Fostering entrepreneurship the way of the future
SARAH RAMSAY finds nothing more invigorating than sitting down with someone at the start of their entrepreneurship journey, with all their excitement for the future.
That was ‘‘like a drug’’, the chairwoman of Startup Dunedin quipped, as she outlined how she also saw it as the future for Dunedin.
Mrs Ramsay was appointed chairwoman in March; Startup Dunedin was the ‘‘rejuvenated and repositioned’’ Upstart business incubator.
The focus was on building the startup ecosystem, identifying what was ‘‘out there’’, helping bring people together and celebrating Dunedin and all the fantastic stuff that was happening in the city, she said.
It was not about reinventing the wheel but connecting people and putting on events, communications, training and education to help the startup community.
She was driven by a passion for Dunedin and also entrepreneurship and the energy that came from entrepreneurs of all ages and types.
When it came to the city’s future, the economy had changed so much. It was no longer just about engineering and manufacturing and jobs had been lost. Where jobs were going to come from were from that startup sector.
Startups had to be seen as the future of the city, creating jobs across all sectors. There were some really exciting innovations coming out — everything from physical products being manufactured to the gaming industry and artificial intelligence.
Dunedin was a city with an amazing lifestyle and creative culture so it was a great place for a creative, enthusiastic entrepreneur to live, she said.
It also had engagement from the Dunedin City Council, University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic and the access to business leaders was unrivalled; key people regularly donated their time to mentor and push the city forward. It was a very collaborative and supportive community and that needed to be told to the world, she believed.
Dunedin was getting a reputation as being a great, creative place for startups to be and a catalyst for great ideas. Mrs Ramsay also wanted Dunedin to be a great place to grow a business, to ensure that when companies reached a scaleable stage, they were supported and stayed in the city. So it was about setting up an environment for businesses to thrive, she said.
Mrs Ramsay’s own career had taken a ‘‘massive pivot’’ as she described herself as ‘‘kind of a startup’’.
After eight years at the helm of Immersion Marketing, she had a desire to scale up a business and ‘‘be part of creating something awesome’’.
Her marketing business was awesome but it was not very easy to scale up that type of business and she made the decision to close the doors.
Mrs Ramsay’s new ventures included returning to her investment and property roots with unlisted property funds manager Property Managers Group (PMG).
Prior to starting Immersion Marketing in 2010, she worked with NZXlisted property trust NPT Ltd and, before that, Hyperion Asset Management and Colonial First State in Sydney, and she retained her connection to the property and investment markets.
For the past three years, she had consulted for PMG, developing its brand and managing its capital raise campaigns — raising more than $80 million in retail and wholesale property investment.
She was now involved with the development of its South Island business. Historically, South Island commercial property investment has been largely limited to direct or syndicated investment, or through one of the listed property funds. The former two were really only accessible to a small number of extremely high net worth individuals, and the latter were subject to sharemarket fluctuations, which, she believed, made them more like an equity than a property investment.
It was a good team of people, led by Scott McKenzie, who happened to be one of her husband Alex’s best friends from John McGlashan College.
He wanted to see PMG at least double in funds under management over the next two years, and the opportunity to be instrumental in that growth and to bring a new company to Dunedin excited her.
She had also kept the Immersion branding and pivoted into an investment company, Immersion
Ventures.
She saw that as the fruition of her longterm dream to found her own private equity fund, investing in high growth ideas and companies from around the country, with a focus on Otago.
The strategy was that Immersion Ventures would take on several investments each year, with a focus on ideas that had some synergies with property, manufacturing and/or marketing.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay own United Machinists where there was a ‘‘bit of a growth strategy in play’’. They were investigating automation and had just placed their first order for a robot.
There were so many opportunities for the firm, which was positioning itself as the preferred machinist for the hightech manufacturing sector in New Zealand, Mrs Ramsay said.
She worked out of Innov8HQ, the business hub and collaborative work space in the heart of the city’s warehouse precinct.
It was a ‘‘brilliant’’ space and she was always seeing new faces — everyone from startups to big corporates — and that mix and frequency was what made the space dynamic.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay live at Kuri Bush with their young son and their home is off the grid. No sunshine over the past few days meant no washing machine — but it was fun, she said.
Asked how she managed to fit everything in, Mrs Ramsay said discipline was the key. She did have peaks where she worked too much, but she typically tried not to work at weekends.
Her mental health and energy were her biggest asset and she kept her exercise up and looked after herself.
The recent death of a much loved nephew had also been a ‘‘massive wakeup call’’ to ensure family and health were priorities.
People needed to stop trying to be ‘‘super people’’ and remember they were human.
It was very important for
Mrs Ramsay to be enjoying what she did and, at the moment, she was ‘‘kind of living the dream’’.
Her patience for ‘‘not doing cool stuff’’ had diminished. ‘‘It’s an area for personal development,’’ she laughed.
She was also a strong advocate for volunteering, saying it made the world a better place.