The Chair of the Startup Dunedin board, Wade Pearson brings over 10 years of experience in both law and startups - and you’d be surprised how often those two things cross over.

Startup Dunedin’s one-off microgrant fund has officially wrapped up, and one thing is for sure - there’s no shortage of great ideas and great founders in Ōtepoti. 

A box of random items, a few hours of ideation and two days to make a business. A pretty impressive feat for the 2025 cohort for Bachelor of Applied Management at Otago Polytechnic!

We had the pleasure earlier this week of stopping in on the Applied Management students for a workshop as part of their Business in a Box challenge - keep reading to find out how it all went down!

Startup Dunedin is lucky to have a board made of people who really go to bat for Dunedin and our entrepreneurial community. We’re stoked to have some awesome new faces on our Startup Dunedin board; including this week’s spotlight on Janine Kapa!

Janine brings with her a passionate involvement in Māori education spanning 30 years, with leadership roles across compulsory and tertiary education sectors, both locally and nationally. Keep reading for more about her and her journey.

At Startup Dunedin, we are big fans of the lean canvas, and we have recently revamped it to be easier and simpler than ever!

If you're currently working on a solution or have an idea, it's a great idea to take a look at a lean canvas to help you plan and focus on customer validation and problem-solution fit. Our new blog is here to help you do just that - take a look below.

Jo Kirkwood sits on the Startup Dunedin board as the Otago Polytechnic representative. With a background spanning policy, academia, and governance, Jo brings some really unique experience and a background supporting student entrepreneurship in Dunedin.

The Christmas period can be a minefield for those of us with a long list to buy for! If you’re looking for some awesome gifts for your friends and whānau, why not support Ōtepoti Dunedin and shop local this time around? 

The good news is that there’s loads of options from Dunedin businesses to tide you over - here’s a list of some of our top options for 2024.

Note: This list is by no means exhaustive! There’s far too many amazing businesses, startups, and organisations in our city to count - a great place to start for further research is here: https://www.dunedinnz.com/ 

This week, Startup Dunedin popped along to the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Regional Finals to cheer on the latest secondary-student-led startups coming out of Ōtepoti! 

Your tech stack is the set of technologies you use regularly. It can include how you keep track of your accounts, manage business operations, projects, collaborative tools, comms platforms, asset management, and more. 

You’ll find a list below of the different tools and technologies used by the startups who came along to our Distiller Incubator founders’ breakfast recently! Keep reading for our founders’ most-used tools.

In the ever-evolving landscape of startups No/Low Code website building platforms are proving to be a game-changer; they put the power to create snazzy business pages and apps in the hands of everyday founders through intuitive graphic interfaces. At Startup Dunedin we're passionate about equipping entrepreneurs with the tools they need. So today we’re checking out the No Code world and passing on some starting points for you to consider for your business idea!

The energy in the room at last night’s Audacious showcase was buzzing, with our Ōtepoti startup ecosystem coming together again to celebrate the amazing work from this year’s cohort of hardworking Audacious students!  This year, a massive 72 students from all areas of study at Otago University and Otago Polytechnic were involved in Audacious. With drinks in hand and the best spicy tortilla chips in the world (quote us on that - go on), we took our seats to cheer for the hard mahi, pivots, reworks, and new beginnings of our Audacious participants.

Here is a list of government departments and where and how they can help you on your startup Journey! We will start with the most commonly shared resources and then briefly talk about others and why you would check out their websites and potentially get in touch with them. This is not a full list so we always recommend doing your research.

3 top tools to help prioritise your time and give you more headspace when starting a business.

The first thing to remember is that the best way to reduce your time money and resources is to focus on validation.

Validation can be seen as three parts of a Venn diagram; where all three parts overlap is the “sweet spot” that indicates the best chance of a successful business. The three parts of the Venn diagram are Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility.

Kia ora to our vibrant and ever-growing Startup Dunedin community! You might have noticed a little bit of change around the Startup Dunedin space lately. As our General Manager Rachel Butler has begun her parental leave, we’ve welcomed some friendly new faces to the team. 

So, as we prepare to say goodbye to 2023 at the end of this month, we reckon this is a great time to introduce (and reintroduce) the dedicated individuals you’ll meet with - or run into at Strictly Coffee - behind the scenes at Startup Dunedin.

Solved a big problem or made a surprising discovery in your academic work recently? You’ll probably want to consider the commercial potential of your hard work! The best way to do that is to understand and validate whether your idea could be a successful business opportunity.

