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’s joined by Christine Langdon, CEO of The Good Registry. Giving gifts can be hard. And when you think about all the unwanted gifts that are given every year, you’re suddenly looking at a big waste problem. What if people were instead able to give people the ability to pick a charity of their choice to give those gift dollars to instead? That was the thought that started The Good Registry, a social enterprise that helps people and companies give people the gift of giving. It supports a diverse roster of worthy local causes, and has so far helped channel more than half a million dollars that might have otherwise been spent on Favourites and Instant Kiwis. Co-founder and CEO, Christine Langdon, left a successful career in corporate communications to pursue the business. She joined us via Zoom from Wellington to discuss the journey, how it is going and how a business to do good can do well. 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’s joined by Hongi Luo, brand director at TikTok. In terms of cultural reach and impact, the biggest tech app in the world right now may well be TikTok. It’s where music companies are trying to break acts, it’s where memes are emerging, it’s where a lot of people find their news and information. It’s wildly varied, and it’s kind of beautiful how so many people are able to create, share and enjoy their eccentricities, enthusiasms and interests without conforming to one style or expectation. It’s one of the world’s biggest brands right now, and as brand director, New Zealander Hongi Luo is helming some of its biggest music and cultural activations, like live-streaming the Brit Awards red carpet and partnering with huge stars. Hailing from Auckland, she was part of the small team establishing Uber in NZ and Australia, before helping launch an agency in Singapore and heading to London to work with TikTok. To talk about being part of such massive growth companies, finding new ways for creativity to grow, and life right now in London, Hongi Luo joined us on Zoom this week for a chat. 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’s joined by Simon Coley, co-founder of All Good and Karma Drinks. Bananas are one of the most popular grocery items in New Zealand – we buy enough of them to eat 18kg each per year. But for years bananas were also a symbol of the kind of capitalism that saw companies exploit workers, overthrow governments and farm mono-crops until they failed. That’s why Simon Coley and a few old friends got together and started All Good, to start bringing in bananas that were fair trade. These bananas have been a hit, capturing 7% of the market, showing people will pay a little more for something a lot better for the world and workers. And this has led to a wave of other fair trade bananas, which has to be a good thing. This month All Good is upping the ante by going carbon zero, offsetting emissions with permanent Amazon rainforest protected plantings. But the really amazing thing about this is that All Good bananas is only part of what the company does in the space. Along with All Good, Coley also co-founded Karma Drinks, whose work with growers of cola nuts in Sierra Leone is helping a community grow equitably, and expanding around the world. To learn about changing some of the grocery mainstays for the better, purpose led business and his entrepreneur’s journey, he joins for a chat in this week’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business Is Boring is taking a break over the summer holidays. We'll be back in the new year, but until then we're we're republishing some of our favourite interviews of 2020. This week: Simon talks with bestselling author Stacy Gregg. First released September 3, 2020. Stacy Gregg’s first job in media was as a secretary, a job she was fired from before being rehired as a staff writer. She went on to specialise in fashion writing, ultimately starting and selling a pioneering media title before sidestepping into a different field entirely – writing children’s books. Her specialty in that field was stories about ponies and horses, and her books – in series like Pony Club Secrets and standalone titles like The Princess and the Foal – have now found a large audience both here and overseas. It took a lot of time and business savvy to build and maintain that audience, in the process becoming one of New Zealand’s most successful international writers. To talk about the work that goes into being a bestselling author and the business of books, Stacy Gregg joined Simon Pound for this episode of Business is Boring. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business Is Boring is taking a break over the summer holidays. We'll be back in the new year, but until then we're we're republishing some of our favourite interviews of 2020. This week: Simon talks with Scottie Chapman from Spring Sheep Milk Co. First released July 16, 2020. New Zealand is famous all around the world for sheep, and for milk. But what it hasn’t been so well known for is sheep milk, but this week on the podcast we’re meeting a man out to change that. That’s right, sheep milk. It’s an alternative milk on the rise across SE Asia. It’s easier to digest than cow’s milk and has a way lower environmental impact than dairy. And although it might sound like it would take a lot of sheep to get volume up, with some selective breeding and some kiwi smarts Spring Sheep Milk Co have found a way to make this primary product into high value exports. And it’s not the first time that company’s CEO has pulled that off. Scottie Chapman had his first big success with Old Mout cider, the brand he started that led huge category growth, making cider a supermarket mainstay. That business was sold to DB and Heineken, and it’s gone on to be one of the biggest ciders in the world. And you know what? When he started that journey people told him cider wasn’t popular. He proved them wrong, and will he also be right about sheep milk? To talk the journey, what sheep milk is used for and why sheep make a lot more sense for the world than ever more cows, Scottie Chapman joined us for a half hour chat. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business Is Boring is taking a break over the summer holidays. We'll be back in the new year, but until then we're we're republishing some of our favourite interviews of 2020. This week: Simon talks with Rachel Taulelei, CEO of Kono. First released June 4, 2020. While the full and lasting effects of Covid-19 are still to play out, and things are looking pretty fractious, there are some companies making the very best out of the current situation. One of these is Kono. Demand for New Zealand produce overseas is currently up. Our country's careful and healthy management of the pandemic has shone a light on our products internationally as people want high quality food and beverage, made with Papatuanuku in mind. That is exactly what Kono does. It's a whānau-owned Māori food and beverage business led by CEO Rachel Taulelei. They sell food, wine and produce brands all around the globe, from wines you know like Tohu, to Annie’s fruit bars. Before this role, Taulelei founded Yellow Brick Road, a company selling the best seafood to top hospitality operators, and was NZ Trade Commissioner in Los Angeles. Today she is on the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, and you might have seen her on one of the Conversations on Covid-19 that the PM was running. To talk about what being whānau owned means and her hopes for the rebuild post-Covid-19, Taulelei joined us on the podcast. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. 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’s joined by economist Tony Alexander. As chief economist at the BNZ for 25 years, Tony Alexander held one of the biggest jobs in New Zealand economics. He helped advise the bank and nation through a lot of economic change and disruption – until last year, when he decided to disrupt himself and left. Since then you can still find him in the media as one of the leading commentators, and now through Tony's View, a weekly free newsletter, with a paid, more detailed, subscription offer. In a year in which a lot of commentators have come a cropper, his measured, data-driven offering has been fantastic. Tony specialises in helping people understand the economy and making it simple and clear enough that they can make better decisions on their businesses and house purchases. It’s a big goal, but like the saying goes: any old fool can make something complex, it takes genius to make it simple. To chat commentary, predictions, making yourself redundant, housing obsessions and what’s next for him and all of us, Tony Alexander joined us via Zoom from Wellington this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pour yourself some eggnog and join the hosts of The Spinoff’s podcast network for our annual Superpod round up of the year that was. Representing Gone By Lunchtime, Dietary Requirements, The Real Pod, Papercuts, The Fold and On The Rag our hosts dive into the key events, issues, heroes and villains of 2020. From National’s botched election campaign to Ben Thomas’ take on TikTok, via the collapse of Bauer, the rise of oat milk, with a detour through controversial frozen grapes and Simon’s Sausage Spot, there’s something for everyone in this year’s Superpod. Featuring special guests producer T and Covid-19. 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’s joined by Blackbird’s Sam Wong. Last year one of the biggest venture capital operators in Australia moved over and set up offices in New Zealand. The company, Blackbird, is famous for backing big companies like Canva, but has also been involved in supporting local successes from very early on. One of those is like Sunfed, the makers of plant protein meat alternatives, and it’s the Blackbird partner that led the Sunfed deal who has come over to set up the local office. Sam Wong started her career at a prestigious law firm. She did well but didn’t quite love it so left, moved home, worked minimum wage jobs to pay her way and got into start-up life. She ran product for a high-growth ecommerce company, founded a company that went through the VC cycle, and got into working at Blackbird. Blackbird VC has invested in a bunch of local companies like AskNicely, FreightFish, AO Air, Partly, Multitudes and Mint Innovation. And it’s recently announced it’s raised a lot more money, partnered with the Government to invest, and run big events for the local start-up ecosystem. To talk moving from law to the start-up world to VC, what it takes to be a great company – and a great venture capitalist – and how Blackbird works to back local companies, Sam Wong joined Business is Boring for a chat. 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’s joined by See-LEVEL founder Dudley Jackson. Around 25% of the population experiences seasickness to an extent that makes ocean-going uncomfortable or even impossible. If you happen to be an engineer working on a sea-based wind farm and are among that 25%, you might find getting to and from work a nightmare – and you might not be much use once you get there. It’s a problem this week’s guest knows well. Dudley Jackson loves the sea, and with dreams of bringing his kids up on the water sold the family home and moved with his wife, two kids and a dog onto a 40 foot yacht – only to find out the hard way he was one of the 25%. The dream had to be put on ice, until a new technology came along that caught his interest because it was making a lot of people sick. Dudley looked at virtual reality headsets and had a lightbulb moment. If some people found these sets created motion sickness, could they be used to reverse that feeling and get people out of it too? It was a unique idea that with his background in IT he was able to experiment with and landed a concept. His company See-LEVEL has now picked up funding, Callaghan Innovation R&D support and is now in use with operators like the Navy, tourism companies and overseas wind farms. To talk about it all, Dudley Jackson joined us via Zoom for a chat. 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’s joined by Foodprint founder and CEO Michal Garvey. Food waste is such a massive problem that it’s hard to fully comprehend. Everyone would have heard the stats that say more than a third of food, fruit and vegetables are wasted, and one of the many causes is the struggle to accurately match supply to demand. Cafes and food sellers will fill a cabinet and hope with the best intentions, and the last thing they want to do is waste that food, but if people don’t buy those fresh items they don’t have much of a shelf life. This week’s guest, Michal Garvey, saw the beginning of a solution to this while living and working in Sweden, and came back to New Zealand with the goal of helping to make the food industry more sustainable while at the same time giving customers access to heavily discounted food. The app, Foodprint, is an ingenious way for great cafes and food makers like &sushi, Ripe and Bluebells Cakery to list items for half price and ensure they sell everything through. It helps give people great food for less, measures carbon saved and cuts down the upsetting waste. To talk about the journey, the uptake and what’s next, Foodprint founder and CEO Michal Garvey joined Business is Boring for a chat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’ve probably stood in a supermarket queue and thought you could be spending your short time on this earth more productively. That’s what happened to this week’s Business is Boring guest, William Chomley, who instead of shrugging off these musings started a company to solve the problem. IMAGR is a New Zealand start-up that uses computer vision to power smart shopping carts, with the ultimate goal of removing check outs, meaning grocery store customers never have to queue again. William Chomley was working in an investment fund and didn’t have time to wait in supermarket lines, but he did find the time to build out and validate the concept of solving the problem. His company went from side-hustle to more than full-time, raising multiple investment rounds including $14 million dollars this year in a round led by Japanese tech giant Toshiba. IMAGR are now working on delivering the shopping experience of the future in Japan and Auckland, with a team of hardware and software experts solving a problem that Amazon and Alibaba have spent billions on. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is episode one of Coming Home, a new five-part podcast series from The Spinoff podcast network, in partnership with Kiwibank. We're sharing it with you here because we think if you like Business is Boring you might find this interesting too. Have a listen and subscribe on your platform of choice to hear the rest of the series. New episodes arriving weekly. Coming Home delves into the phenomenon of high achieving New Zealanders returning to Aotearoa in the era of Covid-19. Join hosts Duncan Greive and Jane Yee as they seek to find out who these returnees are, why they left New Zealand in the first place, the reasons for their homecoming and what their arrival means for all of us. Featuring Peter Gordon, Julia Arnott-Neenee, Paul Spoonley, Jarrod Kerr, Rachel Morris, Joel Kefali, Polly Fryer and Mahoney Turnbull. 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’s joined by Lisa King from AF Drinks. As a society, we don’t have a particularly healthy relationship with alcohol. We work hard to ignore the fact alcohol is a serious carcinogen, and even harder to ignore the social and medical effects and costs of drinking. If we thought about that when people say they’re not drinking, we’d recognise that’s probably the better idea – but it’s not like that yet. This week’s guest should be well known to regular listeners of the podcast, having been on before as the founder of Eat My Lunch. Lisa King decided to take a break from drinking earlier this year, and the weird reactions that prompted from people led her to reevaluate her and our general relationship with drinking. Now she’s helping amplify the conversation about changing our relationship to drinking, and helping make it easier to take control of your choices, with her new venture AF Drinks. The first products are alcohol-free gin and tonics that actually taste good, and they’re hitting supermarkets everywhere shortly. To talk about saving non-drinkers from horrible warm orange juice, starting an alcohol free drinks company and the reaction and reception so far, Lisa King joined Business is Boring for a chat. 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’s joined by Nada Piatek, co-founder and MD of Again Again. Every year, New Zealanders throw out 300 million takeaway coffee cups. Even the ones that are compostable, most often aren’t composted – only one in 400 compostable coffee cups make it to the compost, in fact.Many people have Keep Cups, but not everyone always has their Keep Cup on them at all times. And then there aren’t many choices. But one New Zealand company is out to change that. Again Again offers a service where users can pay $3 to borrow a reusable stainless steel cup with a lid. Bring it back, and you will get your $3 back, with the cafe washing it for future use. It saves cafes money on takeaway cups, and it reduces waste. So far it’s helped remove 840,000 cups from the waste stream each year, and it’s only just getting started. Again Again began in Wellington, has 160 plus cafes around the country in the program, and is now looking to expand their impact and mission. They’re currently equity crowdfunding through PledgeMe – where they’re looking to raise at least $300k to help them expand to tackle other takeaway waste problems, including an exciting new project with Garage Project around their flagons. The company co-founder and MD, Nada Piatek joined us by Zoom, for a chat about how 20 years of entrepreneurship and sustainability initiatives led to this concept, the raise and the goals of the company. 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’s joined by Morgan Donoghue from InMusic. Auckland’s Karangahape Rd has long been a home of live music, but it might be news to you that it’s also an internationally recognised hotspot for music software innovation and excellence. It's where InMusic, owner of some of the world’s biggest music brands like Numark, Denon and Akai make their software, while other big brands with offices in the neighbourhood include Serato and Melodics. Today’s guest has a connection to all of them. Morgan Donoghue was with Serato in key roles during its growth, is an investor in Melodics and is currently the MD at InMusic. On top of all that he’s also the COO for a very interesting new earphone technology company called Nura, who use software to create personalised audio experiences for listeners. Nura hit the news recently for a deal with the All Blacks, where the team took equity in the company in return for a sponsorship deal – a novel and interesting business approach. It’s just the latest step in a long and varied career in music for Donoghue, who before these roles acted as the head of global music for Vodafone and manager of Hollie Smith along with his wife Nicky. He joined Business is Boring this week to tell a few of the many amazing yarns he’s got from his time in the music industry, and talk about the All Blacks deal, his many different roles and how to make New Zealand music tech sing. 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’s joined by Jo Mills, co-founder of Fuel50. The world of work has obviously changed a lot recently, making many of the HR processes employers and employees use increasingly unfit for purpose. With the rise of the gig economy, people changing careers, new ways of working and a growing understanding of the value of people bringing their whole selves to work, the traditional approach of a strict job description, set hours and a once yearly review are quite out of date, yet still being used. One company out to change that is Fuel50, founded by Jo Mills and Anne Fulton – two New Zealanders working to help some of the biggest US companies with their people strategy. Their AI-powered software allows for all the permutations of shifting projects, personnel and interests, matching up people to work and creating new ways to allow managers and team members to shape their careers and lives in the best way for all. The company is at the forefront of a lot of the conversations you might have heard about agile working and work-life balance and all the other good new things. To discuss this, the future of work, making it in the US from NZ and an upcoming spot on Southern SaaS – the excellent SaaS conference for local stars – co-founder Jo Mills joined Business is Boring for a chat. 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’s joined by Hengjie Wang and Alliv Samson, co-founders of Kami. If you have any school-aged kids in your life, you’ll know all about the changes and fast-adoption of technology the education sector has seen this year. During lockdown us parents had what seemed like endless repetitive problems with Google slides, things not saving, appearing or formatting properly and generally just not working. But one New Zealand-based education tool has taken a bunch of these frustrations and made it easy to collaborate, annotate, work and see what others are doing in a shared online workspace. The app is called Kami – which means paper in Japanese – and it’s helping create a shared learning environment for millions of kids and adults around the world. The app is now used in more than one in three schools in the US. They are closing in on 20 million users worldwide, and you might have seen them in the news as they recently made an offer for all New Zealand schools to be able to use it for free for the foreseeable future. Kami was launched by three final year students at the University of Auckland, co-founders who picked up a chairman and a business plan through an entrepreneur challenge, and have now built the business into a global force in the highly controlled and highly contested education space. To talk about the journey, running the business over lockdown with a new baby, and what’s next, co-founders Hengjie Wang and Alliv Samson joined Business is Boring this week for a chat. 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’s joined by Josh Emett, Michelin-starred chef and restaurant owner. Josh Emett is a household name in New Zealand, famous for having worked and won Michelin stars with Gordon Ramsay over more than a decade, before coming home to open a string of successful restaurants and find fame as a judge on Masterchef. You may have visited his restaurants Madam Woo, or Hawker and Roll, or Rata, or Ostro, or read his cookbook of collected greatest hits, The Recipe, or seen his Instagram videos with his sons helping as sous chefs in the home kitchen. All his other restaurants to date have been partnerships, but this year he decided to take over Waiheke luxury boutique hotel and restaurant The Oyster Inn and open a new restaurant, Onslow, from scratch with his wife Helen. What’s it been like for them to take on so much solo risk in a year where running a restaurant has hardly been plain sailing, then doubling down with a fine dining venture? To talk about his career, how he got to where he is and what he's doing next, Josh Emett joined Business is Boring for a chat just two days out from the opening of Onslow. 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’s joined by Simon Farrell-Green, founder of Here magazine. This podcast has always had a special interest in the ways people have managed to keep making things happen in business while the world seems to be falling apart around them. This week’s guest did just that when he crowdfunded and launched a new magazine title during a time of supreme uncertainty, when magazines were effectively banned in New Zealand. Simon Farrell-Green will be familiar to many listeners from his years of food reviews and feature writing for Metro, bfm, Eat Here Now, Kia Ora and as editor of Home. When Home’s publisher Bauer Media folded in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Simon wasted little time in launching a new title of his own, with the backing of a successful Boosted campaign. The magazine, Here, is a colourful and fun celebration of the magazine format that acts as a time capsule of design and these times. With the second issue out now, Simon joined Business is Boring to talk about the journey. 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's guest is Dr Elizabeth Berryman, founder and CEO of mental health app chnnl. Those in the medical profession have difficult jobs, and it can be especially tough for trainee and new doctors. Today’s guest, Dr Elizabeth Berryman, was a trainee doctor herself when she started wondering how many others in her position were under the same pressures and feeling the same stress. A lot, it turned out – more than half the people she surveyed reported bullying, harassment or other unacceptable workplace conditions. This led her to research and develop an app to track and understand the current state of frontline workers in the health sector, through daily check-ins on important measures. The app can predict depression and anxiety, with 90% accuracy, and help point people to timely help. When Berryman started sharing news about the healthcare focused app she got requests from other corporates, and now chnnl has been extended to be for all workforces. She joined Business is Boring this week to talk about her path to entrepreneurship, the app, and the state of it all. – Sign up to The Spinoff's newsletter Rec Room for weekly recommendations along with all our latest videos and podcasts. 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 Dr Ju Zhang, CEO of Formus Labs. Hip and knee replacements are fairly common surgeries, but you’d be surprised how often they need to be revised or redone completely. That’s because every body is unique, and it’s hard for doctors to know what the perfect replacement piece looks like before they open a patient up. Local company Formus Labs wants to help with that. They’re using AI and computer modelling to help surgeons design bespoke surgery plans for patients with their cloud-based software, taking CT scan data and building a computer model to help select the right implant and right approach. It’s revolutionary tech that removes the guesswork about size, shape, stresses and orientation – and it’s picking up a global market. The company stemmed in large part from the research of CEO Dr Ju Zhang, who joined host Simon Pound to talk about the company’s journey, their concept and what they plan to do next. 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 Jonathan Ring, CEO of C-Prize winning company Zincovery. Considering how important steel is to so much of the construction and manufacturing industry, it hasn’t seen a great deal of innovation, and it isn’t particularly environmentally-friendly, either. That’s especially true of galvanised steel, where the materials used create waste problems and tonnes valuable resources like zinc and acids usually go down the drain. But now a New Zealand company has a plan to fix this and create the first clean process, and it’s an idea that’s getting noticed. Zincovery has just won the $100,000 C-Prize – the Callaghan Innovation challenge to find environmental answers through clever business innovation. To talk about the C-Prize and creating change in the construction and manufacturing industries, Zincovery CEO Jonathan Ring joined Simon Pound this week for a chat. 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 Pony Club Secrets and The Princess and the Foal author Stacy Gregg. Stacy Gregg’s first job in media was as a secretary, a job she was fired from before being rehired as a staff writer. She went on to specialise in fashion writing, ultimately starting and selling a pioneering media title before sidestepping into a different field entirely – writing children’s books. Her specialty in that field was stories about ponies and horses, and her books – in series like Pony Club Secrets and standalone titles like The Princess and the Foal – have now found a large audience both here and overseas. It took a lot of time and business savvy to build and maintain that audience, in the process becoming one of New Zealand’s most successful international writers. To talk about the work that goes into being a bestselling author and the business of books, Stacy Gregg joined Simon Pound for this episode of Business is Boring. 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 the founders of new fashion website Ensemble. When Bauer Media announced the closure of its operations in the last lockdown, a lot of talented magazine and media people were put out of a job and into a state of uncertainty. While some Bauer titles have since been resurrected – and others may still be – the advertising market and the economics of running these magazines are unlikely to be the same as before. Bit with change comes the chance to have a look and see if old models still apply, and this week's guests found the standard approach to fashion media was way out of date. Zoe Walker Ahwa was editor-in-chief at Fashion Quarterly and Simply You, the top commercial and cultural institutions in local fashion media. It was the culmination of 15 years working in the sector, on titles like Viva, Next and right back in the beginning, Runway Reporter, an online-first media outlet about 15 years ahead of its time. When her titles were suddenly closed down, Zoe connected with Rebecca Wadey, who had been a writer and contributor to Metro magazine, as well as working on the commercial side of the industry for brands including Esteé Lauder, Bobbi Brown and Kate Sylvester. At first the pair considered relaunching one of the old established titles, but eventually decided that so much of what those titles represented was yesterday’s news. Instead, they’ve launched a new online-first, member-supported outlet called Ensemble, covering fashion, culture and life with a more diverse view and class-conscious cultural lens than traditional magazines might have allowed. To talk about how the idea came to fruition, the relevance of fashion and beauty today, the freedom of publishing online and the whole upside down world we now live in, Ensemble’s editor Zoe Walker Ahwa and publisher and partnerships director Rebecca Wadey joined Simon for a chat over Zoom. 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 Sam Harrop, Master of Wine. Wine is big business in New Zealand. The prices we command for our wine are some of the best margins in the world, and just about anywhere you go in the world there will be a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc on the menu. But this week’s guest believes the potential of our fine wine is only starting to be realised. New Zealand has had many trail blazers on the winemaking side of things, and a few on the industry side too. Sam Harrop is a bit of both. He worked as winemaker both here and overseas, before becoming winemaker and buyer for massive UK grocer Marks & Spencer, revolutionising the way they made, bought and marketed wine. Then he became one of fewer than 400 people ever to make the grade as a Master of Wine, and spent 10 years as co-chair of the International Wine Challenge, perhaps the most influential gold sticker a bottle of wine can get. Sam now splits his time between his winemaking business in Spain, which makes nearly six million bottles a year of some of the world’s best organic wine, and living in New Zealand, where he makes beautiful single vineyard wines with a focus on simplicity. Sam joined us to chat about his journey, the fine wine business and how he makes such good wine. 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 Sarah Ramsay, CEO of United Machinists. Not that long ago in the scheme of things New Zealand did a lot of its own manufacturing. While some of the industries we used to have wouldn’t make much sense to restart now, there’s always room for specialists, no matter how small your home market. There’s a new generation of high-tech manufacturers thriving in New Zealand right now, and this week’s guest is one of the best examples. Sarah Ramsay’s company United Machinists recently expanded its Dunedin HQ, taking over another section of land and building a state-of-the-art temperature-controlled facility with millions of dollars of new machinery. It allowed them to make more high-tech components and assemblies for things as diverse as camera mounts and prosthetic hands. Sarah has a background in investment and marketing and came to the family-owned business through her husband, and in moving to the CEO role has led their growth into a company set up for another few generations of business. She has also been a driving force in the local Dunedin start-up scene and created a body helping lead the renaissance of engineering in the region, now serving as director of the Southern Otago Regional Engineering Collective, SOREC. To talk about high-tech business, manufacturing, growth and the journey, Sarah Ramsay, CEO of United Machinists joined Business is Boring for a chat. 