 Well welcome everybody, welcome to the first actually of a series of presentations that we're going to be doing by the region. So this is a showcase of New Zealand. It's a teaser so that you can have a look and feel of what New Zealand is like. So you can look to see what it's like to live, work and even work remotely in that area and to visit that area as well. So first up we have gotten the Bay of Plenty and the session is going to be run by Greg Simmons from Priority One. I've known Greg for a lot of time now, a long, long time and he's always been a fan of the fellows and he was actually going to be running an in-person business orientation day for you when we shut the borders in February of 2020. So it's really good that Greg is first cab off the rank. So please Greg if you would like to introduce the rest of your team and just for the fellows that are here, I have got the presentation will be available afterwards, the PowerPoint will be available afterwards and there is a document as well that follows alongside this. And thanks so much Michelle. Just to be with me, I'll just share my screen. Perfect, that looks good. Great, you can all see that. Fabulous. So look welcome to Tauranga everybody. New Zealand's big largest and fastest growing city. I'll just introduce the team with us today. You know Michelle obviously. We've got here my colleague Meg Davis who works with me at Priority One which is the Economic Development Agency for Tauranga City and here Marie, sorry Nina Lillia from Enterprise Angels, our Angel Investor Network and she'll talk to us a bit later about the capital network infrastructure here in Tauranga. We've also got Steve Saunders who's probably known to many of you, Chief Executive and founder of Robotics Plus and he'll talk about Robotics Plus and the Hortech, sort of agri-tech sector locally. It's I think it's Greg, their internets. Yeah I think it's on Greg then. Yeah Greg, your end your internet is cutting in and out so we've missed from, you didn't need it and then we missed from there. Ah okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, yeah. So we've got, as I've introduced Nina then we've also got Marie Magnuson from Waikato University. Marie runs the Elville Biotechnology Program for Waikato and will give us a bit of an overview of all things marine biotech in the region. And finally David Hopple, a recent US migrant investor and David will be able to give you a bit of a sense of his experience of New Zealand and particularly Tauranga and then we'll open up for some Q&A. Every morning we face a choice and hit snows and reach for our shows. We wait for our dreams to come true. Do we follow the road well travelled? Carve a path of our own to a place where drive is rewarded. Continue New Zealand's fastest growing city. Bring things differently isn't so different. Meeting place for the businesses of tomorrow or changing ideas. A bit of a sense though of Tauranga is a city and indeed New Zealand is a country. We're certainly a country that really welcomes smart globally connected people and certainly are looking for the sorts of people that US fellows represent to help us as local businesses, as a community and as a nation to really try I guess in the 21st century. So I just wanted to give you a brief kind of overview of Tauranga as a city. Many people are unaware of Tauranga until they actually hit New Zealand and generally what we find is that a lot of the people we work with from a skilled and investor migrant and Edmund Hillary Fellowship perspective actually hear about Tauranga pretty quickly once they do land in Auckland. We are about 200 kilometres or 120 miles from Auckland city and located on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island within what's referred to as the golden economic triangle. So within that triangle which borders the cities of Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga we have over half of New Zealand's population and over half of New Zealand's total economic output. So it's very much the powerhouse of New Zealand's economy. Within Tauranga south it's a very family friendly coastal environment. A lot of people like it because it's got a great mix of both the lifestyle attributes and being close proximity to harbours, oceans, lakes, forests, mountain biking, skiing, all that kind of thing as well as having a very strong commercial sector. So for those people that are really looking to mix that balance of lifestyle and commercial interests and activities then Tauranga stacks up really well. That proximity to Auckland city, our major and largest commercial centre is also of benefit to Tauranga and the people that choose to live and reside here because you can get to Auckland very quickly. It's a 25-minute flight from Tauranga Airport. As a city we've had very strong investment over a number of years in our residential and commercial development and increasingly in our city amenity and infrastructure. Also in our education and R&D infrastructure. So the city has grown quite strongly over the last decade. Certainly the fastest growing city in terms of both population growth and GDP growth of any city in New Zealand in that time frame. And one of the unique pictures of Tauranga is that we are home to the Port of Tauranga which is New Zealand's largest seaport or export gateway. And also to the number one kiwi fruit brand in the world. So Zespri International is headquartered here in Tauranga because about 80% of kiwi fruit is growing in the rural hinterlands surrounding Tauranga city. And as Nina will talk about shortly, Enterprise Angels is actually also the largest angel network in New