Friday startup pitch wows judges

OPINION: Jordan Clist and his start-up TaxiSurfer have been on a wild ride since winning the inaugural Auckland Startup Weekend.

Mr Clist rocked up to Startup Weekend with no intention of pitching but late on the Friday night, after he'd heard all the other pitches, he figured he had nothing to lose and dragged out an old idea about an application that would allow users to order taxis across a variety of companies.

The format of Startup Weekend, which organiser Jason Armishaw now wants to roll out across the country, by the way, is that anyone with an idea can pitch the idea on the Friday night.

Teams then form around the best pitches and get a weekend to refine the idea or build an app and pitch again on Sunday night to a panel of judges.

It's about creating a buzz by getting a bunch of entrepreneurial types in a room and giving them a time limit to come up with something.

The key to TaxiSurfer's win, says Mr Clist, was the calibre of the team that worked on the pitch over the weekend.

It included people like Orsome Software developer Peter Watling, known as one of the best phone app developers in New Zealand, and Andy Lawson, a Kiwi recently returned from London who describes himself as a jack of all trades, who has spent most of his time solving problems for companies.

Included in TaxiSurfer's prize is time with business advisers plus residency in Ironbank, a business incubator on Auckland's Karangahape Rd, for one member of the team for six months.

The challenge now for Mr Clist and his team is to actually turn TaxiSurfer into a real live start-up.

Mr Clist, 26, has his own design company which he launched in 2008 but really got going properly this year. But he's ready to commit to TaxiSurfer.

So are several others from the team that worked so hard over Startup Weekend.

But within a week of winning, TaxiSurfer had already received a challenge from a London-based Kiwi who claimed the idea was originally his.

Mr Lawson dealt with the threat by posting it on the start-up's blog. "From pitch to lawsuit in five days" was the headline. It's still there at taxisurfer.com along with the follow-up communication.

The hazy legal threat seemed to dissipate once it was made public on TaxiSurfer's website.

It was also picked up by Hacker News, resulting in 10,000 hits on TaxiSurfer's website overnight.

But ideas are a dime a dozen, as one poster pointed out. Execution is everything.

"The idea of being able to push a button on your phone is in no way unique," says Mr Clist. "It's about executing in such a way that we grab the market and someone else can't steal our idea. Right now we're deciding whether or not to basically bootstrap TaxiSurfer in our spare time or go hard full time and get the app out there."

Mark Revington is the editor of Unlimited magazine.

- © Fairfax NZ News