What every Startup needs to know: with Marian Johnson from Ministry of Awesome

This week, I catch-up with Marian Johnson from the Ministry of Awesome in Christchurch. 

She has worked with multinational giants like Unilever and Procter & Gamble,  launched a television station in Budapest and eventually found her footing in New Zealand.

Marian recounts her love story that brought her back to Christchurch, her search for a career in the city, and how the 2011 earthquake became a turning point in her life. We talk digital innovation, startups, and raising capital, as she dons the mantle of Chief Awesome Officer at the Ministry of Awesome.

Learn about how increased investment competition has reshaped the early-stage startups, the pivotal role of customer validation in chiseling a successful business and the glaring gender disparity in the tech industry. (There is a conspicuous scarcity of female founders in the startup sphere!) 

 We wrap up with a heart-to-heart on the importance of camaraderie among entrepreneurs, the quest for the right mentors.

Hear how some of Australasia's most interesting and successful people are utilising People, Technology and Processes to live a productive life.

For more information on Lee Stevens visit www.leestevens.co

Sponsored by workforcery.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Time and Motion podcast with me, your
host, lee Stevens.
For over 25 years, I've workedwith businesses all over the
world to improve the technologyand the people within them.
In this podcast, I share someof my experiences and I chat to
guests who generously sharetheir stories of how to or, in
some cases, how not to live aproductive life.
I hope you enjoy the show.

(00:28):
Before we start the show, Iwant to talk to you about
Workforcerycom.
Workforcery helps mid-sizedbusinesses to stay compliant and
legal with both labour andsafety laws in New Zealand and

(00:49):
Australia.
It completely removes allpaperwork, spreadsheets and
manual processes by providingone easy to use tool to capture
and store your employee data.
Using features like the JobOffer Wizard lets managers and
business owners generate andsign employment contracts online
within minutes.
It also allows candidates toprovide all the information you

(01:10):
need from them online using yourown tailored application and
new joiner forms, which you canthen integrate with your payroll
system.
You can also create, manage andassign tasks to ensure that
nothing is missed throughout theemployee life cycle.
If you want to know more, headover to Workforcerycom to book a
demo, and if you mention a timein motion podcast, you'll get

(01:30):
your first month free Marionfrom Ministry of Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm really good.
How are you doing?
I'm good.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, yeah, a bit brisk out there today, but it's
flipping freezing.
Just another one of those camshave mornings, so thanks for
coming on to the show.
I've actually been trying toget you on the show for a little
while now, so saw you speak atthe Kiwi Saaz event.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, a couple months ago it was pretty cool, that
was cool.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
A really good event.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
It's always a big one on the calendar for anyone in
Saaz.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, and I actually thought it was.
As far as tech events go, it'sprobably one of the better ones
in New Zealand.
Yeah, really well organised.
So yeah.
So Kat Truliddhoff for the KiwiSaaz guys for organising that
event.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well done Kiwi, saaz, guys and girls and girls, yes,
yes collective.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, 100%, so okay.
So we'll get into the Ministryof Awesome and what that's all
about and your role there.
I like to keep it personal onthe show, so let's focus on you.
So, marion, where did you growup and where was you born and
what was your life like for you?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
It's probably the most interesting thing about me
is my early life.
I've been trying to live up toit ever since, but my dad was an
American diplomat, so I wasborn in Bangladesh and I grew up
in Near East Asia, with onelittle quick trip to Africa and
then another one to Kuwait, so Ispent most of my life overseas.
Dad was at the State Department,and so my life was really big

(02:56):
white houses with big walls andcompounds and drivers and just
heaps of fun and adventures allaround the world.
Every two years we'd have to goback to the States and that was
like massive culture shock.
But we were really excitedbecause there was electricity
and fast food.
Then we'd be out again.
Then I went to university inBoston, Tulsi University and

(03:22):
then went to New York and thenwent from New York to Budapest
and then from Budapest to Londonand then met this really cute
Kiwi guy one night.
And then boom, here we are inChristchurch.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
What did you study at uni?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
International Relations, Political Science.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
So that goes quite well in Christchurch, I guess.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Oh yeah oh yeah, yeah , it set me up perfectly for my
future career.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
So, in terms of your early career, so it sounds like
you was a natural traveler andit's in your DNA, right, I'm
guessing?
So what was someone like thoseearly jobs that you had?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I think so.
I started off in TV and so Iwas working for a company called
Major Market Television and wewrapped all these TV stations
across the States.
And so my entire background,those first four years, was all
about media, marketing, brandsolutions, working with
companies like Unilever andProcter and Gamble and
PlayStation and so on.

(04:16):
And then I went to Budapestwhere I was the managing
director, launching a TV station, and I was honestly the one
night man leading the blind.
No one knew what the hell theywere doing and I was calling my
friends in New York and sayinghow do you buy a program?
And we introduced Benny Hill toall of Hungary sorry, hungary,

(04:40):
or hey, let's see.
And then I moved to London,where I worked for Universal
Studios and Discovery Networksand just kept on the same sort
of trajectory, working in brandsolutions, just working for
bigger brands, larger contractsacross multiple geographies.
So you're Middle East andAfrica.

(05:00):
And then, late one night, metMr Johnson in a bar called the
Dragons Bar in Shortage.
And then, hey presto, here weare in Christchurch.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
What was the appeal about London?
So what took you there?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
If you're in media, I mean you really should be in
New York, London, Singapore,maybe LA.
Those are your big kind ofthat's where the hotspots are
and that's where most of the HQsare, and so it was just natural
that I would go from Budapestwhere I'd done that national TV

(05:35):
launch and then just bring itback to another place.
That was purely international.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
One thing I talk quite a lot about is the lack of
those big corporates, the hugeones that we just simply don't
have in New Zealand, let's faceit.
So what do you think you learnin those early days working with
businesses of that scale and ofthat size?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Just that everything is global.
Everything is global and Ithink one thing that, because
obviously we work with highgrowth startup founders here who
are coming up with some sort ofinnovation that they're going
to take global and there's a lotof assumption being made from
this tiny island and it's notabout whether or not the rest of

(06:16):
the world is going to liketheir product or whether or not
the product solves a problem.
I think there's just a reallack of understanding of the
scale of competition and thenoise in other markets that your
average consumer is justsurrounded everywhere they go
with their basically theirattention just taken over by so

(06:42):
much noise from so manycompeting brands.
And so it's not about whetheror not your product is good or
whether or not your product isinnovative.
It's just that scale ofcompetition is just something
that is very hard to understandunless you've been standing in
the middle of it.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yeah, 100%.
So you're, having worked inLondon and grew up in London, as
I've mentioned before, you kindof get used to that and you
kind of just get to use to thatpace and just the global out
global.
First, I think I just mightmention that you're just off air
and, yes, I agree 100% with youon that one.
So you met the husband inShoreditch, which is a trendy
area.
It wasn't when I was growing up, no, it wasn't.

(07:18):
They got a little bit trendieras I was in my drinking years,
as I used to say so yeah.
So what happened then when youmet him?

Speaker 2 (07:28):
So well.
We fell madly in love with eachother and within about 12
months we were engaged to getmarried.
And then we got married andthen, as soon as I was pregnant,
it was like all good Kiwis, wehave to go home.
We can't have children overhere, we have to have children
in New Zealand.
And I was cool with that.

(07:49):
I've lived somewhere all mylife, not the States.
So we came home to Christchurchand I thought at first oh my
gosh, there's no way.
Not because Christchurch isn'tawesome and not because it
wasn't awesome then 15 years ago.
But wow, I mean, what a bigdifference.
We're talking a city of primaryindustry 400, what?

(08:14):
10,000 people maybe which hasall sorts of great impacts
having only 410,000 people inthe city.
But in terms of industry, therewas really nothing for me,
nothing for my career, nothingon the scale, nothing on the
impact opportunity.
And then, all of a sudden, theearthquake happened and then it

(08:37):
was a complete reshift andreimagination and there's no
other place I would rather be,yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
When you were struggling with that mindset
lack of opportunity, lack of fit, if I want to have a better
word what was going through yourmind?

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Well, I just kept thinking, Martin and me, we've
got to get home to that globeand spin it and see where we're
going to go, because it isdefinitely not here.
Being a Kentabrian, he hadbriskly jumped over Auckland as
any possibility, whereas I waslooking at it and going, oh,

(09:16):
that looks like a nice place,and he's saying no way.
No way, it's terrible inAuckland, you'll hate it, you'll
hate it.
And of course it's not.
It's wonderful, I love Auckland, but really, in terms of
industry, as I mentioned to youbefore, it would really have to
be Sydney, singapore, london,new York, la, yeah.

(09:40):
And so it really was a takingstock and thinking of all of the
opportunity that was here.
What could I make out of it?
So I took a very brief forayinto working at an ad agency
locally, because there were acouple of local ad agencies, but
again, the scale was just tinyand I didn't really want to do

(10:06):
that on a tiny scale.
I knew that I was going to haveto do something completely
different and that's how I kindof wandered into.
I mean, first of all, theearthquake changed everything
and I wandered into a companythat was doing custom business
applications around irrigationand water management and,

(10:27):
believe it or not, it wasactually really compelling work.
It had huge impact in terms ofhelping farmers navigate their
environment plans and theirsustainability, and so that was
my first foray into sort of thedigital world around

(10:49):
applications, and then fromthere, I then took my next step,
which was working at a startup.
So I worked for a startup thatwas part of the powerhouse group
and that was a CallahanInnovation tech incubator, and
the startup was called FluentScientific.
It was really quite an excitingvalue proposition, which was

(11:13):
essentially helping non-nativeEnglish speakers test their
English capability and improvetheir English capability without
any kind of lessons and so on,and then it ended up being a
testing platform.
In any case, I don't want tobore you about Fluent Scientific
.
What was really neat about itwas that was my first foray into

(11:35):
a true high growth startupwhere there was an innovation at
the heart of it that was aglobal world first.
That was a redundant, a globalfirst.
And then how you go aboutvalidating that to the market,
how you go about finding yourfirst customers, how you go
about building revenue streams,how you go about finding

(11:58):
strategic partnerships that aregoing to help you along your way
and I did that for about twoand a half years.
It was an incredible journey.
It was extremely challengingand you never, ever, ever
stopped thinking about it and Ijust loved it.
I absolutely loved it.
I spent a lot of time raisingcapital, working with angels,

(12:19):
talking to BC, and by the time Igot to the end of that journey,
the company was starting topivot their product quite
substantially and I didn't agreewith where it was going and I
didn't want to be part of tryingto sell that in because I just
didn't believe it.
And it was at that point thatMinistry of Awesome's chief

(12:41):
awesome officer was.
The role came open and I spoketo a trustee who was on the
board and they said hey, yeah,whatever you know, put in your
application, see how it goes.
And I got the role, which I'moverjoyed about, and then I
became the third, I think, chiefawesome officer at Ministry of
Awesome, and that was five yearsago.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
And just so we can fill in the gaps.
Ministry of Awesome's Kyla was.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yep.
So Kyla and Vicky Buck and SamJohnson, sasha McMeaking and a
whole bunch of others who don'treally you know, there's at
least another 10, 15 people whomade that happen.
Ministry of Awesome after theearthquake.
I think it was about a yearafter the earthquake and as a
resident in Christchurch, Iremember vaguely hearing

(13:26):
something about it and I think Imight have read something in
the press or on stuff about theMinistry of Awesome and thought
cool, what a cool brand and,yeah, what a wonderful idea.
And essentially what it was wasa city making organization,
totally grassroots.
Everybody just came out of thewoodwork politicians, your tech

(13:48):
community, basically anyone whowas sort of leaning in and
wanted to have a go at what isChristchurch 2.0 going to look
like and what's it going to be.
And so by the time I got toMinistry of Awesome, five years
after that, the rebuild pieceand the reimagining of
Christchurch was pretty muchwell on its way and there was

(14:10):
really no need for a city makingkind of organization anymore.
So the question was, withMinistry of Awesome, this
incredible database of somethinglike 6,000 active participants,
a reasonably well loved brandand with the connections and, I
guess, reputation that Ministryof Awesome had, what next, and

(14:33):
that's when I started to workwith our economic development
agency and other stakeholders tosee what Ministry of Awesome
could assist with in this futureChristchurch 2.0.
And at that stage there was alot of work around deciding what
the economic strategy was goingto be for Christchurch, and
that was around a city ofinnovation, underpinned by four

(14:58):
key sectors, which were futurefood and fiber, med tech, health
tech, future transport,aerospace, and then underpinned
by high tech services.
And, like all cities in theworld right now, they want to be
a city of innovation.
But, unlike most economicdevelopment agencies and
councils, they actually put areally strong plan behind it and

(15:18):
budget behind it and started toactually make it happen.
And Ministry of Awesome waspart of that movement.
In the group that wasunderpinning, mostly focusing on
, we completely pivoted fromcity making to focusing only on
high growth startup, becauseChristchurch had a really strong
tech community but they didn'thave a strong startup community

(15:42):
that that startup communityexisted, but it was a few people
over here, a few people overthere, all spread out.
And what Ministry of Awesomedid five years ago when we
pivoted to focus on that, was tocreate entrepreneurial density,
find a place where we couldtell one concerted starting line
create one big community andthen have all of the key parts

(16:02):
of that community come togetherto make sure that those founders
had the greatest chance ofsuccess.
And so that was the processthat we began five years ago.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
When you went into that startup and you've come
from the corporate world whatwere some of the biggest
challenges that you saw?
For a startup that wasobviously quite different from a
corporate.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Oh well, no customers , no revenue.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
That helps.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
No customers, no revenue, no support.
You know, every day was whatyou made it, and if you didn't
make it, there was nothing.
So, essentially, I think I'mlike my, my, my real skill set
is growing something, and I dolove a challenge and I never,

(16:51):
never, say no to a challenge,and so it was a perfect role for
me at that stage.
But also, you know, for startupfounders and those very early
team members, you have to becomfortable with you have to be
comfortable, comfortable withaccepting a ridiculous challenge
, because it doesn't existwithout you.

(17:12):
You make every single day right, you lay the next, you know,
paving stone for the path thatyou're going to be making, and
if you don't do it, there's no,there's no path.
So it's really taking ultimateresponsibility for having this
thing, you know, actually becreated.

(17:32):
And that's a huge challenge andthat's why you never stop
thinking about it.
So you go home, you think aboutit, you go to bed, you think
about it, you dream, think aboutit, wake up, think about it.
It's just nonstop.
It's a huge.
It's hugely.
It requires a huge amount ofpassion, a huge amount of
dedication and a huge amount offocus.
And you know, with mostcorporates, they're well

(17:54):
resourced.
You'll have a job and you havea very specific, you know list
of things that you need to do ina list, an area of focus.
But generally you'll also havea team in around you, under you,
above you.
If you don't turn up, the wholething doesn't fall over, I mean

(18:14):
for an extended period of time,if you're any good.
Yes, you know it will have animpact, but you know there's
there's a whole army there,right, but with a startup guess
what?
It's just you.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
I was used to say, obviously, when I started my
business, you know, seven yearsago or maybe a little bit longer
than that, what used to happenwas, as you say, when you come
from the corporate world and youwork in corporate, there's
always someone that's going tomake a decision.
And it got to a point where Ithink I was in a meeting and I
was actually looking over myshoulder and going, actually no
one's going to make thisdecision.
Now I've got to make thisdecision right, you know, you've

(18:45):
got to go with it and trustyour gut.
So, and that I think yeah and100% what you're saying you have
to multitask, you have to buildweb, you have to be product
only, you have to be productmanager.
You have to be sales, you haveto be a manager, you have to be,
you know, marketing, you haveto be all of those.
And that's just a reality of astart up in those early years.
Yeah, okay.
So how would you defineMinistry of Autumn's purpose in

(19:06):
2023?

Speaker 2 (19:07):
So we are essentially all about growing New Zealand's
economy through startupinnovation.
So everything that we dofocuses on that as our mission,
and in the next 10 years, ouraim is to be the first choice
for any startup founder anywherearound the Asia Pacific region
who has high ambition, has areally strong value proposition,

(19:31):
has great capability.
They're going to be wanting togrow their startup in New
Zealand because New Zealand willbe known for that, and if
they're going to come to NewZealand, they'll want to be
working with Ministry of Autumn.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Okay, and it's election year.
So obviously I always say don'tget involved in politics.
You end up a happy man, a happywoman.
But it is election year andlook, I heard a few stories on
the radio last week aboutIreland about 10, 15 years ago
and obviously similar populationwas always like the correlation

(20:02):
of another bigger nation,similar to Australia.
But one of the things they didwas they started putting tax
breaks in about 15 years ago forhigh growth tech businesses and
that really did encourage a lotof investment into the area.
So if you, as a futuregovernment, what are some of the
things that you may be alreadythinking about?
What are you talking about thatcould really kind of put that

(20:24):
growth onto hyperspeed andencourage those tech founders to
come to Christchurch, come toNew Zealand?

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, I don't know if you know this, lee, but there's
a little group called theStartup Advisors Council and it
was created by the Ministry ofBusiness, innovation and
Employment a year ago, and onthat group is a whole selection
of people who come from the highgrowth startup sector.

(20:53):
So it's Sue's Reynolds from theAngel Association of New
Zealand, who is a powerful womanin the startup sector,
specifically around the veryearly stages of investment in
raising capital.
And then there's Phil McCaw,who is pretty much the OG of all
VC in New Zealand MoVac.
So MoVac is the, I guess, theoldest running and one of the

(21:17):
most successful VCs of NewZealand.
And then we've got Imche Furie,who is the CEO of Outset
Ventures, which is a deep techstartup hub located in Auckland.
And let's see who else.
We've got Carl from WNTVentures, which is a Callahan
tech incubator group based outof Taoranga.

(21:40):
And then we have two foundersGrant Straker from Straker
Translations, which is on the E,nzx or ASX, an incredibly
successful high growth founder.
And then we've got Mike Cardin,who is a multiple startup
founder, at the moment founderof Joyus.
So, and me.

(22:01):
So I'm on the startup councilas well and I am really lucky to
be there because this is thegroup that's been created to
ensure that we have all of theright policy levers in place to
ensure that our startup andinnovation ecosystem grows to
become that global world classecosystem that attracts talent

(22:24):
from all over the world and notjust attracts talent all over
the world but gives our Kiwistartup founders and innovators
our best chance for success.
And there's quite a fewrecommendations that are going
to be coming out very soon in areport.
The report is in draft and it'sbasically we're checking in
with key leaders in theecosystem for their input and

(22:49):
their reviews and their adviceon that draft and then it will
be published very shortly.
But I think one of the keythings that I want to give the
New Zealand government kudos foris that the well-being budget
of, say, three, four years agomade an absolute stonker of a

(23:11):
difference for our startupecosystem, and in that was a
fund of funds that went to NewZealand growth capital partners
and sitting here in our startuphub at Ministry of Awesome, we
saw the difference almostimmediately.
One minute.
It was incredibly difficult foran early stage startup founder
to get any kind of interest,apart from the well capitalized

(23:36):
angel groups around the country,most of whom were in Auckland,
and so, certainly for a startuphub that is HQed in the South
Island, it was really hard toget our startup founders any
kind of airtime with thoseangels, and it was really hard
as a whole to find any investorswho would be willing to come in

(24:01):
early and who had thatconfidence.
And from the VC perspective wehad, I can't I mean, I'm
probably going to get this wrong, but at that time we had two,
three reasonably active VCs,movac being one, but this is
later stage, you know.
So if you're early stage, ifyou're anything sort of from I

(24:23):
don't know 250,000, which islike beans through to one and a
half million, two million.
You know, unless you weresomething incredible, you just
weren't gonna be able to getthat first piece of investment,
and that's the thing that startsoff your journey, and so it

(24:43):
would take so long and so muchattrition before you could
actually find someone who wouldput their capital in you.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
And I think it's a challenge in, I suppose, across
New Zealand, right, but I hosteda KiwiSaz event with Vanessa
O'Brien and then Paul Claridgewas there from the Canterbury
Angels and one thing that waskind of immediately obvious to
me was just a scowl right, andso we're battling to try and get
I know that students shouldn'tdownplay you know a million and
a half of funding.

(25:12):
You know in some times inChristchurch and I also
interviewed Dave Armstrong fromNewfoundland and he talks about
the total New Zealand VC marketlast year being like 350, 400
million, which is equivalent toone deal in the States, and so

(25:33):
the money not being there.
Maybe you say whether it's atrust thing.
Yeah, so there's a few things,I guess, that were at play there
as to why, for whatever reason,people aren't looking at South
Island for opportunities.
But I guess that's what you'retrying to change, right.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Well, I want to come back on that actually, because
what I started off by saying wasI was giving kudos to the
government for the well-beingbudget, and the well-being
budget put that fund to fundstogether for New Zealand growth
capital partners, whichattracted VC's investors from
all around the world to come toNew Zealand, and we immediately
saw that.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Why.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
So we saw this great wash of money come into New
Zealand at the same time.
Of course, globally there's ahuge wash of money sloshing
around everywhere trying to finda good home, and New Zealand
certainly felt that as well.
But the NZGCP the fund to fundsreally kicked that off.
It attracted I don't know if itwas alone in attracting, but it
was one of the things thatattracted Blackbird Ventures to

(26:29):
our shores.
It attracted Hill Ferrants toour shores.
And now all of a sudden there'sa great deal of competition,
there's a lot of money standingaround, and so early stage
startups started to feel thatand they could go and get
capital.
And then, of course, you knowall of the fallout of ridiculous
valuations and so on and so on,and that's a worldwide thing as

(26:50):
well.
But I can tell you right now Idon't think.
I think it is definitely harderand we know it is from the data
it takes longer, it's moredifficult for people, founders
outside of Auckland.
So it's not just South Island,it's people, it's founders
outside of Auckland.
It takes them far longer toraise and they're far more
vulnerable for, you know, thosethat in that time period then

(27:14):
founders who are well connectedin Auckland, and that's because
the VC community is really andthe money and the population is
there Is.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
that's no different.
Obviously, because you know,when you go over to some of
these global conferences and thefirst thing VC will ask you is
what major market you're gonnamove to.
And that's quite common rightFounders having to move to San
Francisco or to New York orwhatever that hub my Austin's
the new one I've read this week.
So I'm guessing that's justlife right.
It's where the talent's gonnabe, it's where the customers are

(27:43):
gonna be, it's where people aregonna be.
So isn't that just the case of?
I suppose?
If anything COVID's taught us,is it supposed it doesn't really
matter as much?

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, I think at the early stage, the space that
we're in, our teams are notgetting asked to move for their
500,000 that they raised, ortheir 1.5 million.
It's later when that starts tohappen, and by that time
Ministry of Austin is out of thepicture.
We're only at the very, verybeginning of the journey, which
is, in my view, the hardest part.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
It is.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
But for us it is.
I will tell you right now thatif there's a high growth startup
founder that we're working withthat has high capability, has a
strong value proposition, wecan connect them with capital.
We can do that.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Do.
They always need capital,though.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
It depends on exactly what their path to market is.
It depends on what theirstrategy is.
But generally, if you're a highgrowth startup and you're
looking at global from day one,you need capital, and that's
more capital than your friendsand family round.
That's more capital than othertypes of investment might be

(28:52):
able to get you.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Okay, All right.
So let's look at the profile ofa atypical person coming
through Ministry of Austin.
Where'd you find them initially?

Speaker 2 (29:03):
We do a lot of networking events.
We go to absolutely everything.
There's an aerospace summitthat's about to come up, there's
a Canterbury Tech summit that'sabout to come up, and we will
just get to know all of theother people who are kind of
swirling about, swirling, notswirling, swirling about yeah.
Sounded good and generallyanybody who is an active founder

(29:31):
in that innovation space willalso be part of the same circles
.
But we also do a ton of profilesort of pieces on all of our
social channels.
We get a lot of people coming tous through all of that noise
and through the word of mouthand the recommendations I mean

(29:52):
at this state I don't know ifyou know this, but Ministry of
Austin is the most prolificearly stage startup incubator in
the country.
Our startups have raised northof 81 million at the stage, have
added just under 300 jobs fromthose startups and, considering
we're that early stage, that's areasonable amount of success

(30:15):
that our founders have achievedand Moa can only claim being the
hub where they are, were andhopefully the incubator has been
a great support and theaccelerators have been a great
support.
It's 100% down to the founders.
The point is is I think it'sabout drawing all that talent so

(30:36):
that there is a communitythat's formed so that they get
all the peer to peer stuff, sothat they get the profile they
need when they need it, whichattracts investors, which
attracts employees, whichattracts co-founders and all of
the good stuff that comes inthat very early growth stage.
And so that's the work we do,and that's really what we focus

(30:57):
on.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
I saw Levi and Partley were one of your cohorts
, one of your early businesses.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, they were in the first founder catalyst
before it was called foundercatalyst, and I think about
halfway through the time theywere here, we got funding from
Christchurch and Zedra EconomicDevelopment Agency which allowed
us to hire Jeffrey Ling, who isour head of hang on a minute
head of incubation for thefounder catalyst program, and so

(31:29):
Jeffrey worked with them quitea lot.
But if you talk to Levi andNathan, I'm sure they will tell
you that one of the best thingsthat they got out of being here
at Teohaka was working alongsideall of the other founders, and
that's the critical thing.
You know, it's for sure.
We'll organize office hourswith Samantha Wong from
Blackbird and Rob from HillFerence and the team from GD1

(31:55):
and pretty much every majorinvestor, which allows you to
get to know them before you needmoney, which always puts you in
a better place than asking whenyou actually really really need
it and you'll be supported byour experts in residence and so
on.
But the number one thing thatyou really get from this is
being in a community whereeverybody that you're working

(32:16):
with is on that same journey andthey're either a little bit
ahead of you and can throw somegreat advice, contacts, network,
term sheets, whatever, over theshoulder to help you along your
way, or there are people behindyou that you do the same thing
for, and that in itself is whatpowers everyone forward.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
In those early days what do you see as being?
You mentioned some of thesewhen you was working in the
startup.
But let's take a typical, youknow administrative, also
business or business gangthrough the programs.
What are the first six months?
Say, what are those earlyfundamental things that those
business have to grasp and get?

Speaker 2 (32:58):
I mean, the number one thing for everyone is
customer validation rightProduct market fit.
Well, no one ever really gets tofull product market fit until
they're really cooking with gas,right, you're always developing
that, you're always optimizing,but in that very early stage
the wheel is really really hardto turn.

