Grant Ryan

Founder GlobalBrain.net

RealContacts SLI Systems

YikeBike

Some thoughts on the difference between success and failure

Company A

• Multi-million $ licensing deal in US after just 11 months

• After 2 years sold for over 50 million

Company B

• After 3 years had grown to 35 people but then had to make them all redundant

• Lost 10s of millions of dollars of shareholder value – record loss 5.4 million loss in one day.

• Grew to have more unique users than Trade Me in less than 12 months

• Only NZ company to be listed as a Red Herring top 100 company in the US

• Large offer from Google to buy in less than 2 years

• Within 3 years of starting all 22 staff had to be let go

• Around 10 million of venture capital investment lost

Company C Company D

• 3 people worked on a project for 28 months

• Few hundred thousand investment $ turned into 45x cash exit

• Similar time and investment

• Never got more than a few thousand in sales

• Missed one of the biggest value creation opportunities in history and all employees laid off

Company E Company F