 Tadara. We thought we would get on time if we possibly could. I am here on the Chairman of the Icehouse and on the CEO of Spark Home, Mobile and Business. Welcome to our place. We have a pretty cool big day here today. I don't know if you saw TV1 news this morning but they did all the breakfast news from within the forya and out by our café here. We had Sol Mio singing this morning and welcoming us. p decided every year at that. Switch Gee the and looked what E avenues for our very short notice, but with two amazing draw cards. Let's be real, has dragged such a great audience here on a day like this, so keen to hear this full story. The other thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is something Spark's doing to keep doing our part and what has to happen in New Zealand. We are announcing or confirming our partnership with Lightning Lab in Auckland Wellington in Christchurch Christchurch and that we will be the first national sponsor of that program that is getting underway. In fact, the applications have been going on for the last few weeks. So it's fantastic for us to be involved with something that's very real about taking people's hopes and aspirations and ideas and getting them through a really well-proven, globally known process of refining that idea, of developing that idea, and applying for a place in this accelerator program that will, over a very short three-month period, pick them up and then work out out of a ten that make it through to the program, you know, get them to demo day and get them invested and get them growing and going as fast as we can. So we're really excited about that. A big part of my responsibility in this place is the small and medium business market in New Zealand to have a chance to grow some more of those and to inspire many more of those is really, really cool from our point of view. So we're looking forward to today as much as all of you are. Great that we can host you here at our place and that you can look ahead to some fantastic stories and some truly deeply inspirational stuff today. But I'm going to let our emcee talk about who that is and who they are. So it's my pleasure now to introduce your emcee for the afternoon who's going to keep this thing rolling and keep it full of energy and keep it right on time. Michelle Dickinson and I asked, I had a two-page bio for Michelle, which she begged me not to read. So I'm going to go real short on it, which she said, you know, I'm here one because it matters and I care deeply about tech and I care deeply about New Zealand's success in it. And I want to stand for a whole lot of the, especially the woman entrepreneurs and scientists that are making a difference. She's responsible for New Zealand's first nanotech lab and recent winner of the Prime Minister's Science Communications Award. She came here on 24 hours notice because she cares so much about what we're trying to do with this thing. So I'm going to hand over now to your emcee for the afternoon, Michelle Dickinson. Thanks. Hey, thanks Chris for the intro. You're right. So I had 24 hours notice. So I'm really sorry, but I'm going to be using some notes today. What an awesome afternoon. It's sad to be in a basement now when the weather actually finally someone actually turned up. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Nana Goa. You can find me on Twitter and we are going to have like the most incredible afternoon today. And 2014 has been pretty incredible as years go for our entrepreneurial community. We've had really big successes. We've had Wellington Cloud Storage Company Green Button being acquired by Microsoft. We've had both Orion Healthcare and we've had Vista listing on both the New Zealand Stock Exchange and the Australian one. And so what a better way to wrap up this year by having this amazing ecosystem in one space so we can celebrate entrepreneurship and we can actually pick the brains of some people who've had some massive successes. So it's been pretty exciting, especially as a woman in tech to actually see the formation of Archangels, our first female investment group aimed at women led and managed businesses, as well as a formation of flying Kiwi Angels. And our Taronga-based Enterprise Angels have doubled their investment over the last 12 months, raising them up to 5.1 million invested. And we can't forget Ice Angels have had their biggest year ever with 8.1 million going into startup. So it's a pretty exciting space this year. So we've also got to celebrate things like New Zealand Venture Investments Fund celebrating their 100th investment in early state ventures through our Co-Seed and Co-Investment Fund. And we're really living, I think, in a climate where we're getting massive financial incentives in New Zealand to actually grow. And we're not having to go offshore so much. So what's been happening in the big world for Lanza tech, I don't need to mention that they are just growing and growing right now. So really great stuff from Sean and the team over there. They've managed to raise a start going 200 million US as they get ready to open their first commercial plant in 2016. And Power by Proxy, another exciting one in the midst of raising 30 million from private investors. And it looks like their wireless charging tech is going to go commercial in 2016 too. Talking about funding, we can't forget the important crowd funding scheme. So we've got Snowball Effect, Pledge Me, and the Peer to Peer Group Harmony. And well done to Anna if she's here for managing to raise a 100k in 24 hours. That was pretty impressive. And then we've got these massive groups like Callahan Innovation, NZTE, MB, and Kia. So we actually have this incredible hub now that we can all grow in and some pretty big organisations ready to throw money, experience and knowledge into. So with all that success and investment and with the year coming to a close and the sun finally shining, it's time to celebrate some of these successes. And it's also interesting to bring in investment companies and people from overseas to bring in that knowledge. But I do think you will recognise that we are a very different system here in New Zealand and we're quite quirky. And that whole two degrees of separation seems like quite a high number because you know how it works here. Everybody knows everybody or they know their cousin or they can. And it's one thing I love about living in New Zealand is that we do have this really unique hub where things can grow and you actually your neighbour is probably the guy you needed to help you make that next step. So the goal of this event is to take that two degrees of separation and make it one, right? You're all sitting next to somebody right now. So there's a new network for you right here. To be surrounded by amazing like-minded people to have a space where we can share some insights and experiences in starting companies. And it's a great place you can actually bounce some ideas off some other people and see what they think. It's that little old New Zealand, that funny place, right? It's that little country that has these massive successful ideas. And it's one of the reasons why I love living here. So thank yous. Stuff like this doesn't happen for free. And so we need to thank our important sponsors. First of all, thank you, Spark, for this wonderful room and hosting the event here. Thank you to GridAKL as our network sponsor. And if you haven't been to GridAKL, they're hosted by Bizdojo. Fun, funky space, pretty cool, great coffee machine. Also a really great place to work from to sort of bounce ideas of like-minded people. So thanks, Grid. We have to thank AUT, Creative HQ, Derek Handley, Ice House, Lightning Lab, and Rebecca Mills, and Kiwi Connect. So I thank you all in the audience. Thank you. This stuff can't happen without you. We're going to have a series of speakers with a break in the middle for coffee, and there's going to be a panel session at the end. And with that, it's sort of time for you guys to sit back and immerse yourself in a series of inspiring speakers who are going to share their stories and their experiences with you.