Winners share lessons of success
Past recipients of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award look back on what taking the NZ title has meant for them — and for their business
The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year — the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs — celebrates its twentieth birthday in New Zealand this year. Since 1998, when Trends Publishing founder David Johnson was chosen as NZ’s inaugural EY Entrepreneur Of The Year, our top entrepreneurs have winged their way to Monaco to compete at the World Entrepreneur Of The Year event, where the winners from more than 50 countries vie for the top award.
To date, no Kiwi has taken out the big prize, though scuttlebutt suggests one or two might have nudged close.
But in the past 20 years, some of the country’s best-known entrepreneurs — household names like Sir William Gallagher (2002), Sir George Fistonich (2005), Sir Michael Hill (2008), Sir Richard Taylor ONZM (2006), Phillip Mills (2004), Rod Drury (2013) and Craig Heatley (2012) — have been chosen to represent New Zealand.
Entrepreneurs and the type of businesses they start have changed radically, mostly in response to digitisation, and the average age of those entering the EOY programme has dropped.
This year’s finalists are dominated by business founders in their early 30s and 40s. Tech companies dominate, and even for those with more traditional businesses, technology is integral.
And, says JUCY founder Tim Alpe, who took the Entrepreneur Of The Year title in 2010, today’s entrepreneurs are using the power of social media and digitisation to grow at speeds that were unthinkable 10, or even five, years ago.
“Many are in their early to mid-20s and they’ve used next generation marketing, social media and digital to launch these fast-growing businesses, whereas 20 years ago, it was marketing via the Yellow Pages and other forms of traditional above-the-line marketing which built people’s brands,” Alpe says.
“Nowadays, with social media and Instagram and all these different channels, the opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow brand and grow businesses is a lot quicker.”
This year’s finalists are also thinking big. While their businesses may be at an early stage, many already have global aspirations. “There’s an awareness and an ability to tap into offshore investment to support their growth,” says Darren White, EOY’s Awards Director.
But for Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck — New Zealand’s 2016 EOY winner — the fundamental make-up of an entrepreneur never changes. “The core values — having a goal and a conviction and the drive to make something happen — these are consistent throughout history,” he says. “The scope has changed but the core fundamentals haven’t.”
What’s different, Beck says, is that entrepreneurs can now do things that weren’t previously considered possible, or were once the domain only of governments.
As an example, he cites Rocket Lab. “Ten years ago, going into space took a level of resource and expenditure that only a government could provide. Well, we’ve now got 200 people in NZ and the US doing just that.”
We asked three past EOY winners to tell us in their own words what the programme did for them.
Diana Harrington (formerly known as Diane Foreman), 2009 winner
For me, EOY was life-changing.
I’d had previous international business experience as a director of Trigon but this ramped it up to a whole new level. I returned from Monaco a very different person, with new goals and a new way of looking at my life and business. One of the biggest lessons of all was the importance of working on, and not in, your business.
The biggest opportunity in Monaco is the interaction with the world’s top businesspeople.
Here were the owners of businesses worth billions of dollars, working in huge markets, and I was being given the chance to hear and learn from them. It changed me. I’d always had a global vision but realised how much more I had to learn.
Since competing in 2010 I’ve been invited back to Monaco three times as a World judge. They have been the best three weeks of my professional life. You’re locked in a room and you can ask 50 of the world’s best businesspeople anything you like.
I love the programme. It launched me onto the global speaking platform as an entrepreneur and helped me to establish an international entrepreneurial community for myself. Through EOY I’ve had speaking engagements in Hong Kong, London and Singapore, and was invited by the king of Saudi Arabia to speak at a Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh in 2012 (dressed in an abaya!) I’ve shared podiums with Cherie Blair and Martha Stewart, and spoken at an event where former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was also on the programme.
None of that would have happened had I not entered the EOY awards. Being in the programme raised my profile internationally and helped build my brand. It was like doing an MBA in business.
But it’s also what you make of it. I’ve had more out of it than most people. I sucked the marrow out of it and made the most of every opportunity. EOY propelled me onto the world stage as an entrepreneur.
My latest project, in collaboration with EY, is a book — Dare to Compete — due for publication in January 2019. It’s the result of interviews with 15 of the world’s top entrepreneurs who share the secrets to their success.
Tim Alpe (JUCY Group), winner 2010
Going to Monaco gave me the confidence that JUCY could go global.
What really blew me away was how interested everyone was in what we were doing, even though JUCY was one of the smallest businesses there. But we were visible. As a bit of guerrilla marketing, we took one of our campervans with us and parked it around the Ferraris and Porsches.
For me, the most memorable moment was when EY first introduced us into the hall of fame. Here were 50 people, commanding a reasonably significant portion of the world’s GDP, creating billions of dollars and millions of jobs.
It’s rare that you can put a small group of people in one place who’ve had such a big impact on the world.
It was great to meet these entrepreneurs and learn what they’d done.
I think there’s definitely a consistent mould with entrepreneurs; although we came from different countries, we all had similar approaches, and similar kinds of motivations and drives.
Peter Beck (Rocket Lab), winner 2016
EY’s initiative is fantastic, especially in New Zealand, where we are quick to celebrate our sporting heroes.
Entrepreneur Of The Year is the one event, done with magnitude and scale, which celebrates the daring and the bold business entrepreneur.
Apart from that, we don’t celebrate our engineers, scientists and and entrepreneurs well.
It’s interesting that whenever an entrepreneur becomes successful and leaves New Zealand to build global businesses, the immediate reaction is “we’ve lost another one”, instead of celebrating the fact that the business was so successful that it had to go global.
We can do a much better job of that. Entrepreneur Of The Year is the one event during the year that actually celebrates business and entrepreneurs properly
Breccan McLeodLundy — Rabid Technologies
Breccan McLeod-Lundy (right), the 29-year-old CEO of Rabid Technologies, knew from an early age he wanted to start a business, with the proviso that it somehow had to make the world a better place.
His first attempt, at 18, collapsed within a year. After dusting himself off and working at a “real job” for a couple of years to build up cash reserves, he was ready to try again.
The result was Rabid Technologies, which, he says, “builds technology that is good for the world”. That can mean creating web, iOS or Android applications for clients such as NZ Post, NZX, Worksafe, Oranga Tamariki, Voyce, Skylight Trust and PledgeMe.
On the face of it, Rabid might look like other Wellington development shops, taking on projects and delivering technical solutions.
“What sets Rabid apart is our purpose and our values,” McLeod-Lundy says. “We think carefully about the type of work we want to do and where we can make a positive impact. This manifests itself in us chasing particular clients — for example, government departments with projects that can impact on millions of people or community organisations like Skylight Trust, which helps young people through grief, loss and trauma
. . .” Other clients and projects include crowdfunding platform PledgeMe — where Rabid is also a shareholder — NZ Navigator (an online self-assessment tool for non-profit organisations) and The Pack, an app for student safety.
Craig Smith — Education Perfect
At 18, Craig Smith vowed to be financially independent by the time he was 30. Just months short of his 30th birthday, the co-founder of Education Perfect has largely succeeded.
At high school Smith had created a digital vocabulary revision tool to help himself learn French and Japanese. This morphed into a full online platform, with software developed by his brother and co-founder, Shane.
Education Perfect is designed to complement traditional classroom teaching. More languages have since been added, along with maths, science, English and the humanities.
Craig Smith quit university and learned the hard way — by asking questions, challenging traditional ways of doing things and making mistakes. Like many entrepreneurs, Smith has his quirks. In his case, “disciplined habits” such as being in bed by 8pm every night for four years (including New Year’s Eve) and having a daily dip in the freezing ocean around Dunedin, even when it was snowing. This enabled him to “confront discomfort” and gave him the confidence to take on the challenges of a start-up.
The company was initially funded in 2007 with $20,000 he won in a university business competition. It has grown rapidly, with staff numbers increasing to
125. Nowadays 80 per cent of revenue comes from offshore, and over 550,000 students from 1200 schools around the world are using the platform.
In December last year, Five V Capital and Mulpha International took substantial stakes in Education Perfect, thus enabling Smith (right) to realise his dream of financial independence. He and his brother retain material shareholdings in the company and continue to guide its strategic direction as non-executive directors.
Danny Tomsett — FaceMe
Aucklander Danny Tomsett (below right) is a big believer in face-to-face communication — so much so that his company, FaceMe, has invested several million dollars into developing Digital Humans for its clients so digital conversations can become more “human”.
