Over 7 days we met with over 200 entrepreneurs, doers, and supporters.
We travelled from Invercargill to Westport, and stopped a bunch of places in between. I wrote about the first leg of our roadtrip here, and this is what happened after we left the furthest Southern town (aside from Stewart Island that is).
Dunedin
Dunedin is my home town, so returning to the stomping ground of my youth is always a little bit disconcerting. Gone are many of the highlights of my university days (oh, Gardie), but replacing them are start up spaces, beautiful and massive street art, and an amazing re-use of the old commercial district.
We held our evening event in the Abacus Bio offices, which is part of a beautiful historic building on Moray Place. We had everything from berry farmers to tech start ups, from priests to students, ready to learn more about crowdfunding for companies. The room was packed, and it was at this exact moment we ran out of Crowdfunding magazines (sorry everyone!).
There were some great questions, and a good of bit of weighing in from the attendees on their thoughts around investment, the law, and what a good campaign could look like.
Afterwards, we went out to Thai with some of the attendees, and got invited to park up outside of one of their houses for the night (well – I was outside, Kelsey got a bed!).
Timaru
The next day we continued on our way to Timaru, where Shaun and the team at Vetta Technologies hosted us in their new co-working space. We had a mix of alumni there (Sam and Rachel from the Super Power Baby project came along to listen) through to cafe owners and local charities. We even had a shareholder, Craig, host some after event drinks downstairs.
After a night in Timaru (thanks for the bed, Sam and Rachel!) we wove our way up to Christchurch.
It’s around this time that I introduced Kelsey to the podcast Serial. Our driving got a lot more intense after that, as Kelsey was listen with a renewed focus to what was happening over the sound system.
Christchurch
There we were lucky enough to have a crowd of our shareholders give us a place to stay, host us for our event, and be the overall fantastic folk that they are. The turn out for our crowdfunding talk had a similarly diverse feel with youth workers to a company that listed in 1999 showing up to learn more.
We had the Sunday off after our Christchurch workshop, and had some great conversations overlooking Christchurch while listening to this playlist:
Westport
Our last two events were held over mountains in Westport. There was so much interest there, we held two events, and met with everyone from the Mayor to a powerbar company. We need to say a major thanks to Peter Howard, from Buller REAP for sponsoring and coordinating the events for us, and for Epic Westport for letting us use their beautiful (and new!) space.
Massive thank you time
To all the attendees that crowdfunded to get us down South: thank you!
For all the event organisers & supporters who gave us spaces to speak / sleep: we couldn’t have done it without you.
And to the amazing folk (especially Rachael) at Jucy who sponsored the van we slept in: a HUMONGOUSLY HUGE THANK YOU! You made it possible for us not only to visit our crowd down South, but to sleep outside their houses in a non scary way 🙂
With over 200 of our crowd met while we toured the South, we feel like a North Island tour needs to happen. Do you agree? If you want us to come to your town, let us know in the comments below.
