February 19, 2025 • 11 mins
The name of the game for the government this year is economic growth and increased productivity.
For that, what New Zealand needs is successful businesses.
One of New Zealand’s most successful entrepreneurs believes more can be done to grow business confidence and the economy alike.
Rowan Simpson, one of the founding members and investors in TradeMe and Xero, is releasing ‘How to Be Wrong’, a book that details the unique position New Zealand is in to grow businesses.
He told Mike Hosking that while there are plenty of ideas that are not investable, there’s more than enough that have great potential.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And inside for you now into what this country could be.
The government talks a lot about growth. Of course, we
talk a lot about productivity. What we talk about though
and what has been real are two very different things.
As we were mentioning with Adrian or a couple of
moments ago. So what do we need for success? How
do we grow companies? Can we start and grow large
successful companies? Ryan Simpson was one of the founding members
(00:20):
and investors and trade Me and Zero. His new book
is out money. It's called How to Be Wrong, and
so presumably uniquely placed to give us a little bit
of advice this morning. Rowan currently is chair of what's
called the Hoku Group, which I will explain in the moment. Anyway,
run Simson with us. Ryan morning, Hey Mike, how are
you very well? Indeed? So Hoku finds ideas. How many
ideas are out there? And of those ideas that are
(00:42):
out there, how many are nuts and how many are real?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well? Yeah, I mean there are there are lots that
are not investable, but there's more than enough for us
to invest in that I had great potential, and you
know I've written about four of those companies. There was
a point in time where I thought I was an
investor in most of the good companies, but that's certainly
not true. Now there's hundreds.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
What's the gap between a good idea and making it work.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well? It's ultimately that it comes down to people. For
a long time, we've talked about there being a shortage
of capital in New Zealand, and through that whole time,
great companies have been out there raising tens of millions
of dollars to grow. And you know, again the companies
that I've written about are great examples of that, but
there's many others. Hold Her as one that raised an
eighty five million dollar around the time last year. So
(01:27):
there's no shortage of capital. I think we need to
get over that. What happens though, with these companies as
soon as they raise that capital, they then have to
spend it, and they spend in it on people. And
that's what We're desperately short off, people who can work
on and grow these companies.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And does that, at this present point in time make
life even more difficult? My assessment of what's going on
in this country is, you know, is well written and
well understood, but the immigration story we don't seem to
be as cool as we once were. Is that fear
or not?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't know if that is fear. To be honest,
I think that you know, like New Zealand's reputation is
probably as good as has been amongst the engineers and
the folks that we actually need to come and work
and live in this company and make these companies great.
I think one of the things that happens when we
think about immigration is again we get distracted by capital.
We think we need to attract wealthy people to bring
(02:14):
their money here and invest here. And it's I don't know,
it's a little bit like imagine mirror second Division three
andthrugby team and we just need to hire the next
retired all Black help us win a championship. What we
really need are the people who who want to come
and live here and work here and do the hard
that do the hard yards on them helping these companies grow.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, and saying what you just said to you against
what the government announced the other day, and that is
to attract wealthy foreigners to come here with their money.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think it's fine. I know some of those folks,
and there's a few of them that really desperately do
want to help the Zealand companies grow And that's great,
but you know that's certainly not the silver bullets.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Are you dealing with in general terms? Once again, I'm
sort of looking at these things macro. So the country's
got a whole lot of problems. A lot of kids
don't turn up to school, those who do turn up
to school, don't pass exams, all that sort of stuff
we talk about regularly. Are you dealing with a microcosm
of people within a population who are always going to
be bright, always going to be achieved, is always going
to be go getters, and those are the ones you're
(03:08):
picking off? Is that what we're dealing with?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I mean, there's an irrationality to starting a business like
these companies that grow to become big. So you know,
we're all lucky actually that the crazy founders of these
companies are a little bit irrational, because otherwise they wouldn't start.
