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 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

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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Helen Dorresteyn , co-founder of Clevedon Buffalo. 40 minutes south of Auckland you’ll find the Clevedon Farmers Markets on every Sunday, with a bustling collection of local growers, farmers and artisan food suppliers, and while all this is a firm favourite now it wasn’t that long ago it was nothing but an inkling in the mind of today’s guest. Helen Dorresteyn had seen the trend towards farmers markets overseas and thought we should be able to do that here, too. She went around the neighbourhood, got support from the locals and set up the Clevedon Farmers Markets, however there was one thing she couldn’t find, and that was a great local cheesemaker. So her husband, an industrial electrician, decided to put his hand

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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Dr Shaun Holt, creator of Honevo. New Zealand honey is some pretty wondrous stuff, many will be familiar with manuka honey's clinically proven qualities, but it doesn't stop there. Today's story is about a serial entrepreneur who turned a medical and research background into a clinically proven kānuka honey product. When you hear that a product is all natural, yet as effective as a synthesised pharmaceutical product, you might find your skepticism rising, which is why today's guest went out and created a groundbreaking study, recently reported in the British Medical Journal Open, to prove his product's case. Utilising a network of pharmacies, Dr Shaun Holt got his Honevo cold sore gel, made from 90% kānuka honey, 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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Ben Nathan, CEO and Founder of Container Door. You might have, like I have, got an email out-of-the-blue from a friend asking you if you'd be keen to grab a piece of outdoor furniture, or a scooter, or a mattress comfort overlay thingy, or pretty much anything you can think of, in order to help them fill up a container and get theirs and yours sent to you for a price way under what you'd normally pay. And then, like me, you've probably gone to the website to find out what on earth they are on about and found a lot of things you weren't previously aware you were in the market for, but look pretty good and very well priced. And then you've probably fired off one of those emails off yourself to another friend. If you'

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 Angela Lim, co-founder and CEO of a free, online mental health platform called Clearhead. Mental Health is a crisis in this country, and there is welcome news of 1.9 billion of new funding in the latest budget, but right now, services are stretched. Finding the right care, at the right time, is a challenge. Knowing how to navigate the system is a challenge. Even knowing when to reach out for help, and where to do that is hard. The whole system itself is set up on a reactive model, but as with all health and fitness, preventative and proactive is better than reactive. So how do we do this with mental health care? Well, questions like these, and more, have led to today’s guest starting a new venture, creating an AI chatbot that helps to mimic a GP consult, but creating an atmosphere an

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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to John Henderson, partner at Airtree. One thing that we talk about a lot on this show is what it takes to make an idea successful, but one part that doesn't always get raised, but that is perhaps one of the top factors, is getting the access to the right capital at the right time. Not getting access to the funds at the right time to grow equals failure. Getting capital that demands you do the wrong things spells trouble. Getting capital and not spending it well spells trouble. It is an industry where one win can carry ten losses, and changes in markets, technology and personnel can turn a sure fire bet into a tanker, and vice versa. It's an area that fascinates. People like the team from A16Z have done a great job in

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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Kate Gwilliam, CEO of feedstock solution, Zeddy. We all know we can't simply put more animals onto land to grow the economy, the country needs clever ways to maximise the returns from dairy and other animal farming practices. One person who knows this better than most of us, and is doing a lot more to help, is today's guest, Kate Gwilliam. Kate moved from a job as project manager in, Auckland to the Manawatu, making a big life change taking on a 450 strong cattle herd. Together with her husband Tom, neither with a background in farming, they made their farm a tech-first endeavour, including full automation in the calf shed, farm sensors and computer-based reporting systems. And with this experience, Kate got involv