Bootstrapped NZ Edition #6
An abundance of awards 🏅 let's talk about SaaS 🔦 and spaces for innovation and communities to thrive 🌿
Hello friends!
Hope everyone is well and thriving - thanks for being patient with me as I release edition #6 on holiday time 🏝️
When I trawl through content to share every fortnight, usually some kind of theme emerges. The last fortnight has been quite overwhelmingly about celebrating kiwi startup excellence. There have been awards, pitch nights and calls to celebrate in every corner of the internet and I’m very excited to share them all with you ⭐
P.S. If you have emailed or PM’d me recently, apologies if I have not responded to you - I’m taking some time off socials and promise to get back to you when I’m ~formally~ back online (rather than informally sneaking back into your inbox to deliver startup ecosystem goodness)
🗞️ What’s news?
It’s been a busy fortnight for Callaghan Innovation as they:
Opened Te Pā Harakeke Flexible Labs, a new $7.7M science and research lab in Lower Hutt, with Hon Ayesha Verrall.
Announced the new partners of the Founder and Startup Support Programme: Te Wānanga o Aotearoa Kōkiri, Creative HQ, HTK Group, Icehouse Ventures, Ministry of Awesome and Sprout Agritech Accelerator
🐝 The beehive announced a new Active Investor Plus visa to attract high value investors to the country
🔥 The finalists for mini-accelerator Innovate Taranaki were featured in Stuff: congratulations to Brendan Gammeter, Daniel Reeve, Darius Thorn, Malcom Gomes, Renee Manella and Warren Willetts who will pitch at the finals evening in New Plymouth.
NZ Hi-Tech Awards 🚀
An enthusiastic crowd came together in Wellington to celebrate our best and brightest in hi-tech. It was truly an all star lineup of finalists and great opportunity to celebrate some of the incredible innovation coming out of our ecosystem.
Congratulations to all the winners, particularly Alimetry who won all three categories they were nominated for 🤯
If you couldn’t make it in person (or you just want to relive it because it was that good) you can watch the recording here.
FoodStarter Pitch Night 🥫
The FoodStarter Final Pitch night was a brilliant evening of food innovation. Black Doris Ltd, No Rush, Oliver’s, PARKERS Beverage Company and QB’s snacks pitched in the startup category with QB’s snacks winning first prize valued at $70,000.
Electrify demo night ⚡
The inaugural Electrify demo night went off in Christchurch, where nine wāhine founders pitched their startups to a packed audience.
This was a culmination of New Zealand’s first ever accelerator programme made for women founders, established to combat some of the long-standing equity issues for women in the startup space (think back to edition #2 when we looked at some of the stats)
Read more about this cohort of founders (and register your interest for 2023) here ✨
Other big wins 🏅
🌐 Kacific scooped up most innovative tech startup of the year, most valuable technical innovation and silver for innovative achievement in sales or revenue generation at the Asia Pacific Stevie Awards
👛 Dosh was the sole winner of the Canstar Innovation Excellence Award - the first time a fintech has won the award, and the first time a single winner has taken out the category
👓 Tracksuit won Marketing Technology Company of the Year at the Mumbrella Awards in Sydney
But wait, there’s more…
There are even more awards nights on the horizon (and no shortage of incredible people in our ecosystem to nominate)
🍭 GEN NZ Awards 2022: The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) NZ will host the first annual awards ceremony on September 5th at GridAKL (after Blackbird’s Sunrise festival!). Here are some of the categories:
Nominations close on Wednesday 10th August at 5pm (rumour has it that if you make a submission, you get a free invite to the awards ceremony 👀)
🌳 NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards 2022: Make sure to nominate your favourite rural businesswoman for the NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards.
A spotlight on SaaS 🔦
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)** sector is on track to generate more than $20B for the New Zealand economy, which would position it as the largest contributor to national GDP.
Microsoft recently held an event for SaaS providers in New Zealand, and shared some of the key messages from the event here. Here are some of takeaways:
The Australian market will be an essential first stepping stone to help kiwi SaaS businesses scale globally
Lack of understanding of SaaS careers and the industry in general has been identified as a barrier to further growth
Establishing strong community relationships is the key to long term success
If you’re part of a SaaS team, join the thriving community of other kiwis in the sector over at kiwiSaaS 📈
**If you, like me, struggle with the abundance of -aaS terms out there, this is one of the best explainers I’ve found of what SaaS actually means, complete with examples.
🌿 Creating spaces for innovation (and communities) to thrive
There is increasing demand for co-working spaces internationally, with the global market expected to reach $30.36B in 2026. When done right, co-working spaces can help entrepreneurs build a strong network and sense of belonging. This is particularly important for traditionally underrepresented groups in the startup and tech ecosystem. Here are some cool spaces to check out:
🍎 Manzana
Dil Khosa, Ché Zara Blomfield, and Rachael Peri joined forces (and bootstrapped their way from nothing to over $40k of investment during lockdown) to create Manzana, a space for purpose-driven women entrepreneurs.