But it's a myth too that we just need those folks,
like every crazy Rodgery or Peter Beett needs to hire
teams and then hundreds of people to help them grow
those businesses. So yeah, ultimately we need to grow that
(03:33):
pool much wider, you know, and that's all of those
things you talk about, investments and education and all those
things feed into that.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Is the money out there at globally. Certainly it seems
to me that if you've got some idea, especially around
things like climate change, you can get money. Is that
fair or not?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
The pool of capital for these companies is effectively infinite.
You know, there's now hundreds of millions of dollars of
InChI capital available for investment in New Zealand. There's billions
of dollars of inch capital in Australia. So you know,
like the constraint is certainly not around money for any
of these folks. So yeah, I think you know, there's
been a lot of evidence of international investors been more
(04:12):
than willing to invest in based companies.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
What is driving that? Is that a passion project for
many people? Or is it I'm looking for good return?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
These folks are called venture capitalists, like they're looking for
returns and you know, their job literally is to find
the these companies in the world and to invest in them.
And so the challenge for us in New Zealand is
to be good enough, frankfully, to attract that investment. Are
we well we are? You look at the You know, again,
the companies I've written about have proven that we can
grow these sorts of companies here, you know, Trade Me
(04:43):
with a great domestic success, But there are in the
end and timely in the others that I've worked on
an investment and have all been global companies. And so yeah,
there's there's no question we can do it here. We
just need to do it more in The question we
should really be asking is what's the constraints to that?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, I'll ask that question in a moment. But before
I forget Trade Me, what I I didn't understand about
trade me when you were in there in the start.
It eventually leaded lead to money that went up for
a whole bunch of other startups. So it's very existence
helped others. I don't know that many people would necessarily
understand that, would they?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
No? I mean, you know we sold that. We sold
Trade Me in two thousand and six, so it's a
long time ago now. That company was sold for seven
hundred and fifty million dollars. That capital was all Australian money,
was a Fairfax, Australian media company that border and the
vast majority of that has been reinvested in the next
in the next wave of the company. The only reason
I was able to be an investor in zero was
(05:33):
because of that outcome. And each generation builds on there
on the previous one.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
All right, So take us through the specifics. You saw
what in trade me right at the very start, or
you didn't quite know.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I was actually hired originally as the engineer to help
Sam and Jess's sister, who had just hired to build
build the site in the beginning, So you know my
route into that was was as a software engineer. Really,
and yeah, I mean we were we were crazy, like
I was just describing. We thought we could create something
from enough and gave it a good crack.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And you did, Ryan. You talk about barries before I
get to zero. You talked about barriers and what are
the barriers? What do we need to do?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Well, as I said to you earlier, as people really
ultimately all the careful that's raised by these company spinion's salaries.
So you know, that's where we're desperately short. We're an
underpopulated large set of islands.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yes, okay, and what do you do to change that?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, I mean there's no single answer to that. There's
certainly no silver bullet answer, but it's all the little
things that add up. So, you know, we need to
train more people. If you look at the number of
science graduates and engineers, especially in twenty twenty three, I
think there are only five hundred and ninety engineers graduated
in New Zealand. So you know, we're woefully short of
of the people we need in terms of the ones
(06:43):
we train. And as we were talking about immigration as
part of the solution.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Too, yeah, exactly. And so the engineer is just this
very weekend or the beginning of the week said there
are engineers leaving the country left, right and center because
there's no pipeline. I'm assuming somebody somewhere in Wellington who
runs the place are aware of all of this or not.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
That's what they are. I mean, we've we've spent hundreds
and hundreds of millions of dollars over the years on
this on this problem, Mike. I mean, I heard the
text that you read out before, so of so you know,
we need to invest in innovative businesses and move away
from dairy and tourism. Like this is not a new idea.
We've been talking about that for decades and decades, and yeah, unfortunately,
all of that money that's been spent is a little
(07:21):
bit like pouring petrol onto the roof of a car
and hoping some of it ends up in the tank.
There haven't really been much accountability or systems and feed
that groups around that in terms of working out if
it's actually working.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So you come out of try me to go to zero?
