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Not satisfied with much of the superficial media coverage to date – some of it admittedly courted by the colourful and gregarious Dotcom – NZ Management magazine wanted to find out what really makes Kim Dotcom and his colleagues tick.
We wanted to know if the creators of business that turned over more than the GDP of several of the world’s smaller economies, could have something truly transformational to offer the New Zealand economy.
Behind Dotcom’s showman public persona – flamboyant style that undoubtedly grates with Kiwi conservatism – there’s very smart, very tight business unit with the ability to go from world-class concept development to start-up, and massive scale-up very fast.
Before being shut down in January 2012, MegaUpload was multi-$billion hugely successful online file-sharing business, that counted 80% of the US Fortune 500 companies and the governments of number of sovereign states amongst its users.
It had 66 million registered users and an installation base of over 120 million Mega applications and 50 million unique visitors every day. By Dotcom’s reckoning it accounted for around 4% of internet traffic.
Dotcom’s cloud storage start-up Mega, launched year to the date from his arrest, is one of the fastest-growing internet businesses in history.
All that from just team of four here in New Zealand, on bail pending their day in court, unable to leave the country and with most of their financial resources seized by the authorities and unavailable to them.
In just eight weeks Mega had three million users. Dropbox – one of the established competitors – took two years to achieve that growth.
That’s not surprising, given they say Mega offers speeds 10 times faster than Dropbox, and the 50GB of free storage is many times competitors’ offerings.
So just who are these guys, the smarts behind Mega? NZ Management met recently with chief marketing officer Finn Batato, and interim CEO at the time of the launch, Kiwi Tony Lentino.
Lentino is the founder and owner of Instra Corporation, leading, worldwide internet domain registrar. Following his initial stint as launch CEO of Mega, Lentino remains shareholder and director, working with the Mega executives to grow the business.
According to Batato, one of the tech revolution’s brightest stars, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, is big supporter of Mega and wants to move to New Zealand.
The Mega team envisaged future where burgeoning internet technology hub down here in the South Pacific could attract technology developers and entrepreneurs of that calibre.
You can read the full story in the April issue of NZ Management magazine.
