This workshop was put together by Kiwinet’s GM Bram Smith and Enterprise Angels Exec Director Bill Murphy. With the support of Return on Science, and the National Angel group.
The event was targeted at putting early stage projects from research programmes in New Zealand in front of investors. This is to help build visibility and to bridge the current gap between investors and the opportunities coming out of research and development programmes in New Zealand’s Crown Research Institutes, Universities and other Research Organisations.
This was the second event, with the first held in the Bay of Plenty Region.
The Kiwi Innovation Network (KiwiNet) is a consortium of Universities and Crown Research Institutes who are dedicated to taking a collaborative approach to research commercialisation. KiwiNet’s role is to empower people who are involved in research commercialisation by helping them to access the tools, connections, investment and support they need.
The organisation’s which attended the session included: Waikatolink, IRL, Uniservices, AUT Enterprises. With some inspirational projects with wide ranging potential.
We created a workshop structure designed to help build a pitch over the course of a day. It was a challenging session and all the participants put in a good effort to deconstruct and reconstruct their pitch.
The focus of the day was to move to a benefit led approach which was structured around delivering the information typically used in the standard angel investment 1 page drop sheet. This was done progressively through the following steps:
Defining the Value Chain – Your users, customers, stakeholders and influencers;
From Features to Benefits – Translating the technology features to benefits (to your value chain)
Creating the Value Proposition – Using the One Page drop sheet structure brainstorm all of the key areas of required information in a pitch;
Create the Pitch – Using a series of A6 Index cards create a structured pitch centred on your value proposition.
The teams developed their pitches and then after a great talk by Michael Ahie presented their projects to the regional investment group. It was a great chance for many to see and hear about the exciting projects which are bubbling away in our research institutions.
There was certainly room for improvement, but it was inspirational for our team to be engaged with such an innovative programme and to work with such great projects and people. The worksheets and the presentations are loaded here for use or improvement as the concept evolves throughout New Zealand.
