“It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow”
On Thursday afternoon I left Webstock to head up to the beautiful Hawkes Bay and enjoy two evenings and one day of mixing it with some of the people behind some of New Zealand’s fastest growing businesses.
2011 is the second year Rod Drury from Xero has held his Accelerate conference at the Black Barn Vineyard.
Thursday night started with a social gathering for those who had arrived in Havelock North already. It was great to catch up with a number of old faces and meet many new ones as well.
Friday the conference proper started and, after a brief introduction by Rod, Sam Morgan kicked off the morning session talking about the importance of the business model. This high level over view was then looked at in detail in conjunction with a series of presentations from the likes of Sonar6, Jucy, Sidhe, Aptimize, Snapper and VoucherMob.
The presentations were awesome and many people shared some amazing insights and numbers and Sam and Rod were able to pull out both the good and bad points of the various business models – some of the presenters certainly have a few tough but exciting calls to make in the near term!
Lunch at a vineyard is never a quick experience and Accelerate was no exception. The setting was great and the networking over a great lunch was very enjoyable.
During the morning various topics came up that were to form the basis for the afternoon sessions where discussions and examples were discussed from off-shore development to staff incentives.
A really interesting example from the afternoon was from Sonar6 and talked about how they have shifted their sales focus from the small end of the funnel (converting leads to customers) to the big end (converting suspects to prospects.) The examples and methodologies discussed were incredible and show the power of experimenting, informing and then a small bit of selling. Interestingly since shifting their focus, Sonar6 has made more sales with less sales people!
Following the afternoon session we had another enjoyable evening of networking which included more food and a concert Minuit in the Black Barn Cellar.
Conferences such as Accelerate are extremely positive. Due to a high level of trust amongst participants highly confidential information is shared freely in an open and stimulating environment where everyone benefits.
It is hard not to leave a conference like Accelerate feeling pumped up and the credit must go to Rod for not only organising a great event but also in the people he attracted. Many of New Zealand’s business angels attended along with a couple of VC’s from Silicon Valley.
You can read more about Accelerate from Rod or from Mark Robotham who has a more in depth overview of the day which has saved me significant typing time!