Did Zero seem obvious or not?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I mean, it was an exciting potential, but it was
far from obvious. I mean I start, I started the
book actually with the four stories near this moments for
these companies, Like it's very easy to retrospectively look back
when a company's a big success like Zero's become and
imagine that it was always on that path. But that's
not the experience of working in these companies day to day.
Often the exact opposite. So yeah, I mean, my time
(07:58):
at zero coincided with the IPO. We floated the company
at a dollar per year. Some people maybe old enough
to remember that, but for a long time after that,
the year price was lower than the dollar. You know,
if you did look at this company, now, that's worth
I think it's getting close to thirty billion Australian dollars now,
but there was a long period of time where that
family wasn't obvious.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
You talk also about how much startup advice is dangerously wrong.
Why is it wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, we wrapped a lot of mythology around startups, and
I think part of it's what we were just talking about,
Like a lot of it is retrospective. But what happens
often is the messy bits get kind of ebrushed out
of the stories. And for me, those are the most
interesting moments. Like, you know, the two moments you ten
to hear about startups and the media is when they
are when they started or when they raise capital, and
then when they're sold, And those are kind of the
(08:45):
book ends. But all of the interesting stuff happens in
the middle, and we're not so good at telling those
stories frankly. And yeah, as part of the motivation and
writing this book is to to kind of peel back
those layers a little bit and describe what it's actually like.
Good and yeah, hopefully people who are working on these
buiness is all thinking about it and interested in it
can get a bit of sense of that.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
When Tim Brown is mentioned in the book, he speaks
very well of you, but I follow him with a
great deal of interest. So he's an entrepreneurial New Zealander.
All Birds does not work, It has not worked. It
loses money. Will it? Do you think work or not?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I mean, I'm not an investor in All Birds. I
haven't followed the economic prospects of that company especially well.
But you know, it is an example of a company
that went through a through a big hype cycle. Benefited
a lot from that on the upside, and I guess
I've been hurt from it, hurt by it on the downside.
But you know of tims of smart guy is a
very patriotic New Zealander. I have every confidence in him
(09:46):
and how he thinks about the future. So what's the space.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's interesting, isn't it, because it's that old thing about
To be a truly successful entrepreneur, you need to have
failed a bunch of times. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Well, I think we do over glamorize failure a little bit.
I've also worked on an invest than startups that have sailed,
and I'll tell you it's really painful. I wouldn't I
wouldn't encourage anybody or recommend that approach. I think a
much smarter mindset. The one I write about is like
lots of small little failures constantly every day. Like if
you go in with the assumption that you're wrong and
then and be constantly on the lookout for that, and
(10:18):
you're much more likely to spot those areas and adjust
for them and fix them before they hurt you. Yeah,
And that's really a much smarter way to think about it. Yeah.
I mean the second part, which you are much more dangerous,
is to lie. Like we do this a lot, especially
unfortunately in the ecosystem where government invests. It's kind of
uncomfortable to admit that you're wrong, and so it's easier
(10:39):
to pretend that it's working even though you know that
it's not.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Do you have any answers around productivity just in general,
this broad based conversation that we're no good at productivity
in this country if you put it down on a
piece of paper and explain the equation, but for whatever reason,
we just don't.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Do it well. I Mean, I'm pretty simple, so I
think about it just in terms of simple mass. When
we sold trade Me in two thousand and six, there
were fifty three of us working on that company. It
was about six hundred thousand dollars of revenue per employee.
So that's pretty remarkable in a New Zealand context. It's
not really remarkable in a global tech context. You know.
Zero I think it's over two hundred thousand dollars per employee,
(11:15):
and they have a lot more employees than we have.
You know, they'll get probably closer to two undred and
fifty thousand. We may announce their next results. So you know,
we've proven we can build these sorts of companies in
New Zealand. It's not a question of whether or not
it's possible. It's just a question of scale. How do
we do it and how do we do more of it?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Fantastic Ryan, good to meet and talk with. You appreciate
it very much. Good luck with the book, and I
hope it's out there and people read the stories and
learn something from them. How to Be Wrong is the book.
