Supporting our start up community

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This year Xero sponsored the Velocity 100k Challenge. Velocity is the University of Auckland’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Programme. Now in its 15th year, Velocity is on a mission to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit at the University.

The $100k Challenge is Velocity’s flagship programme where they take students and staff with first-class ideas and help them to create world-class businesses. This year, 95 ventures entered the $100k Challenge of which 16 were selected to go through Launchpad. Launchpad is a 6 week intensive programme where teams are paired with mentors, provided weekly education seminars, and given the resources and support to prove to the Velocity judges that their idea should take out the top prize.

Helping our Auckland entrepreneurs

As part of the Launchpad programme, Xero’s Education Specialist Daniel Hustler spent some time with the teams. Daniel taught the teams about the importance of cloud accounting software and getting on top of their finances early.

We held a drop in session so they could have a chance to chat to our team and learn more about the Xero product. We also helped set them up with Xero, so they could stay on top of their books from the get-go.

Xero attended the finals evening at the University of Auckland Business School where the teams nervously awaited the results. The winning idea came from ZENNO Astronautics who walked away with $25,000 in seed capital and access to Venture Lab—the University-run accelerator. ZENNO Astronautics is working to develop a propulsion system for small satellites, and a suite of software for mission planning, development and operation.

Rewired

We’re proud to be further supporting the Auckland entrepreneurship community with our co-working space – Rewired – in our new Parnell office.

Rewired is a curated co-working space aimed at growing small to medium businesses, Fintech and SaaS companies. Xero’s mission is to rewire the small business economy and we feel that by creating a physical space for everyone to come together, collaborate and innovate, we’re working toward achieving just that.

Whether you’re in our app partner ecosystem, a banking, legal or accounting partner, or in the startup world, we invite your to join us.

Rewired is currently running a competition. We are giving away 2 Flexi memberships to anyone who expresses interest between now and 30 November. Further details on the competition and the Rewired space are outlined on our website.

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