Silicon Valley Execs hit the road in New Zealand

Silicon Valley Execs hit the road in New Zealand “making music” for tech entrepreneurs and partnering with Air New Zealand

Auckland / San Francisco

March 24 2016

Kiwi Landing Pad (KLP) today announced the dates and locations for its Sales and Marketing “Jams” across the country in April and unveiled an A list line up of speakers flying in from San Francisco to inspire and inform New Zealand’s tech ecosystem about what is really required to succeed in building a global tech business.

New to the format this year, KLP is building on its partnership with Air New Zealand by introduc-ing evening events to follow the in depth all-day Jam sessions. These evening events are part of the airline’s recently announced Inspiring Voices speaker series and are being promoted to a wider audience and designed to explore what success in business really means.

Following on from last year’s sold out events, the speakers will engage directly with the audi-ence around topics crucial to creating a successful business from an idea or early stage concept – Sales, Marketing and Product Management.

“We took our inspiration for these events from the concept of a music jam session” says KLP co-founder and Chairman John Holt. “When the speakers and attendees give up their precious time to learn and grow it’s really important that we make sure we deliver maximum value in terms of covering the specific aspects they want to learn more about. Traditional “slide based” presentations limit learning in that respect and can end up with a speaker going through a rele-vant but unconnected presentation in terms of audience engagement and value”

Speakers will be travelling from their home base in San Francisco, California and are this year a mix of first time visitors to New Zealand and previous speakers. “Our community is growing at a rapid pace both in New Zealand and San Francisco” said KLP Global Community Manager, Sian Simpson. “This allows us to continually increase the value and connection between community members and deliver quality content from people living and breathing their areas of expertise as successful entrepreneurs and executives in their own right”

The April Kiwi Landing Pad #NZSMJ Jam Speakers are:

Savannah Peterson - Founder @ Savvy Millennial

Business entrepreneur and named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology, Savannah is a respected voice in innovative technology. Founder of Savvy Millennial, she helps people, products and brands she loves grow.

Ned Dwyer - Director of Product Management & Marketplaces @ GoDaddy

Successful Australian Founder whose company Elto, an online marketplace for connecting small business owners to web developers, was acquired by GoDaddy (San Francisco based) in 2012. He is currently the Director of Product Management and Marketplace at GoDaddy.

Ash Alhashim - Founder @ Brown Flag Group

Founder of Brown Flag Group, Ash helps tech start-ups scale their sales, marketing and customer success functions. Previously the Global Director of Inside Sales at Optimizely, he built their global sales channel and has worked for companies such as Clarizen and Google.

Tristan Pollock - Entrepreneur in Residence & Venture Partner @ 500 Startups, & Co-Founder @ Storefront.

Entrepreneur and co-founder of Storefront, Tristan is the current entrepreneur in residence and venture partner at 500 Startups, one of the world’s best accelerators. In 2015 he was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and has crafted the most read email of all time, reaching over 23 million Best Buy customers.

Tami McQueen – Director of Marketing @ SalesLoft

Marketing and communications strategist with over a decade of experience in B2B and B2C markets, Tami is currently the Director of Marketing at SalesLoft, fastest-growing SaaS company in the US ($11.2 mil funding). She leads communications, content marketing and lead generation initiatives across multiple platforms and is well known for her agile marketing techniques.

Auckland’s Jam is on April 4th, followed by Christchurch on April 6th and, for the first time, Queenstown on April 8th with the final session being held in Wellington on April 11th.

Holt and Simpson expect to be oversubscribed for attendance in all locations – “we want to get to as many of our community as possible and would urge aspiring entrepreneurs and high growth executives to register link: http://www.salesandmarketingjam.com/attend-april-2016.html] early to ensure a place.” Simpson mentioned they have already received over 150 registrations within hours of launching the campaign, due to repeat attendees and a close knit community.

Additional to the Jams is a new online resource - salesandmarketingjam.com - created by the Kiwi Landing Pad team to support the jam conversation, and act as a platform for learning and engaging with the material covered in the jams after the events themselves.

Speakers will be available for a limited number of media engagements at each location.

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