Startup Theatre Podcast

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. 

In this episode, we talk with Ben Pujji who is the CEO of Atomic.io a SaaS platform that helps companies engage their customers more effectively inside their apps.  Ben's early career was in banking, creative agencies, and government, before joining Atomic in 2015. In 2018 Ben stepped into the CEO's shoes, pivoting Atomic to focus on its new Action Card platform. Atomic helps businesses include their customer experience with web-based and in-app engagement. Its existing customers include ANZ, Foodstuffs, Kiwibank, and BNZ and its latest fundraising round is aimed at helping Atomic expand in Australia. Investors joining the Series A round include well-established venture capital firms Movac and Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1, Xero co-founders Rod Drury (who also serves as a director of Atomic) and Hamiah Walker, and former Trade Me executives and shareholders Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson via their investment vehicles Jasmine Investments and Hoku, respectively. Ben talks about his journey into the role of a CEO that started as a school dropout. He shows how if you say yes to opportunities and work hard, you can be a CEO of a successful startup like Atomic.  If he sees two out of three pillars of an idea. He jumps in. Jump into this podcast and listen to Ben's story. 

In this episode, we chat with Diana Minnée who is a Chief Operating Officer for startups. She helps us to understand what a COO does in a startup and how she is able to pattern match across a lot of verticals to help support an Exec team. Diana founded The BizOps Agency to help startups scale. She and her BizOps Agents help organisations fill the gaps for the short term or long term. Previously as Head of Delivery at Trade Me, Diana focused on optimising Lean and Agile practices for over 50 teams across three offices, which her team of Delivery Coaches. As an Agile practitioner since 2008, she focuses on Modern Agile values, pragmatic operational design, and enabling everyone to do their best work. Diana is a pragmatic Senior Exec focused on high-tech startups - Operational leader covering all aspects of #bizops such as: Product and delivery Processes and Policies Organisational change and strategy CISO and engineering Workplace and staff People and Culture Compliance and regulatory Marketing, Sales and CS Financial strategy Diana is also a strong advocate for Women in Tech, mentoring women and Women in Leadership. Known for 'Getting s#$%T done', her transparent frankness, where to find a great gin and tonic, and always coming up with a way forward no matter what the problem. We hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we did.

Mike Dawes founded and runs the IT Heavy Hitters charity boxing match, which has raised over $600k for charity. All proceeds from his events next year go to Voices of Hope. Mike is not usually one to put himself into the spotlight and would rather profile his charities. Mike is not usually one to put himself into the spotlight and would rather profile his charities. But as a good mate of Mike's, our host Troy felt it his honor and duty to tell his story too. No stranger to IT himself, his focus over the last 24+ years has been primarily delivering core infrastructure and technology service-orientated solutions, sales, and infrastructure design to delivery of network and server infrastructure, and leadership of infrastructure and operational teams, delivering quality solutions in large enterprise environments. Mike is also a volunteer firefighter and an around great guy. As someone who has gone through the IT Heavy Hitters fight camp, our host Troy Hammond is a massive advocate of others doing the same. So far IT Heavy Hitters has raised over $600,000 for local suicide prevention causes and they are currently working with the team to pull this together again for 2023, with shows in Wellington on May 6th, Auckland City on May 13th, and Auckland North Shore on May 20th. They'll take a group of IT professionals, provide qualified training and instruction and glove them up. The result is an evening of explosive boxing action. You don't need any experience to fight at IT Heavy Hitters, you'll be trained by professional coaches and helped with all aspects of theory and practical boxing.  On the night you'll choose your walkout song, step into the arena and put all of your training into 3x2 minute rounds, scored and refereed by qualified officials. Sign up here to become an IT Heavy Hitter and help Mike, Voices for Hope and everyone involve K.O. suicide for good.

In this episode on the We F*@KIN love podcast, we speak with Auriga Martin, a positive force in nature the world needs more of. Auriga is an American who moved to New Zealand and has filled her cup with her two passions, the arts, and SaaS product. Auriga is ever-focused on moving the needle and bringing beneficial and lasting change.  Having been one of the founding first ten employees at tech education unicorn lynda.com for more than a decade has given Auriga a unique set of skills about fast word-of-mouth growth and product-led organizational design.  Lynda.com provided Auriga with early product management proving ground that resulted in the $1.7B USD sale to LinkedIn in 2016.   Auriga has led tech teams for more than twenty years to develop and deliver innovative products that bring real and positive outcomes.  Always keeping purpose at the center of what Auriga does she brings full authenticity as a people leader, prioritizing providing the right environment for teams to thrive and move at pace. www.ventana.co.nz

In this episode on the We F*@KIN love podcast, we speak with Simon Small who we literally pulled off the street to join us on the podcast. Simon was one of the OG SaaS sales leaders who found his way into a startup by meditating. Simon has a background in the Arts & Media and started Livestreaming and created three shows: SaaS on the Street is my chance to connect with the brightest SaaS Founders in the world Ride the Next Tech Wave is a profile on Global Tech Leaders (for NZ's TechWeek) Rooibos with Simon Small is offering help with career guidance (launched during COVID) He has also created some Mastermind Training programmes and throughout 2020 he began having a massive impact on SaaS Founders. He says some added several millions to their company valuation. Simon is launching the inaugural website for SaaS Elevator which encompasses all of the training he has developed and delivered, plus some exciting collaborations with global experts. He has also built a close network of investors and is beginning to raise money for SaaS Founders through a new division of his personal company (Moonshot Studio Limited) called SaaS Elevator Capital. He created SaaS Elevator Capital because he wants SaaS Founders to remember they have a choice and says capital raising avenues are largely unconventional (and inaccessible).