‘Wellington’s best-kept secret’
An organisation in a first-floor space above a central city pub is the worldleader you’ve probably never heard of, writes Rob Mitchell.
There are no machines, conveyor belts or factory workers. Rather than the clanging and whirring of industrial motion, there’s Sam Smith and Adele over the speakers and the quiet hum of earnest conversation.
But coming out of this large first-floor office above a centralcity Wellington pub are bright ideas including a rotating hydroponics system to grow micro-greens, a product to eliminate single-use restaurant plastics, and an industry to rival the success of Ma¯nuka honey.
All of those potential products started as problems for wannabe entrepreneurs, public servants and corporate typeswho found themselves at Creative HQ.
It is a consultancy that provides a ‘‘highly structured programme to support teams through their period of growth’’, says chief executive Catherine Jones.
Its backing comes from WellingtonNZ, an economic agency funded by Wellington City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council, the Hutt and Porirua city councils, Crown innovation funding agency Callaghan Innovation and the Ministry of Social Development.
Corporates and foreign governments also pay for access to its expertise and programmes.
They contributed to a budget a tick over $5 million in the last financial year. This was used to support 98 start-up ventures, 50 of which were based in Wellington.
That structure includes mentors, peoplewho have been in the ‘‘trenches’’ and endured ‘‘years of eating two-minute noodles wondering if you are going to get investment in your company’’, Jones said.
‘‘People walk through the door saying I’ve spent my life savings building this cool piece of technology and now I need help to grow the business,’’ she said. ‘‘But what is the problem you are trying to solve, where is the gap, who are your buyers?’’
There are various incubator and accelerator schemes to test the viability of that idea or business, and then design prototypes, connect people with investors and build scale.
Not all ideas succeed but those who fail are encouraged to learn and return.
Jones said the organisation was ‘‘Wellington’s best kept secret’’.
What’s not so secret are its successes. They include Sharesies, which began as a challenge to get more people engaged in the sharemarket and now is a company with close to 100 staff.
Hundreds of people, including Cabinet ministers and corporate heavyweights, turned up for Creative HQ’s Demo Day at the Beehive last month, during which teams pitched ideas to innovate local and central government.
Those included a digital platform to help people better understand the health of their waterways, and another to help communities solve their own problems.
The ideas and others were run through Creative HQ’s GovTech Accelerator, an intense
12-week programme of problemsolving, mentoring and pitching.
‘‘New Zealand can never be a leader of FinTech or ... the startup capital of the world,’’ said Creative HQ’s GovTech head Jonnie Haddon.
‘‘But we have an opportunity to be the global leader of publicsector innovation,’’ he said.
‘‘We are small enough to have ministers in here, have high adoption rates of technology and good connectivity; all of these things put New Zealand in a good position, and [the country] already has a pretty good reputation on the world stage.’’
Other countries are taking notice.
‘‘There’s the Philippines, we’ve delivered work in Japan and throughout Southeast Asia, India. Taiwan sent a team down here,’’ he said.
That has meant kudos for Wellington and New Zealand, more funds to support aspiring entrepreneurs, and jobs for those supporting the technology.
The next Ma¯nuka honey industry?
This is not Carl Meyer’s first rodeo.
As the man who founded online platform Vic Deals eight years ago, he has already tasted success.
Meyer sold that in 2017, travelled the world and read plenty of books on the power of plants. That’s how he stumbled on the health and medical benefits of the forestry byproduct pine pollen. And its popularity in China, South Korea and Japan.
Back in New Zealand, Creative HQis helping Meyer and colleague Matisse Mitchell build an industry they believe could rival the success of Ma¯nuka honey as a superfood and health supplement.
‘‘I was living and working in a garage,’’ Meyer said. ‘‘My dad put a heat pump in it. I needed work space, used to go to Vic [University] and pretend to be a student, even wore a hoodie.’’
As well as the work space and wifi, CreativeHQ had provided a ‘‘community of other entrepreneurs ... access to investors’’.
That’s helped Meyer and Mitchell secure about $600,000 for more research, from MPI; Scion, the forestry industry’s Crown Research Institute; and Callaghan Innovation.
Helping to inSpyre the next generation
Andred Saker saw plenty of troubled youth during his nine years as a cop in Lower Hutt.
‘‘They don’t turn up to school, don’t have food on their plates, are cut off from the world around them.’’
And when he took a ‘‘break from the blue’’, he still couldn’t shake the problems he’d seen.
Which is why he’s spending 12 months in Creative HQ’s incubator programme, alongside his day job as a Teaching Council investigator.
Saker is creating Spyre, which will be a charitable organisation and a technological platform to ‘‘empower young people by giving them control of their lives’’.
‘‘It has a goal-setting feature, an interactive calendar, and a personal messaging system ... underpinned by a rewards scheme offering them tangible things that will help them in their lives, like driving lessons, dinners for wha¯nau, clothing, sports apparel’’.
Creative HQhad helped him towards securing charitable status but also to develop the business, to network, find investment opportunities, and improve his pitching, he said.
Proof that it’s good to talk
Lane Litz. Remember that name. Working out of Creative HQ, she has secured $1 million in funding from venture capital firms and angel investors to develop Chatterize, which builds ‘‘conversational chatbots that live in a virtual world and help young Chinese people speak English with confidence’’.
It’s an ‘‘English immersion
environment in their living room’’.
‘‘They can go to a virtual world and order food from a restaurant or go to a grocery store.’’
The success is not virtual. She now has a team of seven and is hoping for revenue of $2.5m next year, with the release of a new app.
So successful has she been that she is now an entrepreneur in residence, helping Creative HQ with mentorship and advice for other start-ups.
‘‘The ecosystem benefits when people succeed and return their time and money back into the ecosystem, when they pay it forward.’’
More in tune with the commercial world
Jerome Kavanagh loves being a musician, but he’s not so keen on being ‘‘ripped off’’ or the traditional view of the poor, suffering artist.
That’s why he participated in Creative HQ’s Arts Accelerator – a 12-week programme to help artists make money and better protect their work.
‘‘I didn’t really know how to go about that – things like licensing, the tech side of it.’’
The programme put the artists in touch with experts on marketing, licensing and advertising, even accounting.
‘‘It was not set out, like week one you do this, week two… it was free-flowing, about what you need, so we were co-creating the programme.’’
Now he’s creating a website, which will help protect his intellectual property while ensuring he gets paid for it as well.
The benefits will go beyond Kavanagh, and New Zealand.
‘‘Got a guy from the Solomon Islands, one from Rapanui; focusing on unique music. [Also] Indigenousmusic from Taiwan, from Madagascar.’’