A list of New Zealand startups

The good people at Callaghan Innovation have compiled a little list of New Zealand startups from various sources as part of the Scale Up NZ project. The list is rough, but it’s ready, and as they say, perfect is the enemy of good. I’m told it’s a temporary fixture, and can be distributed freely. If…

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Founder mental health and wellbeing hacks

Starting up a business is hard. Being a founder can seem like a pan-galactic ultra marathon. Here is a list of things you can do to attain and maintain good mental health, including achieving a good overall attitude, maintaining focus, looking after yourself, making space for regeneration, dealing with uncertainty, getting help, and dealing with failure.

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EdTech startups, and the key to startup success

Last week was Techweek2020, and I ran a series of EdTech showcases, interviewing NZ Education Technology companies. The highlight of the week for me was Tim Vaughan, the Chief Revenue Officer at Education Perfect talking about what’s made them so successful: There’s no secret, it boils down to: A pathological obession with customer experience, which…

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Addressing unconscious bias and racism

How do we address unconscious bias and racism? Anjum Rahman from the Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono nails it: “Put yourself in spaces where people are different to yourself … and just listen.” This segment was part of a longer session on Religious Attitudes to Racism, run by the Wellington Abrahamic Council of Jews, Christians and…

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The Social Lean Canvas

Way back in 2013, Rowan Yeoman and I designed the Social Lean Canvas, which is based on Ash Maurya‘s Lean Canvas, which is in turn based on Alex Osterwalder‘s Business Model Canvas. The Social Lean Canvas is a tool to help social entrepreneurs work out the key attributes of their very early stage ventures, and…

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Leadership in the age of COVID-19

What does great leadership look like in a crisis? Read on for an analysis of Jacinda Ardern’s leadership of Aotearoa / New Zealand’s response to COVID-19, and some lessons for how we can become great leaders ourselves. On Monday 23 March 2020, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced sweeping new measures to combat the effects…

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Beyond Tolerance

A friend recently reminded me that I’d given this talk at the National Interfaith Forum over 11 years ago. Oddly, the subject has come up a number of times for me over the last few weeks, in the context of how we should develop and celebrate tolerance. But is tolerance enough? Read on… “Beyond Tolerance”…

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A prayer for dead startups

Notes from the Dead Startup Society It’s a fact: a large percentage of startups die well before achieving their potential. Going through a startup failure can be very painful. A company is essentially a person in the eyes of the law, and as a founder, watching your startup die can be like watching a close…

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