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.
The highlight for me was Nicole Retter’s raw and honest presentation on the PAM app journey. Her session on Validation & Customer Discovery captured the real tension between building, learning, and adapting. Her presentation didn’t quite go as planned, she improvised the entire thing, and it was better for it. That kind of grace under pressure is exactly what being a founder demands.
🌱 Aurora Climate Tech Summit #
The next day, I was at the Aurora Climate Tech Summit, again hosted by Creative HQ. The energy at Michael Fowler Centre was incredible, 15 startups pitched bold climate solutions, from carbon capture to energy innovation.
One of the standout ventures for me was RockXtract, a deep-tech startup developing a novel family of ultra-low carbon cements. Backed by GNS Science, their approach eliminates the high-emissions calcination stage of traditional cement production, cutting emissions by as much as 95%. It’s a compelling example of how material science can directly tackle the hidden environmental costs of the built environment. Their pitch was clear, data-driven, and refreshingly pragmatic, proof that some of the biggest climate wins may come from industries we don’t usually associate with innovation.
☁️ Updates from Our Side #
The past few weeks have taken me away from work on StartMeUpNZ, I’ve taken on a new role with MetService, which is a bit of a dream come true given my interest in climate data and resilience infrastructure. Be careful what you wish for, right?
We are in the final stages of forming a board for what I have been abbreviating as SMUNZ, StartMeUpNZ and incorporating as an LLC and I’ll only be serving as director of the initiative on a temporary basis. I already have a great candidate who is also part of the JJobs team to take over once we get going. Eventually, as JJobs continues to gain momentum, it will spin off and incorporate on it’s own when that makes sense. Until then SMUNZ will be a fiscal sponsor for the group and pay the hosting fees and other expenses that come up.
Meanwhile, the JJobs team 🚀 continues to make great progress. We’re currently evaluating Bytescale as the media backend for our video platform. First impressions? Pretty solid, a simple API, fast CDN, and powerful on-the-fly image and video transformations right out of the box.
Since we’ve finally settled on a Bytescale account (after burning through three free trials 😅), I’m now hosting the images in this blog post there too.
If you were at either event, I’d love to hear what stuck with you. I’ll be reaching out to some of the people I met at these events soon to see if StartMeUpNZ can support with some basic platform services.
If you think we can help with anything don’t hesitate to get in touch!