Rowan Simpson is the author. For more from the Mic
Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks it'd be from
six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
And inside for you now into what this country could be.
The government talks a lot about growth. Of course, we
talk a lot about productivity. What we talk about though
and what has been real are two very different things.
As we were mentioning with Adrian or a couple of
moments ago. So what do we need for success? How
do we grow companies? Can we start and grow large
successful companies? Ryan Simpson was one of the founding members
(00:20):
and investors and trade Me and Zero. His new book
is out money. It's called How to Be Wrong, and
so presumably uniquely placed to give us a little bit
of advice this morning. Rowan currently is chair of what's
called the Hoku Group, which I will explain in the moment. Anyway,
run Simson with us. Ryan morning, Hey Mike, how are
you very well? Indeed? So Hoku finds ideas. How many
ideas are out there? And of those ideas that are
(00:42):
out there, how many are nuts and how many are real?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well? Yeah, I mean there are there are lots that
are not investable, but there's more than enough for us
to invest in that I had great potential, and you
know I've written about four of those companies. There was
a point in time where I thought I was an
investor in most of the good companies, but that's certainly
not true. Now there's hundreds.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
What's the gap between a good idea and making it work.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well? It's ultimately that it comes down to people. For
a long time, we've talked about there being a shortage
of capital in New Zealand, and through that whole time,
great companies have been out there raising tens of millions
of dollars to grow. And you know, again the companies
that I've written about are great examples of that, but
there's many others. Hold Her as one that raised an
eighty five million dollar around the time last year. So
(01:27):
there's no shortage of capital. I think we need to
get over that. What happens though, with these companies as
soon as they raise that capital, they then have to
spend it, and they spend in it on people. And
that's what We're desperately short off, people who can work
on and grow these companies.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And does that, at this present point in time make
life even more difficult? My assessment of what's going on
in this country is, you know, is well written and
well understood, but the immigration story we don't seem to
be as cool as we once were. Is that fear
or not?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't know if that is fear. To be honest,
I think that you know, like New Zealand's reputation is
probably as good as has been amongst the engineers and
the folks that we actually need to come and work
and live in this company and make these companies great.
I think one of the things that happens when we
think about immigration is again we get distracted by capital.
We think we need to attract wealthy people to bring
(02:14):
their money here and invest here. And it's I don't know,
it's a little bit like imagine mirror second Division three
andthrugby team and we just need to hire the next
retired all Black help us win a championship. What we
really need are the people who who want to come
and live here and work here and do the hard
that do the hard yards on them helping these companies grow.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, and saying what you just said to you against
what the government announced the other day, and that is
to attract wealthy foreigners to come here with their money.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I think it's fine. I know some of those folks,
and there's a few of them that really desperately do
want to help the Zealand companies grow And that's great,
but you know that's certainly not the silver bullets.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Are you dealing with in general terms? Once again, I'm
sort of looking at these things macro. So the country's
got a whole lot of problems. A lot of kids
don't turn up to school, those who do turn up
to school, don't pass exams, all that sort of stuff
we talk about regularly. Are you dealing with a microcosm
of people within a population who are always going to
be bright, always going to be achieved, is always going
to be go getters, and those are the ones you're
(03:08):
picking off? Is that what we're dealing with?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I mean, there's an irrationality to starting a business like
these companies that grow to become big. So you know,
we're all lucky actually that the crazy founders of these
companies are a little bit irrational, because otherwise they wouldn't start.
But it's a myth too that we just need those folks,
like every crazy Rodgery or Peter Beett needs to hire
teams and then hundreds of people to help them grow
those businesses. So yeah, ultimately we need to grow that
(03:33):
pool much wider, you know, and that's all of those
things you talk about, investments and education and all those
things feed into that.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Is the money out there at globally. Certainly it seems
to me that if you've got some idea, especially around
things like climate change, you can get money. Is that
fair or not?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
The pool of capital for these companies is effectively infinite.
You know, there's now hundreds of millions of dollars of
InChI capital available for investment in New Zealand. There's billions
of dollars of inch capital in Australia. So you know,
like the constraint is certainly not around money for any
of these folks. So yeah, I think you know, there's
been a lot of evidence of international investors been more
(04:12):
than willing to invest in based companies.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
What is driving that? Is that a passion project for
many people? Or is it I'm looking for good return?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
These folks are called venture capitalists, like they're looking for
returns and you know, their job literally is to find
the these companies in the world and to invest in them.
And so the challenge for us in New Zealand is
to be good enough, frankfully, to attract that investment. Are
we well we are? You look at the You know, again,
the companies I've written about have proven that we can
grow these sorts of companies here, you know, Trade Me
(04:43):
with a great domestic success, But there are in the
end and timely in the others that I've worked on
an investment and have all been global companies. And so yeah,
there's there's no question we can do it here. We
just need to do it more in The question we
should really be asking is what's the constraints to that?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah, I'll ask that question in a moment. But before
I forget Trade Me, what I I didn't understand about
trade me when you were in there in the start.
It eventually leaded lead to money that went up for
a whole bunch of other startups. So it's very existence
helped others. I don't know that many people would necessarily
understand that, would they?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
No? I mean, you know we sold that. We sold
Trade Me in two thousand and six, so it's a
long time ago now. That company was sold for seven
hundred and fifty million dollars. That capital was all Australian money,
was a Fairfax, Australian media company that border and the
vast majority of that has been reinvested in the next
in the next wave of the company. The only reason
I was able to be an investor in zero was
(05:33):
because of that outcome. And each generation builds on there
on the previous one.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
All right, So take us through the specifics. You saw
what in trade me right at the very start, or
you didn't quite know.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I was actually hired originally as the engineer to help
Sam and Jess's sister, who had just hired to build
build the site in the beginning, So you know my
route into that was was as a software engineer. Really,
and yeah, I mean we were we were crazy, like
I was just describing. We thought we could create something
from enough and gave it a good crack.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And you did, Ryan. You talk about barries before I
get to zero. You talked about barriers and what are
the barriers? What do we need to do?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Well, as I said to you earlier, as people really
ultimately all the careful that's raised by these company spinion's salaries.
So you know, that's where we're desperately short. We're an
underpopulated large set of islands.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yes, okay, and what do you do to change that?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, I mean there's no single answer to that. There's
certainly no silver bullet answer, but it's all the little
things that add up. So, you know, we need to
train more people. If you look at the number of
science graduates and engineers, especially in twenty twenty three, I
think there are only five hundred and ninety engineers graduated
in New Zealand. So you know, we're woefully short of
of the people we need in terms of the ones
(06:43):
we train. And as we were talking about immigration as
part of the solution.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Too, yeah, exactly. And so the engineer is just this
very weekend or the beginning of the week said there
are engineers leaving the country left, right and center because
there's no pipeline. I'm assuming somebody somewhere in Wellington who
runs the place are aware of all of this or not.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
That's what they are. I mean, we've we've spent hundreds
and hundreds of millions of dollars over the years on
this on this problem, Mike. I mean, I heard the
text that you read out before, so of so you know,
we need to invest in innovative businesses and move away
from dairy and tourism. Like this is not a new idea.
We've been talking about that for decades and decades, and yeah, unfortunately,
all of that money that's been spent is a little
(07:21):
bit like pouring petrol onto the roof of a car
and hoping some of it ends up in the tank.
There haven't really been much accountability or systems and feed
that groups around that in terms of working out if
it's actually working.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So you come out of try me to go to zero?
Did Zero seem obvious or not?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I mean, it was an exciting potential, but it was
far from obvious. I mean I start, I started the
book actually with the four stories near this moments for
these companies, Like it's very easy to retrospectively look back
when a company's a big success like Zero's become and
imagine that it was always on that path. But that's
not the experience of working in these companies day to day.
