Business Is Boring

Karma Drinks and All Good Organics are among the best examples of businesses putting purpose and social impact at the heart of what they do. While providing great products, they also provide fairer wages to the growers and entrepreneurs involved in the production of goods, and part of all proceeds go to the Karma Foundation, which works to provide opportunities to people in Sierra Leone. The chair...

Recruitment can be a great business if you do it well. You get roughly 15% of the salary of the people you place as a success fee, and if you have a good relationships with companies and talent you can repeat the process over and over. But it’s not a simple gig! Great recruiters need to understand the people and the businesses they work with - and every job you place directly affects your reputati...

Nature Baby is the organic baby wear company creating natural, long-lasting and well-made clothing, with a retail model that’s big on community. Co-founders Jacob and Georgia Faull have built to four stores, 55 staff and stockists around the world, and have ridden many waves of business, fashion and commerce to get there. To talk the journey, what’s next and their new circularity initiative Worn A...

When a client didn’t pay Max Semmons-Russell’s plumbing business for a completed $30k job it nearly knocked his company over. When it happened again he decided there had to be a better way. Asking around he saw the problem was huge, and there might be a solution that had fallen out of use. Escrow is a concept where people put a payment with a trusted third party until the product or service has be...

Although the biggest spending line for most startups is people, most startups don’t get serious about people until they get pretty big. Doing so earlier might just be the biggest lever startups can pull to increase their chances of making it in the long run, and making the journey along the way as smooth as possible. Kimberley Gilmour is one of New Zealand’s most experienced people leaders, having...

Concrete is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, with around 8% of global carbon emissions linked to its manufacture and use - but it wasn’t always like this. Local sustainable startup Neocrete has taken inspiration from 2000-year-old Roman methods to make concrete with half the carbon emissions today and a path to being entirely carbon neutral in a few years. This world leading inno...

Daylight is an advertising and communications agency that was born out of The Spinoff newsroom, from the amazing work Toby Morris and Siouxsie Wiles did with Covid explainer gifs which grabbed the eye of the World Health Organisation. Daylight CEO Lee Lowndes has built the agency to add web and digital capability, leading to local and international growth in the hardest of markets. Learn more abou...

In 2012 Mike Brown was hit by a car and became paralysed from the waist down. The transition to using a wheelchair and navigating a world not built for accessibility meant Mike saw a lot of things that could be improved to help improve access, enjoyment and opportunity. He started Adaptdefy, where their first hero product, the LapStacker, helps wheelchair users more easily secure items in their la...

When Tom Wallace went to work at his family property business after university while working on start-up ideas he was amazed to find how poor the software was for property management. This led him to begin a company that helps property management companies run better businesses. Fast-forward 12 years and his company Re-Leased is a global leader, with offices around the world, 1,400 customers, 350,...

Megan Wyper started her career working with New Zealand coffee pioneers Millers coffee, before getting experience overseas in every element of the coffee business. On her return to New Zealand she joined Acme cups, a company you might not have heard of, but whose cups you’ve definitely drunk out of. They make the tulip cups you’ve seen in a variety of colours at specialist coffee stores (or bought...

In a few short years, Anihana have gone from a small New Zealand brand to being on the shelves of 6000+ stores in America. Their shower steamers, shampoo bars, bath bombs and friendly fun sustainable packaging have helped them grow so fast they’re currently doing a capital raise through Snowball Effect to service demand and growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Roughly half of all people experience periods, so why aren’t period products more accessible? In Aotearoa today, if you are dealing with period-related issues and happen to be in a public place - a mall, cinema, office workplace or university, for example - it’s likely that you won’t have access to any free products that might help. Ads on Pads is here to change this. Founder Aditi Gorasia’s goal...

Jessie Stanley first came on the pod to chat founding and growing I Love Pies, the startup she led through to a successful exit. From there she has helped spearhead a project to stop sand being mined in Pākiri, been a food expert for Snackmasters, and is now back with a new startup to help solve food waste and create sustainable protein with one big solution, using a very small method: bugs! Good...