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 Mitchell Pham from Augen Software Group. If the last century was the American century, so far this has been the Asian century. The last three decades have seen amazing growth in wealth and geopolitical influence for a range of Asian countries, in large part due to new trade linkages around the world. And in the digital present, those linkages should only increase. One New Zealander working to help make this happen in both his own business and at ain international level is Mitchell Pham. Mitchell came to New Zealand from Vietnam, but a very different Vietnam to the one that exists now. He was 12 years old when he fled the country as a refugee – outrunning machine gun fire surviving exposure to the elements and running out of food before being picked up by an Indonesian oil rig crew. The next two years were spent across four different refugee camps, before finally arriving in New Zealand. Arriving here alone in the mid 1980s, Mitchell's next challenge was to adjust to the education system – but he thrived, meeting friends at university who he set up a company with that would became the Augen Software Group. Today, his software development company has offices across New Zealand and Vietnam, and Mitchell is a member of a number of national and international bodies helping increase the quality of our digital landscape. He’s the chair of the Digital Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, and New Zealand’s representative on the Asia Society’s Global Council, as well as chair of the the New Zealand Tech Industry Association and the Financial Technology Industry Group. He joined the podcast for a chat about his incredible journey, contributing to the industry and what’s next. Read more about Mitchell's story on The Spinoff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Covid-19 has changed the world for a lot of businesses, and one of the hardest hit sectors has been tourist accommodation. New Zealand is a bit lucky that we have domestic tourism as a possibility, but it’s hard out there, and this week’s guest knows all about it. By age 28, Amelia Gain had owned, run and sold a boutique hotel before launching a successful property management software system serving customers all over the world, from bed and breakfasts in Queenstown to luxury lodges in Morocco. To talk about the state of the industry in a post-Covid world, how she built the business and the importance of incubators and the future, she joins host Simon Pound for a chat. 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. Earlier this year news came out that local company Soul Machines, makers of artificially intelligent, emotionally responsive avatars - what some call digital humans- had raised another $40m USD to continue to take their technology to the world. You might have seen their products - they work with AirNZ and ANZ here, and so many companies overseas, from the makers of Mercedes Benz to big banks in the UK. This success isn’t the first rodeo for the Chief Business Officer there. Greg Cross also was a co-founder and partner in the success of Power by Proxi, another commercialisation of research play that ended up with their wireless charging company sold to Apple for reportedly more than $100m. Before that Greg Cross was Chair at the Icehouse, and had a storied career in tech, doing things such as heading up Microsoft when they launched Windows 95 in NZ. Start me up! He took out the 2019 Flying Kiwi Award and was inducted into the NZ Hi-Tech Hall of Fame at the recent Hi-Tech Awards. Not bad for a kid that left school without an idea of what he wanted to do. To talk his journey in tech, what’s next for AI interfaces, and how NZ needs to think global, Greg Cross joined us for a good big chat you can check out below. 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 Scottie Chapman from Spring Sheep Milk Co. New Zealand is famous all around the world for sheep, and for milk. But what it hasn’t been so well known for is sheep milk, but this week on the podcast we’re meeting a man out to change that. That’s right, sheep milk. It’s an alternative milk on the rise across SE Asia. It’s easier to digest than cow’s milk and has a way lower environmental impact than dairy. And although it might sound like it would take a lot of sheep to get volume up, with some selective breeding and some kiwi smarts Spring Sheep Milk Co have found a way to make this primary product into high value exports. And it’s not the first time that company’s CEO has pulled that off. Scottie Chapman had his first big success with Old Mout cider, the brand he started that led huge category growth, making cider a supermarket mainstay. That business was sold to DB and Heineken, and it’s gone on to be one of the biggest ciders in the world. And you know what? When he started that journey people told him cider wasn’t popular. He proved them wrong, and will he also be right about sheep milk? To talk the journey, what sheep milk is used for and why sheep make a lot more sense for the world than ever more cows, Scottie Chapman joined us for a half hour chat. 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 Lovina McMurchy of Movac. Living in New Zealand we are a bit insulated from just how big some of the world;’s biggest companies are. Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks are bigger financial entities than many countries, and the things the leaders in those organisations do shape how people live. And there are some kiwis very high in those companies making those decisions. If you think about how central to life wifi in Starbucks became to so many people before mobile data was affordable, and if you’ve ever been a tourist popping in to take advantage of it for example, you have a kiwi to thank. And if you’ve ever used Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant to order a product chances are you have a kiwi to thank for that. Actually, the same kiwi for both. Lovina McMurchy started her career here, but after an MBA from Harvard, she found success in the states, leading up important parts of Starbucks, Skype and Amazon before heading back home to Aotearoa last year to help lead a big new investment fund at Movac. To talk the journey, what her hopes for NZ business are and how people can make it in the world’s biggest companies, Lovina joined us for a chat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rob Teina from Supreme Plumbing in Auckland has worked out the formula to keep people interested in his business, growing an audience of over 4,000 on the Supreme Plumbing Instagram. Sharing everything from his tradition of giving the truck a wash ahead of the working week, taking "the bossman" – one of his young children – for a pastry and a cuppa mid-morning or exposing what good and bad workmanship looks like on site, Teina has grown a huge following from his staff of 10. He hit the headlines earlier this year with a series of cash giveaways to help businesses needing a hand over lockdown, a period that he spent on the road a lot as an essential worker. To chat about building his business and brand, learning a trade from apprenticeship up, and cultivating the mindset and conditions for growth, Rob Teina joined us on Business is Boring. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simon Cooke and Ryan Carville are the founders of brewers yeast company Froth Technologies. Until very recently, even in the booming local craft brewing scene, almost all yeast used was imported from a very small group of commercialised strains. The yeast being used didn't even scrape the surface of the astounding variety of yeasts available, and their potential use in creating new, interesting beers. Last year the two Wellington craft beer professionals set out to change the scope of yeasts available for New Zealand brewers. Their company, Froth Technologies is, after a successful crowdfund last year, working with leading-edge tech and science, and bringing local yeast to the people. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emma Lewisham is the founder of a skincare brand selling products to address the effects of sun on skin pigment. She's also launching a new initiative to take back the brand's packaging, along with any other beauty packaging, in return for a voucher for their products. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacob Kohn and Dr Gaetano Dedual are the co-founders of Futurity, who are in the process of bringing a bio-refinery to Tairāwhiti Gisborne, that would use new techniques to break pine down into its building block chemicals, that then become the platform chemicals that can be used for plastics, resins and all sorts of applications today provided by oil-derivatives. It’s an awesomely ambitious project that’s aiming to create jobs, increase the value we get for timber grown here, and help keep carbon in the ground. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Taulelei is the CEO of Kono, a whānau-owned Māori food and beverage business selling food, wine and produce brands all around the globe. Before this role, Taulelei founded Yellow Brick Road, a company selling the best seafood to top hospitality operators, and was NZ Trade Commissioner in Los Angeles. Today she is on the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, and you might have seen her on one of the Conversations on Covid-19 that the PM was running. To talk about what being whānau owned means and her hopes for the rebuild post-Covid-19, Rachel Taulelei joined us on the podcast. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Bell is an investor and business advisor. As a professor at US university Wharton, he taught many successful business founders and innovators. He's been an investor in pioneering companies like Diapers.com, Bonobos and Harry’s, and worked with Warby Parker, a US glasses company that's changing the world of how glasses are made, sold and priced.Its innovative direct-to-consumer model allows people to get pairs sent to their houses to try and then send back. It battles against monster incumbents that own the whole distribution chain, charge what they like - and still manage to make cool glasses affordable. It’s now a retail phenomenon, and Bell was one of the first investors and advisors to the company. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Miller-Sharma is the general manager at Ruby. She's one of the driving forces behind Mindful NZ, an industry body bringing together local producers to advocate for better standards of traceability and to create locally appropriate codes of conduct to find out what the industry is facing. Emily talks about initiatives like apprentices, moving toward more sustainable choices throughout the business and the story of Ruby. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Asantha Wijeyeratne is the CEO of PaySauce. Since coming to New Zealand in 1988 as a young accountant, he has built multiple million-dollar businesses in the payroll space. Seeing that the payroll system could be done better he launched an early technology solution in 1995 called SmartBooks. Later know as SmartPayroll it grew to process a good portion of New Zealand business payrolls before eventually being sold to local tech giant Datacom in 2013. But there was still an itch to innovate in the space again with a mobile-first offering that took advantage of emerging tech. So in 2014, PaySauce was born. PaySauce has been in the news lately with its offer of a free "essentials" payroll solution, PaySimple, for New Zealand businesses affected by Covid-19. Its successful right issue brought on board its first institutional investor. To talk about the journey, what this disrupted world means for business, and how his work in the community helped lead to a Queen’s Service Medal, Wijeyeratne joined us by Zoom from Sri Lanka where he was visiting family at the beginning of lockdown. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice Lines and Nicholas Burrowes publish Homestyle magazine, and Nicholas is also chairman of the Magazine Publishers Association. On this episode we talk about what it takes to run magazines locally, what is involved in creating something people love to spend time with and what does the new business reality of Covi-19 mean for the sustainability of the titles we love? Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mel Lewis is the founder of Ultrella. Natural deodorant hasn’t always had the best image. Everyone probably knows someone they can smell at five paces who told them they run a crystal under their arm occasionally to help with odour. Some 'natural' mixtures have so much rosemary and coconut oil that you end up smelling like a body odour lamb roast. Mel was tackling an endurance 100km challenge, and needed something that worked but that wasn’t full of nasties. She figured there had to be a better option to what she could find, so applied for a research grant through Callaghan Innovation, got it, and partnered with a product developer expert to create a range of natural products that act like a natural botox, suppressing perspiration without the need for aluminium. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew Chapman is the founder of HR search company ChapmanCG. He has grown his business to the point that it’s attracted significant investment from a listed Japanese company, and also helped build an eco-resort island in remote Indonesia as well as being part of a global team that founded one of the toughest ultra races in the world (the Snowman Race in Bhutan). To talk his journey, tips for remote work and why he chose and is optimistic for NZ, Matthew Chapman joined us by zoom from Auckland’s west coast. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pat MacFie is one of the founders of local agency Indigo and one of the driving forces behind Manaaki.io, a platform that helps give support to local businesses trying to navigate Covid-19 by linking up experts to answer questions from the business community. It's a great service, with some of the biggest names in Aotearoa's business scene volunteering their time. His company turned Manaaki around as a concept and launched the website in just days, and now they're busy making content that's having an impact on Kiwi businesses. Many in the tech scene will know MacFie for his role growing the Xero brand across pivotal years, running global media for the company and setting the standard in the industry. To talk stepping out of our local big blue and into Indigo, what they do there, his amazing team and how you can access Manaaki, he joined us for a chat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business owners around the country will have been watching to see what the government is doing to help with the massive disruption caused by Covid-19. One of the things that's been offered is extra funding to support business, through the Regional Business Partners Network. This funding allows for mentoring and support so businesses can make plans to get through this. But what is the RBPN? How can you access it? Is it for you? and what help is available? This week we are chatting to one of the Regional Business Partners in this network, Kirstin Mead, who has been working with the programme for the last three years, helping companies in the Bay of Plenty access advice, support, and matched funds to grow their businesses. Now there are special services covering current needs like continuity planning and HR – and you don't need to match funds to access up to $2000 of specialist by-the-hour advice. RBPN can also connect you to mentors and make introductions to people that could help you and your business grow. Head along to the Regional Business Partners Network website to see what help is available for you. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michelle Dickinson is well known as Nanogirl, her science communicating, experiment making, science cookbook authoring alter-ego. With a PhD in engineering specialising in nanotechnology, and a love for sparking interest in science, Dickinson has worked to increase the quality of our national conversation through media appearances, a Herald column and live events, events that can’t happen for the foreseeable future. Faced with this drop in income and uncertainty for her team, this spirit of invention and experimentation kicked in. The team pivoted over the course of three days to create an online learning platform that can help kids stuck at home experiment with items found around the house and learn through doing. With a lesson every weekday, for only a dollar a day, and a buy one give one model, it’s already finding a great audience. You can find her new venture at nanogirlslab.com Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zac De Silva is one of the top rated business coaches in the world. His background is in accountancy, and he was CFO of Flight Centre at the age of 28. He went on to lead a $100m organisation, run the turnaround of Barkers, and then became a coach in the corner of great local businesses, with 38 clients landing on the Deloitte Fast 50. I took part in one of his workshops, and working with Zac he has helped me get clearer about business than anything else I’ve done. Along with his wife, Sip, he runs Business Changing and the Nurture Change events, and with his experience in business we thought he was just the person to get on to talk about how to navigate business in 2020. Please note: This was recorded Tuesday morning, before the Government assistance package announcement. If you are in business and looking for the first thing you can do to help your situation, do check out the help you can get here. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chia Sisters is award winning for its nutrition and commitment to sustainability. Its founders have been lauded on the Forbes Asia 30 under 30 list, named Obama Foundation Asia Pacific Leaders and have done some pretty cool stuff like put solar panels on their roof, more-than-doubling the power needed for their solar juicery and giving the excess back to the grid. To talk about how good business and sustainable practise can work together and what's next for Chia Sisters, Florence and Chloe Van Dyke joined us on Business is Boring. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All is for All came to many people’s attention with its trailblazing fashion shoots using diverse models. It’s continued to grow into an advocacy and accessibility consultancy, helping brands like The Warehouse better understand a good section of their customers and design their stores accordingly. Founder Grace Stratton has been a powerful communicator for the issue, talking to companies, speaking on the TedX stage and being named in the InStyle magazine top 50 Badass Women. To talk about what’s involved in starting a business in an industry that is chronically underinvested, how to work this around university study, and what’s next for her, Grace joined us on Business is Boring. Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this month Asia Pacific agritech conference evoke AG hosted 65 Kiwi delegates in Melbourne, and among the Kiwi companies represented was Sparrows. Their purpose is to cut food waste by using smart sensors and data to keep track of where everything is and where it’s meant to be, at what temperature and for how long. It’s leading to less product being written off, a huge problem in the food industry. Sparrows CEO and founder Andrea Watson and Simon Yarrow, who leads Callaghan Innovation’s agritech team joined us on Business is Boring this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices