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Speaker 1: This week on the Business of Tech powered by two

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Speaker 1: Degrees Business, the big tech news that define twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: four and what may lay ahead for twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 2: It was just like thousands of hours of work and

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Speaker 2: millions of dollars fielding a bed that was ultimately unsuccessful.

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Speaker 3: The industry's gone from a kind of a boom time

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Speaker 3: to a time where we're seeing the potential for some

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Speaker 3: kind of brain drain happening nuclear fusion.

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Speaker 4: It's almost this hubristic level of ambition, right.

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Speaker 5: Are you not concerned in the displacement of New Zealand

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Speaker 5: companies to non tax paying tech companies? Am I crazy here?

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Speaker 5: Or is this a bigger problem?

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Speaker 6: We're joined by the leading journalists who have covered some

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Speaker 6: of the big tech stories from AI installed government IT projects,

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Speaker 6: to takeover attempts, and some big exits for our startups.

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Speaker 1: I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin with our eightieth

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Speaker 1: episode of the Business of Tech and our penultimate episode

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Speaker 1: for the year. Ben, Who've we got on the show

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Speaker 1: this week?

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Speaker 6: We've got four journalists, each with unique perspectives on a

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Speaker 6: particular aspect of tech. We've got our business desk colleague

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Speaker 6: Rebecca Stevenson. She's the senior markets journalist who has been

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Speaker 6: keeping an eye on our listed tech companies this year.

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Speaker 6: There's Rob O'Neil, senior writer for Reseller News on the

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Speaker 6: big movements in the enterprise tech space. Finn Hogan who

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Speaker 6: writes for Caffeine Daily and also does some work for

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Speaker 6: dig a tech focused PR company, and he's wrapping up

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Speaker 6: what twenty twenty four held for our tech startups. And

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Speaker 6: finally Duncan Greeve, founder and media writer at The Spinoff,

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Speaker 6: who has been keeping a close eye on big tech

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Speaker 6: this year.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, great lineup, and we were initially intending to have

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Speaker 1: them all into ended MEHQ for one big conversation until

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Speaker 1: we realize the challenging logistics of doing that. So instead

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Speaker 1: we've got four short, sharp segments featuring this week's guests

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Speaker 1: on various aspects of tech in twenty twenty four. Where

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Speaker 1: shall we start, Ben.

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Speaker 6: Let's start with the z X and a couple of

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Speaker 6: listed tech companies that have been on Rebecca Stevenson's radar

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Speaker 6: this year. So you are the markets reporter, extraordinary business desk.

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Speaker 6: If I say to you that what is the biggest

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Speaker 6: story enlisted tech of the year in New Zealand. What's

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Speaker 6: the first thing that pops into your mind, Well.

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Speaker 7: It would have to be two things.

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Speaker 2: I'm afraid break on Who's the advanced still high tech

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Speaker 2: manufacturer of all sorts of interesting bits that go inside

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Speaker 2: high tech systems and it's failed takeover bid was a

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Speaker 2: huge story for listed tech companies this year. And then

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Speaker 2: on the flip side we had gen Track, which is

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Speaker 2: the utility software provider, which was also listed on the exchange.

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Speaker 2: It just seems to be going from strength to strength

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Speaker 2: and continually I guess, surpassing analysts expectations, winning customers, increasing

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Speaker 2: revenue and doing incredibly well. So it's blasted into the

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Speaker 2: ZX fifty last year and people thought, you know, well,

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Speaker 2: maybe it would start to sort of top out sometime soon,

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Speaker 2: not at all. It recently reported its full year result

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Speaker 2: which was very strong, increased its revenue by about twenty

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Speaker 2: five percent, and that sat its share price spike up

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Speaker 2: really quite high on the day, up to about fourteen

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Speaker 2: dollars at one point, I think. And then now its

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Speaker 2: market cap is more than one point four billion, and

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Speaker 2: it started the day while under that, so a couple

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Speaker 2: one hundred million in a few days for gen Track.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I think it's a We had Gentrack CTO

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Speaker 6: new CTO Mark Ree, a former CTO of Zero, on

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Speaker 6: the podcast not long ago, and the market for what

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Speaker 6: they are producing globally, I think is really strong because

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Speaker 6: there are so many of these utilities companies that are

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Speaker 6: needing to upgrade their systems and get something modern, digital

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Speaker 6: and flexible to meet the changing demands.

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Speaker 5: You know.

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Speaker 6: And that sounds like I'm literally spouting gen track pr

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Speaker 6: but actually it's also true. So what is what has

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Speaker 6: been the news and market response to Genrack's success. I'd

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Speaker 6: imagine there'd be quite a bit of buzz. Yeah. I think.

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Speaker 2: Look, it's just the best performing share on the exchange,

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Speaker 2: you know, and you really can date it back to

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Speaker 2: the leadership of Gary Miles. I was crunching the numbers

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Speaker 2: actually today and he started in October twenty twenty, and

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Speaker 2: I think the shares are up more than nine hundred

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Speaker 2: percent since he joined. So it's just been extraordinary, just

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Speaker 2: a crazy ride in the share price since. And then

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Speaker 2: somewhat ironically, perhaps that's also created some blowback, a little

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Speaker 2: bit of blowback around his remuneration and the incentives for

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Speaker 2: the senior leadership as I put it, they've kind of

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Speaker 2: been hoist on their own petard a little bit because

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Speaker 2: of the success of the share price they had to

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Speaker 2: reach about ten dollars, Well it's gone way past that,

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Speaker 2: trading today at about thirteen dollars ninety ish, and also

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Speaker 2: had some earnings per shares targets that Gary Miles and

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Speaker 2: the other senior leaders had to hit to get some shares,

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Speaker 2: more than nine million shares vested to them for hitting

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Speaker 2: these targets. But there's been a little bit of criticism

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Speaker 2: about that from the New Zealand Shareholders Association, who.

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Speaker 7: Felt the thresholds were too low.

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Speaker 2: However, you know, as Gentrek would say, well, we certainly

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Speaker 2: didn't think that last year. And you know when Gary started,

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Speaker 2: Gary Miles started, I think the shares we wrote about

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Speaker 2: a dollar seventy. So to be saying ten dollars was

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Speaker 2: too high or too low, now, you know, it's the

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Speaker 2: benefit of hindsight perhaps.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, that is interesting, the idea that you set these

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Speaker 6: targets that you see as kind of almost outlandish, like

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Speaker 6: had they ever reached that level, and then when you

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Speaker 6: have a runaway success, you do end up with shareholders going, oh,

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Speaker 6: hang on a minute, we hoped for this, but now

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Speaker 6: we've got to clamp down and make sure that we're

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Speaker 6: not spending too much where we're not supposed to be.

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Speaker 6: Is that a common story enlisted companies or is this

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Speaker 6: something that hasn't really been too much of a problem before.

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Speaker 2: Well, you have to be in it to win it,

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Speaker 2: I guess, you know. And so in Genrack's case, they

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Speaker 2: did have a special general meeting in September last year

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Speaker 2: specifically for this issue and to change some of the

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Speaker 2: sort of triggers around and the sort of rules around

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Speaker 2: whether or not Gary Miles and the senior leadership team

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Speaker 2: would be able to get those incentives and those new shares.

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Speaker 2: Andy Green, who was the chair, basically said that we

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Speaker 2: believe that we need to do this to keep them

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Speaker 2: to perform well for the next three financial years. So

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Speaker 2: this is for the twenty twenty four financial year, twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty five and twenty twenty six, so it's not all

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Speaker 2: a one hit wonder. They have hit the first earnings

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Speaker 2: per year target for twenty twenty four because they just reported,

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Speaker 2: but they're still twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six

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Speaker 2: to come, and obviously it sort of ramps up from there.

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Speaker 2: They have to hit higher targets to get that full whack.

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Speaker 2: What Gary Mayles said to me when I met up

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Speaker 2: with him recently was that they're in a really competitive

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Speaker 2: environment for talent and private firms can pay higher. You know,

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Speaker 2: they are public firms get the scrutiny and are benchmarked

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Speaker 2: like this and everybody can see what they get. But

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Speaker 2: also gen Track is competing in this global talent poll

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Speaker 2: where you know, public tech companies can offer you know,

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Speaker 2: really generous incentives. So he said that they're trying to

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Speaker 2: strike a balance, and they say they've gone basically in

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Speaker 2: the middle of what sort of a public firm perhaps

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Speaker 2: benchmark New Zealand listing incentive scheme would be, and between

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Speaker 2: a private equity listing because they want to get the

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Speaker 2: best talent because, as you said, this is a massive

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Speaker 2: global transformation program that's happening for utilities providers and they

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Speaker 2: really they want to be number one here. They want

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Speaker 2: to win all these contracts, they want to win across

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Speaker 2: the world.

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Speaker 7: And all these different countries.

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Speaker 2: So you know, they believe they need to yeah, really

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Speaker 2: be attractive and have those incentives in place.

