A great new initiative for New Zealand businesses has begun to emerge; Made From New Zealand has grown out of the people behind Silicon Welly and StartUp and it is a web based community/networking/linkbuilding/promotional-tool, and I believe we have only seen the start of it yet.

I have already been posting a some articles to the Start-up blog over the past months and so through that I have been in contact with Patrick Macfie and Tim Norton. It is very cool to see what have come out of it (so far).

So for any kiwi individual or company that have something to contribute to the NZ business scene, be it entrepreneurs, investors or customers, check out Madefromnewzealand.com!

PS: From today the Transfercar blog will be plugging in to the Made From New Zealand blog network so these posts can be read there as well.

Keep it up guys!

The Transfercar website continues to increase in popularity, much thanks to your increased number of links to us.

Transfercar website traffic increased

In January we increased visitors with over 10%. The number of rental car relocations increased even more, which indicates that the function changes we made in December (more information on each rental car relocation listing, individual rental car company terms & conditions) have worked.

Transfercar relocated 33% more rental cars and campers in Januray than in December.

This is great for us and means that even more of you were able to find a free rental car.

We look forward to February’s figures!

Here at Transfercar we would like to make your visit to and use of our site a breeze. So from Monday the 1^st of December on you will find a couple of new features implemented on the Transfercar site.

For example, there will be more relevant details on hand of the available rentals. As you know, the allowed amount of km’s and days was already specified with your free rental. However, to find out more about the vehicle you had to request it and then find out afterwards. But times have changed! Now you’ll be able to get the rental car company’s specific terms and conditions, more details about their requirements of you as a driver, and a price list of ‘optional extras’ like for example how much extra days or a baby seat costs.

If you are looking for a specific route, destination or date, and –fair enough- you don’t have time to check our site every day, then there is now the option of receiving email notifications. So get notified right away when your ‘ideal’ free rental becomes available, so you’re sure not to miss out.

And what about this-if you see a free rental listed that friends, colleagues or family really could use, you can forward this listing to them in the form of an email through our site.

Go to the site and check it out!

So we’re LIVE!

After a very productive beta testing - we’re finally ready to “Hello World”!
A BIG thank you to all the beta testers who helped with squashing all our bugs out, you hold a special place in our….carburetor =P

I had the plessure today to be invited by Dr Shuyuan Wu as a guest lecture for a undergrad paper at AUT in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. One of the objectives of the paper was for students to generate a business idea and present it in front of a panel - just like Dragons Den. I used my own company, Transfercar, as a case study to demonstrate how an idea was turned into a new venture.

I was amazed with the quality and diversity of the ideas that these students have generated - but gee - what happend to good old fashioned market research? Not that the student have not done any market research - they had been told to identify their competitors and estimate the market potential - simple Google research - but none have actually been out getting their hands dirty. None have actually been out talking to real people - real customers - real suppliers.

I guess it is not the students fault - but maybe academics should spend less time teaching students how to do regression and Porter’s 5 forces - and spend more time teaching them how to use their network and communicate with people - because at the end of the day - isnt that what entrepreneurs do.

Our spanking new office @ 23 Edwin Street

On a google map we are HERE