The Morgo Podcasts

20 minute interviews with people building tech companies from New Zealand and Australia into the world.

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Melanie Spencer, Socialites

May 16, 2023

Socialites is a full-service social media agency which helps organisations thrive in the dynamic digital world by using social media to bring a brand’s DNA to life, creating communities of loyal customers. The Socialites Group has grown by acquisition. It runs multi-language, multi-platform campaigns across Asia, Europe, Australasia, the Middle East, the United States and Canada.

Max Ferguson, Lumin

May 1, 2023

Max founded Lumin to create a better way for people to annotate and collaborate on PDF files. He bootstrapped it to 30M users based on ad revenue, then made a very rapid switch to being subscription funded – in just 2 months! Lumin now has 80M users and 80 staff around the world and many documents being signed every second. Max’s vision is to solve the pain of digitally managing, signing and sharing documents.

Hans van der Voorn, Izon Science

April 17, 2023

Izon Science isolates & analyses nano-biological particles. Its products are sold for medical R&D in 50 countries. A step change in the size of Izon’s business will be driven by one of its customers taking a product currently in testing to market – such as a cancer test. Izon has 50 staff in NZ, the USA & France. Hans talks about funding a company when it’s cash negative, getting focused on marketing and continuing to innovate to find the product-market fit.

Tim Bourne, CerebralFix

April 3, 2023

CerebralFix is an international game development studio which games for large international companies. Its talented team of more than 70 developers, artists, and designers work tirelessly to bring their games to life: from brainstorming new ideas to coding, testing, and polishing the final product. Tim talks about the challenges of staying current while technology is changing so rapidly.

Stefan Powell, Dawn Aerospace

March 21, 2023

The challenge in getting to space is to marry the scalability of the aircraft industry with the performance of spacecraft. That is a scalable, reusable rocket. Dawn Aerospace is currently building a craft that can get to space and back again twice a day. They gained early revenue by building a green fuel propulsion system for in-space mobility - manoeuvring satellites into position. Dawn now employs over 100 people in NZ, the Netherlands & the US.

Bill Buckley, Buckley Systems

March 6, 2023

Bill Buckley is New Zealand tech royalty. Do listen to this! Buckley Systems makes ion implanters to put the metal into silicon chips (300 lines in the width of a human hair); its ionising machines make all the flat panel screens for your phones, iPads etc; and they make medical devices and R&D machines. These are all based on using huge precision magnets to direct & accelerate ion streams. They ship over 1,000 tonnes per month from Auckland to the world.

Ian White, ZX Security

February 21, 2023

ZX Security is a specialist cyber security consultancy with staff in New Zealand, Asia & Europe. It tests and finds vulnerabilities in an organisation’s networks, cloud environments, buildings and more. ZX also provides senior leadership security advice specific to customer environments. Ian talks about the importance of the company’s employees in building a company whose customers around the world range from start-ups to a company with over a million employees.

Neil Cresswell, Portainer.io

February 7, 2023

Portainer is a container management system for Kubernetes, Docker/Swarm, and Nomad that simplifies container operations so you can deliver software to more places, faster. Neil talks about the challenges of commercialising open source software and of building a business out into the world from New Zealand. The company now has thousands of customers across the world.

Chantelle Cole & Niamh Fitzgerald, Dinosaur Polo Club

January 24, 2023

Dinosaur Polo Club is an independent game development studio, founded by Peter & Robert Curry. Well known for its award-winning games, Mini Metro and Mini Motorways, the last couple of years have seen the studio grow, and they’re now working on some exciting new games. With an inclusive and supportive culture Chantelle, CEO, and Niamh, COO, talk about growing the business and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Sarah Kennedy, Calocurb

January 9, 2023

Calocurb’s natural product capsules reduce appetite to help with weight loss. The active ingredient was developed by Plant & Food Research, who work alongside Calocurb in clinical trials. An FDA approved drug for weight loss in the US has the same course of action, costs a lot more and must be injected – with side effects. Calocurb’s sales of capsules have taken off as a result! Sarah talks about building a business based on science with most functions outsourced.

