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MY SERVICES

WHAT I DO

Venture-Led Innovation & Product Strategy

I work with senior leadership teams to help them understand how developing their own entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem can create an always-on pipeline of future growth opportunities to drive long-term sustainable growth.

Innovation Programme Design & Delivery

I work with programme leaders and individual product teams to build more successful high-growth products, faster; and co-design innovation acceleration programmes to find, coach, & grow inside or aligned outside venture opportunities.

External Governance For Investment/Growth Boards

I work with investment panels and growing opportunities to provide external venture-led governance & advisory - ensuring products and ventures scale into future business units that can predictably deliver the revenue streams of tomorrow.

The biggest point of difference you'll find working with me is the digital- and entrepreneurial- lens I cast over your operations and systems to help you become more agile, more disruptive, and build enduring products and services that customers will love.

MY PHILOSOPHY

WHAT I BELIEVE

I have over 20 years’ experience leading and building high-performing venture-backed technology companies and teams at global scale in CTO and CPO capacities.

I strongly believe that the large enterprises and organisations of the future are those who can create an engineered ambidexterity in their leaders and people – those who can excel at executing on today’s business, whilst systematically searching for the new business models and opportunities of tomorrow, particularly in the way a startup would.

Why startups? Because they are the ones at the cutting edge of building the future, so learning their mindset, methods, and understanding how their innovation ecosystems work, can give any large organisation significant competitive advantage by creating a blueprint for continuous transformation and long-term growth.

Given the sheer pace of change of digital technology and customer behaviours, I believe that this type of venture-led innovation and entrepreneurial transformation is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s imperative!

Dan Khan - TechStars

Dan has a genuine passion for innovation, in particular taking an idea and determining the path to value. A unique skill that encapsulates vision that links to execution, principles through to the pragmatics of getting things done. Dan has a strong sense of community and the desire to make a difference. He epitomises the culture, capability and connections necessary for startups to succeed and enterprises to transform, both he sees as being vital to NZ’s socioeconomic wellbeing.

Marcel van den Assum
Founding CIO Fonterra

Dan Khan reminds me of Oren Harari’s quote: ‘The light bulb did not come from continuous improvement of the candle.’ New Zealand needs to embrace a new digital frontier and there are very few people in New Zealand more qualified than Dan to open up a new chapter for our economy. Whilst Dan is already a globally recognised thought leader he also has a strong bias towards action. Dan has a unique ability to inspire and build large scale coalitions that challenge convention and generate momentum towards a new digital future.”

Colart Miles
Founder and Executive Coach

Simply put, Dan is the ‘Eric Ries’ of New Zealand. Since meeting him earlier this year, every interaction I have had with him has made me more thoughtful, knowledgeable, & aware of current trends of building start-ups using lean start up methodologies. He has a knack of asking tough questions from budding entrepreneurs and guiding them in the right direction. He has clearly risen as one of the most sought after advisors in the technology startup space in NZ.

Chirag Ahuja
Prior Head of Marketing at Xero

MY BACKGROUND

HOW I CAN HELP YOU SUCCEED

I've built high-growth, product-led, technology companies from idea to exit...

I've designed and built world-leading venture accelerator programmes...

I've coached leadership teams on how to build entrepreneurial systems and culture at scale...

 

I love the challenge of taking an idea and working out the path to value through to delivering high-growth.

I've founded, led, and coached companies at all levels, giving me the ability to solve the most gnarly business growth challenges at a systemic level.

I have a passion for disruptive innovation, business model design, and complex product development.

No-one can predict what will come next or where disruption will come from.
All we can do is build a culture that encourages agility, experimentation, and
Rewards searching for the future without ignoring what got us there in the first place.

Whatever your growth goal or innovation challenge, let me help you take that to the next level.