Business Is Boring The Spinoff

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Emma Ogilvie and Nick Landsman from Bar Céleste.


You’ve probably seen their food on Instagram: people ripping into a whole flounder doused in delicious butter, the late-night filet o' market fish, the pop-ups and the restaurant full of patrons drinking orange wines and spritzes.
For a new spot, Bar Céleste has been received extremely well. It was named the best new opening of 2019 by Viva, reviewed glowingly by Metro, and is now a fixture and favourite of food influencer EatLitFood.


If you haven’t been yet, you might wonder what’s so different about this 'neo-bistro' idea. Inspired by a new style of dining that's grown in France, it's where the idea for Bar Céleste began. Brought together by the team behind the La Pêche pop-ups that happened first in Paris and then around Auckland, Emma Ogilvie and Nick Landsman joined Business is Boring this week to talk about what goes into creating a dining experience and how in hospitality – a notoriously fickle industry – opening a restaurant is never as easy as it seems. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

This week's podcast guest is a Kiwi making a big impact on the global travel scene. 
You might remember a few years ago, a couple of NZ lads blew up on kickstarter with their clever carry-on bag.  With a short fun video and a cool traveller friendly bit of kit, full of compartments and tech device friendliness, they landed more than ten times their target and then managed to deliver  -on time -that much larger than expected order.
Then, they did it again with their second bag, outperforming even the success of the first time. 
The brand is Minaal, a much loved essential for many travellers, and with its premium features, community of supporters and minimalist design, it has become a global hit. 
The two founders landed on the idea as a way to continue a life lived abroad, and it’s still working - with this week’s podcast guest, co-founder Jimmy Hayes in Auckland on a trip back from Japan, one of their biggest markets and one of his home bases.
To talk making a dream into a life, global success, taking on an industry with massive incumbents, and the power of the crowd, Jimmy Hayes joined us for a half hour chat. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Morris Pita from EmergencyQ.
You might have been unlucky enough to have been sitting with a kid at an emergency department, wondering just how long it might take and if you were even in the right place. It's not a nice feeling, or a very productive one, and it turns out that a lot of people in the queue ahead of you, and maybe even you, might not be best served at that place.
This insight helped lead this week’s podcast guest to take a side-step from a successful academic and business career into software entrepreneurship. He made an app called EmergencyQ that works with DHBs and emergency and community health providers to make sure everyone gets the fastest, most appropriate care for their needs.
It's saving millions of dollars, countless hours, and meaning stretched emergency departments can better prioritise working on the highest-need cases.
The app is the idea of Morris Pita, who gained an MBA at Oxford, was involved in delivering some of the biggest clean energy generation projects in the country, and became a consultant working on significant Māori economic development projects.
To talk the journey, the goals of EmergencyQ and economic development, Pita joined Business is Boring for a chat. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Greg Brebner from Blunt Umbrellas.


This week on the podcast, a business that began with the realisation that umbrellas really sucked, that's grown into a business turning the industry inside-out. Blunt Umbrellas sell brollies for 5-10 times more than the market, are found in countries all around the world, and have now sold over a million units of their signature styles.


Through fashion collaborations, a lot of market building, and clever design they have created their own section of the market for their wind proof, strong, beautifully designed umbrellas, that won’t take your eye out or be heading straight to landfill after seeing some weather.
To talk about making an idea into reality, the importance of a clear vision, and loving bad weather, creator and inventor Greig Brebner joined the podcast. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Bridie Picot, founder of Thing Industries and Wrappy.


This week’s podcast is a chat about turning cool ideas into great businesses, around day-jobs and responsibilities, and having those products be picked up by some of the great taste arbiters in the world. Bridie Picot started out in New Zealand, and then went to London and New York, working at some of the most influential ad agencies in the world. Around the edges she always had an interest in design, thoughtful and warm characterful pieces. She turned this love into Thing Industries, a partnership with a New Zealand based designer. The brand grew, running fashion collaborations, was named the maker of the year by local title Urbis, and was featured in Wallpaper* and in the New York Times for its playful products like the Banana Pillow and a chair with no seat.


From this Bridie has launched Wrappy, a design-led gift-wrap business, and also The Shack, an artfully composed rental project in upstate New York. To talk making it in the Big Apple and turning ideas into reality we caught up with Bridie in the studio on a visit home. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds.


On this week's Business is Boring, host Simon Pound talks to a founder and chief investment officer who has taken a company from starting with a small loan to having a billion under management in just over a decade.


If you were a uni student around the year 2000 you might remember that you could draw down student loans, ostensibly for living, but we would all know stories of people who turned them into trips, parties or other forms of massive future liability. I went to a study trip in Russia on mine and resented the debt for the next twenty years. But how many people do you know who were onto-it enough to use that opportunity as the seed capital to kickstart an investment career? One that now means this week's podcast guest runs a company with $1b under management that has returned $350m to its clients.


Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds, turned his $3000 and some other funds into $200k, attracting investment enough to go out on his own. Then the financial crisis hit. He battled through, bought while the getting was good, and was able to build his way to some of the best returns in the business.


Today they are involved in funds management, wealth advisory and Juno KiwiSaver, which offers a low-fee model that they are now challenging the industry to match.


I got to know Mike when I did some writing for his company, and was amazed at his story, so it is a great pleasure to welcome him as a guest on Business is Boring. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy