Presentation 1:
Raising Capital in Five Minutes

Weds 8th October, 3:30pm

Building a next great product is anything but a trivial matter. Making that idea grow into a viable business, even if it already has countless hours of blood, personal investment, and a few customers under its belt, is often the most difficult obstacle for entrepreneurs to clear.

Nicolás Erdödy introduces IT professionals on the verge of the million dollar idea to the world of angel and venture capital investment. It’s a tough nut to crack, because early stage investors say “no” most of the time, and they usually form their views in the first five minutes meeting with you.

This presentation outlines what happens in that initial encounter, with tips on how to make it past the first five minutes with a potential investor, and onward to raise capital for your IT start up.

Presentation 2:
SKA: The Ultimate Big Data Project

Fri 10th October, 10:40am

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is one of the most complex projects ever conceived; a global effort involving hundreds of engineers, computer scientists, astronomers and specialists working together to deliver a remarkable technology and scientific facility.

SKA will be a mixture of thousands of radio telescopes to be built in Southern Africa and Australia, to monitor and survey the sky in one of the ‘Big Data’ challenges of the decade. Data rates involved will require real-time analysis of 10 terabytes per second; that's the equivalent of streaming one million HD movies at once. New Zealand's Open Parallel is the only IT company -globally, leading two work tasks of SKA.

Founder Nicolás Erdödy discusses the challenges his team faces in leading the Software Development Environment work package for SKA and how they are working towards a Big Data solution that could be applied to major industrial IT projects in New Zealand.

About Nicolás Erdödy

Nicolás Erdödy is the founder of Open Parallel, a company responsible for two work packages of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project in Australia and South Africa, the largest IT project in the world. He also leads his own business consultancy and previously founded and managed several ventures, including software, high-tech and e-learning companies.

Nicolás is an Individual Member of the Angel Investors Association of New Zealand, was Full Member of the NZ Venture Capital Association (NZVCA), has done formal due diligence on thousands of high-tech and IT proposals and lectured in the subject at Otago University. He holds a Master of Entrepreneurship from Otago University and learned FORTRAN at the School of Engineering of Universidad de la República, Uruguay.