This week, Startup Dunedin popped along to the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Regional Finals to cheer on the latest secondary-student-led startups coming out of Ōtepoti!
Young Enterprise Regional Finals ‘24
Operational Tech Stack
Your tech stack is the set of technologies you use regularly. It can include how you keep track of your accounts, manage business operations, projects, collaborative tools, comms platforms, asset management, and more.
You’ll find a list below of the different tools and technologies used by the startups who came along to our Distiller Incubator founders’ breakfast recently! Keep reading for our founders’ most-used tools.
No Code vs. Low Code: What is it? and how can it help scale my idea?
In the ever-evolving landscape of startups No/Low Code website building platforms are proving to be a game-changer; they put the power to create snazzy business pages and apps in the hands of everyday founders through intuitive graphic interfaces. At Startup Dunedin we're passionate about equipping entrepreneurs with the tools they need. So today we’re checking out the No Code world and passing on some starting points for you to consider for your business idea!
Audacious student showcase 2024
The energy in the room at last night’s Audacious showcase was buzzing, with our Ōtepoti startup ecosystem coming together again to celebrate the amazing work from this year’s cohort of hardworking Audacious students! This year, a massive 72 students from all areas of study at Otago University and Otago Polytechnic were involved in Audacious. With drinks in hand and the best spicy tortilla chips in the world (quote us on that - go on), we took our seats to cheer for the hard mahi, pivots, reworks, and new beginnings of our Audacious participants.
Support & resources from the government
Here is a list of government departments and where and how they can help you on your startup Journey! We will start with the most commonly shared resources and then briefly talk about others and why you would check out their websites and potentially get in touch with them. This is not a full list so we always recommend doing your research.
3 tools to help you plan your startup
3 top tools to help prioritise your time and give you more headspace when starting a business.
The first thing to remember is that the best way to reduce your time money and resources is to focus on validation.
Validation can be seen as three parts of a Venn diagram; where all three parts overlap is the “sweet spot” that indicates the best chance of a successful business. The three parts of the Venn diagram are Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility.
Meet the Faces Behind Startup Dunedin
Kia ora to our vibrant and ever-growing Startup Dunedin community! You might have noticed a little bit of change around the Startup Dunedin space lately. As our General Manager Rachel Butler has begun her parental leave, we’ve welcomed some friendly new faces to the team.
So, as we prepare to say goodbye to 2023 at the end of this month, we reckon this is a great time to introduce (and reintroduce) the dedicated individuals you’ll meet with - or run into at Strictly Coffee - behind the scenes at Startup Dunedin.
Taking Science to Spin-out
Student startups at the Young Enterprise Scheme Regional Finals 2023
Last night, Ōtepoti gathered together to uplift and celebrate local secondary school students working on new ideas at the Young Enterprise Scheme Regional Finals. Startup Dunedin came along and celebrated with a full table this year - with our founders, Distiller Incubator & Audacious alumni, and Startup Club president in attendance!
For those of you who haven’t crossed paths with them yet, Young Enterprise is is an experiential programme where year 12-13 students in New Zealand set up and run a real business.
The regional winners will get flown to Wellington to participate in the national finals - something that Dunedin has become pretty familiar with over the last two years as Dunedin students - Abalro Health and Sole Haircare - have won the national title two years in a row!
Albalro also took the stage tonight, as alumni and speakers. Co-founded by Abby Green and Alex Livingston, Abalro took out the top prize two years ago, so they had a lot of empathy and insight for the nervous students waiting in the wings.
Since that day, they’ve taken out the Polson Higgs Premiere award at Audacious, and are now one of the teams in Startup Dunedin Distiller Incubator.
Want to hear more about the awesome pitches? Keep reading!
Abloom Tea - Bayfield High School
First across the stage was Abloom tea, which aims to create a stress-relief tea with Ayurvedic ingredients and eco-friendly packaging. Their destress tea is infused with Cardamom and cinnamon, it's 100% organic and features passionflower, chamomile and Ashwagandha. You can find Abloom tea at Dunedin's very own Taste Nature stores!
