Hey everybody,
You know that thing where you’re very optimistic about a topic when others seem to be all doom and gloom, and then one day everybody is optimistic and you make that face and feel great the rest of the month? Of course you do, you’re a WellyForge subscriber! The vibe is shifting and our core media seem to be onboard Wellington’s great resurgence. Sure, it’s been happening for a while, and our treasure of a town really never was the kind of dump the press described, but it’s great to finally see positive stories. Keep ‘em coming! 🗞✨🍾
If you are attending WellyForge #9, look out for an email from Kevin about logistics, access and H&S. Also, the waitlist is straight up mad, so please release your ticket if you are no longer able to attend. It’s going to be amazing!
Rule #1 - Celebrate the Wins
Congratulations to the terrific innovators among The Post Gold winners stable, including Mufftech, PledgeMe, Snapper, Speculo, and Ratu Mataira 🏆 Also nice to see all the coverage and praise from Taiawa and WellingtonNZ among others 🙏
Evithé Biotechnology targets $3M pre-Series A raise for longevity market 🤞
Among the PM’s science prizes is the Science Teacher Prize, and our local winner is Nan Walden of Wellington East Girls’ College 🧑🏫🍾
KiwiStar Optics lands multi-million Euro contract for the Extremely Large Telescope 🔭👏
Rule #2 - Understand Your Environment
Research commercialisation and IP Policy momentum
There is lots of commentary (and some optimism) about our new national IP Management Policy. This TEU explainer summarises the policy as granting researchers the initial right to independently own and commercialise their inventions, while institutions providing standard commercialisation support are capped at a 5% to 10% equity stake in resulting spin-out companies—Public Research Organisations will retain initial commercialisation rights but must pass them to creators if they decline to proceed.
The policy comes with $41M for universities to commercialise their research.
Faith Jeremiah, The Next Leap, and others hope this will cultivate commercialisation skills among academic researchers, as the three-year funding runway structure fits in with the grant structures of academia.
Chris Simpson draws on geothermal deep-tech commercialisation to show how vital these structural pathways are for translating complex, capital-intensive science into exports.
But everybody also tempers their enthusiasm given the lack of an underlying structure of longevity. Let’s see if the structure is picked up, and if then it is supported in the long run.
Wellington's capital activation and vibe shift
Last week I wrote about WCC’s proactive establishment of a new advisory "brains trust" of investors, entrepreneurs, and creatives to advise on job creation and breathing new life into the capital. This aligns with a major cultural and economic vibe shift reported on (Wellington Chamber of Commerce's) The Re-Wrap podcast, which notes a bustling weekend crowd ahead of the Matariki celebrations and the All Blacks match at Hnry Stadium ✨.
All of you WellyForgers have been defiant against the doom and gloom in the media over the past few years. Now that there is optimism out there, let’s make sure we make it stick!
We must address local capital constraints in a smart way: read Serge’s take on “lazy capital” and the risk that it fails to actively build wealth or fund high-growth tech ventures 💸
Meanwhile, I hope we’ll see the genius and optimism in Auckland's “100 Days of Startups” campaign—featuring engineering solutions like Mutu and deep-tech ventures from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute—as a huge motivator and maybe an opportunity for some healthy, positive, and additive competition 🥊🧢
Rule #3 - Nothing Falls Thru The Gaps
Peter Griffin’s story on Heidi (among other things) was picked up by a wider LI news summary about Privacy fears over AI scribes.
“The best investors bring far more than capital - experience, wisdom and connections.” 🦉
Good sources to follow if you’re on the applied science side: Wellington Digital Mental Health Roundtable and the VUW Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Annual Workshop.
NZGCP are moving into the Majestic building alongside InvestNZ and NZTE. A birdie told me there is to be an opening event.
Can the Cook Strait be considered a gap? Carbonscape have taken an investment from the world's largest battery maker CATL, while aiming to bridge geopolitical supply bottlenecks (across US, EU, and China) in the critical material (graphite) supply chain and remain headquartered in NZ.
AI Search, Deep Tech, and the Education Paradigm Shift
As generative AI continues to separate the appearance of competence from true knowledge formation, Rod McNaughton’s essay argues that universities must pivot from transmitting abundant answers to organising student responsibility and judgment formation. Entrepreneurship education is also in there, which ties in nicely with Vic Uni sustaining support for The Atom and the role of Academic Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Positive signals 📈
This educational shift underpins the rapid commercial expansion of global deep tech discussed at “Summer Davos”. Our own Ipshita Mandal-Johnson notes that frontier fields like generative biology and precision fermentation are rapidly commercialising, pointing at Vic, the Malaghan Institute, and the RNA Development Platform leading the charge from the coolest science capital. 🧬
On the infrastructure side, you’ll have guessed I’m bullish about building data centres here: most of our country is more about heating than air conditioning and we can easily develop green baseload energy generation. Last week I reported on strongly negative reactions in the US. This week it’s even more nutty: the political gymnastics needed there have come down to building in active oil fields 🥥
Reminders:
AgriTech New Zealand Executive Council nominations close 9 July.
Optimal Experience Awards entries close 10 July.
Tech New Zealand is looking for new Board members until 17 July.
2026 Aotearoa AI Awards entries close 23 July.
Rule #4 - Get Inspired, Meet the Locals
Highlighted entries are new from last week.
Coming week:
8–9 Jul, Sovereignty Beyond Territory: Culture, Identity and Language in an Uncertain Digital World at the Irish Embassy. Email [email protected] for a seat.
Tue, Jul 14th, 6–7:30pm, Our Mysterious Brain: The Making and Breaking of Memories, Rutherford Medal talk by Prof Cliff Abraham at the Royal Society.
Coming eight weeks:
Mon, Jul 20th, kick off of AI for Charities course (8 weeks) by Fundsorter.
Tue, Jul 21st, 9am, BizFest 2026 in Porirua.
Wed, Jul 22nd, 7:15–8:30am, Beehive to Business with Qiulae Wong at Wellington Chamber of Commerce.
Wed, Jul 22nd, APHANZ Annual Conference, shaping smarter rules for plants, animals, and biosecurity.
Fri, Jul 24th, 1:30–2:30pm, Growth NZ All Hands, online.
Mon, Jul 27th, 12-1pm, 2026 emissions reduction monitoring report, online.
Mon, Jul 27th, 11am–12pm A brief history of the models in Animal Breeding and Genetics.
Wed, Jul 29th, 5:45–7pm, Café Scientifique: Life at the (plate) boundary, at Southern Cross.
Wed, Jul 29th, 6–7:30pm, John Lekner Royal Society Lecture: Electroporation in Cancer Therapy, and Beauty in Physics.
Wed, Jul 29th, 6–8pm, NZ Tech Rally Meetup: AI assisted coding: Productivity, fatigue or tech debt.
Thu, Jul 30th, Aurora Climate Tech Summit.
Thu, Jul 30th, 12–2pm, Supercharge your Business Productivity with AI at Rutherford House.
Tue, Aug 4th, 7:30–8:30pm, Subterranean Critters: Understanding Biodiversity Aotearoa.
Wed, Aug 5th, 7-7:45pm, The changing landscape of allergic disease research and treatment by immunology legends Franca Ronchese and Maia Brewerton, online. ICS link here, Teams link is dodgy.
6–7 Aug, the AI Hackathon is back at AWS 🛠
Tue, Aug 11th, Digital Trust Hui Taumata at Te Papa.
Tue, Aug 11th, The CEO Table gathers eight leaders under Chatham House to discuss the topic of ‘Governing for the Future: Rethinking the purpose of boards inside growing New Zealand businesses’.
Wed, Aug 12th, Shadow Tech offers girls in years 9-11 an opportunity to discover the world of tech, spark their curiosity and explore career pathways.
Fri, Aug 14th, 2—4pm, GTM Engineering: automate, scale, win by KiwiSaaS.
Aug 24–25, GEN NZ Unconference and Workshops at Rutherford House. I’ll post more about this soon 🙂
8–9 Sep, Aotearoa AI Summit at Tākina.
Much later:
Thu, Sep 24th, SaaSpocalypse Now at Hnry Stadium, early bird to Aotearoa’s premier SaaS gathering by hosted by KiwiSaaS.
Fri, May 7th 2027, NZ Tech Rally on a Super Early Bird launch.
Recurring events:
The Atom at Victoria is open for any unfunded Founders (Students, Early Stage, Idea Stage) and is run by Tania Jones, with entrepreneurs in Residence, Parisa Shademan, Jack Shennan, and Alistair St Pierre and investors in residence Dave Moskovitz, Aaron Scott + Ralph Highnam. Email or join the Facebook community.
Mondays 8–9am, Atom Founder Mentoring online.
Weds 12–1pm, Atom Founder Support drop-in hour.
Thursdays (every other) at 8am, Kapiti Start-Up Network meetups.
Fridays (every other) at 5pm, Wellington ENTrepreneur meetup at Southern Cross.