This month, FaceMe made global headlines by cloning Daniel Kalt, the regional chief economist and chief investment officer at Swiss-based UBS bank, and programming the avatar to answer client questions that the real Daniel Kalt had trained it to deliver.
To Tomsett, it adds a “human touch” to digital conversations. These avatars (or digital humans) can see, hear and where appropriate, remember customers, he says.
FaceMe was not always an artificial intelligence (AI) company. It was founded eight years ago to provide frictionless video conferencing between businesses and their customers.
But in 2016, Tomsett decided he wanted to take FaceMe in a radical new direction. Not only has it produced the first digital assistant in the Australasian banking sector but also the world’s first digital biosecurity officer at Auckland International Airport, who can answer simple questions.
FaceMe has several New Zealand clients, including ASB,
BNZ and the Ministry for Primary Industries. Globally, it works with IBM, UBS and is currently implementing a number of pilots with other large banks, telecommunications and technology companies.
Digital communication, says Tomsett, must embody brand and create “feeling” experiences. Nothing is more effective than tone and body language, he says.
Grant & Merryn Straker — Straker Translations
Within a few months of meeting in 1999, Grant and Merryn Straker (below right) decided to quit their jobs and start a business in an industry where they had no experience.
Initially, the business was a software development company; Grant had taught himself code after leaving the British army. He cashed in his army pension and Merryn tossed in her life savings.
After what they describe as a 10-year apprenticeship, the pair have developed a cloud-enabled, global translation service.
Key to their operation is a powerful, multi-lingual, web-based content-management platform — an invention that enables human translators to deliver not only more quickly and more accurately, but also more cheaply.
Since 1999 the Strakers have served more than 50,000 customers. They have sales offices in nine countries with production centres in Auckland and Barcelona.
Grant, of Nga¯ ti Raukawa, is a strong advocate for Maori in technology. The company is working with the Gisborne Regional Council and mayor to set up a satellite office in the city.
James Annabell — Egmont Honey
James Annabell says his company makes “the world’s purest and finest honey”, plus paleo-friendly superfoods and bee venom skincare products.
Plenty of punters seem to agree. Cofounded with his father Toby in New Plymouth in 2015, Egmont Honey has experienced huge growth in the past three years.
It began with 100 hives; there are now 4000 and the business buys in 700 tonnes of honey a year.
Last year, to raise more capital and ramp up its global aspirations, Egmont sold 51 per cent of its shares to The Better Health Company, a New Zealand business majority owned by Singaporean hedge fund CDH Investments, with US$20 billion under management. The move has also given Egmont access to the networks and companies CDH owns worldwide.
Today the business exports to 16 countries. Its customers include wellknown wellness brands, large supermarket chains such as Woolworths Australia and two large Chinese supermarket chains with over 1000 stores between them.
Egmont Honey, says James
Annabell
(right), is integrated from the hive to the pot.
He has been in the industry since
2009, when he was approached to work for Watson & Sons, New Zealand’s biggest manuka honey producer. Annabell recognised that there was a great opportunity for him and his father, who has years of agriculture experience, to go it alone and form Egmont Honey.
Lisa King — Eat My Lunch
Like most fledgling entrepreneurs, Lisa King (below right) found getting her business off the ground was tough.
Probably the lowest point was when a bank manager said her idea was “stupid” and “would never make money”. Undeterred, King quit the corporate world, where she had spent the previous 15 years, and launched Eat My Lunch from her kitchen table with only $50,000.
Within three months, King says she’d reached her three-year targets.
Her business works on a “buy one, give one” basis. It’s an online fresh food delivery service, aimed at helping to feed 25,000 children in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington who go to school each day without lunch.
For every meal bought through her company, she gives a lunch to a kid in need. To date, Eat My Lunch has supplied 869,649 lunches in 78 low-decile schools.
The goal, she says, is “to ensure no child at school goes hungry, starting with kids right here in our own backyard”.
It’s not a charity, though Eat My Lunch has 12,000 volunteers supporting its 42 staff. “Everything we do must make commercial sense and deliver on our social purpose,” King says.
The business has grown rapidly through social media marketing and word of mouth. If you want to volunteer, there’s a two- or three-month waiting list.
King says “the model can be replicated anywhere in the world”.
Foodstuffs North Island has taken a 26 per cent stake and
King has forged corporate partnerships with Air NZ,
Spark, CCA, Z
Energy, and with social entrepreneur
Sir Ray Avery.