 Kia ora, kato nā mai haere mai. Welcome to this EHF Mini Springboard. We're excited to have you all here for this session today, which is Maturing New Zealand's Innovation Ecosystem into an Economic Driver. So just checking you are all in the right room, okay? I know there's a lot of zooms going on these days. So some quick background context before we begin. This is one session that we're running this week of different topics which are in line with EHF's Organisational Strategy. This session is Innovation and it's going to be led by our CEO Rosalie, who will shortly share future context and framing. You'll find in the room today we've got EHF fellows, we've got New Zealand organisations and also interested collaborators. You'll find there's entrepreneurs, there's investors working in future technology, sciences and policy, there's change makers, there's educators, there's innovators and policy workers and even creatives already active in innovation and so on. Some quick housekeeping before I formally open the session. This session will run until 5.30. It is going to be broken into two segments with a natural break at 4.30. So the first one is 90 minutes, we'll have a five-minute break and then we'll be moving into actual breakouts. In the breakout session I'll be taking, this first session Rosalie will be taking. It is being recorded, it's been live streamed as well. The main presentation it is and the panel discussion and it's running on Facebook if I'm right, is that right, Willie? Cool. We ask you to stay on mute when not speaking to limit background noise and interruptions. We will use the raise hand function under reactions and Rosalie is going to moderate questions. Just unmute yourself when you're prompted to speak or put them in the chat and I can field them from there for Rosalie if you like. Rename yourself, as I've said, it's really good for us to be able to see who's in the room, fellows, cohorts and maybe the place that you're actually coming in from as well. It's good to see what parts of the world you're from. After this session we will also be publishing a summary, next steps and an invitation for you to actually continue what we're going to be doing here today. So I'm just going to open this session with a karekia timatanga. Timatanga. So thank you for showing up today. I'm excited to see where we go. Over to you, Rosalie. Kia ora. Kō Edmund Hillary. Kō Ta Edmund Hillary Te Tangata. Kō Edmund Hillary Fellowship Te Pare. Kō Rosalie Nelson. Toku Inua. Kō Te Chief Executive Edmund Hillary Fellowship Aho. Māori Ora. Look, I just want to send out a huge thank you to you all for taking the time to join us for this springboard session. For those of you who are not familiar with the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, we are a cohort of over 500 world class innovators, entrepreneurs, technologists, scientists, creatives, educators and investors who have been drawn into and are committed to Aotearoa as part of a global impact visa programme. Our purpose is to partner with Aotearoa to find and build solutions to some of our toughest challenges so that we inspire global leadership and solutions for future generations. So today's topic, how we can unleash our start-up ecosystem to become an economic engine, is really one of those very gnarly and systems challenges. Aotearoa does have an emerging vision for its start-up ecosystem that in the next 10 years we can transform the New Zealand economy to be a world leader in sustainable value creation and innovation grounded in empathy for people and planet. Today, you could best describe our ecosystem as emergent. After 15 years, we do have some areas of real momentum. There is a strong and vibrant community of around 1,500 start-ups, over 1,000 angel investors, and we've got about 12-plus active early stage venture capital companies. Start-ups have created estimated over 50,000 future focus jobs. There's been nearly a billion invested in over 1,500 deals and we do have some emerging and strong growth sectors, particularly in agtech, life sciences, medtech, gaming, fintech and aerospace. However, our start-up ecosystem does remain sub-scale and it is not yet an economic driver. Our exports as a percentage of gross domestic products remain static and we do remain overly dependent on commodities. Our productivity and investment in R&D is low, well under the OECD average and we do face constraints and access to talent, global connections, capital and entrepreneurial skills. Equity, equality and diversity do remain a challenge, particularly for our Māori and Pasifika innovators. Right now, we are at an inflection point in history with climate change, COVID and the world that's also a washing capital. So what we want to explore today through our panellists and through our speakers is what are some of the critical levers we have that will drive substantive impact over the next two years and what role can our fellows play in helping to drive some of that collective impact in partnership with New Zealand leaders. So today is the beginning of the conversation. We have got some amazing speakers. I'm so grateful for the time and commitment they've made to this and there will be chance for you to connect, to discuss and to share your views. I'm sure there'll be a lot of views. So just sit back, relax and enjoy the discussion. We're beginning the session with scene-setters. So we're initially joined for, I guess, the keynote discussion by Jay Avgotie, who is the founder and CEO of the Startup Genome project and he's going to really bring that global perspective about New Zealand's stage of innovation growth relative to other global markets and what we need to do to accelerate our potential. We then bring a very on-the-ground perspective from four of our systems leaders. There's Suze Reynolds, who is the Executive Chair of the Angel Association in New Zealand and Komunik, who is the Asia-Pacific Director of Advanced Aviation Company WISC but also our new Board Chair. Francis Felentine, who's the founder and Chief Executive of MindLab and Tech Futures Lab. Francis was very much a disruptive educator, really looking at how she can equip for future skills and then Aubrey Tikhanawa, who was until very recently the Program Director of the Māori Accelerator Program, Kokiri at Te Wananga o Aotearoa. Look, as Michelle noted, there will be time for Q&A throughout. So if you have a question, please put it to chat or put the hand up through the raised hand icon and then we'll go into the break. So I want to begin this session by welcoming Jay Avgotie as the founder and CEO of Startup Genome. Jay Avgotie is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur who has become a global leading voice in innovation ecosystem development. He's advised more than 100 governments and public-private partnerships across 35 countries about how to develop their ecosystem. He's founded five businesses. He's led others across two continents and achieved two X6 plus one scale-up and he is an active angel investor and does have a background working in corporate innovation and advising companies like IBM, Cisco and Agilent HP. So Jay Avgotie, welcome and thank you so much for your time today. I know that you're beaming in from the United States and it's probably going to begin pretty late in the evening, so thank you. I just want to kick off, thank you, by asking, can you just tell us a little bit about Startup Genome? What it does? So Startup Genome is an organization created by entrepreneurs first in 2011 with Steve Blank and a couple of professors from Stanford University and Wharton who study for the first time through our own communities, through entrepreneurs like us. What are the success factors for startups? You know, when you talk about the validation stage, the discovery stages, these are Startup Genome phases, of the startups and then we move to ecosystems realizing that actually most of our success depends on the ecosystem, not on just what we do in our startups. I don't have control over that and I always ask people like, if Zuckerberg had been in a small city in Africa what would have been his chances of success? Zuckerberg didn't build that Facebook. So over the years we've grown this research into a startup that we sold to SAGE, became the AI department in SAGE but when we sold it we decided to keep the research and turn it towards an advisory company, research and advisory companies to help policy makers do better policies for startups all over the world and this is our way to give back and make sure that startup ecosystems grow all over the world not just in Silicon Valley and a few top places. So that's our mission, that's what we do full time is just researching and advising governments on policies and learning from the best governments in the world that have a lot of experience and knowing what failed and what didn't, what succeeded so that we can all learn together and help each other build those engines of growth and start and job creation. Jay, one question that you must be asked a great deal is every market will be quite unique. It's going to have its own characteristics and it's those characteristics that will shape the startup ecosystems. So how do you manage to compare across markets, across countries when there is such massive differences? Well the differences is in the culture, is in the strengths, right? Some cities like Frankfurt is undeniably great at FinTech and not very good at other sub-sectors for instance but the way they make startup successful is very replicable all over the world, right? What is a funder doing to build a startup, their lean startup methodologies? What should an angel investor and a VC investor do? The global knowledge there really helps every individual in every city learn about their role and get better. So of course there's a lot of... So what we do is we bring global best practices from all of these learnings that apply generally to different cities and then in each city we work with the local government, the local community to tailor this to the local reality, the local culture so that we don't apply exactly the same thing, right? Because the problem is a little bit different. The organizations in the ecosystem that are important are different, different roles that are differently structured, et cetera. So we bring the global best practices, they bring the local tailoring and together we apply, we start programmes and investments and policies to spur growth of the ecosystem. So thank you. So you've been looking at the New Zealand ecosystem for two to three years now. Where do you see us relative to other markets? I think I talked to Sue's about six years ago now when we just started. New Zealand was actually one of our first members of this knowledge network when we spun off into this new organisation. And I've seen the New Zealand startup ecosystem grow a lot and a lot more entrepreneurship, more support organisation, more funding. We've seen at the beginning there was much more gaps and we've worked with the governments that took our assessment and enacted policies very effectively. So over the years we've seen a great transformation and improvement of the startup ecosystem. And we talk about phases at startup genome, probably a lot of people here today are familiar with the activation phase and the globalization phase. And at this stage where you have about the 1000 startups and more than the 1000 startups, that's when we say you're moving to the globalization phase. So most of your work, most of your attention to stop being just on the local but actually you need to continue to work locally always. And you need to start allocating more resources to the global. And I think it really applies to the reality of New Zealand where it's at as a startup ecosystem but also as an economy and its needs in terms of being a small market that can create corporations with 10,000, 20,000 jobs or even 100 corporations that create that many jobs without starting to be better at marketing globally. And so this is a different challenge, right? It's going global for the scale-ups to create that engine approach that