Zealand. Just in terms of our economic profile, you'll see we've got a population of around about 215,000 people now within the city and an employment market of about 105,000 jobs. GDP as you can see there around 11 million New Zealand dollars and a mean annual income of around 60,000 New Zealand dollars. That is slightly below the annual, a mean annual income for New Zealand as a whole. And that's predominantly because of a bit of a sector mix that we have here in terms of quite a high portion of primary industries and also a tourism and a large tourism and retail sector. However, we are actually growing our knowledge intensive jobs. So those jobs and tech, professional services, healthcare, et cetera, at a faster rate than the rest of New Zealand. So at the current rate, we're expecting to exceed the New Zealand mean annual income within the next decade. From a lifestyle perspective, certainly we sum the city up as a great place for active lifestyles. So as I briefly mentioned, access to surfing, sailing, golf, mountain biking, skiing, biking, all that sort of stuff, very easily accessible from Tauranga. And we also have a great sort of, I guess, culture from a cafe, restaurant, coffee perspective. We have the highest sunshine hours of any major city in New Zealand. So it's very much an outdoors lifestyle. And we've also had significant growth in our migrant communities over the last five to 10 years, which has seen a real diversity in our demographics and a real internationalisation of our city as well. Coupled with that, there's been significant investment in healthcare and education, R&D facilities within the city as well over the last decade. And in 2019, we opened our university campus here in Tauranga as well alongside our technical institute for more vocational careers. Mount Maunganui Beach is rated consistently one of the best beaches in New Zealand. And Tauranga has a very rich Māori culture as well. Māori recognised, we're very early to recognise, Tauranga and the wider Bay of Fenty region as a very fertile region, very good soil quality. So a great place to grow things. And obviously that's evidenced by kiwifruit production surrounding the city, but also other horticultural crops like avocados, et cetera, and quite a big food manufacturing sector here as well. From a government perspective, where a growth region and recognised as such by the government and have a strong partnership with the government in terms of supporting infrastructure growth over the next 50 years. And we're also an accredited welcoming community. And that speaks to the increase in international connections and diversity that I mentioned before. From an education perspective, this is one of the things that often when we're talking to people such as yourselves and skilled and investor migrants as well that they're most interested in, particularly if you've got families of your own. We do offer the full range of public and private schooling options locally. We have also the full mix of single sex, co-educational, religious denominations. And we do have a local university, Marie will talk a little bit more about that shortly. And also our home to Toiopomai, which is part of our National Institute of Skills and Technology, our vocational training provider. We also have a number of research centres of excellence, everything from plant science, artificial intelligence, marine, forestry and wood products. And we certainly invest strongly in our education system and our business, the local businesses are also very involved in our education system right from primary, secondary and tertiary level to ensure that they have really early access to some of the talent that's coming through that pipeline. And also to ensure that our students, our young people are really well aware of the career opportunities that are available locally and the skill needs that businesses are looking for in the future. So very much, Taranga is a city for skilled and talented people. We love what the EHF program does and certainly welcome fellows here to come and visit and we can certainly help connect you with others locally and ensure that your time in New Zealand is as well spent. I'll hand over to Steve now to give a bit of an overview of robotics plus and the cortex sector. Steve. Cool. Kia ora everyone. I'm Steve Saunas. I'm the founder and CEO of robotics plus. I wear a number of hats. I'm also a grower, significant grower in horticulture. I've been growing for over 38 years now and I'm also a multiple sort of I've started a number of companies over the years with successful exits. So I also heavily invest back into the community. So as a founder of WNT, our local tech incubator, which is a private sector and government initiative where we invest seed money into early stage companies, also am a director and one of the founding members of plant tech, which is a regional research institute, which is focused on artificial intelligence and data and particularly focused into the agritec sector and also sitting in a number of other funds and initiatives and invest directly myself into various companies as well. Robotics plus is really founded on the premise of really tackling some of these labour constraints that we're starting to really see in the markets today, particularly in the agtech sector. That last point of where people stand, those jobs that people don't want to do or the way we describe it as the dull, dirty, dangerous jobs. Robotics plus was born just on 10 years ago, but really accelerated in 2018 after receiving investment from Yamaha Motoko Japan. We're now a team of over 95, quite a large early stage company. We have three core areas of automation that we work in, and that's port side automation. So we do a lot of automation around the forestry industry, really removing people from dangerous jobs. We have our fruit packing automation portfolio, which is packing fruit in the packhouses. Our target's mainly around specialty tree crops, so apples, stone fruit, those types of crops. So we have machines now globally across Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, and just heading into South America at the moment. Then our third portfolio that we follow is autonomous vehicles. So automated spraying, mowing, those sorts of tasks within orchards. Again, removing people from dangerous situations. So we've got just released our first machines up into Napa Valley, actually, around automated vineyard, tasking with spraying, et cetera. The reason why New Zealand, I guess, New Zealand is a primary sector-based country. We're known to be some of the best producers of specialty tree crops. So on a productive basis, New Zealand with apples is probably the most productive country globally. The unique thing about New Zealand is that we are so far from the market that everything we do has to be premium focused to actually compete globally. So we have great centres of excellence here in New Zealand with plant and food research who do breeding specific varieties. So the Zespry Gold came out of plant and food research. If you think about apple varieties, MV, jazz, rocket apple, they're all global licensed varieties, came out in New Zealand. So we have in our DNA a lot around breeding specific varieties and high value varieties. And then because of our distance from market, our growers are incredibly innovative in the sense that to compete, we're all about quality and we're also about production. So highly innovative ecosystem. It also brings an advantage of counter-seasonal testing where we can test in multiple markets. So we can be testing technologies here in New Zealand. We grow most crops that are growing in the likes of the USA and other global areas. So we can test here in New Zealand, but we can then ship that up and test again in the US. So we've been able to test two times a year, which has significant advantages. I think the other area of rural interest here in New Zealand is the ability to leverage capital. So there's a lot of support from the New Zealand government and the government ecosystem in terms particularly in the ag tech sector. So through Ministry of Primary Industries, we have what we call the SFFF fund, the Sustainable Farming Fund. That's where they'll co-invest with industry in agriculture up to 45% of significant projects. These projects can be anywhere from $100,000 to $100 million. So with Robotics Plus, we've been able to leverage a lot of our capital significantly by doing projects to solve problems here in New Zealand, but with a global focus. And why I say that is the challenge with New Zealand is we are small. So the market scalability is small here, but it's a great place to do the R&D and the research work. So whenever we're creating technologies, we do have a focus that it's got to be solving a global problem, not just a New Zealand problem. And it's actually solving the global problem that allows us to solve the New Zealand problem by being able to create scale. I think again why Taronga, as Greg mentioned, is the home of Zespri, which Taronga is one of the three main key horticulture areas of New Zealand. So you have Taronga, Hawkes Bay, and Nelson has been high horticultural areas. So being in the environment has a lot of benefits. We're within the golden triangle, as Greg pointed out, between Auckland, Hamilton, and Taronga. So from a business standpoint, it's a very quick commute to Auckland if need be. And so we're in that main golden triangle. And we have one of the most effective ports in the world here in Taronga. So it makes shipping and importing quite simple from here. And we're seeing a real build out within Taronga now of a number of tech companies that are successfully paving the way in Agtech. We have companies like Blue Lab who are doing digital instruments around forehorticulture. So providing a lot of product into the US, particularly into the cannabis markets, into high-position horticulture, the likes of Robotics Plus. We have great relationships with the Waikato University who have a very strong engineering division. So using the students and bringing those students in through summer internships, doing PhDs and masters, and so really being able to connect well where with the University. The establishment of the Plant Tech Regional Research Institutes are bringing in world-class AI data skills here that we can tap into and help and solve some of the real curly questions if our own team can't do that. Obviously, a lot of investment and support by Zespri have been a $4 billion horticultural business based here in Taronga. So a really great ecosystem evolving around Ag here in Taronga and I think that's probably enough for now and I'll hang out for some questions later. Got to say, thank you for that. Marie will hand over to you for a bit of an overview of the University of Waikato and particularly your specialty area, sort of the macro-elgal biotechnology. Thanks very much Greg. Hi everyone. If you go to my presentation, I think the next slide home, I can talk anyway. So I lead a seaweed and macro-elgal research program at the University of Waikato. This program has been operational now for about four years. You can go to the next slide Greg and skip this one because we've already seen where we are. And so we're a team of about 