The Daily Lark

Are you an exporter or a global company? It’s a subtle but very important difference. NZ tech companies have been confused on this one for too long.
Brand NZ does little for the NZ technology enterprise, so trying to derive some advantage in our clean, green, pure image is a waste of time. If anything [...]

Put the Perfect Pitch on your “Marketers Must Read” list. Whether you’re on the Agency or Client side, you’ll get a ton from Jon’s ideas on giving the Perfect Pitch. The run-down on how London won the Olympics is worth it alone.
There are weeks when I seem to motor from one set of PowerPoint [...]

Xero just raised $23.2m, again proving that great ideas secure great investors. What’s interesting is that they were able to attract the founder of traditional software maker in their space – MYOB – to invest. A massive endorsement of their strategy and product.
What is really amazing is that they have passed the 6000 customer [...]

Chris has a great response to The Economist on free models. I’ve long argued that free often gets misread as literally free. (the comments are worth reading)
Every customer comes with a cost. Rather than pay to market to you and obtain revenue now, instead I choose little or no marketing or distribution cost, focusing instead [...]

I’m really thrilled, and a little belated in announcing, that I’ve joined the advisory board of crack NZ start-up Xero. Put simply, Xero is the most exciting SaaS/Cloud native in the accounting space.
Why? Well, three reasons:

Great team. Rod, Alastair, Phil and the crew are the best out there. I love the idea of working with [...]

Michael has ignited a debate about the work rate of Europe vs. Silicon Valley. I tend to agree with Michael – the success rate in the Valley has plenty to do with the work rate. This isn’t just about output… it’s about mastery.
I’m also in agreement with the comments over here that Japan also has [...]