Lightning Lab grows up, gets into its groove

The Lightning Lab’s demo day had some quite fascinating works in progress…bring on Demo (to investors) Day on May 28 at Te Papa.

The team behind LL are also, as you’d hope, a year wiser, further along a path with the aim of rapidly ramping up verified/proven businesses.

It also isn’t surprising to see the LL accelerator (now there’s a nice rhyme/assonance) expanding to Auckland next year and Christchurch.

The nine, mostly two or three man teams (and a question asked why so few females?), have had assumptions challenged, hard questions posed – as teams are forced to think about building a business as opposed to creating a product.

There is also wider value beyond the incubation itself, as Ken Erskine, director of startups at The Icehouse, (as appears in Stuff), puts it perfectly

He says research showed successful startup accelerators provided a network of highly experienced and committed mentors and investors, an active alumni network and, most importanly, connections to future capital.

“Together, we have a phenomenal combined network of mentors, investors and startup entrepreneurs to help ensure the success of the nationwide accelerator programme.”

At the demo, with a small d, day on April 23, one of the three month intensive’s more interesting pivots was the horse guy.

The original pitch was to do something to make horse shoeing more easy. But the team lead by Ashok is now looking to create a tool so that businesses can run campaigns on SnapChat (the instant appear/disappear photo app).

The guys looking to build a tool to automate translating accounting figures from say Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks to an accountant’s own chart of accounts has already got strong traction and demand.

One of the startups wants to capture, retain and effectively distribute that deep institutional knowledge longertime employees have about a company and how it works.

There’s an app to help the hospitality industry manage its staff/flow requirements, and software for managing shared expenses – as in flatmate situations. An easy, no-bugs way to get a web design quickly going live and updateable, a water tank monitor device, management software for sports coaches, and an app that uses social networks as a way to connect offline – say a quick game of tennis – were explained, and a brief lessons learned given by all.

Finally, and this will be interesting to see if they can get it right – a map that shows where you’ve been on web searches – a way of collecting notes and creating shortcuts through the world’s knowledge.

So, obviously no shortage of ideas up for grabs.

But, as we all know, ideas are easy – it is getting them to sustain flight that’s the trick.

And, an interesting final note:- LL is a partnership between founding investor partners (who receive a percentage share of any startup’s initial offer) and MBIE, part of its accelerator funding pool.