Jenny Morel interviews entrepreneurs building tech & other high growth companies going global from New Zealand and Australia. Growing businesses is hard work. Everyone has setbacks. The entrepreneurs who grow companies are a relentlessly positive group of people: they are going to succeed no matter what. They are risk-takers, they work crazy hours, they are obsessive. Much of the time they are embattled. Every now and then there is a wonderful breakthrough. These podcasts share with you some of these stories - the excitement and the challenges of building businesses. And they show the wonderful variety of exciting new businesses being built from Australia and New Zealand. At the MORGO annual retreats, these people building tech and other high growth companies going global get together to share experiences and learn from each other. They’re an annual re-charge. See www.morgo.co.
Kitea Health makes a device to help manage hydrocephalus: a condition where fluid accumulates in the brain, managed by inserting a shunt to drain the fluid. Kitea Health makes a tiny implantable device to measure pressure in the brain at home, letting you know if the shunt has failed and you need medical help. Simon brings an extensive background in developing medical devices to this new venture. His key advice: build the team! www.kiteahealth.com
11/18/24 • 23:50
Hot Lime Labs is putting the green back in greenhouses – supplying yield-boosting CO2 from biomass for large glasshouses. With $9 million of angel funding they’ve scaled from the lab to a demo delivering CO2 into a 11 hectare glasshouse. It’s now ready to take to the world – which will need lots more funding. Tijs talks about how the needs of the business change as you grow, with specialists replacing generalists, and how ready people are to help if you ask. www.hotlimelabs.co.nz
10/28/24 • 22:28
Kry10 is a building a secure operating system to enable critical infrastructure such as electrical grids and medical devices to transition to a future where they are intelligent, cloud connected and adaptive driven. This can replace, or be placed in front of, old software built on operating systems from the 1990s that are vulnerable to viruses. It was founded by Boyd and other ex-Microsoft/Amazon execs to commercialise cybersecurity technology spun-out from an advanced research group. www.kry10.com
10/7/24 • 18:54
Wellumio is developing a highly portable head MRI scanner for use in emergency departments - providing a scan in the “golden hour” after stroke when treatment is most effective. Shieak & Sergei talk about how great it was to find each other, their journey to dealing with investors rather than grant reviewers, and now getting their product to market. They’d like to encourage more academics to choose entrepreneurship! www.wellumio.com
9/16/24 • 24:23
OneReg is about effortless compliance and smoother operations for aerospace. When Covid struck, Clinton lost his job and decided it was time to start a business. He and his two co-founders had more than 100 years experience in compliance, digital innovation and aviation. Their initial customers are airports, which are very complex environments – they have the biggest need for what OneReg does. They now have most of the airports in NZ as customers and are moving offshore. www.onereg.com
9/3/24 • 16:35
Eight360 has built an immersive VR motion simulator: a ball that you sit inside that can do full 360 flips and spins. This is fun. It’s also very serious: it delivers a more immersive and visceral experience, leading to better engagement and learning outcomes whether you are manoeuvring heavy equipment in unusual situations, practicing your off-road handling skills to avoid a rollover, or learning to land an aircraft in a windy location. www.eight360.com
8/19/24 • 21:56
Danny, CEO & co-founder, of Basis explains how they have developed a home electricity smart panel that allows you to manage your power usage in real time and gives data to the electricity companies so they can offer smart-use plans to reduce cost. They are driven by delivering an enduring positive impact for the planet. The first smart panels will be delivered soon – you can pre-order on their website. www.wearebasis.com
8/5/24 • 21:26
Three founders who had worked together before started Comply Pro to meet needs for safety in the construction industry and food safety in hospitality, building a SaaS company that can be rapidly scaled around the world. Now ComplyPro manages 18.4 million records and protects 200,000 sites globally, with over 4,000 clients and 45,000 users. Michael talks about encouraging everyone to act like owners, think like founders, and innovate like entrepreneurs. www.complypro.io
7/22/24 • 19:30
Hadleigh’s maritime background gave him the insight that started SwipedOn: on a super yacht everything was electronic except the dog-eared visitors’ book. With no tech or business background, he set out to build a tablet sign in. Today Hadleigh employs over 50 people and SwipedOn is used in over 9,000 workplaces. The company has gone through ownership changes: it sold to an AIM listed company and became 95% of its recurring revenue, and it is now owned by a PE firm. www.swipedon.com
7/8/24 • 18:54
RedSeed trains retail staff: it provides courses, coaching & a customisable LMS with a library of easy-to-implement course content and learning pathways that lets its customers customise the training. Its coaching is a key differentiator. Anya talks about growing the company from in-person training to fully online resources. She’s now looking at flipping from sales led to product led growth. It’s a great story of adapting the company to the market over time. www.redseed.com
6/24/24 • 20:27
Starboard takes data from satellites to track every oceangoing vessel on the planet. It combines this with scientific models and other intelligence sources to create a pattern of life for each vessel, allowing analysts to assess if the vessel poses a risk – to sovereign borders or to commercial assets. Trent joined when Starboard had product-market fit in the Pacific. His key role has been to capitalise the business and scale internationally. www.starboard.nz
6/10/24 • 22:50
CAR T-cell therapy is a cancer treatment where a patient’s own T-cells are reprogrammed to fight the cancer. There are 2,000 therapies in clinical development around the world which use different ways to program the T-cells. BioOra has developed an automated manufacturing system to scale up the production of personalised T-cells for treatment of the cancer. In partnership with the Malaghan Institute BioOra has treated 30 patients, the last 7 using this automated system. www.bioora.com
5/27/24 • 21:34
OneRoom is a webcasting platform specialized for the funeral sector. It instals cameras in funeral homes to make webcasting easy & free up funeral directors to focus on personal service. David was as an investor in the company and became CEO to take up the challenge going from start-up to scale-up. As a student he won a scholarship to the US & made the US Gymnastics Team. Now he is taking on the challenge of the US market for the business. www.oneroomstreaming.com
5/13/24 • 27:44
The Gastric Alimetry system is like an ECG for the gut - the electrical signals are 100x weaker than from the heart and very noisy. It provides data-driven insights to help clinicians work out what’s going on. It is now used in 35 hospitals. Greg talks about how hard it is to build a medtech: regulatory, reimbursement & technical issues. To move fast it’s important to have the right people, including key partners such as his co-founder & his Chair, and a balanced life.
4/29/24 • 18:07
Tracksuit provides beautiful, radically affordable and easy to use brand tracking for modern consumer brands. The team recently raised $22M. Connor talks about finding early product-market fit with 100 prospect conversations, and then leaning into scale. Every 3 months everyone should “give away your Legos”–either automate your current job or hire someone to do it better than you can while you solve new problems. www.gotracksuit.com
4/15/24 • 18:50
Goodnature makes ethical pest control devices that now sell around the world. Craig, a co-founder, talks about how they started Goodnature to control rats and stoats in New Zealand – building a trap that can go off multiple times in the bush. Dave joined as CEO 3 years ago, bringing a background in international marketing. They both like to solve problems: Craig on the technical side and Dave on the marketing and company growth side. www.goodnature.co.nz
4/2/24 • 23:06
Gembot.ai is a smart investment platform. Charlie started it because he was frustrated that he couldn’t find this for himself: he wanted to know statistically and visually what his exposure looked like at any time. Gembot provides transparent, low cost and informed investment. How do you set this up from scratch? Listen to Charlie’s journey! He’s on a mission to help people grow wealth. www.gembot.ai
3/4/24 • 19:56
Claudia Smith & Russell Smith built AML platform APLYiD to allow companies to verify customers online in seconds using biometric measures. APLYiD now has over 1,000 customers in Australia, New Zealand & the UK. Claudia and Russell each had a background in identity work and knew the corporate environment well. In this podcast they talk about how they work together, how they complement each other and what they’ve learned about building a tech company fast. www.aplyid.com
2/12/24 • 24:35
Bspkl makes high-performance catalyst coated membranes for hydrogen production - using 25x less catalyst metal than alternatives. Christina joined the inventor of this technology, Jérôme Leveneur, to build a company based on his technology. Christina talks about why hydrogen production as the first market, the challenges of raising funds, and their ambition to make a genuine difference in the world, opening pathways for the scientists, startups & employees. www.bspkl.co
1/22/24 • 15:59
ADInstruments makes scientific hardware & software for biomedical research and education with offices in 15 countries & 220 people around the world. Its customers include the top 100 universities & the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. The company has been built over 37 years. Alex has been CEO for the last 4 years and has overseen the growth of the SaaS business, which is now a significant part of their revenue. www.adinstruments.com
1/8/24 • 21:55
ecoPortal started as an environmental risk management consultancy. Bringing its sustainability origins into the larger health & safety picture, it now supports enterprise retail, transport, and logistics companies worldwide to achieve their health & safety engagement goals. Manuel talks about ecoPortal’s humble beginnings as a consultancy and the journey of bootstrapping the company to 75 people. He also sheds light on the limitations and benefits of bootstrapping. www.ecoportal.com
12/11/23 • 18:57
Alyona studied Natural Language Processing before most of us had heard of AI. To start her company she looked for a problem worth solving & found the need for customer feedback analysis. Thematic is an AI-powered platform that transforms feedback into actionable insights. Alyona talks about how she built an initial product, talked to the market to find a fit, persuaded her husband Nathan Holmberg to join her, and the difference that YCombinator made for them. www.getthematic.com
11/27/23 • 20:59
Mary Vance & Nick McDonald founded Cemplicity in 2013, with Blaik Wilson taking the CEO reins in 2020. Cemplicity keeps patients remotely connected to their care teams as they go through a health service, alerting care teams when action is needed. Cemplicity has worked with over 3,000 health facilities in 8 countries and over 5 million patients. Mary & Blaik talk about building their global business in the challenging field of digital healthcare. www.cemplicity.com
11/13/23 • 25:57
Ambit is an AI platform for customer service at scale. Tim & his co-founders started Ambit in 2016, seeing the opportunity to leverage the power of Generative AI to provide deeply personalised, automated conversations for customers – increasing customer satisfaction while reducing the cost to serve them. He talks about how tough it is to sell to the IT teams in large enterprises and how relationships drive almost everything. www.ambit.ai
10/30/23 • 21:33
Inhibit Coatings is a science-based company producing high-performance antimicrobial coatings for use in food safety and medical applications. It works with resin manufacturers and end-users to develop bespoke antimicrobial solutions with high effectiveness and long-lifetimes using novel nanotechnology. Eldon talks about the journey from his PhD research to first commercial sales and pursuing a licensing model to grow fast. www.inhibitcoatings.com
10/16/23 • 19:33
Futureverse is a media tech unicorn at the intersection of AI, Gaming and Web3. Its platform simplifies Web3 for developers and users and it works with brands to power their experiences, such as a recently released AI powered game built with FIFA. Aaron talks about how he & his co-founders started by building a portfolio of companies for Web3 and last year rolled up and acquired 11 companies to create Futureverse, which now has 250 people across 16 countries. www.futureverse.com
10/2/23 • 26:44
Asantha founded PaySauce to bring new technology and deep domain knowledge to small businesses wasting time and energy on paying their people. Asantha talks about the journey –learning the real pain points to solve for small businesses, and commitments to excellent customer service and to providing a great place to work. Its automating top-up pay for dairy farm workers and its pre-pay day lending are revolutionary. www.paysauce.com
9/18/23 • 26:17
Pultron Composites makes glass fibre composite materials. Peter Holdsworth invented the technology for fibreglass fence posts. His wife Bronwen built the business & ran it for 20 years. Her son, Jasper, now runs it. This is a great story of innovation and building a global business. The core of the company remains in Gisborne where they experiment, make 20 product lines & build the machines for the offshore JVs in Saudi Arabia and the US. www.pultron.com
9/4/23 • 28:24
Sam is the co-founder & the CEO of LawVu, a software platform for in-house legal teams. Lawyers using LawVu gain visibility over all their legal work, improve productivity & show legal’s value to the wider business. Sam talks about the journey: spending 3 years building the product with trial customers before going to market, winning an RFP for a legal team of 200 – which accelerated their product development, scaling rapidly to 125 people, and learning about fundraising along the way. www.lawvu.com
8/21/23 • 24:09
John saw the need for a seamless SaaS platform for commercial training providers: automating all the processes for promoting, selling and delivering courses. John talks about starting out with sweat equity, spending a lot of time with customers to design the product, always appearing as a global operation even when they were working from his house, and how rewarding it has been to build a company of 60 people processing $500m p a which has trained over 7m people around the world. www.arlo.co
8/7/23 • 23:22
