Life after eVentures

Saturday 1st September 2001

Guess what Cindy Mitchener's up to? The former chief executive of stalled investment start-up eVentures has started another company - giving management advice to start-ups.

Cindy Mitchener has just climbed three flights of stairs to the top floor of her sunlit Herne Bay home, and she's still talking. As she talks her hands gesticulate wildly in the air. Life may have changed, but Mitchener has no intention of slowing down.

She finally resigned as chief executive of cash shell eVentures at the June annual meeting, after braving shareholders angry that the company wasn't handing back its unspent $50 million.

Floated with much hyperbole and several high-profile directors, the technology investment compnay had been going for just over a year. A board headed by major shareholder Craig Heatley is still deciding eVentures' future and is currently considering a number of new investments recently put to it. Mitchener's fate was already sealed - she was out of a job.

True to form, she hasn't let that faze her. After 14 years in the corporate fastlane - including stints as Touchdown Productions chief executive, Saatchi & Saatchi media director and TV3 ad manager - Mitchener decided it was time to take a punt. The result is Mitchener Cammell, a new company she has just set up in partnership with Sue Cammell, a former eVentures and TV3 colleague.

Cammell had the job of investigating investment proposals for eVentures. It ended up investing in only two: email marketing company Message Media and failed online mortgage broker E-Loan. "People say eVentures didn't invest because it never saw enough good opportunities, but that was not the case. The right thing to say is the significant shareholder issues consumed the opportunity," Mitchener says.

Both she and Cammell found their experience within the publicly listed company wildly frustrating and a big "learning curve".

So, how can you give advice to start-ups when the last one you were running failed? Mitchener's eyes flash and she almost grits her teeth. "Saying eVentures was a failure is harsh. Within the environment we operated in, eVentures was quite successful. We didn't lose all our money." But they didn't make much either, reporting a $4.6 million loss for the year. Small shareholders are still out of pocket.

No one criticised the management of the company, in fact the opposite, Mitchener says. "To quote Roderick Deane [former eVentures chairman], 'we were much more valuable people at the end of it than at the beginning'."

The idea of the new company is to give start-ups, which can't afford to hire Mitchener and Cammell's combined skills full-time, hands-on help in strategic planning, keeping an eye on the customer, even sourcing venture capital. "If you can't see we've made a significant difference in eight to 12 weeks, we won't be doing our job," Cammell says.

The biggest gain from their eVentures experience was international contacts, particularly with Softbank and News Media, the recently departed eVentures shareholders. The pair are working in a loose alliance with former eVentures director Jesse Parker, who resigned from Softbank to set up his own company in Boston advising US start-ups on how to internationalise their companies. These networks are crucial to their current role if the New Zealand companies they work with want to go offshore.

"That's the hard thing, to know people will take your call," Mitchener says. "And getting people to trust that you will do what you say you will," adds Cammell.

The pair are opposites. Mitchener is more out-there, louder, more abrasive, more charming. Cammell brings her down to earth, is quieter and more thoughtful. Like a marriage, a business partnership needs complementary skills. They already have three clients lined up and Mitchener jumps when the phone rings. "It could be more work," she says, quickly picking it up. She's smiling as she says it.

Fiona Rotherham
fiona@unlimited.net.nz

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