Startup Theatre Podcast

In this episode, Troy Hammond chats with Rachael Fitzjohn. You will hear them talk about leadership, trust, fuckups, vulnerability, and becoming one of NZ's best tech leaders of people. Her name is Rachael Fitzjohn. Although over the last few years, further to a joke from a workmate and then multiple Rachel's/Rachael's in the team, Rachael became Fitzy! Fitzy works at a company called Cogo. Cogo is a tech start-up that provides carbon footprint management products to allow people and companies to measure, understand and reduce their carbon footprint. Fitzy is the Head of People Experience at Cogo so is responsible for the health, development, and well-being of Cogoers across a variety of markets (they are in the UK, Germany, other parts of Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and...New Zealand). Her passions and values mostly revolve around people (a bit of a relief, especially considering her role title and background!) In all seriousness, though Fitzy feels that what makes her get up in the morning is ensuring that people have a good experience at work and that she is being the real Fitzy She also has a strong desire to coach leaders and be a good leader herself - leadership and the concepts around it have changed so much over the last few years and Fitzy says: "I am here for it!" Please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue to keep bringing you content.

In this episode, Troy Hammond chats with his old boss and good friend Vaughan Fergusson. Vaughan goes deep on the startup journey of a man who founded a company and did not know what he was doing and then sold it for $484m NZD. He is open, honest, vulnerable and talks about his passion for not just Vend, but his charity and how to grow an ecosystem. We touch on how Innovation is the fastest was to transform our economy and many other topics. While this one was longer than our usual, it is a great one and so strap in and hear from someone who does impossible things.  Vaughan Fergusson (previously Rowsell) is the founder of Vend, pioneering cloud technology in retail globally, omni-channel commerce and invented the iPad retail point of sale. Vend is a New Zealand high-growth tech success story contributing significantly to the New Zealand tech eco-system over 12 years. Vend  was sold for $500m in 2021 to LightSpeed and remains the flagship retail product globally. In 2014 he was the founder and trustee of The Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust running initiatives like OMGTech!, Mana Tangata, Voluntari.ly and The Institute of Awesome to teach innovation, creativity and technology to tamariki of all ages and backgrounds, in particular our youth who would not otherwise get the opportunity. Collectively the trust also works with educators across New Zealand empowering them to empower our future innovators. He was EY's Tech Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014, a judge for the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year programme, and head judge for the 2021-22 programme. Vaughan has been a Trustee, Judge, and Vice-Chair for the New Zealand Hi-tech Trust from 2015 - 2021 and remains as a judge for the 2023 awards. Every year Vaughan does an impossible challenge, something to take him out of his comfort zone, like running 1,000km, learning to sing to get a paid gig in front of 100 people, or cycling around the world in 80 days. Vaughan is a self-described weirdo and has spoken many times on the importance of challenging the status quo, thinking differently and trusting your inner weirdo. He is also a staunch ally for diversity in New Zealand and in the technology and creative sectors. Please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue to keep bringing you content.

In this episode, Troy Hammond talks with Andréa van der Meel. We chat about tech, greenwashing, and how we can make considerate decisions on fashion and be better for the environment and the people producing these products. We chat about Andrea's career founding a tech startup on her own in her 20s. We also chat about how the second time around founding a startup, she joined forces with John Holt of Homes.co.nz and Kiwi Landing pad fame and how they did founder vetting with each other. Andréa van der Meel is dedicated to increasing transparency and accountability in the fashion industry. With over 15 years of experience in the retail sector, her first business, SeekStock, delivered real-time product feedback to retail brands via store staff. Now, Andréa is the Co-Founder and Head of Platform of All Things Considered, a community-driven platform driving impactful change around how we produce and consume our clothing. Andréa put something into the world this year that she wanted to get onto three podcasts as she had never done one before and so she jumped at the chance when we asked her on after hearing about her work. You would never know this was her first podcast. Please help us spread the word about our podcast by liking, subscribing and following us on all our platforms found here. Share with your friends who may be interested. Thank you for coming on Andréa. This chat was really fun and super interesting.

In this episode, Troy Hammond speaks with Danny Smith on the fall of Silicon Valley bank due to the bank run. They go deep into what has happened, why it happened, and what could happen in the future. Danny breaks down the information in an eloquent non-financial talk conversation so that everyone can understand the reasoning behind the 18th largest bank in the US falling down.   Danny is a startup enthusiast with a passion for blending finance, product, commercial, and operations to drive growth. He has worked with a range of industries at Deloitte, in-house finance with Icebreaker, and most recently 8 years with Xero, in a range of finance and non-finance roles.    Today, Danny serves as CFO at Storypark, which is an easy-to-use private online service that helps teachers, parents and families work together to record, share and extend children's learning. Please like, follow, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue to keep bringing you content. 

In this episode, Troy Hammond speaks with Joel Lieser.  Joel Lieser is the CTO of Trove Money, a child company of Forsyth Barr.   His career has spanned seven states and three countries, where he has held positions from global banks to Silicon Valley technology juggernauts like Netflix, and companies like Nike along with multiple startups along the way.   His passions lie in technology innovation and building teams. In this episode, Joel chats about culture, engineering, the differences between US and NZ, and how he thinks we can help get more people into startups. Joel hones in on his career and how our lives are a culmination of the choices we make against our adjacent possibles It is a really interesting episode and we hope you enjoy watching and or listening as much as we did.  Please join us and subscribe to help us. We want to help New Zealand to support its own when it comes to innovation.   To quote Joel: "Don't let the Tall Poppy Syndrome sidetrack us from supporting Kiwis to change the world."

