Startup Theatre Podcast

In this episode, Troy Hammond chats with his old boss and good friend Vaughan Fergusson.

Vaughan Fergusson (previously Rowsell) is the founder of Vend, pioneering cloud technology in retail globally, omni-channel commerce and invented the iPad retail point of sale. Vend is a New Zealand high-growth tech success story contributing significantly to the New Zealand tech eco-system over 12 years. Vend  was sold for $500m in 2021 to LightSpeed and remains the flagship retail product globally.

In 2014 he was the founder and trustee of The Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust running initiatives like OMGTech!, Mana Tangata, Voluntari.ly and The Institute of Awesome to teach innovation, creativity and technology to tamariki of all ages and backgrounds, in particular our youth who would not otherwise get the opportunity. Collectively the trust also works with educators across New Zealand empowering them to empower our future innovators.

He was EY's Tech Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014, a judge for the 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year programme, and head judge for the 2021-22 programme.

Vaughan has been a Trustee, Judge, and Vice-Chair for the New Zealand Hi-tech Trust from 2015 - 2021 and remains as a judge for the 2023 awards.

Every year Vaughan does an impossible challenge, something to take him out of his comfort zone, like running 1,000km, learning to sing to get a paid gig in front of 100 people, or cycling around the world in 80 days.

Vaughan is a self-described weirdo and has spoken many times on the importance of challenging the status quo, thinking differently and trusting your inner weirdo. He is also a staunch ally for diversity in New Zealand and in the technology and creative sectors.

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In this episode, Troy Hammond talks with Andréa van der Meel.

In this episode, Troy Hammond speaks with Danny Smith on the fall of Silicon Valley bank due to the bank run.

In this episode, we chat with Dale Clareburt from Weirdly

Starting out in the agency land where the focus is on delivering a 1:1 service, Dale and three other founders banded together to create a product to improve the experience for candidates in the recruitment process. From culture, values, and purpose quizzes to a fully automated end-to-end talent platform for first jobbers in the frontline/retail sector. 

Weirdly has over 1m candidates who are hungry to get their first work experience under their belts. 

Dale is very committed to guiding youth on their first steps into adulthood. She says "It's about more than just the culture shock of that first job away from your home and school, but also the life skills you need to become an independent and fulfilled young adult."

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In this episode, we chat with James Fuller from Hnry. 

James began his career as an application developer, before moving into technology strategy and consultancy. 

After senior roles at Thomson Reuters and Deloitte, he decided to strike out on his own as a growth consultant for startups, corporate, and government clients.  

To solve the issue, he and co-founder Claire created a simple, homemade system to automate calculating and paying self-employed taxes.   

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In this episode, we chat with Jessica Halley.

Jessica is a Wellington-born social anthropologist. Her PhD research focuses on the intersection between precarious labour, entrepreneurialism, and identity across Wellington’s digital workforce.

As an anthropologist, Jessica collects human stories.

She tells us that ethnographic research allows us to mine everyday stories.

Bringing these stories into a startup context will enable us to build the next generation of technologies in a way that counts.

We discuss many topics including Jessica's current research, which focuses on Wellington startups, social enterprises and software development.

Additionally, her experiences conducting ethnographic research amongst Bhutanese refugee women and what this taught her about Facebook, selfies and user experience.

Jessica says that gone are the simple days of broad-based solutions to user experiences. Instead, future technologies will demand a specific, localised and culturally-relative approach to problem-solving.

Qualitative research, specifically ethnography, can provide methodological tools for startups seeking to solve the problems of the future.

You can read about her research on "Young Bhutanese women becoming 'Kiwi'" here

Here are the references focusing on Wellington as a digital city. And below is the quote from PM Tony Blair about creative labour, along with a link to a journal article that examines his legacy in the digital workforce.

'Our aim must be to create a nation where the creative talents of all the people are used to build a true enterprise economy for the twenty-first century – where we compete on brains, not brawn' (Blair, 1999: 3).

https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/42872_Flew.pdf

We really enjoyed this chat with Jess and hope you do also.

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In this episode, we chat with Adrienne Muir. 

Adrienne is the Chief Operating Officer of Voxsmart which is headquartered in London and based in Queenstown.

When she started at VoxSmart in London in 2017, the business communications surveillance and analytics firm had seven employees. 

Now Muir oversees a worldwide team from Queenstown, serving over 100 international clients.