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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Warner Cowin.A big theme in the world of business and economics this year, that I struggle to understand, yet is proven over and over again, is that in the middle of a construction boom companies in the sector are going bust left right and centre and no-one is said to be making any money. Which, when you look at supply and demand, and also things like the cost of materials, and the highly concentrated set-up for supply, seems a bit bananas.Well, one figure in the industry, who is founder-CEO of procurement and bidding consultancy, Height, and so knows the business from both the pitch for and commission project sides of the fence, has a few idea that he has been sharing as to what might be off in this particular soup. His name is Warner Cowin, an ex RNZAF engineering officer, who’s taken many of the disciplines and skills from military life, a place so influential on business team structure accountability, culture, and systemisation, and used those to help build his successful 15 person consultancy.To talk construction, things learnt in the services, and empowering Māori and pacific business through clever delivery of big projects, Warner joins the podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Until very recently, if you were wanting to buy shares in American companies like Apple, Facebook, Google or Tesla it is quite amazing how hard it could be.You needed either to be buying an awful lot, so to make sense of the massive fees of using a local bank share-trading service as a broker, or you needed to navigate a confusing and bewildering process to get access to an international broking platform, and then all the tax and hassle around that. It is not recommended.And now, an innovative new platform has started up to solve the problem, offering access to US shares and exchange traded funds with brokerage fees at an order of magnitude under the existing big bank status quo. Which may make it surprising that this start up has come from the same holding company as …a big bank! It’s called Hatch, and is from Kiwi Wealth, the sister company to Kiwi Bank, and is a product of their focus on innovation.Because the big banking sector is ripe for disruption, and big change is coming with open banking already changing the fee and service landscape around the world. It’s very cool to see that coming from inside a bank. The general manager of Hatch, Kristen Lunman, and the head of experience Natalie Ferguson have made it their business to do just that. Working first with the Kiwibank Fintech accelerator, and then in the Kiwi Wealth Innovation Lab resulting in this game changer.A disclaimer is that I am a user, but only out of wanting and finding the service and then asking them on once seeing how interesting the background was.To talk the service, opening up investment opportunities and innovating in a bank environment, Natalie Ferguson and Kristen Lunman join us n 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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Nick Whitehouse.How many times might a board member have asked, what are we doing to innovate? And how many times did anything happen? Well, at MinterEllisonRuddWatts that question was answered by the start of an innovation lab, that has led to a company joint venture spun out with VC backing to use AI to change how the law works.The fantastically named McCarthy Finch are using NLP, machine learning and human inputs to help analyse mountains of legal documents in a fraction of the time, augmenting humans to make decisions faster and cut out the leg work while looking out for the fishhooks. The company has jumped onto the world stage, winning awards like Sir Richard Branson judged Global Talent Unleashed gongs, and becoming the first local company to make the finals of the TechCrunch Start-up battlefield, pitching in front of an audience of up to 6 million.With partners and clients including some of the biggest professional services and law firms, the idea is finding amazing traction and the CEO, co-founder, and winner of Most Disruptive Leader at the Talent Unleashed Awards, Nick Whitehouse joins me now 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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to John Barnett.Outrageous Fortune, Sione’s wedding Shortland Street, Whale Rider. These enormous hits that are part of the cultural fabric of Aotearoa, can all trace back to today’s guest on the show. They came about in large part thanks to the work, organisation, connections made and championing from a man named John Barnett.Over a career that’s taken him from having an independent production company before there was much of independent industry to speak of, through to managing Fred Dagg and creating best selling albums, to bringing us the Footrot Flats movies, then moving into South Pacific Pictures which were State owned by TVNZ where he led a management buyout. And South Pacific pictures has played an amazing role in building our creative industries. Long running hits like Shortland street, Outrageous Fortune Almighty Johnsons and Westside have created a base for the industry of professionalism, ability to gain experience, and great pay while living in the arts. John Barnett stepped back from South Pacific Pictures a few years ago but is still involved in helping bring stories to screens. To talk on his career, on telling some of New Zealand’s most important and loved stories and on the entrepreneurs journey, John Barnett joins us now 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. In our regular Business Chat special, Simon Pound speaks with Fleur Francois, director at New Zealand’s national metrology institute and Karyn Scherer, senior copywriter at Callaghan Innovation.It's been a big year in international measurement. A number of the big measures we rely on every day, and for the accurate use of more things in our lives than you might imagine, have swapped