Cloud 9 Hydrations - Otago Boys High
Next up were Cloud 9 Hydrations from Otago Boys High. The team was dedicated to tackling a pretty big, and pretty common problem: low mood, motivation, and mental health challenges that affect many people. Dopashot is the solution they came up with - a natural mental health and well-being drink in a ‘shot’ formula.
EmpowHer Mind - Cromwell College
Anthea Husein has created beautiful, ethnically diverse children's storybooks that encourage young girls to pursue STEM (science, tech, engineering and maths) careers, which are generally male-dominated.
With every 5 books sold in NZ, one is then donated to children living in Fiji. By doing so, EmpowHer mind are helping with bridging the educational gender gap in the Pacific Islands, and will be joining the regional winners in Wellington this year to receive a special prize.
Rejura - Otago Girls High
This team are solving a problem after they noticed issues with something they themselves use every day - mascara!
Rejura is a natural mascara removing oil designed to be gentle on the eyes, and focus solely on the eye area. Rejura even gave us a live product demonstration - which was enough for two people sitting at the Startup Dunedin table to purchase it, immediately.
Wavea - Otago Girls High
Wavea have created a versatile, sustainable, and stylish solution for the under-explored beach-wear market, and found a way to support their community in water-based activities at the same time. Their product, the Skash, is a towel that can triple as a cute skirt, a seat cover, and a picnic blanket.
This year, the quality of the pitches were just amazing - every single team had put in some serious hard mahi to get their businesses out of pen & paper and into the real world.
Want to know who took out the big prize? Drum roll, please… Abloom Tea!
With such an impressive pitch, a thorough go-to-market strategy, and careful consideration for what their product target market was looking for, the Abloom team can now give themselves a huge pat on the back -and get ready to represent Dunedin on the National stage in Wellington!
Congratulations to all the amazing tauira on what they’ve managed to achieve in just the space of months. We really can’t wait to see where this will take you all next.
3 Lessons from FoundX: A Journey Through Dunedin's Startup Community
Prizewinning pitches from the 2023 Audacious Showcase!
A round of applause for student entrepreneurship, please, Ōtepoti. We know that The University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic students have the edge but it’s always the best time of the year, seeing it in action.
This week, Startup Dunedin sat down with our wider ecosystem together for drinks, nibbles, and a big group-congratulations. We’ve watched all the hard mahi our Audacious students have put in over the last months, and it’s been quite the adventure. Some have pivoted, some have re-worked, some have validated, some have started all over again from scratch; but all of them have something to be seriously proud of.
Assumption Mapping- one of the most important startup tools.
Assumption Mapping is one of the most useful tools for people setting up a project or looking to build a startup or new venture. It helps prioritise your time by identifying and focusing on the core assumptions you are making about your idea so that you can then isolate each one and test it so it becomes a validated assumption (a ‘known’).
When you think about or talk about your idea think about all the times you say ‘I think’ rather than ‘I know’. For example: “I think my customer is mostly using Instagram rather than Facebook”.
These are called assumptions - they may come from anything related to the idea such as your customer, where to reach them, what their problem or issue is, how you are solving the problem for them, or your solution.
You can list these assumptions out and plot them on an assumption map with the axis known/unknown, and how important it is to your business. It is useful to list your assumptions and place them on sticky notes so that you can reposition them as you continue to validate your idea and assumptions.
Once you have plotted your assumptions onto the axis, you can prioritise your efforts in the section that has important, unknowns (top right). Figuring out these “important unknowns” helps you de-risk - making it safer for you to keep building your startup.
Next, you can choose something to derisk, and isolate a singular assumption to validate. By separating each assumption out, you can then think of a mini experiment or test to validate that thing.
Whether that's through doing a few more customer interviews, creating a prototype to observe how someone uses it or using a fake door test. You could also try using Test cards to help frame these experiments.
If you are looking to startup your idea or get stuck- head to the Meet with us section of our website and book a free 15-minute chat and we can help you with some useful next steps.
What happens when a Dunedin startup stops?
One of Startup Dunedin’s core values is that innovation requires success and failure.
That failure part? Turns out it’s pretty important. In fact, failure can be just as much of a success as, well, success. The lessons you learn, the skills you pick up, and the connections you make can be the spark that ignites the next big flame.
For Cameron Templer, who founded the npw-closed startup Yezmac, the journey has just begun.
We sat down with Cam for a quick Q&A on the ups and down that came with his entrepreneurial journey and the decision to close Yezmac.
Introducing new Distiller incubator startup: Aftergame!
Dunedin's startup scene just got a major power-up.
The newest startup welcomed into Startup Dunedin’s Distiller Incubator is Aftergame; an app designed for tabletop gamers to track their plays, share their results, and enhance their gaming experience. Team members Eric Poulin, John Brent, Eli Labes, and Chalene Scott are on a mission to revolutionise how we experience and remember our favourite board games - from Catan, to Monopoly, to everything in between. We caught up with the brains behind this venture for a very quick chat - here’s what we learned!
Local startups, glass ceilings, and a national conference
Perspectives and learnings from local female founders at the second ever Electrify conference.
Recently, three women currently in Startup Dunedin’s Distiller Incubator had the unique opportunity to attend Electrify Aotearoa, presented by the good folks at Ministry of Awesome. Conferences like Electrify are a part of that solution. Just as a series of amazing wāhine took the national stage to share their wisdom, we’re excited to see how our local startups take that knowledge and turn it into real and tangible progress here in Ōtepoti.
Let’s recap some of that wisdom!
How Dunedin supports startups: Awards, fashion, agritech, and more!
In collaboration with Polson Higgs, an advocate for all things starting-up
We’re really proud of the way that Ōtepoti, Dunedin has blossomed into a thriving hub for all things entrepreneurial and startups (for more on that, make sure you have a read of our previous blog!), as well as impactful community and creative arts projects. Here’s a roundup of some of the entrepreneurial programmes and awards you might not be as familiar with.
Legal advice sometimes necessary when forming a startup - Wade Pearson
— This blog is written by Wade Pearson, who is an associate in law firm Gallaway Cook Allan’s commercial team in Dunedin. This article is general in nature, so don’t use it as a substitute for legal advice.
Lawyers will generally tell you to get legal advice. But nowadays you can do a lot yourself, without paying a lawyer (especially as AI develops). So if you’re starting or growing a business, how do you know what you should and shouldn’t do yourself?
Dunedin ❤s Startups!
How our awesome ecosystem supports founders.
There is no place like Dunedin for innovation and entrepreneurship.
This chilly, bright, eclectic, awesome little city has such a thriving ecosystem around it - one that embraces and supports startups and small businesses anyway it can.
Join us to take a deeper dive into how Dunedin has become such fertile ground for startup founders, with three inspiring cases that demonstrate the city's commitment to entrepreneurial success.
Case one: Nutriblocks
Where better to start in Ōtepoti than a gaming startup? There’s been a lot of buzz in our neck of the woods lately in the gaming sector, with Dunedin firmly in place as the best place to start up in gaming in the south island - Stuff even called it “absolutely, positively, almost, the gaming capital of NZ”. There’s no doubt about it - it’s a sign of great things to come.
Nutriblocks is one of those gaming startups - and they’re aiming to change the way that nutrition education is taught. Founder Claudia Leong’s vision is to “help build healthy futures”; thus, their first product is Nutri-Islands, a nutrition video game targeted towards 7 to 11 year olds, with a school subscription model.
In 2020, Claudia Leong came through Startup Dunedin’s student entrepreneurship programme, Audacious, which helped her in beginning to find a market for Nutriblocks, refine her problem statement, and get her product ready for the next step.
That next step? Securing funding from the Centre of Digital Excellence (C.O.D.E). They’re part of an industry-wide drive towards a $1BN interactive media industry in Aotearoa, aiming for a sustainable game development ecosystem right here in Ōtepoti.
