Bootstrapped NZ Edition #8
๐ The wrap on Sunrise Festival ๐ a bunch of congratulations and building a world-class Fraud Automation Platform ๐
Morena e te whฤnau! It was a big fortnight in kiwi startup-land, so lets get straight into what our community has been up to.
๐ Sunrise Festival ๐
The ASB Waterfront Theatre was buzzing yesterday as over 600 kiwi startup ecosystem enthusiasts came together to explore the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead of us as a nation.
๐ฆ Sam Wong opened with a provocation: Will what youโre doing now matter in 10 years? Are you moving as fast as you possibly could? Why not you?
๐ If half the worldโs habitable land mass is agriculture, how can you make that more sustainable? Craig Piggot shared Halterโs mission and his journey building a high-performance team in a high-stress environment.
๐ There was a wide-ranging Q&A with Robyn Denholm about thinking big, the importance of hiring, team culture and measuring progress as you scale
๐ Alliv from Kami, Julia from Fibre Fale, Zoe and Vaughan from Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust dug into the education system: What is it and how is it changing? Why should we care? A recurring theme was the importance of inequality in who can access (and benefit from) our education system, and how this flows into who makes up our tech sector.
ฮ Brooke Howard Smith gave a crash course in NFTs, web 3 and the metaverse (and invited the entire room to gatecrash South by South West in 2023)
โ๐ป Amber Marie Naveira spoke about her work at the Granary, and the power of storytelling.
The day wrapped up with demos from local talent: Natasha Turner (Wrestler), Lordana Podolska-Kint (medical student, poet and author) and Oliver Coates (creator of Turning point).
๐ฐ Startups in the news
๐ Highlights from the Icehouse Ventures Showcase made an appearance in Stuff
๐ฎ Halterโs Craig Piggot spoke to Simon Pound about how the โfitbit for cowsโ is revolutionising farming (Halter also recently featured in the Forbes Asia 100 startups to watch list alongside Partly)
๐จ Kindaโs sustainable cauliflower ice cream was featured in Stuff
๐ฅฆ MenuAid made headlines in Stuff for halving grocery bills for some of their users
๐ฑโโ๏ธ Newshub shared Paper not Foilโs hair foil alternative made from industrial waste
๐ต Noteworthy
๐ฑ Atomic.io raised $4.5M in their series A round led by Movac
๐ฉ Ambit raised $1M for their expansion to Australia
๐ The beehive announced a $6M investment into researching three green hydrogen projects in partnership with Germany
๐ Fonterra announced their partnership with Royal DSM to establish a startup that will develop non-dairy proteins using precision fermentation.
๐ง ฤki Innovations was granted $100,000 by ACC to develop an assessment tool for tฤne Mฤori suffering from traumatic brain injuries
๐ฅ๏ธ GridAKL will provide HTK Group with permanent co-working spaces in a partnership aimed to accelerate the growth of Mฤori and Pacific entrepreneurship across Tฤmaki Makaurau
๐ฅ๏ธ NZGCP went live with a microsite of support resources available for Kiwi start-ups and investors
๐ Icehouse Ventures 12th Annual investment showcase
A collection of iconic kiwi startup founders pitched to an audience of 900 at the Icehouse Ventures 12th Annual investment showcase. The showcase is one of the largest early-stage tech investment events in Australasia.
This year, Yabble, Crimson Education, Kitea Health, KiwiFibre Innovations, Halter, Payleadr, HeartLab, Parrot Analytics and Tracksuit took the stage and absolutely smashed it (if you missed it, you can rewatch the whole showcase here)
๐ Congratulations are in order forโฆ
โญ Max Ferguson from Lumin who won EY NZโs Young Entrepreneur of the Year!
