Learning from mistakes important key to success

By ADAM JONES

Like many New Zealanders, James McGoram returned from overseas with ideas that he wanted to make happen.

He contacted Auckland New Ventures with the idea of starting a magazine focusing on unpublished New Zealand literary talent.

He then went through the Be Your Own Boss course to develop the idea and write a business plan. This gave him the business skills to get going, and with some seed funding from Winz he began publishing Evasion magazine.

Three quarterly issues of Evasion were published before Mr McGoram changed tack, making it a web-only magazine.

He describes his first venture as "totally undercapitalised' and believes that this is a common problem for New Zealand start-up businesses.

But the lessons learned in this publishing venture led Mr McGoram to look at more commercial projects using internet technology.

He set up Messiah, a web design company, with longtime friend Leon Matthews.

Mr McGoram looks after design and copy and Mr Matthews is the web engineer/programmer of the operation.

Messiah, named after a Monty Python joke, recently won the contract for a multilingual New Zealand Immigration Service site for placing skilled migrants in work - www.intonz.co.nz.

Their company aims to develop a multilingual web product, something Mr McGoram believes would be popular in the Asian and Pacific markets.

On the Gem report findings that New Zealanders are exceptionally entrepreneurial, Mr McGoram says, "It's easy to fall into the trap of being cliched and saying it's our give-things-a-go culture. For me, it's that I am an independent person, I see things that aren't being done properly and want to do it myself."

Lessons learned from Evasion meant Messiah was started with set financial goals. The plan was to start with low overheads, build credibility and then look at further capital investment in six to eight months.

The partners are now investigating an Industry New Zealand New Ventures grant to finance research and development of their multilingual product.

From the outset, the Messiah partners had one-on-one business advice sessions with Auckland New Ventures business facilitator Gerald Dellany.

The company is developing sites for Auckland University's Summer Shakespeare production and the Immigration Service.

Mr McGoram says that going overseas made him recognise that "New Zealand is the place to do things" and that "being in New Zealand is not a barrier for working in a global economy".

GEM Special Report