you were talking about. So it sounds as if we've moved, we're moving towards late stage activation, early globalization, would that be a fair characterization? So what in your view are the key areas of focus and levers now? And also where are you seeing the momentum occurring? So the change has to be in terms of culture of all of the stakeholders in the startup ecosystem to start working differently from the start. In the past, if you were just building new entrepreneurs, you work on local problems. The startup accelerators and incubators, they can work locally. Once you start wanting the startups in their first, second, third year to be starting to go global, all the startup organisations need to change. They need to have their own network. They need to start saying, okay, I need to connect them and take them out of my country in my city and bring them to the US, bring them to Europe. How do I do that? I need to start myself thinking global as an ecosystem builder, as a startup accelerator. Am I belonging to a global network? Am I learning from peers in other ecosystems? How do they create scale-ups? Am I getting this network to be available to my startups so they can piggyback on my work so that not every startup has to build its own global network? Are the investors doing the same thing? Are the VC investors going every quarter to Silicon Valley, to New York, to London, to Singapore to meet the venture partners of global firms that have a global network that could help close a Series B not only with capital, but also bring a bench of chief operating officer, chief marketing officer that can help the entrepreneur scale the company in the US, in China, in Europe. So the VCs and the angels have this role also. They connect it to investors in other countries that can also then invest in my local startups so that then they can have relationships and access to a global network of experts, investors, customers, industry experts, technical experts. So this is the work of everyone and of course the entrepreneurs. They need to get out of their comfort zone and say, I need to go to San Francisco once in a while. I need to go to London. So this is a system that made that transition beautifully and very effectively and some surprisingly well like Stockholm that created four or five unicorns in the years 2014 to 2016-17. And at start of genome, we're wondering what did they do different? And one of my partners said, I have really great design skills. And I'm like, I doubt this is because I have great design skills. We studied the entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs traveled more than anybody else in the world except Jalavi entrepreneurs. They would go to London for business a couple of times a year or San Francisco and they developed their network so that they can call on marketing experts and investors and et cetera in other countries and therefore they were much more successful at getting out of their country but even getting out of their continents when it was time to market. The question that of course immediately springs to mind is how do we do that in a COVID environment would be the first thing. And I guess the follow on to that is it's fantastic to hear that we've moved but are we moving fast enough relative to the rest of the world as they adapt to COVID? Yeah, so that the COVID issue is a blessing and a curse where tech has grown a lot faster and we've broken these physical barriers. So when I talked to some of the best VCs in Singapore over COVID, they were saying for the first time we have companies that can market globally because the physical barriers are broken. It doesn't matter if our companies in Singapore or London anymore which is great. What also happened is that there is a sense of community where I want to help someone is really help when we go have a beer when we go have dinner when we need a person and we have trust. So that has been effected with COVID but face to face still has an importance I believe. But hopefully we're migrating out of it. I know I started travelling again in October. I've already gone to Berlin, Singapore, Copenhagen and Miami and Montreal so hopefully we're getting back on the road but that's been easier to create connections and feel like we belong to the global community during COVID. It's been harder to get strong connections of I care about you, you care about me, you want to help me. But hopefully that's changing and I think this is now as we're opening the importance of going back to let's travel let's meet others, let's get out of our comfort zone. Jay, if you look at New Zealand internationally we're not really famous for any particular type of innovation. Are there areas of strength or advantage that you can see are clearly emerging for us now? Yeah and you were asking me before and I didn't answer are we growing fast enough, are we improving fast enough and you know that I try not to but as the average are you creating a lot of startups faster than others? I think before COVID last data we had you were a little slower creating new startups and that was a little bit concerning but I think through COVID clearly you've grown very fast but what I care more is that you invest and focus on growing what you're good at and betting on this creating specialized programs for instance in the act that you are talking about in life sciences on your agenda and it's a fast growing segment so this is how startup ecosystems accelerates by focusing on your local strengths not trying to be good at everything and you're not an enormous country you don't need to be good at five sectors to create a lot of jobs so focus is and when you're a small ecosystem focus is the name of the game and so you know what your strengths are you just name them just at the beginning but then you're just working with the act that life sciences and others Oh, so it's just looking to validation Yeah so this is this is you know I think you know it because it's in the data you've seen exist us in creation of startups and not a question is as an ecosystem how do we bet on those strengths so that we don't just create you know funding policy but also focus funding policy how do we create funding policy aqtec also can write a check and bring mentorship plus capital as opposed to you know separating the two right so how do we bet on those strengths with the with a set of programs and policies where we accelerate because once you start creating scaling expertise and scaling experience and success in aqtec it's transferable right you have aqtec remedi that problem with really great success or London was recognized for early exits, you know, eight years ago before that and now is the number two at creating skill of number three with New York. So, we've created a program to do that and it's needed everywhere so this is your challenge now how do we create those scaling skills and is global mindset in the investors in the start up support organization. But when I look at your funding policies been very effective at funding more startups, when I look at the check size, it's too small to fund global growth. So that's a change in mindset instead of funding 50 startups at two million each to invest my 100 million dollar fund. What about invest in only 20 startups 5 million each right, but really change in mindset for the investor, and that's about the community that's what we're talking about. Jay, thank you. Look, I'd like to open it up to anyone who would like to ask questions at this point, please just either put it into chat or put your hand up, because there is still so much that we can explore with with Jay. And so, look, while we're, while we're waiting on that, what's the role of, ah, no, we've got Mark Bregman. Mark, hello. Rosalie, you knew I would have a question. So is I agree with an awful lot of what you were saying, Jeff, I do wonder about that last portion know where there tend to be smaller checks and frankly a gap in the capital available within New Zealand. I think that's caused some people in New Zealand to think we need to have a way to fund these New Zealand originated companies through their life cycle. We need bigger capital pools and bigger checks. And I mean I've heard commentary when a New Zealand company goes for example to the US market, because that's where the customers are, and raises money in the US market because that's where the money is. Oh no, we've lost another company, because now they're a US company. And I contrast that with what I've heard with Israeli companies and I'll exaggerate a little bit, but until the last Israeli member of that company dies it's a new Israeli company they don't care where it is. It's Israeli because it started here, and it's our intellectual capital. And that global is back to something you were talking about it's the global startup community that the Israelis look to. I worry that there's still a parochial view in New Zealand of that because of the fear of companies going to the US rocket lab, oh my God they went public in the US, we've lost another one. That's a success, but it's not necessarily perceived that way because there's still this somewhat parochial view of capital sources. I wonder if you can comment on that. Hey, it's a continuum and all of these solutions are good. It's good that the best startups go get a big check in Silicon Valley and go towards a big exit. I always mention Waze, which moves at quarter to Palo Alto. And if they didn't, I doubt they would have exited at what is it, 1.7 or 2.3 billion dollars. And 10 employees were in Palo Alto, but 90 were in Israel. And they did very well and they became angel investors and started new startups, these people. The ekages are okay and it's a continuum. And now in the last four or five years, Israel has worked on creating the same aversion of Technation Future 50 to help companies scale larger before they just sell. And the Deputy Minister of Innovation in Ontario says, we need to stop being producers of Christmas trees or we build it, we grow it to 10 feet. We cut it and we ship it to the US. 100 million dollar company, we cut it. So, you know, what you're saying is exactly right. And at the same time, when the local investor starts writing bigger checks because they know that success comes with going global. And they know that with the 1.5 million dollar, 2 million checks, it's not going to happen. So they risk averse. They say, let's create smaller checks and spread it over more so they have more chance that a few will make it at least medium big. How do we change that? Of course, some VCs, it's not all the VCs that will have the capability. But we have one or two VCs that are pulling the market up, like an Omer's did in Ontario, like a Baldo Tundid in London, like a Jungle Ventures is doing in Singapore, where one is better capitalised as starting to build a big network and are willing to write a 10 million dollar series A. And now when the other ones, the other VCs are competing for good deals, they're like, you know, that firm is going to write a 6 million dollar check. I need to match, I need to go up, right? And they're pulling everybody up. So that's what I'm talking about, right? The flip side of this is getting New Zealand on the radar for the foreign VCs to come in and invest at that earlier stage, and maybe they really not. I mean, I talked to lots of my friends here in Silicon Valley. I show them interesting companies and their view is I'll wait till they're big enough and they're already here, which by the way means they're missing out on earlier opportunity. Yeah, I have something very specific to tell you about that. So we've been working with the sole metropolitan government to internationalise their local VCs and that give us the opportunities to call my friends in the VCs in Silicon Valley and Stefan call his friends in London and we call people in Singapore and say, you know, now there's what nine unicorns in Seoul. Are you interested in investing? And my friend was a former, you know, Cliner Perkins now managing director at Menlo Ventures says there's 25,000 startups in Silicon Valley. And I don't have time. I have a great VC firm. I track really great deals. I have none of my partners are Koreans. I don't have time to develop that market. I could, I could go to India, I could go to them, but I have so many good deals in the US. I'm, I don't have time. So I'm not doing it because I have great deals already. I'm not going to Seoul and what he was saying and what Balderton was saying and what John Cole Ventures is that the opposite happens, right? The John Cole Ventures. And on a match that I flew to Silicon Valley over three months to say, hey, I'd love to have a relationship with you. Here's some deals from Singapore, you know, and then suddenly after three, four trips, now VC says, oh, yeah, I'll put some money in that company. That's very interesting. And all mirrors, right? John Ruffalo did the same thing, right? Is the opposite. So how do we internationalize the ecosystem is the VC's in the small ecosystem goal is to present deals, start learning what the investor in Silicon Valley is looking for and start having co-investments. And they're not going to start investing, right? They're not going to come and travel to New Zealand to invest. So it's the opposite. And then when that starts happening, then you start having relationships. So then a Silicon Valley firms does the series B. And now suddenly you have access to the global network of men, low-range ventures or, or climate break in the Sequoia. So JFM consciousness, a couple of other questions come in. So Dan. Thanks, Rosalie. Kia ora, Teia. Lovely to hear your insights and sharing. I just love the insight here about the whole ecosystem refocusing on globalization. I don't think you'll have any complaints from these people in this room, certainly. So just interested maybe in your experience around the leadership of that, like, you know, is there any accelerants that you've seen an ecosystem level that helps us get there sooner or does it just end up being organic and we spread the message? And one at a time, you know, we start developing globalized networks, like just thinking that maybe the answer is no, but is there a real strong short circuit from an ecosystem perspective? I'm an entrepreneur, so I always wanted to be faster. It's never fast enough. I work at government, it's never fast enough. What I bring to them is how do you hack the system? How do you accelerate? Because if you wait for it to develop organically, it's going to take 10 to 20 years. And you might never get there because your best resources might move to ecosystems where they have better support, right? They might move to Sydney or they might move to the US or London. So therefore you need to do something, right? And so the government should start creating policies that help. And so how do we create in your fund-a-fund a couple of firms that can play bigger? Right? How do you help them, you know, get formed at Kauffman Fellows so that they develop a network of VC investors from all over the world? How do you support the incubators being part of a global incubator network? The accelerators, they stop thinking that. How do you fund these accelerators so they not only can teach lean startups but actually, you know, make, you know, create those networks, participate in them in a real way, bring the startups outside? Right? There's a lot that the government can do, but there's all of this also the community itself can do, right? The incubators can pick up the phone and look on the web and say, oh, yeah, there is a clean tech incubator network that Fred Walty and who was at the LAC, the LA incubator in clean tech is building. There is a network of XYZ, right? I want to belong, right? And maybe I ask for money from the government or maybe just I'll pay because I know it's going to create more success. The founders need to get out of their way. And that was the beauty of the Stockholm and the Tel Aviv culture of saying, we're going to get out, right? Maybe it's the family businesses that were super successful in Sweden and the Jewish community that is really global. But when I was talking to someone doing ecosystem building in Tel Aviv a few years back, it's like, you know, you start a startup in Tel Aviv, you jump on a plane, you have an idea, you jump on a plane, you're in Silicon Valley or London for a few weeks and you ask everybody to introduce you to people and you see, is that a good idea? That's the first thing you do, you don't start coding. So they would take it on themselves. They would buy a flight and go do it. We can do it together as a community. But we need to know that it's important and just change, right? Get out of our comfort zone. J.F., I'm conscious of time and thank you because this is a really generous conversation. I probably got time for just one more question. A bit of a debate. Actually, Will Charles, you've posted a good question and chat here. I'm just wondering if you'd like to speak to that. Yeah. I think to me a lot of the conversations focus on capital, which I think is important. But for me, the challenge in New Zealand, I think it's in the chat, is that we have a very thin industrial base created by companies that are either pay big dividends, mature, or they're Oligopolis or flat-out monopolies. And 70% of our NZTE companies only trade in New Zealand. So we don't necessarily train a bunch of people who understand how to operate in large, fast-growing companies. So when we get to who's going to open this, our sales office in Europe, or who's going to open our sales office in the West Coast, we don't have any SVPs or VPs who can do that. And so our challenge really is, over time, we need to import and go overseas. But I also think we have a kind of an opportunity to start to think about how we grow our own capability of people who can do that. We're not in there around what do we do at universities, what opportunities we give some of our more talented people as they're learning and developing. So having the startup ecosystem really engaged with our tertiary education institutes and providing both curricula and extracurricular things around entrepreneurship, innovation, working in teams alongside things like doing their PhDs or whatever, and much more of a T-shaped education. So I think as they start our Pico system in New Zealand to start having those conversations, because there's a lot of universities that start thinking about what does COVID mean to them. Lots of things have moved off campus, but there are things that are off campus that you don't have a student experience, you don't make friends, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of them are quite happy with that. So universities are trying to reinvent themselves about reasons to be on campus, and some of those can be around extracurricular teaching or entrepreneurship, innovation, working in teams and so forth. But I think we've got a really good opportunity to work as a community and engaging with our education institutes to see, because they're looking for solutions and we can provide some. Yeah. So thank you, Will. JF, just as a final summary, if there were two or three things that we need would be our call to action or your provocation to us that we need to do right now for the next two years, what would they be? Yeah, I think for each stakeholder to think about what can they do to progress the global market region, global connectedness of the community. And so everybody has a role. And together as we start thinking about it, we can advocate for also policies and programs that can help us. That was what Tech City UK was doing. And then finally they said, we need to, what Will was saying at the beginning of his interventions, we need to create executive skills and growing those startups at a functional level. Because we have nobody who's been doing it and a few people have done it, we need them to mentor the others and maybe to bring them towards the executive. So that sticking in these terms is very important. What does it mean for each person also to change our behaviour so that we actually act in a way that support and spur that global thinking and that global market reach? Dave, thank you so much for your time and for beaming in from the evening from San Francisco. So we really, really appreciate that. Thank you. It was great to join. We do hope to have another opportunity again in the future. So what we'd like to do now is that we're going to be creating the opportunity. We'd like to welcome the panellists to this session. And I'd really like just to give a very heartfelt thank you to each of the panellists that are joining us. I know how incredibly busy you are and I also know that you are all amazing ambassadors for the Edmund Hillary Fellowship as well as being personal inspiration to me as both visionary leaders but also those that have bring enormous warmth, empathy and passion for Aotearoa. So we are joined by Sue Reynolds who is the Executive Chair for the Angel Association. She's the co-founder and current director of Angel HQ and she is also an advisor to the government on their emerging start-up leadership strategy and her real power is the passion for or the passion is the power for angel investment to generate world-changing businesses. So, Sue, we'd love to just keep on to get your, just your initial thoughts on this whole theme. Can I just begin by saying kawaitana i tu ana i a moa i a koutou. Kei te taha o toko mama te whanau cox i te taau 1860 i te mai toku kutu tuna piho piha kapa marunga i te kapa ki te randoff. For those of you who and I'm not proficient in te reo either but I'm trying to be braver and more courageous in my use of it while honouring it as well, that just gave you a little insight to my whaka-papa which is that I, my mother was a whaka-papa back to South Canterbury. My family were immigrants in the 1840s and came here on a ship called the Randoff. So, yeah, thank you, Rosalie. This is such a neat thing to be doing and so wonderful to see the incredible people on this call. I'm really chuffed about that. I think the things that resonated for me the most in what J.F. was talking about and it actually stemmed right back to the six years ago or so that he mentioned the Randoff which this was that and the kudos is really belongs to Marcel van den Assem who first met J.F. when he was on a trip to speak to the globalisation thing up to San Francisco. Matt with J.F. was impressed with what he was doing and so he was the kind of drive behind us being part of the start-up in the first instance and what came out of that for us was so many insights about our ecosystem but we thought that it would be neat to bring together the people in the ecosystem and their point to kind of talk about these insights together and so we got a roomful of people together at NZT and a whole bunch of people who've been still working in the space and what was so gorgeous was that so many of them hadn't met each other before and they were all working in the space just perfect. So for me the connectivity piece is our big challenge between founders to support each other between founders and the right investors and between founders and the right investors so that is professional service providers corporate New Zealand academia love world child's kind of provocation that people is at the top of it that really truly is all about people I believe if we fix that connectivity piece if we get the right people connected all those other bits that we're talking about today capital capability and then the culture piece will all be solved if we crack that bit and I think to kind of drill down into that a little bit more what is partly in a national start-up strategy and Dan was raising this point in the chat too focus, we've got to get focused in a national start-up strategy if it's going to be effective too will be grounded in a sort of and we don't want to get too kind of centrist about this but having a general sense of where our strengths are and being kind of joined up about what those strengths are because it is in focus a small notion like us focus is the number one principle of success so that's the kind of stuff I think that we're really focusing on it's a strong kind