Bootstrapped NZ Edition #10
♻️ The power of polypropylene: why throw $14.9M in the trash? 🥝 How the New Zealand brand stacks up on the world stage and enabling circular business with Mutu 👀
Kia ora koutou, Bootstrapped whānau 👋
Today marks our 10th edition and… I’m actually feeling rather excited about the arbitrary milestone! In 10 editions and around four months we have:
🥾 Welcomed 642 kiwi startup enthusiasts
🥾 Hit 11,435 post views on Substack
🥾 Amassed over 18,000 unique impressions on LinkedIn
🥾 Most importantly, shared the stories of 10 kiwi founders
Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or have just come on board - thank you.
If you are wondering which corner of the internet you’ve found yourself in: every fortnight, this is where you can get the wrap on what’s been happening in the NZ startup ecosystem.
👇 If you feel like sticking around - feel free to subscribe (and maybe share with a friend)
🚀 Cool people launching cool things: an update on new stuff
🎂 LILO Desserts have turned fruit waste into delightful ready-to-eat cheesecakes
☕ Cleantech startup Again Again and Havana coffee launched Ground for Good - allowing users to scan returnable branded coffee cups in and out like library books.
🍄 Nutraceutical start-up OtherNature launched their mushroom-based supplements
🍒 Tracksuit released their Marketing Budget Calculator that helps startups find their ideal marketing budget split.
👊 For my purpose-led sector people: Ākina launched their Impact Directory, listing their certified Impact Suppliers (more on the criteria for certification here)
👏 Funding announcements
📱 eVouch closed a 500k pre-seed round (co-founder Alonso also won a Blues Innovation award for Most Meritorious Innovation - go team!)
📝 Legal tech startup Latch raised a $2.3M seed round that will help them launch their contract-automation software in the US
🏥 Anna Mowbray has invested in HealthNow’s vision for revolutionising healthcare
🏅 Awards, awards, and more awards…
🔬The KiwiNet Awards went down, celebrating heroes in research commercialisation - read about the winners here.
🌼 Daisy lab, Critical supply coffee and Come Clean won the inaugural Got Nous competition
💰 Investing platform Kernel, won GOLD at the 2022 Good Design Australia awards in the Apps and Software category
🤝 Ministry of Awesome were nominated for “Most Active Community Builder” the Technode Global Origin Innovation awards (head here to vote for them!)
💸 Dev from Sugar Wallet and Ravi from Yarken won the Tech Alley ‘Pitch Perfect’ competition
♻️ The Power of Polypropylene: are we throwing away a $14.9M opportunity?
Who knew throwing away our plastic may cost between $8.45 to $14.9M annually?
Currently, only 15% of our polypropylene waste is recycled - the remainder hits the landfill or is exported overseas. According to Plastics NZ, this represents $8.45m to $14.9m in potential lost value.
Critical are a kiwi startup hoping to change that: transforming polypropylene (usually used to make things like ice cream containers) into panels that can replace MDF and plywood boards. Co-founder Rui’s story was shared in Stuff earlier this week, alongside the work of Plastics NZ's Polypropylene Working Group.
“Local and global demand for polypropylene continues to grow, far outstripping supply. Aotearoa New Zealand has the opportunity to recycle the product, creating a circular economy worth between $10.4m to $17m annually,”
- Rachel Barker, CEO of Plastics NZ
👉 If you’re keen to learn more: Have a read of the Plastics NZ Polypropylene Progress Report (it’s a delightfully easy to read two page summary)
🗒️ Other cool things
🌟Lee Timutimu gave the keynote speech on ‘indigenising space’ at the Design Matters Conference in Denmark.
🚀 Harry, Amber, Eugene, Devrath and Toby (from Cotiss, NextWork, eVouch, Sugar Wallet, EasyRentANZ) hung out with Christopher Luxon and toured parliament
👩 RangiX, the innovation, technology and entrepreneurship programme run at Rangi Ruru Girls’ school in Christchurch, was featured in Stuff.
🥝 The Kiwi brand: How does New Zealand stack up on the world stage?
Hot on the heels of the “Do Good, Do Well” campaign, a new report showed New Zealand’s brand value increased by 13% over the last year. This makes us 39th most valuable in the world (a rise from 42nd).
Interestingly, a driver of New Zealand’s high brand strength score is related to warm public perception - ranking 8th in the world at 85.2.
