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There's a reason New Zealand's pool of innovative website techies is generally of the younger age bracket: they are able to handle the late nights, the early mornings, the seven-days-a-week accountability.
Operating out of a trendy villa on Parnell Rd, Richard Poole of www.grownups.co.nz and Richard Henry of www.getfrank.co.nz are two of Auckland's young entrepreneurs thriving in the cut-throat online media market. It's exciting, it's fast but it's tough - and they say they couldn't imagine doing anything else.
"When you don't have the luxury to employ people you just end up doing the hours it takes to get it done, and in the end it makes you pretty damn passionate about wanting to make it work," Poole says.
Poole, 35, is the founder of grownups.co.nz, New Zealand's only website exclusively for the 50-plus age bracket. He had always kept a book of ideas; it just happened that the retirement market had featured on the first page. Friends introduced him to Shane Bradley, the founder of finda.co.nz and the concept of a secure networking and information website exclusively for retired people was born.
Launched in 2006, the site now has 21,000 subscribers, 66,500 user-visitors per month and was voted best lifestyle website in this year's NetGuide People's Choice Awards.
Henry was at university when he recognised an opportunity to tap into the young professional male demographic through an online men's magazine.
His concept won him a Nescafe big break cash grant to help launch getfrank.co.nz in 2006. But 25-year-old Henry quickly realised it was not enough to simply create a site and expect the people to visit it.
He left his job as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers so he could concentrate on keeping his business afloat.
He too, was fortuitously introduced to Bradley. Realising the potential of Henry's website, Bradley jumped on board as an investor and an adviser.
"And it's been a helluva ride since then," Henry says.
getfrank.co.nz is attracting 50,000 visitors a month and has 10,000 subscribers.
It has grown nearly 300 per cent since the beginning of 2008, recently acquired its chief New Zealand rival bigfella.co.nz and launched an Australian version of the site this month.
Mark Evans, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, says the internet boom is alive in New Zealand and there are countless opportunities for young entrepreneurs to make their big break online.
He rattles off a list of success stories similar to those of Poole and Henry and says it is still a great time to start a career in the interactive advertising and media space.
While interactive advertising's spending as a percentage of total advertising is lower in New Zealand than in other countries such as the United States, Britain and Australia, the bureau's quarterly adspend reports show the local interactive advertising market has grown 67 per cent from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008 - which is much faster than the growth in more developed markets.
This growth opens up opportunities for publishers, media companies, advertising agencies, creatives and other online businesses in the interactive advertising market, Evans says. "The internet boom has made it easier for any smart, entrepreneurial person to reach vast audiences more quickly than ever before, and at lower cost," he says.
The pair say there were pros and cons to coming to the online market as young novices and being new, Henry says, he was open and trying a different tack when traditional avenues were not working.
"I went and had a coffee with Marc Ellis, bounced ideas off him - you try that in the States, you wouldn't have a dream."