of I guess kaupapa for the Angel Association connectivity, joining us all together and we can maybe dig into that a little bit more when we get into our breakout session but I hope that you agree with the sense of where I can be hidden If I could just ask what are you asking for in the start-up strategy what are the key things you're recommending Well we need for a start-off and you mentioned this too in your introduction a sense of what success looks like and there are some sort of broader tenets to that and I love your whole creating exponential value and impact that's grounded in deep empathy for people on the planet I think that's a really strong sort of kiwi thing that we all can be very very proud of I think that's our secret source and I think we owe a lot of gratitude and thanks to Aomari and our Indigenous people for that kaitiaki tanga, malaki tanga all of those things are really really important and they go and they're not just things to use most likely technical term that a nanga nanga but soft they're actually really solid value drivers and creators if you're creating empathy you're really sussing out and you're using empathy you're really sussing out where the value is but to get a bit more sort of granular and I guess specific about that we need some clear targets so we have talked about creating sort of five to ten thousand start-ups in the next five years and keeping a bead on where the job creation is and where the focus and strengths are for us and I think we're small enough that we can have a sort of again a light touch national start-up strategy and national start-up portfolio so that we know who they all are and we can join the dots that connectivity piece of Aomari is really really important and really owning it actually really genuinely recognising that our future job grows that all the big problems facing in the world are being solved by start-ups and really kind of helping us to kind of button into that being a start-up founder is incredibly freaking bright so those developers need our support way more helping them to be brave helping them to be ambitious helping them to go global and find the right people So what I'm hearing there is that our three key levers from your perspective really are around that connectivity it's around and getting the bright it's getting the vision and some clear targets and then it's real united focus to actually get behind and to try for this next stage Thank you, thank you I'd like to turn now to Anna Konomig So Anna is currently the Asia Pacific Region Director of WISC New Zealand and WISC is a United States New Zealand Advanced Aviation Company that is bringing to market one of the world's first autonomous electric air taxis and it was really a forerunner I guess for our advanced aviation and aerospace industry Anna has a real portfolio of that ground having served two Prime Ministers in New Zealand and a former Commonwealth Secretary and has also founded her own businesses She is also I'm delighted to say the new board chair of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship So Anna, just love to get your initial thoughts and your brand of different perspective Ena Mana Ena Karangama kata katoa kata ahumarangi i tamawia kauri mako kauri mako kauri mako kauri mako kauri mako kauri mako kauri mako kata katoa kata katoa kauri mako kata kauri mako kauri mako kaa kauri mako kauri mako k�aldu uniduka Uniduka www. position之S dominate via anormous opportunity for New Zealand, from Aotearoa, from my perspective. We're small, but we're mighty, and I think one of the things that I have learned very much both in doing startups in New Zealand, but also now having a very privileged position in the fact that WISC is an investment into New Zealand, which is quite a new start of a new wave of innovation and entrepreneurship, where outside innovation wants to come to New Zealand to actually develop, go to market and go out back to the globe from New Zealand. And that gives us a different perspective again from just growing from startups to scale up. So it's a slightly different approach. I think from what I've learnt in my current role is that we have some distinct advantages in New Zealand that we can really leverage, grow, develop, sustain, and they are going to give us a real advantage in all of this space. And what does that mean specifically? That's around the fact that we have a fantastic regulatory environment. It's very easy to get things done in New Zealand. We have a very progressive, generally, government, no matter which flavour it is. We have a wonderful community spirit. We have a strong sense of diversity that helps with your product growth, your product development, because what you're actually doing is you're speaking to your future customers and that diversity in the development actually creates a better product. That was an unintended consequence of whisks coming to New Zealand, because they suddenly realised this diversity, the different voices that were part of the New Zealand environment were starting to really add value to the product development itself. And the other side is actually our people. So we talked a little bit, I know that we're just talking a little bit about what is the people capital side of this. We're very generalists in New Zealand. So that actually has a huge advantage to international companies who are looking to go back out into the globe, because the way that we approach relationships, that tolerance, the listening, actually helps us to grow things faster. We develop relationships very quickly. And what we've found is that our American colleagues actually leverage that very heavily, particularly into the Asia Pacific, as the New Zealandness has huge brand value in making those specific connections. I mean, if I was to lump things together, I think in the post-COVID environment, we've got to understand that every decision that we're making right now is actually impacting on our future in 20 years' time. And we have to be very deliberative about the decisions we're making, around our border or whether it's about which industries we're supporting at this time. Whatever it is, we've got to be thinking about this as a conscious decision for our future wellbeing, innovation and economy. You know, I think there's an aspect around, and I know that I'm sure Francis will talk about the pipeline of talent. Are we taking science seriously enough? And are we taking innovation seriously enough at our school level? That connect and collaborate, which I'm very passionate about and which obviously JF was talking about, is not just about internationalising our opportunities, but how do we actually get a little bit more aggressive about that? So I've been working a lot with WISC in Australia and learning a lot about how they really do fight to win. And I feel like sometimes with New Zealanders we're a little bit earnest and we sometimes stand back and don't always, it's that parochialism factor and we don't always, you know, really back ourselves, understand that sometimes there's a little bit of veneer and marketing in this space. You always have to be authentic, but let's not. We don't have to be 110% before we actually say we're good. We can actually go out there. I have a little bit of an analogy that I see quite often with some of the smaller aerospace companies in New Zealand who are literally growing up under the wings of Rocket Lab, ourselves, Storn Aerospace. Believe it or not, New Zealand is number 11 in terms of aerospace in the world and growing really fast, so we've got a real opportunity there. But with both companies, they're still not pushing hard enough. They're not pushing themselves out to go to JS Point. They're not going out there and actually demanding that attention, demanding those collaborations with ourselves. You know, we're happy to take them and tuck them under our wings as we go to things like commotion in LA right now or wherever it might be. So really driving home those collaborations. And then the other thing that's really high on my list is valuing knowledge. So really understanding the value of what New Zealand is bringing. IP. We should be embedding IP in New Zealand regardless of whether it's an innovation coming to New Zealand or whether it's New Zealand companies. We tend to allow that to go, so we don't hold on to that. But the ticket all the way through and to go to JS Point, that would make a New Zealand company always a New Zealand company because IP would be there. So I think there's some really tangible things we can do to make sure that we retain value, really own our value in the start-up ecosystem. We are a wonderful proof of concept or proof of how to do things in New Zealand. The reason Wisk is here is because we can show that what we're doing will work in any city by actually working with cities in New Zealand so that it's globally applicable and we're already leveraging that. So yeah, I think it's that small but mighty and let's make sure we value ourselves properly. That's really powerful and I think very relevant for a lot of our fellows who are international and bringing their businesses here and what I'm hearing is that there is not only the potential to bring a business here and use it as a test pad but also to play a very active role within developing the ecosystem here and driving value back into the international business from New Zealand that's quite unique. Is that a fair summary? Yeah, I do believe that. I do think that understanding that actually there is value for, I mean we could be attracting way more business into New Zealand as part of that. You can come here, you can develop. I'm not going to say research and development because like Suze, I feel like we just don't really do that particularly well yet but we can develop, we can go to market, show a proof of concept and then send it back out into the world and that's OK. What we need to do is embed those benefits into New Zealand on the way through so that our other companies are growing, scaling, getting the experience and innovation that they need to succeed. Anna, thank you. Now just a reminder to everyone you will get an opportunity to ask questions, to share your thoughts on this. I now like to turn to Francis Valentine. Francis has had a long history with Edmund Hillary Fellowship, has supported us throughout, has been part of the selection crew for many of the fellows. She's an awarded technologist and educator and is the founder and chief executive of MindLab and Tech Futures Lab. Her passion is really about providing learning pathways for educators and professionals to understand the impact of emerging technologies and then the cultural adaptation that is required to really embrace change. So Francis, welcome. I know you'll bring a different perspective because you really take the whole, whole of country view. Tena koutou katoa ko Francis Valentine Aho. It is a great pleasure to be here and I first of all want to acknowledge some of my favourite people in the community. So great to be sharing this stage, this virtual stage with you. And I also just want to acknowledge Annie USC, who's on the call as well. She's cohort 8 and she is actually joining me for a class in half an hour in disruptive technologies. So I have to leave at 4.30 so so does she. So I still live in the world where I still do teach and I love it. So my view is very much through an education lens. I fell into education as a technologist over 20 years ago and I've never left because I feel the job is still not done. And I have had the view through working on the Board of Callahan Innovation for many years, looking at the R&D environment up until last year when I stepped off and of course with EHF. But most of my time is running graduate school for professionals. And just if you don't know the organisations for context, the students we have and we have thousands of students, they are professionals with the average age of 44. Mostly they come out of large organisations and are really trying to discover where directionally they're heading in their careers. And so this is really a view I've taken across multiple countries