🖥️ Pasifika Digital Knowledge Bank
Inu Akerei (Rei) Maresala-Thomson and his wife Katrina Thomson just opened a new 614m2 multi-purpose space in Pukekohe. The space (completely self-funded by Akerei and his wife) will act as an incubator for digital and tech solutions to encourage more youth, women, Māori and Pasifika participation.
There are workspaces and conference spaces, and the space is free for up to 6 hours a week for anyone running free tech, digital, or well-being events for the community.
📚Worth a Read or Listen
Alliv from Kami talks about creating one of the fastest growing ed-tech companies in the world on Business is Boring
Read about Mr Greg O’Grady’s journey from surgeon to CEO of Alimentry
🙋🏼♀️ Cool people doing cool things: Meet Jan from Intelligensia
Intelligensia is a cybersecurity startup founded with a single mission: to improve the cyber resilience of New Zealand businesses. Intelligensia helps new businesses to develop customized, unique cyber resilience plans aligned to achieve their business objectives.
Hi Jan! What's your story?
Cybersecurity has always intrigued me. From the first time I saw an attack decimate a large company, I knew this would potentially be a big problem in the future. So when I got the opportunity to join the National Cyber Security Centre, I lept at it. There I learned everything I now know about cybersecurity and the resilience of New Zealand's organisations. Last year I decided it was time to step out of my comfort zone again and start a new business helping SMEs, start-ups and non-profits to become resilient to cyber-attacks.
How was Intelligensia born?
I was helping support large organisations with weak cyber resilience, and it got me wondering who was looking after the little guys. There are a lot of cybersecurity firms that focus on large organisations and the government. They typically take a bottom-up approach. They focus on the tools and try to sell them to businesses' IT teams. Well, most SMEs don't have in-house IT. Intelligensia takes a top-down approach working with the business leaders and focusing on the security gaps with their people, processes and systems.
How's it going?
I've been in business for a year and haven't stopped. I am taking on staff, have signed several partnerships with other managed services providers, and have someone interested in investing in the business.
What's your vision for the future?
Global domination of the SME market starting in New Zealand and Australasia. Ultimately, I want to build up this business and then sell it off once it is at a consistent operating level.
Do you have an ask for the community?
If you know any small businesses that need to improve their cybersecurity but don't know how to get started, please give them my details.
Connect with Jan on LinkedIn or through the Intelligensia website.
🤩 Funding, Accelerators, and Incubators
🚀 Startmate are looking for ambitious kiwi women to join the next Women’s Fellowship cohort and deep dive into the startup ecosystem. As a fellowship alumnus, I can’t speak more highly of the programme put together by the incredible Kelly Spoerk. There are some extra scholarships available for the kiwi applicants so make sure to apply before August 14th
🌐 Applications for the Global Women Entrepreneurship Leadership Programme close on 19th August
♻️ If you’ve got waste-busting idea, apply for a $50k grant from the Auckland Council Annual Waste Minimisation and Innovation Fund (open until 31st August)
🔋 If you’re an energy sector innovator, check out the Orion NZ Ltd Accelerator
💼 Cool jobs
Mutu are looking for a Senior Account Manager
ZeroJet are looking for a Head of Growth for Sales & Marketing
Fergus are looking for a Sales Development Representative - Tech/SaaS
Want more? Check out the Matchstiq, Icehouse, HIRE HER and AirTree job boards.
📆 Upcoming Events
🖥️ Virtual
Founder Story: Max Ferguson - Lumin (11 August) Hear how Max grew a community of over 70 million and chat software accessibility in this webinar organised by Territory 3
👯♀️ Hybrid
Cleaning up on the world stage: Achieving scale with intangible assets (11 August) Hear from a panel of deep and clean tech founders about the lessons they’ve learned and what they wish they’d known when they started out
👱🏻 In Person
Lauren Woolf: WAGMI* (Aren’t we?) (10 August) If you’re in Auckland come deep dive into the world of Web3 with Lauren (there will be pastries!)
RISE UP 2022 Pitch Night (17 August) Listen to the six finalists pitch o be in to win $10,000 cash.
Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Meetup (31 August) Bring your best crypto chat to meetups in Wellington, Dunedin, Nelson, Auckland, Christchurch, Tauranga and Hawkes Bay
✨ If you missed her debut, make sure to check out the Kiwi Startup Supercalendar! A subscribable google cal pulling together all the 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✨
I would also love to hear your thoughts via this cheeky one-minute survey, a LinkedIn DM, or a reply to this email 🙌
See you next time!
Izzy 👩🏽💻