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.

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 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…

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

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

The Friday Show #7 – Part 1

The Friday Show #7 – Part 2

Major hit to the competition

MYOB was subject to a takeover by a private equity firm at the end of 2008, which sparked the move of previous founder and board member Craig Winkler, and no doubt a shift in culture for the business at a time when Xero is just warming up. The ability of private equity to manage a business which needs to rapidly innovate in a competitive environment remains to be seen, but it’s clear that the now private equity lead MYOB will continue to face challenges in finding and retaining key talent and innovation, and with the visionary founder now moving his money into Xero, the new era of online accounting lead by Xero is in full swing.

Existing investor top-up

The shares will be issued at 90 cents in a round open to all existing investors, so while Xero don’t need your additional money, if you bought in at launch, nows a good time to top up and bring your average buy price down slightly. With a strong growth curve, a freshly capitalised balance sheet, a foothold in New Zealand, the UK and Australia, and momentum building from a base of regular customers, Xero is well on it’s way as a powerful global business that’s changing the way small businesses roll in the new world economy.

Big congrats to the Xero crew, this is a big win for the industry and a great story for the NZX at a time when capital is generally tight.

Richard Taylor World Class New Zealand

Richard Taylor creative director and founder of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital wins the supreme World Class New Zealand award this week.

The most important characteristics to create success in order

1. Passion
2. Enthusiasm
3. Tenacity
4. Talent

John Key at World Class New Zealand

Prime Minister John Key had everyone cracking up as he pulled out an inspirational 15 minutes Wednesday night amidst a fantastic evening last night at the World Class New Zealand Awards, hosted by Stephen Tindalls Kea and NZTE with some amazing New Zealanders being recognised for their contribution to New Zealand and helping take New Zealand to the world. Videos of the winners and more from our coverage very soon.

John Key at the world class new zealand awards.