Innovation Warehouse Articles - Page 2 of 2

How to hustle like a New Yorker

To aryrow a business you need a steady stream of customers and investors because cash-flow is the lifeblood of an enterprise. Yet lots of people around the world still feel uncomfortable with business development, marketing and pitching to investors.

Hacker Hustler Designer — Alley NYC brings together hackers, hustlers and designers.

In Silicon Valley there is a saying that the perfect combination of skills for a startup is a developer, a designer and a hustler. Often under appreciated, the hustler is responsible for ensuring that the business has a steady and increasing cashflow. The role of the hustler could be taken by someone with training in marketing, sales or finance. The art of the hustle is really just a combination of clear communication and hard work.

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UK startup tour of New York

New York and London have a lot in common when it comes to finance, fashion and technology startups. The startup cultures in both cities are focussed on building real businesses not just the latest flashy social mobile apps.

The trade group was part funded by UKTI and VentureOutNY hosted the programme.

Recently I’ve been in New York checking out the startup scene with VentureOut New York and UKTI. Keith Moses from UKTI and Brian Frumberg from VentureOutNY were our hosts. It was a great trip with an exciting group of startups. We had a full programme of events, meetings and visits. We kept a frenzied pace and I learnt a lot about the startup culture in New York.

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London and New York startup scenes

As part of our work for the Innovation Warehouse, I’m travelling to New York with a cohort of startups from London. UKTI have helped pull together a group of exciting new businesses from London’s Tech City to take to New York for a modern version of a trade mission. The startups are going to pitch for investment and meet new customers.

VentureOutNY is run by Brian Frumberg (and team) to promote New York as a first port of call for overseas startups expanding into the USA and raising capital from American investors. Over the course of the year, they have had events welcoming startups from all over the world and they have dedicated events coming up for startups from Brazil and Portugal.

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Converge event at the Innovation Warehouse

The second Converge+ event was held at the Innovation Warehouse in October 2012. We had over fifty people attend from a mix of design, business and technology backgrounds. The mash-up of backgrounds made for some great debates and discussions.

Peter Thomson at Converge+UK — Creative abrasion is one of the main themes of Converge+UK.

The Converge+ team are getting better at dressing the room to create a sense of occasion. Our branding is getting so good that we even had a few attendees try and grab the event posters at the end of the night. We’ll be making PDFs of the posters available on the Converge+ website.

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Pirates of East London

New ideas happen when old ideas collide. But if you’ve ever been to a networking event then you might have noticed that birds of a feather generally flock together.

Get shit done — At the convergence of design, business and technology is where sh+t gets done.

While sitting in an East London cafe, Biotech consultant Tim McCready, entrepreneur Klaus Bravenboer and I bemoaned that business culture in the UK had turned out to be no further ahead in terms of innovation, collaboration and access to capital than our native New Zealand. And in some areas such as Angel Capital and start-up incubators, New Zealand was actually ahead of the UK.

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