Curious Kiwi Capitalist

Curious Kiwi Capitalist


Entrepreneurship & Early Venture Capital in NZ with Richard Higham

August 26, 2019

Episode 4 of the Curious Kiwi Capitalist Podcast

27th August 2019

My guest for this show is Richard Higham. Richard is one of the top business academic practitioners in New Zealand history. He has not only experienced but researched and studied entrepreneurship. He has run his own firm, consulted to corporates about entrepreneurship, and saw the start of venture capital in NZ before "venture capital" was even really a word.
Now in his eighties, he is still going strong, as you'll see he is the master of the rhetorical question and pretty much ran this interview himself!
In this show, we'll discuss entrepreneurship and the early days of venture capital in New Zealand including:

* The king, the castle and le entrepreneur
* Austrians and supply-side entrepreneurs
* Drucker arrives on the scene leading to a bloosoming in books and research on entrepreneurship from 1983 to 1986.
* Early venture capital in NZ
* 2-6-2: 2 winners only
* The Saudi king and Saudi Corp in NZ
* Graeme Hart, his MBA and financial wizardry
* Process vs poduct innovation
* Large corporates find entrepenurship from within, they're in the woodwork, somewhere though the "corporate immune system" then tries to destroy it
* Death Valley and the going up the S-Curve
* The assumption that 80% of small business were going broke is wrong, its probably only 30%.
* Prospective entrepreneurs making up less than 10% of the NZ population of which only a few succeed
* Otago University rugby Blooz Nooz.



Show Notes

About
Richard Higham still lectures at Otago University. The lectures are run at the same speed you hear in the episode, always a sprint, but always time for a student. I believe he was a pathfinder for many New Zealand entrepreneurs, not the least being Graeme Hart.
He studied at Oxford, as a young man worked at Imperial Chemical Industries, went to London Business School as a Sloan scholar, and worked at various times in the Auckland and Otago MBA programs, and consulted far and wide.
Richard Higham was my master's thesis supervisor at Otago University as well as my favourite lecturer. Indeed, of the 8 courses I took, he ran three of them, all of them practical and useful today in representing or investing in high growth companies.
Richard has played rugby, and also has been heavily involved in coaching and leading the Otago University Rugby Club. If you played rugby at Otago then you will want to subscribe to his newsletter about Otago Univeristy rugby, the popular Blooz Nooz.
Links
Richard Higham at Otago University
Blooz Nooz Otago University Rugby Club newsletter, subscribe by emailing Richard: richard.higham@otago.ac.nz
"Entrepreneurship & Early Venture Capital in NZ with Richard Higham" show notes

Transcript: Entrepreneurship and early Venture Capital in NZ with Richard Higham

Bruce: Thanks Richard for coming along to this episode about entrepreneurship. Perhaps a little bit about the history of venture capital. I remember my time fondly here at Otago University in the courses that that you taught. Let's kick it off by asking you about entrepreneurship. What is entrepreneurship?
Richard: What is entrepreneurship?
Well, it started off years and years and years and years ago in France. Where the entrepreneur built castles for the king and the King said I want a castle and someone came along and said I know how to get a castle for you and it'll cost you so much. So this was really a demand-side initiative the king wanted something and an entrepreneur in France le entrepreneur provided it.
And this went on bring the fashion in France for gener...