Femmi is a coaching and fitness app challenging the outdated idea that periods limit performance. Their run training programmes and run club communities are designed to help solve the problem that sport training - like so many things - has been designed and built with the physiology of men in mind. Femmi helps users train in a way that is mindful of the menstrual cycle; a pioneering approach curre...

Hnry is now New Zealand’s largest accountant, helping to manage, file and contribute nearly 1% of New Zealand’s entire tax revenue - and is getting huge in Australia too. It’s done that rare thing: change people’s habits, getting them to have their wages paid to a different account so Hnry could deduct tax as they go. Co-founder and CEO James Fuller joins us to chat the journey he and his wife/co-...

Menopause happens to roughly half of everyone, yet until very recently it’s largely been absent from culture and work - and when it has popped up, it’s often been in ways that are stereotyped or misinformed. Niki Bezzant is one of the people leading a new conversation, helping more people understand, plan for and talk about menopause. Through speaking events, running workshops, and writing books T...

Ārepa has had a roller coaster year. The functional drinks company are on a mission to make brains work better, through their science and research-backed products. Last year, however, they went through a well-publicised process with the Ministry for Primary Industries about health claims on their labels, resulting in a media fire storm. How did that all come about? How did they move past it? And i...

Kernel recently surpassed $1B in funds under management - a massive achievement for the investment and finance platform. They started with a range of index funds and this milestone is just the beginning of how they aim to help with wealth management. What does it take to get started in fintech? How do you grow to a billion under management? What comes next? To chat all this Dean Anderson, founder...

Vessev make hydrofoilng boats, marrying America’s cup foiling and boatbuilding prowess with software excellence to make smooth, sustainable travel possible. CEO Eric Laakmann is one for the water. He came to NZ as part of a sailing adventure that took him from his American home (where he’d worked at Apple as an instrumental part of the Apple Watch project) to NZ, where he decided to get involved w...

Access to opportunity is not equal. A new report looking into pathways for Māori in entrepreneurship and capital has identified many barriers and opportunities. The Te Ara Takatū report is from the Tapuwae Roa trust, and their chief executive /Kaihautū, Te Pūoho Kātene joined us to chat his career journey (including study at Stanford University, serving his iwi Ngāti Toa and his time as an Obama F...

Rob Coneybeer co-founded Shasta Ventures in Silicon Valley in 2004. They invested in companies like Nest and Dollar Shave Club, have over $1B of funds under management and, unusually for US VC, have a deep and active interest in Aotearoa. We cover his journey into venture capital, how he got connected to NZ, how he’s creating more links between NZ and the US and what it takes to spot the next big...

Taxi is a new venture helping Kiwi businesses turn their provisional tax payments into a new source of business funding, at about half the price of a typical big bank overdraft. It’s from the founders of Tax Traders, who manage the better part of three billion dollars of tax pooling here. To talk building better businesses, giving the economy a rev up and making Aotearoa more productive, co-founde...

We thought you might like a wee taster of our brand new #1 series, Juggernaut: The Story of the Fourth Labour Government, hosted by Toby Manhire. Click here to follow Juggernaut so you get every episode as soon as it's released! 1. I love you, Mr Lange Fuelled by brandy and fury, Sir Rob Muldoon calls a snap election, sparking a 1984 campaign of contrasts – the menacing, protectionist National PM...

Greg Shove is CEO at Section, the next generation education online company founded by Professor Scott Galloway. He is in NZ with Spark for Business, launching a special Mini MBA to equip business leaders for the AI age. We talk to learn what business owners would be doing now, where the world of AI is at, and what you can do to take advantage of the biggest change to business since the cloud. Lear...

Ethan Eismann has been a design leader at Adobe, Google, AirBNB, Uber and Slack - some of the most influential companies of our age. As part of the Spark Business Lab Future State festival he spoke to us and shared his approach to design, building great design cultures, and how he has grown and supported growth in his career. World-class advice from a world leader. Learn more about your ad choices...