(33:20):
You push and push and push andit just kind of creaks forward,
if anything, or it's justcompletely stuck and that means
your customers are kind of going, hmm, not really don't need it,
you know, or too expensive, butmostly it's just no, that
problem's not really that bigfor me and so I'm not going to

(33:40):
go there.
I'm not even curious enough togo there.
I'm not even going to sign up,you know, for free, yeah, and
it's not a hair on fire problem,so I really liked that analogy.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
when I was at one of the talks recently, they said,
yeah, if it's not a hair on fireproblem, then just don't bother
.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Just don't bother, and it's basically customer
validation, until you have ahair on fire problem.
Until you've got someone whojust starts to, you know, eat
your arm off.
You know, at the first, in thebeginning, you're kind of like,
you know I'm going to be thisterrible analogy.
But you're like feeding ducks,right, and they're kind of

(34:16):
quacking around and yeah,because it's all free bread it's
being thrown at them, andsometimes you know you feed
ducks and they've already hadsome, and nobody, you know,
there's just no duck attraction.
I'm going to drop this analogynow.
Forget about the ducks.
That's all right, but whathappens with so many of those
founders and it's so excitingwhen it does start to happen is

(34:37):
suddenly there's a bite and it'sa hard one, and then there's
another one and another one, andanother one and another one,
and suddenly, honestly, it'slike a little feeding frenzy and
the team is going ah, we needto hire more people, we need to.
You know, we need moredevelopers, we need more
engineers, we need more datascientists and they can't hire
fast enough.

(34:58):
And that's when you're off tothe races, and well, it's
actually before that, you know,because you see that coming
right, you see the, you see itand you can feel it, and then
that's when you start.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
And that customer validations.
I think no matter where you areon your business journey or how
experienced you are, but it'samazing how the business is
trying to skip that phase.
So you know, I want to pick themum test.
I don't know if you've readthat book, but so it's one of
the best books I've probablyread on product validation.
But it talks about doing yourcustomer interviews but not even

(35:31):
mentioning product.
All you're trying to find outis what the problems are in
their life.
But what happens is you start tosee a bit of a pattern, and
I've done this.
I'm up to like 35, 36 customerinterviews or B2B, and already
in those 35, so what happens isyou start well, those 15 have
all said the same thing, right,and then you kind of, and then
you, you validate that with thenext one and actually they go
yeah, there's definitely aproblem and I've got this and

(35:52):
I've got this and so.
But it's amazing how manypeople do skip that stage.
And one quote that I reallyliked they said it's like
copying bad DNA.
So if you try and scale up whenyou haven't got that fit, then
what are you doing is copyingbad DNA.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Oh, you know, I think the most important thing that
that anyone can learn here isthat many of the founders that
we work with they just lovefusing around with their product
.
They just flipping, love it.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
They fall in love with the product.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
They just cannot help themselves constantly doing
better.
It just needs a better UX, youknow, and you're like stop it,
get out of the building, get outof here, go, go, talk to your
customers.
No, don't fudge around with theUX.
The UX is not the problem.
It's not the logo, it's not thecolors, it's not the, it's not
the journey, it's not the signupform.

(36:46):
It's not that it is true, likeat a later stage.
It is that.
But you should be able to goout with a no code version of
your thing and ask people andask them some intelligent
questions to understand whetheror not this is a problem and
whether or not the potentialsolution that you're providing

(37:07):
is of any interest whatsoever.
But that's not fun, because youknow what, guess what they
might say.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
no, yeah, and I think that goes your big dream and I
think, yeah, especially someonelike myself, so in the relative
early days, but as a solution.
You know, my title wassolutions consultant.
That was my job, that was myexistence, you know, to come to
fall in love with a solution,not problem.
But yeah, I think the minuteyou start stop believing that
and you actually go no forfalling in love with the problem

(37:34):
, that's all, in love with thesolution, I think you definitely
get a bit more traction,absolutely OK.
So six months, it's that, youknow custom validation.
Six months, 18 months what'sthe next set of challenges for a
business?

Speaker 2 (37:47):
It's then ensuring that your MVP is, once you have
your market validation.
It's kind of a balance betweengetting a MVP together that has
the right balance of everythingyour customers need and will pay

(38:10):
for, and that's a lot of pilotprograms, test programs.
But you must always be testingthe revenue side and not just
testing the product side,because there's a lot of that
too.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
The last point you mean.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, you need to.
If you're going to do a trial,don't let it be 100%, zero, free
.
Have it be something.
It's got to cost something.
You have to always make surethat your customer is focused on
the purchase of your product,not just making their system
slightly better.
When I learned this the hardway myself at Fluent, we had

(38:56):
some really strong paid trials.
We also had some free trialsand with the free trials, guess
what happened?
The customer.
Because it was free, they justdidn't really support it, they
didn't tell everyone about itand so on and so on.
It's just taken for granted.
No one really takes yourproduct for a ride.
No one really gives you anyreal feedback because you're
giving them something for free.
So they want to be grateful andit's just false.

(39:19):
So I think as soon as you canget to some form of payment for
your first trial of your MVP,that's your second step.
And then if you nail that andyour customer is really leaning
in and saying yeah, yeah, I wantto roll it to another line or I

(39:40):
want to roll it to anotherdepartment or whatever your
business is, that's when youknow that you're probably going
down the right path.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, okay.
So one thing I just want totake a sidestep on is, as I
mentioned just before we wastalking, before we came onto the
show, a lot of the businessfocus I speak to in Christchurch
, new Zealand, it's a Marmiteapproach or Veggie Might
approach.
Sorry, localize it to come tosome of the support.
Next, work like Callahan andInitiative Awesome, and I think

(40:15):
a lot of it's probably lack ofinformation, probably not
knowing what it's all about.
But the people I spoke to andI'm just going to ask a couple
of questions because I've gotsome quotes that they're kind of
either all in, like this isamazing, they've been great,
really supportive.
My business couldn't cope aboutit.
Or they're like do you knowwhat?
They're just sitting arounddrinking coffee or sitting on

(40:36):
beanbags and that's what someonesaid to me and singing come by
and trying to take over theworld, right, all from
Christchurch, and so itdefinitely.
You know, when I spoke to a fewpeople because we were trying to
set this up for a couple ofweeks and spoke to a couple of
people and said you know, if youwere going to ask these
questions, what would you ask?
And so definitely Marmite intwo camps.

(40:56):
So there's three questions thatyou know, and these are more
points that quotes that come outfor me and I'll protect the
innocence I speak.
But the first thing someonesaid to me is the support system
is full of so-called expertsthat have never founded and run
a business in their life.
I think gray hair, gray suits,gray mentality was another quote
he said.
So what gives them the right toadvice?
So how would you respond tothat?

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Well, yes, there are.
I don't know about gray hairand gray suits and I immediately
want to defend the gray hairand gray suits, but I'm not
going to go there.
I think that I'm just going totalk about Ministry of Awesome,
because that's what I know,right?
So our team in terms of thesupport and the people who are

(41:46):
actually in the programs side ofthings so our head of programs
is a guy called Zach Ward orGabaldon, and he spent the last
20 years in Silicon Valleyworking on med tech startups or
in med tech startups.
So he spent some time at a medtech startup that grew from its

(42:15):
very early stage all the waythrough to IPO, and he was part
of that entire process and sawthat entire process, and then he
founded his own med techstartup, which he did not
succeed at, but went through allof those horrendous trials that
you do.