and working living across the ecosystem and thinking about startups. And coming back into Aotearoa and looking through that lens of what people think about startups, I recognise the first and foremost it's a very exclusive club. And it's a hard thing to say but actually we exclude the core values of Aotearoa because the aspirational pieces and components that we put forward as the characteristics of a startup founder are often look nothing like our community. And I think we're really missing the fact that our country is a very diverse country. Our city is even more so. We have a rich history and influence of Tiamori. We have a Pacifica flavour. We have a large immigration community which is one of the most diverse cities or countries in the world. And actually we really have to understand what is in the heart of people when they think about startups. And if you go deep into the school system, you very quickly identify that there is really no visibility of a culture around people creating their own destiny, becoming entrepreneurs becoming startups. And even to the point of understanding the difference between a traditional analogue organisation and a digitally informed and scalable organisation. So by the time I meet these students as adults who have many decades often in experience, these two have no understanding of what the startup community really looks like. Because it's ring fenced by certain terminologies and often by connections into the likes of venture capital and partners and VCs and it's just a unfamiliar terrain. So I think we do need to be very careful that we don't become even further exclusive to the richness of what Aotearoa can bring. So that's the first part. The second one, our economic complexity is very low. In terms of as a metric, what we're producing is not unique. The high levels of innovation perhaps where we peaked over 20 years ago are declining as we are not really embracing those things that we're extraordinarily good at or we have a natural unfair advantage. And I do hear and see more and more people aspiring to be like something else as opposed to what is intrinsically our unfair advantage. What could we do? How do we harness it and how do we bring the components that make us significantly different from other markets and that we can scale in a different way. The challenge that goes deeper into the system though is people don't know what they don't know. And I think this is one of the greatest challenges we have and if I look at the issues we have around R&D, the lack of maturity of understanding the benefits of research and development permeates all the way through the system and even right through into education. So just to give you a bit of a taste of New Zealand. So less than 5% of New Zealanders have any form of postgraduate qualification. Now that is the lowest in the OECD. Now that's where and you go into postgraduate studies is where you learn to research. It's where you learn to experience, experiment. It's where you start to actually have a hypothesis and think about how things can be possible. It's where you mix with other people from different disciplines and you bring that convergent space together. So in the absence of really pushing people into the spaces where education is a lifelong pursuit and actually engaging with parts of the ecosystem within education, within the start-up and ecosystems, within different communities it's really hard to imagine that diversity that's going to spark the start-ups that we need to scale and to grow. So one is how do we get people involved with learning across their life and so it's not that part of a sort of a front-loading experience that we do early on and then we kind of forge ahead and trade on things that perhaps no longer fit for purpose. And I think that given a small size of our population, the number one employer is the government. The number two employer is yourself. The number three employer is typically international companies. 50% of all of our companies in New Zealand are offshore owned. So we have to understand we're getting down to a very small segment by the time you take out local councils you're actually getting down to a private sector that is predominantly focused on small businesses. How do we get those people to understand the potential opportunity of growth and if they're not surrounded by people who talk about investment, if they're not surrounded by people who understand the money you invest in, the time and the research, the exponential benefits that can come with that, we keep talking to the same people and I think it's really critical that we try to understand we have talent, we have incredible talent, we have great creativity, we've got great perspectives from different cultures and we have a fairly egalitarian community which means that ideas can bubble around without a huge hierarchy because of complexity and big businesses. So then what is missing is the understanding of what start-up ecosystems need and also what they look like. So I'm a really big favour of this idea that we need to permeate that storytelling and actually I think of one of the other parts of storytelling is even deeper into journalism is if you think about the sources of information that people now gravitate towards if you take a Washington Post or a New York Times you look even across the ditch at the Australian and you look at the calibre of the storytelling about start-ups and technologies and the advancement of different types of tech and then you pick up local media. It's really hard to see where are those businesses here, they don't get become front-page news. We don't see the really great success stories that we are incubating or we've populated and pushed into the world and I think it's part of that too. We have to have those deeper conversations in depth of understanding of what is actually happening behind closed doors or in offshore markets that's been sort of spurred and spawned and grown from Aotearoa's heart. So all the ingredients for me are all there but the links are not. The connections are frail and actually when we think about how we might build all those ecosystems and connect them we just need to make sure that there's no missing pieces. If you think about the connections and the chain that we need as soon as there's a broken link the system breaks completely and I think that's where we are right now and COVID of course with two years of slow down is going to actually exacerbate some of these issues. So we need a gear change and put the foot on the accelerator and we need to hustle people together and get going again but maybe reimagining people at the table. So if there were three things or two things that we could do to move it forward what would it be? I think the big one is that visibility. Let's talk about our heroes. Let's talk about the people who carved the way over the generations and who are now storytelling today. Tell the stories that make sure they're represented above the communities that Aotearoa is so that people can relate ability that is really critical tell their stories within the school and education system as well throughout the whole system and I think the other one is going back to that point I made around do what you've got at and actually we need to define and I know Rosalie we worked together with Callahan so Paul Callahan gets saying we need to do the weird things the things that nobody else wants to do the things that are unique because we can do them in small scale but we can sell them at high prices and we've got to lose this obsession with doing things like other people are and really focus on those things which perhaps are a little bit weird and a little bit niche but actually done beautifully and can scale because nobody else wants to touch them because of scale. Lovely, thank you. Thank you so much and now just turning to our fourth panellist Aubrey Te Kanua you bring a really special perspective to this really keen to hear your thoughts from the perspective of the Māori start-up system. Kia ora, Rosalie. Karioa Te Maunga, Whangaroa Te Moana Ngati Maniapoto Te Wharafaro, Tōku Ngākau my name is Aubrey Te Kanua, Karioa is my mountain, Reglan is my moana and also from Ngati Maniapoto as well. Happy to be on the call and obviously acknowledge a few people out in the audience that have seen their name come up on the comments and just to acknowledge everyone that's spending their time on this so my perspective is much the same as Francis is coming from an education perspective so for the last two years being running the Kaukiti Māori business accelerator that's focused as the first Indigenous focused accelerator in New Zealand and at the time where we now have to the global accelerator network in Denver we found out that we were probably one of the only ones, if the only ones that we knew of in the entire global accelerator network so it's really interesting perspective to compare us globally going over that but in terms of like I've looked at Aroha Maewra and I was a late ring in on my substitute so getting across the material I haven't prepared at all so I'm just going to wing this but I can only speak about the perspective of looking at the Māori startup ecosystems on what I saw while I was running Kaukiti so one of the first things is if I start with capability the founders that we got through they need a lot of capability development so while we're wanting to accelerate them to then scale internationally the reality is we're back at grassroots level and we actually had to take a step back and work on development of people as founders and what that meant was we had to change the program so 50% of it was actually focused on human skills, how to relate to team members how to manage your emotions because the entrepreneurial it's pretty tough so if you're not built for entrepreneurialism it can be pretty rough so half our program was on human skills which was kind of different I suppose from how it's normally done maybe I don't know but that's where we ended up so from from that perspective hear people talk about we've got all these great scientists and there's research and development stuff really in the Māori ecosystem we're a step behind that so most of the people that we see are actually SMEs and then a small percentage of that would be ready for say an accelerator program and so when JF was talking about global connectivity they actually have the opposite view while that's important where the Māori ecosystem is we actually need local connectivity that's sort of foundation layer that you can build the global connectivity on so I went around and actually talked to about 40 different people in the Māori startup ecosystem none of them were in accelerators or incubators these are people that work to develop other startups that it's like this massive underground black market of people trying to help startups get going and most of the time they're doing it voluntarily not really well funded sporadic funding and they're just doing it out of love but that is the Māori startup ecosystem and that's the one that I'm curious about how we build that because if that later is there then there's room to make the step up and start building the next layer up so but the issue found is they're not really well connected so that connectivity pieces is actually needed and stepping back to a grassroots level not worrying about scaling internationally and all that just get the baseline level stuff done first the next one on the list is the I think of cover-off capability next one's connection so the connectivity I'm going to talk about capital there's a lot of capital out there and we had someone actually map on the old startup growth curve where all the capital was along that curve and there's actually quite a lot in the early stage and then as you go up there's people there that will fund startups at different stages none of that capital is connected into the Māori community so it's not connected the capital is there but it's not connected and the second part of it it's actually culturally not appropriate somewhere because you're asking you get people that are really committed