16 to 20 people depending on the number of students and staff that we have at any one time. We reach out a lot and actually work a lot with priority one as well to have summer students and interns from various organisations and other students. And also quite a few international students who come here as well on social who come here for internships and just sort of study a broad programme. So that's obviously been on hold for the last two years but in the first two years we operated, we were had quite a few people coming around. And so the next slide there Greg, please. Thank you. And so what we do within the team is we work with seaweed and macro-elgy on basically all aspects. So from seed to farm. So this is a very broad group with broad expertise in algal biology all the way from ecology and aquaculture to chemistry developing products with a molecular understanding of how and why things work. So that's sort of our what we bring is that critical mass of a very group of people who will work towards the same thing. We one of our main products are around bioremediation. So using seaweed or freshwater macro-elgy to mop up nutrients from either waste waters or natural environments. So we do have a few of these sort of larger scale industry programmes around this as well. And we work and collaborate broadly around developing products from algae as well. So if you go to the next slide Greg there's a video in that one that should be a video of our aquaculture facility. So this is a really unique facility in New Zealand. And this will be part of the power point I will share afterwards as well if this video is not playing. But so we've got basically a 1,000 square meter site with a big greenhouse with lots of tanks for growing algae. So this is a recirculating system with a freshwater half and a sea water half a week and regulate temperature and flow rates and nutrient concentrations and really do manipulative experiments to maximise productivity and manipulate the actual composition of the algae for various purposes. And the scale that we can grow here you can go to the next slide please Greg if this one's not playing. Try the pond video there again to the right if that one will play here. The specifics that we're focusing on are this is sea lettuce here. Just Oliver the scientific name and to the right here is one of the ponds that we're using. So these are 10 by 2 meter ponds and we've got 12 of these at our site. So over a year we could grow if we maximise production through all the ponds we can grow up to a tonne of seaweed in this in this pilot system. We're using it mainly to produce bulk of biomass for our product development purposes. So if you go to the next slide. We also work a lot with the common kelp. So this is a clonia the most widely distributed seaweed kelp in New Zealand. So what Steve was saying around these Ministry of Primary Industries SRIP LEFT programmes we got two of these in collaboration with the industry partners and one of them is a three-year pilot project demonstrating ocean aquaculture and hatchery processes for our common kelp here. So in New Zealand we have most of the seaweed that make up the bulk of global commercial production and aquaculture of seaweed. We don't have those species or even those genera here in New Zealand and what we do have that are similar to overseas is invasive here so we don't grow it on purpose. And so that's why all these we've got on the other hand we have a really unique seaweed and algal flora to produce unique products. It also means that we have we need to develop our own processes and procedures for the cultivation and all the way from just on farm processes through to processing and distribution chains and just building that market. So we've been collaborating really broadly with various business and industry partners and research institutions to start building that framework in New Zealand. So if you go to the next slide Greg please. So this is another example of our industry outreach. So we are working together with PSIDE which is the investment arm of the original council here and they started a spin-off company called Aquacuro who built this quarter hectare freshwater bioremediation plant that one of the wastewater treatment plants here and so here we are using a freshwater algae to to basically clean up the excess nitrogen and phosphorus that is released from within consent limits released from the wastewater treatment plants. And so this has been ongoing for IE and the Other Silence Commission and inoculated with algae last year and we're working through optimization and quantifying how much nutrients we can actually remove and how much biomass we can grow in this time and what we can use that material for as well. So this is this is super exciting and we'd love to have visitors if anyone's coming by to come and poke around in our sewer tanks and and visit some yes this is Keyside sites well it's there's a question from Michelle Cole there. So Keyside own suits but Aquacuro is the entity that actually manages it right and if you go to the next slide Greg please just to remind me what's there. So this is just basically a brief overview of some of our research partners so this is an old slide so we're actually working with a few more people now. So really a broad network of domestic and international research and industry partners so we're quite well connected in terms of implementation of our research which is really where we are really excited about working. We also have in terms of education so within our team we work mostly with postgraduate students but we're also teaching into the new undergraduate