Entrepreneur offers tips to online success

During Global Entrepreneurship Week, BusinessDay puts questions to Wellington entrepreneurs. Today: David ten Have offers tips for online success.

David ten Have is the founder of Ponoko.com, a design and manufacturing website enabling people to build and sell their own designer goods virtually.

Ponoko has backed its internet expansion into the United States with a physical presence in San Francisco. Mr ten Have talks about building a global online business from Wellington.

What has the internet done for entrepreneurship?

It has made it cheaper to get started and maximise shareholder value. It allows you to sensibly pursue a global mandate. It also allows you to gain data about businesses that was previously difficult to obtain. It enables you to efficiently enter into a one-on-one conversation with your customers - irrespective of where in the world those customers are.

What is the most important thing in building an online business?

Build something people want and understand that the stories that are told about online success are the outlying cases. You need to be patient and persistent. You need to constantly talk to your existing customers. You need to get them to tell their stories. You need to publicise those stories. You need to alter your offering to ensure that you can repeat those successes.

Has the online world changed manufacturing entrepreneurship?

Yes. It is no longer valid to treat manufacturing as a "solved problem". It is now a space that is rich in veins of innovation. It has opened up a whole new world of production topologies and business opportunities.

What is the worst thing to do when entering a new market?

Ignore the data that confirms you have built something people do not want. You need to be bluntly honest with yourself and remove dead weight as soon as it becomes apparent that it's not contributing to your business. The second thing is outsourcing the market engagement. Early on you'll never find someone more incentivised to sell your product than you.

It is a terrible mistake to think it's easier or better to get someone else to do it.

When is the perfect time to set up base in an export market?

Day 1. It's easier to service a domestic market with systems designed to support an export-driven vision than vice versa. If you're going to subject yourself to the experience of starting up a business, you should pursue an opportunity that is big enough to make it worthwhile. If you're starting up in New Zealand these days and you can articulate a global vision you owe it to yourself, and in some respects New Zealand, to go for it. Why play for a lesser goal?