Bizruption is about start-ups small business owners innovating fearlessly and the first Bizruption in Melbourne was an amazing event with over 300 entrepreneurs registered. We were all a bit nervous as we were planning for 200 but thanks to the great work by ANZ bank who hosted the event it was a huge success. NetStripes partnered with the Melbourne Business Network in co-organising this event with several members, their CEO John Stock and President Bev Friend playing a leading role.
Our guest of honour was the Hon Philip Dalidakis Victorian minister for Small Business, Innovation and trade who we were told is “dubbed” the best small business minster in the world. The ministers spoke of the importance of innovation in small business and the need for small business to get digital and develop a strong digital presence. The minister also spoke of the important “fail fast” mindset when innovating. The need to learn from your failings rapidly, to reiterate and move on.
The event took off with the trademark heart thumping curtain raiser, which revealed eye opening statistics and a vision for changing the course of small business in Australia. It emphasised on the need for Australian small businesses to be fully digitally engaged in increasing their survival in these tough times, boost their growth and revenues by 20%. CEO of NetStripes Dinesh De Silva then presented his inspired vision for small business innovation in Australia. Dinesh also spoke of the ground breaking innovations by NetStripes that are helping hundreds of entrepreneurs innovate and market their business ideas successfully, yet affordably.
NetStripes client, Dr Sachin Patel, founder & CEO of DrSicknote.com.au – Serial Entrepreneur in the healthcare sector who has founded 4 businesses in the last 8 years was the event’s MC.
Sachin mentioned how DrSicknote has hired over 10 new doctors to support the growth in less than 10 months. Sachin also spoke of the importance of the specialised Digital Strategy crafted for DrSicknote.com.au and the world class web based system that took less than 8 weeks for NetStripes to complete and launch as crucial elements to its success.
Legal Tech Entrepreneur and winner of the Lexis Nexis Legal Innovation Index for 2016 Anne Marie Cade of Daniel Lew Lemercier & Co spoke how her legal firm did not have a website 15 months ago before she discovered the NetStripes platform. Today she is one of the top 3 Female Aussies in Legal Tech.
The audience was welcomed by Denton Pugh Head of Small Business for ANZ in Greater Melbourne. ANZ certainly are big supporters of Small Business and start-ups and was evident by presence of several senior officials of the bank.
The ‘Pitchfest’ was favourite with the Melbourne entrepreneurs. There were 200+ pitches that happened in less than 10-12 minutes with everyone getting a chance to pitch to their team. The PitchFinals being one of the best of all Bizruptions with the 10 best pitching to the entire audience. Thanks to Aquire, 10,000 loyalty points were presented to the social media winner of the night before the formalities coming to a close giving participants the opportunity to mingle and network among themselves. In fact, come 8pm and people were still huddled, enjoying great, stimulating talks that no doubt will disrupt and transform businesses for a long time to come.
Big thanks to ANZ bank for delicious food and drinks and a great venue that was filled with great energy, a positive vibe, amazing people to network with and lot of fun. We are also thankful to Optus & Aquire who were gracious in ensuring the Bizruption crew had flights and accommodation to get to Melbourne and back safely.
The next step for every entrepreneur who wants to make that important change to become an innovative digitally enabled business would be to book into one of NetStripes Strategy sessions. All attendees were given a coupon code to avail themselves of a strategy session valued at $499.
Are you ready to elevate your business to another level?
Feel free to talk to one of our digital strategists today. We are more than happy to help! Contact us now.