(42:35):
And it's even more complicatedwith med tech because there's
such a long development timeinvolved in that, raising
capital can be more difficult.
So I guess what I want to sayis that Zach has been there and
done that, and he's a mechanicalengineer with a master's in

(43:00):
mechanical engineering fromStanford, so he's got a systems
and processes down.
He's been in, you know.
I mean, he's kind of like ifthere was an expert in
Christchurch guess what.
We got him, and he's the personwho designs and manages all the
programs, and he began in thatrole I think in November last
year, because it was in Julylast year that we received we

(43:25):
were lucky enough to get thatCallahan funding.
It's the first time we've hadgovernment funding.
We've been bootstrapping allthis time ourselves, so we
ourselves have had to deal withthis crap, and so we needed to
start making our processes andour systems a whole lot more

(43:46):
scalable, customized, and wealso had this ambition to be
just supremely world-class andthe best in NZ.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
So is there any collateral damage with that,
though?
Because I guess, to a certainpoint, there's only so much
money, there's only so much time, there's only so many people.
So I think one of the terms Igot told was Lee, we have to
back winners.
I was like thanks for that.
You know, obviously I'm not awinner, but I'll get it.
But, looking back, you'veobviously got to take a punt on

(44:17):
some of those ones that can goglobal and can take it beyond
New Zealand, but at the sametime, I guess, is there other
channels for those?
Because I imagine there's a lotof entrepreneurial people out
there but probably don't want tobe, or can't be high growth
can't reach for the moon.
So I suppose, what are thechannels for those people out

(44:38):
there that maybe just want tobuild a successful business in
New Zealand?
That's not your target market.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
There's a big difference between SMEs and high
growth startups and one of themain things that the startup.
One of the main recommendationsand the easiest one in the
startup council is to be reallyclear on what is a high growth
startup.
So when we say startup, what dowe mean?
And so what we mean is anorganization that is small right
now, has no intention ofremaining small, will be going

(45:04):
global with something that'sscalable and impactful for the
whole world, that has innovationat its core.
So, whatever that looks like,that could be a tech platform of
some kind, it could be hardware, it could be in any sector, it
could be retail, it could bewhatever.
It's anything and everything.

(45:25):
So one thing that we have atMinistry of Awesome is every
sector is represented.
We have I don't think we haveMedTech right now, but we have
HealthTech, we have had MedTechin the past and we certainly
have a lot of Agritech, and.
But the key thing is it's notyour sector, it's whether or not
you have that scalableinnovation based value prop that

(45:51):
and an ambition and acapability to go global, and
really what it comes down to forus is we test that, but really
the most important thing is thefounder right.
The founder could be someonewho doesn't necessarily have all
the skills that they need rightthis very second, but they have

(46:12):
to have that ambition, thatcapability that's going to take
it to the first step, and theyhave to have discovered
something that is truly aninnovation, and that is a
problem that needs to be solved.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Do you think you've developed a bit of a neck of
ascertaining pretty quicklywhether someone's going to
succeed or not?

Speaker 2 (46:33):
I know, but there's always exceptions to the rule.
We miss people all the time.
And, to be honest, you know,lee, the issue here because we
deal with, 30 of our founders inthe incubator are local
Christchurch, canterburybusinesses.
The other 30 are all over NewZealand, most of them in
Auckland, most of them in theNorth Island, but we have people
from Gore.
In fact, we have one founderfrom Gore, and then we have

(46:56):
people in Taoranga, we havepeople in Auckland, we have
people in Hamilton.
They're all over the place.
And for our accelerators it'sthe same thing.
So our accelerators are hybrid.
There's some part of it that'sin person, there's some part of
it that is not in person, and sowe serve founders everywhere.
So, all up, every year we serve90 founders and of those 90

(47:16):
founders, we have never had a,we have never had a call to
action where we thought, oh, mygoodness, we have too many
really highly capable peoplewith innovation at the base,
with the ambition to go global.
So to me it says that thevolume is not there, right, we

(47:38):
don't have enough people in ourhigh growth startup pipeline
that have that profile with aproblem that needs to be solved,
you know, for a hair on fireproblem, with the capability to
solve it and with ambition to goglobal.
We don't have those threethings and a high enough number
in New Zealand, and that's whywe are squarely right at the
start of the early stage startuppipeline, because unless we get

(48:00):
that volume right, we're nevergoing to get to the number of
startups that we need to be aglobal, world class innovation
nation.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
For those businesses that need to go.
So one thing I would say aboutNew Zealand I think it's a
really great region for one ofour better than a country to do
your testing, to actually askthose initial questions, because
it's a lot more accessible.
You know, people generally doopen the doors and they are
generally more likely to helpyou, I think, if you actually
reach out to them, which hasbeen fantastic for me, right.

(48:28):
But I guess the biggestchallenge is the minute you have
to go overseas.
Australia is the logical stepfor a lot of people because it's
over the ditch similar laws,similar cultures, etc.
But what do businesses in yourmind have to differently?
The minute they say, right,okay, this list goes beyond New
Zealand.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Well, first of all, capital they'll need capital and
second of all, they'll need tohave a really smart go to market
strategy and they'll have topick their target customer and
their target geography and howthey're going to.
You know, what they're going tomarket is going to be
absolutely critically important.
They also need to be growingtheir team, you know.

(49:09):
So there's tensions all overthe show.
There's a lot of moving parts,but I also don't believe that
Australia should be.
I mean, like why?
Because you can step across toit?
No, you can't.
You still have to fly there,you still have to deal with
Australians.
You still have to deal, youknow.
Okay, like maybe it's not as bigand so that's less scary, but
you look, if you're going to dothat, why not just choose

(49:30):
Kentucky, you know?
Or why not just choose a statein the States or you know
somewhere, somewhere else?
I mean, I think the commonthing here is that straight away
, you just have to see whereyour target customer is and then
and then also deal with thingslike language and at least you

(49:50):
know some kind of translationfor culture and something that
you can hold on to.
But yes, ultimately this is anexcellent market to test in.
But this, for me, this marketis 100%.
Just to do that initialvalidation, work out what your
workout, your best conversion,you know pathways are, and then

(50:14):
make sure that your businessmodel works and then, from after
that, go and do it elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah, Okay, we've already touched on access to
capital.
Obviously, with the currentconditions, less money sloshing
around term I've used a littlewhile ago, and I guess investors
appetite for risks has probablydecreased for different reasons
how big an impact is thecapital markets changing on

(50:44):
businesses from an issue ofawesome?

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Well, it's major because we're going from the
heyday of ridiculous valuationsand so the ability to you know
those valuations are now bitingpeople in the, in the in the
butt.
Cause they've raised, so they'redoing down rounds and and that
hurts at our level, though it'sstill not the biggest problem.

(51:08):
You know, if I was, if I wassomeone who was trying to raise
series A or go series A to B, Iprobably would have a massive
problem.
But for that very first roundit don't matter, because most of
our people this will be thefirst time, and if it's the
second, then maybe we're alsodealing with a lot of people who

(51:29):
have a bridge round and or whoare doing that next stage, so
still below one and a half, atwhich point there are fewer,
there's there's less money inthe market because All those VCs
that were swimming around witha ton of money to give are

(51:49):
reserving a whole lot more fortheir follow-ons and they've
left the country.
So people like, for example,air tree I hate to just name one
because it sounds like I'mtargeting them but you know
people, people, the AustralianVCs who came over and drove Year
and a half, two years agothey've slunk back home because
they've got, they've got theirown markets to deal with, and

(52:12):
but at the same time there arestill some really active people
out there.
But you have to, you have tokind of pinpoint them, you have
to be a whole lot more carefularound.
Well, what sectors are theyinterested in?
No one's throwing money aroundanymore, so you really have to
hit their sweet spot.
You know, right in thecrosshairs you know, as opposed

(52:33):
to close.
okay, here's some, but yeah, Ithink it just makes everything a
whole lot more challenging.
So we have we have a couple ofpeople raising at the moment and
you know I made a comment toyou earlier that if someone has
a great value proposition yet wecan find funding for them.
Well, yes, we can, but it'schallenging and it takes a long

(52:54):
time, whereas it was a whole lotfaster before because there
would be, you know, you put yourhand up and if you looked even
slightly hot, there would befive VCs trying to get you Right
, and now that's not the caseyeah, yeah, I think.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Going over to the conference, as I mentioned, the
SADS, the conference in thestates 10,000 people, it's the
whole tech community there andhalf the people there with VCs,
the other half, you know,founders.
And something was reallyinteresting was that you know
those VCs very quickly, like letyou to the point where they
would turn away from you if youwasn't a value to them.
You talk to me I was early myjourney and they'd be like yeah,

(53:29):
okay, anyway, and it's just.
But I think the one thing that Ithought was noticeable was I
started spotting the trend thiswas like September last year and
I think even more so on thesocial media and all the the
tech commentators is Becomingprofitable quicker.
Right, and I used to saybecoming profitable was almost
like a dirty phrase for a lot ofpeople, but I think now it's

(53:51):
like okay, how do we get Profit,and it's always possible, but
just might mean that your growthis not as fast.
I'm guessing for a lot ofpeople, but I don't think that's
not a bad thing, the fact thatif you can start turning a
profit quicker, okay.
One final subject I want to askis I know it's very close to
your heart and when I saw youspeak of a couple of months ago
Was around women in tech, and soone of the programs that

(54:14):
ministry of awesome is electrify, yeah, and essentially that is
really to give women in tech andwomen in the stock.
Stop aspirations bigger, bigger, kick up now and I read that
twenty three percent of Founders.
That is less than twenty threepercent of twenty percent of

(54:37):
founders.
It's less than women.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
I think it's the last figure I saw.
In the last figure that wasseriously collected, start up
denim came up with anotherfigure, but I'm gonna throw it
out because I'm not sure wherethat figure came from exactly
and also there's no way wejumped up by nine percent in one
year.
So the last figure was twentyone point six percent of all
start up founder teams have onewoman on them.

(54:59):
So, if we just turn that aroundand make it a little bit more
understandable, it's roughlyfour out of five teams are all
male, and that's that's thedrama, right, that's.
That's.
That's a real problem.
Because If we think, if we thenlook at the other stats which
show that in any OECD comecountry, up to seventy percent

(55:19):
of your future economy is goingto be your current startups, and
so therefore, four out of five,our future economy, our future
kind of huge companies that makeup the entire, you know,
economic output of our country,are all male At this stage.
And and this is this is a dramafor both sides of the coin and

(55:43):
for everyone.
This is not about me saying it'snot fair, you know.
It's not about that, althoughequity is an issue.
But you know, to me it's morelike not only do women founders
provide a better return oninvestment Then male founders,
and that's been proven.
That's been proven again andagain.
There was a recent beingconsulting group BCG report that

(56:06):
showed that.
I can't remember whether it wasten percent more, but it was a.
It was a double digit figureand as an investor, you need to
sit up and Pay attention to that.
Not only do we provide a betterreturn on investment for
investors, and we are alsoworking in spaces that male
founders are not working in, andwhat that means is that when

(56:31):
you decide what problem you'regonna solve as a startup founder
, that has something to do withyour, your experience, your
areas of interest hundredpercent your, your passions.
the things that you consider ourmajor problems are are are
different for women and for men,and many are shared, but what
I'm saying is this that four outof five Problems are coming at

(56:55):
it with a male view and intwenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
I just find that fascinating because you look at
and and I've seen you thinkabout your wife, you think about
your daughter, you thinkingabout your people in your life
who you're saying, well, that's,that's gonna be a potential
barrier for them, but in twentytwenty three, why are we still
having this conversation?
Why is it still so tough forwomen to get involved and to

(57:19):
become founders?

Speaker 2 (57:21):
I think that the all of the contribution to that
problem it's it's so complicatedand interrelated, but straight
away, right off the bat, thereare a couple things that we
could do which would change thatdramatically.
In.
The first one is role modeling.
So if you, if I say to you whatis the startup founder?
Look like, I guarantee you, youjust thought of some guy.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Zuckerberg's basis.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Yeah, yeah you're not thinking of Cecilia Robinson,
you're not thinking of Nadialimb, you're not thinking of
Melanie from canva.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
who's Awesome, like you know, incredible you're not.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
you're not thinking about all those women founders
out there.
If I ask you, if I ask you whois the Chat GPT, right, who
actually is in charge of thetech?
Would you think it's a male orfemale?

Speaker 1 (58:16):
well, I mean, obviously, since I'm asking you,
it's a female and it's been onTwitter, but you would
automatically think it was a guyor your average general
population person would.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
So it's all about role modeling.
It's the same thing for tech.
It's about role modeling allthe way home, because that is
our easiest way to start tochange the Start to change what
people think they can do and andand.
That would immediately haveimpact from your youngest

(58:49):
graduate choosing their courseat school all the way through to
, you know, startup founders andmore women coming into the tech
space.
I think the other thing that isreally, I think the other thing
that is really important isthat and this almost I always
feel really uneasy talking aboutthis because it almost feels

(59:10):
like it's women's fault, but Ithink that there's something
happens with our confidencesomewhere between up to the age
of 12, like prepubescent, andthen all the way through, you
know, for the rest of our adultlife, Because before that, girls
and boys are like side by sideand you know no one's the winner

(59:32):
right, no one's the leader,Everyone is just.
You know it's an even playingfield and then all of a sudden,
you start to second guessyourself, you start to, you
start to feel uncomfortable andit becomes extremely challenging
.
Men have their own challenges.
I think here, with women, yousee a massive dip with
confidence, and you can see thisin you know, all sorts of

(59:55):
psychological data, and so whenyou can see it in your own home,
if you have daughters, there'ssomething that just gets all
messed up out of about thatstage.
And then it's at that stagethat you're starting to
introduce more sophisticatedversions of STEM subjects at
school and generally you'regoing to find that there are

(01:00:17):
fewer women who are taking partin those subjects, and that goes
all the way through touniversity, where you suddenly
have a drop in engineering, youhave a drop in software, in hard
sciences and so on, and thathas a knock on effect.
And then finally I mean this islike the you know top five, I

(01:00:38):
think, of the contributingfactors, but I'm going to give
you two more.
The first one is is in thestartup ecosystem, as it has
been over the last 20 years.
The real boom has been in techright, and that boom has been
driven by the tech industry andthe fact that I don't know what
the current figure is.

