khosla had this to day:

When I passed it on to my partners for due diligence, the technology stood up to every test, and the intellectual property protection was awesome,” Mr. Khosla said.

Then, referring to the bacteria that are key to the process, he said, “The performance of the bugs was frankly mind-boggling to me, not something I would have expected from a tiny research effort in New Zealand.” He said his firm “sent the best process engineers we know to evaluate the technology and could it be industrialized, and the answer was yes.”

Four Nippled Sheep...

OK, enough NZ stories for a bit... but I couldn't resist this one from El Reg...

New Zealand scientists plan to tackle the thorny problem of ewes producing more lambs than they have nipples to accommodate, by simply upping mum's teat-count, Stuff.co.nz reports.

Apparently, NZ's ovine population has become more fertile over the past 10 years and females often drop triplets. AgResearch Invermay scientist George Davis solemnly explained: "A triplet, if he is the runt of the litter, is usually doomed."

Comparisons Come Up Short...

NZ is a broadband backwater. I'm a big advocate of waking up NZ to what it is missing in terms of broadband connectivity. What won't help is drivel and comparisons that contain no evidence (I'm guilty of this too:-). Witness this peice in ComputerWorld with this little gem from really smart guy David Skilling:

Local companies with an overseas presence have told him broadband infrastructure is five to ten times better in China “which most people think of as a developing economy” than it is in New Zealand, and have pointed out that it’s much cheaper to get a document electronically from Sydney to London than it is from Auckland to London.

Five to ten times better than nothing? Than what? And what garbage on the cost of moving a document... on what transport? Nothing beats free and that is precisely what my Internet connection cost me in a Hotel in Shanghai. So, to get  a document from Shanghai to London costs nothing making Sydney a highly uncompetitive market? Hmmmmm... don't think so.

What is more amazing is how the Telcos are putting-up with this nonsense. Why aren't they correcting the facts and helping set the agenda rather than being slaughtered by competitive framing...

... this debate is getting more ridiculous by the day....

The Cost Of Living In the Valley

The cost of living and working in the Valley is obscene. Take a look at this...

A software developer might earn $99,250 in San Jose - the highest paying market in the US. But adjusted to $51,693 in real terms - #7 in the bottom 10.

I wonder how this compares to NZ?

Technorati : NZ, VC

NZ Start-ups & The Valley Of Death

Rod as an interesting post on "The Valley of Death".

I view this principally as a mental rather and physical issue. Contextually NZ businesses sit far from the rest of the world and therefore they frame everything in terms of distance. Distance begets an attitude of scarcity -"I don't have enough because I am a long way from everything..." ... "I can't raise capital because I am so far from it..."

Because I sit in San Jose, CA, I frame everything in terms of proximity. I am close to capital and markets. I have lots because I am close to everything. It takes me a night or day to get to New York. It takes a Kiwi a night or day to get to San Francisco. Arguably, my trip is the more exhausting of the two... really.

How do you change the mindset? First, act like you work and live in Silicon Valley. Switch to the timezone. Work the hours. Network via Skype, Twitter and other tools. Plan a week a month there. You don't have to drink the crap coffee though.

Second, dream your enterprise as it was going to scale like a US business.

Third, if you think there is a Valley of Death it is likely you will fall into it. Imagine there is a highway instead and go ride it. This is critical. Most NZ businesses plan very conservatively in the hope of mitigating risk and failure. They do so so severely that they constrain growth and expansion, choking the company to death.

Fourth, you focus on what is closest to you. Closest to you mentally. The UK is closer mentally to NZ than the USA. So, Kiwi entrepreneurs, despite the distance, focus on the UK. Or, they focus on local customers first. I know some great NZ start-ups that did the opposite and are thriving in the US. To avoid the trap of focusing on what was closest to them they deliberately chose instead to only focus on the West Coast of the US.

And then, you need to turn-up. Some say that a great part of success is in turning-up. Most NZ businesses never break-in to the US market because they don't turn-up.

I'm not going to make light of the many issues a Kiwi business faces in breaking into the US market. Two biggies for me are lack of capital and a scarcity of experienced talent. In the Valley we have an incredible investment ecosystem - from VCs and Angels through Venture debt. And there is a very deep bench to draw on. For other start-ups issues like Government procurement rules come into play.

These are all issues faced by - and overcome - by Israeli companies. I wish more NZ companies would look at Israeli companies as a model rather than nations like Singapore or Ireland. Go on, give me more than two superstar, NASDAQ listed companies from either...

It is amazing how quickly all the physical and market issues start to vaporize when you shift your context, aspirations, focus and frame of reference. Lets look to a new set of role models and move the mind-set.

Technorati : NZ, VC