Dunedin's startup ecosystem came to life once again last week, as we all  took our seats at Petridish for the latest edition of FoundX!

A round of applause for student entrepreneurship, please, Ōtepoti. We know that The University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic students have the edge but it’s always the best time of the year, seeing it in action. 

This week, Startup Dunedin sat down with our wider ecosystem together for drinks, nibbles, and a big group-congratulations. We’ve watched all the hard mahi our Audacious students have put in over the last months, and it’s been quite the adventure. Some have pivoted, some have re-worked, some have validated, some have started all over again from scratch; but all of them have something to be seriously proud of.

One of Startup Dunedin’s core values is that innovation requires success and failure.

That failure part? Turns out it’s pretty important. In fact, failure can be just as much of a success as, well, success. The lessons you learn, the skills you pick up, and the connections you make can be the spark that ignites the next big flame.

For Cameron Templer, who founded the npw-closed startup Yezmac, the journey has just begun.

We sat down with Cam for a quick Q&A on the ups and down that came with his entrepreneurial journey and the decision to close Yezmac.

Dunedin's startup scene just got a major power-up.

The newest startup welcomed into Startup Dunedin’s Distiller Incubator is Aftergame; an app designed for tabletop gamers to track their plays, share their results, and enhance their gaming experience. Team members Eric Poulin, John Brent, Eli Labes, and Chalene Scott are on a mission to revolutionise how we experience and remember our favourite board games - from Catan, to Monopoly, to everything in between. We caught up with the brains behind this venture for a very quick chat - here’s what we learned!

Perspectives and learnings from local female founders  at the second ever Electrify conference.

Recently, three women currently in Startup Dunedin’s Distiller Incubator had the unique opportunity to attend Electrify Aotearoa, presented by the good folks at Ministry of Awesome. Conferences like Electrify are a part of that solution. Just as a series of amazing wāhine took the national stage to share their wisdom, we’re excited to see how our local startups take that knowledge and turn it into real and tangible progress here in Ōtepoti.

Let’s recap some of that wisdom!

In collaboration with Polson Higgs, an advocate for all things starting-up

We’re really proud of the way that Ōtepoti, Dunedin has blossomed into a thriving hub for all things entrepreneurial and startups (for more on that, make sure you have a read of our previous blog!), as well as impactful community and creative arts projects. Here’s a roundup of some of the entrepreneurial programmes and awards you might not be as familiar with. 

— This blog is written by Wade Pearson, who is an associate in law firm Gallaway Cook Allan’s commercial team in Dunedin. This article is general in nature, so don’t use it as a substitute for legal advice.

Lawyers will generally tell you to get legal advice. But nowadays you can do a lot yourself, without paying a lawyer (especially as AI develops). So if you’re starting or growing a business, how do you know what you should and shouldn’t do yourself?

The advocates we have for the Ōtepoti startup ecosystem are numerous, and truly passionate about the city’s role in supporting new ideas. Someone who fits that description to a tee is Robin Gauld, who recently concluded his time on the Startup Dunedin board and his time as Pro-Vice Chancelor of Otago Business School. Robin is leaving behind a wealth of knowledge and experience, and some great tidbits of wisdom. 

Let’s take a moment to celebrate Robin's contributions by sharing five key things we learned from our time with him.

In the dynamic and ever-evolving world of entrepreneurship, Steph Benseman and Mason Bleakley have already had quite the journey - from helping fledgling startups and young entrepreneurs find their feet, to ending up listed in Forbes 30 under 30 Asia for their work with  First Cut. 

What is a customer persona?

Customer personas are a helpful tool to understand a startup's customers and target audience. We recommend them as a great task to help startups with their process of market validation.

When developing a customer persona, it helps to think of one specific customer (and name them), rather than a stereotype (plus, it’s more fun that way). If you are unsure who your customer is- this blog may be helpful.

Grace is the newest member of Startup Dunedin, having taken over as Programme Facilitator a.k.a startup lead, this week following her move from Tauranga.

This role will see her engaging directly with our startups, providing support for founders and delivering workshops right here in Ōtepoti, Dunedin. 

Despite the obvious drop in temperature, I was keen to learn more about how Grace is adjusting to her brand new (she’s 7 days in!) spot in Otago, and what excites her about the road ahead.

Picture this: You’ve recently taken up the mantle as a personal trainer, but getting your content out to clients is proving to be a bit of a headache.  The industry standards like emails and spreadsheets are outdated, and this is where ONI Workout comes in.