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 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. 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 Bruce Turner and Thomas Rowe from Urbanaut Brewing Co. There are probably a few people listening that have kept up with friends from school and kicked around some business ideas. Maybe even some that have enjoyed the odd beer together and thought about making some. But how many people actually go ahead and make it happen?That is the founding story of today's company, Urbanaut. It came about after three friends bought the worst house in Auckland, turning into one of the best, so they could fund their very own brewery in Kingsland.The three friends came from Marton - malt growing country, so it seemed fitting that they would open their own brewery, and now their brand is blowing up.Two of the co-founders, managing director and chief brewer Bruce Turner and sales director Thomas Rowe are on Business is Boring today to tell the story of making a dream happen, with a few global adventures along the way. 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 toRobyn McLean, co-founder of The Hello Cup. 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 Campbell Ellison from Callaghan Innovation and Alexandra Allan, CEO of FoodBowl.One of the coolest things about Business is Boring is when listeners, inspired by the people we talk to, share their ideas for cool products. Just the other day a friend talked about an idea for an innovative food product, and I was able to tell him about the existence of the FoodBowl - which provides support and resource for companies and innovators looking to move from small scale to the big time.He was amazed to learn that there is a facility that is part commercialisation and export readiness lab and part mad scientist workshop where food technologists, scientists and other enthusiastic inventors tinker, explore and create new food ideas. It’s an open access service supported by Callaghan Innovation and run by the Auckland chapter of the NZ Food Innovation Network.We’ve talked before to people like Angus Brown from Arepa who’ve been through it, so it is super cool to today be able to share a bit more about how it operates and how you could get involved.This week on the podcast we're joined by food and beverage technologist Campbell Ellison from Callaghan Innovation, and Alexandra Allan, FoodBowl CEO, who also has a background in making things, working through outfits like Cadbury and Horleys, before she turned to management. 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 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, pilots, testing and built the infrastructure to make the leap to the mass-market, attracting $AU35m of funding, winning awards and making something completely new happen. And then...... then it didn't work as they hoped. Maybe it was too much choice to offer, but the mass market visited and didn't buy. They tried to pivot but couldn't make the economies of scale work - and decided to pull the plug. It is a different kind of chat this week - about when success is closing when the signals tell you, and sharing what is hard learnt.To that end our guest, co-founder of Shoes of Prey, Jodie Fox, is with us at the link below to talk about her journey and new book to share her story, Reboot: Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about Starting a Global Business 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 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 company is called Micropod, and came about via a group of four friends, who got together to solve the engineering problem of reliably growing and productising the idea. They have won big at the Best Design Awards and since launching in February have serviced customers all over the country.To talk about what it takes to turn an idea into an engineered reality, the goodness of microgreens and starting a company, CEO Jeff Xu and co-founder and designer Ollie McDermott joined 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 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 commodity, to help provide the scaffolding for human bodies to repair wounds.The science is remarkable, and it's happening at great scale. More than 100 staff, patents around the world, FDA approval and a partnership with some huge healthcare players. The company is run from New Zealand by founder/CEO Dr Brian Ward.Ward started as a vet, went into big Pharma, ran NZBio and then got the idea to use animal tissue to repair human tissue. To tell the story of turning that idea into a worldwide company, Dr Brian Ward joined the podcast. 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 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 Business is Boring today, Jade Tang-Taylor - who was on the podcast previously as a co-founder of Curative and now consults to bring design for social impact and diversity to projects large and small and Anna Guenther, founder and chief bubble blower at PledgeMe.Listen to the chat to learn about their philosophy, how they launched a successful cheese service business and the journey of making a business with friends. 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 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 Volkswagen e-golfs.The founder is someone who has been at the front of a lot of change. Victoria Carter ONZM has been a lawyer, PR practitioner, board member, politician and lately, the first female chair of The Northern Club. She's also helped get more fairness for kindergarten funding and helped make the Auckland Arts Festival happen.To talk her mission to reduce car ownership, Victoria Carter joined 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 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 things grew a little far, stock piled up and the bank changed its appetite for risk. Rumours swirled I Love Ugly might be going under, and the reality was most people would have.Founder Valentin Ozich brought his company back from a place most couldn’t, and has started to tell the story. His new podcast and his company’s social media presence aim to inspire, educate and be honest about what it takes to succeed.To talk good (and not-so-good) decisions, personal growth and where Tony Robbins fits into it all, Valentin joined Business is Boring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices