New Zealand is known for its world-leading innovative thinkers. The tools necessary to turn those thoughts into successful businesses are taught through programmes like Velocity.
With customers ranging from Bunnings and Briscoes to Walmart and Woolworths, crime intelligence platform Auror is a local startup success. Used in more than 32,000 stores across New Zealand, Australia, North America and the UK, the company – whose technology has helped simplify the crime reporting and detection process – is now one of the fastest growing in Aotearoa, featuring on Deloitte’s Fast 50 index for the last two years and winning EY’s 2022 award for Entrepreneur of the Year.
But before the accolades, before the global expansion, and before the millions of dollars in capital raised, Auror started off over a decade ago as little more than a simple idea between three friends: Phil Thomson, Tom Batterbury, and James Corbett. At the time, Corbett was still a student at the University of Auckland Business School and suggested the trio take their concept through Velocity – the University’s entrepreneurship development programme.
Founded in 2003, Velocity (formerly known as Spark) has been helping foster young entrepreneurs for more than 20 years. Led by a student committee in partnership with the University of Auckland Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the wider business community, Velocity enables students and staff from across the University to bring their business ideas to life – supporting them to develop an entrepreneurial spirit that will live on throughout their lives.
Thomson and Batterbury agreed to try out Velocity, and it turned out to be a good move: Auror (known as EyeDentify at the time) were eventually named runners-up of the Velocity $100k Challenge in 2012, taking home a $15,000 chunk of the $100,000 in seed money up for grabs.
“We saw the programme as an opportunity to test our thinking – a forcing function to get really deliberate around all the things we’d been talking about and actually put it down on paper,” recalls Thomson, who took part in the programme while working as a lawyer.
“Looking back, I think being given the opportunity as first time founders and young people to meet with different mentors and advisors and build a business plan was really invaluable … and I know there’s been some other really cool companies that have emerged from Velocity over the years, which I think speaks volumes of the programme itself.”
The programme involves a year-long schedule of talks, workshops, events and competitions, culminating with the programme’s flagship $100k Challenge which sees teams pitch their business ideas in front of a group of industry-leading judges for a share of the grand prize.
Over the years, Velocity participants have ignited almost 300 ventures, attracted over $1.39 billion in investment and created more than 3,000 jobs with products and services in over 35 countries. In addition to Auror, notable past participants in the programme include education technology platform Kami, a 2013 finalist of the $100k Challenge which was recently named one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential companies of the year, and 2018 $100k challenge winner Zenno Astronautics, pioneers of a more sustainable form of space exploration that’s booked almost $80 million in pre-sales so far.
“When the programme was first established back in 2003, its main purpose at the time was to change the culture at the university to one that was more innovative, entrepreneurial, and enterprising,” says Darsel Keane, director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
“Universities are hubs of new and innovative ideas, and the wider business community obviously want to support the next generation of innovators and ventures. The programme enables these two groups to come together, allowing entrepreneurs, investors, and others working in the ecosystem to see what students are working on and thinking about. Meanwhile, participants are connected with those who’ve been there before, accessing their support, advice, networks, and funding, all of which are really important in helping their ventures develop and grow.”
In addition to providing an impetus for Auror to sit down and carve out a concrete business plan, Thomson says Velocity was crucial in providing its founders with an initial sounding board for their thoughts and ideas. He says the programme also enabled the team to practice their pitching skills, draw on advice from their mentors, and meet other like-minded entrepreneurs.
“During the programme, especially in the final stages, we were essentially pitching the business to a panel of people who were determining if our business was viable or not. That definitely gave us an early opportunity for us to test some ideas, and see what resonated with people,” Thomson says. “It was also a great chance to practice pitching our idea in public, especially in front of a large audience.”
While Velocity is based at the University of Auckland Business School, the programme is open to students from all faculties and academic levels, helping to foster a diverse range of ideas and entrepreneurs. Prior to becoming CEO of entertainment analytics company Parrot Analytics, Wared Segar took part in Velocity during his time as a science student. Angela Lim, co-founder of the free online mental health platform Clearhead, was studying medicine when she joined the programme back in 2015. Bowen Pan, who founded Facebook Marketplace during a stint with the Silicon Valley behemoth several years ago, started his entrepreneurial journey in 2006 with uniFriend – the country’s first social networking site for students. An engineering and property undergrad at the time, uniFriend would go on to place runner-up in Velocity’s $100k Challenge.
“Business, engineering, and science collectively make up between 80-90% of Velocity participants, and they’re pretty much equal in any given year. The remainder are made up of students from faculties like medicine, law, and the creative arts,” Keane explains.
“Making sure people are connecting with participants from other disciplines is a really big part of the programme. One of the strongest bits of feedback we get from students is that this is one of the few places they can meet, engage and work with people from different faculties, and where they’re all bound together by this common desire to learn about innovation and entrepreneurship.”
A recent shift Keane says she’s observed in the programme over the past few years has been the increasing desire from participants to pursue ideas that “do well [in a business sense] by doing good”. While social entrepreneurship and commercial entrepreneurship were long viewed as two separate things, she says that differentiation doesn’t really exist anymore.
“What you see coming out of the student and research body is this really strong desire and motivation to have a positive impact on the world, so we see a lot of potential solutions that address issues like climate change, such as water quality, energy sources, and transport,” she says.
“Nowadays, what we do is we use the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as part of our problem-solving space because we recognise students really do care about making a change in the world. They’re driven to use entrepreneurship as a way to do that.”
Having observed the programme over a number of years, Keane (who first became involved in Velocity during the late 2000s as a member of the student committee) says it’s a rewarding experience seeing so many of Velocity’s participants go on to achieve greater things. Not only has the programme managed to help turn “first class ideas into world class businesses”, but its arrival in 2003 also helped breathe life into New Zealand’s nascent entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“There was a great need to create knowledge-based technology and creative businesses, but also to create talent that would go on to work in multiple parts of this entrepreneurial ecosystem. So you see people who’ve been through our programme now working at places like the Icehouse, venture capital firms, and professional services working with hi-tech businesses,” says Keane.
“I love seeing these early stage businesses, and the talent and ventures that go along with it, grow and develop over time. It’s remarkable seeing where these people go – and the impact they’re having on the New Zealand economy.”
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