out, or are in the process of doing so. The kilo is a famous measure, kept under glass and lock and key in France,that’s changing from an actual lump of metal to being kept by quantum measurements based off fundamental laws of physics so as not to change.It turns out that up to now every now and again the kilo mass shifted and so would all measurements, kind of bananas to think of it.It's also been a big anniversary for another standard, standard time. Did you know, and I'm not trying to catch you out if you didn't, that NZ was the first place in the world to adopt standard time, adopting Greenwich mean time as our base measure, before England even did. It's a great story of parochialism and vision all at once, and we were a staggering 15 years ahead of anywhere else. The 150th anniversary of that also passed this year. So to chat time, measure and the nature of reality, we're joined on the pod by Fleur Francois, director at New Zealand’s national metrology institute, Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL), and Karyn Scherer of Callaghan Innovation. 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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to CEO of EzyVet Hadleigh Bognuda.The move to the cloud has been called the biggest thing to happen to business since the dawn of the internet. At its best it means little businesses can enjoy the kind of enterprise software advantages the big players used to only be able to get, for small affordable payments, and big companies get enterprise software without enterprise price tags. We’ve seen it in business software, with local hero Xero becoming one of the great SaaS, software as a service companies in the world, and in its wake an ecosystem of possibility emerged. Some of the companies that came after were an obvious move of putting a business tool into the cloud. Others have pulled together a bunch of tools to change every element of how a business can operate. And one of the beauties of the cloud is that you can serve customers everywhere. So where making specialist vet software might not have been viable in an isolated NZ market, now the world is your market.Which is the story of local SaaS star, EzyVet, a vet practice management software solution that has been on a tear, tripling year on year and opening offices in North America, Auckland and London, and 100 plus staff around the world. With 65% of their revenue in North America, and a huge wave of change happening with vets looking for a better way, EzyVet is a fantastic kiwi success story you may not yet have heard of, unless you are in a vet clinic, and then you most definitely should have, To talk the journey, sustainable scaling and the future, CEO Hadleigh Bognuda joined the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few years after studying science, but beginning a career in cosmetics and lingerie and film, today’s guest was reading a science journal for fun. A line about the properties of native bee excreted nesting material caught her eye and made her wonder if it might make a good bioplastic.What for some might have been a quick muse, for Veronica Harwood-Stevenson became a mission and then company. It’s taken her across New Zealand and Australia to find specimens, had her duck venomous locals and bushfires, found collaborators and funding and led her to identify and be working to commercialise under the name Humble Bee.To chat the journey, inspiration and making that action, Veronica joined the podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that every day around New Zealand more than $2 million of theft occurs that no one even bothers to report?Petrol station drive offs, little thefts at supermarkets, things under $1000 generally don’t even get reported to the police - and if they are the police often can’t do much about them.Well a few years ago a lawyer and his co-founders saw this issue and thought there must be a better way. They set up a company that became Auror - helping to link evidence of shoplifting or small-scale crime between the retailer and the police. It’s helped lead to some pretty amazing stats: 55% fewer drive offs at the petrol station Z, and hundreds of recidivist shoplifters brought to justice. The product works by making it easy to report and connect the dots on organised retail crime, and even helps prevent crimes by integrating with license plate recognition.It’s a company that’s attracted top-class investment and top-class customers with most of our major retailers here and more and more in Australia and across the world using the service. To talk the journey, the decision to throw it all in as a successful lawyer and chase criminals, and the fact that so much crime would just go unreported, Auror CEO Phil Thomson joins us Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2018 can feel quite progressive and doing pretty well, if you’re in the right bubble. But in many ways oh boy there’s a lot still to do. Like with tampons and pads. Half the population needs them, yet they are mainly made with synthetic and potentially harmful materials, and have attached to them in some places  luxury taxes and in many places a stigma around them. Which is where the Organic Initiative comes in, to provide an organic alternative and foster the movement to recognise safety and health around periods. A radically sustainable and progressive company it was co-founded by today’s guest a few short years ago. Helen Robinson is a wildly accomplished founder of a start-up - having been CEO at Microsoft New Zealand in some of its most dominant days, a board member of nationally and globally significant bodies like ATEED and a winner of the Supreme award at the Women of Influence awards. To talk the journey and the mission, Helen joins us by phone from America where she is with Oi/  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, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Nat Cheshire, self-described 'fake architect'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices