It has been flooded with "a whole lot of great ideas and potential businesses and opportunities" but is looking for people prepared to devote some time to help turn those ideas into reality.
"We've got the backyard inventors, we need the backyard entrepreneurs," chief executive Steve Silvey said.
Upstart has been helping high growth companies get started since 2004, by providing incubation and angel investment services.
Successful graduates include award-winning technology startup companies such as TracMap NZ Ltd, TracPlus Global Ltd and Innovative Learning.
Mr Silvey was excited about some of the ideas being expressed, saying there were some great concepts, some of which had "huge" export potential.
"The thing really missing is people that can pick up and run these sorts of things, devote a bit of time for it.
They can see the vision and turn it into something real."
Likening it to playing a match-making service, Mr Silvey believed those people were in the community and Upstart wanted to hear from them.
Upstart is a non-profit entity owned by the Dunedin City Council, University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic.
