The Morgo podcasts are 20-minute interviews with people building tech companies from New Zealand and Australia into the world. Look for The MORGO Podcast on your favourite podcast app and subscribe.
Building Engineering & Design Co (BEDC) takes architectural plans and turns them into structural plans using a human-augmented, patented AI platform. In just 5 years the company has grown to over 450 people: a large design team in the Philippines and people in market in NZ, Australia, the US, Canada and the UK. Ben talks about successful market entry using a channel partner. His advice on how to scale fast: hire great people and retain them. www.bedc.ai
Ed Harvey, Evnex Evnex makes charging solutions for electric vehicles. Ed talks about spending a year developing their first electric charger, then working out how to turn a technology into a company: better understanding the market, learning how to raise money and how to hire people. Now there are a lot of competitors & a slowdown in the market so he needs to think deeply about how to win. Ed's advice for success: play to win – narrow your focus to something at which you can be the best. www.evnex.com
Worldwide fog disrupts 620M passengers & costs airlines billions in rescheduling fees every year. Emily started Pyper Vision to disperse fog at airports but then realised that the biggest problem is vague forecasting of fog leading to cancelling far more flights than necessary. Pyper Vision switched to fog forecasting using a deep learning model. They can now give a fog forecast for every minute of the next 4 hours. Their first airline customer goes live this month. www.pypervision.com
Litmaps is a Literature Discovery Tool that helps researchers to find vital scientific papers they didn't know about and to tell a better research story. A Litmap is a picture that shows the relationship between a collection of scientific papers based on their citations, popularity and currency. Litmaps is now used by researchers, students and professionals across 150 countries. Axton talks about what he's learned in starting the business and in moving from CTO to CEO. www.litmaps.com
This podcast celebrates a hero of the NZ tech sector: Ian founded Orion Health over 30 years ago - the first company in Auckland to have internet! Orion builds products that link healthcare systems together. It has spun off a number of companies along the way, most recently selling 3 products for over $200M. After this they have 3 products and are down from over 700 people to 120. Ian has handed over the CEO role and now calls himself Mr Odd Job at Orion. www.orionhealth.com
Max & co-founder Sebastian Wieczorek started space tech company Zenno to solve the problem of running out of fuel in space. Their solution is to use superconducting magnets fuelled by solar power to provide fully autonomous positioning of satellites. After 7 years work, they have solved the problems of operating their technology in space. (And have now announced their first commercial partnerships.) When asked what part of this was hard, Max replies “all of it”. www.zenno.space
The Clinician offers a digital platform that redefines healthcare by shifting funding from service delivery to measurable outcomes. Founded by Ron, a former neurosurgeon, and Tam, with experience in pharma and business intelligence, the company blends medical, technical and commercial expertise. They've scaled the business to over 50 employees globally with clients in 7 countries, leading a transformation in healthcare funding and delivery. www.theclinician.com
The Dodson Group is a precision manufacturer, #1 in the automotive niche of high horsepower transmission upgrades. It has diversified into other markets such as aerospace, agriculture, marine, & green energy by acquiring its largest local suppliers. David took over as CEO of Dodson five years ago and has grown the business from 17 to 75 people. David is a former automotive engineer and investment banker who wanted to build a business, and Dodson was a perfect fit. www.dodsongroup.com
Kitea Health makes a device to help manage hydrocephalus: a condition where fluid accumulates in the brain, managed by inserting a shunt to drain the fluid. Kitea Health makes a tiny implantable device to measure pressure in the brain at home, letting you know if the shunt has failed and you need medical help. Simon brings an extensive background in developing medical devices to this new venture. His key advice: build the team! www.kiteahealth.com
Hot Lime Labs is putting the green back in greenhouses – supplying yield-boosting CO2 from biomass for large glasshouses. With $9 million of angel funding they've scaled from the lab to a demo delivering CO2 into a 11 hectare glasshouse. It's now ready to take to the world – which will need lots more funding. Tijs talks about how the needs of the business change as you grow, with specialists replacing generalists, and how ready people are to help if you ask. www.hotlimelabs.co.nz
Kry10 is a building a secure operating system to enable critical infrastructure such as electrical grids and medical devices to transition to a future where they are intelligent, cloud connected and adaptive driven. This can replace, or be placed in front of, old software built on operating systems from the 1990s that are vulnerable to viruses. It was founded by Boyd and other ex-Microsoft/Amazon execs to commercialise cybersecurity technology spun-out from an advanced research group. www.kry10.com
Wellumio is developing a highly portable head MRI scanner for use in emergency departments - providing a scan in the “golden hour” after stroke when treatment is most effective. Shieak & Sergei talk about how great it was to find each other, their journey to dealing with investors rather than grant reviewers, and now getting their product to market. They'd like to encourage more academics to choose entrepreneurship! www.wellumio.com
OneReg is about effortless compliance and smoother operations for aerospace. When Covid struck, Clinton lost his job and decided it was time to start a business. He and his two co-founders had more than 100 years experience in compliance, digital innovation and aviation. Their initial customers are airports, which are very complex environments – they have the biggest need for what OneReg does. They now have most of the airports in NZ as customers and are moving offshore. www.onereg.com
Eight360 has built an immersive VR motion simulator: a ball that you sit inside that can do full 360 flips and spins. This is fun. It's also very serious: it delivers a more immersive and visceral experience, leading to better engagement and learning outcomes whether you are manoeuvring heavy equipment in unusual situations, practicing your off-road handling skills to avoid a rollover, or learning to land an aircraft in a windy location. www.eight360.com
Danny, CEO & co-founder, of Basis explains how they have developed a home electricity smart panel that allows you to manage your power usage in real time and gives data to the electricity companies so they can offer smart-use plans to reduce cost. They are driven by delivering an enduring positive impact for the planet. The first smart panels will be delivered soon – you can pre-order on their website. www.wearebasis.com
Three founders who had worked together before started Comply Pro to meet needs for safety in the construction industry and food safety in hospitality, building a SaaS company that can be rapidly scaled around the world. Now ComplyPro manages 18.4 million records and protects 200,000 sites globally, with over 4,000 clients and 45,000 users. Michael talks about encouraging everyone to act like owners, think like founders, and innovate like entrepreneurs. www.complypro.io
Hadleigh's maritime background gave him the insight that started SwipedOn: on a super yacht everything was electronic except the dog-eared visitors' book. With no tech or business background, he set out to build a tablet sign in. Today Hadleigh employs over 50 people and SwipedOn is used in over 9,000 workplaces. The company has gone through ownership changes: it sold to an AIM listed company and became 95% of its recurring revenue, and it is now owned by a PE firm. www.swipedon.com
RedSeed trains retail staff: it provides courses, coaching & a customisable LMS with a library of easy-to-implement course content and learning pathways that lets its customers customise the training. Its coaching is a key differentiator. Anya talks about growing the company from in-person training to fully online resources. She's now looking at flipping from sales led to product led growth. It's a great story of adapting the company to the market over time. www.redseed.com
Starboard takes data from satellites to track every oceangoing vessel on the planet. It combines this with scientific models and other intelligence sources to create a pattern of life for each vessel, allowing analysts to assess if the vessel poses a risk – to sovereign borders or to commercial assets. Trent joined when Starboard had product-market fit in the Pacific. His key role has been to capitalise the business and scale internationally. www.starboard.nz
CAR T-cell therapy is a cancer treatment where a patient's own T-cells are reprogrammed to fight the cancer. There are 2,000 therapies in clinical development around the world which use different ways to program the T-cells. BioOra has developed an automated manufacturing system to scale up the production of personalised T-cells for treatment of the cancer. In partnership with the Malaghan Institute BioOra has treated 30 patients, the last 7 using this automated system. www.bioora.com
OneRoom is a webcasting platform specialized for the funeral sector. It instals cameras in funeral homes to make webcasting easy & free up funeral directors to focus on personal service. David was as an investor in the company and became CEO to take up the challenge going from start-up to scale-up. As a student he won a scholarship to the US & made the US Gymnastics Team. Now he is taking on the challenge of the US market for the business. www.oneroomstreaming.com
The Gastric Alimetry system is like an ECG for the gut - the electrical signals are 100x weaker than from the heart and very noisy. It provides data-driven insights to help clinicians work out what's going on. It is now used in 35 hospitals. Greg talks about how hard it is to build a medtech: regulatory, reimbursement & technical issues. To move fast it's important to have the right people, including key partners such as his co-founder & his Chair, and a balanced life.
