Business Is Boring

Concrete is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, with around 8% of global carbon emissions linked to its manufacture and use - but it wasn’t always like this. Local sustainable startup Neocrete has taken inspiration from 2000-year-old Roman methods to make concrete with half the carbon emissions today and a path to being entirely carbon neutral in a few years.

This world leading innovation has attracted top international VC support, and the co-founders Matt Kennedy-Good and Zarina Bazoeva are now poised to make huge impact on the biggest of industries. Kennedy-Good joins the pod to discuss making change in an established practice, the path to innovation and what’s next for the concrete industry.

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Daylight is an advertising and communications agency that was born out of The Spinoff newsroom, from the amazing work Toby Morris and Siouxsie Wiles did with Covid explainer gifs which grabbed the eye of the World Health Organisation. Daylight CEO Lee Lowndes has built the agency to add web and digital capability, leading to local and international growth in the hardest of markets.

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In 2012 Mike Brown was hit by a car and became paralysed from the waist down. The transition to using a wheelchair and navigating a world not built for accessibility meant Mike saw a lot of things that could be improved to help improve access, enjoyment and opportunity.

He started Adaptdefy, where their first hero product, the LapStacker, helps wheelchair users more easily secure items in their laps with straps, and is a hit that is up for a Best Design Award this year.

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When Tom Wallace went to work at his family property business after university while working on start-up ideas he was amazed to find how poor the software was for property management. This led him to begin a company that helps property management companies run better businesses. Fast-forward 12 years and his company Re-Leased is a global leader, with offices around the world, 1,400 customers, 350,000 tenants and a rent roll of US$7.5 billion.

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Megan Wyper started her career working with New Zealand coffee pioneers Millers coffee, before getting experience overseas in every element of the coffee business. On her return to New Zealand she joined Acme cups, a company you might not have heard of, but whose cups you’ve definitely drunk out of. They make the tulip cups you’ve seen in a variety of colours at specialist coffee stores (or bought from homeware and retail stores far and wide). To talk the journey, running a hospo-adjacent business and where Acme goes next, Meg Wyper joins the pod.

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In a few short years, Anihana have gone from a small New Zealand brand to being on the shelves of 6000+ stores in America. Their shower steamers, shampoo bars, bath bombs and friendly fun sustainable packaging have helped them grow so fast they’re currently doing a capital raise through Snowball Effect to service demand and growth.

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Roughly half of all people experience periods, so why aren’t period products more accessible? In Aotearoa today, if you are dealing with period-related issues and happen to be in a public place - a mall, cinema, office workplace or university, for example - it’s likely that you won’t have access to any free products that might help.

Ads on Pads is here to change this. Founder Aditi Gorasia’s goal is to make period products free by placing advertising on them, while ensuring the products themselves are natural, biodegradable and made of the safest possible materials.

To talk the journey, the problem today, and how more companies can support the battle for accessible period care, Aditi joined the pod.

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Jessie Stanley first came on the pod to chat founding and growing I Love Pies, the startup she led through to a successful exit. From there she has helped spearhead a project to stop sand being mined in Pākiri, been a food expert for Snackmasters, and is now back with a new startup to help solve food waste and create sustainable protein with one big solution, using a very small method: bugs! Good Grub creates vertical bug farms, feeding food waste to black soldier flies and harvesting the fast growing grubs to be a source of protein and amino acids, great for pet feed, animal feed, fish feed and fertiliser. Jessie presented her startup at the Icehouse Showcase in August, and joined us to chat that experience, how bugs will change the world, fundraising and life as a second time founder.

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Femmi is a coaching and fitness app challenging the outdated idea that periods limit performance. Their run training programmes and run club communities are designed to help solve the problem that sport training - like so many things - has been designed and built with the physiology of men in mind.

Femmi helps users train in a way that is mindful of the menstrual cycle; a pioneering approach currently followed by only 1% of the fitness industry. Along the way Lydia O’Donnell and her co-founder Esther Keown have built a devoted community and are employing a science-backed approach to help women move with confidence. To talk her journey from elite sport to founding a world-beating company, CEO Lydia O’Donnell joins the pod.

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Hnry is now New Zealand’s largest accountant, helping to manage, file and contribute nearly 1% of New Zealand’s entire tax revenue - and is getting huge in Australia too. It’s done that rare thing: change people’s habits, getting them to have their wages paid to a different account so Hnry could deduct tax as they go. Co-founder and CEO James Fuller joins us to chat the journey he and his wife/co-founder Claire Fuller have been on, from humble beginnings with a single spreadsheet, to resigning from their great jobs, to now being a massive success that is - in many ways - just getting started.

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