Dave Blackwell, Spidertracks

December 12, 2022

Spidertracks was born on the back of a huge personal tragedy and an incredibly inefficient search and rescue effort following a high-profile helicopter accident in 2005. Initially solving the problem of locating an aircraft in distress, today Spidertracks is the preferred provider of aircraft tracking, flight following and flight safety insights for thousands of commercial operators across the general aviation sector.

Barney Chunn, CONQA

November 29, 2022

CONQA is an online platform to give construction contractors quality assurance as you go – not as an afterthought, making quality assurance into a genuine measure of progress and saving time and money. CONQA can help construction businesses reduce defects, minimise risk, track progress and support your payment claims, altogether enhancing your reputation in the market. It now has close to 60 people across Australia & NZ and is poised for further expansion.

Darryn Keiller, WayBeyond

November 15, 2022

Darryn and WayBeyond are on a mission to transform the way greenhouse and protected crops are grown using sensors, data, and AI. Three years of deep R&D was followed by the launch of Folium (an IoT network of sensors) and its digital farming platform, FarmRoad in 2020. It now has more than 35 enterprise customers across North America, Europe, Africa, China and Australasia, who represent thousands of hectares growing fresh produce supply fed to millions of people.

Adeel Ali, APIMatic

October 31, 2022

APIMatic makes the integration of its customers APIs as simple as possible. It provides documentation, SDKs, Code Samples, Assisted Authentication, Test Cases, CI/CD integrations - and keeps them updated if the API changes. Its Code Generation Engine emits code in a variety of languages. APIMatic is currently being used in over 190 countries. It employs over 60 people in Auckland, San Francisco and Islamabad.

Howard Moore, Pictor

October 17, 2022

Pictor is an in-vitro diagnostics company that has a patented multiplex platform for highly accurate testing for complex and infectious diseases in human and animal health. PictArray™ multiplex technology makes it possible to detect multiple disease markers in a single test simultaneously. The lead product is a diagnostic for Covid 19 which can detect multiple antibodies. The company has also developed tests for M. bovis, for maternal infections and other diseases.

James Sampson, FileInvite

October 4, 2022

FileInvite transforms the way you collect information from your clients – hassle free and on time. No longer do you have to receive multiple emails from clients, files that are too big, the wrong data. It has customers in real estate, banking, mortgage broking, accountants, lawyers, insurance brokers, website designers … James talks about their founding story, raising money through to a US Series A. It now has over 30 million files collected securely.

Milan Cooper, First AML

September 19, 2022

Milan is CEO & a co-founder of First AML, which streamlines the entire anti-money laundering (AML) onboarding and compliance process. The company was founded in 2017. In 2021 it was named by LinkedIn as one of NZ’s top 10 start-ups, tripling its headcount that year to 75. It now has 160 people. Its cloud-based know-your-customer (KYC) passport allows complex entities to share their verification across multiple companies & geographies.

David Leach, Cin7

September 6, 2022

Cin7 was started by Danny Ing in 2012 to provide connected inventory and a point-of-sale system for small & medium businesses who sell through multiple channels. In 2019, the company received significant investment from a US PE firm and David joined as CEO to scale the company into the world. At that time the company had 140 employees in Auckland and 1,800 customers. Now the company has about 400 staff around the world and 8,000 customers.

Mike Carden, Joyous

August 22, 2022

Mike is a founder & co-CEO of Joyous, an enterprise conversation app. Joyous is designed to make everyone feel comfortable talking about work, encouraging feedback to drive positive changes at every level of the organisation - from individuals up. Joyous unlocks authentic conversations for teams: building a sense of belonging, boosting engagement, retention and eNPS. It gathers the expertise of your team, identifies actionable themes, and solves critical challenges.

Christopher Boyle, Fabrum

August 8, 2022

Christopher leads Fabrum, a precision engineering company in Christchurch which has developed world-leading cryogenic technology. The AFCryocooler technology was chosen by NASA for use on the MARS Lander. And the America’s Cup team went to Fabrum to develop the technology for hydrogen powered foiling chase boats, which Fabrum developed in 5 weeks. Fabrum is driven by developing technological excellence whilst leaving the lightest footprint possible on the earth.

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Morgo Partners

Supported by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise