Startup Financing Options

Startup Financing Options

Looking at starting a new venture and need to sort out the financing? In a recent webinar Jana Mathews from the ANZ Innovyz Start program in Adelaide went through the five main startup financing options.

Bootstrapping

The goal of bootstrapping is to generating enough money inside the company that you do not need to find other sources of funds. All expenses are minimised and pursuit of cashflow is critical. Not all companies can bootstrap – large initial CAPEX requirements can often preclude it. Continue reading

The Reputation Economy

The Reputation Economy

Rachel Botsman on how online reputation is becoming a currency

AMP Amplify Festival 2013

Online reputation is becoming a bigger and bigger problem (or opportunity) for organisations and individuals. Rachel is here to open our minds to where this could be going. First, a little on Rachel:

Named by Monocle as one of the top 20 speakers in the world to have at your conference, Rachel Botsman has already presented at high profile events including The Clinton Global Initiative, TED, HP, Google, and No.10 Downing Street.

She received her BFA (Honors) from the University of Oxford, and undertook her postgraduate studies at Harvard University. Her work has taken her to every continent, except Antarctica.

Rachel opens by stating that she thinks reputation will become a currency more powerful than our credit histories. To help paint the picture of what might happen, she asks – what is reputation?

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Emerging Shifts for Money and Wealth

This year I was lucky to attend AMP’s Amplify Festival in Sydney. My first session is ‘Emerging Shifts for Money and Wealth’ with Dr Tim Jones. Some notes on Tim:

“Tim is Founder and Program Director of the Future Agenda – the world’s leading open foresight project… Tim is a recognised expert in innovation and future growth. He is the author of numerous articles and eight related books and is a regular speaker at corporate events and public conferences on innovation leadership, growth platforms and future trends. He has a PhD in Innovation Performance and Masters Degrees from Cambridge, Imperial College and the Royal College of Art in London.”

Dr Tim starts off his talk, focusing on the difficulty of predicting and anticipating future changes and trends:

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ANZ Innovyz Demo Day Live Blog

The ANZ Innovyz Demo Day, 18th of April, 2013. The ANZ Innovyz Start is an accelerator program for innovative startups located in Adelaide, South Australia.

This blog post is my live blog of the ANZ Innovyz Demo Day.

What is demo day? See http://www.innovyzstart.com/what-is-demo-day-jana-matthews-explains

I thought all the companies did a great job! To read how it all happened, see below!

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Minimum Viable Product – You’re getting it (partially) wrong

MVP. Minimum Viable Product.

Terminology from the startup world is finding its way into the language of Business. Managers are latching onto the key words such as pivot, disrupt and the idea of the minimum viable product.

Unfortunately, few managers fully understand what each means to the startup world. The idea of the minimum viable product is widely misunderstood. It’s pretty easy to get most of its meaning, but unfortunately the point gets missed.

About the Minimum Viable Product, Eric Ries in his book ‘The Lean Startup‘, says: Continue reading

Adelaide Startup Ecosystem and ANZ Innovyz

On the weekend I attended an interesting talk by Dr Jana Mathews at Adelaide University. She touched on many facets of innovation and entrepreneurship  but of most interest to me was her discussion on the Adelaide Startup Ecosystem and ANZ Innovyz’s work in South Australia.

Firstly, on Dr Jana Mathews. She is an expert in her field of entrepreneurial leadership and business growth. She has a doctorate from Harvard, is co-author of several books (such Lessons from the Edge and Building the Awesome Organization). From Colorado, she has recently been spending significant time in Adelaide as the Managing Director of ANZ Innovyz START program – a 13 week startup accelerator modelled after the US TechStars. Continue reading