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Speaker 6: And that's a big conversation generally, but in tech specifically,

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Speaker 6: this idea of private companies being able to just splash

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Speaker 6: around more money on talent compared to public companies. And

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Speaker 6: I think it's especially true of New Zealand, where salaries

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Speaker 6: are generally a little bit lower than globally in tech

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Speaker 6: as well. So definitely worth keeping an eye on to

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Speaker 6: get a sense of how that pressure is impacting a

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Speaker 6: New Zealand company. Yeah, let's look now at the other

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Speaker 6: story you talked about, which was Racon and they had

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Speaker 6: a difficult time with a takeover offer. But companies get

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Speaker 6: takeover offers all the time, right, and some work out

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Speaker 6: and some don't. What made this one so controversial.

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Speaker 2: Well, it was a little bit fraught from the start.

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Speaker 2: I mean it sort of popped up in December when

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Speaker 2: we were lots of us were on holiday, and they

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Speaker 2: felt that their hand had been forced, that they were

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Speaker 2: forced by media reports in Austria E to make the

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Speaker 2: bid public and then they were basically a sort of

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Speaker 2: on record and they had a lot of pressure from

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Speaker 2: shareholders to keep them updated because this was quite a

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Speaker 2: juicy premium, you know. I think it was valued them

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Speaker 2: at about a dollar seventy per share. Well, Raycon shares

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Speaker 2: have been trading at about fifty nine cents lately, so

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Speaker 2: you can understand why people wanted to know what was

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Speaker 2: going on with this bit. Now, this sort of rolled

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Speaker 2: on for a few months, this kind of not much

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Speaker 2: going on in terms of updates. Raycon said, you know, look,

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Speaker 2: when we know something, will tell you. But it was

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Speaker 2: a difficult and expensive process for the business. You know,

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Speaker 2: the chair got up at their own your general meeting

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Speaker 2: and said, it was incredibly onerous going through this process

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Speaker 2: with what we think was a Nasdaq listed Apple supply,

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Speaker 2: a huge company called Skyworks, and basically they had to

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Speaker 2: bring in consultants, they needed legal advice, yes, just management

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Speaker 2: had to be available, you know.

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Speaker 7: The CEO, the board.

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Speaker 2: It was just like thousands of hours of work and

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Speaker 2: millions of dollars actually as well that it cost Raycon

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Speaker 2: and Fielding a bid that was ultimately unsuccessful. Since then,

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Speaker 2: the share price has just been falling away really because

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Speaker 2: you know, it felt a little bit like the one

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Speaker 2: that got away. People were like, well, why did it fail?

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Speaker 2: Raycon said it was material complexities were uncovered as part

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Speaker 2: of the process, so really a bit of a question

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Speaker 2: mark there about I guess potentially the future of Raycon.

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Speaker 2: You know, a lot of people say it is really

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Speaker 2: a good acquisition target now and it should perhaps be

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Speaker 2: bought by someone bigger. However, you know they'll want the

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Speaker 2: price to be right.

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Speaker 6: What does material complexities actually mean? Because in my understanding,

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Speaker 6: if there is a material issue with a company, it

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Speaker 6: needs to be disclosed if they're listed. So how does

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Speaker 6: that interact with this concept of material complexities that prevented

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Speaker 6: a takeover?

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Speaker 2: The thing is, we really we don't know much. You know,

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Speaker 2: Raycon just continues to say that, you know, they're keeping

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Speaker 2: the market informed of anything that they need to know. Basically,

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Speaker 2: I mean, we don't know. There's been a lot of

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Speaker 2: speculation about why this deal actually fell over. One person

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Speaker 2: that I spoke to who has knowledge of these sorts

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Speaker 2: of deals, pointed to just the general complexities of the

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Speaker 2: markets that Raycon operates and you know, and sort of

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Speaker 2: pointed me to the fact that, you know, we have

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Speaker 2: a chip war going on between the US and China,

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Speaker 2: and you know, Raycon is obviously active in those sorts

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Speaker 2: of industries and it is incredibly complex, you know, tense,

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Speaker 2: sort of secretive. People are worried about their IP and

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Speaker 2: then you've just got this idea of you know, who

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Speaker 2: owns the check apps as well at the heart of

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Speaker 2: it all. So they said, you know, it's a really complex,

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Speaker 2: difficult sort of agreement to get across the line when

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Speaker 2: you're trying to sell a business like Raycon that is highly,

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Speaker 2: highly technical, highly secretive, you know, customers, we're not even

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Speaker 2: allowed to you know, they don't talk about their customers

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Speaker 2: a lot of time or name them. You know, everybody's

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Speaker 2: trying to protect their patch and protect their competitive advantage.

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Speaker 2: You know, particularly, I guess with the rise and rise

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Speaker 2: of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data centers and all of that.

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Speaker 2: You know, Raycon really wants to be playing in that

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Speaker 2: sphere and be an important player. So there's a lot

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Speaker 2: of commercial sensitivities and non disclosure agreements and things. So yes,

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Speaker 2: they said, yes, it is materially complex.

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Speaker 7: The whole thing.

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Speaker 6: Interesting. Well just by out of time unfortunately, because there's

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Speaker 6: so many more companies that we could talk about. Obviously,

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Speaker 6: there was the big listing of being AI this year

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Speaker 6: and some material complexities going on as we speak with

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Speaker 6: being AI, so we'll hopefully get some stories about that

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Speaker 6: coming out in the near term. Any other companies that

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Speaker 6: you think are particularly worth a shout out on the

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Speaker 6: tech listed front before we wrap up.

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Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean Spark has absorbed a lot of

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Speaker 2: energy this year, which you're probably closer to, you know,

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Speaker 2: than I am, But I think they're a classic example

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Speaker 2: of perhaps some of the things that have also been

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Speaker 2: affecting Raycon as well. You know, we saw the sort

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Speaker 2: of infantry stock piling and a lot of expenditure throughout

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Speaker 2: COVID as you know, mobile networks providers and things were

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Speaker 2: worried about not having parts, so you saw Raycon and

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Speaker 2: people like that, you know, get a bit of a blip.

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Speaker 7: From that, but all that has retrenched now.

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Speaker 2: So the global economic sort of pullback has really been

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Speaker 2: affecting a lot of tech companies. In terms of a

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Speaker 2: little company that I keep an eye on, there's our Frio,

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Speaker 2: which is the refrigeration sensor and software company, which someone

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Speaker 2: sort of perhaps sarcastically said to me, you know, if

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Speaker 2: you had sort of a dollar for every time they

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Speaker 2: said they were going to be making it, you know,

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Speaker 2: you'd probably be quite wealthy. But you've got to admire

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Speaker 2: the persistence of that business. But they've got some really

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Speaker 2: interesting things happening as well, and kind of like similar

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Speaker 2: to gen Track in a way. It's that, you know,

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Speaker 2: looking at energy use and energy consumption.

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Speaker 7: Is a really a big theme. I think that's running

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Speaker 7: through for a lot of these sort of listed.

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Speaker 2: Companies in tech companies, and how you can create savings

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Speaker 2: cost savings and give customers more information about how they're

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Speaker 2: using energy and how they can save energy. I think

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Speaker 2: is going to be a huge trend for like a Freo,

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Speaker 2: gen Track, et cetera in the coming years.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, and Eerod's another one who similar in terms of

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Speaker 6: driving down costs around transportation duration and those kinds of areas.

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Speaker 8: Cool.

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Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much, Rebecca. It's super interesting and

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Speaker 6: I look forward to seeing some more in the adventures

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Speaker 6: of the zet X from you in the next year.

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Speaker 6: It's tumultuous year for tech companies and speaking to Beck's later,

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Speaker 6: she also said Vista Group had quite a bit of

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Speaker 6: drama at the board level, which is worth reading about

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Speaker 6: and you can check out Rebecca's excellent reporting on that

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Speaker 6: at Business Desk as well.

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Speaker 1: Sort of mixed bag for our listed tech companies and

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Speaker 1: that really went for the whole enterprise. It space to

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Speaker 1: the big tech projects in the corporate world and in

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Speaker 1: the government sector. Here's Rob O'Neil on some of the

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Speaker 1: big developments he covered at reseller News this year. Rob O'Neil,

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Business off Tech, the man who

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Speaker 1: likes to get down in the weeds in enterprise tech,

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Speaker 1: coming to us from fong Array. How are you doing.

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Speaker 8: Good? Good, good to be here, Pete. Thanks for inviting me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we just spent some time together in California

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Speaker 1: recently we went to a SpaceX launch together. So busy

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Speaker 1: end to the year and a busy year for enterprise tech,

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Speaker 1: which is really all about what companies are doing with technology.

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Speaker 1: So what are your big picks for the big developments

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Speaker 1: in enterprise tech this year?

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Speaker 8: Well, I mean the first one will come as no surprise.

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Speaker 8: It's AI. It's not so much that AI is new.

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Speaker 3: It's been developing quite strongly over the last few years,

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Speaker 3: but it has kind of reached that inflection point during

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Speaker 3: this year where people are really starting to roll it

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Speaker 3: out and develop use cases for it. But the real

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Speaker 3: reason why there's been this breakthrough an adoption is because

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Speaker 3: the vendors have developed the tools. You know, It's not

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Speaker 3: like companies are trying to develop their own AIS or

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Speaker 3: which some were you know, even just a few years ago,

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Speaker 3: but the tools are now available, so you know, it's

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Speaker 3: become much more achievable. Like with any I system, there

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Speaker 3: will be integration challenges if you want to apply AI

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Speaker 3: across systems and across processes. I think it's called multimodal AI,

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Speaker 3: for instance, maybe incorporating sensors and IoT devices as part

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Speaker 3: of that network. You know, that's really where things are

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Speaker 3: going to be heading and trying to do that in

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Speaker 3: a safe way, in a controlled environment where you don't

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Speaker 3: get hallucinating AIS contaminated with external data of some sort.

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Speaker 3: I think those are the things that will be going

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Speaker 3: on right now.

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Speaker 1: We've heard so much about the supposed productivity gains that

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Speaker 1: come with using the likes of Microsoft Co Pilots. Apart

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Speaker 1: from the vendors who all quote great progress in this

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Speaker 1: area because they're pushing their own services, have we seen

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Speaker 1: any real evidence among our own companies that they I

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Speaker 1: seeing those productivity gains. We saw report out from the

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Speaker 1: Australian government which did a trial of Copilot and said

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Speaker 1: actually the public servants using it saving you know, for

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Speaker 1: thirty or forty minutes a day. Have we seen any

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Speaker 1: more evidence like that, particularly here in New Zealand, that

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Speaker 1: it's actually delivering return on investment.

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Speaker 3: You hear it anecdotally, don't you. And I think there's

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Speaker 3: always the problem. You're going to get people who just

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Speaker 3: want it now, you know, the early adopters, and they

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Speaker 3: will build it into their.

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Speaker 8: Own work habits very very quickly.

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Speaker 3: And then you've got other people who maybe are not

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Speaker 3: quite as quick on the on the uptake and need

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Speaker 3: to be guided a little bit more.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 3: It's the other thing about all of these software tools

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Speaker 3: is that they bring creative possibilities. How the application is

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Speaker 3: applied is a is a creative challenge for the user,

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Speaker 3: and that's where some real innovation can happen because of

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Speaker 3: course the users are the ones who are most familiar

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Speaker 3: with the with the value as in the data, where

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Speaker 3: the problems are, the need to be solved, what the

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Speaker 3: problems are, and how to do that safely. So I think, yeah,

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Speaker 3: those will be the sorts of issues that have been

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Speaker 3: being grappled with now. The impact on jobs, of course

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Speaker 3: is the is the follow on from that, and that's

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Speaker 3: actually part of something we'd like to maybe like to

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Speaker 3: talk about next.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So talking about jobs particularly, one of the big

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Speaker 1: trends this year really in New Zealand has been the

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Speaker 1: head count reduction in the public sector. We've just seen

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Speaker 1: in the last couple of weeks, you know, the proposals

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Speaker 1: to really slash headcount again at health which will impact

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Speaker 1: the data and dig division there, huge reduction. What's your

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Speaker 1: take on how this is sort of playing out in

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Speaker 1: terms of affecting government's ability to digitally transform. It's got

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Speaker 1: a aggressive roadmap DEIA just put it out at Service

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Speaker 1: Modernization Roadmap. It wants to do all of this sort

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Speaker 1: of stuff. Do we actually have the resources to push

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Speaker 1: this through now?

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Speaker 3: They've also come up with another one market lad initiatives,

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Speaker 3: which will allow players in the market to suggest projects

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Speaker 3: that might might improve service, so you don't necessarily have

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Speaker 3: to go through a full tender process when you go

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Speaker 3: through that. So they are greasing the wheels of innovation,

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Speaker 3: you can say, with some of that within the public service.

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Speaker 3: Let's just get some numbers on the public service cuts.

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Speaker 3: For starters twenty two there were sixty two forty three

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Speaker 3: public servants twenty three there were sixty three, five hundred

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Speaker 3: and thirty seven and As of yesterday, eight hundred and

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Speaker 3: sixty five layoffs had been reported. Right now, that's still

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Speaker 3: relatively early days, but as you can see, it doesn't

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Speaker 3: actually take us down below the twenty twenty two number.

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Speaker 3: So everything's a matter of perspective.

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Speaker 2: Really.

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Speaker 3: I believe that some of those I haven't quite worked

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Speaker 3: up the exact relationship, but some of those positions that

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Speaker 3: are being vacated are not filled at the moment.

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Speaker 8: Anyway.

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Speaker 3: It could be an anticipation of these losses that the

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Speaker 3: agencies have already decided to allow head counter shrink naturally

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Speaker 3: when they have an opportunity to do that. That's probably

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Speaker 3: my reading of it. But yeah, I mean, we think

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Speaker 3: of them as huge cuts, and they could well be

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Speaker 3: in the future huge cuts, but right at this point

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Speaker 3: in time, it's not appearing that huge.

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Speaker 8: Still early days, We'll wait and see.

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Speaker 1: We heard so much at the start of the coalition

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Speaker 1: government's term. They stopped three Waters, that was a big

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Speaker 1: IT project, tip the Kinger. They sort of unwound that

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Speaker 1: MSD has big transformation project on the go. What's really

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Speaker 1: your sense on the state of some of these big

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Speaker 1: government tech projects. There has been sort of freezing of

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Speaker 1: some budget and that some of those big ticket items

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Speaker 1: still rolling along the likes of three Waters.

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Speaker 8: Three Waters is basically pretty much right off.

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Speaker 3: It had advanced quite a bay, but not to the

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Speaker 3: point where it could really be rolled out anymore. So

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Speaker 3: you're looking at a two hundred and two hundred million

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Speaker 3: right off of three Waters. In terms of TEA the

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Speaker 3: King of they've they're still working on the project there.

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Speaker 3: They've rejigged it so it's able to be a deployed individually,

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Speaker 3: almost like a SaaS application, I guess, with an instance

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Speaker 3: for each institution, and for the ability for institutions, the

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Speaker 3: smaller institutions to group together and share an application like that,

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Speaker 3: So you might have three smaller regional training organizations deciding

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Speaker 3: to join forces and run on one set of financial

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Speaker 3: systems and so forth. So that's really what's happening with

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Speaker 3: TIFA Kinger. The right offs there have been very small. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: of course, all of the stuff, you know, the loss

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Speaker 3: of staff, they're clamped down on spending. The change in

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Speaker 3: these two big keynote projects has a wash on effect

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Speaker 3: into the industry, right so in things like employment within

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Speaker 3: the tech industry. I was just having look at some

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Speaker 3: staff numbers for data Coom. For instance, twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 3: data Com had nearly seven thousand employees and in twenty

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Speaker 3: twenty four they had six thousand, one hundred and thirty one.

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Speaker 3: So that's pretty much a ten percent reduction in the

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Speaker 3: space of two years. And I don't think that's stopped,

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Speaker 3: so we might see some more news on that in

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. So yeah, that's quite a deep cut.

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Speaker 3: And the industry's gone from a kind of a boom

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Speaker 3: time it was very very hard to find people to

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Speaker 3: a time where we're seeing I guess the potential for

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Speaker 3: some kind of brain drain happening.

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Speaker 6: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, we're facing that sort of crunch on funding

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Speaker 1: in the private sect there, amidst that, we've got transformation

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Speaker 1: projects rolling on, some of them not going particularly to plan.

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Speaker 1: Might A ten probably a big one that's got a

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Speaker 1: lot of publicity this year for its sort of struggling

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Speaker 1: SAP implementation.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's one of a long line,

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Speaker 3: and I guess on this topic, I've put it under

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Speaker 3: the headline persistent project failure. So not particularly picking on

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Speaker 3: MINA ten, but MITO ten is quite a spectacular example,

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Speaker 3: and it's also the one that I think was hard

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Speaker 3: to see coming. So it's been in trouble for a

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Speaker 3: couple of years now. But I guess, I guess everything

439
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:15,800
Speaker 3: that I'm hearing is that the AS is part of

440
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:19,480
Speaker 3: the project understanding the processes that were actually being used

441
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:23,000
Speaker 3: in the stores and in the warehouses before you start

442
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:26,159
Speaker 3: rolling out software, before you even procure your software, that

443
00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:29,000
Speaker 3: that might have been underdone. That's the story I've heard, right,

444
00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:31,479
Speaker 3: and so that in that sense you could almost call

445
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 3: it human error rather than take technology eraor.

446
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:36,399
Speaker 1: In terms of green shoots sort of stuff. That's optimistic.

447
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:39,000
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the year finally after a lot

448
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,879
Speaker 1: of hype and talk that one of the hyperscalias is

449
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 1: rolling out of data center region in New Zealand. Microsoft

450
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:47,119
Speaker 1: we saw from their accounts from recently doing very well

451
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 1: in New Zealand one point three billion in revenue, but

452
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:52,879
Speaker 1: also spent the best part of a billion dollars on

453
00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: building these data centers in the New Ukan region.

454
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:56,400
Speaker 8: Yeah.

455
00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:58,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean this is this is potentially a

456
00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:01,360
Speaker 3: big boon for New Zealand. You know, I think everybody

457
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,560
Speaker 3: likes the model of having your data within easy reach,

458
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 3: within your own legal system and your own protections and

459
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff and still having the kind of

460
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:14,800
Speaker 3: backup of a company like Microsoft or AWS or whoever

461
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:19,400
Speaker 3: SAP for instance, if you on your ERP applications. So yeah,

462
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 3: I mean it's finally happening. I mean it's been a

463
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,640
Speaker 3: long time, hasn't it. We've been reporting on these these

464
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:26,960
Speaker 3: deals for ages. And there's a bunch of other ones

465
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 3: as well. You know, those are the headline ones. You know,

466
00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of other data center players in there,

467
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:35,280
Speaker 3: including data com So it's an exciting time. The AWS

468
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 3: one appears to be suffering from a few setbacks. They

469
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 3: had a bit of a water problem on the site.

470
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 3: It's a bit damp. You don't really want that around

471
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 3: your computers. So I think they've done some engineering to

472
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:47,520
Speaker 3: get past that and they're underway again. So we'll just

473
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 3: wait for them to come on stream as well. But yeah,

474
00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 3: I mean first mover advantage. That looks like it's going

475
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 3: to be Microsoft.

476
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:56,640
Speaker 1: And finally rob Looking to twenty twenty five, if there's

477
00:24:56,720 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 1: sort of one thing that's going to be big in

478
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:02,120
Speaker 1: tech and in enterprise tech as well, what's your pick.

479
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:07,840
Speaker 3: I'm really interested in the emerging battle between satellite and

480
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 3: terrestrial broadband. You know, investment in fiber has been huge,

481
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 3: obviously in New Zealand and around the world and still ongoing,

482
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 3: but there is at least in the US a bit

483
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 3: of a disinformation I think going on at the moment

484
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 3: around fiber. You know, if people connected with Elon Musk

485
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 3: perhaps sort of suggesting why are we spending all this

486
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 3: money on Fiver when you've got satellite now, that there

487
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:31,159
Speaker 3: is a pretty good reason for that. It's that is

488
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:33,280
Speaker 3: that Fiver is still the gold standard. You may be

489
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:36,159
Speaker 3: getting very good service on your satellite connection now, but

490
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:38,200
Speaker 3: what happens when another one hundred thousand or two hundred

491
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:40,199
Speaker 3: thousand people decide to.

492
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 8: Go that way. The early adopters of Starlink.

493
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 3: And New Zealand, a lot of them in rural areas,

494
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:47,880
Speaker 3: were cocker hoop about it, and quite rightly so, because

495
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, they didn't have an option and

496
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:53,480
Speaker 3: it performed really well. But we just have to be

497
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 3: a little bit circumspect, I think, And this is where

498
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:58,600
Speaker 3: that market lead lead development.

499
00:25:58,280 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 8: Things thing comes in.

500
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 3: You know, we had John Hannah from Tuaali First Fiber,

501
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:05,680
Speaker 3: which deals with a lot of remote customers, welcoming that

502
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 3: idea that that somebody like Tuatari could propose very specific

503
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 3: fiber rollouts and directly to government and get support for

504
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 3: that outside of the UFB structure for instance. Okay, so

505
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 3: that's that's one possibility for extending fiber further in the future,

506
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 3: and it would be led to some extent by the

507
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 3: by the telcos involved, and they would be able they're

508
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 3: in the best position to work out how they can

509
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 3: make a service like that, which might otherwise be marginal

510
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 3: a profitable one one worth doing within the with fiber

511
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:39,720
Speaker 3: through a commercial construct or actually they might decide to

512
00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 3: use satellite technologies as well, who knows, but it'll be

513
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 3: horses for courses, i'd imagine.

514
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 5: Yeah.

515
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:48,400
Speaker 8: So yeah, that's that's an exciting time.

516
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the disruptive potential of star Wars

517
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 3: Staralink is obviously significant. We've got some numbers on that

518
00:26:55,080 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 3: now they've become subject to the Telecommunications development and that

519
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:02,719
Speaker 3: means we know that they are only three point eight

520
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 3: million in revenue in New Zealand starlink Wow in the

521
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,120
Speaker 3: twenty four year and they got thirty seven k customers

522
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 3: at the end of the twenty four year, so that's

523
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:12,440
Speaker 3: very significant.

524
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:16,760
Speaker 8: Growth from zero over maybe a couple of years. Yeah,

525
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 8: hustlers keep it, keep an eye on that.

526
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 3: And of course that changes the way you can network things,

527
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 3: you know, for instance, evasive networking, which which will become

528
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 3: one of the fees that goes into the AIS we

529
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:33,679
Speaker 3: talked about earlier, where you have IoT devices distributed all

530
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 3: over the country, monitoring and possibly connected to systems that

531
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 3: can take remote action over infrastructure, for instance, when things

532
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 3: start going wrong. So I mean, I think that's going

533
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 3: to be open a world of possibilities.

534
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 6: A difficult year for enterprise and government tech twenty twenty

535
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 6: four was there rather underwhelming year for capital raising for

536
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 6: startups internationally, with venture funding down fifteen percent year on

537
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 6: year by tech Crunch's estimate, But it actually wasn't a

538
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 6: terrible year for our own startups. Here's Finn Hogan from

539
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:12,200
Speaker 6: Caffeine Daily and dig pr on some of the highlights. Hello,

540
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 6: Finn Hogan, Welcome to the Business of Tech podcast. Thanks

541
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 6: for joining us.

542
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure to chat with you.

543
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 6: Ben. The first thing I'm kind of interested in, I

544
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 6: guess is for you, what is the most interesting story

545
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty four in the startup world.

546
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,119
Speaker 4: Well, there's so much to kind of chat through there, right,

547
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 4: if you want to talk about like the big deals

548
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 4: in any sense of the word, I feel like Kami

549
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 4: or Trade to Phi has to be mentioned just in

550
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 4: terms of like the amount of capital getting injected back

551
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 4: into the system. You know, KARMI getting valued at that

552
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 4: three hundred million dollar mark, sort of record returns for

553
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 4: New Zealand Growth Capital partner Trade Phi over one hundred

554
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 4: MILLI as well, just sort of really gave a boost

555
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 4: in the arm of the ecosystem, really sets that confidence

556
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 4: moving forward after what's been a pretty rough year across

557
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 4: the board and the kind of macroeconomic climate. If you

558
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 4: just want to talk about like the interesting nerdy heck

559
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 4: stuff always which is exactly and I'm so glad you

560
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 4: got me in for this, I think the open staff

561
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 4: for me just has to be mentioned. Because nuclear fusion,

562
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 4: it's almost this hubristic level of ambition, right, you're kind

563
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:16,600
Speaker 4: of harnessing the power of the sun and the palm

564
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 4: of your hand. Literally. The plot of Spider Man two

565
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 4: and the fact that New Zealand has a company that's

566
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 4: actually taking genuine strides in that with some kind of

567
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 4: really fascinating bits of engineering, and obviously I have done

568
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 4: some work with them through my work with dig PR.

569
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 4: So if anyone wants to just disregard everything I say

570
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 4: as being a shell, absolutely understand. But I will back

571
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 4: myself because I've been covering these guys for years, particularly

572
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 4: since my time at news Hub, and I think their

573
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 4: reactor design is fascinating. It's built on some work that

574
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 4: happened previously overseas, but they've really innovated it. And the

575
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 4: fact that they got first plasma this year and we

576
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 4: actually got to see it, we got to see that

577
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 4: bright purple flash. I think that was a really spectacular

578
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 4: moment and it really speaks to the kind of ambition

579
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 4: that the startup community is capable of.

580
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think that that's been a fascinating story to

581
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 6: watch play out. Seeing the video of those first sparks

582
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 6: is pretty amazing. And you know, some people have said,

583
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 6: you know, it's such a long shot, and the kind

584
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 6: of response to that is, well, deep tech is a

585
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 6: long shot, like it's supposed to be a long shot,

586
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 6: but if it pays off, man, is it going to

587
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 6: pay off exactly?

588
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 4: I mean, the concept of unlimited energy, carbon free for

589
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 4: everyone forever is obviously sounds like a pipe dream, and yes,

590
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 4: of course Fusion's always been thirty years away. But when

591
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 4: you look globally now at the moves, it's not just

592
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 4: open style. There's genuine momentum in this direction, and the

593
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 4: idea that New Zealand has a hand on that ball

594
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 4: on any level is.

595
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:51,479
Speaker 6: Just Spectator absolutely a very cool company. So what were

596
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 6: the things that happened in the startup scene this year

597
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 6: that were maybe surprising to you? I mean, obviously the

598
00:30:55,880 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 6: big strides in tech are surprising, but was there anything

599
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 6: that you saw happened that you weren't expecting.

600
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 4: I think what surprised me just from twenty twenty four

601
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 4: perspective was when I spoke to founders. When I'm interviewing

602
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 4: people for CAFM, there's this real sense of carimaraderie and

603
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 4: community in the startup scene, and there's this kind of

604
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 4: willingness to help each other that I wasn't necessarily expecting

605
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 4: when I came in. There's this this idea that this

606
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 4: quite sharp elbows, that we're competing for relatively limited funds

607
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 4: and so we're going to be really we're going to

608
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 4: harbor our secrets and we're going to be competing in

609
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 4: a zero S game, but every single person I speak

610
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 4: to was just gushing with praise for another person in

611
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 4: the community that helped them on their path and talked.

612
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 4: Every time I asked them of who helped you, they

613
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 4: would just rattle off a list of names from sometimes

614
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 4: competitive company, saying, well, this person was so useful. This

615
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 4: person connected me with this person, And it made me

616
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 4: realize that the startup community in New Zealand is this

617
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 4: lovely mixture of small enough to be a village, but

618
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 4: large enough to sort of steed be a shining city

619
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:03,800
Speaker 4: on a hill, sort of vibe of that we've got

620
00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 4: these large, spectacular successes that get eyeballs on the community,

621
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 4: but it's small enough that it can still have that

622
00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 4: community vibe of collaborating together and helping each other. And

623
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,600
Speaker 4: so I think that's what surprised me most year talking.

624
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 6: On that kind of concept. That small village thing can

625
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 6: really be a benefit, but it can also have its

626
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 6: downsides in terms of people don't want to talk about

627
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 6: bad experiences, people don't want to kind of get on

628
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 6: the wrong side of the village and kind of end

629
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 6: up excommunicated. Have you had any sense of the darker

630
00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 6: side of the close knit community.

631
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that positive side is in some ways

632
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 4: a shadow of what you're talking about. Right, Everyone is

633
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 4: extremely positive about each other because they worry that if

634
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 4: they say something negative, it's going to very quickly get

635
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 4: back to that person.

636
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 6: Yeah.

637
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 4: So yes, I think, as often happens, a positive trait

638
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:56,840
Speaker 4: is in some way a shadow of the negative trait.

639
00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 4: And so I think you're absolutely right and on that

640
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 4: kind of And I think the other element, in terms

641
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 4: of that sort of small kiwi community that we have

642
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 4: in the startup scene, it can work against people as well.

643
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 4: And I was speaking to the guys from a grow

644
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 4: Ai which recently closed a record breaking pre seed round,

645
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 4: about how they went straight to San Francisco to get

646
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 4: that raise, and they talked about how to do that.

647
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 4: They really had to cast off this sort of reflexive

648
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 4: village humility that New Zealand sometimes has, because it's such

649
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:30,959
Speaker 4: a baked in part of our DNA that we are

650
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 4: reflexively humble, that tall poppy synd your own clean you know,

651
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 4: insert cliche here, And they realized how much that would

652
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 4: work against them when they're sort of fishing in that

653
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 4: money pool in sand fram and they talked a lot

654
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 4: about how harnessing our key weness, you can take the

655
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 4: good parts of it, of the novelty. People are going

656
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 4: to be fascinated by you. You know, insert Lord of

657
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 4: the Rings joke, hare whatever. But you've really got to

658
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 4: cast off that we've come from the small pool and

659
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:58,719
Speaker 4: we've just come in here on our jendles and please

660
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 4: give us money. If you actually walk in boldly and

661
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 4: back yourself, people are going to take you seriously. People

662
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 4: already take New Zealand seriously, and you really need to

663
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:09,920
Speaker 4: take yourself seriously at the same time, otherwise going to

664
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:10,720
Speaker 4: do yourself at a service.

665
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, New Zealand sometimes has its constraints when it comes

666
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,320
Speaker 6: to raising capital. And we saw a massive spike and

667
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,799
Speaker 6: raising and like twenty twenty one, and then we saw

668
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 6: a real constraint after that. Where are we starting to

669
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 6: sit now, How are people feeling in the industry about

670
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,879
Speaker 6: their ability to raise money, where that money's coming from,

671
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 6: and you know that their outlook on the success if

672
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 6: they do start something well.

673
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously the macroeconomic climate has not been great

674
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:43,959
Speaker 4: just in terms of raising money for the past couple

675
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 4: of years, but I think we're starting to see the

676
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 4: kind of green shoots of that. Obviously, as the top

677
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 4: tier interest rate comes down, money starts to get a

678
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 4: little bit cheaper. But yes, every founder I've spoken to

679
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:58,320
Speaker 4: this year has talked about the difficulties of raising and

680
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 4: it genuinely is a sense in the community that it's

681
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 4: been a very, very tough year. People are watching their

682
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 4: money very very closely. I think there is also a

683
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:12,359
Speaker 4: bit of a concern around that top tier, that top

684
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:15,399
Speaker 4: stream level of funding, which is usually taxpayer funded. We're

685
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 4: coming from grants and coming from research institutions because that

686
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 4: pool of money has been drying up over the last

687
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 4: few years, and I think something that not a lot

688
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 4: of people will be aware of in terms of the

689
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 4: deep tech area, so much of that relies on sort

690
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 4: of deep tech research funding that comes from government. Fundamentally,

691
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 4: it comes from research institutions, whether it's counterhand or anything else.

692
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 4: And I think, particularly with the moves we have seen

693
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 4: from government recently putting those different criteria on the MARS

694
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 4: and fund really cutting down on the ability of people

695
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 4: to have that blue sky kind of thinking. I think

696
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:53,839
Speaker 4: companies that rely on having that before investors are even

697
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:55,640
Speaker 4: going to have a look at them that kind of

698
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 4: research that is only ever going to be funded. From

699
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 4: a university perspective, I think there is a real concern

700
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 4: that some of that deep tech technology is going to

701
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:05,680
Speaker 4: really struggle to get off the ground because at that

702
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:08,239
Speaker 4: top end of the stream, that money's drying out.

703
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 6: Yeah, it reminds me of a company Captivate Technology. They're

704
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 6: a carbon capture startup. Still, I think pre Seed and

705
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,359
Speaker 6: the founder came out of a university. He just kind

706
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:23,919
Speaker 6: of stumbled across this metal framework called muff sixteen. Tried

707
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 6: to convince them it needs a name change. They weren't

708
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 6: having it.

709
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 4: Idy talking about it.

710
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 6: That's great, but muff sixteen which captures carbon dioxide, right,

711
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:39,080
Speaker 6: And it was only because he was experimenting with these

712
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 6: frameworks that he found it. It wasn't like he was like,

713
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 6: I'm going to go and search for a carbon capture technology.

714
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 6: And so that's that representation of how blue sky can

715
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 6: actually lead to major breakthroughs, which there are plenty of.

716
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,800
Speaker 6: So yeah, it is sad to see. Well, it's important

717
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 6: that we do have a focus on commercializing some of

718
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 6: the technologies. I wonder if implementing that at the base

719
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 6: stage of funding is probably that maybe the wrong place

720
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,240
Speaker 6: to put it. Well exactly, I'm opining here though.

721
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 4: No, I yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think

722
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 4: so many of these innovations come from stumbling across something

723
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,880
Speaker 4: or having to front load proving where the benefit of

724
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 4: this technology comes from. Is putting the cart before the horse?

725
00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 8: Yeah?

726
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 6: Yeah, So we're at the end of twenty twenty four,

727
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 6: twenty twenty five, what are we expecting to see. What

728
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 6: is the perspective that you're hearing from the people you're

729
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 6: talking to in the sector.

730
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 4: I feel like we're going to start seeing the rubber

731
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,880
Speaker 4: meat the road in terms of actual AI applications that

732
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 4: really start generating value. I think a speaking to arcaneum AI.

733
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 4: I think they're in a really interesting example of where

734
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 4: a gentic AI or AI that's starting to act a

735
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 4: little bit more autonomously is going to start proving itself

736
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:52,800
Speaker 4: as an actual real value creator and boosting productivity. And

737
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 4: I think as these underlying models are improving at pace,

738
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 4: even if that pace slows down, even if we see

739
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 4: a modest increase in capabilities next year, most people applying

740
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 4: this technology are still scrambling to harness the full potential

741
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 4: of technology that existed six months ago, let alone what

742
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 4: happens in six months down the line. So I think

743
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 4: agentic AI is going to start becoming a bigger part

744
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 4: of the conversation in twenty twenty five. I also think

745
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:18,719
Speaker 4: mid tech as well. I think when we saw the

746
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:21,880
Speaker 4: bio Aura getting their funding and looking to build a

747
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 4: facility in christ Church, I mean there was some very

748
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 4: very big numbers thrown around a quarter of a billion

749
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 4: dollars added to GDP. But even if we don't take

750
00:38:29,360 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 4: that seriously, I think the combination of advances and underlying

751
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,840
Speaker 4: technologies in the mid tech space, combined with the government

752
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 4: looking to loosen some restrictions, particularly around advances in gene

753
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 4: therapy and gene editing techniques, I think that's anaria that's

754
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 4: going to be really interesting. I think mid tech overall

755
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 4: is really undervalued. I think mid tech is such a

756
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:53,239
Speaker 4: massive growth industry, and I think it also from an

757
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 4: investor perspective, is quite de risked because there's the underlying technology,

758
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 4: There is so much R and D, there is so

759
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 4: many hurdles that they have to get through from a

760
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,359
Speaker 4: regulatory perspective that I think it's not like a drug

761
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:08,600
Speaker 4: company just of this drug works. It either does or

762
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 4: it doesn't. The technology itself has so much value and

763
00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 4: is dear risk because of so many regulations it has

764
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 4: to clear before it can even get to market. So

765
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:19,799
Speaker 4: I think like a Cadear Health for example, looking at

766
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 4: their rays this year, that was an incredible piece of technology,

767
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,920
Speaker 4: world first microcomputer brain implant, and they're very focused on

768
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 4: a very specific illness, but the at potential applications of

769
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:36,760
Speaker 4: that underlying tech are incredibly broad, and so I really

770
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 4: think the medtech space and our advances in that area

771
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 4: are going to be a big story in twenty twenty five.

772
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:41,719
Speaker 5: Cool.

773
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 6: Yeah, that is I think an area that has a

774
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 6: lot of potential for New Zealand because we have a

775
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 6: really strong med tech underpinning and bioengineering underpinning that people

776
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 6: don't actually really know, so it'd be really exciting to

777
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,319
Speaker 6: see that grow super well. And that's about the time

778
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 6: that we have, so thank you so much for joining us,

779
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 6: Finn Hogan on the Business of Tech podcast. It's been

780
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 6: a pleasure to talk to you and chat startups.

781
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 4: It's always a pleasure having back anytime.

782
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:08,799
Speaker 6: Fantastic.

783
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: So we're going from startups to what they can become

784
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 1: when left to their own devices, which is big tech companies,

785
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:21,400
Speaker 1: and between the battle for supremacy in AI and antitrust

786
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:24,520
Speaker 1: action against them in the US and Europe, they've dominated

787
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: tech news once again. Duncan Greeve has done some great

788
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: stories this year looking at the ways that they are

789
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: increasingly influencing the digital economy in New Zealand and how

790
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 1: little we really are doing to put checks on their power.

791
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: It's been a busy year for you, Duncan and the

792
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:53,080
Speaker 1: spin off, a bit of a challenging year for anyone

793
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:57,280
Speaker 1: in the media. You've been really busy with the Fold,

794
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 1: your own podcast about the media. You've also been keeping

795
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: a pretty close eye on big tech companies, and a

796
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: lot has happened this year. A lot of antitrust activity

797
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:13,240
Speaker 1: in the US really yet to bear fruition, but definitely

798
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:17,799
Speaker 1: some seismic changes potentially underway in the home country off

799
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: these big tech companies, less so in our part of

800
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,600
Speaker 1: the world. You wrote a couple of weeks ago that

801
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 1: the tough approach of Australia's regulators and policymakers towards big

802
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 1: tech is paying off for its citizens, who are getting

803
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:36,720
Speaker 1: far stronger protections than New Zealanders. That was in relation

804
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: to a move over there. The Australian government said that

805
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 1: if you want to advertise on Facebook over there, you

806
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:50,280
Speaker 1: will have to verify your identity so have government issued

807
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:54,839
Speaker 1: ID to actually place adverts, which will potentially do away

808
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 1: with a lot of the scams and fraud that goes

809
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: on on that platform and other platforms as well. But

810
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,919
Speaker 1: really this year, I think what you've been tapping into

811
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 1: in your stories is really just that dichotomy that there's

812
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:10,719
Speaker 1: all this activity going on just across the Tasman in

813
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: comparison we're doing so little.

814
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, it feels like the whole story of the year

815
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:23,320
Speaker 5: to me that you kind of have these two countries

816
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 5: that you know, we've got a common economic zone and

817
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:29,840
Speaker 5: we like to think of ourselves as kind of siblings

818
00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 5: in a lot of ways. Big technology feels like it's

819
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:36,920
Speaker 5: the sort of signal challenge of our time is how

820
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:41,359
Speaker 5: you as a country retain your sort of sovereignty, take

821
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 5: the good of what they do, and try and deal

822
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 5: with the externalities that come with them. And yet Australia

823
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 5: is arguably the global leader. You know, maybe the EU

824
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 5: could could could be kind of considered that too. But

825
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 5: suddenly as a global leader in dealing with them in

826
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:03,280
Speaker 5: a sort of joined up, in multifaceted way in New Zealand.

827
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 5: Is just it's close to a zero, which is it's

828
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 5: it's quite a hard thing when you're sitting here in

829
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:11,960
Speaker 5: one of the sectors that's impacted, but one means the

830
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 5: only one to kind of watch with envy, to be

831
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:19,719
Speaker 5: honest at what's happening across the Tasman and see that

832
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 5: there's just so little energy or interest from our politics

833
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:24,759
Speaker 5: and regulators over here.

834
00:43:25,080 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: In some of your pieces, you've sort of tried to

835
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:29,800
Speaker 1: get to the height of that. Is it a resourcing issue?

836
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 1: John Smaller said, Look, we just don't have the budgets

837
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:35,000
Speaker 1: of the a triple seed to go after big tech,

838
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: which has the best lawyers in the world. This is

839
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 1: an expensive undertaking. We don't have the expertise to do it.

840
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: But I mean we could have piggybacked on a lot

841
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 1: of what the Aussies were doing this year. Maybe we

842
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 1: would have had a lot more critical mass if we

843
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: sort of joined force. It's not necessarily on everything. The

844
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:57,440
Speaker 1: social media ban, for instance, I think this terrible legislation

845
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:00,320
Speaker 1: and ram through in the last week of pil so

846
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:02,800
Speaker 1: we can pick and choose. But on the anti competitive stuff,

847
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,279
Speaker 1: I mean, Australia is about to potentially put a bill

848
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 1: through which would mean that a company, at big tech

849
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:16,240
Speaker 1: company that was preventing a customer from switching to another

850
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: platform or being anti competitive fifty million dollar fine. So

851
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:23,240
Speaker 1: they're going out with a really big stick on anti

852
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 1: competitive activity in the digital economy. I mean, what's to

853
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:30,560
Speaker 1: stop us teaming up and going after this together.

854
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:34,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, it seems really strange, right, because these are complex issues.

855
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 5: I don't want to kind of downplay that. You know,

856
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,600
Speaker 5: the we've signed a lot of you know, free trade

857
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 5: agreements which again, like so much of our legislation didn't

858
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 5: imagine how just how borderless commerce and communication was going

859
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:50,840
Speaker 5: to become, and probably had we been able to do that,

860
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 5: we would have taken note of the impact on our

861
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 5: you know, just how complicated it would make legislating in

862
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 5: some respects. But the the response of Australia is, you know, yes,

863
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 5: maybe some of the tax ideas are going to be difficult,

864
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:09,800
Speaker 5: but at least we can try and find them into

865
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 5: altering their behavior. And even sometimes you don't even have

866
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 5: to get that far. Sometimes you can just assure a

867
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:21,360
Speaker 5: report that makes something plain and start the process of

868
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,759
Speaker 5: looking at it and magically things change, you know. You

869
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:27,719
Speaker 5: see that with Netflix, for example, which has got an

870
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:32,080
Speaker 5: ANZ office. It's tided to commission big Australian shows, but

871
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 5: it's only doing that for Australia, and it's only doing

872
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:39,399
Speaker 5: that because the government made the fact of it's doing

873
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 5: none of the local content stuff that TV networks are

874
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 5: doing such a political issue that we'll try and get

875
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:48,879
Speaker 5: out ahead of it. Now that's an imperfect process, it's

876
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 5: not finished, but it's transparently a better outcome for Australia

877
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 5: the nothing, which is what we have with Netflix in

878
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,239
Speaker 5: New Zealand. And you can see the same thing with

879
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 5: the scams, which are a massive problem here, you know,

880
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 5: somewhere between two hundred million and two billion dollars a year.

881
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 5: And yet Meta is almost kind of making fun of us,

882
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 5: right like they're doing the absolute bare minimum, which is

883
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 5: trying to verify that people advertising financial services in Australia

884
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 5: are in fact Australian businesses. And when I ask them directly,

885
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,320
Speaker 5: are you going to do the same thing here? You know,

886
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 5: would be a very easy thing to do. Google is

887
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 5: doing it. They've just said no plans. You know that

888
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 5: they will eventually, But the fact that we could be

889
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 5: having just the most basic levels of consumer protections here,

890
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 5: were we just to be talking about it publicly is

891
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 5: It's shocking to me that it continues to be something

892
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 5: that our ministers, our government, even our opposition parties, to

893
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:49,319
Speaker 5: be honest, don't seem to be making a big thing

894
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 5: out of it.

895
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we've got this permissive environment here, you know,

896
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:56,840
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of MP's would argue that

897
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: that encourages innovation, but we haven't seen all the innovation

898
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: from big tech. They do the bare minimum here, They

899
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: have a bare number of people here. They give us

900
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: the same sort of vanilla offering that everyone else gets,

901
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 1: but they don't have to jump through nearly as many hoops.

902
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: And I guess the one area this year that there's

903
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:20,359
Speaker 1: actually been some activity and is the Digital News Bargaining Bill,

904
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,360
Speaker 1: which showed some promise bilateral sort of support for that.

905
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: With the new government coming in, they took that up

906
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: and ran with it. But by the end of the

907
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: year it looks like it's very much in jeopardy that

908
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:34,480
Speaker 1: this thing is actually going to happen. What's your take

909
00:47:34,520 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 1: on that this was one.

910
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 5: Of the most flawed in terms of not necessarily so

911
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 5: early its intention, but the way it has played out,

912
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 5: because what you've seen in Australia is that those initial

913
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 5: deals that were struck between Meta and Google and no

914
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:52,440
Speaker 5: one else, which is one of the issues, they expired

915
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 5: after three years. Google began the process of renewing, but

916
00:47:55,719 --> 00:48:01,240
Speaker 5: Meta didn't, so it became effectively a single company tax

917
00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:04,359
Speaker 5: and it wasn't a tax because you didn't have any

918
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 5: transparency around what the scale of those deals was. There

919
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 5: has been within media a bit of a divide about

920
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 5: whether to sort of push through the legislation and see

921
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 5: if Google, which has said it will pull out of

922
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 5: news distribution and break all its seals, see if they're

923
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 5: being honest about that or if they're bluffing, or others

924
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 5: who say, actually, that's quite a dangerous thing to do

925
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:29,279
Speaker 5: in many respects. But it's by no means the only

926
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 5: legislation over them, so they could have picked up other

927
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 5: things and said that these can advance at different speeds.

928
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:38,840
Speaker 5: But the biggest thing, I think, the biggest reason that

929
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:42,239
Speaker 5: Australia has made so much progress is actually through the

930
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:45,640
Speaker 5: a Triple C, which has got a kind of a

931
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 5: constantly operating sort of survey of digital spheres and competition

932
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 5: in the same way that we do with telecommunications, with

933
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 5: electricity and now increasingly with supermarkets. To me, it's so

934
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 5: obvious that is a sphere that needs to be scrutinized

935
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 5: in the same way as those other ones, arguably more

936
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:11,320
Speaker 5: than for example, tele communications, and yet the ComCom have

937
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:13,840
Speaker 5: said we're just out resourced or mandated to do it,

938
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:14,719
Speaker 5: so we're not going to do it.

939
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:18,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've called for a Minister of Big Tech, which

940
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:21,319
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree with. Do you think anything is going

941
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:22,520
Speaker 1: to change under this government?

942
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 5: They're a year old, right, and you know I've spoken

943
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 5: extensively to Andrew Bailey, who's the so called Minister for scams,

944
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 5: met with and spoken with Paul Goldsmith who's the Media

945
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:39,400
Speaker 5: and Communications Minister, on multiple occasions. But they're not unaware

946
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 5: of the issues here. So I'm not without hope that

947
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 5: this could kind of raise up the political agenda.

948
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:50,920
Speaker 1: On the social media ban. I mean you can relate

949
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:54,200
Speaker 1: to this. I guess you ran a harrowing story feature

950
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: article about a young woman in Wellington and her horrendous

951
00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: experien parents with basically a stalker who was able to

952
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:08,400
Speaker 1: carry this on for years through online platforms, and just

953
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 1: a woeful response from those online platforms which she repeatedly

954
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:15,439
Speaker 1: complained about it. So I guess we can all sort

955
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 1: of relate to this and see the harm that is

956
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: being done. But really, is this a workable solution technically

957
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: and even costs wise. I mean, our government has been

958
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:31,040
Speaker 1: very reluctant to spend anything in enforcing any sort of

959
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: rules in this area. That's going to be an expensive

960
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:36,480
Speaker 1: undertaking for the Aussies having a third party company running

961
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 1: potentially a digital identity verification system. It's going to cost

962
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:41,720
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars.

963
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think this is the hardest part, right is that?

964
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:47,879
Speaker 5: Think about YouTube and TV and zed as functionally, both

965
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:51,359
Speaker 5: of them have video content on their websites and they

966
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 5: make their money by selling advertising that sits between that

967
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:58,520
Speaker 5: video content. TV and zaid employees. Well, it's less by

968
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:01,800
Speaker 5: the day, but it's around six hundred people. When it

969
00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:04,440
Speaker 5: makes a profit, which it hasn't been this year, it

970
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 5: pays company tax on the whole of that profit. And

971
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 5: I just think it's a kind of a perfect little

972
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:15,840
Speaker 5: encapsulation of the way that the contributors to the economy,

973
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 5: to the tax base, to the employment base have a

974
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 5: huge amount of rules and both unspoken and literal legislative

975
00:51:25,160 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 5: that they operate by. And then you have the big

976
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 5: tech companies, which contribute no tax create all these problems

977
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 5: which the tax paying companies ultimately have to fund. And

978
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 5: I sort of just very hands off about those sort

979
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 5: of externalities. And that's where, you know, one of the

980
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 5: things I was trying to stand up earlier this year

981
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 5: was trying to speak to the Minister of Revenue about

982
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 5: this because I'm like, if nothing else, is there not

983
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:51,239
Speaker 5: a are you not concerned from our tax based perspective

984
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:54,600
Speaker 5: in the displacement of New Zealand companies to non tax

985
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 5: paying tech companies, And you can't get people interested in

986
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 5: At a certain point you're like, am I crazy here?

987
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,239
Speaker 5: Or is this a bigger problem than you're litting on?

988
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:06,919
Speaker 1: No, You're not crazy, And you know, just finally dunk

989
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 1: and looking to twenty twenty five, we've seen in the

990
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: US a lot of antitrust action play out. The Department

991
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: of Justice over there has taken suits against Google and others.

992
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:23,680
Speaker 1: Google was found to have a monopoly in digital search,

993
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:28,360
Speaker 1: and there's a decision pending on its digital advertising business.

994
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:32,760
Speaker 1: It also lost the Blizzard case around its app stores,

995
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: so that may have to be opened up. Is a

996
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff and the frustrations we have going

997
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:41,320
Speaker 1: to sort of be overrun by bigger events in the

998
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 1: US that may see some structural answers to this, or

999
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:47,320
Speaker 1: is do you think it's just going to roll on

1000
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:50,480
Speaker 1: and on in court and appeals for years to come.

1001
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 5: Court action remains probably the most likely source of sort

1002
00:52:55,520 --> 00:53:00,480
Speaker 5: of structural change in the industry. You can see that

1003
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 5: with it's not strictly court action, but courts have confirmed

1004
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 5: it with the TikTok ban, which could still happen in

1005
00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:10,959
Speaker 5: a bit over a month in the US, which would

1006
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:14,959
Speaker 5: be an enormous change. But I think that that also

1007
00:53:15,080 --> 00:53:17,279
Speaker 5: points to one of the big problems, and it is

1008
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 5: that this is both a trade and a geopolitical issue

1009
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 5: as well, and that if you're the US, you know

1010
00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 5: that these companies are behaving in ways that are anti

1011
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 5: competitive and using their scale and the opacity of their

1012
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:37,600
Speaker 5: sort of systems and the ways that they can kind

1013
00:53:37,640 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 5: of combine their different audiences and products in a way

1014
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 5: that is kind of quite overwhelming, but on a sort

1015
00:53:44,600 --> 00:53:48,759
Speaker 5: of a the fact that those companies are global and everywhere,

1016
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:53,000
Speaker 5: but still based in the US, so you derive enormous

1017
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:57,239
Speaker 5: benefits to the fact that your share markets hold those

1018
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:00,239
Speaker 5: companies to the vast bulk of their most and your

1019
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 5: employees are in your country, and that when they finally

1020
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 5: do repatriate money, it comes into this very dynamic in

1021
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 5: a very innovative economy that you still have. So do

1022
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:13,319
Speaker 5: you accept some harm in your domestic interest because you're

1023
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,640
Speaker 5: you know, your overall geopolitical interests or advanced. This is

1024
00:54:17,719 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 5: the thing that especially with you know, one of the

1025
00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 5: great entrepreneurs of history right next to the administration, Elon Musk,

1026
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 5: I'm still not quite sure that they have an answer

1027
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 5: to that. So even with these cases going forward, I'm

1028
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:32,320
Speaker 5: not one hundred percent sure that that won't kind of

1029
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 5: lead to it just a continuation of the sclerosis that

1030
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 5: we see, you know, around the world with a lot

1031
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 5: of this stuff.

1032
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 6: So there we have it. In many ways, I think

1033
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 6: it's been a bit of a landmark year for technology

1034
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:50,319
Speaker 6: in a lot of ways, everything from AI and these

1035
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 6: big enterprise companies that have had to do a lot

1036
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:57,240
Speaker 6: of restructuring, the continued growth of startups in New Zealand

1037
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:01,840
Speaker 6: and the startup industry, Big tex can virtial power being questioned,

1038
00:55:02,239 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 6: and the ups and downs of our nzat X listed tech.

1039
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:09,640
Speaker 6: So overall, it's been an interesting year to be following tech.

1040
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:13,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm really interested to see what happens with

1041
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:19,319
Speaker 1: the Trump two point zero administration. You've got I think

1042
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:23,480
Speaker 1: I read somewhere his cabinet which has a lot of

1043
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:25,800
Speaker 1: sort of tech related people in there, the likes of

1044
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:29,120
Speaker 1: David Sachs, one of the PayPal mafia, is going to

1045
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:33,440
Speaker 1: be his crypto advisor. I read somewhere that their combined

1046
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:37,839
Speaker 1: net worth if you include Maska, isn't in cabinet, he's

1047
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:43,360
Speaker 1: the doge Master, is about three hundred and forty billion dollars,

1048
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 1: so by far the richest cabinet ever. And these are

1049
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:53,160
Speaker 1: all super smart, super ambitious, egocentric people, and a lot

1050
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:58,320
Speaker 1: of them have very firm views about technology. They're techno optimists.

1051
00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:01,360
Speaker 1: They think tech is the answered to most things, and

1052
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: that unfettered innovation is the answer to climate change and

1053
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,520
Speaker 1: all of these problems that we face in the world.

1054
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:14,400
Speaker 1: So how is that going to manifest itself in policy

1055
00:56:15,600 --> 00:56:18,200
Speaker 1: in the Trump administration over the next four years. What

1056
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:20,920
Speaker 1: will it mean for all of those lawsuits that are

1057
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:25,440
Speaker 1: happening against the big tech companies. Is bees as going

1058
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 1: to be able to, for instance, influence Trump to the

1059
00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:33,839
Speaker 1: extent that he orders the Department of Justice to sort

1060
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 1: of dial back its action against Amazon. These are sorts

1061
00:56:37,120 --> 00:56:41,279
Speaker 1: of questions I think are going to be answered quite

1062
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:44,880
Speaker 1: quickly in twenty twenty five. And then the other one

1063
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: really is where is AI going to go? We've got

1064
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: chat GPT five has sort of been delayed the technology

1065
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: underpinning that. There's a lot of talk in the industry

1066
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:01,399
Speaker 1: that these large language models, the transformer technology is sort

1067
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:03,440
Speaker 1: of running out of steam in terms of their capability.

1068
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: They've hit some walls in terms of what it's capable of,

1069
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,560
Speaker 1: So there's a bit of worry about that. How are

1070
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:14,919
Speaker 1: they going to overcome that. We've got Sora and things

1071
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:17,520
Speaker 1: like that that are just now being released. So we

1072
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:22,200
Speaker 1: will see the impact of AI generated video probably a

1073
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: lot more in twenty twenty five, and of course the

1074
00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 1: rise of AI agents, which has been talked about and

1075
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,160
Speaker 1: hyped up a lot in the second half of this year,

1076
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:33,000
Speaker 1: but we haven't really seen them in action yet, So

1077
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: next year we will see them rolled out because a

1078
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:38,560
Speaker 1: lot of them, the way they're designing them at Microsoft

1079
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:42,080
Speaker 1: and Salesforce and others is to just drag and drop.

1080
00:57:42,240 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 1: You don't need to code or anything. If you've got

1081
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:48,160
Speaker 1: the data, you can feed those into an AI agent

1082
00:57:48,200 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 1: to automate a sales process or a conversation. Companies will

1083
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 1: definitely be taking those up next year. Yeah.

1084
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 6: I had a story just go up recently about the

1085
00:57:58,080 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 6: kind of expectations of the timeframe of a generative AI

1086
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 6: being integrated into enterprise company systems. I think it's something

1087
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 6: we need to keep in mind as well. You know,

1088
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 6: they are drag and drop, so you can just kind

1089
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:13,440
Speaker 6: of feed them data. But at the same time, there

1090
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:15,960
Speaker 6: is a certain level of integration work and data cleaning

1091
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 6: and all those things that you actually need to do

1092
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 6: to make them functional. So we're starting to learn a

1093
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 6: lot more about how the implementation of these technologies is

1094
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:27,600
Speaker 6: going to what that's going to look like. I think

1095
00:58:27,640 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 6: it's been similar to kind of cloud migration. You know,

1096
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 6: it's going to take time and people are going to

1097
00:58:32,160 --> 00:58:34,640
Speaker 6: have to figure out how to do it and where

1098
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:38,400
Speaker 6: the challenges are and what's actually most impactful. But once

1099
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:40,520
Speaker 6: we get into it and things get rolling, we are

1100
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:42,640
Speaker 6: going to start to see some pretty drastic changes.

1101
00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:46,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, the in terms of some of the sort of

1102
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 1: ticky stuff next year, you know, I think the driverless cays,

1103
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 1: we've seen so much progress this year in the US

1104
00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: in particular and China, so we're just going to see

1105
00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:00,680
Speaker 1: a lot more that, maybe in the UK an official

1106
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: launch there. We've got Kiwi Alex Kendall who's taking his

1107
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:06,520
Speaker 1: technology to the US. We're just going to see that

1108
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 1: really start to hit critical mass. I think we'll also

1109
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 1: see some of the first prototype small modular reactors. Nuclear

1110
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:20,440
Speaker 1: reactors go into development and maybe production in conjunction with

1111
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:22,760
Speaker 1: the big tech companies that are funding them because they

1112
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:27,800
Speaker 1: need more energy to run their data centers. And literally

1113
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:33,120
Speaker 1: today Microsoft launched its own data center region in New Zealand.

1114
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: So we will see if that pays off for them,

1115
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:40,640
Speaker 1: what demand is, like, is their good uptake off those services?

1116
00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: They certainly think there will be. They put a billion

1117
00:59:42,840 --> 00:59:45,880
Speaker 1: dollars of investment into that, and speaking to them, they

1118
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:47,960
Speaker 1: say it's going to be a slow burns. This is

1119
00:59:48,040 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 1: a long term commitment for them, but to what extent

1120
00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 1: our company is going to accelerate their migration to the

1121
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: cloud as a result of having this hyperscale infrastructure on

1122
00:59:59,280 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 1: their doorsteps. And what is it going to mean for

1123
01:00:02,080 --> 01:00:05,600
Speaker 1: the economy? Will those productivity gains were so desperate to

1124
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:10,919
Speaker 1: achieve start to be realized as a result of having

1125
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:14,040
Speaker 1: all this great infrastructure. Won't happen in twenty twenty five,

1126
01:00:14,160 --> 01:00:16,920
Speaker 1: but will we start to see some really great use

1127
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 1: cases emerging that inspire others in corporate New Zealand to

1128
01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 1: adopt it as well.

1129
01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:25,520
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there are some big promises that big

1130
01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 6: tech has to keep in terms of the return to

1131
01:00:28,280 --> 01:00:31,640
Speaker 6: the economy. Billions and billions of dollars, the numbers they've

1132
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 6: thrown around around how much this is actually going to

1133
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:36,760
Speaker 6: benefit New Zealand Inc. So hopefully we start to see

1134
01:00:36,800 --> 01:00:39,200
Speaker 6: some of that playing out and keep an eye on

1135
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 6: whether that is actually happening to what extent. So, Yeah,

1136
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:46,160
Speaker 6: in particular, those productivity gains are going to be highly anticipated,

1137
01:00:46,280 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 6: I would imagine by many people, So let's see if

1138
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 6: we can get there.

1139
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on all of

1140
01:00:52,720 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 1: that every week here on the Business of Tech. So

1141
01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:00,440
Speaker 1: that's it for this week. Thanks to resellers Rob O'Neil,

1142
01:01:00,680 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 1: Rebecca Stevenson from Business Desk, Finn Hogan from Caffeine Daily,

1143
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:07,640
Speaker 1: and a spinoffs Dunk and gree for joining us links

1144
01:01:07,680 --> 01:01:10,120
Speaker 1: to some of the big tech stories they've covered in

1145
01:01:10,240 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: the show notes at Business desk dot co dot ezed.

1146
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 1: Head straight to the podcast section to find them.

1147
01:01:15,560 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 6: You can stream the podcast there as well as on

1148
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 6: iHeartRadio or of course, your podcast platform of joyce and.

1149
01:01:21,680 --> 01:01:24,680
Speaker 1: Get in touch with your feedback, ideas, suggestions for topics

1150
01:01:24,720 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 1: and guests for twenty twenty five. Email Ben on Ben

1151
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:30,040
Speaker 1: at Business desk dot co, dot.

1152
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 6: Zed Our final episode will be next Thursday. It will

1153
01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 6: just be me and Peter are reflecting on some of

1154
01:01:34,800 --> 01:01:39,440
Speaker 6: the best, worst, most interesting, ridiculous technologies that we got

1155
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:41,760
Speaker 6: our hands on in twenty twenty four, and.

1156
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:44,080
Speaker 1: We'd really like to hear your picks for the best

1157
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:47,760
Speaker 1: gadgets you bought or test drove in twenty twenty four,

1158
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:51,600
Speaker 1: the ones that were absolutely worth the money in your view.

1159
01:01:51,840 --> 01:01:54,120
Speaker 1: Head to the Business of Tech LinkedIn page to tell

1160
01:01:54,200 --> 01:01:57,640
Speaker 1: us what tech absolutely brought you joy or made your

1161
01:01:57,720 --> 01:01:58,280
Speaker 1: life easier.

1162
01:01:58,480 --> 01:02:00,280
Speaker 6: Have a great week and we'll catch you one last

1163
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:02,600
Speaker 6: time for twenty twenty four, Next Thursday.

1164
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:03,720
Speaker 1: See you next week.