Business is Boring with Mike Taylor

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 Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds.

On this week's Business is Boring, host Simon Pound talks to a founder and chief investment officer who has taken a company from starting with a small loan to having a billion under management in just over a decade.

If you were a uni student around the year 2000 you might remember that you could draw down student loans, ostensibly for living, but we would all know stories of people who turned them into trips, parties or other forms of massive future liability. I went to a study trip in Russia on mine and resented the debt for the next twenty years. But how many people do you know who were onto-it enough to use that opportunity as the seed capital to kickstart an investment career? One that now means this week's podcast guest runs a company with $1b under management that has returned $350m to its clients.

Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds, turned his $3000 and some other funds into $200k, attracting investment enough to go out on his own. Then the financial crisis hit. He battled through, bought while the getting was good, and was able to build his way to some of the best returns in the business.

Today they are involved in funds management, wealth advisory and Juno KiwiSaver, which offers a low-fee model that they are now challenging the industry to match.

I got to know Mike when I did some writing for his company, and was amazed at his story, so it is a great pleasure to welcome him as a guest on Business is Boring.

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