Business Is Boring

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Jodie Fox, co-founder of Shoes of Prey. For many years this week's podcast guest executed every move from the big start-up scale-up playbook. She and her co-founders came up with an innovative new idea, and worked out how to do something that had never been accomplished before - they created the technology and systems to allow people to customise shoes, in pretty much anyway you could imagine, and have a one of a kind shoe made and sent to you within about two weeks. They were profitable from very early on, having found a customer that loved the ability to make their dream shoe. They then attracted top tier investors and partnered with some of the world's top retailers, like Nordstrom, to grow from a niche product to mass market. They followed every sensible step -customer research,

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Jeff Xu, CEO, and Ollie McDermot, co-founder and designer of Micropod. At over $60 for one kg, microgreens are a hot commodity. Commonly served in tiny portions on top of cafe eggs benedict, or placed delicately on a seared salmon fillet at a fancy restaurant, the teensy leaves are packed with nutrients and flavour like you wouldn't believe. This week's guests on Business is Boring have come up with a home grow kit for microgreens, having created an environmentally sustainable seed layer innovation that helps people grow on demand quantities of the nutrient-rich microgreens on their kitchen windowsills. Catering to the huge numbers of people who don't have the space outside to plant vege gardens, this process is easy, quick, and most importantly takes up a tiny amount of space. The c

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Dr Brian Ward of soft-tissue repair company Aroa. Coming from New Zealand it is so important to keep in mind that what may seem pretty niche here can translate into a massive business overseas. On the podcast this week we talk to someone making big international business out of a health solution you might not have even heard of. Dr Paul Callaghan, who inspired Callaghan Innovation, had the idea that 100 great companies doing tightly focussed products with global ambitions could change our economy, and this week on Business is Boring we have one of those companies. You might not have heard of soft-tissue repair, but it is big business. It’s highly focussed healthcare, where in this instance a company called Aroa uses materials from sheep stomachs that were previously a low value commo

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Jade Tang-Taylor and Anna Guenther from Cheese Cartel. This week on the podcast we have something a bit different: our first returning guests. It's very cool to have someone come back to the podcast on a second mission, and today that's happening twice.Two people from two different previous podcasts have created a kind of entrepreneur supergroup. Cheese Cartel was the outcome of a bunch of friends who know how make things happen coming together for a higher purpose (cheese). A self-described slow startup, Cheese Cartel is an antidote to the kind of businesses that are out to take over the world at any and all costs. Instead, it is a cool meditation on growing a company with the best people possible to get the best results. Two of the Cheese Cartel’s five (and a half) founders join Bu

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Victoria Carter, founder of car-sharing company Cityhop. The benefits of car share in an increasingly dense and urban Auckland are clear. Why own a car and carry all of the costs when you use it so little? Why not go easier on the earth by sharing resources? Why not make more trips by public transport and only use a car when you really need one? Today this appears obvious, but how about 12 years ago, when Auckland’s pioneering car share service, Cityhop got underway? It was 12 years before smartphones, and before a lot of the awareness for the sharing economy had been built out by services like Airbnb. With Cityhop now in Auckland and Wellington, for way less per hour than an e-scooter you can hire a range of cars, from little runabouts to great big vans to completely electric Volksw

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Valentin Ozich, the founder of I Love Ugly. The fashion industry isn't an easy one to break into. A lot of it makes no sense and very rarely do New Zealand brands become leaders around the world, and that's exactly why I Love Ugly is special. Worn by some of the world’s top stars – with Justin Bieber famously buying 15 pairs of their signature pant – they had a store in LA with lines around the corner on opening day, built hundreds of thousands of followers and were one of the most highly engaged-with Facebook pages in New Zealand. I Love Ugly changed the rules to sidestep some of the silliest parts of fashion. Instead of running interest free loans to all their stockists like most small fashion labels would, they innovated their model and became pioneers in ecommerce. But then thing

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to James Bartle, founder of ethical clothing brand Outland Denim. This week on the podcast we talk to a man inspired to take on trafficking after watching the Liam Neeson film Taken. His journey led him to Cambodia to set up a factory, train staff, pioneer environmental production techniques and to today run one of the world’s fastest growing premium sustainability fashion brands. Right now, more likely than not, you are wearing something that you're not super proud of. All of us know that if we are in a piece that was a bargain at a fast fashion store or from a mass market brand that, chances are, the labour, fabric or environmental footprint is probably not up to scratch. Clothing production is one of the biggest industries in the world and it has a hugely harmful social and economic

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Campbell Brown, CEO of the company making sure Domino's has enough dough. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Kiri Nathan, the co-founder of a Māori-inspired fashion brand that's been gifted to some of the world's biggest names. Today we talk to Kiri Nathan, leader of a brand and company by her own name that fuses millennia of Māori tradition with an industry so often focused on the future. Kiri Nathan's pounamu, carved by her husband and business partner Jason, and her woven kākahu cloaks have been gifted to visitors from Barack Obama to the Duchess of Sussex. Both are part of their unique offering, contemporary pieces that represent the modern fashion world but with their roots in te ao Māori. It is a concept that she's had to forge room for, but she's succeeded through determination, talent and dedication. And she's not forgotten to carve the path out for those who wish to follow her jour

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Brianne West, founder of Ethique. On the podcast this week we have an amazing guest, one of the most successful companies to come out of the local high-growth ecosystem, now exporting their idea all around the world. Ethique are one of the best investments local venture experts the Icehouse has made, and they aren't even a traditional tech or widget maker. They sell soaps and shampoos and things that would come in wet form in plastic, except in dry form in cardboard. Ethique founder Brianne West joined us to discuss the novel approach to a problem right in front of everyone every day, but one that took her fresh approach to see. Because we are pretty funny animals, us humans.  Some people see problems and do things about them, and others do weird things. Take supermarket plastic bags

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Shaun Edlin, CEO of Dotterel, and Richard Quin, Callaghan Innovation Group Manager. This week’s podcast is a bit different, we’re going to be hearing from an entrepreneur about their company and journey - and also from the people behind the C-Prize, a competition that our entrepreneur’s company Dotterel took part in that’s helped take their innovations to the world.  Dotterel are a drone noise reduction company, they make technology that means drones don’t drone so much - allowing for things like stealth defence work and screen industry audio recording. CEO Shaun Edlin joined us to talk about how the C-Prize helped spur them on, and open up new markets. The C-Prize challenges New Zealand innovators to use new technologies to tackle complex global problems with creativity and inventiv

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Ian Taylor, founder of of Animation Research Ltd. This week on Business is Boring we have Ian Taylor - a man who has used science and technology to tell new stories in sport, movies and culture. His company Animation Research Limited has pioneered graphics that became world famous with the America’s Cup, and he has now set out to tell one of the great, barely-told stories of New Zealand. New Zealand Aotearoa has one of the world’s most amazing stories of navigation and exploration, yet for years when it was taught it was only Cook and Tasman named as our discoverers. Kupe has long been written off as a story, a Maori 'legend', and the seafaring feats of journeying across the ocean of the first people of New Zealand were labelled an accident. Everyone has heard of Cook. How many know

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Tim Brown, Co-founder of AllBirds. This weeks’ podcast has an extra special guest that has recently been on the minds, and feet, of people all around the world. It was a great chance to talk about a journey from New Zealand to the very top of the fashion industry, and Allbirds co-CEO Tim Brown turned up for an honest, engaging and helpful chat about what it takes to build something different, and what it takes personally and professionally to keep stepping up in terms of scale and expectations. It’s a story now famous in Aotearoa. A few short years ago a New Zealand professional footballer has a dream for a shoe made out of wool, and lots of our podcast listeners will have followed every step along the way.For many that first moment might have been seeing a Former All White fronting

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Erik Zydervelt, Founding Director and CEO of Mevo. This week the Business is Boring Podcast chats to the founder of a revolutionary new ride share program, prominent in Wellington and with big plans. It’s the future, it’s electric, it’s the vibe, it’s Mevo. This is an interesting one. In a few years people will probably be looking back and thinking it was absolutely bananas how many people had cars, and how little they used them. If you think about it, having an asset that you use less than an hour a day, yet where you are responsible for every bit of depreciation, servicing, insurance, risk and upkeep, well it doesn’t seem the brightest model. And as cities begin to price in all the free space they are given in the form of road parking; as automation advances; and as urban density i

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Hamish Pinkham, founder and creative director of R & V This week’s podcast tells the story of how a few mates turned a party for friends into one of the biggest events in New Zealand. There is a lot that is unlikely about the story: the people, the place, the success…. and it was never assured. It’s taken a lot of risk, determination, wrong turns and hard times to make R & V such an event that for you to know it all we have to say is its initials. In 2003 a group of mates threw a party for 400 people in a vineyard in Gisborne. 2000 people came and it began what has become a festival that is famous on the world stage and a rite of passage for kiwi youth. Rhythm and Vines grew and grew. From small beginnings they added days to the event, Internationals, camping, comedy and a whole rost

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Paris Georgia's Paris Mitchell Temple and Georgia Cherrie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you take a step back and look at it, it is kind of bananas that New Zealand went from no real cafe culture, to having a coffee so associated with down-under - the flat white -now ubiquitous around the world. This episode of Business is Boring talks to a man who has as much to do with bringing great coffee here, and then taking that back to the world, as anyone else in the country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to R&D programme leader Dr Peter Surman and Simone Hollier. Did you know that there is a local pharmaceutical company in the second stage of trials to use ketamine to treat depression - and that they're looking for people to participate in the trial? Well, here's a podcast for you dear listener. For this week's Business is Boring we meet two of the 800 workers at a very under-the-radar local drug maker. You might be surprised to know New Zealand has a big Pharma company, and you could also be forgiven for not knowing at all that it was almost sold off, but in this half hour chat we learn about the history, current work and future plans of Douglas Pharmaceuticals. Douglas is a family-owned drug giant, that since 1967 has grown from a company making generic drugs once they fell out of pat

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Flamingo Scooters CEO and co-founder's Nick Hyland and Jacksen Love. Around Auckland lately, and Wellington for a little longer, you might have noticed a bunch of bright pink scooters popping up, and this week’s Business is Boring podcast meets the two twenty-something kiwi guys behind this company. It’s no trivial feat to launch such an enterprise, especially when you are taking on some of the world’s biggest and best funded companies. How do they do it? Co-Founders Nick Hyland and Jacksen Love of Flamingo Scooters first got properly started in Wellington, where, after a long process, Wellington Council approved two scooter companies to take part in an 18 month trial to see how last-mile mobility could work for the Capital. One was Jump, a division of mega transport company Uber, on

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Vaka Interactiv CEO and co-founder Jesse Armstrong. This week’s Business is Boring podcast talks with an entrepreneur who is changing the way that stories, especially Māori and Pasifika stories, are told in museums, art and business. In a half hour chat with CEO Jesse Armstrong we hear about how they founded their company, Vaka Interactive, landed their idea for pictures that talk to you, got into Te Papa’s cultural idea accelerator and ended up making a piece of technology that would fit right into a Harry Potter movie. Their idea traces back to a visit to a museum, and a realisation they had, that although museums have come a long way in some ways, a lot of what goes on is still quite passive. There’ll be an exhibit and maybe a little bit of text to explain it. And the bits of tex