Startup Theatre Podcast

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.

In this episode, we chat with Jonty Hodge  Jonty is a Wellington-based entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of Kepla, an emerging SaaS that makes it incredibly easy for any business to run incredibly effective digital advertising campaigns.  Dubbed 'a digital advertising agency in your pocket'.    Previously co-founded Aro Digital, a digital marketing agency based in Oriental Bay. We chat about Jonty's journey from a cricket coach in high school to a founder of two companies. Jonty is very mature and wise for his years. He is honest and tells us where he is in his journey and the road ahead. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did. Please subscribe where you watch and listen to help us continue to bring you, great guests. 

In this episode, we chat with Owen Evans. Owen is the Senior Vice President Of Technology (CTO) of Timely. He talks about his many attempts in startups and his growth as a leader of engineering teams. Owen has been a software developer and technologist since being introduced to the early stages of the internet in the early 90s.  Since then he's gone on to help found a number of startups, including Xero, Hoist, 8i, Zapier, and JRNY, not all of them successful. He's passionate about good people leadership in the technical space and has worked with a number of technical executives as a coach to try and improve management and strategic thinking across the board. He's passionate about startups and the people that make them, as well as enabling great remote decision-making. Owen was brought into Timely to take over from the founding CTO during their acquisition by EverCommerce and currently holds the SVP of Technology role for their Wellness group.   In his lack of spare time, he likes to brew beer, play golf, shoot arrows, and generally spend time with his family, his wife and two daughters, in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. Enjoy this episode and please subscribe to the pod.

In this episode, we chat with Julie Reddish. Julie is the Head of People and Culture at Optimal Workshop and was formerly the happiness engineer at Xero.  She has traveled throughout the world leading programmes that transform people’s lives and now she empowers teams of tech humans as they navigate moving from start-up to scale-up.  Julie is highly invested in growing people.  She is their champion.  Julie has seen the positive impact this has on an individual basis, on a team, on an organisation - and globally. She believes in people's ability to influence positive change and wants to make a difference in the NZ tech startup ecosystem.  You can watch more of Julie here with her "Do we really need Managers?" talk.  In her spare time, Julie is into sports, jewelry making, brain science, parenting, and dog-breed identification. We hope you enjoy this episode.

In this episode, we talk with Andrew Tokeley who helps successful NZ businesses build high-performance product leadership teams. Tokes talks about what product is, how product leaders can work closely with the business, and understanding how to develop your product strategy alongside the business strategy.  His name is Andrew Tokeley but most people call him Tokes.   Tokes founded his coaching business in 2017 and is NZ’s only full-time independent product leadership coach.  Since then, he has worked with over 60 companies ranging from start-ups to large corporations and even helped a few government agencies to adopt a more product-centric approach to their work.    His work typically involves working directly with senior product leaders, executive teams, and founders to help raise the understanding and practice of product leadership.  While he calls himself a coach, he is just as likely to provide advice to his clients, drawing from over 20 years of experience as both a technical and product leader himself.    Tokes also works as a Product Operating Partner at Movac, providing support and guidance to a number of their portfolio companies.   In 2015 he created Wellington’s largest product MeetUp, ProductTank, now boasting 2500 members, and he is a founding committee member of Product Aotearoa, a non-profit organisation supporting product leadership across the country.   In his previous life, he has been a statistician, software developer, and banana picker.

In this episode, we talk with Kristen Lunman.  For as long as she can remember, Kristen wanted to challenge the status quo, leading her to circles of like-minded entrepreneurs. Those that seek to deliver a vision of a different world. Her superpowers tend to lean in the area of growth and leadership. Until last year, it was at Hatch and more recently a new venture called Powrsuit.  Powrsuit exists to amplify the impact of women leaders to shape the future of work.  Previous to Hatch and Powrstuit and Hatch, Kristen was the Chief Operating Office for Wipster. When she does have spare time, it’s spent with her teens or on a surfboard in freezing cold Lyall Bay. Kristen was amazing on the podcast and talks about her superpower of "just saying yes!" Please jump in and listen or watch this podcast.