Five of the 13 finalists hail from Wellington, with companies ranging from an online portal for early childhood records to a database for professional and academic fellowships.
Now in its fifth year, The Unlimited Challenge aims to help get New Zealand company’s investment ready, through workshops, business planning, mentoring and pitch planning.
“The Unlimited Investment Challenge has been fantastic in the way that it has forced us to write down our business plan,” says Greg Day of PeopleMine, a company which focuses on the lifetime value of retail customers and one of the five Wellington finalists. “It has made us channel our energies into not only what PeopleMine is but a detailed vision of what it will be.”
Greg and fellow Wellington finalist Nathan Li from e-portal company Educa are no strangers to the process of scrutinizing their bright ideas and business plans having completed business development programme, Activate and both being residents of Grow Wellington business incubator, Creative HQ.
“Activate was excellent for filling in some of the blank spots in my business experience,” says Greg. “It was a great way to get feedback on our business and it also ensured we focussed on talking to customers and finding out how we could better tailor our product to them.”
The finalists of the Unlimited Investment Challenge will present their ideas to investors in October, following pitch preparation.
Far from being nervous about pitching to investors, Greg sees it as being part of the process of developing the PeopleMine product.
“We think it’s time to share PeopleMine with more people, and get feedback on our product. Winning would be great, particularly from an exposure point of view, but we are believers in PeopleMine and the potential for computers to help real people.”
The Challenge also offers finalists the chance to be matched with a business mentor for 12 months.
For more information about the Unlimited Investment Challenge click here