Jessica's trip adds to product success

When Australian teen Jessica Watson set off to become the youngest person to sail around the world, almost immediately she ran into a problem.

Her yacht, Ella's Pink Lady, collided with an oil tanker on the way to Sydney.

Once safely back in port, Jessica's support team installed a collision warning device called the AIS Watchmate, developed by Auckland's Vesper Marine. And she made it the rest of the way around the world without hitting anything.

You'd think that kind of story would be priceless publicity for a small Kiwi startup.

Not really, says Jeff Robbins, who started Vesper with his wife Deirdre Schleigh. Vesper already has a large base of satisfied customers who spread the good news for the company and Jessica Watson's approval of AIS Watchmate barely caused a ripple.

"Our customers tell each other about our products, they tell their friends, and they in turn pass it on. Now we're looking to give them the materials to pass the story on themselves."

Go to market early, get feedback from customers, and continue to innovate. That time-worn advice is ignored by many entrepreneurs, but not Mr Robbins and Ms Schleigh.

Maybe it's Mr Robbins's background in software but the mantra of getting a product into the market as soon as possible and refining it according to customer feedback is etched into his psyche.

"You've got to get that early feedback, and revenue. You get the chance to improve your product based on feedback."

The couple, both keen sailors, developed Watchmate after setting sail from the United States in 2001. Like all sailors, they thought about the possibility of collisions at sea.

But Mr Robbins, with a background in product development, went a step further and developed Watchmate.

Vessels at sea are required to have an automatic identification system and the family of Watchmate alarms developed by Vesper shows data from all vessels in the vicinity, sounding an alarm "if a potentially dangerous situation exists".

It's easy to install, easy to use and doesn't use much power and, after three years, Vesper is in 19 countries and experienced sales growth of 160 per cent in the past financial year.

After going through the Escalator programme set up by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to get companies investment ready, Vesper Marine raised almost $1 million earlier this year. The investors are a consortium from the Ice Angels, the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund's seed capital fund, and private equity.

It wasn't difficult deciding to become investment ready. Capital was obviously necessary to chase the kind of growth Vesper is interested in and attracting outside investors has given the company access to a wider range of expert advice. But the preparation time is hard won in a startup.

"It's challenging because it takes a lot of time. Towards the end of that period, it was taking up to 70 per cent of my time. All small business people wear a million hats and there's never enough time, but it was worth it in the end."

* Next week a business mentor casts their eye over the company. Mark Revington is the editor of Unlimited magazine. mark.revington@unlimited.co.nz

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