The journey for Claudia then took a left turn - it was time to come back through the Startup Dunedin doors! Gaining acceptance into the Distiller Incubator in 2021, Nutriblocks began to take shape, and Claudia went on to take part in a national HealthTech accelerator, and create a successful prototype.
Want to see what they’ve been up to since then? Take a look at the Nutriblocks website for all the information on their current offerings, contact details, and more.
Case two: Timeclock
Another great example can be found in the story of Loic Joachim and Cameron Hill, founders of Timeclock.Kiwi. These founders have developed a time management solution that makes tracking employee hours way, way easier.
Loic and Cameron were inspired to create Timeclock.Kiwi after noticing that existing time management systems just weren't cutting it. After months of in-depth research and development, Loic and Cameron began working on a clocking-in Kiosk, which they’d found to be the main pain point for customers. They prioritised making sure that their Kiosk was both visually appealing and user-friendly before moving on to design a filter system that allowed for easy tracking of employees, and a simple user portal, taking inspiration from Gmail's early days.
To support their final stage of development, in came O'Brien Group Benchtops, located in Mosgiel, Dunedin. O’Brien Group are not just Otago, but New Zealand's largest benchtop manufacturer, and this partnership really helped to iron out any issues that hadn't become apparent in testing.
With the backing of such an established local business, Timeclock.Kiwi is being rolled out across all eight O'Brien Group factories in New Zealand, and it's already making a huge impact. We’re really looking forward to seeing where this one goes.
Curious? You can learn more about this awesome Ōtepoti startup at Timeclock.kiwi.
Case Three: Jeenks Group
Lastly, we’ll take a look at a startup that provides an IoT sensor based device for grain bin and grain silo management - and this device is set to be a real disruptor in the grain storage industry!
Jeenks Group was founded in 2019 by Paul Amezcua. Paul had previously worked as a digital technology professional across a super-diverse range of organisations, (and even published a book titled ‘Skills to Back Yourself’ - in 2020!), and had previously founded and co-founded multiple digital tech businesses. With this experience and wisdom under his belt, his Grain Crawler idea was a fresh, new, and definitely exciting step along his journey.
Whilst in incubation with Startup Dunedin in 2022, Paul managed to create a working prototype of his grain crawler robot, which might have been the coolest moment of our year that year. Watching his project make it through some challenges, fail, break down, then succeed and come to life was a really awesome experience - for Paul, for us, and for the community watching on.
After making it into national accelerator Sprout Agritech NZ, Paul needed to dive into testing the feasibility of his prototype, in the hopes that it will be able to beat his competitor’s 1-metre depth restriction. To get over this hurdle, he began working alongside a local oat company, who enabled him to conduct those tests on real product, in a real business setting.
Stay up to date with the team at Jeenks Group (and their grain crawler robot!) here.
Want to make a case for yourself?
We can help. You’re not alone - Ōtepoti can provide new startups with a range of support systems, from robust support networks, to access to funding opportunities, and collaborative partnerships. Our favourite city has firmly established itself as a hotspot for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Anyone with any idea at any stage can touch base with us for free, and figure out where to go next. Just click here or email us at hello@startupdunedin.nz!
5 Things We Learned From Robin Gauld
The advocates we have for the Ōtepoti startup ecosystem are numerous, and truly passionate about the city’s role in supporting new ideas. Someone who fits that description to a tee is Robin Gauld, who recently concluded his time on the Startup Dunedin board and his time as Pro-Vice Chancelor of Otago Business School. Robin is leaving behind a wealth of knowledge and experience, and some great tidbits of wisdom.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate Robin's contributions by sharing five key things we learned from our time with him.
Dinner with Steph and Mason at First Cut
In the dynamic and ever-evolving world of entrepreneurship, Steph Benseman and Mason Bleakley have already had quite the journey - from helping fledgling startups and young entrepreneurs find their feet, to ending up listed in Forbes 30 under 30 Asia for their work with First Cut.