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Have Someone In Your Corner

Maria King is a mentor, coach and director (and much more), as well as an integral part of Venture Centre’s community.  We sat down to chat with Maria about her role as a mentor, her approach to mentoring and the important role a mentor can play in your journey as an entrepreneur. ...

Startup Weekend Tauranga | Wellbeing 2021

It is a wrap for Startup Weekend Tauranga 2021! This was the 10th year that this 54-hour entrepreneurial event over a weekend happened in Tauranga. This year’s theme was wellbeing which meant the participants were focused on enhancing and improving the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of our community. The event had 55 participants and 16 mentors from all over the country. They tackled wellbeing issues that ranged from increasing housing supply to reducing carbon emissions to foste...

Plenty of Growth Opportunities for July

We have plenty of events in July designed to continue to support you take your venture to new digital heights. It's all about getting noticed and standing out.  Make sure your business gets found on Google and that your brand gets noticed amongst all the digital clutter by attending on of our PoweringON workshops.Digital experts from our community can't wait to share their passion and expertise with you.And, your chance to get out and support our next generation of entre...

How to Strengthen Your Courage Muscles

Whether you are contemplating starting your own business or you’re already in the thick of it, courage is a crucial aspect of the entrepreneurial mindset. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines courage as, ‘the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.’...

Be In The Room

Being a Year 13 at Otumoetai College is where ordinary starts and ends for Rachel. Despite being in a time in life where the path is laid out painstakingly clear, Rachel is choosing to take every opportunity that comes her way, even if it means being the youngest in the room....

Plenty of Growth Opportunities for June

We are all about helping you make your way on your entrepreneurial journey and we are big believers in the power of using the digital tools at your fingertips to get you there. Want a win (or ten!) in the digital arena of your business? Check out our latest blog and find out about the PoweringOn Digital Assessment and how it can make your life more digital, with less stress. Also, check out June's events below for more growth opportunities this month!MADVenture...

The future of business is digital, is yours?

Even the tech-savviest of us find ourselves in the beginner stages when learning a new digital tool. Whether it's starting out or becoming familiar with the latest app or upgrade, you're allowed to want digital tools to make life easier (not more stressful). ...

The Art of Leveraging Digital Tools

A master of many tools, Alicia has maximised her Instagram as the platform to sell her bold and beautiful paintings. Although this could easily be a successful full time job, two months ago Alicia launched Aura Digital to help other creatives and small businesses also achieve their goals and create income with what they do. ...

Plenty of Growth Opportunities for May

May is quite the month for fabulous events and growth opportunites! We are especially excited about Startup Weekend Tauranga, your opportunity to connect with like-minded people, start or build on your entrepreneurial journey, learn what it takes to start an enterprise by doing it and leverage the opportunity to really get started. You can read more at our latest blog or jump right in to secure your spot here.Also, check out this month's Techweek events (between the 24th - 28...

Looking for your next step? Startup Weekend Tauranga is here!

Shaking up the mundane is as easy as signing up for this year’s Startup Weekend Tauranga. Take a risk, take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey and participate in this awesome weekend of learning and innovation.  ...

Finding a place to grow roots

For over 10 years, Nila has been a freelancer by trade. This career has given her the opportunity to model, event manage for music festivals, social media manage and more recently, pursue graphic design, all whilst travelling the world. ...

Plenty of Growth Opportunities for April

Whether you are just starting out and have questions about your business (Office Hours) or always wanted to create your dream job (Entrepreneurs Everywhere) we have something in this month's lineup to help you make your way. MADVentures - events for youth_____________________________________________Young Enterprise Scheme (YES)| Be a mentorKeen to support a secondary school team running a business this year? Register your interest herePoweringON - events for bu...

Delivering Meaningful Opportunities to do Good Stuff Together

Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Co-founder and Director of Venture Centre, has an awesome Twitter bio: “Creating connections and exploring intersections between people and ideas by delivering meaningful opportunities to do good stuff together #entrepreneurship.”...

Your new favourite tool

One of Venture Centre’s favourite tools to recommend to the entrepreneurs in our community is the Lean Canvas. No matter if you’re in full flight with a business idea or cautiously contemplating its potential, the Lean Canvas can help get your business plan on one page, increasing your chance of success....