๐ฅ Boring Oat Milk who won the Foodstuffs National Innovation Award
๐ All the GEN NZ Ecosystem Award Winners
๐ฅ The inaugural Got Nous competition finalists
๐ The Coralus NZ Venture Semi-Finalists
๐๐ผโโ๏ธย Cool people doing cool things: Meet Justin from Authsignal
Kia Ora Justin! What's your story?ย
Iโm an engineer by craft, but a people person by passion. These two traits have led me down the garden path of being fascinated with the problems people face and the amazing solutions technology can offer. Iโve been privileged to be a part of the Australasian Fintech fraternity, working for NZ banks with Hewlett Packard, enabling NZ capital markets at the NZX during one of its most exciting IPO periods, P2P lending with Harmoney, and the BNPL phenomenon in most recent times with Afterpay via Dovetail, and finally at Laybuy as CTO, helping the company go public on the ASX.
I had a slight detour in MedTech somewhere in between with Orion Health, which opened my eyes to North American healthcare scale, and privileged to work on projects that were propelled out of Obamacare. Finally, Iโve followed my heart and have done what Iโve always wanted to do, and thatโs to start up. The time was right, and Iโve been fortunate to learn from and observe the gutsiest entrepreneurs during my time working for them.
How was Authsignal born?
Iโve been in FinTech for the last 15 years, and what was evident during my tenure was that behind every FinTech is the requirement to manage risk. Modern FinTechโs need to become experts at balancing their customer experiences and their risks. There were three major themes that I found over and over again. It was hard to observe risks in real-time, there was a dependency on engineering teams to develop controls, and lastly, the user experience typically sucked. Authsignal was born because I had to continuously build these systems from company to company, and I finally decided to build a product I wished I had in every one of my previous roles.
How's it going?
Itโs going really well. Customer feedback has been great, and the problems we solve are delivering real value for our users. Weโre doing what it says on the tin and enabling companies to reduce fraud, and as a result, their customer's experience is vastly improved. Authsignal is securing the customer journey and saving customers a lot of time and cost. What would take weeks or months to implement, we enable in hours.
What's your vision for the future?ย
Weโre building a world-class Fraud Automation Platform that is changing the way companies fight fraud and deliver improved customer experiences. The future will see teams adopt Authsignal as their source of truth. Think connected a workspace with one single view of all your customer's actions and the journeys they take with complete observability. Tasks like manual review, holding customers in queues and reverifying identity will become a thing of the past, we want good customers to speed through their daily financial management, and stop bad actors in their tracks.
Do you have an ask for the community?
Head on over to Authsigal.com, and create an account. If youโve got any feedback, weโd love to talk. If you have friends in the fintech, Crypto, banking, or gaming space, Forward this newsletter and tell them about us.
๐คฉย Accelerators, Incubators and more
Are you a marketplace founder? Join the club over at NZ Online Marketplace Founders, a new group for founders and those keen to learn more about the space
If youโre working on a circular or regenerative initiative, add it to the Project Moonshot map - a database of circular and regenerative businesses in New Zealand
If youโre a Mฤori business owner wanting to build your confidence in navigating digital tools and systems, see if youโre eligible for the Digital Boost Programme
๐ผ Cool jobs
Medsalv are looking for a Research and Development Intern
First AML are looking for a Senior Product Manager
Multitudes are looking for a Data Engineer
Want more? Check out the Matchstiq, Icehouse, HIRE HER and AirTree job boards.
๐ย Upcoming Events
Aotearoa AI Summit (12 September) Catch up on all the AI Action in Aotearoa
Startup Council: CHCH Founder Meetup (15 September) If youโre in Christchurch, grab some pizza and have your say on how to ensure the success of startups in NZ
How to build a unicorn (14 September) Hang out with Mahesh and learn the essentials of how to build a unicorn
Startup Weekend Auckland (23 September) Can a startup be built in 54 hours? Maybe youโll be the one to do it at Startup Weekend Aucklandโฆ ๐
โจ If you want to keep up with the latest events, make sure to check out the Kiwi Startup Supercalendar - a subscribable google cal pulling together all the events in the NZ startup ecosystem. If youโre an event organiser, make sure to add your event to Pauliโs event excel spreadsheet and Iโll include it on the calendarโจ
I would also love to hear your thoughts via this cheeky one-minute survey, a LinkedIn DM, or a reply to this email ๐
Ngฤ mihi nui,
Izzy ๐ฉ๐ฝโ๐ป
Good to meet at Sunrise! It's a shame I didn't think to mention Sahha launching on product hunt as something you could add to this issue https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sahha