Business Incubator Hatching Outstanding Successes

16 June 2006

Business Incubator Hatching Outstanding Successes

Positively Wellington Business sees confirmation of the economic benefit of its business incubator, Creative HQ, in the ongoing successes of three companies set to graduate this month.

The three companies – Optimal Usability, Innaworks, and SilverStripe – have already shown outstanding growth and profits.

Just to graduate, each of the three companies had to meet at least two of the following three criteria: achieve $500,000 in revenue, attract $500,000 investment, or double staff numbers.

Optimal Usability, which aims to ‘humanise’ technology, was named start-up of the year at this year’s Telecom New Zealand incubator awards.

The company saw revenue skyrocket in its first year at Creative HQ and now has nine full-time staff, a host of contractors, and offices in Wellington and Auckland.

Similarly SilverStripe, whose flagship product is a website design and maintenance system, had a 300% surge in revenue last year.

“In our first year with Creative HQ we aligned ourselves, and since the second year there we’ve just taken off,” says co-founder Tim Copeland, adding they aim to grow their company base from 11 to 15 employees before picking up any of the overseas work being offered to them.

CEO of Innaworks Stephen Cheng is a global innovator in the lucrative market of world-leading enabling technologies for the mobile application and gaming industry.

His product, mBooster, reduces the sizes of mobile applications and improves their performances.

He’s working in a very big and high-value market, as each year mobile phones outsell PCs.

Positively Wellington Business Chief Executive Philip Lewin says that these companies are the future of business in Wellington.

“The results are continuing to show that investing time and effort in selected start-up companies with high-growth potential will result in a worthwhile economic return.”

Mr Lewin says that every dollar Positively Wellington Business invests in Creative HQ has a tenfold economic impact.

ENDS