👉 You can access a free preview of the report here (the full report is behind a paywall)
*This is from the Nations Brand Report 2022 by Brand Finance. Brand Finance are a world-leading brand valuation consultancy, that provide a range of annual reports on brand value. Brand strength is calculated based on investment in nation brand (25% weighting), public perception of nation brand (50% weighting), and performance of nation brand (25% weighting).
📚 Worth a read or Listen
👀 LinkedIn’s list of 10 NZ startups to watch
🏉 Meet the 16 year old making 22,000 poi for the Women’s Rugby World Cup
🙋🏼♀️ Cool people doing cool things: Meet Ben from Mutu
Mutu is on a mission to help the organisations of Aotearoa reduce their carbon footprint by empowering them to manage and dispose of their assets in a smarter, more sustainable way.
Kia Ora Ben! What's your story?
I started out life as a Mechanical Engineer and being a bit of a data nerd I was quickly drawn into the world of tech. I have always found the partnership between marketplaces and tech fascinating (the way Uber & Airbnb completely disrupted traditional industries). For the past 8 years I have been working for marketplace startups in Europe and Australia and more recently back here in Aotearoa.
How was Mutu born?
Our mission has always been to help people make more sustainable choices. Originally Mutu was a P2P marketplace where people could list things they owned to make some money on them when they weren't being used - think Trade Me for renting stuff. By renting stuff off someone nearby we could reduce the need to constantly go and buy new things.
Over time, we saw that this was also a problem that most organisations in NZ were dealing with. Employees in big businesses were telling us there was often confusion about what to do when something was no longer needed. They also told us how hard it was to see what assets their company owned. This is where Mutu slots in.
When we looked at the opportunity the B2B market presented vs. the P2P marketplace concept it was clear that we could have significantly more impact in the B2B space so we recently made the infamous startup pivot to focus exclusively on that space.
How's it going?
We are in the learning phase and our B2B offering is only 6 months old. Mutu is pre-seed so all our focus right now is on working with our customers to demonstrate value. We have a great product, we know the pains of our customers, now we are working to get the results to justify our concept. Being a B2B SaaS platform coupled with the size (and bureaucratics) of the organisations we are working with, it takes time to get to value but we completely believe in this idea and our vision. We have an awesome group of initial customers and so far the feedback has been really positive but there's still a long way to go until I can retire on a yacht.
What's your vision for the future?
Our BHAG is to completely change the asset management industry making it driven by sustainable choices alongside financial ones. Existing solutions are not user friendly, cost a lot of money and are only available to a few team members. We feel these tools should be accessible to everyone in a company. By giving everyone in an organisation visibility over what is owned, we can improve utilisation & drive down unnecessary purchasing (less carbon in). Then by connecting all these organisations we can find a new home for things that are no longer needed (less waste to landfill = less carbon out).
Do you have an ask for the community?
Reach out to us if you work for a company that has a lot of assets and is struggling with some of the pain points we have mentioned above. We would love to talk to you and learn from you!
💼 Cool jobs
Banquer are looking for a Head of Revenue (amongst multiple other roles!)
Ministry of Awesome are looking for a Head of Partnerships AND a Head of Marketing and Community
Altered State Machine are looking for a Community Manager
Want more? Check out the Matchstiq, HIRE HER and AirTree job boards. Blackbird, GD1 and the Icehouse also have job boards for their portfolio companies.
📆 Upcoming Events
🧑 In Person
Icehouse Ventures: Careers of The Future (11 October)
AWS Lunch and Learn @ Outset Ventures (11 October)
Startup Dunedin | Audacious showcase (12 October)
Startup Weekend Tairāwhiti (14-16 October)
WISANZ Pathways to Space - Christchurch (15 October)
Aronui Industry 4.0 Navigator open day (18 October)
Making a delicious difference: how three local entrepreneurs have embraced sustainability (19th October)
🖥️ Virtual
Co-Founder Networking: Find a Business Partner (13 October)
✨ Make sure to check out the Kiwi Startup Supercalendar - a subscribable google cal pulling together events in the NZ startup ecosystem. If you’re an event organiser, make sure to add your event to Pauli’s event excel spreadsheet and I’ll include it on the calendar. Subscribing to Pauli and Paul’s Techstars Startup Digest is a great way to keep up with weekly events ✨
Thanks for reading! Hit subscribe for more free fortnightly kiwi startup goodness (make sure to check your promotions tab, Substack tends to send them there)
I would also love to hear your thoughts via this cheeky one-minute survey, a LinkedIn DM, or a reply to this email 🙌
Ngā mihi nui,
Izzy 👩🏽💻