Ministry of Awesome’s (MoA) vision to increase the density of New Zealand’s startup ecosystem has led to the establishment of a national Startup Hub Network (NEST) in central Christchurch.<\/p>\n
“History has shown us that one Rocket Lab can give birth to several new unicorns,” MoA chief executive Graham Scown said.<\/p>\n
“That’s the ambition of a space like this, and programmes like ours. We’ve already seen huge successes, like Partly, come out of Ministry of Awesome.”<\/p>\n
The aim was to give startup businesses faster, easier access to the space, community, mentoring, and networks that accelerate the journey from idea to investment to export.<\/p>\n
“We’re geographically challenged, and so when you look at those ecosystems around the world that have been so incredibly successful, there’s a real concentration, a geographical concentration,” Scown said.<\/p>\n
He said entrepreneurial density in countries such as Denmark and Singapore meant the necessary support services were physically close, which was not the case in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“In New Zealand we’re a little bit cursed with people saying New Zealand’s a small country. It’s not a small country.”<\/p>\n
He said the geographical nature of New Zealand and the small amounts of money available to support founder enterprises was “quite problematic.”<\/p>\n
“One of the outcomes of this network is where some potential funding … comes up, we’re not all scrapping over it. We can look at it and go, ‘Hey, look! Actually, that’s way better for you guys to do it. Do you want a support letter? Do you want something? How can we support you?'”<\/p>\n
NEST Christchurch, located at 829 Colombo Street, aimed to give founders and entrepreneurs a single doorway to whatever support they needed, no matter the focus of their enterprise.<\/p>\n
“One of the key components for me is that we are actively avoiding replicating or duplicating anything that already exists,” Scown said.<\/p>\n
NEST offered access to physical assets of work stations, meeting rooms, event spaces, recording studios, as well as amenities such as full service changing rooms and garage usage.<\/p>\n
It also offered opportunities to startup ecosystem stakeholders to take part in programmes, mentoring, investments, community connections, and business development.<\/p>\n
Beyond NEST Christchurch, the network was intended to act as a connector between existing startup hubs, programmes and communities throughout New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ministry of Awesome’s (MoA) vision to increase the density of New Zealand’s startup ecosystem has led to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[84,4203,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}