courses here at the at the brand new fantastic campus here in Taronga. And so this is sort of really building momentum both within the really vibrant research that's going on here both with seaweed and other organisms within within biology and with the rest of the university as well as we're starting to have that base of undergraduate students who can actually do all this hands-on research here as well and live in Taronga and not have to go to have them. And that was just really brief from me. I'm very happy to answer any question you might have. Great thank you so much Marie it was an awesome overview of some pretty exciting kind of R&D commercially another spectrum that's happening here in that space in Taronga. I'll hand over to Nina now and Nina's going to give us a bit of an overview of both enterprise angels but also the actual broader capital networks infrastructure that exists locally. Thanks Greg. I'm going to flip to the next slide. Okay so in Taronga we have a really neat start-up in capital ecosystem. We've pretty much got end-to-end in terms of capital raising from ideation right through to public markets. So we've got the venture centre right at that early stage. Accelerator, we've got the Acceleration Foundry which launched last year but technology and capital which Steve mentioned earlier. In the angel stage we're enterprise angels and we have some side-card funds that work with us. After that we have in the venture capital space Nauance. Many of you all know Adrian Goa involved in Nauance and then we've also got Purpose Capital Impact Fund which is an impact fund that's 22 million and that's sort of a bit slightly later stage opportunities making a real social and environmental difference and Orients Private Equity Capital then right at the end of the section we've got Craigs and the public markets. Obviously lots of local support priority weren't there for what we do in this space as well. Okay so because we've got this really neat ecosystem that's end-to-end there's lots of local companies on the global stage. It's really thriving in the ecosystem. You heard more about robotics plus and Blue Lab earlier. There's some other really neat companies which you've probably heard about in the news as well. Upro Electric Bikes, Swap Dawn which was a company which was acquired by a UK listed company. That's a really neat story of how you get this bubble-on effect with a maturing ecosystem. So now the founder and the senior staff of Swap Dawn have become enterprise angels members and they're mentoring other startups and so it's just this real nice bubbling effect which is great to see. We've got Law View as well which is going from strength to strength and Hila La-Lamila. So yeah we're the only regional centre in New Zealand to have this really neat ecosystem which is cool and I think it's the lifestyle and the culture that really brings everyone in together. You know lots of talented people that come here for that lifestyle and they see these growing business opportunities and they don't want to leave. So I'm actually from Price Church and you know I won't be going back to Carl down there. So we're digging a little bit to enterprise angels and we've really been quite a founding pillar of the local startup ecosystem back in 2008 when Angel Investing was first kicking off in New Zealand. I think there were maybe a handful of players in the market. Bill Murphy you founded it, it was called Western Bay of Plenty Business Forum, bit of a mouthful. There was a small group of individual just in West End according to their own interests and experience. The first four to five years pretty slow growth but we built a stronger group collaboration, a few diligence, growing member numbers until I think a bit of a pivotal point. I joined in 2013 and at that point we had quite a few key business leaders that joined the group. Steve you probably joined around that time as well and really the depth and breadth of the experience within our group grew and you know we could attract really good deals and really good people as well. So by 2014 we were over 100 members and we learned to our first fund which was a sidecar fund so that actually follows what the members do and enabled our members to get a broader diversification in the startup space and also to ensure that our parcels were a bit larger when we have companies approaching us. We also launched a Waikato Tector so when we have pitch events that's six times a year we do one event in Tauranga and one in Hamilton as well. Although we just had our first in person event last night they've been virtual for 10 months it was fantastic to have the community together again. Fast forward to 2019 when we launched our third sidecar fund. The funds are fairly small with the third being three million and during 2019 Bill Murphy launched the purpose capital impact fund that I mentioned earlier so $22 million fund and it's investing in asset backed opportunities that are making a real difference environmentally and socially it's one of the largest impact funds in New Zealand. At that point when Bill moved to purpose capital I took the lead and enterprise angels and have been there since so we've seen some really neat growth and we've got some scalable and less management systems or robust processes we're actually launching our investor portal this year which is really neat. We've got a great connected group of individuals with a lot of experience now. We're actually this year we're launching our first lead seed fund as such which is like a normal seed fund just not a sidecar fund so it's going to be much the same as our other funds but it's actually going to be able to take advantage of many other opportunities in New Zealand as well to allow our members to get access to a more diverse range of opportunities that perhaps I want to picture an angel group. So a bit more about us so one of the things that we're really passionate in our team is that you know investing in startups is a really great way to ensure that you've got growth and innovation solving some really hard problems and it's great for the business and the community and the economy to thrive it's just a real key part of that problem I think. So we've got professional staff at seven and invested in over 100 startups, three sidecar funds and we've actually because we've got all these robust systems and everything in place we're expanding our administration and investment services as well so that's a real sort of core part of our business. A really deep New Zealand network and market experience we've got 200 members so yeah fascinating that we're one of the largest angel group but the population wise you know we're quite small I guess we get a lot of people that come and retire to Te Totoa because of the lifestyle so they have a bit more time and energy to put into supporting startups and wealth as well. We've got a network of 130 koulsana vistas actually our members and investors are spread over New Zealand as well we've even got a few members offshore and we have a number of stellar partner organisations that really understand and support the startups space so they really help us and help them grow these startups and connect them throughout New Zealand. Our co-investment relationships are really important and that's probably testament to our reputation and a real collaborative approach you know it really takes a village to grow a startup as many of you are probably aware from your experience so you know that's very much part of our DNA in there. One of the things we're doing so we reached 100 startups and we've been looking at case studies you know and we've had about 25 companies that have exited both positive and negative and there's learnings across the board with both of them so we'll be producing these case studies and we're refining the way that we invest and move forward and it's been a really neat journey we need that so we're looking forward to sharing that more with the community. There's a bit of a snapshot of our portfolio so we've invested more than 60 million since the early days the majority of that has actually been in the last five years and as we know with growing these companies at you know overnight success with 10 years of hard slog behind them so the portfolio status we've got almost 60% of them that are either growing or thriving and yes it's a really neat logos in there which I'm sure you'll recognise. Our key area that we invest in so the percentages from the breakdown of the type of companies we invest in that says at the seat of dollars invested so whilst we invest in more companies that are seed stage our investors are fairly steady and so they double down when they're you know savage fine product market question so on. You'll see top company top type of company we invest in the software which is quite typical of angel investors but we do have a really large portion of investment in agtech and hardware and I think that's a reflection of you know the expertise that we have in this region and you know what we're really good at as well. We would like to see more investment locally but the sheer population of Auckland you know we see lots of startups from Auckland as well and we certainly invest in them too. This is more a general New Zealand startup ecosystem and the timing for investment and growth in tech you know it's a really exciting time there's a lot of ambitious standards they're solving these really hard problems we can make a real difference in terms of jobs and positive impact the environment and social as well and really helping to put New Zealand on the map. New Zealand's got a real innovation mind-setting reputation you know that number eight world mentality and so on and we've certainly got a reputation from ease of doing business in New Zealand our companies are really efficient with capital and they often provide better value for money than their US counterparts i.e. tibia. The rise in remote working has been really neat for our startups you know on the global stage it makes it easier to then meet prospective clients and partners you know it's just puts them on the same level as anyone over in the US because they're all waiting by zoom although that's not enough again but i think we've made a mark and we're going to leverage that as i mentioned earlier that a very evolving ecosystem and the second time founders and growing is really exciting and the other thing which is really cool is the amount of follow-on capital that we have available now i think it was about 254 million that was invested in 2021 which was a massive increase on the previous year in startups in New Zealand and you know there's been some really good government support in getting that going and you know it was a real struggle in the early days that follow-on capital it's like we'd have to go offshore and now we've got really lots of good partners that we're investing in we know what they want to help steer us our investment as well so so that's really exciting as well so really neat way to make your mark in New Zealand with this you know maturing ecosystem leveraging people's skills and international connections this is a type of people that we look for you know so really neat infographic work Josh and i don't know if anyone knows Rudy Bublitz from Flying Kiwi so he pipped it up for us means the opportunities that we really love plenty of ways to get involved really actively with our fourth seed fund opportunities and investing partnering governance advisory obviously getting involved with our startups both existing and new prospective startups that we're working with supporting the group working on the impact side with purpose capital earlier investors and obviously the seeds of opportunities to learn and network and grow in this community it's a it's a really neat community to be a part of and yeah it was great to pick up with everyone again in person yesterday although we have been doing virtual since pre-COVID so not that pretty well that's it from me but yeah open for questions when we hey thanks thanks Nina that's awesome and you know i think Nina's given us that real sense of the real innovation and entrepreneurial culture that exists here and it's a very collaborative business environment so um to round things off i'll ask um David maybe to give his perception really of New Zealand and in Taranga in particular from a recent kind of migrants suspected to the city and somewhere he's chosen to um to spend a lot more time and reside so so David over to you great thanks so much um yeah so i'm David Hople i uh i live primarily in mill valley in town just across the golden gate bridge from san francisco and um as as i my wife and i came to New Zealand i think first and foremost there was a lifestyle issue so we checked out several different towns the Hawkes Bay area and Nelson and Taranga and all three offered great lifestyle opportunities but i know enough about myself to know that i'm not going to sit around as a passive investor i'm looking to actively engage with with the investments that i make so so kind of that second tier of what i was looking for for an area or town that we would settle in was the economic opportunity to invest engage with those investments and so um ultimately as i assess that across those three towns it became very very clear um that Taranga had the greatest what i would consider ecosystem around early stage businesses in terms of entrepreneurs in terms of capital availability and um uh so so you know so much of what you've heard from the other speakers is exactly why i decide my wife and i have decided to settle in the the Taranga area so um you know i'm very very bullish on what i see here i've spent you know the last 20 years in san francisco and saw how that market emerged and i see a lot of those foundational components coming together in Taranga so that's um that that's kind of my assessment the process i went through and why i ultimately concluded that Taranga was an area that's going to provide me and my wife with what we're looking for over the next chapter of our of our existence so um hope that's helpful for you all greg happy for you to share my contact information and be delighted to visit with anyone offline to give you a little more color about that process awesome thank you so much for sharing that uh david and certainly it's been great getting to know david over the last last few years and uh he's become really active participant in the in the local community um which is which is just you know just what we really are looking for so um so really appreciate that david so look we'll um open it up now for any sort of q and a um and uh you know please feel free to to ask ask anything um we're quite happy to answer open and honestly it was brilliant team i'm like going wow i'm learning so much new stuff and i probably want to go uh to tolonga i do have a house there that i rent out but i can't get there i'm on the mount monganoe side um yet so there is actually a question for marie and it's come in from bruce is the university looking at a um just a medical school i think it was wasn't it yeah are you looking at establishing a medical school do you know marie uh yes there's a there's a lot of um talk i'm actually honestly not fully up to speed on where the process is at now um so i can't actually really answer that question i can i can look into it and and put you in touch with the right people who could actually answer that properly um i can add a little bit to that so so yes uh wai kato university is uh it has is is exploring the opportunity to um to look at medicine um we have two universities in new zealand that currently offer medicine that's Auckland university and otago university uh the the gap in the market that wai kato university saw was um specializing in medical health particularly in um smaller and rural communities and regional uh new zealand which have quite um unique and different demographic profiles um uh and uh that was a um a gap that wai kato are looking in nice thank you uh tach's got a question thank did you want to um yes you can also ask it directly sure uh thank you very much and i really appreciate all this information uh both of us and we're uh we're interested uh i'm an investor fellow from kowari but and we're coming to taramanga for uh a close to a week to to check it out and i think one of the i have a couple questions of how long should we spend there because we're we're traveling around the country and david thanks for very much for your view as well uh and what's the best way to engage so if we end up there one afternoon should be great should we call you or nina or should we uh you know how should we engage with you guys yeah look absolutely um feel free to uh to get in touch with uh with me uh we can have a bit of a chat around um you know if you've got any particular interests and uh and in which case i can kind of introduce you to the right people um i'll turn to somebody i'm very happy to catch up with you and um you know grab a coffee or a beer or wine or something like that and and talk to you in a bit more detail about some of the things that are happening here too so great and thank you this is very helpful really helpful thanks so what i will be doing if me can drop the email addresses in the chat as well but what i will do is afterwards i will um just connect your rules to everyone that's uh accepted to the invite and then also the ones that couldn't make it because we want to make the video and the powerpoint presentation available to everybody afterwards any other questions a lot of them thank you oh you go sorry rosalie yep i didn't see you on the screen any cover it no i just um i just first of all want to thank thank you all because this has been a really great i'm sorry that i came in a little later i had a couple of other urgent things um david i i i was just very interested to hear your journey and i also wondered if there's any advice that you could give to fellows about i guess the the translation for the um the the challenge that you find in coming into another country you know embracing another culture embracing tal maori and i just wonder if there's any sort of insights that you can provide for our fellows and how that links them with toadonga sure um i've found it to be quite frankly a pretty easy process um just anecdotally i ended up meeting steve at a restaurant in amsterdam a few years ago and through that introduction we we got talking and he essentially invited me hey you got to get to know tal ranga um i've been involved with um enterprise angels that's been very very helpful and and what i've found is there's a real sense of community within this tal ranga ecosystem around early stage businesses that you know with one phone call you can get to just about anyone and not only in just tal ranga but i've i've had that experience across the country that effectively with one phone call you can generally get to what you need and that feels very very refreshing coming here as as somebody who's been you know running and building businesses in the us which can be complicated and so forth so um i've i've found it it's i would refer to it as refreshing so brilliant that's great thank you um tina have you got a you've got your hand raised you've got a question or a response there thanks michelle can you hear me okay perfect hi hey i just want to say um everything that's been acknowledged is you know is is what makes tal ranga so special and um exactly why i moved here 12 years ago so i am a little bit different in that i came into new zealand under the general skills category about 20 years ago and then 12 years ago decided to raise my four children in tal ranga because of all the research that greg said and i cannot stress it enough you know asking for help there's no question about you know being part of the first co-working space that that um priority one created a handful of years ago was a was a big connector um supporting the work with Enterprise Angels Nina's amazing work um getting to support some of steve's work and building that horticulture ecosystem um the thing is just you know ask for help and and all for support um i i got to yacht race everything's so accessible i got to yacht race while i did my MBA at wikato university and both were great networking tools um everything is really really accessible here so um if there's anything i can do for anybody please reach out um i very much work behind the scenes but would love to support in any way i can so thank you it was great to celebrate tal ranga through this presentation thanks tina that's great that's amazing um and for those of you that don't know tina is a fellow so do reach out to her and also deba might still be on the call as well deba is a fellow and she's also offered um her information of anyone and her i think she put an email address there if anyone wants to reach out to her directly as well kia ora oh there you are debs yeah um yeah and david i didn't realise you were here around the corner pretty much so um there is a handful of of tal ranga fellows um as well as tina there's um abco tim and and there's yeah myself um and obviously adrian and david now i didn't realize you were here so there's quite a lovely little group that's beginning to form as well so um it's always fun to get together and and share stories and and just hang out as well as getting on with our all-important mahi so nice to meet you all thanks deba yeah that's really good and then yeah so peter who you may not have uh in um marie's presentation uh peter was in one of those slides uh in in there peter um ren ren ren drop yeah yeah any other questions for the team all good well thank you if um everyone has put their email addresses in the chat that's great but we will do a follow-up email with the presentation and the PowerPoint for those that couldn't make it and i sincerely thank you all panel for your mahi today that was an amazing presentation i absolutely loved it i love that colourful background it just makes me want to go there in full stop and those statistics and that it's the the fastest growing city and i love it that that's part of that uh golden triangle it's just been amazing so thank you very much team and we will get this um for you so that you can share it and utilise the material and i appreciate all the time that you've put into this today it's been great greg and the team thank you everybody and thanks to you michelle for the opportunity uh and happy to connect with uh with anybody who wants to uh follow up thank you team