ecoPortal was profiled in the latest copy of the Unlimited business magazine. The feature story highlights how Spark, a business planning competition at the University of Auckland, has ignited over 90 ventures that have raised $130M. ecoPortal is one of those ventures. In 2008, we entered the Spark competition with the idea of developing a consultancy. Since then, we have worked hard to develop ecoPortal as a sustainability management platform, that supports consultants and their clients on their journey to sustainability. An excerpt from the article is below, and you can read more about the Spark story by purchasing the magazine here.
ecoPortal’s Logan Wait answers the phone still buzzing from receiving confirmation of a big, new order. The University of Auckland has just signed up as a customer, joining the likes of Fonterra and the Auckland Council on ecoPortal’s dance card. There’s a particular appropriateness about this latest customer: ecoPortal was founded by Wait and four fellow University of Auckland mechanical engineering graduates after they participated in the 2008 Spark programme. From the rudimentary initial concept, the engineers created an exciting cleantech company, offering a simple, web-based environmental management system that organisations can use to achieve their sustainability goals.
“What I pitch is that sustainability is a big, complex issue and has a lot of different facets, much like the sales process was before tools Salesforce.com arrived,” says Wait, explaining the business proposition.
“We’ve created a super simple system to help organisations identify, mitigate and manage their sustainability issues. They can save costs on waste, water, energy and carbon, gain and maintain compliance and then communicate their sustainability actions to their stakeholders in a transparent way.”
Having successfully commercialised the software in New Zealand and made its first export sales, ecoPortal is now looking to build sales channels in the UK, Canada and Australia.
It’s rather a different looking company than Wait and his colleagues took to the finals of spark. Then, the vision was of a consultancy focused on stimulating innovation in manufacturing companies, with sustainability management just one aspect. They didn’t win, but they did well enough to get funding to attend the Stanford Business School’s Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship, where they got an up close look at successful Silicon Valley startups. Returning to New Zealand, they “put a ring around” ecoPortal as the most obviously scalable opportunity in the portfolio.
Nevertheless, Spark was key. “It gave us the opportunity of putting our [engineering] knowledge and expertise into a commercial business plan and entity. Ans the mentorship we got, having access to people at the top of their game, was invaluable.”
Wait reckons engineers make good entrepreneurs, an observation that was reinforced at Stanford, “where they say that the best ideas come from the engineering department, particularly the post-grads”. All five of the original engineering team from 2008 remain involved in ecoPortal, two of them full time and the rest contributing when they can.
Thanks Spark for your help along our journey, and thank you Unlimited for featuring Spark in your magazine, more people need to know about the great work they do.