October Meetup - Accounting for Startups

We are pleased to announce the next event in our monthly Meetup series!

Accounting for Startups
EPIC Innovation Centre, 76/106 Manchester Street
Tuesday, October 9th
5:30pm-7pm

Hear from Chartered Accountant and social enterprise advocate, Anthony "Antz" Rohan, all about accounting for startups.

Antz will be talking about compliance and IRD, accounting systems, good financial hygiene, budgeting and forecasting, and KPIs and metrics.

We hope to see you there! Please RSVP HERE to let us know you’re coming along.

Introducing Our Practical Tools for Active Startups Workshop Series and New Startup Christchurch Membership Programme!

Startup Christchurch is pleased to announce the launch of our new Membership programme!

A low $50 annual Membership fee will provide you benefits such as:

US$15,000 worth of AWS credits
Discounts on in-person training
Discounts for online resources
$2 off Bacon Brothers
Special deals from Kiwi Vikings - coming soon!
Access to exclusive Startup Christchurch merchandise and online content
Preferential tickets for Startup Weekend Christchurch

If you would like to discuss becoming a member, please get in touch with us at info@startupchristchurch.nz.  We welcome your feedback and hope that our Members will work with us to expand upon and fine-tune our benefits to ensure that we are providing you with the most value.

Still Free

Don't worry!  Even if you don't join, we will continue to host free public events like our regular monthly meetups.


You Asked for It!

Feedback from the community is that many of you want more focused support and actionable takeaways, which has led the team to start developing more in-depth content about the topics that matter to you.


Want to see a return on your membership fee RIGHT NOW? Sign up for the first of our Practical Tools for Active Startups workshop series which is launching later this month...

Read more HERE!

August Newsletter

Startup Tips
 

Today's Top Tip - Check Your Actions, Regularly

Getting visitors to your startup website is only part of the challenge. Turning them into paying (and hopefully long-lasting) customers is where the real fun begins. One way to quickly scupper your chances of success is to have a website where your conversion actions - such as getting a visitor to fill out a demo-request form or download a whitepaper - are broken. Unfortunately, this scenario is all-too-common. 

Anything from plugin updates on your website to basic human oversight (such as setting a form to go to an email address that doesn't exist) can result in you losing out on valuable conversions, and ultimately disappointing potential leads.

Therefore, it pays to get into a habit of regularly checking all conversion actions on your website to ensure they do what you want them to do. This is something low-effort with large reward. You put in the hard yards to get people to check out your idea, so it's crucial to ensure they can take action on it if interested. 

This tip comes to you from local online marketing expert, Sam Frost.  Want to learn more?  Come check him out at our meetup on the 21st!

View the rest of the August newsletter HERE.

Callaghan Repayable Loans

Tech Incubator Programme

There are three organisations in the Callaghan Innovation's "Tech Incubators" programme which provides pre-incubation grants and repayable loans for commercialising of IP.  The organisations are Astrolab, Powerhouse, and WNT Ventures.

The programme is designed to support the commercialisation of IP from Universities, Crown Research Institutes, and private sources.

Read full article HERE.

Top 5 Online Marketing Mistakes (That no one tells you...)

Is your startup struggling to gain traction online? Join us for our next fantastic Startup Christchurch meetup event, hosted by online marketing expert, Sam Frost.

Hear from Sam about the top mistakes people make with online marketing. Sam will talk about how to identify wasted online advertising spending and proven ways to save money on paid online advertising.

Sam has over ten years’ experience in digital marketing, having started as an affiliate marketer, building, growing and monetising websites while at high school. Since then he has worked with a number of leading agencies and businesses, including as a Digital Marketing Manager for a business division within the Warehouse Group. Sam now helps businesses in a variety of industries to grow through the development and implementation of effective digital marketing strategies.

Tuesday 21st August
5:30pm-7pm, Greenhouse

We hope to see you there! Please RSVP HERE to let us know you're coming along.

July Newsletter

Thank you to everyone who came along to our July Meetup at Vodafone xone.  It was great to see some lively discussion among our panel members regarding accelerator programmes in New Zealand. 

An extra thanks to everyone there who completed our startup survey.  Your feedback is helping us to form our programme for the latter part of this year.  Stay tuned for information about our next Meetup, as well as some new content which we will be rolling out very soon!  

View the rest of the July Newsletter HERE.

June Newsletter

We are excited to announce the next in our Speaker Stories series of Meetup events.

Speaker Story: Jeremy Wyn-Harris, Builderscrack
Tuesday 19th of June, 5:30pm-7pm
Greenhouse, 146 Lichfield Street

Jeremy Wyn-Harris is the co-founder of Christchurch-based business Builderscrack which matches tradespeople to home and business owners who need work done.  The web-based business went live in early 2007 and, since then, thousands of New Zealanders have posted hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Builderscrack is now New Zealand's leading trade networking site. 
 
This is the latest in the Startup Christchurch Speaker Stories series. We will also be launching lots of additional content over the next few months - panel discussions, capability training, lunchtime sessions and more.

View the rest of the June Newsletter HERE.

May Newsletter

Hello Startup Christchurch network!

First up, a huge thanks to everyone who came out for Startup Weekend Christchurch.  It was a great weekend with lots of energy and ideas.  Congratulations to the Find the Gap team who took home the win!

We are hard at work now putting together a calendar of exciting new meetup events for you.  Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on our Facebook poll.  We heard you, and we're looking at a range of formal and informal events: speaker stories, capability-building, networking, lunchtime, and evening options.  Stay tuned for details of our next meetup session coming very SOON!

View the rest of the May newsletter HERE.