Both Paul Graham, in a post about start-up ideas, and Vaughan Rowsell, with a just published interview, talk about the importance of understanding customer pains and needs. Vaughan first, from an interview with DoesWhat I started Vend completely by accident. I actually had another idea, as awesome as Soapbox, that was mobile and could let you find …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Pacific Fibre II: Background and questions for new players
Kim.com is the first, among many I believe, to try to resurrect the case for Pacific Fibre. This has created a bit of a media kerfuffle, and so let’s get some background and questions for Kim and any other potential new players to answer. I remain a very strong believer in the business case for a …
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Paying our tax – step 1 of 10 complete
It’s great to see that NZ Customs has introduced a website, WhatsMyDuty? to help us calculate how much GST (and other duties) we owe when importing goods. That includes ebooks, it seems: I’d assumed eBooks were duty free, but it’s going to be hard to have them assessed as they don’t actually arrive in NZ, …
Plotting Apple’s next steps: Giant screens, merged iOS and OSX devices and cars?
A year ago, in The Steps for Apple beyond iPhone 5, I tried to map out the future of the iOS product range – focussing on the iPhone as the base. Let’s review how it went, and look at the next 12-24 months for Apple’s portable devices. iPhone The initial miss was that the iPhone …
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US Campaigning: Money please
This is the sort of email spam that I get from both sides of the US presidential election. First – the National Rifle Association. Apparently if you are a rifle owner then you are automatically Right Wing. From a previous NRA email: Obama gave a clear warning to you, me, and every gun owner in …
Fast50 special: Join Powershop and get $100 of free power
We are delighted that Powerkiwi was second in the NZ Fast 50 today. So we want to share the good vibes. Join Powershop here and we’ll kick in $100 of free power. It’s that simple. (But it won’t last long.)
PowerKiwi and the Fast50
We entered PowerKiwi into this year’s Deloitte Fast50, and the results are announced tonight. Powerkiwi sells FlowerPower and other products on online electricity retailer Powershop. We’ve had an incredible growth rate over the last few years, and just hit over 220 million units of electricity sold to date through Powershop. Since launch we’ve been responsible …
Trade Me Values
It’s great to see that Trade Me’s values have not changed in the years since I was there. The success of Trade Me was in no small part due to the sometimes rigorous enforcement of these. It’s no surprise to see that customers come first at Trade Me, as they do at many other organisations. …
Cash matters
As part of an email to a client negotiating a deal I mentioned: Cash matters. We might contemplate equity arrangements as making us fortunes, making sure that you are swimming in cash along the way is a much surer way to build a fortune. He is putting it on the wall. Maybe I should too, …
Set up your own email account under your own name
Telecom has adopted a mercenary stance and will charge $20 per month to former customers (who have moved to other ISPs) to retain their Xtra email account. I have several issues with this: The cost to service these accounts is less than $2 per month, even if outsourced completely. While Yahoo.com offers free accounts, they …
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Gidday cobber – the Kiwi story
It seems, according to insiders, that allegedly the winning firm for crafting the great Kiwi story for NZTE, Tourism NZ and Education NZ is actually an Ozzie import. That’s appalling on the face of it. I’m not sure whether this is an artifact of an RFP lowest bidder process. I do wonder at the impact …
The Webstock ’13 website
Webstock ’13, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs. It’s a brave team who will put up a blink-tag site for hordes of web designers and developers waiting for the latest news. That’s what the lovely folks at Webstock did, though they did replace it with a more modern version , complete with the speaker list, later in …
How to win at team building exercises
Building towers out of spaghetti, marshmallows or paper, creating paper airplanes, crossing water with a man made bridge, changing Nascar tires, designing clothes with paper – we’ve all been exposed to team building exercises, and they just keep coming. They are generally designed to teach a certain issue, but they are also often designed to …
BBD CEO tour: What shared agenda should NZ set with the world?
Keith Yamashita is an inspiring chap. He wasn’t content with sharing how SYPartners engages with clients, but wanted to reach further. He asked us “What shared agenda should New Zealand set with the world that drives deep impact – and also advantages the nation?” He then facilitated a session try to answer the question. The …
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BBD CEO Tour: Method
Method co-founder Adam Lowry presented at the BBD CEO summit this year, and was excellent. The tour reinforced what a great company this is and also showed how small and simple they really are. There is nothing going on here that is not reproducible in New Zealand. The difference is scalability – easier access to …
Lance Wiggs 