into their co-papa they're doing something that's impactful so they're not going to exit so how do you tell that to an investor that wants to have an exit at point X so then okay if that's the case then who's the right investors or maybe do we have to do some cultural training on that capital so that they will invest in stuff where people have like a 100 year time frame so I don't know it's interesting I don't have an answer for it but that was my observations around the capital in terms of culture I'm going to touch on this one is obviously some cultural differences and I think the younger generation are probably more tuned with Māori values and frameworks like when you're talking about manaki tanga and kaitiaki tanga just about every young person wants those things they're in tune but the challenge that we had a lot of the time was actually getting our entrepreneurs to think about making money to make sure that the business stay sustainable because I was so focused in on the co-papa that they're not thinking about the business model and one of the things I've observed as well and I think if you're working in indigenous spaces you'll know what I'm talking about but it's a term it white night syndrome where you get into your community from overseas they've got all these great skills but they're basically like here I am I am your champion follow me natives so just to give you a story I moved back to Raglan several years ago to work on our land block and build a pāpakainga it took me three years to build up enough trust with my own people that I was there to actually do some good work and took three years and they knew who I was so imagine you're coming from outside and you're saying hey I can solve all these problems for you and I'm going to do it in a year people go oh yeah okay cool so that's probably something to watch and just know that the Māori ecosystem can sniff those people out pretty quickly and then probably to answer your question before you ask it is what are my three things so the first thing is the local connectivity so if you were to somehow link up all of the people working in the startup ecosystem on some sort of combined strategy where they're not fighting for the same RFPs and they're able to collaborate that would be awesome and then an environment where I'm able to share IPA and how to develop startups with everybody else and we're sharing knowledge because in the Māori startup ecosystem a simple concept like validation is not well known so how do you talk about building an ecosystem when you don't have the baseline knowledge so that has to get spread throughout the entire ecosystem everyone needs to be on the same page so local connectivity is the first one and the second one is programmatic so you think about if you want to build a culture where entrepreneurialism is throughout the entire country and it's normal in stock standard I'll use the analogy of the Orblax 77% win record over 100 years to get the Orblax there's a bunch of stuff below that starting at Rippa Rugby and going all the way up to Schoolboy Rugby 7-12 there's volunteers, there's referees, there's a whole bunch of infrastructure that goes into building that one unicorn and if you apply that to the startup space it's actually not that different but we don't have all of those steps in the ladder to build that unicorn group so for me the focus is bottom run baseline infrastructure Rippa Rugby number one get that in place first and also making it accessible because for example if you think about what do you have at schools for entrepreneurialism then you think what do you have at high schools for entrepreneurialism then you think okay now this is for me for Māori people after high school how many of those people are going to universities and getting access to the programs that are run through universities so there's a bit of a gap and then you think about that from an infrastructure perspective you need to have all that stuff before you can start expecting startups to tune out at a regular rate and in terms of the programmatic stuff I also think there needs to be massive work done on mindset especially in COVID times it's made people more conscious about human skills being able to handle stress being able to manage relationships which is much harder when you're doing it via zoom which is kind of the norm nowadays so programmatically you need all the accelerators and incubators helping their entrepreneurs become good humans at the same time that they're stepping out into the world and I think that could be a real difference for us as New Zealanders if we're focused on humans developing good humans that then become good businesses and good role models you'll build that culture over time and what else was the one more note local connectivity programs that are good and also then there's some policy stuff as well if you want that sort of infrastructure you have to have policies that incentivise that stuff to happen you can't incentivise people to be connected when you're putting into a competitive RFP that's not going to happen so the RFPs have to be worked in such a way as you're encouraging collaboration in terms of the accelerators and incubators but those things are key pieces of infrastructure for developing the next layer of startups that's my rant I think actually that was incredibly revealing thank you so much those insights are really valuable and much appreciated so we'd just like to open up to questions now I know there's been quite a live commentary that's been going on in chat so any questions that you've got or else putting up your hand if you have any sort of questions for the panellists at this point while we're waiting I think I've probably got one question that is going to be burning on my mind which is I don't know we've got Harve, Ian Harve let's throw it to you, I can ask my question later I'd love to see it you make it sound easy in some respects from it can be really challenging for us Pakiha to step into your world and it's a really interesting dynamic doing that and thanks to your spooky sister I've had to do it a few times but what advice for us coming into your world that's those first steps how do we do it you had to ask a tough question didn't you you're making it look too easy you've got any good advice on the spot but probably the first thing is just to listen I'll give you an example I met this person and they came to me and said I want to do this stuff in startups and then I never know what people's intentions are so I just sat back and waited for a year to see what will roll and watched this person over the space of a year bust a whole bunch of relationships and that was enough so the evidence was in the actions but just listening and actually being considered in actions and knowing you know not trying to put a lens on what you see just listening and observing that's probably the biggest thing in fact listening skills is rated as the number one human skill so just listening thank you any other questions or any of the panellists so look the question that I have because we're talking here about local and global connectivity we're talking about skills and capability we're talking about culture what's your provocation or ask of the admin Hillary fellows given that they bring they are serial entrepreneurs they are investors and expertise they have experience in scaling up systems my provocation and my ask of the panellists is what should we be doing in these next two years to really help to mature this ecosystem is that for me or is that for everyone for all it's so easy Rosalie you know bubbling out of water I think we have just this so easy but I think I also love the Chinese philosopher he talks about and I like the kind of start local I really love the thing about just build trust builds connections at home first and so where I think admin Hillary fellows you would be brave about making those initial connections One-on-one small groups, if you see a start-up that appeals, if you see initiative that appeals, New Zealand is so sort of hyper-connected that ask any of us here and within two sendings of an email, we can probably join some dots for you. So I'd encourage them just to have it because I think your question, it can be daunting coming into a new hood where you don't know anyone and where the culture seems quite powerful and people use jingo and jargon that can be also a little bit off-putting. So I'd just encourage you to reach out. Frances, I'm conscious of your time. I'd love to get your final thoughts. I think that the key thoughts, first of all, this is great, this conversation is taking place. I think the more we have these conversations, the more we have a global group of people coming together to make those connections, the better it's going to become. I just wish it was amplified. And I think there's been some great comments in the chat and coming back to just reporting and storytelling that I still think that if we can get our stories more able to be consumed by a broader group of the community, people who are running small businesses who have got aspirations and people who are in the regions and people who have seen the potential of what they've got but they just don't know where to start, if we can find a way to connect with those people. We've probably discovered there's a whole of untapped capability and innovation and just original thinking that we haven't seen at all yet. And that's what a whole country was really built upon, that pioneering really strong creativity. And I think we've lost a little bit of that. And I think we'd love to see it come back and make sure that it's in its own flavour distinctly from here. Thank you. We have a question from Mark Breakin. A follow-on to the earlier discussion that we're having about how to connect the different families. We have the Maori, we have the, OK, how we have the people like me that are really neither. We come from the outside. And I think that this discussion about listening and hearing is at the centre of it. I just wanted to recommend a book following on Suze Reynolds who recommended some ancient book. This one is not quite as ancient. It's a dialogue that's written by Daniel Bohm who's a physicist. That's how I know him. He's passed away. But he really spent a lot of time thinking about how to bring different groups together through communication. And his book on dialogue is a very structured way to think about it. And I think it's really valuable and something that maybe within EHF we ought to, lots of people should read it because I think it's relevant to a lot of what we do. And bringing the whole fellowship together and then integrating the fellowship into New Zealand and helping also pull together the different sort of constituent parts of New Zealand. Thank you. AJ. And look, I will have to farewell Francis. She has to go and teach her class in literally two minutes. So really delighted that she took this time with us. AJ. Thanks Rosalie. Yeah, I was responding a little bit to the question you asked around what can the unique positioning be for the fellowship and for the Edmund Hillary Institute and Fellowship. And I think it's bouncing off a lot of the comments we've heard from Francis and from everybody today. To me if I would ask that question it would be the fellowship can be the living breathing example of what happens when you have an entrepreneurial ecosystem that's focused on impact. I think coming back to what we were talking about narratives and about why isn't New Zealand as a culture responding to certain to the entrepreneurship and the startup proposition. I think it's because we're telling the wrong narratives where we're trying to bang square pegs into round holes. Kiwi culture isn't good at responding to my P&L is my global score and this is I just need to get a higher and higher one. We kind of have this this comfort dynamic the traditional boat batch and BMW we want to have a little bit of comfort. But we don't seem to have this constant appetite for increasing our personal score. But we do have this constant appetite for having greater and greater impact. If we can we can refocus the New Zealand startup proposition around this is the place where startups don't just start up and become successful in fiscal terms is the place where startups start up and become successful in solving challenges meeting problems overcoming hurdles solving global problems. Just refocusing not just the ecosystem but then the narratives that generate that ecosystem around impact. Again I've spent a lot of time warping young minds as well just trying to teach high school kids quantum mechanics and watching them all fall down it's quite fun. But I don't see any of them respond to go start up a company because then you'll get fantastically wealthy. But I see a lot of them saying how do I solve this problem. There's this global issue out there whether it's I don't know tigers are dying or water is dirty or climate change obviously. And they're all asking how do I solve the problem and there's a disconnect between you know what the way you can solve the problem is by a really successful startup that's impact driven. So come back to the cohort in the fellowship you're 90% of the way there in your language anyway global impact visa impact driven organization. Be the standard bearer for it. You know just stand up and you know I know there's a keen out there and stuff like that but be the standard bearer for this is what happens when you build an entrepreneurial ecosystem around core foundation of impact. And that's the way you'll get wealthy because that's what happens if you succeed. That's super cool because and also acknowledging for a program that we've just done which was the abroad well being program with about 4050 founders and investors. And part of that was trying to, you know, focused on well being and and letting founders know that it's okay to fail and that they're human, you know, at all of us for that matter. And Anna outed it and commented about, you know, the fear of failure is still a real handbrake in New Zealand the fear of mean I put it slightly more pricey fear of looking like a dick. And I think it's partly because we still still a little small little village like you want to belong you don't want to stand out too much. But if we can build a community which was so gorgeous this morning we had a sort of farewell wrap up of the abroad program for you for fearless. And it was just asks and offers. And man, it was powerful in terms of the number of people who said, I now realise I'm not alone in this and trying to be brave and wanting to save, you know, save the world. It's okay to want to have a huge impact and supporting and leaving it be okay for us to have a crack and not make it. Goodness. Thank you, AJ. It's a really good point. Thank you. I am conscious of time. What do you think, Michelle? Have you got time for one more? Yeah, I think so. Well, we've got housing. Everyone's energy levels. Everyone's still pretty good. Yeah, we've got some amazing panels here. So I think we should just keep this going. We can do another couple. Yep. So I know that there's a lot of what now have you still got your hand up. Do you have another question? I do, but I'm happy to the first of the somebody else online. Go ahead. So I'm interested in to the whole panel. How do you Francis has gone, but the rise of dows in the, in the world? How do you see that impacting the, the startup space? Sorry, I might not have heard the question. The rise of dows, the centralized autonomous organizations. How do you see that impacting their impact space? The startup space. I'm not particularly scared about it. But that's maybe because I quite like chaos. Um, look, I, um, I'll, I'll let the other panelists go for it and then come back to that. Yeah. To be perfectly honest, it's not a concept that I'm terribly familiar with. I really love the sound of it. And, um, you know, so love to learn more. I just think it's going to be huge in the marae space. Yeah. I think, I think Maura going to get on to this. Um, and it's basically, it is just motivating the crowd and having multiple stakeholders instead of one. So it's, it's, it's the opposite of the old capitalist system. And, and, and, and coming with a whole new ownership structure and involvement. So, um, yeah, I'm really, I'm really interested. I think it's going to be, and I, I'm really, I talked to Chae Wilson last week, Aubrey, and going, you need to get up to date with this because it's coming. And I think you are just going to be great with it. I also think there's a piece that I, you know, some of the people on the call have heard me say a lot before too. In the same way that it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole country to raise a startup. And that is professional service providers, the government, academia, NZ corporate. We all have to kind of wrap the love around that and help them to succeed and all have to take it kind of. I mean, I don't mean to this to sound quite so messed around, but it's sort of portfolio approach to it. You know, we all have a stake in helping our startup ecosystem to thrive. And it's not either. Is it a sort of classic government intervention logic? Either you sort of write in, fix an intervention and then fix a problem and then write out a game. We've got to be in this for the next forever, right? Because it's, it's hard mahi. And, and lots of people will fail if we're doing it right. But fail in a well supported additive kind of fashion. That's how we learn for goodness sake. Yeah, how about, I think from my perspective, I think there are some moves. I mean, it is a, it's a, it's a different kind of structure, right? And it is devolved. And I do agree that it's going to take a wee while for your, your, your more traditional funding structures to kind of catch up because it looks really messy when you're having a look at the, look at the box. But from my perspective, I think it's a hugely exciting. Particularly as you say, where you have, particularly for indigenous peoples, it's, I know in Canada, they're looking at it really strongly. So I think it's got huge potential. It's just, you know, we will see it evolve over time. And I hope that it's given the space and breathing space to actually evolve into something positive because I think it's got a lot of spillover into the mainstream. I mean, we were in a conversation with LA City about devolved ownership of some of the transport systems, particularly into hard to reach areas. And there was a couple of organisations that were looking for community, basically, it's basically adults. So, and they were looking for government to actually support that. And I suspect that that's probably where it's going to start potentially. There's some talk about, you know, whether it's going to be more of a cryptocurrency or a crowdsourcing type approach to funding, but I do think there is where you're seeking. It's almost like an evolution of community development to that next phase. I'd love your view on that. But I think there's huge potential and particularly in the New Zealand context. Okay, everyone. I'm conscious of time. I do want to say a huge thank you because this has been a really interesting and a really engaging session. We're getting a lot of messages from people who are saying I'm really sorry that I've got to go right now. I just did have and I just wanted to throw something at Anna with her EHF board hat on. And I just wanted to just for to share while we still had this group together where you believe the opportunity is for EHF next year for the fellowship next year. Yeah, so I mean, obviously, forgive me. I'm two weeks into into the role that one thing I would love to see us discussing more around is connect connectivity. How do we not only internationalize but also build those connections both in New Zealand and also outside? What is a practical way to do that? What are some ways that we can work with other organizations like Sousa's like others that are on the call to actually maximize that? So we don't even just think about our own organization, but we're also thinking out outside of that. What is the specific, I guess, what is to use horrible marketing language? What is the EHF value proposition in terms of that collective impact? What does that actually mean? What are we actually holding ourselves to? What will be different as a result of our actions in 12 months time? I would like to give us that challenge to actually set ourselves something concrete to have challenged and changed over 12 months time. And then I do want to really see how we can, I guess, think about valuing knowledge. What are the aspects of knowledge that sits within our own organization and the wonderful people that we have? What are the aspects of that knowledge that we should be bringing to New Zealand? And then how do we value the knowledge that we have in New Zealand? How do we match that? So if we look at our distinct culture in New Zealand, te ao Māori is a very, very important. I would say it's a lesson, it's a piece of knowledge that we have in New Zealand that actually creates a better world. That long term thinking relationship based is already so articulately pocked. It is about not doing things in a transactional and fast way, but listening, understanding what you don't know, and then starting to explore that white space between and not being afraid of that. Because once you start to do that, not only is your business better, not only is your product better, but I sincerely believe our communities and our society is better. Great. Thank you so much. So look, we're going to go to a short break now, and then there's the opportunity to come back. We've got decisions that are broken out into connections, capability and culture, as well as capital. Look, there's been some amazing things, and it's very hard to draw together all of these. But the underlying things that you keep hearing is that we have momentum and growth. That is this issue of connectivity that keeps coming up, whether it is at a grassroots level. It is how do we begin to work together to focus our energy and ensure that we have the right incentives that bring people. So that is a mixture of culture as well as platforms. But then also that real provocation about how do we go globally? How do we build the relationships globally? How do we also build the ambition and the vision to be able to go out on a global scale? And then I loved Francis' provocation, which was really how do we bring the rest of New Zealand into this? That it is not just an innovation, an inward-looking initiative. How do we bring in traditional businesses? And how do we begin to tell the story and create the vision and the excitement and the inspiration that will bring a pipeline and inspire a whole new generation, as well as ensuring that we've got the support, the structures and the opportunity to bring them into the system and foster and grow them? I'm sure everyone will have quite different outtakes. I'll hand it back to Michelle now. Kawhai, Risley. Paulie, if you can stop the live streaming that will end now. So everyone on the live streaming, thank you for partaking. And we're just going to break for a very short, short break. But before you go, we're going to have the panelists are going to co-host the breakout sessions. So we're going to go into three breakout rooms. You get to choose which room you go in. So capital is going to have sews running it. Connections is going to have ana and capability and culture is going to have Aubrey. There'll be an EHF staff member in there as well. So before you go to having a quick break, just think about which room you want to go to and that when you come back in a couple of minutes, Paulie will get us sort of to go into those rooms. So if you just want to just have some time out very quickly to function break, which means the bathroom break and to get another drink break. And we'll meet you back here in a couple of minutes. How about at quarter two? CSUN team. Nice. I grabbed some more water to sunshine in here at the end of the day. It's fantastic. All right. What I'm going to do is I still want to finish at 5.30. So we're going to condense down what we're originally going