The Morgo Podcast

Mars Bioimaging has developed a mobile colour CT for  high quality  scanning of hands and wrists. It has FDA approval in the US and is selling to the orthopaedic & emergency markets in the US & NZ. Ojas became CEO to focus on the commercialisation of the product and lead the push into the market. Key lessons:  f ind your customer (a large market) and only then start throwing money at it.  You'll  ...

Tait Communications is  a provider  of critical communications for  public safety ,  emergency services   utilities   &  enterprises .   Yoram  became CEO   in 2021  and  has grown the company  from 450 people to over 1300.   Plans include a  new  state of the art  manufacturing facility  & a Centre of Excellence with over 10 labs.   Yoram  says the key to the growth  is having a strong business c...

OpenStar   is  nuclear fusio n company . In this podcast Ratu talks about the  pathway  of building the business :  the science, the people, the funding. The core technology is   a  levitated dipole  containing  a plasma  at temperatures of millions of degrees , which  OpenStar  demonstrated recently .  Now  OpenStar   plans larger machines and temperatures of millions of degrees  to make medical...

Silverstripe partners with governments and enterprises to create the digital infrastructure that underpins everyday life in Aotearoa and beyond. Sigurd shares its journey from small startup to a mature company of 70 people whose open-source CMS powers over 200 NZ government websites. Their work is aiding digital transformation internationally too, as in South Africa where they delivered a single d...

Lutra 's   purpose is to protect the environment and the people within in  through excellence in management of water and wastewater. I ts  team  are  engineers, modelers, data management specialists, content producers, and project managers  and its   clients  are  in N ew  Z ealand ,  Australia  and  other countries .  Quentin talks about  coming into the CEO role – learning to shift quickly acros...

Aspeq  is in the business of providing secure exams and assessments for regulators. It started  in the aviation sector:  as sessing pilots and  aircraft  engineers in New Zealand. Now it  is in 2 5  countries   with test centres ,  software to book & run exams and a secure browser  that allows  access  only to  agreed resources.  Aspeq  now has 50 people and many more contractors.  Hamish talks ab...

Atomic.io delivers secure, in-app messaging that helps companies reach customers where engagement is highest, inside their web and mobile apps. By replacing fragmented channels like SMS, calls, and email, Atomic.io enables more trusted,  timely , and seamless customer experiences. Jo is driven by scaling category-defining companies and leads Atomic.io in transforming how enterprises connect with c...

Sydekick  provides cyber security for small business.  Phishing emails  and  voice calls have become more  sophisticated  and  everyone  need s  to be protected.  Phil Howie ,  CTO,  started the company . Kendra was an early investor . Then  she and Phil agreed to  build  the  company   together  with  Kendra  becoming  CEO.   The y work through  partnerships with service providers in New Zealand,...

Lisa is the CEO of Recollect, a cloud-based platform for managing and accessing archives. With some large customers in New Zealand and Australia, Recollect is now focused on expansion in the US and Canada. Lisa says she's been surprised by how much the customers appreciate the customer service Recollect offers. And she talks about the continuing need to focus to get the most out of the resources t...

The Humble Bee Bio journey began with rare bees, whose genomes it sequenced to uncover novel molecules, including one with a rare and potent property — elastin stimulation . This molecule will soon be available as a hero ingredient for formulation of anti-ageing products . Bridgit is not the founder , she joined to build the business . She says the skills of leading a company are transferable but...

Heartlab provides a c loud-based  c ardiology i maging sy stem that helps cardiologists review and report on scans of the heart. Will talks about how they started using AI to improve the reading of ECGs but discovered that the real issue wasn't better diagnosis , it was access to the images at any time on any platform. Heartlab has customers in Australia, NZ, the US and Canada . Will enjoys learni...

Levno is an intelligent dairy farm monitoring business – remotely monitoring milk, water, fuel, feed silos and providing information to the farmers and suppliers. It is expanding from a strong base in New Zealand into the UK, Ireland and Australia. Oscar talks about how they've needed to adapt their offshore strategy to establish credibility in new markets and keeping the culture in the company as...

Virscient design s wireless chips for semiconductor companies and integrate s wireless technologies into products for other companies . Dean started the com pany consult ing to a semiconductor company he had worked for and gradually added more engineers . V irscient now employs over 50 people . Dean talks about what he's learned along the way, especially in building the commercial side of the busi...

Exaba is building a secure, sovereign & highly scalable data protection platform for service providers, data centres, & large enterprises. Peter and Stuart Inglis (CTO) saw the opportunity to give customers their own trusted local alternative to the public cloud. By merging with digital solutions company LuminateOne , Exaba expanded to deliver a complete wrap-around service. Backed from the outset...

Matt is Co-founder, President, and Chief Product Officer of Projectworks , a platform for consulting firms to better manage projects, people and financials. Their niche is boutique management consultants, software services, engineers, and architects. Matt talks about building a product users love and the journey of scaling it to now being used by over 500 consultancies globally and the importance...

Modica is a CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) delivering mes saging supported by enterprise analytics, security & world-class support. You choose the channel - voice, video, messaging, chatbots or WhatsApp - and Modica makes it work. Stuart talks about building from a scrappy start-up, through acquisitions, winning in Australia, to a $50M turnover company with operations around the worl...

It's rare to have 3 co-founders still running the company as co-CEOs 8 years after it started and great to hear how they interact! Sharesies mission is to provide financial empowerment to everyone . Sonya, Leighton & Brooke talk about growing Sharesies to 800,000 user s & $9 bn under management . 200 people work in the company , which now helps people manage wealth , connects companies to sharehol...

Desiree shares how she developed Flowpresso , a Class II medical device designed to reset the body through lymphatic therapy. Using compression, heat, and pressure, it helps clear cellular waste, improve sleep, reduce stress, and support recovery—especially after illness. Now used in clinics across the US, NZ, Australia, India, Canada, and the UK . A great story of developing a product to fit a ma...

Building Engineering & Design Co ( BEDC ) takes architectural plans and turn s them into structural plans u sing a human - augmented , patented AI platform . I n just 5 years the company has grown to over 450 people : a large design team in the Philippines and people in market in N Z, Australia, the US, Canada and the UK . Ben talks about successful market entry using a channel partner . His advic...

Evnex makes charging solutions for electric vehicles. Ed talks about spending a year developing their first electric charger, then working out how to turn a technology into a company: better understanding the market, learning how to raise money and how to hire people. Now there are a lot of competitors & a slowdown in the market so he needs to think deeply about how to win. Ed's advice for success...

Worldwide fog disrupts 620M passengers & costs airlines billions in rescheduling fees every year . Emily started Pyper Vision to dispers e fog at airports but then realised that the biggest problem is vague forecasting of fog leading to cancelling far more flights than necessary . Pyper Vision switched to fog forecasting u sing a deep learning model . They can now give a fog forecast for every min...

Litmaps is a Literature Discovery Tool that helps researchers to find vital scientific papers they didn't know about and to tell a better research story. A Litmap is a picture that shows the relationship between a collection of scientific papers based on their citations, popularity and currency. Litmaps is now u sed by   researchers, students and professionals across 150 countries. Axton talks abo...

This podcast celebrates a hero of the NZ tech sector: Ian founded Orion Health over 30 years ago - the first company in Auckland to have internet! Orion builds products that link healthcare systems together. It has spun off a number of products along the way. Orion - the 2 major products and most of the staff – is being sold for over $200M, while 3 younger products and 100 people are being spun of...

Max & co-founder Sebastian Wieczorek started space tech company Zenno to solve the problem of running out of fuel in space. Their solution is to use superconducting magnets fuelled by solar power to provide fully autonomous positioning of satellites. After 7 years work, they have solved the problems of operating their technology in space. (And have now announced their first commercial partnerships...

The Clinician offers a digital platform that redefines healthcare by shifting funding from service delivery to measurable outcomes. Founded by Ron, a former neurosurgeon, and Tam, with experience in pharma and business intelligence, the company blends medical, technical and commercial expertise. They've scaled the business to over 50 employees globally with clients in 7 countries, leading a transf...