2021, the year Tauranga’s Long-term Plan can become future-focused and community-led

As an entrepreneurial community we are pre-disposed to finding problems that spark our curiosity and get us doing everything we can do to find new ways to make things better for everyone. It’s the way we’re wired.However, as entrepreneurs, our voices have seldom been heard, and our entrepreneurial needs — so that we can bring a diversity of alternate ways of solving problems to light — have been under-represented and mis-understood....

The Power of Curiosity

Our entrepreneur in the spotlight this month is Yohann Irani. Mechanical engineer (by day) and entrepreneur (always), Yohann shares about the power of curiosity in any entrepreneur’s journey....

Plenty of Growth Opportunities for March

It’s March already! And no doubt that your to do list is continuing to grow arms and legs. We’re here to help! Are you just starting out, with lots of questions on how to protect your new brand? Come and chat with an expert from James & Wells. You’ve built your website? Help it be found with some SEO skills.  Ready to start talking about your idea and meet others on the same journey in our community? Come along to our next Entrepreneurs Everywhere me...

Plenty of Growth Opportunities for February

It's 2021 and we are ready!Ready to continue to help you, our community, grow their inner entrepreneur. We have hit the ground running with a fantastic range of events for your February.Stay up to date with 2021 events through our monthly listing (you can update your preferences or unsubscribe at the bottom anytime).Feel free to connect (or reconnect) anytime, particularly if there are other areas of support you would like to see that are not currently available to entrepreneurs looking to ...

It Takes A Village

Starting your own venture is no small feat. The starting goal might be to create and sustain a business but the real work becomes your evolution into an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur you need to develop and increase a range of soft and hard skills that will help you grow your venture. The great news is these skills can also be applied in different job roles, projects and sectors. One of the key soft skills is teamwork. Gone are the days of the lone wolf. Just as it takes a village to raise a ...

YES Regional Winners inspired by love

Each year, 4000 Kiwi students around the country form teams to participate in the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES). Given the opportunity to create and run a business throughout the year, teams complete a series of challenges including validation, promotion, sales and their pitch. This year’s YES Regional Winner, Akau (Anmoldeep, Bella, Amber and Nicole from Aquinas College) created a body moisturising tube, inspired by love for their Mums. “We wanted to give back to our wonderful mum...

Entrepreneurship in Regional New Zealand - GEW 2020

4 entrepreneurs, 4 trajectories a common theme: it's a journey! Find out who they are and gain insights into their diverse journey and experience...

More support needed for social enterprise to thrive nationwide

Nicola Patrick believes that entrepreneurs in provincial New Zealand are different from their city counterparts, even varying from region to region. To her, this led to a significant gap in economic development. Without resources at the community level, entrepreneurs in these areas are left unsupported – especially when they don’t know where to start. To help address this capability gap, especially in social enterprise, she founded Thrive, an organisation providing services to help ideas tak...

Startup Watch: essence

When a customer or client comes to me, they are unsure how to articulate, specifically with words, what they do, how they do it, and the problems they solve. I sit down alongside them and not only give them the words of ‘this is what you do’ but try to articulate their core or the essence of who they are as a brand. So, if you were to meet their brand in person, what kind of person would you be chatting with? What are the strengths of that brand? If I’m looking up 50 different hairdressers...

Next Generation of Entrepreneurs Flourish

The entrepreneurial spirit in the next generation of business leaders is flourishing with sustainable products and practices being developed, thanks in part to the impact of COVID-19.High school students from across the Bay of Plenty have been working hard to develop a successful business as part of this year’s Young Enterprise Scheme (YES).Toi Ohomai remains a key sponsor of this event, with regional finals being held in both Tauranga and Rotorua recently.The Rotorua finals was made up of tea...

COVID a Catalist for Like your Local Founders

Before the world locked down, Murphy and Terrington were in Melbourne, a couple of weeks away from closing their second funding round for an online ticketing platform they had built. With the platform, FOMO Events, event organisers could plug their ticketing service into a platform, and customers would receive a URL to a webpage that dished out app-like experiences.This approach solved a fundamental problem common in apps. Murphy says that although everyone wants to build an app, people rarely d...