I’ve had a busy first quarter of 2026, and the past few weeks in particular have been a flurry of events across Wellington’s startup ecosystem — from an NZ Tech Rally event for International Women’s Day through to the day-long Code Camp Wellington conference spread across the Xero and Trade Me offices.

Two quotes bookended this series of events for me. The first came from NZ Tech Rally: “if you are not winning, you are learning.” The second came from Dean Pemberton at Code Camp: “you only win if no one loses.” There is something almost incongruent about holding both ideas at once, like a Zen koan without an answer.

What is SMUNZ? #

Over the past six months, I’ve completed what I’d call three sprints worth of founder work to build a new fiscal hosting provider for New Zealand–based startups: StartMeUp.NZ Limited, or SMUNZ for short.

If you’re unfamiliar with fundholding or fiscal hosting the basic idea is: a fiscal host allows early-stage projects to receive, hold, and spend money before they’re ready (or willing) to incorporate.

In Aotearoa, there are already excellent examples of this model in action:

I didn’t get the chance to immerse myself in the full 54-hour whirlwind of Startup Weekend Wellington this time around, but I did make it along to the finale — and wow, what a finish. The energy, the teamwork, and the sheer creativity filling the room were incredible to witness. I grabbed a few photos while I was there, starting with a great group shot of all the participants who brought their ideas, passion, and determination to life over one massive weekend.

It’s not DNS #

The thing I’m procrastinating on right now is the “DNS as Code” talk I will be delivering at KiwiPyCon 2025. What better way to procrastinate than write a blog post.

This is the 0.1.0 release note for OpsDev.NZ: not a product, but a collective inside StartMeUp.nz Limited that keeps the day-to-day lights on. Think platform engineering with fewer buzzwords and more coffee.

After a few weeks where work (and life) got in the way, I finally returned to some work on StartMeUpNZ last week.

⚡ Electrify Aotearoa – A Day of Inspiration #

Last week I attended Day 2 of Electrify Aotearoa, a powerful gathering of women founders, investors, and ecosystem supporters. The event offered a full day of keynote talks, panel discussions, and casual networking—all focused on unlocking the potential of women-led innovation in Aotearoa.

This week we launched the new StartMeUp.nz site using Hugo Book!

We first experimented with the Ananke Gohugo theme which turned out to be a little too complicated for us right now. We switched to a lightweight, clean Hugo Book setup, and created sections for:

• Mission and Vision
• Platform Services
• Partnerships and Governance
• Operating Model

📚 Exploring Legal Pathways for Social Enterprise in NZ #

We’ve been reviewing resources from: