Speaker 1: This week on the Business of Tech powered by Two
Speaker 1: Degrees Business, we're talking about the future of Wellington. I'm
Speaker 1: Peter Griffin and this is a subject close to my
Speaker 1: heart as I'm now in my twentieth year living right
Speaker 1: in the center of the capitol. It's a wonderful place
Speaker 1: to live and to be honest, I never expected to
Speaker 1: say that as an orchander via Dublin, who came here
Speaker 1: to study creative writing and expected to be on the
Speaker 1: first plane north after finishing my degree. But I fell
Speaker 1: in love with the place and with a woman living here,
Speaker 1: and the rest is history. But the city has some
Speaker 1: big problems now. Our infrastructure is dilapidated, economic growth is stagnant,
Speaker 1: and the public sector cuts have seen a lot of
Speaker 1: smart people leave in the last couple of years. Wellington
Speaker 1: used to be the center of our tech sector, with
Speaker 1: huge successes like zero and Trade. Me founded here. Believe
Speaker 1: that doubling down on tech, on startups and innovation a
Speaker 1: massively successful film industry is the way to attract top
Speaker 1: talent to the city, inject more capital into our companies
Speaker 1: and create more high paying jobs. We're not alone in
Speaker 1: having that idea. A couple of weeks back, during Tech Week,
Speaker 1: Auckland's Mayor Wayne Brown launched a new innovation and technology alliance,
Speaker 1: bringing together the public and private sectors to attract capital
Speaker 1: and boost productivity. He wants Auckland to be the Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley of the South Pacific. A little bit cringy, but
Speaker 1: let's face it, Auckland is the center of startup activity
Speaker 1: now and has a lot going for it. As for
Speaker 1: the capital, a lot of smart people have been thinking
Speaker 1: about how to revive some of the glory associated with
Speaker 1: the city's golden run of tech and entrepreneurial success in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands into the twenty tens. Last week,
Speaker 1: the think tank Vision for Wellington, up of prominent Walentonians
Speaker 1: who want a new direction for the city, featured tech
Speaker 1: luminaries on a panel discussion giving their suggestions for what
Speaker 1: we should focus on. For instance, Rod Drury, who after
Speaker 1: a huge success with Zero divides his time between Wellington
Speaker 1: and Queenstown, suggested the city is the perfect place for
Speaker 1: young people to get a start in their career and
Speaker 1: we need to do a lot more to attract them here.
Speaker 2: I think the idea around how he pets Wellington's what's.
Speaker 3: How unique about it. It's that great networking city early
Speaker 3: in your working career. Sorry to you know kids discussion
Speaker 3: twenty times for different things going on. But I think
Speaker 3: what's called about an asset like don't need a car, So.
Speaker 4: If you're a young person in the twenties, you don't
Speaker 4: have to waste time with the car, the car insurance
Speaker 4: and parking cars, or you need really as.
Speaker 3: A laptop and somewhere to live.
Speaker 4: So as a thing, I think we should have a
Speaker 4: strategy of trying to attract people in their twenties, not
Speaker 4: just people to go at a university, but people that
Speaker 4: just want to come and have the big city experience
Speaker 4: like I had coming from full State into some of
Speaker 4: the floways cuts in the provinces.
Speaker 3: Don't have to be super and to do the Uni track,
Speaker 3: just come and live here. So how do you make
Speaker 3: that easier? We have to make it affordable for them
Speaker 3: to live.
Speaker 1: That was Rod speaking at the Vision for Wellington event.
Speaker 1: Also on the panel was Brooke Roberts, the co founder
Speaker 1: and co CEO of Chaersease, which has become the go
Speaker 1: to app for key We equity investors now. Brooke talked
Speaker 1: about the city's proximity to nature and beaches being something
Speaker 1: that we really have going for us, but also the
Speaker 1: need for Wellington to invest more in the startups that
Speaker 1: can produce wealth for the city.
Speaker 5: On top of that, you know what I love about
Speaker 5: Wellingtons being able to run around the waterfront and the
Speaker 5: hills being able to super dawn and then go to
Speaker 5: they need to meetings and then fund bilance is quite
Speaker 5: rare in willing to make it possible than is needing
Speaker 5: more into growing. I can't be even attracted color to day.
Speaker 1: It's easy to live out here or purposely to raise.
Speaker 5: Families and to recapital wall and face back to what
Speaker 5: it was from what's possible and local standards for city can.
Speaker 1: So the tone of the night was basically that we've
Speaker 1: got a great compact city offering a fantastic lifestyle and
Speaker 1: networking opportunities, but these networks have become disconnected, particularly in
Speaker 1: the wake of COVID. To rebuild a vibrant tech sector,
Speaker 1: we need to double down on those lifestyle factors the
Speaker 1: city has going for it. We need to attract talent,
Speaker 1: more investment and have better links between our universities and startups.
Speaker 1: We also need leadership for the city with a clear
Speaker 1: vision for the future. Sitting in the audience along with
Speaker 1: me listening to that vision for Wellington panel was Ralph Heinem,
Speaker 1: the co founder of Volpara Health, a startup that created
Speaker 1: pioneering software for improving the accuracy of breast screening ma as.
Speaker 1: The software is now used to screen literally tens of
Speaker 1: millions of people worldwide, and last year, after a stint
Speaker 1: on the Australian Stock Exchange, Volpara was acquired by South
Speaker 1: Korean medical imaging software company Lunet in a deal value
Speaker 1: at around three hundred million dollars, one of the biggest
Speaker 1: exits from a Wellington company in the last twenty years. Ralph,
Speaker 1: like me, came to Wellington and fell in love with
Speaker 1: this place. He's now an active investor in startups in
Speaker 1: the cety, including lit Maps, which I featured on the
Speaker 1: podcast a few episodes ago. So I caught up with
Speaker 1: Ralph on a sunny Wellington day at his Mount Victoria
Speaker 1: home after the panel discussion to get his thoughts on
Speaker 1: what he'd heard and his plans for wally Forge, a
Speaker 1: new group he's formed that will act to promote events,
Speaker 1: networking and investments for the Wellington startup scene. Here's the
Speaker 1: interview with Volpara Health co founder Ralph Heinem. Ralph, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Business of Tech. Great to see you and
Speaker 1: to have you on for the first time.
Speaker 6: Great to be here, Peter, I mean, I'm going to
Speaker 6: enjoy the conversation. Let's crack into it.
Speaker 1: Well, there was a great conversation last night. You and
Speaker 1: I attended this Vision for Wellington events. Some familiar and
Speaker 1: iconic faces from the Wellington tech community, the likes of
Speaker 1: Rod Drury, founder of Zero, Brooke Roberts, the co founder
Speaker 1: of Chersey's Great Company, a lot of New Zealanders are using,
Speaker 1: serge Van dam a serial investor in companies in Wellington,
Speaker 1: and Stephen Cummings, the professor of Innovation and Strategy at
Speaker 1: Victoria University. So it was a great panel. We're going
Speaker 1: to get your thoughts on what they said last night
Speaker 1: about the potential to use one of our strengths, which
Speaker 1: is tech, to sort of reinvigorate the city, which, let's
Speaker 1: face it has been in a bit of a funk
Speaker 1: since COVID. But first I just want to remind listeners
Speaker 1: off your success story coming to New Zealand after this
Speaker 1: great academic career at Oxford and setting up Volpower Health,
Speaker 1: which has been a huge success, grew to be listed
Speaker 1: on the ASX. Has since been acquired by a South
Speaker 1: Korean company, so a really successful exit there. Still based
Speaker 1: in Wellington, still employing a lot of people here, dozens
Speaker 1: of patents, so creating real intellectual property and helping women
Speaker 1: all over the world with the AI powered screening software
Speaker 1: that you've developed. So this is exactly the sort of
Speaker 1: company as the people said last night, we need more
Speaker 1: off and how do we do it? How do we
Speaker 1: sort of ten x or one hundred times what's going
Speaker 1: on here? But first just yeah, dial back to coming
Speaker 1: out of Oxford University in the UK, what brought you
Speaker 1: to New Zealand and the genesis of Volpower.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the APHD in Oxford on breast AI applied to
Speaker 6: Paragrams for the textion early texts of breast cancer. Tried
Speaker 6: to commercialize that in nineteen ninety nine but it was
Speaker 6: a bit too early, but we switched into brain imaging
Speaker 6: instead and we were very successful at that and we
Speaker 6: ended up selling the companies to effectively to Siemens in
Speaker 6: two thousand and three, at which point Mike Kiwi partner
Speaker 6: who is now. My wife said, look, she had to
Speaker 6: come back here from Oxford to finish off a medical
Speaker 6: degree a targo. Would I come back with her? And
Speaker 6: I said, well started the company. I was kind of
Speaker 6: free and easy and never been to New Zealand. It
Speaker 6: was like, yeah, all right, I'm on the way, let's
Speaker 6: go to go to Wellington and interesting kind of flying in.
Speaker 6: Obviously that was always exciting flying into Wellington, and it
Speaker 6: was particularly on my first visit here. I was very
Speaker 6: exciting and I thought, this is the kind of place
Speaker 6: for me. It's got big exciting storms and lots of activity,
Speaker 6: lots of energy and the lots of interesting things going on.
Speaker 6: That was two thousand and three, Peter, and then they
Speaker 6: consulted for some of the top medical emagine companies right
Speaker 6: around the world. In two thousand and nine, I come
Speaker 6: back and talked to the guy in Oxford, professor Mike Brady,
Speaker 6: and we said, all stuff we did fifteen years ago,
Speaker 6: now is the time for And we could have done
Speaker 6: it anywhere in the world at that point, but I
Speaker 6: or we chose to do it in Wellington, to start
Speaker 6: vol Pier in Wellington. And we did it because quite
Speaker 6: quite simply, it was just so easy starters where we
Speaker 6: started to have Skype, which meant kind of global stuff
Speaker 6: started to play in quite nicely, and we had fairly
Speaker 6: good internet too. It felt so easy here to access
Speaker 6: the government, access early stage funding. And then as we
Speaker 6: started growing, we realized actually there's a huge number of
Speaker 6: really good software engineers in Wellington. In medical space were
Speaker 6: to breastcoats, you need really high quality people who really
Speaker 6: can test the head out of software, you know, no
Speaker 6: bugs or that kind of stuff, and there was lots
Speaker 6: of those around Wellington. But that thing that we found
Speaker 6: as well was as we started to get going was
Speaker 6: there was there's a lot of people around here with
Speaker 6: computer vision or AI skills because of the film industry.
Speaker 6: So back then typically an American would come over and
Speaker 6: work Wetter They would very conveniently bring a partner along
Speaker 6: and that part and would often come and work at
Speaker 6: bop A. So there was a really good relationship and
Speaker 6: it was a fantastic base to which to start to
Speaker 6: grow the company. People say, well, you kind of developed
Speaker 6: the company and the biggest market was the US. Shouldn't
Speaker 6: you have done it in the US? But I actually
Speaker 6: feel that well, with the Internet now, you don't have
Speaker 6: such issues of the tyranny of distance, but also being
Speaker 6: outside the market just makes you think about things in
Speaker 6: a different way, and I think vob Ai was just
Speaker 6: very good at looking at things in different ways from here.
Speaker 6: And the other thing which as I look back and
Speaker 6: reflect on now, is that lots of companies came in
Speaker 6: to our space in the US, funded by USBC, and
Speaker 6: they were always trying tens and tens and tens of millions,
Speaker 6: but it all burned out within one or two years.
Speaker 6: Because medical and a lot of deep tech stuff, you
Speaker 6: can't do it in one or two years. It's a
Speaker 6: long term game and you need to have a sustainable
Speaker 6: company and a sustainable workforce.
Speaker 7: So from day one at Volpira, it.
Speaker 6: Used to kind of drive me mad that people weren't
Speaker 6: working twenty four hours a day. On the other hand,
Speaker 6: I kind of realized it made all these people they
Speaker 6: were here for the long run and they weren't going
Speaker 6: to burn out. So that was a real kind of
Speaker 6: a real benefit of bit of being in Wellington, as
Speaker 6: well being the ability to do deep tech, to be
Speaker 6: patient to grow stuff over the long term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that theme really came through last night because
Speaker 1: it's a small city, but the access to the green
Speaker 1: belt here, to surfing at Lyle Bay and cycle tracks
Speaker 1: and all that. You know, people are able to do
Speaker 1: their work. You can get out into nature. But your
Speaker 1: story is quite similar to some of the people on
Speaker 1: the stage last night, Like Rod came from the Hawk's
Speaker 1: Bay and he relates his story of coming to the
Speaker 1: city for the first time and why it was such
Speaker 1: a good place. You came here through circumstances. You know,
Speaker 1: your partner was a Kiwi and came back to Wellington
Speaker 1: to complete his studies. But you could have gone in
Speaker 1: the last few years. Rod could have gone. Cheersy's is
Speaker 1: very big. He is operating in Australia now, Brooke could
Speaker 1: have could have gone. But you're all still here. So
Speaker 1: it's something about this place, even that it's gone through
Speaker 1: tough times in recent years, that keeps you here and investing.
Speaker 1: You're an investor in lip Maps, Wellington based startup, So
Speaker 1: what is it that keeps you here?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's a great question. And you know you just
Speaker 6: walked up around Mount Victoria, right. Yeah, we live in
Speaker 6: such a stunningly beautiful place. You know, it's just stunning
Speaker 6: weather and today and just stunningly beautiful. Along with that, though, yeah,
Speaker 6: we do because because of that geography, we get big storms.
Speaker 6: I actually love big storms, and I think Rod touched
Speaker 6: on that last night. Someone touched on that last night.
Speaker 6: It's very dramatic here when you get the big storms
Speaker 6: coming through, and I actually loved I love being in
Speaker 6: the office here or off downtown and the big storm
Speaker 6: rolls through, bundles of rain against the window. You think
Speaker 6: the windows are going to come in. It's all very
Speaker 6: dramatic and exciting, but then it blows through and it's
Speaker 6: just as stunning afterwards. So it's so I kind of
Speaker 6: like all that. But the other thing that really came
Speaker 6: over last night they used the word easy.
Speaker 7: I used the word simple.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: I love it goes to the US or wherever you
Speaker 6: come back, and you fly into the airport and it's
Speaker 6: just so simple. Get out taxi, ten minutes to the
Speaker 6: city center, walk up the road to the house.
Speaker 7: From the house here in malt Victoria, we're very lucky.
Speaker 6: We can walk ten minutes to the beach, five minutes
Speaker 6: to the green Belt, fifteen minutes downtown to Cuba Street.
Speaker 6: You know, it's just it's all simple and easy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it was a theme last night around cars. You know,
Speaker 6: we very rarely drive cars unless we really have to.
Speaker 6: And there's just that simplicity of life and stuff, I guess,
Speaker 6: you know, along with the location, the storms and that
Speaker 6: simplicity is a very outdoorsy place where where you know,
Speaker 6: we love the outdoors that you talked about going up
Speaker 6: on the green Belt. I used to, especially at Volpira,
Speaker 6: get stressed or whatever, walk along the top of the
Speaker 6: green Belt.
Speaker 7: You could see the whole world up there.
Speaker 6: There were raging storm and it would battery, but it
Speaker 6: would inspire you at the same time.
Speaker 7: And you know, I kind of love that.
Speaker 6: And I think all those factors really helped to form
Speaker 6: the people, right the people. You know, there's that you know,
Speaker 6: we often talk about the people being the most important,
Speaker 6: you know, to me, only you can't come from Looton
Speaker 6: is a working class town, kind of deck down South,
Speaker 6: And yeah, we all support Looton Town, which is the best,
Speaker 6: best team, best football club in the world. But you know,
Speaker 6: there's always these jokes about Manester United and everyone that
Speaker 6: goes to watching has pron cocktail, sandwiches and drinks, caviar,
Speaker 6: and you don't get any of that crap in Wellington.
Speaker 6: You know, it's all kind of down to earth people.
Speaker 6: Everyone's everyone's friendly, helping people and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: and everyone's up for a beer or a coffee and
Speaker 6: it's just the people really make it at the end
Speaker 6: of the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and two thousand and three, when when you got
Speaker 1: here was really the start of this real nascent scene.
Speaker 1: It started with trade me then you know, Rod was
Speaker 1: working here on Glazier Systems and that the genesis of
Speaker 1: Zero was more like two thousand and six, but you
Speaker 1: had Over the Hill and Mirrima, you had really burgeoning
Speaker 1: film scene happening with Sir Peter Jackson and Sir Richard Taylor.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot going on that was twenty
Speaker 1: plus years ago, and some of those people are still here.
Speaker 1: But there's a sense that we've sort of lost what
Speaker 1: was so great about the tech ecosystem. I mentioned COVID,
Speaker 1: you know, and Rod talked last night about how the
Speaker 1: towns sort of emptied out, particularly government, and it hasn't
Speaker 1: quite come back. But what else explains that? What do
Speaker 1: you think has happened so that we really don't have
Speaker 1: that thriving tech ecosystem that we once did.
Speaker 6: I agree co Cove has been a big impact, but
Speaker 6: also it feels like we've kind of lost some of
Speaker 6: the coherence behind the scenes that could be related to
Speaker 6: the government and the Council and their views on staff.
Speaker 6: Both those entities seem to be breaking things apart rather
Speaker 6: than trying to help us bring things together. And as
Speaker 6: we talked about a bit earlier, it kind of feels
Speaker 6: like this constant disruption willing to nound all we want
Speaker 6: to do. Well, I want to do is get companies moving.
Speaker 6: All I want to do is my breast cancer research
Speaker 6: to go on and save more families from cancer. But
Speaker 6: I'm stuck, you know, fighting this seven story tower block
Speaker 6: at the end of the road which is never going
Speaker 6: to be built, and it's just a waste of their time,
Speaker 6: it's a waste of my time. But there's some ideological
Speaker 6: thing happening. I think a government and council level. There's
Speaker 6: just not letting people get home with stuff. And I
Speaker 6: think we're Rod touched on that yesterday as well, right
Speaker 6: up and with his dreams of more bike paths around
Speaker 6: the place, especially up in the green Belt and things
Speaker 6: like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about sort of being really intentional and deliberate
Speaker 1: about where you want the city to go. And as
Speaker 1: we sit here, we're just looking out at what you
Speaker 1: were saying about this plot of land behind you, which
Speaker 1: is going to have this massive place at the end
Speaker 1: of a private road in a very poky space.
Speaker 7: They want they want that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so they're being deliberate about de insification in
Speaker 1: some areas, but it seems to be at the expense
Speaker 1: of an economic vision for the city.
Speaker 6: Yesterday was great because the vision for wanting to event
Speaker 6: because there was kind of people were talking about economics
Speaker 6: and you don't really hear that from the council and
Speaker 6: certain things. Yeah, obviously COVID come along. But the other
Speaker 6: thing that was very useful used to be very useful
Speaker 6: was it used to be quite easy to kind of
Speaker 6: get government funding early on, especially for SaaS companies, but
Speaker 6: then the Labor government under Grant Robertson come in and
Speaker 6: they changed it to this really complicated tax R and
Speaker 6: D credit thing which only bigger companies could understand. So
Speaker 6: Bobar actually ended up doing pretty well on that because
Speaker 6: by that stage we were a bigger company. But in
Speaker 6: my view, it really took away a lot of really
Speaker 6: good funding for very early SaaS companies and waiting towards
Speaker 6: a SAS central place. So yeah, you know it ended
Speaker 6: up our MP in many ways championed this change to
Speaker 6: the rule. In my view, that helped cripple some of
Speaker 6: the kind of SaaS infrastructure that was going on. And
Speaker 6: I'm not sure we ever recovered from that.
Speaker 1: And then COVID and you know, objectively, the R and
Speaker 1: D Texas sin of hasn't really achieved its aim was
Speaker 1: still around one point four or one point five percent
Speaker 1: of GDP spent on R and D. The whole idea
Speaker 1: of this was to get more businesses investing in R
Speaker 1: and D so that we would spend two or maybe
Speaker 1: three percent of our GDP on R and E, which
Speaker 1: is what other advanced small nations are doing. So it
Speaker 1: hasn't really hit the mark, has it?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 6: As I say, and again it's good for big companies.
Speaker 6: I remember we first did it. You need like ten
Speaker 6: accountants and sixteen Deloitte people to work out what was
Speaker 6: going on. Small companies can't afford that. And you know,
Speaker 6: the thing, the way it was before, as a SaaS company,
Speaker 6: you get some you get money up front, and that
Speaker 6: would be such even if it's like fifty k or
Speaker 6: sixty k. It would be so useful having that money
Speaker 6: to help you go get ambitious and really go for growth.
Speaker 6: And one of the things I think back on a lot,
Speaker 6: and Brooke from shares his touch on this last night
Speaker 6: was even though we'd already sold a company when I
Speaker 6: come to Wellington started up Volpara, I always remember getting
Speaker 6: ten k from I think it was grow Grow Wellington
Speaker 6: at the point it was ten k to do some
Speaker 6: capability buildings, have a quality system in the country to
Speaker 6: start with.
Speaker 7: It was just a real nudge.
Speaker 6: It was like, you know, there is stuff around here,
Speaker 6: there is people to support you. You know, it does
Speaker 6: actually make sense to do it in Wellington. And so
Speaker 6: and Brooke talked about it last night to early Stage
Speaker 6: and you know, they went to Creative HQ and then
Speaker 6: there was some nudge. They got some money and there
Speaker 6: was this kind of nudge. And I really think that
Speaker 6: one of the things that that SaaS funding used to
Speaker 6: be that kind of nudge, that you know, supporting nudge,
Speaker 6: and I think we've kind of lost that. And one
Speaker 6: of the things I've been talking to a lot of
Speaker 6: people about rebuilding the ecosystem, and that's what welly forged.
Speaker 6: But also I really do believe we need early stage
Speaker 6: nudge funding of zero to fifty k. You've got have
Speaker 6: you've got a good idea, it convinced sort of whatever
Speaker 6: it is, five or six people to put in ten k.
Speaker 6: Let's get some nudge funding going in into those founders
Speaker 6: who turn up. They might not be techie, you know,
Speaker 6: they might not be rich, they might not be able
Speaker 6: to go to their favorite or on call to get
Speaker 6: the money. But you know there's a bunch of I
Speaker 6: think there's enough people around Willington now that should be
Speaker 6: able to come together and really do that kind of
Speaker 6: true very early stage angel investing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and look there is angel HQ, which if you're
Speaker 1: a wholesale investor you can put twenty five or fifty
Speaker 1: k into something. There are a few opportunities like that,
Speaker 1: but it really goes to the larger theme that Surge
Speaker 1: van Dam was talking about. Here's actually a clip of
Speaker 1: Surge talking about the constrained capital for high growth companies.
Speaker 3: Yes, so just on the capital a's long that we
Speaker 3: have a shortage of capital and the wall so probably these.
Speaker 8: Themes about I've just written around numbers here, so doing
Speaker 8: a quote media or a media personality one hundred billion
Speaker 8: dollars and q WE saved over across a whole lot
Speaker 8: of funds fifty billion and leans in two there or
Speaker 8: fifty billion and probably speaking so well John billion dollars
Speaker 8: on kiwi's money sitting there and managed, which two of
Speaker 8: one percent of there is and great basics like what
Speaker 8: we talk about here. So basically you've got one hundred
Speaker 8: thousand bucks save for your retirement and aggregate two hundred
Speaker 8: bucks of that is going to companies a lot.
Speaker 3: Of years these as an investor.
Speaker 8: So you're all of you who actually have KEYWI savers
Speaker 8: or are actually saving through some other mechanism and have
Speaker 8: influencing government, you can actually have your voice certain give
Speaker 8: that feedback that you actually want.
Speaker 3: To participate in the future companies of New Zealands.
Speaker 1: So so towards Yeah, it's basically saying, now, you know,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of money in iq WE saver,
Speaker 1: pension funds, all that sort of thing, but only a tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of that is going into high growth companies.
Speaker 1: There aren't really any mechanisms for local investment where people
Speaker 1: might want to support investing in Wellington's startups. What do
Speaker 1: you think we need to do to address this.
Speaker 6: I agree with Surged on that, and you know, I
Speaker 6: can't understand where it's going on the key we saver staff.
Speaker 6: I understand, you know, some of the other things again
Speaker 6: mentioned we sit around waiting too much for the council
Speaker 6: or for the government to come and rescue us.
Speaker 7: You know they're not coming.
Speaker 6: And the tech sector and you know, entrepreneurs around here,
Speaker 6: we've got to get together and we've got to solve
Speaker 6: this ourselves. Yeah, and I really believe it's kind of
Speaker 6: it's time for wanting to people to put up the
Speaker 6: hand to upcome this nudge fund for early investors to
Speaker 6: get things moving. I'm certainly not going to wait around
Speaker 6: for the government. You know that that could be a long, long, long,
Speaker 6: long time.
Speaker 1: What was your capital journey like obviously you ended up listening,
Speaker 1: so that was great, and you had mechanism there to
Speaker 1: raise money, But in those intervening years, what was the
Speaker 1: real first influx of funding that allowed you to do
Speaker 1: what you needed to do with full power?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So if you go back to the first company
Speaker 6: in Oxford, you know, we were very successful there. People
Speaker 6: made where it was times ten the money and that
Speaker 6: company started up on that very much was family and
Speaker 6: friends money.
Speaker 7: Was it good?
Speaker 6: It's hugely stressful obviously because you know something your brother
Speaker 6: or your sister and time you're seeing there like how's
Speaker 6: my money going? And he's like wow, no, yeah, quite
Speaker 6: a few more years. But you know they waited and
Speaker 6: they got a really good return out of that.
Speaker 7: Then. Yeah, when I moved here.
Speaker 6: I started to company up with free professors then around
Speaker 6: the world, and we went back to those early investors
Speaker 6: in Oxford and said that we're going to do a company.
Speaker 6: It's going to be Wellington, New Zealand.
Speaker 7: Are you in?
Speaker 6: And so yeah, the capital journey really was that those
Speaker 6: first investors reinvesting into this kind of next company.
Speaker 7: And again I think Phil Royal.
Speaker 6: Touched on that last night though kind of the once
Speaker 6: founders do one thing that they'll do it again.
Speaker 1: And look at right and Atomic and I mean and
Speaker 1: Sam Morgan, Row and Simpson, a lot of them at
Speaker 1: Wellington based company. So it's really about people, isn't it.
Speaker 1: If you weren't here in Wellington saying I want to
Speaker 1: do Vulpower here, your supporters and all that would have
Speaker 1: said okay, doing in Oxford.
Speaker 6: Yeah they were, but they supported us here and so
Speaker 6: in the Endia we were very kind of grateful for that.
Speaker 6: But then over time we got we found there was
Speaker 6: a really wealthy guy over in Australia, Roger Allen, who
Speaker 6: just loved the whole saving families from cancer color view
Speaker 6: and he got heavily involved in it. And I always
Speaker 6: remember Roger because one of the things he said, and
Speaker 6: I think this is pertinent to a lot of New
Speaker 6: Zealand investor, is his viewpoint always was that what you're
Speaker 6: doing is really good for the world. So you know,
Speaker 6: I have a choice. I could give money to charity,
Speaker 6: I could put into companies see innovation, and you know,
Speaker 6: potentially get some money back. I can recycle. So he'd
Speaker 6: always tend towards companies which are doing good as his
Speaker 6: form of.
Speaker 7: Whatever that word is. It has a hard one there.
Speaker 6: And Joe we talked a lot earlier about kind of
Speaker 6: some of the numbers. But for Para, at least a
Speaker 6: year ago we were at obviously we were castro, it
Speaker 6: was castro positive and it was bringing in ten tens
Speaker 6: of millions of revenue, but also forty percent of all
Speaker 6: US breast cancer screens were being done using volpar our
Speaker 6: software's Yeah, that is you know whatever. It was fifteen
Speaker 6: sixteen million women each year getting the benefits of our software.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that was you know, that was that was
Speaker 6: incredible buzz. And going back to the start of opera,
Speaker 6: so we had Oxford sort of investors come in. We
Speaker 6: we had Roger Allen come in. But then as we
Speaker 6: came towards ASX, Neil Craig and Craigs re supported us
Speaker 6: so that they ended up raising five million for us
Speaker 6: as a pre IPO round and that led to the AX.
Speaker 6: And what do you remember that journey for various things.
Speaker 6: What one is because we got investment in from ox
Speaker 6: to start with. From the very start, we had to
Speaker 6: communicate a lot with the investors. So every month the
Speaker 6: all reports going out to all these people in the
Speaker 6: UK who probably thought, well, someone probably thought my money's
Speaker 6: going to New Zealand. I'll never see that again. But yeah,
Speaker 6: they are getting these regular reports and that whole report
Speaker 6: reporting really set us up for the AX because we
Speaker 6: were very used to gear to.
Speaker 7: Reporting two people.
Speaker 6: So yeah, the capital journey for us was Craigs. We
Speaker 6: never really took any VC money for here for various
Speaker 6: reasons that there was one VC got very close to
Speaker 6: putting in a substantial amount, but then there was a
Speaker 6: there was a disaster one of there other companies, and
Speaker 6: they're to throw money into that one.
Speaker 7: So I've all switched around. Yeah, very much.
Speaker 1: So yeah, look and there is there's more more money.
Speaker 1: Robbie Paul from ICE has to Interest just day a
Speaker 1: graph showing the participation of international vcs in their funding
Speaker 1: rounds and it and the curve is just going up
Speaker 1: and up and up. So the international players are looking
Speaker 1: down here. They're scouting for talent. So that the capital
Speaker 1: thing is it's not it's not perfect. What you've said
Speaker 1: is the real early stage stuff. We need more of
Speaker 1: that obviously, and.
Speaker 6: Then touched on that last night, the plant more seeds planted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked about you you need a city that's
Speaker 1: a great place to live. And we do have the wildlife.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the landscape. The cultural heart of the
Speaker 1: city is still still intact and people and Stephen Cummings
Speaker 1: reflected on that last night, and you acknowledge that, you know,
Speaker 1: the university hasn't particularly got this right to date, but
Speaker 1: things are changing. There's a little incubator and shared working
Speaker 1: space on the Pipotier campus, So we went in near
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago to meet lit Maps who
Speaker 1: are based there. So that's really coming along. Here's what
Speaker 1: he said about what they need to get right and
Speaker 1: do better to get that talent pipeline going for the industry.
Speaker 3: I think, in fairness forcunity hasn't been the most receptive
Speaker 3: university to.
Speaker 2: Providing help for people from the community coming in. But
Speaker 2: I think we're fixing that now and I think you
Speaker 2: know that. The Tech Awards on Friday night was interesting
Speaker 2: to me how many people thank the University of Autland
Speaker 2: and thanks the Center for Innovations and Entrepreneurship with the
Speaker 2: University of Auckland for the support that they have given them.
Speaker 3: What don't we have The University of Auckland had when
Speaker 3: it's set up a sense for renovation and entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2: They had local government support like we did, like we do,
Speaker 2: They had university support.
Speaker 3: Like we do, but they also had private and corporate
Speaker 3: investors investing.
Speaker 7: In student entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2: So that's my provocation, if you believe it's recorded, be
Speaker 2: a mental outcome and support, but also think about maybe
Speaker 2: what you could do to sort of scattered those manities
Speaker 2: that the surge talked about.
Speaker 3: That's my propilication, gearing high for money.
Speaker 1: So Stephen Cummings is basically saying, yeah, there needs to
Speaker 1: be a more collaboration, more cohesive way of fostering all
Speaker 1: that entrepreneurial talent. What you've generally been like with Volpara
Speaker 1: actually finding great talent from the Wellington area or attracting
Speaker 1: people to this city.
Speaker 6: We really didn't have a huge amount of issues. Obviously
Speaker 6: during COVID and stuff that there was, there was issues,
Speaker 6: and you know, it comes like Vaultpire a lot of
Speaker 6: the deep tech ones you get out of universities, you're
Speaker 6: always trying to do good and you're on a mission.
Speaker 6: So for volt Pier of saving fans from breast cancer
Speaker 6: and that was always a very powerful poll for people.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we used to get some outstanding engineers from
Speaker 6: ron Wellington. We did bring in FDA skills from overseas.
Speaker 7: But again, you know a lot of these people, especially in.
Speaker 6: Today's year us, were keen to know, keen to try
Speaker 6: try somewhere else and so that again that was relatively
Speaker 6: easy to find those people and pull them down.
Speaker 1: And because Oxford and Cambridge are I mean, Cambridge is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest innovation ecosystems in the world in
Speaker 1: its own right. When you have a highly innovative, successful
Speaker 1: university at the heart of it, the stuff that spins
Speaker 1: off and the capital that attracts the talent from all
Speaker 1: over the world, and we do. Yeah, we've got a
Speaker 1: pretty good at university here in Victoria and mass as well,
Speaker 1: plus all the Crown Research Institute, so we do have
Speaker 1: quite a good sort of base of scientific expertise.
Speaker 6: No, absolutely no, there was a whole science city concept
Speaker 6: which I'm actually a real believer in. The well Itto's
Speaker 6: ability of science was amazed when you know, whenever you
Speaker 6: go into the Hut for example, and you know, you're
Speaker 6: always sitting down with someone random and they're telling you
Speaker 6: their fifty year journey of understanding MRI or coils or.
Speaker 7: Whatever it is.
Speaker 6: And I do really believe that Wellington has got like
Speaker 6: an outstanding science based around here, and I actually do
Speaker 6: believe a lot of it is getting There's a certain
Speaker 6: amount of wastage there, people getting laid off or retiring
Speaker 6: when they should be continuing to contribute to Wellington and
Speaker 6: to you know, to the overall new Zealand economy. One
Speaker 6: of the things I did about a year or eighteen
Speaker 6: months ago was started called something called Welly Breast Hub.
Speaker 6: It's kind of using my experience in breast cancer try
Speaker 6: and raise up the breast cancer research across the country.
Speaker 6: It's kind of expanding now into Australia. It's about to
Speaker 6: kind of go global as well. But I first felt well,
Speaker 6: if I could do that, then you know, one of
Speaker 6: the guys who won those MRI experts or experts on
Speaker 6: coil could equally do a community like that to try
Speaker 6: and raise the whole level up as well. And yeah,
Speaker 6: the key to doing it is you want people. We
Speaker 6: were very grounded. We've put people with a good mix
Speaker 6: of academic and commercial kind of views on stuff. And
Speaker 6: you have to use digital technology. So you know, bob
Speaker 6: Pya becomes successful. Well, one of its big successes was
Speaker 6: using a system called Yama at the heart and Bob
Speaker 6: was very very science based and anything in the world
Speaker 6: happened around breast cancer, whether it was detection, diagnosis, treatment
Speaker 6: or whatever, we wanted to know about it. We wanted
Speaker 6: to teach everyone in the company about it. So even
Speaker 6: if you're an accountant or the salesperson, we would teach
Speaker 6: you that science. The whole company kind of grew this
Speaker 6: culture of science and understanding of breast cancer in all
Speaker 6: its forms, and I really believe that that was one
Speaker 6: of the big reasons. And I'd love to see some
Speaker 6: of that kind of thinking and science city concepts kind
Speaker 6: of come through. And the other thing Peter which touched
Speaker 6: on it is Welly Forge as well, and part of
Speaker 6: that is part of that is building on side city
Speaker 6: and yeah where where things like it just really annoyed me.
Speaker 6: Over the last couple of years. I'd hear about a
Speaker 6: talk via some LinkedIn post and I'd turn up there
Speaker 6: and it'd be fifteen people sitting in a room and
Speaker 6: I'm like, if you circ, if you told people about this,
Speaker 6: there'll be journalists here, there'd be students here, they'll be
Speaker 6: public here, the agent invested here, they be you know,
Speaker 6: be real movac and these guys would come along as
Speaker 6: well and just start to hear your message and start
Speaker 6: to kind of get your branding, you get your name known,
Speaker 6: and start to kind of build up that kind of
Speaker 6: base level of understanding. But there's a whole series of
Speaker 6: these kind of talks and which i'd miss or I've
Speaker 6: got to hear about secondhand somehow and go along with
Speaker 6: it to be empty. And I'm like, these are great
Speaker 6: networking events, these are great learning opportunities. These these are
Speaker 6: kind of things where Wellington should be here learning, building, growing, networking,
Speaker 6: getting inspired to actually go out there and do it themselves.
Speaker 1: And we used to that around in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: and I remember going to some of those events and
Speaker 1: they were humming, and there was a lot more shared
Speaker 1: working spaces. There was more of a vibe around tech
Speaker 1: in this in the city. We seem to have lost that.
Speaker 1: What's the goal with Welly Forge? How are you going
Speaker 1: to get involved in trying to foster that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so again I'm always a big fan of using
Speaker 6: using tech tech well, but I've always had you know,
Speaker 6: I've used tech many times now. PI was built around
Speaker 6: Yama Tech, right, and actually we're about to use Yama
Speaker 6: I think Rod talked about it at some point. That's
Speaker 6: sort of video we'll try that. I think they moved
Speaker 6: away for it, but it was it was next.
Speaker 1: Went through a period from about a decade yea. It
Speaker 1: was massive. It wasn't as a tool for collaboration, and that.
Speaker 6: So it's always been a big fan of building communities
Speaker 6: kind of digitally and welly Ford is going to be that. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's it's going to be an email list. But the
Speaker 6: kind of the news that is going to cover all
Speaker 6: the Wellington success stories. We don't celebrate success enough in Wellington.
Speaker 6: You know, lip maps, buying research Rabbit. Let's just you know,
Speaker 6: recap on that. So a small weddingtor company raises money,
Speaker 6: hits a million dollars of URR and buys an American competitor.
Speaker 7: That's quite a unique story, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: And I think you covered it. I don't remember the
Speaker 6: Dominion Post covering it. Probably not all the story you
Speaker 6: talked about earlier. VOPI got brought by South Korean company
Speaker 6: last year and that's one of the biggest exits in Wellington.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, it's three hundred million dollars for.
Speaker 7: A long long time. Yeah. So but you know, I
Speaker 7: didn't see anything that don post about this.
Speaker 1: And that goes to what Stephen Cummings was saying. You know,
Speaker 1: we celebrated our sports stars and that and this is
Speaker 1: a common sort of complaint through New Zealand's recent history.
Speaker 1: Are entrepreneurs and that don't really get much of a
Speaker 1: look in so Peter Beck and that obviously rocket lab
Speaker 1: or inspiring success, but yeah, there's just so many of
Speaker 1: them really in this town. You don't really hear much about.
Speaker 6: Welly Ford is going to celebrate those successes and hopefully
Speaker 6: journalists like yourself and others will go, oh, actually that's
Speaker 6: an interesting story. I'll I'll write that up and yeah,
Speaker 6: that'll inspire the next generation of people coming through.
Speaker 7: We're going to cover all the wedding. It's an event
Speaker 7: in Wellington.
Speaker 6: Which is kind of science translational or tech tech translational.
Speaker 6: You know, we want to want to know about it
Speaker 6: and tell everyone and so and yeah, we're gonna start
Speaker 6: to bring together the the whole ecosystem. So there's something
Speaker 6: called the Wellington Startup Collective, for example, run by Brent's
Speaker 6: by Sir Jimmy McGee and then Surge and a few
Speaker 6: others and Trent as well. And again you know, not
Speaker 6: a huge amount of people know that. So it's start
Speaker 6: linking up this email news that we'll start mentioning the
Speaker 6: angels that you mentioned earlier. We'll start mentioning this collective
Speaker 6: and I'd love to build that up and then introduce
Speaker 6: this early stage venture fund as part of it as well,
Speaker 6: and then moving on and it was a topic last
Speaker 6: night as well as that, you know, we really need
Speaker 6: somewhere to interact, you know, in a casual way. So
Speaker 6: Welly Forge is going to host an event Undercurrent on
Speaker 6: the junior team and it's a great little venue and
Speaker 6: it's all designed for talking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great underground on Tory Street in center Wellington.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's just good.
Speaker 6: It's an excellent venue for kind of the atmosphere we
Speaker 6: want to create. But you know, we need to start
Speaker 6: creating that space where if I go and have a
Speaker 6: coffee somewhere downtown and there's surgeries standing there and we
Speaker 6: have a little chat or some of the other people
Speaker 6: prefer me it's an incubator kind of more in the
Speaker 6: center of town with open doors where there's much more
Speaker 6: flow of people coming in and out and stuff, just
Speaker 6: to get those casual interactions moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are all things that you know, you
Speaker 1: don't need the Council to give its approval to. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of things where I mean last
Speaker 1: night that you can get off the ground. It's really
Speaker 1: reclaiming our own destiny. And deciding what I said he
Speaker 1: wants to be. And there was a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about people getting more engaged in the democratic process. Actually
Speaker 1: Rod said it should be compulsory to vote. So there's
Speaker 1: a few interesting views on that. But there's the things
Speaker 1: that you're doing with wellly forward and that, as Rod
Speaker 1: and other said, it's very competitive and if you want
Speaker 1: to attract the best talent and the capital, you've got
Speaker 1: to roll out the mount and say this is what
Speaker 1: we're good at.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 6: No, I loved you know, I cycle ever walk every
Speaker 6: out and I'm grateful for some of those bike paths.
Speaker 6: But you just can't force people to do stuff like that.
Speaker 6: And you can't, you know, you have to take them
Speaker 6: along the journey. So you can't have some ideological things
Speaker 6: saying from now on, everyone's going to walk or cycle.
Speaker 6: It doesn't work for the older generation, disable people, you know,
Speaker 6: all that kind of group.
Speaker 7: It's just it's just not the right way doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yes, you know, we heard that vision from Rodolph and
Speaker 6: it just it was just beautiful term this, you know,
Speaker 6: with the capital of urban adventure. To me, it really
Speaker 6: resonated because it really touches on you know, adventure, extreme winds,
Speaker 6: extreme rain, beautiful sunny days, biking, walking up the green Belt,
Speaker 6: plus starts and being creative and the council and others.
Speaker 6: You know, they talk about creativity and in their mind
Speaker 6: that's all about arts and stuff. But you know, science
Speaker 6: is incredibly creative, Tech is incredibly creative, and it's it's
Speaker 6: when you start mixing all together you get magic happening. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and that's kind of Welly Forward and other initiatives that
Speaker 6: we need to get magic happening again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that sort of intersection, like like you were
Speaker 1: saying that the people from the film industry who came
Speaker 1: and worked at all para. That's a great thing about
Speaker 1: about Wellington as you've got these you know, you've got science,
Speaker 1: you've got tich, you've got the creative, you've got a
Speaker 1: strong arts scene, and you've got just massive film in
Speaker 1: this over there, so many entrepreneurs and startups cross over
Speaker 1: those sectors.
Speaker 6: And then and because we're a small compact city, yeah,
Speaker 6: you walk around, you bump into them, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think we both came away by sounds of
Speaker 1: feeling pretty inspired by what we heard last night. Do
Speaker 1: you think it's going to translate into meaningful action. We've
Speaker 1: got a mayoral election coming up, Andrew Little looks to
Speaker 1: be the front runner, and that he's obviously former labor
Speaker 1: MP left leaning. To what extent do we need? A
Speaker 1: real leadership change and a vision change for the city.
Speaker 1: Doesn't need to be led, but how important is it
Speaker 1: to have a strong leader in the council who buys
Speaker 1: into this vision. Playing to our traditional strengths like tech
Speaker 1: absolutely critical.
Speaker 6: We need someone who is at the top who understands tech,
Speaker 6: understands commerce, understand businesses, understands creativity and understands the kind
Speaker 6: of the energy and stuff around Wellington that if we
Speaker 6: can pull it together, and we do need rallying kind
Speaker 6: of vision and love. We heard about being the capital
Speaker 6: of urban adventure feels to me like that that is
Speaker 6: a rallying vision because it does pull together some cycling,
Speaker 6: but in a pragmatic kind of way, but it plays
Speaker 6: to all our strengths and as talking to Americans and
Speaker 6: talking to them about you know, we're the capital of
Speaker 6: urban adventure and stuff, I think it will become a
Speaker 6: very attractive place to come and interesting thing is right
Speaker 6: you turn up and it kind of almost sets sex
Speaker 6: affectations as well, it's kind of you don't turn up thinking,
Speaker 6: oh it's going to be calm and mild and we're
Speaker 6: going to drink a caveat and every day you come,
Speaker 6: you know, this is the city of action. That's one
Speaker 6: of the words down there on the waterfront. This is
Speaker 6: the city of action. And we need to get back
Speaker 6: to being the city of action. And we need that
Speaker 6: rallying vision from the top. And I'm really hoping that
Speaker 6: Andrew Little or Rachel or some of these people you
Speaker 6: start to pull out this positive rallying cry that yeah,
Speaker 6: we can do stuff. But also I mean, as were
Speaker 6: ready forward and other things. Yeah, we can't wait for
Speaker 6: the gard and we can't wait for the council to
Speaker 6: do this. We have to do it ourselves.
Speaker 1: So thanks to Ralph for coming on and giving his perspective,
Speaker 1: and I'll post a link to the full Vision for
Speaker 1: Wellington panel audio in the show notes too. I recorded
Speaker 1: it on my phone, so it's not great audio, but
Speaker 1: it's worth a listen. There was some great stuff that
Speaker 1: came out of that discussion. Thanks for tuning in. If
Speaker 1: you're not subscribed, you can do so entirely for free
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Speaker 1: business coach who has written a book that cuts through
Speaker 1: the AI hype to help figure out what you actually
Speaker 1: need to do to integrate artificial intelligence into your business.
Speaker 1: That episode's dropping next Thursday, and I'll catch you then