Hello Everyone:
It’s a huge next few days in Wellington with Capital Capital on Thursday in Shed 6 (including the AngelHQ showcase in the evening), the Nobel Science event at Vic, and then straight into Startup Weekend Wellington on Friday at Rutherford House. It’s not too late to be involved with them, so jump on those web-sites and join in.
Another excellent Wellington Start-Up Collective meeting last Thursday. New & old founders telling war & good stories. Well done to Jimmy McGee for getting it running with others, and good luck to Jimmy on his sabbatical in Amsterdam over the next wee while. Here’s a photo of the motley crew:
The Wellington EcoSystem Map welcomes Wise Gear NZ (outdoor gear), Indi Mortgages (FinTech), Stepcare (residential home apps), Flightdec (connecting communities), VXSport (SportTech), LaunchBot (AdTech), Solid Oral Care (better oral care, our first in Titahi Bay!) and Gifted Microbes (AgTech, see below). We’ll be revamping that map over Christmas, so please check & correct any errors, or send more additions. Another Australian VC has been looking closely at that map and probing a few companies of interest.
And tickets are out for:
WellyForge6 (The Christmas Edition) on Weds Dec 10th, first announced speakers are Dr Ben Mallett who won the Breakthrough Innovator Award at the recent KiwiNet (public research) event and is a co-founder of JxB Space Systems (see Liftoff! below), and we’ll have a quickfire introduction to Maci Libby, Massey Design Graduate and founder of Wise Gear NZ.
Wellington SaaSMas Tickets are out for another big night at Dockside on Dec 17th. And note, KiwiSaaS’s 7 weeks of SaaSMas has started, and check out their Advent Calendar, lots of Welly names on there along with their stories (Projectworks, StoryPark, who else will appear?!).
Rule #1 - Celebrate the Wins
$75m into PHF Science for Infectious Disease Research Platform, PHF (which was ESR) is based in Porirua, here’s the RNZ story.
Tasmanion, a Vic spin-out making aluminum-ion batteries won the Idea Stage at the Entrepreneurship World Cup in Riyadh. Well done, Shalini Divya, you’ll be on the WellyForge stage in 2026!
Govt Marsden Fund funds Wellington’s Vic Uni to the tune of $9.9m; Malaghan Institute medical research for more work into cancer treatment, infectious diseases and allergies; Earth Sciences NZ (the amalgamation of GNS/MetService/NIWA etc) for looking at turning geothermal waste heat into electricity, amongst other grants from the slimmed down Marsden awards.
Wellington based Sunit Prakash and Lalita Kasanji co-founders of NZ Centre for Digital Connections with India were awarded NZ Order of Merit for services to the IT industry (check out their web-page for events)
Speak celebrate Angel investment and a New to R&D Callaghan Grant, the virtual shopping concierge.
And other recent media coverage of local interest:
Liftoff! Kiwi Space Video - includes Ben Mallett and many others from the Robinson Research Institute (part of Vic).
Gifted Microbes, spin-out from Victoria are taking part in the latest Sprout Accelerator and are looking at finding high-impact agricultural microbes.
Starboard Maritime Intelligence partnering up with Syos Aerospace to combat tomorrow’s maritime threats.
Vic’s Industry Alliance Programme wrote on LinkedIn about how much their student’s value industry contacts, and report on visits by Atomic.io and Capggemini - more academic/industry collaborations please!
Hutt Valley AI Lunch Tour - sponsored by Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce run by Arcanum.ai they come to your offices to work through AI.
Vote for PikPok’s “Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days” nominated as the Most Anticipated Game at the 17th Unity Awards - got to love an industry that has an award with that title.
Goodnature turns 20! “600,000 traps deployed in 60+ countries and 25 million pests gone (and counting).”, nice photos from their birthday event at their Adelaide Rd Hq.
Rule #2 - Understand Your Environment
Technology Investment Network (TIN200) Report for 2025 is out from Hutt-boy Greg Shanahan and team and Chris Keal and NZ Herald summarize as strong revenue growth for the top 200 tech firms up 9.9% to $20Bn, of which $15Bn is exports making tech the 3rd biggest exporter, employment was up 1.3% to 61,369, but with more jobs offshore so onshore TIN200 staff fell 12.4% from 32,813 to 28,751. Hmmm. See also Graeme Muller at NZ Tech’s viewpoint on this report.
Mark Bregman (Quidnet Ventures) arguing for more coop-petition in NZ, and a more connected, sharing innovation community.
Capability constraining high-value economy, Newsroom article arguing that our world-class University research will not drive growth unless we build capability to commercialize it, and they cite U Auckland as an example of what can happen when we do invest.
Rule #3 - Nothing Falls Thru The Gaps
The Fission Project - 8 weeks over summer to get your idea moving by working collaboratively with the team that’s made the Atom such a pumping community - last few spots available!!
TedX Studio Ideas Wanted! Contact Alex Matthews, this is where they film you professionally giving a TedX style talk for distribution.
Rule #4 - Know the Locals
Space wise, Wellington is now blessed with the Atom (early founders) and Taiawa (scale-ups) at Rutherford House, but we also now have a more techy, more permanent-desk founder space in the central city being run by Andrew Butel at Level 4, 40 Taranaki St which is where you’ll often find WellyForge getting written.
Note: there are many AI showcases going on, we’re trying to pick the ones more generic and more geared towards you all, rather than listing all of them.
Highlighted entries are new from last week.
NEXT 10 DAYS:
Mon Nov 1st-14th, 9-4pm, Vic Design & Innovation End of Year Exhibition.
Sat Nov 8th-21st, 10-4pm, Massey Exposure Exhibition, showcase of work in design, arts, screen and music. Check out the multiple events going on as part of the exhibition, and some of the world-class facilities they have access to.
Wed Nov 12th, 5pm, Bastion Security - Red Teaming Event on Brandon Street. Always enjoy listening to Simon Howard talking cybersecurity.
Thu Nov 13th, Capital Capital Summit 2025, a whole day summit for founders & investors, starting with investment workshops, moving into growth, and ending with the AngelHQ annual showcase. Going to be a big day!
Thu Nov 13th, 6-7.30pm, The Science Behind for 2025 Nobel Prizes being run by Victoria with local experts explaining the work, notably, how the immune system is kept in check, quantum physics in action, molecular architecture.
Fri, Nov 14th, 12-1pm, Designing RNA Vaccines by Dr Lisa Connor, being run at the Malaghan Institute
Fri-Sun, Nov 14-16th, Start Up Weekend Wellington is Back! Sponsored by WellyForge! Get along, get active, and get things moving.
Mon-Fri, Nov 17th-21st, Pacific Rim International Conference on AI (PRICAI) is being held at Rutherford House with plenty of input from the AI people at Victoria
Tue Nov 18th, 6-8pm, Public Policy & Science, Dame Juliet Gerrard at the Govt Buildings, Vic.
Tue Nov 18th, 9am-4.30pm, Food Safety in a Changing World, whole day session looking forward to future risks, being held at Massey.
Tue Nov 18th, 5pm, “The Secrets to Success (and Failure) in Fintech” hosted by CreativeHQ in collaboration with Octave with speakers from Feijoa, Hnry and others.
Tue Nov 18th, 3.30-5pm, MORGO Managing Up Workshop with John Quirk at Projectworks on Customhouse Quay
Tue-Fri, Nov 18th-22nd, ANZ for Extracellular Vesicles Conference at Harbourside
Wed-Fri, Nov 19th-21st, Synbio (synthetic biology) is at Te Papa, organized by Mark Calcott
Thu Nov 20th, 5pm, Digital Health Meet-Up - Volition, re-arranged talk, being held at Level 4, Featherson House.
Fri Nov 21st, 10-12, AI and Cybersecurity with international speakers being hosted at Victoria University.
Fri Nov 21st, 6pm. Wellington Regional Business Excellence Awards 2025 in Lower Hutt
Fri-Sun Nov 21-23rd, Kiwi PyCon (Python!) at Shed 6
KNOWN, MAJOR, FUTURE EVENTS
Mon Nov 24th, 5-7pm, Experience Rapid Learning Cycles, a new project management approach for innovation, interactive session from world leaders being hosted at CreativeHQ.
Thu Nov 27th, 4.30-6.30pm, BioTech ‘n’ Beers Speaker Series, with WellyForge’s own Ipshita Mandal-Johnson. This seems to be in conjunction with Women in HealthTech.
Tue 2nd Dec, 6.30-9.30pm, Game Developers of Wellington - Pitchmas! Turn up and pitch your game, 2 minutes, no slides, I like it.
Tue-Wed 2-3rd Dec, One Health Aotearoa Symposium, being run at U Otago in Wellington covering a wide range of themes (antimicrobial, infectious diseases+)
Wed Dec 10th, 7-9pm, WellyForge6 Christmas Edition
Wed Dec 17th 5pm+, Wellington SaaSmas Party Tickets, hosted at Dockside
RECURRING EVENTS
The Atom at Victoria is open for any unfunded Founders (Students, Early Stage, Idea Stage) and is run by Entrepreneur in Residence, Adiraj Gupta - Email [email protected] , or join the Facebook community.
Mondays 8-9am, Atom - Founder Mentoring ON-LINE
Weds 12-1pm, Atom - Founder Support Drop-In Hour
Thursdays (every other), 20th Nov, Kapiti Start-Up Network Meet-Ups
Fridays (every other), 14th Nov, Founders Meet Up at Southern Cross hosted by Jack Shennan, Alistair St Pierre and Adiraj.