New Year's resolution: Becoming an entrepreneur

Massey University’s ecentre is encouraging entrepreneurs to tap into its expertise about potential markets for their ideas and save start-ups time, money and effort.

The business innovation centre, on the Albany campus, will be running free advice workshops next month.

Steve Corbett, chief executive of ecentre, says tough economic times are a paradise for entrepreneurs who have the courage and capability to exploit opportunities and seek out support.

“There are support systems in place,” he says. “Incubators such as the ecentre are a great first point of contact. Incubators help entrepreneurs to develop their capabilities, fast track their business and overall de-risk the process, especially if you are not quite sure whether your idea is worth pursuing.

“To make this decision easier, you need to figure out whether someone is willing to pay for your offer. We call this process market validation.”

Mr Corbett, who chairs the industry association Incubators New Zealand, says entrepreneurs can spend months or even years developing a “good” idea for which there is no market. “The concept of solving a real market problem is simple, but is often overlooked,” he says.

The ecentre will run free Business Idea Workshops around Auckland, with the first on February 8 at the ecentre.

In addition, ecentre is now enrolling for the next 12-week ecentreSprint programme, which will start at the end of February.

Entrepreneurs receive market feedback, gain access to mentors and investors with different points of view, pitch to investors and receive encouragement with others going through similar challenges.

Alexei Dunayev, chief executive of TranscribeMe, a smartphone-to-text transcription service, which went through the programme, says the support from the ecentre had been “leading edge” and helped the company to focus on the customer.

“We see a lot of entrepreneurs who have an idea but simply can’t afford to quit their day job to figure out whether their businesses will take off,” adds Sabrina Nagel, programme manager for ecentreSprint.

“And it is a good way of testing whether one can be an entrepreneur.”

For more details, go to the ecentre’s website www.ecentre.org.nz.