Vanguard Programme backs budding entrepreneurs

When business owner Tony Falkenstein decided he wanted to help set students emerging from the University of Auckland on the path to entrepreneurship, he hoped they would in turn share any wisdom gained with others.

Since 2020 he has been funding the Business School’s Vanguard Programme, which pays for student travel to the epicentre of United States go-getting in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

So far two groups of 15 students have made the week-long journey and Tony, who accompanies them, has committed to total funding of $1.2 million to keep the programme, run within the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), going for another five years.

“My thinking is entrepreneurship is the key to economic prosperity, which is why my philanthropy is so focused in that direction,” says the head of Just Life Group, who describes his funding philosophy as “paying it forward”.

“To me that means paying it on to the next generation of students. The Vanguard Programme is one way I can do that.”

To their credit, students on the programme have taken his philosophy to heart.

“All of them committed to doing exactly that after the trip. This amounts to speaking engagements at their old schools or Rotary, commitments to engage in fundraising programmes for charities and writing articles for journals or their business cohorts.”

Tony’s emphasis on entrepreneurship strikes a chord with Hiraia Haami-Wells and Vin Allen, two members of the 2023 travelling group, both with a particular interest in social entrepreneurship.

The group’s itinerary included visits to tech giant Amazon, genome engineering company Synthego, educational entrepreneur ClassDojo and sustainable footwear-maker Allbirds, co-founded by Kiwi Tim Brown.

Hiraia, who is part way through an electrical engineering degree and works in the kaiārahi and investment team at the University’s UniServices commercialisation arm, says she was impressed by the range of innovative enterprises they were exposed to and the maturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem they operate in.

“I think Aotearoa has a lot to learn from overseas ecosystems – both good and bad. A key theme throughout the trip was realising your unique potential.”

She sees opportunities for New Zealand in the creation of an entrepreneurial springboard for values and integrity-based enterprises.

“Instead of just commercial profit, I see us also focusing on what makes Aotearoa stand out and apart, those things being our environmental focus and Indigenous knowledge and people.”

Vin, a psychological medicine PhD candidate who is working on a digital means of scaling up delivery of mental-health services in primary care, had an eye to the differences between the New Zealand and Silicon Valley ecosystems.

Whereas social impact rates highly in the New Zealand entrepreneurial setting, his observation of Californian enterprises was that return on investment has greater priority.

“I asked a lot of questions about the viability of social-impact ventures and how people go about getting them funded. I got the impression that in that ecosystem investors are a lot more interested in the bottom line.

“Social impact and sustainability usually only matter there if they give the company some sortof competitive edge, whereas in the New Zealand ecosystem there’s an appetite for impact investing.”

Yet he found the San Francisco and Silicon Valley ecosystem inspiring.

“There was plenty that was amazing: the scale, the availability of funds, the appetite for risk. But I think we need to be careful about holding on to the things that make our New Zealand ecosystem special.”

Hiraia took inspiration from transplanted New Zealanders she met who are thriving in the Californian environment.

“It was eye-opening to see the potential we have overseas. People describe New Zealand as a small, isolated country yet if these amazing people can create a successful career overseas I believe anyone who really wants to can do so as well.”

She would like to create a small-scale “Vanguard” trip for Māori tauira to Māori businesses and entrepreneurs with the aim of exposing them to the ecosystem.

“If we want to create an ecosystem unique to Aotearoa, we must create a space for Māori that allows for contribution and collaboration. So I want to give tauira the tools to create their own opportunities and contribute to the ecosystem in their own ways.”

Vin, who previously participated in the CIE’s Velocity and VentureLab programmes for budding entrepreneurs, is eager to impart to other students what he has learned about bridging the gap between academia and the commercial world.

“I’m trying to act as a bit of a mentor to PhD students who are looking into applications of their research in the real world but don’t know where to start.”

All the Vanguard participants thus far get their benefactor’s thumbs up.

“I think each student has found value in different parts of the programme but all have been impressed with the collaboration in Silicon Valley,” Tony says.

“The whole experience has expanded their horizons and helped them recognise their abilities to conquer the world.”