Business Is Boring

Nemi Teas creates employment opportunities right across their business, with the first steps being running chai stalls at festivals and markets. They sell their tea through retail and wholesale, and are plastic free, using innovative materials and techniques to keep the nasty stuff out of their product. It’s a growing business addressing a growing problem, and helping to drive the idea that you can vote for the kind of world you want to live in with every dollar you spend. To talk about social enterprise, the Nemi Teas journey and what’s next for the brand, Founder and CEO Pranav Chopra joined us on Business is Boring.

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For a new spot, Bar Céleste has been received extremely well. It was named the best new opening of 2019 by Viva, reviewed glowingly by Metro, and is now a fixture and favourite of food influencer EatLitFood. If you haven’t been yet, you might wonder what’s so different about this 'neo-bistro' idea. Inspired by a new style of dining that's grown in France, it's where the idea for Bar Céleste began. Brought together by the team behind the La Pêche pop-ups that happened first in Paris and then around Auckland, Emma Ogilvie and Nick Landsman joined Business is Boring this week to talk about what goes into creating a dining experience and how in hospitality – a notoriously fickle industry – opening a restaurant is never as easy as it seems.

Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation.

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Minaal's two founders landed on the idea of making travel bags as a way to continue a life lived abroad, and it’s still working, with this week’s podcast guest, co-founder Jimmy Hayes in Auckland on a trip back from Japan, one of their biggest markets and one of his home bases. Jimmy joined us on Business is Boring to talk making a dream into a life, global success, taking on an industry with massive incumbents, and the power of the crowd.

Business is Boring is presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Morris Pita from EmergencyQ.

You might have been unlucky enough to have been sitting with a kid at an emergency department, wondering just how long it might take and if you were even in the right place. It's not a nice feeling, or a very productive one, and it turns out that a lot of people in the queue ahead of you, and maybe even you, might not be best served at that place.

This insight helped lead this week’s podcast guest to take a side-step from a successful academic and business career into software entrepreneurship. He made an app called EmergencyQ that works with DHBs and emergency and community health providers to make sure everyone gets the fastest, most appropriate care for their needs.

It's saving millions of dollars, countless hours, and meaning stretched emergency departments can better prioritise working on the highest-need cases.

The app is the idea of Morris Pita, who gained an MBA at Oxford, was involved in delivering some of the biggest clean energy generation projects in the country, and became a consultant working on significant Māori economic development projects.

To talk the journey, the goals of EmergencyQ and economic development, Pita joined Business is Boring for a chat.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Greg Brebner from Blunt Umbrellas.

This week on the podcast, a business that began with the realisation that umbrellas really sucked, that's grown into a business turning the industry inside-out. Blunt Umbrellas sell brollies for 5-10 times more than the market, are found in countries all around the world, and have now sold over a million units of their signature styles.

Through fashion collaborations, a lot of market building, and clever design they have created their own section of the market for their wind proof, strong, beautifully designed umbrellas, that won’t take your eye out or be heading straight to landfill after seeing some weather.

To talk about making an idea into reality, the importance of a clear vision, and loving bad weather, creator and inventor Greig Brebner joined the podcast.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Bridie Picot, founder of Thing Industries and Wrappy.

This week’s podcast is a chat about turning cool ideas into great businesses, around day-jobs and responsibilities, and having those products be picked up by some of the great taste arbiters in the world. Bridie Picot started out in New Zealand, and then went to London and New York, working at some of the most influential ad agencies in the world. Around the edges she always had an interest in design, thoughtful and warm characterful pieces. She turned this love into Thing Industries, a partnership with a New Zealand based designer. The brand grew, running fashion collaborations, was named the maker of the year by local title Urbis, and was featured in Wallpaper* and in the New York Times for its playful products like the Banana Pillow and a chair with no seat.

From this Bridie has launched Wrappy, a design-led gift-wrap business, and also The Shack, an artfully composed rental project in upstate New York. To talk making it in the Big Apple and turning ideas into reality we caught up with Bridie in the studio on a visit home.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds.

On this week's Business is Boring, host Simon Pound talks to a founder and chief investment officer who has taken a company from starting with a small loan to having a billion under management in just over a decade.

If you were a uni student around the year 2000 you might remember that you could draw down student loans, ostensibly for living, but we would all know stories of people who turned them into trips, parties or other forms of massive future liability. I went to a study trip in Russia on mine and resented the debt for the next twenty years. But how many people do you know who were onto-it enough to use that opportunity as the seed capital to kickstart an investment career? One that now means this week's podcast guest runs a company with $1b under management that has returned $350m to its clients.

Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds, turned his $3000 and some other funds into $200k, attracting investment enough to go out on his own. Then the financial crisis hit. He battled through, bought while the getting was good, and was able to build his way to some of the best returns in the business.

Today they are involved in funds management, wealth advisory and Juno KiwiSaver, which offers a low-fee model that they are now challenging the industry to match.

I got to know Mike when I did some writing for his company, and was amazed at his story, so it is a great pleasure to welcome him as a guest on Business is Boring.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Bruce Turner and Thomas Rowe from Urbanaut Brewing Co.

 

There are probably a few people listening that have kept up with friends from school and kicked around some business ideas. Maybe even some that have enjoyed the odd beer together and thought about making some. But how many people actually go ahead and make it happen?

That is the founding story of today's company, Urbanaut. It came about after three friends bought the worst house in Auckland, turning into one of the best, so they could fund their very own brewery in Kingsland.

The three friends came from Marton - malt growing country, so it seemed fitting that they would open their own brewery, and now their brand is blowing up.

Two of the co-founders, managing director and chief brewer Bruce Turner and sales director Thomas Rowe are on Business is Boring today to tell the story of making a dream happen, with a few global adventures along the way.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks toRobyn McLean, co-founder of The Hello Cup.

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Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Campbell Ellison from Callaghan Innovation and Alexandra Allan, CEO of FoodBowl.

One of the coolest things about Business is Boring is when listeners, inspired by the people we talk to, share their ideas for cool products. Just the other day a friend talked about an idea for an innovative food product, and I was able to tell him about the existence of the FoodBowl - which provides support and resource for companies and innovators looking to move from small scale to the big time.

He was amazed to learn that there is a facility that is part commercialisation and export readiness lab and part mad scientist workshop where food technologists, scientists and other enthusiastic inventors tinker, explore and create new food ideas. It’s an open access service supported by Callaghan Innovation and run by the Auckland chapter of the NZ Food Innovation Network.

We’ve talked before to people like Angus Brown from Arepa who’ve been through it, so it is super cool to today be able to share a bit more about how it operates and how you could get involved.

This week on the podcast we're joined by food and beverage technologist Campbell Ellison from Callaghan Innovation, and Alexandra Allan, FoodBowl CEO, who also has a background in making things, working through outfits like Cadbury and Horleys, before she turned to management.

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