Often the exact opposite. So yeah, I mean, my time
(07:58):
at zero coincided with the IPO. We floated the company
at a dollar per year. Some people maybe old enough
to remember that, but for a long time after that,
the year price was lower than the dollar. You know,
if you did look at this company, now, that's worth
I think it's getting close to thirty billion Australian dollars now,
but there was a long period of time where that
family wasn't obvious.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
You talk also about how much startup advice is dangerously wrong.
Why is it wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, we wrapped a lot of mythology around startups, and
I think part of it's what we were just talking about,
Like a lot of it is retrospective. But what happens
often is the messy bits get kind of ebrushed out
of the stories. And for me, those are the most
interesting moments. Like, you know, the two moments you ten
to hear about startups and the media is when they
are when they started or when they raise capital, and
then when they're sold, And those are kind of the
(08:45):
book ends. But all of the interesting stuff happens in
the middle, and we're not so good at telling those
stories frankly. And yeah, as part of the motivation and
writing this book is to to kind of peel back
those layers a little bit and describe what it's actually like.
Good and yeah, hopefully people who are working on these
buiness is all thinking about it and interested in it
can get a bit of sense of that.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
When Tim Brown is mentioned in the book, he speaks
very well of you, but I follow him with a
great deal of interest. So he's an entrepreneurial New Zealander.
All Birds does not work, It has not worked. It
loses money. Will it? Do you think work or not?
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I mean, I'm not an investor in All Birds. I
haven't followed the economic prospects of that company especially well.
But you know, it is an example of a company
that went through a through a big hype cycle. Benefited
a lot from that on the upside, and I guess
I've been hurt from it, hurt by it on the downside.
But you know of tims of smart guy is a
very patriotic New Zealander. I have every confidence in him
(09:46):
and how he thinks about the future. So what's the space.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's interesting, isn't it, because it's that old thing about
To be a truly successful entrepreneur, you need to have
failed a bunch of times. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Well, I think we do over glamorize failure a little bit.
I've also worked on an invest than startups that have sailed,
and I'll tell you it's really painful. I wouldn't I
wouldn't encourage anybody or recommend that approach. I think a
much smarter mindset. The one I write about is like
lots of small little failures constantly every day. Like if
you go in with the assumption that you're wrong and
then and be constantly on the lookout for that, and
(10:18):
you're much more likely to spot those areas and adjust
for them and fix them before they hurt you. Yeah,
And that's really a much smarter way to think about it. Yeah.
I mean the second part, which you are much more dangerous,
is to lie. Like we do this a lot, especially
unfortunately in the ecosystem where government invests. It's kind of
uncomfortable to admit that you're wrong, and so it's easier
(10:39):
to pretend that it's working even though you know that
it's not.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Do you have any answers around productivity just in general,
this broad based conversation that we're no good at productivity
in this country if you put it down on a
piece of paper and explain the equation, but for whatever reason,
we just don't.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Do it well. I Mean, I'm pretty simple, so I
think about it just in terms of simple mass. When
we sold trade Me in two thousand and six, there
were fifty three of us working on that company. It
was about six hundred thousand dollars of revenue per employee.
So that's pretty remarkable in a New Zealand context. It's
not really remarkable in a global tech context. You know.
Zero I think it's over two hundred thousand dollars per employee,
(11:15):
and they have a lot more employees than we have.
You know, they'll get probably closer to two undred and
fifty thousand. We may announce their next results. So you know,
we've proven we can build these sorts of companies in
New Zealand. It's not a question of whether or not
it's possible. It's just a question of scale. How do
we do it and how do we do more of it?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Fantastic Ryan, good to meet and talk with. You appreciate
it very much. Good luck with the book, and I
hope it's out there and people read the stories and
learn something from them. How to Be Wrong is the book.
Rowan Simpson is the author. For more from the Mic
Asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks it'd be from
six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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