to do for the breakouts and just make it a little bit more tighter. So you've got yourselves renamed still. So that's good. I'm just going to grab my sheet here. We're going to harvest notes. So aunts and Paula can throw in the chat session there for me. We've got a shared note thing and we're going to harvest notes when we go into the breakout room. There'll be one of us in each of those rooms. So we'll be taking a lot of notes and we'll be helping one of the panellists. And usually we do run the law of two clicks if the room isn't right for you that you get to shift on. But because we're only going to have probably about a 15 minute breakout or maybe 20 minutes. So we still need to have, we need to finish it at 4.15. So we can have 15 minutes sort of discussion back in. The breakouts will be just a little bit shorter than normal. But if you do feel at the very beginning and not in the right room, then you can shift to the next one. So just a reminder, we're going to have Anna doing connections. And you heard that discussion that was already happening before. So you can probably have a bit more in-depth conversation with Anna on that or start to raise up sort of what are the opportunities that you see in New Zealand from all of the information that you received before. And I'll be jumping in there with Sue's. Anne's is going to be hoping in with Anna on connections and Paula's going to jump in on capability and culture with Aubrey. So just sort of reflect and think a bit more on what you've been hearing. Maybe jot down more ideas, thoughts that you didn't manage to get in currently. Don't worry too much about what actions are going to come out of this because we will do that in a later session. So how are you going with getting those breakouts sorted Paula? It's all done. 20 minutes, correct? Yep. So you'll be able to select which room you want to go in. So hopefully over the break you had a bit of a think about which one. Do you want to look to any five minutes? I will finish with 10. Yep. OK, sounds good. All right. Great. And that still leaves it for a discussion. So one of you put that document in there and we'll take it each into those rooms as well. So the rooms are open now. And the way that you can choose and you can move around rooms. And if you look at the border of some, there is a breakout. And if you hover over the blue number, you will be able to see the join option. And then you join the session that you want to go. Right in the chat where you want to go. And one of the co-hosts can send you there. Perfect. Have a good discussion. Just continue what you've already been doing today, I think, team. You can feed back to me. We're just going to popcorn style this just to steal answers. Lovely little term. Some reflections that happened in your rooms. Who wants to chime in with some? How about someone from the connection room? Or somebody else other than myself? Yes. I like that one too, Diana. Who was in Nina's room? Or Felicity or Huia or Mohan or... I choose Mohan. Well, it was a lively dialogue. Thank you folks for just throwing me under the bus. It was a very lively dialogue. It's done with love. It's done with love. Always. I feel the truck over me in love. But it was a lively dialogue of really thinking about where connectivity could really be defined. Two levels were considered. One was primarily outside connectivity. And Dino let that dialogue with a real frame of reference saying, yes, it is important to be internally connected to understand your identity. But that is not necessary and sufficient. What is sufficient is to have the energy that was delivered by our keynote address that made us feel that we need to really be externally focused as well and be able to connect to an ecosystem that can fund these ideas. And so there should be two ecosystems. One within the Aotearoa framework and the other externally driven. That was the most direct conversation. There were others that fed into that, that framed possibly a more search for identity, which was really coming from my thoughts and others chandin in agreement, I believe. If you don't, please rest it today and let's speak of it now. Did I miss anything else? Because the framework was really connecting outside, connecting inside. There was a minor skirmish on whether corporate should be involved or not. And that was near the end of the conversation. And the nature of how corporate should be involved because that seemed to be missing in the dialogue here. And we were advocating either for not to happen or to happen. Anna, did I cover all the issues? We did a beautiful job. Thank you very much. And I think the other thing is a call to action for EHF to really lead in this space. So we pick up that mantle for the team and I and we will work on that. So thank you. Thanks. Thanks. That's great. Just to jump. I was listening in there intently and just one thought, which I heard is an opportunity. The DNA of EHF as an organisation has been in creating gatherings to connect people. And we sort of did that for three years, both internally with the Welcome Week context and externally with the New Frontiers conferences. And the opportunity that I heard there was for the last two years, we've been unable to do that in the way that we were founded to do it. And so one way to look at that is that we've been sort of keeping the boat afloat mode. And the other way to look at it is that in 2022, we've been given a two year head start of half of the fellowship have a lot more connection than they ever would have if they'd just landed in the country to do what we were doing before. So the opportunity I see is like now that we know that what we know with the data that we have, what would it look like for EHF to architect the connectivity and the gatherings in a really strategic way moving into 2022. And just this call where we've got some really fantastic folks from the NZ ecosystem and the fellows from New Zealand and fellows overseas. We're just sitting on really fertile soil. So I'm just going to throw that little seed in the mix there. Well done, Ian. Thank you. I like it. It's good. Well, they had a great discussion. OK, what about the other room? Culture and capability. Who wants to chime in there? But I throw it to Shea, particularly the point that you made at the end Shea, which I thought was perfect. Which one was that one, Rosalie? There's full of ideas. It's not on top of mine, but I think we had one kind of conversation around the importance of ensuring that we don't take aspects of parts of a culture, remove it from its original context and then use it as a faceplate, which is a term that all were used. And if we do that, then we run the risk of it kind of being outside of what it needs to actually be successful. And we just kind of order it down. So that was one thing that I remember hearing. Yeah. What other ones do you want to talk about? One of the ones that I thought was really into was a point that Brett made, which was actually a shifting of the language. And the way that he described it was that if we use the buzzwords of start-up and entrepreneur and all of those things, it's just not going to resonate. But if you were to actually think of this as a television breath and it was actually about the creation of impact and the storytelling of people and the purpose that was addressing some of the greatest problems that we've got, it would fundamentally both attract and would change the nature of the conversation. And I thought that was really powerful. And then we also talked about the issue of translation. And that was the point, Shay, that I thought was really interesting that you made if you wanted to pick up on that, or anyone else wanted to chime in. Leap a neck, because that's a really neat segue and I don't mean to hold the mic either. So any of the other bod to it in our session by all means chip in. But solving the really big problems because I felt I owned my own anxiety about being the sort of dirty capitalist but often in a capital piece. But we had such a cool conversation that was really not about that, all about show us the financial returns. We talked about kind of solving the really big kind of existential crisis for the world, which is around the whole, you know, our economy and our society, so extractive at the moment. And so we anchored that and how do we, after you articulated it far more neatly about how we sort of changed the way we use our currencies, for instance, to be rather than extractive to be additive so that you have credit ratings, you have impact ratings so that encourages us to put more stuff back. And then we also, because we had we'll just come on our group too, we talked about housing and how we make housing kind of more accessible and grounded in sustainability, that kind of stuff too, which, you know, and my kind of sort of framing for that is that we talk about a lot of things, climate change is one of them as being our big existential crisis. But in fact, I think sort of humanity and sort of social equity is a bigger existential crisis. But we find that so much harder to fix and yet here in this Coast Court, in this bunch of people, we've got the sort of the germs of being able to fix it. By being brave and getting pregnant. So it was cool. Anybody else on that call? Yeah, one cool thing I really liked about it and our one was how we spoke about VC or Mark, what was the topic up and then art sort of built on it was that VC used to be creative and now it's gone to the sort of financial extractive. So how do we, this could be a thing that we work with, with the ecosystem of people like Sue's, EHF, what we work with them is how do we then get that circle going back around so we get back to it being creative? And even if it's just in Zellan, we can lead in that by flipping the VC back to being creative instead of extractive. Brave, it's not about getting wussy about generating returns or anything like that and that's still the big piece in it that we want to create this exponential impact and value. But instead of anchoring it and sort of slightly up with the sort of financial returns, it's more about the sort of socioeconomic returns that we, and if we do that then the financial returns will come with that as well but we just have to get focused on creating the value first. Yeah, I agree. Any other last refrictions? We've covered all rooms otherwise. Well, I hope you've had a great session. It's probably felt long but I think it's been really worthwhile. So just know that this is just the beginning, it's just that the start of the conversation we've done today is harvest about and hear a lot of data and hear a lot of points. There is going to be activity that comes after. So we will be running events in the new year as well. So what we have got coming up at late March and in February, there's the blockchain paper that's been run through Callaghan. So they are sort of working on that at the moment and with our fellows. So art, if you want to be interested in that sort of thing, there's lots of different things there. So that'll be late February or into March and we've also got the space. So we're a stakeholder there with Enby on the space strategy. A lot of our fellows have been helping out with that as well. And tomorrow morning there is actually still another session on the many springboard if you want to come. It's at 8.30, actually it's 8.30, and that's Rod Orham is running it. It's New Zealand's priorities and opportunities in the decade of climate action. So we actually are going to be lucky to have Hillary Laureate, Johann Rockström. He is going to be speaking for the first sort of 40 minutes. Vicky from MFE is going to jump in and Rod is going to sort of facilitate the whole thing and wrap up about our post-cock 26 as well. So that should be very good but thank you all for partaking. It's been good and so thanks for hanging in there until the very end. Thank you for the organisation and love that went in behind us. Oh, you guys are welcome. It's cool, it's good. So I'm just going to close us off with a karekia. Kia taw, taw rangamai. Te runga e na iwi o te aw. Kia ora.