In this episode, we chat with Dale Clareburt from Weirdly Dale has been the CEO/Co-Founder of Weirdly since the beginning of 2014. She has 20+ years in the recruitment industry before going into tech.  Starting out in the agency land where the focus is on delivering a 1:1 service, Dale and three other founders banded together to create a product to improve the experience for candidates in the recruitment process. From culture, values, and purpose quizzes to a fully automated end-to-end talent platform for first jobbers in the frontline/retail sector.  Weirdly has over 1m candidates who are hungry to get their first work experience under their belts.  Dale is very committed to guiding youth on their first steps into adulthood. She says "It's about more than just the culture shock of that first job away from your home and school, but also the life skills you need to become an independent and fulfilled young adult." We chat about the Weirdly story from the early days to finding market fit and all things in between. Dale shares all her successes and attempts and we have some laughs along the way. We really enjoyed this weird chat with Dale and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with James Fuller from Hnry.  James began his career as an application developer, before moving into technology strategy and consultancy.  After senior roles at Thomson Reuters and Deloitte, he decided to strike out on his own as a growth consultant for startups, corporate, and government clients.   It was rewarding work, but James found himself struggling with the amount of tax and financial admin involved in being self-employed.  To solve the issue, he and co-founder Claire created a simple, homemade system to automate calculating and paying self-employed taxes.    They shared their system with self-employed friends, realised that there was a market for it, and got to work improving their solution. In 2018, James and Claire officially launched Hnry; a service designed to automatically calculate, pay, and file taxes for sole traders. We chat about James and Claire's story and how they realised they were building a new category when their lawyer had no idea if what they were doing was legal or not. We discuss what it is like working with IRD and contributing over 1% of NZ's total tax bills. Hnry recently raised funding of $35m and we discussed how this happened and where the money will be spent. We really enjoyed this chat with James and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with Jessica Halley. Jessica is a Wellington-born social anthropologist. Her PhD research focuses on the intersection between precarious labour, entrepreneurialism, and identity across Wellington’s digital workforce. As an anthropologist, Jessica collects human stories. She tells us that ethnographic research allows us to mine everyday stories. Bringing these stories into a startup context will enable us to build the next generation of technologies in a way that counts. We discuss many topics including Jessica's current research, which focuses on Wellington startups, social enterprises and software development. Additionally, her experiences conducting ethnographic research amongst Bhutanese refugee women and what this taught her about Facebook, selfies and user experience. Jessica says that gone are the simple days of broad-based solutions to user experiences. Instead, future technologies will demand a specific, localised and culturally-relative approach to problem-solving. Qualitative research, specifically ethnography, can provide methodological tools for startups seeking to solve the problems of the future. You can read about her research on "Young Bhutanese women becoming 'Kiwi'" here Here are the references focusing on Wellington as a digital city. And below is the quote from PM Tony Blair about creative labour, along with a link to a journal article that examines his legacy in the digital workforce. Norman, R. (2015). Wellington’s Digital Sector - Growing under the Radar. Victoria University of Wellington: Wellington. https://www.gw.govt.nz/assets/Documents/2021/12/Vic-Uni-Digital-Sector-Report.pdf Brabazon, T. (2009). Brand Wellington: When city imaging is GLAM’ed: A personal view. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 5(4), 260–275. https://doi.org/10.1057/pb.2009.22 Bonelli, D., Jutel, T., & Leotta, A. (2019). ‘Selling the creative city’: Wellington tourism film in the neoliberal era. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 13(2-3), 32-50. https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.1080/17503175.2019.1693149 'Our aim must be to create a nation where the creative talents of all the people are used to build a true enterprise economy for the twenty-first century – where we compete on brains, not brawn' (Blair, 1999: 3). https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/42872_Flew.pdf We really enjoyed this chat with Jess and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with Miki Szikszai.  Miki has served as CEO of Snapper Services since 2009. You'll know Snapper as the ticketing provider for Wellington - it also serves off-shore customers by white-labeling its apps and is launching a transport network performance analytics service in the next few weeks. He's been an active director on the Board of NZ-based SaaS companies including the original board of Vend, Chair of StarNow before its sale to Backstage, and is currently an active director at Spotlight Reporting and the chair of vWork. We chat about Miki's story from being a New Zealander made with imported ingredients. (His mother was photographed as one of a few Polish refugee children arriving in Wellington on board the ship General Randall.) From his career having to empathetically educate New Zealanders about major technology changes, to how to have an amazing grad program, to being an effective CEO and independent director. We really enjoyed this chat with Miki and hope you do also. Please follow and subscribe to our podcast wherever you consume podcasts.

In this episode, we chat with Adrienne Muir.  Adrienne is the Chief Operating Officer of Voxsmart which is headquartered in London and based in Queenstown. Born and Bred in Wellington,  Adrienne Muir has spent decades working overseas in the global capital markets and financial technology sectors.  When she started at VoxSmart in London in 2017, the business communications surveillance and analytics firm had seven employees.  Now Muir oversees a worldwide team from Queenstown, serving over 100 international clients. We chat about everything from being a successful woman in tech to making deliberate career choices, global vs NZ, and the very sad death of Adrienne's twin son John. Adrienne was absolutely delightful and we are sure you will enjoy watching or listening to this podcast as much as we did making it. Please subscribe, hit the bell, and share this podcast so we can continue making you great content.