Pacific Fibre

Pacific Fibre Aims to build high-capacity, undersea fibre cable connecting Australia, New Zealand and the USA. We aim to make fast, inexpensive, unlimited broadband a reality, unleashing the potential of New Zealanders and Australians.

My Tours

My Tours - Turn your city walks, museum tours and audio guides into an iPhone application.

Heaps! Online Personal Finance Software

Heaps! Personal Finance Software

Lot’s of people need to be better at managing their money so they can live the life they want and get out of debt, and New Zealand needs a much more financially strong country of people. Enter online personal finance software Heaps!

Heaps! Intro Video to Personal Finance and Budgeting

Why Heaps!

Helping people save money and set a budget they stick to is hard work. Some people are ready, already budgeting and ready for a smarter way, and others need it to all just be a lot simpler, more fun and about the goals they want to get in life. So over the last few weeks we’ve been rolling out online personal finance software heaps! to the first round of Kiwibank customers, checkout the Heaps! Intro Video, if you’re interested sign-up here at heaps!

Who is behind Heaps!

Heaps! is brought to you by Kiwibank in partnership with Social Capital

Disclaimer - I (Tim Norton), am the owner of Social Capital so along side partner Kiwibank, am behind Heaps! so already think it’s pretty cool and love it to bits!

Heaps!

Heaps! Online Personal Finance Software

Heaps! is an online personal finance software tool that heps you save money, set budgets and goals, and get more out of life. Brought to you by Kiwibank in partnership with Social Capital.

Accelerate 2010 - The Business development event of the summer

The business development event of the summer is shaping up to be in the sunny Hawkes Bay on Wednesday February 17.  Local legend Rod Drury and global marketing guru Andy Lark are doing a full day with business owners wanting to accelerate their business.

When & How: Wednesday Feb 17 - Register Now!

Accelerate 2010 - The Best Business Event of the year!

This will be tight game raising stuff

If you’ve had your time making plenty of mistakes and starting businesses and now want to get into serious and focused growth mode, then Accelerate 2010 is set to make sure you start 2010 with a fresh growth focus from people doing it well right now.

With Rod and Andy Lark leading the way, this will be a no BS, straight up, put into immediate action day that helps you raise your game and sets up an increasing network of senior entrepreneurs who know how to build and sustain successful businesses. Register up at 0to60.com.

Then the day ends with an Open Air Concert At Black Barn, where Kiwi music legends Tim Finn, Bic Runga and Dave Dobbyn will again take the stage together! Choice…

Event Backed by Xero and promo site which looks hot designed by Mogul.

MinuteDock Time tracking - Turn your time into Money!

A pretty cool Time tracking tool called MinuteDock has recently launched out of Wellington and it plugs beautifully into Xero so it makes it faster and easier than ever to, turn your time into money!

If you charge out your time, and are familiar with super simple social media tools like twitter, then you’ve just found the fastest and most easiest way to turn your time into money.

Here are 2 Big things Minutedock does to hit the bottom line and increase profitability and ability to scale for billable hour and services businesses.

Micro-bill lots of clients in Parallel

Because you can quickly log every piece of work you do in MinuteDock, it’s much easier to allocate and bill for small amounts of our time over many clients, enabling you to support more clients in parallel. And with no overhead, you can now knock out a dozen 15 or 30 minute jobs, and make them profitable! Key when you’re in the services game.

Customers know EXACTLY what they’re paying for

With Minute Dock, there’s no scurrying to pull together invoices for clients or having to tally up and detail whats been done at the end of a month. Instead you’ve got a simple clean audit trail so you and your clients can see exactly what chunks of value you’ve delivered - Chunks of value = cash. Also great if you’re managing a team and want everyone working on things that can be billed everyday.

The Crew Behind MinuteDock

MinuteDock has been designed, developed and is backed and supported by some pretty smart cats Nik Wakelin & Oliver Clarke from Code to Customer and James Nisbet from Bandit Design and a partner of mine in Challenge for Change.

The Xero Sales Machine Oils up with Xero Personal

Well behind on the posting sorry! But Xero announced it’s move into Personal finance and is launching to market early 2010 with Xero Personal. Xero have been working away on Xero Personal for sometime no doubt, and announced they will be working initially in partnership with the BNZ before going out to the rest of New Zealand at some point in the future, then beyond.

Small Business and Personal Finance direct link

The rest of the world aside, as a country powered by small businesses, New Zealand alone has over 400,000 business owners, and depending on what numbers you get, around three quarters of these are sole traders - 1 man bands or couples. To many of these people, the family money and budget are based around the business, and all financial decisions in either business or personal completely effect each other.

Xero Sharpens it’s Sales Strategy

So along side the massive and increasing opportunities in personal finance, Xero is stepping into a very strategic position with small business owners and will be able to capture these people as customers through either their business or personal finances, then convert them into a customer on the other… a well oiled machine…

For a quick video teaser of Xero Personal

Wellington Xmas Party on a Boat

Last Christmas, Silicon Welly threw a huge boat party to end a massive year for everyone. This Christmas, we’ve hooked up with Summer of Code and Unlimited Potential to throw a Xmas party at Tugboat on the Bay. Its shaping up to be a great night, starting with meeting in the Beach Bar from 6.30pm, a yummy Christmas dinner will be served from 7.30pm, then letting loose in the “Engine Room” after dinner.

The deal is:

Jump on the Summer of Code website to register. The party is open to all Summer of Code companies, students, staff, guests and members of Unlimited Potential, Silicon Welly, Made From New Zealand, WYP or just Wellington businesses in need of a Xmas party. The meal is $50 per person and there will be a cash bar. (Check out Summer of Code for payment details.)

For a bit of reminiscing about last Christmas, watch the video of our boat party last year…

Brand New Zealand on Cover of Inc Magazine

Ponoko on cover of Inc Magazine

The world’s easiest making system - Ponoko and CEO David Ten Have, have taken their business, Wellington and brand New Zealand to the front cover of Inc Magazine in this months global edition in an expose titled The Future of Manufacturing.

The headline says it all - and Dave, Derek and the crew at Ponoko are carrying brand New Zealand and a couple of our key attributes of green and innovative.

“The future of manufacturing is alive in a five-person shop in Wellington, New Zealand. Think cheap, quick, green, and global. And everything’s made to order.”

Inspirational leadership from Ponoko, they’ve opened doors for all of us

10,000 Businesses on madefromnewzealand.com

Over the last 9 months we’ve been pumping along promoting and connecting New Zealand Business and have just in the last week hit 10,000 Businesses on madefromnewzealand.com. We have dished out over 50,000 outbound links/leads to member websites, with quality visitors coming from the US, Australia, UK, China and more. I chatted bright and early yesterday morning with Corin Dan on TVNZ’s NZIBusiness Show about systematically growing New Zealand’s Exports, and our journey so far.

Tim Norton, entrepreneur and co-founder of Made From New Zealand talks to Corin Dann on the NZI Business Show.