The nine vital signs of start-up success

Silicon Valley’s “elephant in the room” is venture capital’s 90+% portfolio failure rate. Numerous reports have shown that the key drivers of failure are the team and product-market fit. In this lively and interactive workshop, we review and discuss the nine vital signs we look at when evaluating start-ups, and explain what they can do in the early stages to put themselves on a better path of viability and market readiness.

We involve the audience by inviting them to answer an online survey about their companies’ market readiness, and begin to identify perception gaps between founders’ views and reality. Lastly, we provide participants with a customer discovery toolset allowing companies to begin to better understand their actual product-market fit.

Open to all University of Auckland students and staff.

Location: University of Auckland Conference Centre, 22 Symonds Street, Room 340

Guest speaker: Jeff Wallace

Jeff Wallace is a long-time Bay Area resident who works with global start-up ecosystems, including governments, corporations and start-up accelerators/entrepreneurs, to help catalyse start-up environments and create a bridge to Silicon Valley. He is an Adjunct Instructor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UC Berkeley and is co-founder of Silicon Valley in Your Pocket, a global provider of innovation, acceleration and start-up studio programmes to governments, universities and corporations. He is also the co-founder & Managing Partner at Batchery, a Berkeley-based startup accelerator focused on AI strategy. Through these programs, Jeff and his team have supported thousands of companies across 40+ countries.

Finally, Jeff is the founder & President of Global Kinetics Inc., an innovation catalyst helping companies “Move Innovation Forward” be it for early stage start-up companies innovating new solutions or large corporations seeking to generate new business models that add value for their customers.

About the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship:

The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship provides a world of opportunity to participants so that they can stand out and create value through innovative careers and start-up creation.

CIE is New Zealand’s leading University entrepreneurship centre, winning 12 international awards since 2020.