(01:00:59):
Do you know what the currentfigure is on women in tech?
Is it 18% or?

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
17% or 20%.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Anyway, it's way out of whack on our population.
We're 47% of the New Zealandpopulation and so, therefore, if
one of the key entry points forstartup and for founding a
startup are through the techsector, well then you
automatically have a massivedrop off of women and there's a

(01:01:26):
disparity there that needs to beaddressed.
So I think as more women jointech, we'll have more women in
startup.
Having said that, there's acritical other founder who
creates startups, and that isthe person who goes out and gets
a business, who who finds aproblem in business, who finds a
problem in their career, intheir sector, and then goes and
decides to solve it from theother end and then goes get it,

(01:01:46):
goes and gets a tech partner.
And and that's where you'reseeing also a lot of women
coming through.
So I think that the, the, thatdisparity of numbers in the tech
community is a key driver.
And then and finally, I wouldsay that the fifth thing is is
that when we, when we talk aboutthe disparity of investment in

(01:02:08):
women founders so 83% in 2021,83% of all venture capital went
to all male teams, 83% worldwideright 2% to all women teams,
15% to mixed teams, but 83%versus 2% that's ridiculous,
right?
So 83% of that money goes thatway.
And why?
Because most investmentcommunities, if you were to just

(01:02:31):
generalize across the board, doan average, they're investing
in tech, right, but if women areseeing problems that are not
necessarily have a tech solutionso, for example, you know
startups that might be moreimpact related then your average
investment deal is reallylooking for same old same old,

(01:02:53):
because that's what peopleinvest in, right?
So if you, if you try to sellme a SaaS, you know product, I
can, I get it.
There's a thousand of them andyou'd be stupid not to invest in
it.
If there's a really high TAMand a low, you know a KAC and a,
etc.
Etc.
You know, but but that's notalways the, the sector or the

(01:03:15):
type of startup that getspitched by women founders.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
And it's probably a vicious circle, right?
So if this just continues and Iagree 100% around the
confidence thing because, yeah,I don't know why there is, but
we've got to try and change thatyeah, yeah, cool, all right,
thank you, I really appreciatethat.
Okay, couple more questions,then Just we wrap up.
What's next from an issue ofawesome.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Oh, just you know, world domination, we're almost
there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
No, just kidding, Starting with Australia or
Kentucky.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
I think I mean we, we just need to refine and get
better at what we do.
We're constantly you know we'rewe're continuously improving.
We have a really fantastic teamin place.
It's been a while building itso that we can provide the best
possible support and opportunityfor founders.

(01:04:06):
We don't take an investment inany of our founders.
We're kind of an intermediary,we're a safe spot, we're a place
where you can, you know, whereyou can grow and and and get all
the support you need to becomesuccessful.
I didn't mention as well JeffreyLing, who is oh, I might have
mentioned him who is on thestartup team.

(01:04:27):
So you've got Zach, who is ourhead of startups sorry, our head
of programs and then you've gotJeffrey, who is the program
director of the founder catalystincubator, and he comes from
startup stadium in Taiwan andit's just just been like an
incredible flywheel of foundersgoing through that ecosystem.
So he's taken a lot of his bestpractice and brought it to what

(01:04:49):
we do here at Ministry ofAwesome.
We also have an incredible headof marketing community who just
joined us about two and a halfmonths ago from zero, and we
have just hired our head ofpartnerships and I can't say who
that is yet.
I don't think so, because hehasn't put it out on LinkedIn
yet, but he's really cool andone of the one of the things
that's really awesome about himis that he is going to be our

(01:05:13):
first hire and on the seniorleadership team, who is Manafena
, and that's something that weare hugely excited about.
We're the only Callahanconsortium that have a
partnership with a MOTI startupgroup, which is HTK.

(01:05:34):
So the Callahan partnershipthat we have with HTK is
essentially we want to make surethat we are baking cultural
intelligence in from the verybeginning and making sure that
that superpower goes with ourfounders to the rest of the
world, at the same time asbringing across all the network
and this huge community to theMOTI and Pacifica founders who

(01:05:57):
could potentially benefit fromit.
So that's a pretty excitingdevelopment and, with that team
in place and, of course, katieand Anjali and Jeffrey were
really poised for great successand great things over the next
five years.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Sounds fascinating.
Okay, and then final question,which I'll ask everyone on the
show If you could go back andgive 21 year old you some advice
, what would that be?

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Gosh I would say follow your dreams sounds really
naff, but in quite honestly,lee, I have like I have never
shirked from someone handing me,you know, the keys to the 747

(01:06:54):
and being like, okay, you go.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
I love a good challenge and I've done that all
my life.
So I would say absolutely youngMarion, go and follow your
challenges, follow your dreams.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Good advice, Great advice, Marion, thank you so
much for making time to spend onthe show and being fascinating
here and about the start upscene in New Zealand and what
you're doing at Ministry ofAwesome and actually for me it
was actually quite good becauseas a whole he had the questions
I always want to ask and justdidn't have the opportunity.
So actually from a personalperspective, if I'm the only one
that's listened to this, thenI've had, you know, actually got

(01:07:29):
a great deal to do out it, butI'm sure lots of our listeners
out there were interested in thebusiness scene in New Zealand
and start up scene and justgenerally business as a whole.
I think would be fascinatinghere and here in your story and
what you've been telling us.
So I really appreciate the time, looking forward to seeing the
continuing success of Ministryof Awesome, continued success
for Marion and, yeah, let's keepin touch.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
I've loved meeting you, Lee.
Thanks so much.
It's been.
It's been an awesome.
I don't know how long we'vebeen talking 45 minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Just over now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
All right then.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Time flies.
We're about to get kicked outof the room.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Okay, Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Marion.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
All right, thank you, cheers.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
So that's another great episode, done and dusted,
as always.
I'd love to hear from you ifyou know anyone that's got a
really good story to tell abouthow they are, or not, living a
productive life.
If you want to get in touchwith me, please do so by my
website, wwwleastevansco.
That's wwwleastevansco.
You can email me, lee atleastevansco, or get in touch on

(01:08:27):
LinkedIn, which way I also hangout in the meantime.
Have a good week.