The Golden Ticket Program - Tranche 1 done, and it was good as gold!

Our ambition with the launch of the Golden Ticket was to provide pro bono support to a FinTech start up to help them achieve their business goals. We launched right in the middle of the global pandemic knowing that our support was more important than ever to support Fintechs in what are increasingly challenging times.

Our first Golden Ticket holder, Kernel Wealth, came to us with a vision to empower Kiwis through investment. Having achieved that with their minimum viable product, we knew that with the help of our partners, we could offer them the right expertise and practical support to confidently move forward with their scale up journey.

With tranche one done, we thought we’d give you a run down of how it’s been for us, what Kernel Wealth has to say, and what we’ve learnt for the next tranche.

Tranche one - our journey.

A practical approach.

The founding partners were YouDo, Alphero, MinterEllisonRuddWatts, Arcanum, and FinTechNZ, all seasoned industry experts.

When we designed the programme, we knew there was no need to reinvent the wheel. Rather what would set our program apart from others would be our approach and the principles applied.

It would be industry-led and delivered by experienced practitioners. It would be strongly practical with a solid walk away value. 

The program would be entirely pro bono, with the collective understanding that everyone involved would benefit from the program in some way - both the ticket holder and the partners involved.

We were specific about what stage we would help start-ups to make sure the deliveries aligned with their needs and we could make the most impact. In this instance, Kernel Wealth already had a nimble and accessible investment platform, a team of passionate experts, and a clear vision and plan to scale up. 

Last but not least, we knew that for the programme to have staying power, it had to be sustainable. This meant a careful balance of value and time for everyone involved, choosing one ticket holder per quarter and delivering the support across a three month period so everyone could maintain a quality approach. 

The game plan:

We started by running initial workshops with Kernel Wealth, looking at where they were in their product lifecycle as a way to qualify future plans and requirements. They then had coordinated calls with each partner every two weeks to complete ideation and move down to detail designs and recommendations.

Through that process and those interactions, small but significant takeaways flowed through to Kernel. 

Deliverables were refined to suit Kernel Wealth’s specific requirements and from those, outcomes were delivered around legal support, platform design, user experience and a future lens on machine learning capability.  

It proved to be a winning recipe.

Our first tranche was a soft-launch, a chance to both support and learn from Kernel Wealth. The programme went better than we could have imagined. 

Each of the partners just rolled up their sleeves and delivered. There was a real sense of preparing Kernel for the next step in their journey, with them walking away with substantial practical benefit. 

Equally Kernel were ready with their own well developed plans, but also open to the partners input. As our launch partner we gained invaluable feedback on the program from Kernel helping us to determine what worked well and what needed refinement for the next Golden Ticket holder.

 For Kernel Wealth, round one was just the ticket.

For founder and CEO of Kernel Wealth, Dean Anderson, the Golden Ticket Programme couldn’t have come at a better time. They were ready to scale up, and while they had a clear vision of Generation Two, there were a lot of variables to be considered.

“The programme’s been hugely valuable for us to be able to engage with all the different parties. It’s really rounded out and touched on all the key points that we need to address as we continue to scale our products. There have been a huge number of takeaways that we’ve already started implementing and that you’ll probably see come to market.”

In fact, Dean says one of the most valuable things was the happy friction; the challenging of some of their existing ideas that has helped them to change their thinking. 

“I’d say the challenge to your existing thinking is the key outcome of this. It’s caused us to think about things differently and we’ve actually taken a different approach with some of what we’re planning to do.”

He says they had a chance to plug some of their gaps, changing not their products but the ways they can deliver these to their clients. 

“We had a strong sense from the start that we would get value out of it. I would encourage anyone who’s thinking about it to go and register, and anyone who does come into it, to have an open mind.”

Did we achieve what we’d set out to?

In a word - yes. Our ambition was pretty simple: if we could help one more start-up survive and thrive, then we would have achieved our goals. We’ve achieved that, giving Kernel Wealth the tools and confidence they need to move forward with their plans. 

Much of the value has come from the very specific detail in the deliverables only specialists can provide. As Dean alludes to: “That’s what the experts deliver - the small details that start to make a big difference.” 

And for the delivery partners involved we were able to showcase the best of our own talents and capability through the program and for the rest of the industry to see, improving our brand and presence as well as the potential for future business leads.   

Building on our success.

We’re grateful that our program has been well received and are proud of the outcome so far. It’s clear the demand exists and we believe we can continue to build onto the program based on feedback from our past ticket holders.  

Over time we anticipate adding capability to the program, building linkages to more industry mentors and existing support programs so our Golden Ticket holders can get easier access to the best of what’s on offer to them.

Stay tuned to hear about how tranche two of the Golden Ticket programme continues to support start ups to create the FinTech space of the future.