Guest Post: Shannon Brown
While visiting New York, I got the chance to meet over coffee with Guy Horrocks, Kiwi entrepreneur & CEO of mobile brand accelerator, Carnival Mobile. As his third startup, Guy has experienced the grind of trying to succeed in the US and has started a ‘Flat White Meetup‘ group in New York to share these stories and help connect Kiwi entrepreneurs. Carnival is a finalist in three categories for the 2014 NZ Hi-Tech awards, including Innovative Software, Service, Mobile, and the Young Achiever Award, which Guy is a nominee for.
Guy founded his first startup while at Canterbury University, a forensic company that analyzed blood splatters at crimes scenes, which won the Entre $40k Entrepreneurial competition.
He then went on to co-found Polar Bear Farms, which in 2007 became the world’s first commercial iPhone application company, with over 6 million users. “Half of Apple wanted to shut us down, but the other half had already hacked their iPhones and were running our apps.” Guy laughed.
A year later, Guy left Polar Bear Farm to pursue his new mission, Carnival Mobile, with co-founder Cody Bunea. Their original focus was building mobile apps for Fortune 500 companies, but they soon realized the problem was not creating targeted apps, but managing ongoing interaction with customers after it was live.
Carnival’s office was initially located in Christchurch, New Zealand, but after the 2010 earthquake destroyed their office they relocated to Wellington. It was after several sale trips in 2011 to New York when they found it was just as hard to win NZ clients as it was US clients, the difference being scale, so they opened an additional office in New York.
“We pitched TVNZ the same month as CNN, but lost TVNZ, and won CNN for the US elections- America has a heritage with innovative startups, they all want to work with the next Mark Zuckerberg.” Since moving to New York, Carnivals client list now includes CNN, Coca Cola, Time Warner, DreamWorks Animation, One Direction and Oreo.
In August last year Carnival secured $2.4 million in the Angel financing round co-led by Lerer Ventures and Gary Vaynerchuk with participation by additional investors: Flybridge Capital Partners, Bowery Capital, Google Ventures, David Tisch (BoxGroup), Jos White and Michael Lazerow. Guy explains that though the money is essential, he is most excited about the high calibre of investors that are now contributing to Carnival. “What we are trying to do is similar to what Victoria Ransom did with Wildfire, so having investors on board who have been through the process is worth more than money.”
Understanding the value of developing networks, Guy set up the ‘Flat White Meet-up’ group for Kiwi entrepreneurs in New York. The group of around 40, meet one morning a month in New York over a flat white to share experiences and success stories, and to form a sounding board to grow the New Zealand business community in New York City.
The meet-up is done at the only Kiwi café in New York Happy Bones, each month they have one or two people who present for 5 minutes. Guy tries to keep the group small and focused, some of the regulars include Craig Nevill-Manning, Director of Engineering at Google, Adam Jenkins, Creative Director of R/GA and John Tate, Head of Marketing for BBC America.
What’s your advice for those just starting their career?
Just start something- New Zealand is great, we are innovators, we have a can do attitude, and we are very problem to solution orientated, but there is a lot of bad stigma around failing, which is preventing Kiwis from giving startups a go. Even if you build a startup and it doesn’t become the million dollar idea you hoped for, you would have learned so much and gained opportunities for your next venture.
Asking for help- Asking for help goes against our nature as Kiwis, but Americans are always asking for favors, it’s a bartering system. When I moved to the US, networks like Kea, NZTE, and now The Kiwi Landing Pad were great for information on the moving process and they need to be utilized.
The rewards of a startup are awesome, the ability to build your own company, work with your friends, travel the world, and work with the coolest brands, out weighs the stress and uncertainty, but it is hard work!
Thank-you to Guy for taking the time to meet me, it was great to hear your passion for helping Kiwi entrepreneurs succeed. We wish you the best for Carnival, and the NZ Hi-Tech Awards in May.