Tracksuit provides beautiful, radically affordable and easy to use brand tracking for modern consumer brands. The team recently raised $22M. Connor talks about finding early product-market fit with 100 prospect conversations, and then leaning into scale. Every 3 months everyone should “give away your Legos”–either automate your current job or hire someone to do it better than you can while you solve new problems. www.gotracksuit.com
Goodnature makes ethical pest control devices that now sell around the world. Craig, a co-founder, talks about how they started Goodnature to control rats and stoats in New Zealand – building a trap that can go off multiple times in the bush. Dave joined as CEO 3 years ago, bringing a background in international marketing. They both like to solve problems: Craig on the technical side and Dave on the marketing and company growth side. www.goodnature.co.nz
Gembot.ai is a smart investment platform. Charlie started it because he was frustrated that he couldn't find this for himself: he wanted to know statistically and visually what his exposure looked like at any time. Gembot provides transparent, low cost and informed investment. How do you set this up from scratch? Listen to Charlie's journey! He's on a mission to help people grow wealth. www.gembot.ai
Claudia Smith & Russell Smith built AML platform APLYiD to allow companies to verify customers online in seconds using biometric measures. APLYiD now has over 1,000 customers in Australia, New Zealand & the UK. Claudia and Russell each had a background in identity work and knew the corporate environment well. In this podcast they talk about how they work together, how they complement each other and what they've learned about building a tech company fast. www.aplyid.com
Bspkl makes high-performance catalyst coated membranes for hydrogen production - using 25x less catalyst metal than alternatives. Christina joined the inventor of this technology, Jérôme Leveneur, to build a company based on his technology. Christina talks about why hydrogen production as the first market, the challenges of raising funds, and their ambition to make a genuine difference in the world, opening pathways for the scientists, startups & employees. www.bspkl.co
ADInstruments makes scientific hardware & software for biomedical research and education with offices in 15 countries & 220 people around the world. Its customers include the top 100 universities & the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. The company has been built over 37 years. Alex has been CEO for the last 4 years and has overseen the growth of the SaaS business, which is now a significant part of their revenue. www.adinstruments.com
ecoPortal started as an environmental risk management consultancy. Bringing its sustainability origins into the larger health & safety picture, it now supports enterprise retail, transport, and logistics companies worldwide to achieve their health & safety engagement goals. Manuel talks about ecoPortal's humble beginnings as a consultancy and the journey of bootstrapping the company to 75 people. He also sheds light on the limitations and benefits of bootstrapping. www.ecoportal.com
Alyona studied Natural Language Processing before most of us had heard of AI. To start her company she looked for a problem worth solving & found the need for customer feedback analysis. Thematic is an AI-powered platform that transforms feedback into actionable insights. Alyona talks about how she built an initial product, talked to the market to find a fit, persuaded her husband Nathan Holmberg to join her, and the difference that YCombinator made for them. www.getthematic.com
Mary Vance & Nick McDonald founded Cemplicity in 2013, with Blaik Wilson taking the CEO reins in 2020. Cemplicity keeps patients remotely connected to their care teams as they go through a health service, alerting care teams when action is needed. Cemplicity has worked with over 3,000 health facilities in 8 countries and over 5 million patients. Mary & Blaik talk about building their global business in the challenging field of digital healthcare. www.cemplicity.com
Ambit is an AI platform for customer service at scale. Tim & his co-founders started Ambit in 2016, seeing the opportunity to leverage the power of Generative AI to provide deeply personalised, automated conversations for customers – increasing customer satisfaction while reducing the cost to serve them. He talks about how tough it is to sell to the IT teams in large enterprises and how relationships drive almost everything. www.ambit.ai
Inhibit Coatings is a science-based company producing high-performance antimicrobial coatings for use in food safety and medical applications. It works with resin manufacturers and end-users to develop bespoke antimicrobial solutions with high effectiveness and long-lifetimes using novel nanotechnology. Eldon talks about the journey from his PhD research to first commercial sales and pursuing a licensing model to grow fast. www.inhibitcoatings.com
Futureverse is a media tech unicorn at the intersection of AI, Gaming and Web3. Its platform simplifies Web3 for developers and users and it works with brands to power their experiences, such as a recently released AI powered game built with FIFA. Aaron talks about how he & his co-founders started by building a portfolio of companies for Web3 and last year rolled up and acquired 11 companies to create Futureverse, which now has 250 people across 16 countries. www.futureverse.com
Asantha founded PaySauce to bring new technology and deep domain knowledge to small businesses wasting time and energy on paying their people. Asantha talks about the journey –learning the real pain points to solve for small businesses, and commitments to excellent customer service and to providing a great place to work. Its automating top-up pay for dairy farm workers and its pre-pay day lending are revolutionary. www.paysauce.com
Pultron Composites makes glass fibre composite materials. Peter Holdsworth invented the technology for fibreglass fence posts. His wife Bronwen built the business & ran it for 20 years. Her son, Jasper, now runs it. This is a great story of innovation and building a global business. The core of the company remains in Gisborne where they experiment, make 20 product lines & build the machines for the offshore JVs in Saudi Arabia and the US. www.pultron.com
Sam is the co-founder & the CEO of LawVu, a software platform for in-house legal teams. Lawyers using LawVu gain visibility over all their legal work, improve productivity & show legal's value to the wider business. Sam talks about the journey: spending 3 years building the product with trial customers before going to market, winning an RFP for a legal team of 200 – which accelerated their product development, scaling rapidly to 125 people, and learning about fundraising along the way. www.lawvu.com
John saw the need for a seamless SaaS platform for commercial training providers: automating all the processes for promoting, selling and delivering courses. John talks about starting out with sweat equity, spending a lot of time with customers to design the product, always appearing as a global operation even when they were working from his house, and how rewarding it has been to build a company of 60 people processing $500m p a which has trained over 7m people around the world. www.arlo.co
Kea Aerospace's mission is to improve life on Earth using insights from the stratosphere. Solar-powered, remotely piloted stratospheric aircraft will fly continuously in the stratosphere for months to collect frequent high-resolution aerial images. Mark became fascinated with space a long time ago, and was the co-Director and seed investor of Rocket Lab. In addition to building Kea Aerospace, Mark has been instrumental in establishing an aerospace tech hub in Christchurch. www.keaaerospace.com
Forbury provides commercial real estate investment modelling software to customers in the UK, Australia, Singapore, Japan & New Zealand. Scott joined the founder, Steve Surridge, to build the business, with Steve focussing on new products and Scott building the team. He talks about how important it is to focus on the people who will deliver your business outcomes, and how Covid was an advantage for them and has accelerated expansion into offshore markets. www.forbury.com
John Penno and Maury Leyland started Leaft Foods to create a new food system by capturing the most abundant protein on the planet - Rubisco from green leaves. Leaft integrates with existing farming systems, extracting the Rubisco from common forage crops & producing a high-quality silage feed as a co-product. This reduces the total nitrogen loading in the farming system & lessens the carbon footprint of farming while producing products that taste good with high nutritional value. www.leaftfoods.com
Spice is a founder & CEO of Marsello, a smart marketing platform for smaller retailers. Marketing is really hard for these businesses. The Marsello platform has strong reporting & analytics. Retailers can run targeted marketing with data-driven automation, email, SMS, loyalty programs & social media and measure the impact of them. Thousands of small and medium-sized retailers and hospitality operators around the world are now using the Marsello platform. www.marsello.com
Tim is the founder & CEO of Runn.io, a resourcing and capacity planning platform. Tim previously co-founded SilverStripe, whose open-source content management system is used by thousands of organisations worldwide. He started Runn because of the frustration of being able to get company-wide visibility across sales, projects and the people needed to deliver them. Runn has employees and customers around the world, including very large companies. www.runn.io
Socialites is a full-service social media agency that helps organisations thrive in the dynamic digital world by using social media to bring a brand's DNA to life, creating communities of loyal customers. The Socialites Group has grown by acquisition. It runs multi-language, multi-platform campaigns across Asia, Europe, Australasia, the Middle East, the United States and Canada. www.socialites.co.nz
Max founded Lumin to create a better way for people to annotate and collaborate on PDF files. He bootstrapped it to 30M users based on ad revenue, then made a very rapid switch to being subscription funded – in just 2 months! Lumin now has 80M users and 80 staff around the world and many documents are being signed every second. Max's vision is to solve the pain of digitally managing, signing and sharing documents. www.luminpdf.com
Izon Science isolates & analyses nano-biological particles. Its products are sold for medical R&D in 50 countries. A step change in the size of Izon's business will be driven by one of its customers taking a product currently in testing to market – such as a cancer test. Izon has 50 staff in NZ, the USA & France. Hans talks about funding a company when it's cash negative, getting focused on marketing and continuing to innovate to find the product-market fit. www.izon.com
CerebralFix is an international game development studio which games for large international companies. Its talented team of more than 70 developers, artists, and designers work tirelessly to bring their games to life: from brainstorming new ideas to coding, testing, and polishing the final product. Tim talks about the challenges of staying current while technology is changing so rapidly. www.cerebralfix.com
Rockets that operate like aircraft and satellite propulsion of the future – that is what Stefan Powell and the team are building at Dawn Aerospace. Their spaceplane, the Mk-II Aurora will be the first vehicle to fly to sub-orbital space twice in a day, and their satellite propulsion systems are already powering 11 spacecraft in orbit. Dawn now employs over 100 people in NZ, the Netherlands and the US. www.dawnaerospace.com
Bill Buckley is New Zealand tech royalty. Do listen to this! Buckley Systems makes ion implanters to put the metal into silicon chips (300 lines in the width of a human hair); its ionising machines make all the flat panel screens for your phones, iPads etc; and they make medical devices and R&D machines. These are all based on using huge precision magnets to direct & accelerate ion streams. They ship over 1,000 tonnes per month from Auckland to the world. www.buckleysystems.com
ZX Security is a specialist cyber security consultancy with staff in New Zealand, Asia & Europe. It tests and finds vulnerabilities in an organisation's networks, cloud environments, buildings and more. ZX also provides senior leadership security advice specific to customer environments. Ian talks about the importance of the company's employees in building a company whose customers around the world range from start-ups to a company with over a million employees. www.zxsecurity.co.nz
Portainer is a container management system for Kubernetes, Docker/Swarm, and Nomad that simplifies container operations so you can deliver software to more places, faster. Neil talks about the challenges of commercialising open source software and of building a business out into the world from New Zealand. The company now has thousands of customers across the world. www.portainer.io
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