July 3, 2024 • 46 mins
When you've had one of the most successful careers in business in New Zealand, what do you do next?
For Xero founder Rod Drury the answer is to spend days mountain biking around Queenstown, wing foiling when he gets the chance, and meeting with government and business leaders to get national improvement initiatives moving.
He's pushed for the separation of energy generation and retailing, campaigned for more water storage across the country, worked to get an autonomous public transport system set up in Queenstown, advocated for the reduction of electronic payments fees, and spent days with Ngāi Tahu supporting environmental clean up.
In this rare interview, Drury goes deep into the why and how of all these, plus reflections on Xero, artificial intelligence, private funding of public infrastructure, and more.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
When we talk about success of New Zealand tech companies,
there's always one name and one company that tops that list,
and that's Rod Dreary and Zero.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Zero founders set out in two thousand and seven
to make accounting software a pleasure to use and fulfilled
his vision of creating a truly global tech company all
the way from Wellington.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
In May this year, Zero reported one point seven billion
dollars in revenue, a jump of twenty two percent its
back end profit, and it is impressing the market with
its growth potential.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Zero's share price on the ASX had a healthy bump
after its full year results, which are really an endorsement
of how current CEO took kinder syn Cassidy, who's been
in the job for around sixteen months, is leading this
twenty billion dollar software giant.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
But what about Drury? What's that guy been up to?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
So I've been really thinking about what's our version of
Saturday Arabian oil?
Speaker 5 (00:55):
And I think that's renewable electricity And I've spent a
lot of time I'm just pulling the string on that.
I think we should be doing. What we did, like
with UFB, is.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
To structural separation of the electricity industry and have a
goal of you know, if you say you're going to
get to carbon zero, it's like going on a diet.
No one wants to do that, and you kind of
know you won't get there. Whereas if we reframed it
to having the lowest cost renewable energy in the world,
everyone gets that.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I'm Peter Griffin.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
And I'm been more and on the business attack powered
by two Degrees Business. This week, we catch up with
Rod Drury, who's been largely off the radar in the
last few years, but clearly keeping busy on some post
zero projects.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, he has, and really he did a little bit
over the pandemic. He did some web conferences and panel
discussions and that sort of thing. But Rod's been really
sort of off the radar in terms of media for
a few years now, and last year he stepped down
officially as a non executive director of Zero. He stepped
(01:56):
down from the board. He's still going in there to
work with the product people. He's very interested in where
the product roadmap is going. But I was really interested
in what else he's doing. We've heard a little bit
about projects brewing in Queenstown. He's a real passionate mountain biker,
so he's been working on some passion projects down there,
so I just really wanted to see where he's going.
(02:18):
So I literally had him around and we had a
chat a couple of weeks ago, and it was just
after the Apple Intelligence launch. He's a big passionate Apple fan,
so I wanted to get his views on that, reflecting
back over Zero and some of those forward looking things
that he's interested in. So a really good opportunity to
catch up with illuminary off the tech world in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Absolutely, it's great timing as well. I just published a
story about Zero's use of AI either this week or
early next week, so that will be an interesting companion
read to this episode. I think the conversation you had
with Roderury dips into AI a little bit, but goes
much beyond that and really kind of talks about his
(03:00):
vision for New Zealand as a whole. Quite interesting to
hear his perspective considering the influential character that he is.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Here's my sit down with Rod Drury, Zero founder, done
lots of other stuff as well. A good opportunity to
catch up on exactly what he's up to. So Rod,
welcome to the business of tech. It's been a long time.
Great to see you. But I do remember quite clearly
back in two thousand and seven, we spent a couple
of days together in Silicon Valley, a group of Kiwi
(03:30):
tech entrepreneurs part of the Pole Blacks. This is the
Segway polo team that you were part of that was
playing Steve Wozniak's team, the co founder.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yeah, So that was.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Quite an interesting experience watching that sport that you were
involved in.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Well, I mean I do dine out on that a bit.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
I can tell people I was a national rep and
a sport the pole Blacks. Unfortunately, only criteria for being
a Pole Black was to own a Sedgeway, so you know,
it was a short lived sporting career.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And I remember down at the polo club on the
Front in San Francisco. They're very serious, you know, they
take that sport very seriously.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So that was fun.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
But I think the next day what really struck with me.
This was just after the release of the iPhone, and
this obviously really inspired you. This was the original iPhone
in two thousand and seven, and we went for a
drive and you were telling us about the convergence off
cloud computing and the rise of this incredible mobile device.
And this was before the app store, but what you
(04:27):
would be able to do with applications on that device.
And you told us about what your plan was for Zero,
which it was just getting off the ground.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
So it's incredible that journey.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Seventeen years later, Zero's last months reported its results one
point seven billion dollars in operating revenue, four point two
million customers. You pull it off exactly that vision you
had back in two thousand and seven to make accounting
software nice to use based on those fundamental technologies. Have
you ever paused, Have you had time to pull and
(05:00):
think and reflect on that journey that you've been on.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean it's amazing seeing the results come out
last week. I actually went back went WHOA at one
point seven billion because I remember our first year, I
think we were the smallest, the smallest revenue of any
public company in the world, like one hundred and seventeen
grand I think was our first annual amount of revenue,
and then it was I we got to three hundred
and nine hundred. We used to know all the numbers
(05:23):
off by heart. And remember going to ten million was great.
And then you know, we used to have all those
summits and I remember Rod Aoram once he asked me
a question and I said, oh, you know, it's the
three B shouldn't be there, was it, Boat Batch and BMW.
They should be building billion dollar businesses from the beach.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
Whenever I saw a Rod.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
He kept reminding me of that, and we always had
those discussions about we just need a few more hundred
million dollar companies. So now we do one hundred million
a month, you know, and that was huge. I hadn't
realized that we actually made profit, like half a billion
of profit.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
What the hell? Yeah, you know, and even.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
The way back then, you wanted to grow this thing
from New Zealand and it's now ASX listed all around
the world, but still fundamentally in New Zealand business.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So you've you ticked off that goal. Yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Just the community of other businesses have grown around us.
So we had an open ecosystem from day one and
a lot of my close friends were now people that
built their companion accounting software businesses around the platform that
we had.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
And there were people used to see.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
At all of our zero con events around the world
every year, and that's become a really key part of
my friend groups because we've had this shared history of
building cloud accounting over the last you know, fifteen seventeen
years has been amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, you step down as a non executive director late
last year August twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Or something like that.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Seventeen years of board meetings.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Man, Yeah, you know, of anyone you would not want
to have as a board member, it's me.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
But I had to do it and it was nice.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
And I said it at the annual meeting when we
started zero and my daughter was and she's at university now,
so literally her whole life and it was just time
to get off the all that travel and that sort
of stuff. But you know, a great team. I love
going in there and doing product strategy work. Still there's
(07:14):
you know, I keep saying, it's still just the beginning.
We built this amazing platform, and it's neat when you
see new bits of technology like AI is obviously the
new thing, and everyone's talking about large language models. We
have probably the largest financial model and such a by
doing boring accounting, we just have this amazing graph of
financial information for small businesses all over the world, and
(07:36):
we have so much customer to demand to do things.
It's been to allocated enough resources and time to do
some of the cool things I've always wanted to.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Do over the top.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
But I just watched Zero Con in London a few
days ago, and you know, we've got this just zero
product which is starting to unlock that. But we're just
at the beginning. There's so much more we can do.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, so that you know you saw back then, obviously
cloud computing and then the app economy which you sort
of built on and fostered yourself with zero and all
the companies that plug into that ecosystem. So now obviously
generative AI. We've had AI throughout the last twenty years
in various guises, but it's really exploded with jen Ai.
You've got jacks, as you say, being built into zero.
(08:19):
But what's your take on what this fundamentally means for
software development and the opportunities potentially for New Zealand software
developers to Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
I'm pretty cautious about new trends like blockchain. I never
got you know, I never thought that the city bitcoined out.
I never thought that sovereign governments want to lose control
of the money supply. So it's been interesting watching AI.
It does look like there really is something there. But
I watched the ww DC Apple keynote last week, and
(08:47):
you know what you can do with generative AI is
you know, that's been pretty amazing over the last year
watching that. But you know, we knew that Apple was
acquiring a lot of AI technologies and what they have
done with their personal AI where it can mind your
own messages and emails and then you ask the question
what time is Mum's flight coming in tomorrow? That's kind
of that feels really cool. That's going to touch everybody,
(09:10):
so I think it's quite exciting. But my big dilemma
is I've managed to avoid all those mail clients and
just been having Gmail on my phone and being able
to just get a picture of my email and not
have to download everything. But now we've got this opt
in decision whether we want to go for personal AI,
which is the LinkedIn post I wrote last week that
(09:30):
you ping.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Me back on. So that's really interesting.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Things are changing, and thinking about what Apple's done from
a competitive point of view is so interesting, Like what
does it mean with their Google relationship. Where does Google
go now? And then the amount of lock and we'll
get with personal AI. It's a big decision. Some people
we saw in the comments of the post is just
completely don't want to be locked in, and other people
(09:54):
will surrender it to it for convenience. After the Apple keynote,
things have got really interesting in the AI aispace and
watching a lot of that at the moment.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
It is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And even in the Windows space as well with the
Copilot PCs, Microsoft is doing a similar thing with a
neural processing unit on needs devices. So the idea of
doing a lot more of this intensive stuff on the
device instead of constantly having to go to the cloud.
That starts to change the dynamic and the angst around
sustainability and data centers. Everything is happening on these increasingly
(10:25):
powerful devices that are sitting in front of you.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
Yeah, no, it's everything's changing. It's interesting.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
I've sort of poo poo the idea of doing a
big data center in the South because we're always remember
the Pacific Fiber days, we're always one hundred million seconds
from the States, and a lot of the financial apps
need that super fast speed.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
But now we're training for AI.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
The biggest constraint is a renewable green electricity and doing
a data center down there and with a potentially there's
talk of a new cable from in the cargo to
Sydney and Melbourne. That kind of makes sense now because
we could have an abundance of renewable electricity, which is
a constraint. And of course in the electricity industry, no
(11:07):
one was modeling. Janitor of AI is going to take
off in a few years, so we should be, you know,
ten xing our supply of green electricity. And I saw
the numbers. You know, a lot of places in Europe
absolutely running out of electricity, and so there's a direct
link between it's happening in AI and opportunities for us
here in New Zealand where that one hundred milliseconds doesn't matter.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Lots of excitement.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, So you describe yourself on LinkedIn these days as
fun employed.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
What have you been doing?
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:38):
So, like when I left Zero, I think we had
about two and a half thousand people. We're up to
about five thousand. We're in the falls now. It's a
pretty big organization. It becomes less about doing product work
and more around you know how you run a global
organizational as people think. So Steve was perfect to come
in and run that part of the business and that
got us to a point where we were able to
(11:59):
land like a really good global CEO. And sekinda's doing
an amazing job. There's a great article for we had
on her and Forbes just in the last few days.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
I picked a note last night, just so.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Proud of her and hearing her story. And I always
think they're companies. I always get a bit embarrassed about
the founder thing. I think it's a bit like having children.
They go off and do their own things. So I've
never been precious about it. And you know, I'm just
proud this thing has a life and other people can
go and do it. So what was interesting about Zero
was it you know, it was just being a public company.
(12:31):
It's just a roller coaster you can't get off. And
you know, every half year, thank goodness, every half year,
not every quarter. We do our financial results where every
dollar you spent, every taxi that everyone spent, any business
class fair. You're standing there in front of the market
explaining it. And then you know that you can't hide
from the revenue numbers as well. Right, So it was,
(12:51):
you know, twelve fifteen years of pretty stressful public eye.
Great fun, but it does this roller coaster you just
can't get off. And I kind of figured, you know,
we were a twenty four y seven business on Christmas Day,
there's you know, one hundred thousand people on the servers.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
It just doesn't stop.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
So I figured I'd kind of accordioned my career into
a shorter amount of time. So when I stopped, I
did lily said, well, I'm not going to go and
work again. If I wanted to keep working, I'd start
at zero because there's so much more to do and
in a good you know, fortunate to be in a
good position financially where I could do some other things.
Speaker 5 (13:29):
While we were doing zero.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
I was really holding this idea of a Chief Technology
Officer of New Zealand and got that through his policy.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
But you kind of have that normal dilemma in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
You don't really you know, once you've kind of come
out of the public eye, you don't want to be
accountable for too much. So people that kind of were
asked to do it didn't really want to do it,
and then you end up with a.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Committee doing things and not too much has happened.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
So I kind of feel, as I've been riding my
bikes in Queenstown, what are those really big projects where
someone like me who has the you know, time and
interest to do good things for New Zealand, how how
can we or how can I go and help and
move things forward? Because when you don't have a vested interest,
you can actually have really good conversations. So I've been
(14:12):
really thinking about, you know, what's our version of Saturday
Arabian oil? And I think it's renewable electricity. So I've
spent a lot of time just pulling the string on that.
You know, we only store two months worth of water.
The way the market works, you know, we will never
get to one hundred percent renewable electricity, and we still
have quite high electricity where we know there's no marginal cost.
(14:34):
It's you know, of of hydro, it's the cost of
infrastructure and the more units you use, the cheaper it
should be. Right, So in theory, you could basically set
eultricity prices wherever you like if you had unlimited supply.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
So where I've landed on that is I.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Think we should be doing what we did, like with
the UFB is do structural separation of the electricity industry
and have a goal of you know, if you say
you're going to get to cart zeris like going on
a diet. No one wants to do that and you
kind of know you won't get there. Whereas if we
reframed it to having the lowest cost renewable energy in
the world, everyone gets that right. It's great for business,
(15:11):
it's great for consumers, it's great for making life more
affordable for people. I've being based in Queenstown quite a
lot where we actually make electricity, a lot of it
around that Southland area. There's an idea of do we
kind of start down there and use Southland as a
test lad for changing the electricity market. So that's been
really interesting getting involved with that. So we're looking at
(15:33):
thickening up all the power lines around Southland, getting an
intervention from government to move the rental car fleet and
campavan fleet to all electric, which lifts the demand and
then we can afford to spend more on infrastructure down there,
putting a new cable from Kingston to Franktin so we
get our diverse electricity supply. In fixing Queenstown's public transport.
(15:57):
It's a really interesting model that I go from the States.
Doctor Neil jacob Stein talks about the pat model, population
affluence and technology. If you want to keep lifestyle as
population grows, you've got to use technology, and Queen Sound
to me feels like the perfect test.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Lab for doing some of those things.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
So through COVID we looked at small autonomous buses to
fix the transport problems. And what I've kind of worked
out is that you know, there's no money in central
government with all the things that have happened in the
last year. It was even less in local government and
being able to partner. It's all about how do you
raise the money to do these things. The Aussie super
(16:36):
funds have trillions of dollars sitting there. They would normally
give it out to fund managers to invest in Amazon, Google,
Ali Barber, companies that won't pay domestic tax and creating
employment issues. They're actually looking for good domestic infrastructure to
invest in so they get an outcome. So rather than
asking the government for money, I think the model is,
let's actually, you know what we have as an opportunity
(16:59):
here in Zealand is a be this global test lab
as we have in the past, but be working with
those super funds New Zealand super Fun, Australian super funds
work with local bodies and float up these proof of
concepts that those overseas investors can get a working site
like in Queenstown. So the business case for fixing public
transport in Queenstown is not Queenstown. It's not putting another
(17:20):
whole through Mount Victoria and it's taking three or four
billion out of Auckland light Rail. So you know, one
example of that is the is the Wish cable car
where the cables fixed and the motors are in the
cable cars, so low marginal cost once you've got that.
And we've been looking at this really cool technology called Dromos,
which a little four person electric bus pods which operate
(17:42):
in a one point four meter wide dedicated lane, so
they're not robotaxis that integrate with traffic. They just go
down essentially a cycleway, so it's a bit of curb
and channel which is pretty cheap and you can actually
fit that in the road constraints we have because we
need an autonomous solution, because to get a bar worker
home at two in the morning and a ski worker
to the to the bus first thing in the morning,
(18:05):
so bus drivers don't really work and it's quite a
small place where we could fix it. So Glenn Sowery,
the airport CEO, he's given us some land to do
a trial could be airport rental car. So trying to
actually do things in New Zealand's got really hard.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
But because I've got.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Time, I can just go and do all the meetings
and see where the barrier is and say hey, why
don't we And that's been really fun talking to ministers
and officials you know, mayors, and you know, well, why
can't we do it?
Speaker 5 (18:34):
What's the what you know?
Speaker 4 (18:35):
The big thing is can we actually go and not
ask them for money, but just permission to do it
and raise that money?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, it seems to be the frame of mind of
the coalition government at the moment. There's no money anyways,
so but we will fast track things. We will allow
you to cut through the red tape. What would you
take on the parking the pumped hydro like Onslow in
(19:02):
favor of consenting more renewables.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
What was good about Onslow is we actually talked about
doing some more dams because I think, you know, our
competitive advantage is having hills and having rain. And if
we think of water as an asset, which I think
it is, then you can clean rivers, you can do
more plant based proteins downstream. There's a whole lot of
goodness comes from it. But when you're in New Zealand,
there's two key values. You've got to worry about the environment,
(19:28):
and you've got to think about equality as well. That's
a very key value that New Zealanders have, which doesn't
exist in many other places as well. So you've got
to think about everything through that lens. And you know,
I was chatting to a geny Sage and James show around.
We should do some more water storage. It's not thinking
(19:48):
about the supply side. Get people excited about the demand side.
So again, if we said, hey, look we're a small country.
You can't flow more than an hour and a half
in any direction. What about in ten years we completely
made the domestic aviation fleet electric, so you'd have super
cheap flying and no carbon gilt. Do you want that? Yes,
(20:09):
that sounds great. Right, let's have a mature discussion around
water storage. And I think now with energy, sovereignty and
all those sort of things that conversation is happening. And
what's been nice with all the work we've been doing,
the conversations had over the last five years, you're actually
hearing things like structural separation of electricity is being repeated
and said, and we saw that with UFB.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Right, we have amazing internet.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Because it's really hard to have public companies invest in
infrastructure because it's a long term. Yet there's a whole
lot of infrastructure funds that are looking to earn a
say five to seven percent, So you know what structural
separation of electricity could be as we buy all the
lines and there's the entity like Chorus for telecommunications, so
(20:54):
that's kind of fading a little bit. But imagine if
we had that infrastructure company that had transpower and the
gen generation in it. It just pays its five percent,
so the super funds are happy and there's a regulated
wholesale price. The goal of it could be to have
really good ultricity supply, get to one hundred percent renewable,
but also give us the lowest cost wholesale price. And
(21:15):
as they get more money through those connection fees and
that wholesale price, then they can invest more in the network.
So infrastructure should be funded by infrastructure funds and then
retail investors should invest in risk so smart networks meters
and like, this isn't something that would happen overnight. So
the existing listed entities energy companies which are vertically integrated
(21:36):
have ten or fifteen years to you know, to modify
their business to do the risky stuff over the.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Top, knowing they've got the lowest.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Possible electricity wholesale price they can go for. So I
mean that's you know, to me, that is one of
the really big vision things we could be doing in
New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, and you know they are talking up at the
moment what they did with UFB and the success of
that and trying to replicate that model with the Crown
fiber hole in and do it on different types of projects.
What's your sense with this coalition government? You've been interested
in politics, You've been a donor to the act Party,
so you've now.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Got international into the Greens, right.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So yeah, so you've spread the money around, you're interested
in politics. What do you make about this coalition? And
it's what it's articulating for you know, some of the
stuff we need to happen, but it's going to take
maybe thirty to fifty year vision.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I think I think everyone's in the right place, and
the reality is is that they've got more to do
every day than they've got time to do. So I
think you've got to understand what their goals are and then.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
Do the work.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
And the big thing is like there's no money. So
I think that's where it's interesting. We're business people like
me who are used to raising money in Australia and
working with overseas investors. I didn't understand much about infrastructure,
but I have understood it over the last few years.
I think that's where we can help, where we can say, okay,
we know what we want to do as a country.
(23:00):
We actually had the relationship's going to raise the money,
we want to do it fair. We have different goals here.
There'll be a commercial return, but the appropriate return for
the risk. And then but we you know, we want
to build something that's intergenerational. So I mean, I'm you know,
I'm probably the whitest Natahu people person that you've met.
But you know, one of the values we had at
(23:21):
zero was that.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
Long term intergenerational thinking.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
And my father Ken he was when he was around
he was very proud of his Natalia upbringing. So I've
been reconnecting back with the tribe. Got to spend a
lot of time with Ta Tipinay of the last year
and a lot of the senior people there, and they're
thinking about these intergenerational things. And what I love about
our Kinnomari thinking, which is part about his Zealand culture,
is that long term intergenerational thinking, and that really ties
(23:47):
in really.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
Well with infrastructure as well.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
So there's some real positives around lining people up and
getting us thinking long term and thinking about, you know,
things being better for our children and what do we
leave behind. So and I think, what you know, when
you've had the business success that we had with zero,
then that's the natural thing moving away from that kind
of three year thinking to that long term thinking, which
(24:11):
is why it's quite good backing some of these strategy
stuff into Natahu, which is an intergenerational organization, makes a
whole lot of sense. So yeah, it's been a really
nice connection getting that long term thing in it. When
you have heavy sessions, everyone's like, yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
But it's all.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
About implementation, manifesting action, getting things happening, and I think
coming from business where again you're judged every six months.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
You just naturally biased towards getting things done.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Appropriate action is one of our values and you know,
after every meeting, what's the next step?
Speaker 5 (24:43):
How do we get to it? Why can't we do that?
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah, and we have done that in pockets.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I think in New Zealand the space industry has been
sort of fantastic and Peter Beck's been at the height
of that. The software is a service in this area.
But there's other areas that it's just very high for
us to get traction and like you know, the energy stuff.
Why is that some areas we've done well. In other
areas we're just banging our heads against the brick wall.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
I think we've been really timid as a nation over
the last ten years and we've just been scared to,
you know, to take that step and be accountable. So
that gets very frustrating for a business person, right where
you have to deliver or you publicly fail. And I
think that's getting the the partnership working with government is
that where you actually drive, you know, you push things.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
You don't take no for an answer.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Straight away, you actually push, push a little bit harder
to make things happen, and then if you can start
changing that culture, then I think it is a culture change.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
So finding a few iconic.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Projects that actually are used to change culture is the
way to do it. So and picking a bite sized chunk,
So running a renewable energy strategy in Southland makes a
whole lot of sense, and then we can get the
model working.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
People can see.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Actually that wasn't that hard. Everyone everyone wins. It's been
done for the right reasons. So when I say that
we're timid, like mean that, and we're not looking at
the effect of globalization that's happening on small countries like ourselves.
So what we're seeing with tech is global operators that
(26:12):
are funded out of the low cost capital environment to
build global platforms with low marginal cost coming into being
able to enter each new market, you know, really easily.
So one of the projects I've picked up, I was
just chatting to Minister Bailey last week about it. As
credit card surcharges, it's not suddenly they're everywhere, and you
know there's no cost of moving money, Like moving money
(26:34):
costs less than a cent, you know, it's one hundredth
of a cent. Yet we're paying these percentage fees, so
we've got a three or four percent inflation across everybody.
But it's just untidy. These things are meant to be contactless,
but we don't have to content them.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
We've got to.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Accept the surcharge. And why is it a percentage fee?
Costantly no more money to move. So there's been a
whole lot of reasons why banks have been incentivized to
move transactions off our great fpost networ work onto overseas rails.
But these multinationals, you know, with a very few staff,
are taking I think it might be two or three
billion dollars out of New Zealand booking dot Com up
(27:09):
to thirty percent sometimes more of chargers to our tourism
operators here and they don't get the cash till like
a year later when the.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Service has been fulfilled.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
So doing a little bit of work with New Zealand
Tourism on creating a data architecture where we all work
together as a team.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
Another project I've been.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Picking up as well, So some of those big picture
things that are long term things to fix. Having a
lot of fun just leaning into those projects.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Well that's great because there's so much potential in our
fintech space, and you know there are a lot of
really cool startups working in New Zealand in that area,
but they are constrained because the environment here. Working with
the big banks, they are a stumbling block, are opposition
to a lot of the innovation. You know, there is
supposedly the consumer data right coming, so things are just
(27:57):
so slow to get off the ground. But something like
as you say, we've got this great FPOs network that
has served us, well, why can't we just do contactless
through that as the primary voice?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
Well that's fascinating too because now the phone operators Apple
primarily are in the space right so they won't unlock
the secure enclave so you can do face id direct
banking or whatever. And even the a triple CE in
Australia with Australian banks couldn't break that a few years ago.
So maybe we've got to link our regulatory environment to Europe.
(28:28):
So they've had wins with USBC, wins with the app
store because we're too small, but maybe we've got a
link and so we can open those up. And you
would have seen on the Apple develop a keynote. They're
now doing that kind of Venmo Apple card to cards,
so with you know, as soon as Apple came out
with the credit cards, surely then they're vertically integrated all
(28:48):
the way through and they should have to unlock the
secure enclave.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Got to be careful though.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
I don't want to wake up with a horse head
in my bed, point the breaks go in my car
and the sort of while you know you can ever.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Look, Yeah, you're obviously having good, good conversations, really productive
things with ministers and that. Yeah, that idea that you
floated for the CTO for New Zealand sort of seems
like we still really need it. Was it really disappointing
to you how that sort of fizzled out? Was that
frustrating to you to see that the way that played out?
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
No, it's kind of fun to watch. But that's the thing.
You know, New Zealanders don't want to put their head
up too much. But you know, after being in the
NBR every day with open comments, you.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
Develop a bit of a thick skin.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
So I don't I don't want to get paid to
do anything or have to do anything. I really do
like doing these fun, big projects, but you don't have
to spend every day doing them. You can just nudge
them along and have really stimulating conversations.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I mean, you know, I just want to be ambitious
for New Zealand. And remember back in the old Results
Area nine days where we looked at how to be
the most efficient.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Consumer to government. You know, I think that should still
be our goal, right.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
We should be the poster child where people come down
here to see how things are done and you know,
having good chats with Doo. Hopefully will have online driver's
license so that it'll be part of your Apple Walllet
it'll be a cool one. Working on digital identity is
super interesting. That touches everything we're doing.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
So there's a lot of fun things to do and
they're good to spend time on.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
And that digital identity is integral. We've got the Digital
Identity Trust framework that they're building here. What's your take
on that. Does it make sense for the government to
sort of build a bigger version of real me? Do
we need that sort of authentication?
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Yeah? I think you do. You just want the key.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
What I've been saying is kind of identity has been
one you know, sign them with Apple sign of a
Google sign on Facebook whatever, link that to your real
me ID and then so it's really easy for consumers
to get to it. And that's only that kind of
winning of sin Ons only happened in the last couple
of years. So when you're running ten year projects and
things are moving so quickly, you do have to be
(31:10):
you know, maybe we're too early with real Me, but
I think that could be solved elegantly now. Tech Spaan's
a really good one. We've put some solutions up to
DIA that could be quite easily solved. I love the
idea of it, all of government messaging app so you
can sign them with real Me and then you only
have one application for government, and then smaller agencies can
drop messaging in. So the Atomic Technology great company, we've
(31:34):
kind of solved that problem. So working with for government
agencies on that at the moment. But I think what
we're seeing through these processes is getting government to say, hey,
just reach out to industry. You've got a bunch of
smart people, you know what don at Rise has done,
and a bunch of other good multinationals. They've got the solutions.
And New Zealand's so subscale we don't have to reinvent
(31:55):
the wheel with a lot of things. But we're also
small enough we can do cool things and be seen
as lee in the world of this like we used
to be ten twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
There was attempts, you know, Siien Taylor and others during
COVID sort of tried to get a lot of this
sort of stuff going in a short time frame solutions
to this crisis that we had.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
It sort of didn't really go very well.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
That collaboration Sam Morgan was involved in there, trying to
basically help the government out to with technology to get
things done. Quacker, Do you get a sense that there's
more scope for for that sort of interaction now?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I think the rise of the big cloud platforms, you know, Aws, Google,
Microsoft with Azure. You know, there's just the ability to
spin up things were pretty low initial upfront cost. And
we're so small ony five million people, you know, which
is which is the size of a US city. But
you've seen that the conversation definitely changed. I had a
really good, interesting conversation and so daa yesterday around well,
(32:53):
rethink the partnering model just you know, allow New Zealand
vendors to come in with their overseas partners and define
the problem, not the solution, and then let smart people
go and do it and just try a few small
ones first and don't be scared of that, and then
hopefully we can just speed things up about So there
is that cultural change to speed things up. But you know,
(33:15):
we have to be aware too that we are part
of a global world. And one of the things that's
frustrating is we haven't had a national conversation around where
we sit in the world post COVID and with this,
with this globalization where workers can work anywhere in the world.
So I mean, we're not at zero, We're not really
competing against local businesses. We're competing against Microsoft, Amazon. We've
(33:37):
got former colleagues that are living in Queenstown and Wanaka
working for these big multinationals. Like things have changed, So
do we want to welcome the smartest in the world?
In especially geopolitically, we're still seen as a pretty safe place.
But for some reason we've seen to worry about people
coming in here and buying houses. Yet we said let's
(33:57):
put a tax on them. Everyone said, well, that's fine.
Then we knew our price. But unfortunately, the way the
coalition worked, we didn't have that. So you've got super
bright people in the world that want to come and
live here and contribute, and we keep them out, which
seems nuts.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
So obviously, you know you've made money from zero, which
is great for you doing philanthropic stuff, but you're also
investing some of that money back in Radio Ventures is
the company you're involved in, Yeah, tell us about what
you're doing.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
There.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Apparently a deep tech sort of focus to that.
Speaker 5 (34:30):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
So again, because I've done all I've done all this
quite a lot, I don't really want to go and
spend a lot of time in business. I want to
do other things like ride mount and bikes and go
wing foiling and that sort of stuff, and sold these
big New Zealand projects. But just as you know, part
of my portfolio, Rate Adventures is our vcarm and it's
fun being involved with founders. We brought a whole lot
of them to Wellington last year and showed them around
(34:52):
and getting portfolios together and seeing them help each.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Other is really cool.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
So that one there is kind of deep tech, you know,
done sas and that's I'm not too interested in that,
but you know deep research. Atlanta who runs the fund,
she's had her own health issues, so she's you know
fascinated in medical tech and that kind of gets you
to AI. Applied AI is kind of interesting as well.
So that's kind of more moonshot fun stuff where we're
(35:19):
an open star here, which is incredible interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Across from US here they're fusion reacting that they're building.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, I can't understand why Radhi doesn't have a T
shirt that says, actually, I am a nuclear scientist. So
there's some really cool stuff happening in New Zealand. So
doing a bit of that.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
So just on that you you said you've done the
SAS thing. Yeah, are you still excited as with that
as a category for New Zealand? Oh yeah, that would
continue to be a major tech sort of generator.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
Of income for us.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yeah, and I'm involved with a few of those, yeah,
but also doing some really kind of interesting physical things.
So I kind of feel like when you're in a place,
you want to make it the best place you can.
So doing a lot in Queenstown that's leading to the
recloaking of Coronet Peak, cleaning up of some of the
waterways down there. That's been fun, and that ties on
with a lot of stuff I'm doing with Nitahu as well.
(36:13):
You know, spending a bit of money with Southern Lake
Sanctuary doing predator work, which ties in there's some really
neat technology and with that as well. So yeah, it's fun,
like the real luxury. Very lucky to be able to
just play with a few fun things, identify great founders
and give them a bit of advice and just let
them go and do their thing.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, And in terms of where we're going as a nation,
we haven't, as you say, we haven't really had that
conversation post COVID where we are in the world. We're
starting to have a conversation geopolitically about where we are
and Orcus is at the height of that. Do we
join pillar two of Orcus watch your view on this?
(36:53):
Sitting on the sidelines this debate, this tension of how
close do we need to be to China in the
next decade, the political tensions between the US and China
sort of exacerbated and they go into polar opposite fields
on technology. They're not sharing advanced technology.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
What does that mean for us?
Speaker 5 (37:11):
Yeah, you're seeing the sort of bifurcation of the Internet,
aren't you. Yeah. Three, the instincts we've had, we still
have free trade agreements with China in the States.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Last time A look, definitely with China.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Yeah, so maybe we're the broker, maybe the sky towers
where you know, everything kind of links together.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
But that is a real dance.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Remember when Jacinda first came in, I think Turnbull, whereas
part of five Eyes, said look, you have to turn
Hawaiki off when we were, you know, basically using them
to vendor finance our five G network. So she was
under a huge amount of pressure to do that, and
suddenly our farming produce was being blocked on China wharfs
and English as the second language students weren't coming. So
(37:51):
I mean, you know, China plays to win and uses
all the pressure, and I mean that was an interesting
Actually did someone ask her about that, because that was
a very tough time, just as she came in as
Prime Minister. And you know, we're pretty we have this nice,
kind of naive version of the world. But I think
people will tell you there's there is a lot of
tension going on between those places. I think, you know,
(38:15):
with what's happening politically in the US at the moment,
there's a lot of fear over there. And again I
don't understand why we're not making people welcome to come
here invest here, because you know, all the overseas people
that I've met, they come and you pay GST on everything.
You don't really they don't use much roads, they don't
use much hospital, they don't use much school, you.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Know, and they want to connect.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
They want to whenever you go into a new community,
you want to be useful and make friends. I've always
founded a really good experience with the overseas people that
we've had here, and you know, in simply Queenstown, there's
a lot of Americans in Australia that are that are
here that have always been big contributors to New Zealand
and massive fans.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah. You know, what's your advice to you know, software
entrepreneurs at the moment, Is this a good time to
launch something? They always say, don't let this opportunity go.
It's a great time to test your metal and have
a lean operation. The vcs are looking for really lean
operations at the moment. They don't have as much capital.
What's your advice to people who are coming up like
(39:15):
you were launching zero back in twenty seven to two
thousand and seven.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Yeah, I'm glad I don't have to do it again
because it was so much hard work. But I mean,
we'll be lucky at zero because it goes well when
it's booming, and when things are tight, people you know,
get displaced out of corporate roles and start their own
small businesses. So even when things have been tight as
a sector, the small business sector, there'll be hot spots
and cold spots, but generally has been okay, as we've
(39:40):
seen with all of our numbers, so that's been good,
but it is really tough, like Wellington at the moment,
a lot of people are being restructured out. But yeah,
we does feel like we're a little bit stagnant here
at the moment and a lot of our brightest have gone.
But there's still a great opportunity because if the world's global,
you know, how do we sell menim platform like Shopify.
(40:02):
I mean that pretty much anyone can sell globally or
the drop shipping works and it's a pretty slick experience.
So thinking about your customers being the world and that
there's a lot of education and just aspirational culture change
to make that happen. But work as a mobile now
they can go anywhere and they can get jobs for
(40:25):
anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
What he's up to is what we said we would hear,
and man sure have. There's a lot in there of
what he's up to. It seems like he has his
fingers in many, many pis across local government in Queenstown,
national government, as well as funds and everything.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, it's interesting. He's got his radio ventures, so he's
putting money into startups and pivoted to deep tech, which
is interesting. He's interested still in software as a service.
He's got his company, which you didn't talk that much about, Atomic,
which is very much around infusing AI into customer service
in a software as a service. But really the deep
(41:08):
tech stuff is what he's passionate about and really interested in.
His real passion for energy, he said, what's our version
of Saudi Arabian oil and the equivalent is renewable energy,
So let's double down on that. Loved is thinking around.
We need to shake up off our electricity sector in
terms of structurally how it operates. He talked about the
(41:31):
ultra fast broadband of success of that structural separation of
retail and wholesale in the telco market, what that has
done for broadband. Can we do the same thing for
electricity and really build a grid and renewable generation that
is going to make us able to go truly one
hundred percent renewable. And then the conversations around data centers
(41:55):
and attracting data centers here to work on AI projects.
That really starts to make sense.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Absolutely. I think it's common sense, really and what I
thought was quite clever about it, how he was talking
about it was not necessarily a fundamental change to what
many people have been setting for some time, which is
that we need more renewable energy. We need to be
working towards getting as close to one hundred percent as
we can and building out more infrastructure. We've been saying
(42:23):
that for a long time. But he wants to do
a really clever kind of brand spin on it and
say we should stop talking about it in terms of
reaching carbon zero and start talking about it in terms
of having the cheapest renewable energy in the world. Is
that will appeal to far more people. And I think,
you know, if we look at the past election and
(42:43):
a lot of the rhetoric out of national really on
the campaign trail about easing cost of living, about tax relief,
about all of these things, about just helping people with
their wallet. It makes sense that that would be a
great way to sell what is something that's great for
everybody in the long run.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, very clever thinking on that other stuff that was
of interest, the CTO role that the unfortunately just went nowhere.
People will remember the Clear Current got into trouble over
conflicts of interest over that with Derek Handley, who was
supposed to fill that role. The whole things sort of fizzled.
(43:21):
There was a Digital Council, which I think maybe we're
supposed to pick up some of that slack. It never did,
as Rod said, a committee that sort of fizzled. So
what he's been doing is sort of behind the scenes,
leveraging his relationships to have discussions about things like sur
charges for electronic payments which are still crazy, the fees
(43:44):
that we pay on contact list payments, and that sort
of thing. Digitizing government is talk of an all of
government messaging app. So as he's riding around Queenstown on
his mountain bike, he's clearly thinking about I don't have
a vested interest in a lot of these things anymore.
I've made my money. I'm in a position where I
can give back. What am I going to put my
(44:05):
time and energy into and so hopefully some of that
does come to fruition. We've seen tech entrepreneurs, as I
noted in the interview, sort of get very frustrated when
they put their hand up to help or volunteered their
services because they know how to get things done quickly.
And Rod as one of those guys come away from
government thinking well, that was a waste of my time.
(44:26):
So hopefully he can do it in a way where
he can use all of that incredible knowledge and experience
of technology and business and how to get things done
in a way that has a meaningful outcomes.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, and he kind of spoke about it in terms,
not directly using the term, but basically talking about public
private partnerships, which something that people have been talking about
for a long time and have been talking about a
lot more ever since the government basically closed their past
strings in the last budget, and this idea that we
(44:59):
do need to be thinking about how we can entice
private companies to invest in into infrastructure that is going
to be beneficial to the community, to society and potentially
make a like you said, five percent return on investment
a year that doesn't have to be massive if you
think about it as infrastructural projects rather than stripping value
(45:21):
like has happened with certain projects in the past, then
it can potentially be a really great way to actually
get some of these projects moving forward.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
That's it for the Business of Tech this week. Thanks
so much to Rod Drury for joining us on the show.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
We'll put links to the key things we discussed in
the show notes, and you can go to the tech
section Business Desk, dot Co, dot and z define those
as well as our picks for some of the best
tech stories from around the web this week.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
The Business of Tech is on all major podcast platforms,
as well as iHeartRadio, where you can stream every episode,
leave us a review and share it with your friends
and colleagues.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Get in touch with feedback, ideas, topics, guest suggestions. You
can email me bent Businessdesk, dot Co, dot Z. We'll
find both of us on LinkedIn and occasionally X.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
We'll be back next Thursday with another dose of the
Business of Tech.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Until then, have a great week.
When we talk about success of New Zealand tech companies,
there's always one name and one company that tops that list,
and that's Rod Dreary and Zero.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Zero founders set out in two thousand and seven
to make accounting software a pleasure to use and fulfilled
his vision of creating a truly global tech company all
the way from Wellington.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
In May this year, Zero reported one point seven billion
dollars in revenue, a jump of twenty two percent its
back end profit, and it is impressing the market with
its growth potential.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Zero's share price on the ASX had a healthy bump
after its full year results, which are really an endorsement
of how current CEO took kinder syn Cassidy, who's been
in the job for around sixteen months, is leading this
twenty billion dollar software giant.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
But what about Drury? What's that guy been up to?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
So I've been really thinking about what's our version of
Saturday Arabian oil?
Speaker 5 (00:55):
And I think that's renewable electricity And I've spent a
lot of time I'm just pulling the string on that.
I think we should be doing. What we did, like
with UFB, is.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
To structural separation of the electricity industry and have a
goal of you know, if you say you're going to
get to carbon zero, it's like going on a diet.
No one wants to do that, and you kind of
know you won't get there. Whereas if we reframed it
to having the lowest cost renewable energy in the world,
everyone gets that.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I'm Peter Griffin.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
And I'm been more and on the business attack powered
by two Degrees Business. This week, we catch up with
Rod Drury, who's been largely off the radar in the
last few years, but clearly keeping busy on some post
zero projects.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, he has, and really he did a little bit
over the pandemic. He did some web conferences and panel
discussions and that sort of thing. But Rod's been really
sort of off the radar in terms of media for
a few years now, and last year he stepped down
officially as a non executive director of Zero. He stepped
(01:56):
down from the board. He's still going in there to
work with the product people. He's very interested in where
the product roadmap is going. But I was really interested
in what else he's doing. We've heard a little bit
about projects brewing in Queenstown. He's a real passionate mountain biker,
so he's been working on some passion projects down there,
so I just really wanted to see where he's going.
(02:18):
So I literally had him around and we had a
chat a couple of weeks ago, and it was just
after the Apple Intelligence launch. He's a big passionate Apple fan,
so I wanted to get his views on that, reflecting
back over Zero and some of those forward looking things
that he's interested in. So a really good opportunity to
catch up with illuminary off the tech world in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Absolutely, it's great timing as well. I just published a
story about Zero's use of AI either this week or
early next week, so that will be an interesting companion
read to this episode. I think the conversation you had
with Roderury dips into AI a little bit, but goes
much beyond that and really kind of talks about his
(03:00):
vision for New Zealand as a whole. Quite interesting to
hear his perspective considering the influential character that he is.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Here's my sit down with Rod Drury, Zero founder, done
lots of other stuff as well. A good opportunity to
catch up on exactly what he's up to. So Rod,
welcome to the business of tech. It's been a long time.
Great to see you. But I do remember quite clearly
back in two thousand and seven, we spent a couple
of days together in Silicon Valley, a group of Kiwi
(03:30):
tech entrepreneurs part of the Pole Blacks. This is the
Segway polo team that you were part of that was
playing Steve Wozniak's team, the co founder.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yeah, So that was.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Quite an interesting experience watching that sport that you were
involved in.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Well, I mean I do dine out on that a bit.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
I can tell people I was a national rep and
a sport the pole Blacks. Unfortunately, only criteria for being
a Pole Black was to own a Sedgeway, so you know,
it was a short lived sporting career.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And I remember down at the polo club on the
Front in San Francisco. They're very serious, you know, they
take that sport very seriously.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So that was fun.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
But I think the next day what really struck with me.
This was just after the release of the iPhone, and
this obviously really inspired you. This was the original iPhone
in two thousand and seven, and we went for a
drive and you were telling us about the convergence off
cloud computing and the rise of this incredible mobile device.
And this was before the app store, but what you
(04:27):
would be able to do with applications on that device.
And you told us about what your plan was for Zero,
which it was just getting off the ground.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
So it's incredible that journey.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Seventeen years later, Zero's last months reported its results one
point seven billion dollars in operating revenue, four point two
million customers. You pull it off exactly that vision you
had back in two thousand and seven to make accounting
software nice to use based on those fundamental technologies. Have
you ever paused, Have you had time to pull and
(05:00):
think and reflect on that journey that you've been on.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yeah, I mean it's amazing seeing the results come out
last week. I actually went back went WHOA at one
point seven billion because I remember our first year, I
think we were the smallest, the smallest revenue of any
public company in the world, like one hundred and seventeen
grand I think was our first annual amount of revenue,
and then it was I we got to three hundred
and nine hundred. We used to know all the numbers
(05:23):
off by heart. And remember going to ten million was great.
And then you know, we used to have all those
summits and I remember Rod Aoram once he asked me
a question and I said, oh, you know, it's the
three B shouldn't be there, was it, Boat Batch and BMW.
They should be building billion dollar businesses from the beach.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
Whenever I saw a Rod.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
He kept reminding me of that, and we always had
those discussions about we just need a few more hundred
million dollar companies. So now we do one hundred million
a month, you know, and that was huge. I hadn't
realized that we actually made profit, like half a billion
of profit.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
What the hell? Yeah, you know, and even.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
The way back then, you wanted to grow this thing
from New Zealand and it's now ASX listed all around
the world, but still fundamentally in New Zealand business.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So you've you ticked off that goal. Yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Just the community of other businesses have grown around us.
So we had an open ecosystem from day one and
a lot of my close friends were now people that
built their companion accounting software businesses around the platform that
we had.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
And there were people used to see.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
At all of our zero con events around the world
every year, and that's become a really key part of
my friend groups because we've had this shared history of
building cloud accounting over the last you know, fifteen seventeen
years has been amazing.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, you step down as a non executive director late
last year August twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Or something like that.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Seventeen years of board meetings.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Man, Yeah, you know, of anyone you would not want
to have as a board member, it's me.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
But I had to do it and it was nice.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
And I said it at the annual meeting when we
started zero and my daughter was and she's at university now,
so literally her whole life and it was just time
to get off the all that travel and that sort
of stuff. But you know, a great team. I love
going in there and doing product strategy work. Still there's
(07:14):
you know, I keep saying, it's still just the beginning.
We built this amazing platform, and it's neat when you
see new bits of technology like AI is obviously the
new thing, and everyone's talking about large language models. We
have probably the largest financial model and such a by
doing boring accounting, we just have this amazing graph of
financial information for small businesses all over the world, and
(07:36):
we have so much customer to demand to do things.
It's been to allocated enough resources and time to do
some of the cool things I've always wanted to.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Do over the top.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
But I just watched Zero Con in London a few
days ago, and you know, we've got this just zero
product which is starting to unlock that. But we're just
at the beginning. There's so much more we can do.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, so that you know you saw back then, obviously
cloud computing and then the app economy which you sort
of built on and fostered yourself with zero and all
the companies that plug into that ecosystem. So now obviously
generative AI. We've had AI throughout the last twenty years
in various guises, but it's really exploded with jen Ai.
You've got jacks, as you say, being built into zero.
(08:19):
But what's your take on what this fundamentally means for
software development and the opportunities potentially for New Zealand software
developers to Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
I'm pretty cautious about new trends like blockchain. I never
got you know, I never thought that the city bitcoined out.
I never thought that sovereign governments want to lose control
of the money supply. So it's been interesting watching AI.
It does look like there really is something there. But
I watched the ww DC Apple keynote last week, and
(08:47):
you know what you can do with generative AI is
you know, that's been pretty amazing over the last year
watching that. But you know, we knew that Apple was
acquiring a lot of AI technologies and what they have
done with their personal AI where it can mind your
own messages and emails and then you ask the question
what time is Mum's flight coming in tomorrow? That's kind
of that feels really cool. That's going to touch everybody,
(09:10):
so I think it's quite exciting. But my big dilemma
is I've managed to avoid all those mail clients and
just been having Gmail on my phone and being able
to just get a picture of my email and not
have to download everything. But now we've got this opt
in decision whether we want to go for personal AI,
which is the LinkedIn post I wrote last week that
(09:30):
you ping.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Me back on. So that's really interesting.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Things are changing, and thinking about what Apple's done from
a competitive point of view is so interesting, Like what
does it mean with their Google relationship. Where does Google
go now? And then the amount of lock and we'll
get with personal AI. It's a big decision. Some people
we saw in the comments of the post is just
completely don't want to be locked in, and other people
(09:54):
will surrender it to it for convenience. After the Apple keynote,
things have got really interesting in the AI aispace and
watching a lot of that at the moment.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
It is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And even in the Windows space as well with the
Copilot PCs, Microsoft is doing a similar thing with a
neural processing unit on needs devices. So the idea of
doing a lot more of this intensive stuff on the
device instead of constantly having to go to the cloud.
That starts to change the dynamic and the angst around
sustainability and data centers. Everything is happening on these increasingly
(10:25):
powerful devices that are sitting in front of you.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
Yeah, no, it's everything's changing. It's interesting.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
I've sort of poo poo the idea of doing a
big data center in the South because we're always remember
the Pacific Fiber days, we're always one hundred million seconds
from the States, and a lot of the financial apps
need that super fast speed.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
But now we're training for AI.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
The biggest constraint is a renewable green electricity and doing
a data center down there and with a potentially there's
talk of a new cable from in the cargo to
Sydney and Melbourne. That kind of makes sense now because
we could have an abundance of renewable electricity, which is
a constraint. And of course in the electricity industry, no
(11:07):
one was modeling. Janitor of AI is going to take
off in a few years, so we should be, you know,
ten xing our supply of green electricity. And I saw
the numbers. You know, a lot of places in Europe
absolutely running out of electricity, and so there's a direct
link between it's happening in AI and opportunities for us
here in New Zealand where that one hundred milliseconds doesn't matter.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Lots of excitement.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, So you describe yourself on LinkedIn these days as
fun employed.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
What have you been doing?
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (11:38):
So, like when I left Zero, I think we had
about two and a half thousand people. We're up to
about five thousand. We're in the falls now. It's a
pretty big organization. It becomes less about doing product work
and more around you know how you run a global
organizational as people think. So Steve was perfect to come
in and run that part of the business and that
got us to a point where we were able to
(11:59):
land like a really good global CEO. And sekinda's doing
an amazing job. There's a great article for we had
on her and Forbes just in the last few days.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
I picked a note last night, just so.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Proud of her and hearing her story. And I always
think they're companies. I always get a bit embarrassed about
the founder thing. I think it's a bit like having children.
They go off and do their own things. So I've
never been precious about it. And you know, I'm just
proud this thing has a life and other people can
go and do it. So what was interesting about Zero
was it you know, it was just being a public company.
(12:31):
It's just a roller coaster you can't get off. And
you know, every half year, thank goodness, every half year,
not every quarter. We do our financial results where every
dollar you spent, every taxi that everyone spent, any business
class fair. You're standing there in front of the market
explaining it. And then you know that you can't hide
from the revenue numbers as well. Right, So it was,
(12:51):
you know, twelve fifteen years of pretty stressful public eye.
Great fun, but it does this roller coaster you just
can't get off. And I kind of figured, you know,
we were a twenty four y seven business on Christmas Day,
there's you know, one hundred thousand people on the servers.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
It just doesn't stop.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
So I figured I'd kind of accordioned my career into
a shorter amount of time. So when I stopped, I
did lily said, well, I'm not going to go and
work again. If I wanted to keep working, I'd start
at zero because there's so much more to do and
in a good you know, fortunate to be in a
good position financially where I could do some other things.
Speaker 5 (13:29):
While we were doing zero.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
I was really holding this idea of a Chief Technology
Officer of New Zealand and got that through his policy.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
But you kind of have that normal dilemma in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
You don't really you know, once you've kind of come
out of the public eye, you don't want to be
accountable for too much. So people that kind of were
asked to do it didn't really want to do it,
and then you end up with a.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Committee doing things and not too much has happened.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
So I kind of feel, as I've been riding my
bikes in Queenstown, what are those really big projects where
someone like me who has the you know, time and
interest to do good things for New Zealand, how how
can we or how can I go and help and
move things forward? Because when you don't have a vested interest,
you can actually have really good conversations. So I've been
(14:12):
really thinking about, you know, what's our version of Saturday
Arabian oil? And I think it's renewable electricity. So I've
spent a lot of time just pulling the string on that.
You know, we only store two months worth of water.
The way the market works, you know, we will never
get to one hundred percent renewable electricity, and we still
have quite high electricity where we know there's no marginal cost.
(14:34):
It's you know, of of hydro, it's the cost of
infrastructure and the more units you use, the cheaper it
should be. Right, So in theory, you could basically set
eultricity prices wherever you like if you had unlimited supply.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
So where I've landed on that is I.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Think we should be doing what we did, like with
the UFB is do structural separation of the electricity industry
and have a goal of you know, if you say
you're going to get to cart zeris like going on
a diet. No one wants to do that and you
kind of know you won't get there. Whereas if we
reframed it to having the lowest cost renewable energy in
the world, everyone gets that right. It's great for business,
(15:11):
it's great for consumers, it's great for making life more
affordable for people. I've being based in Queenstown quite a
lot where we actually make electricity, a lot of it
around that Southland area. There's an idea of do we
kind of start down there and use Southland as a
test lad for changing the electricity market. So that's been
really interesting getting involved with that. So we're looking at
(15:33):
thickening up all the power lines around Southland, getting an
intervention from government to move the rental car fleet and
campavan fleet to all electric, which lifts the demand and
then we can afford to spend more on infrastructure down there,
putting a new cable from Kingston to Franktin so we
get our diverse electricity supply. In fixing Queenstown's public transport.
(15:57):
It's a really interesting model that I go from the States.
Doctor Neil jacob Stein talks about the pat model, population
affluence and technology. If you want to keep lifestyle as
population grows, you've got to use technology, and Queen Sound
to me feels like the perfect test.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
Lab for doing some of those things.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
So through COVID we looked at small autonomous buses to
fix the transport problems. And what I've kind of worked
out is that you know, there's no money in central
government with all the things that have happened in the
last year. It was even less in local government and
being able to partner. It's all about how do you
raise the money to do these things. The Aussie super
(16:36):
funds have trillions of dollars sitting there. They would normally
give it out to fund managers to invest in Amazon, Google,
Ali Barber, companies that won't pay domestic tax and creating
employment issues. They're actually looking for good domestic infrastructure to
invest in so they get an outcome. So rather than
asking the government for money, I think the model is,
let's actually, you know what we have as an opportunity
(16:59):
here in Zealand is a be this global test lab
as we have in the past, but be working with
those super funds New Zealand super Fun, Australian super funds
work with local bodies and float up these proof of
concepts that those overseas investors can get a working site
like in Queenstown. So the business case for fixing public
transport in Queenstown is not Queenstown. It's not putting another
(17:20):
whole through Mount Victoria and it's taking three or four
billion out of Auckland light Rail. So you know, one
example of that is the is the Wish cable car
where the cables fixed and the motors are in the
cable cars, so low marginal cost once you've got that.
And we've been looking at this really cool technology called Dromos,
which a little four person electric bus pods which operate
(17:42):
in a one point four meter wide dedicated lane, so
they're not robotaxis that integrate with traffic. They just go
down essentially a cycleway, so it's a bit of curb
and channel which is pretty cheap and you can actually
fit that in the road constraints we have because we
need an autonomous solution, because to get a bar worker
home at two in the morning and a ski worker
to the to the bus first thing in the morning,
(18:05):
so bus drivers don't really work and it's quite a
small place where we could fix it. So Glenn Sowery,
the airport CEO, he's given us some land to do
a trial could be airport rental car. So trying to
actually do things in New Zealand's got really hard.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
But because I've got.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Time, I can just go and do all the meetings
and see where the barrier is and say hey, why
don't we And that's been really fun talking to ministers
and officials you know, mayors, and you know, well, why
can't we do it?
Speaker 5 (18:34):
What's the what you know?
Speaker 4 (18:35):
The big thing is can we actually go and not
ask them for money, but just permission to do it
and raise that money?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, it seems to be the frame of mind of
the coalition government at the moment. There's no money anyways,
so but we will fast track things. We will allow
you to cut through the red tape. What would you
take on the parking the pumped hydro like Onslow in
(19:02):
favor of consenting more renewables.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
What was good about Onslow is we actually talked about
doing some more dams because I think, you know, our
competitive advantage is having hills and having rain. And if
we think of water as an asset, which I think
it is, then you can clean rivers, you can do
more plant based proteins downstream. There's a whole lot of
goodness comes from it. But when you're in New Zealand,
there's two key values. You've got to worry about the environment,
(19:28):
and you've got to think about equality as well. That's
a very key value that New Zealanders have, which doesn't
exist in many other places as well. So you've got
to think about everything through that lens. And you know,
I was chatting to a geny Sage and James show around.
We should do some more water storage. It's not thinking
(19:48):
about the supply side. Get people excited about the demand side.
So again, if we said, hey, look we're a small country.
You can't flow more than an hour and a half
in any direction. What about in ten years we completely
made the domestic aviation fleet electric, so you'd have super
cheap flying and no carbon gilt. Do you want that? Yes,
(20:09):
that sounds great. Right, let's have a mature discussion around
water storage. And I think now with energy, sovereignty and
all those sort of things that conversation is happening. And
what's been nice with all the work we've been doing,
the conversations had over the last five years, you're actually
hearing things like structural separation of electricity is being repeated
and said, and we saw that with UFB.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Right, we have amazing internet.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Because it's really hard to have public companies invest in
infrastructure because it's a long term. Yet there's a whole
lot of infrastructure funds that are looking to earn a
say five to seven percent, So you know what structural
separation of electricity could be as we buy all the
lines and there's the entity like Chorus for telecommunications, so
(20:54):
that's kind of fading a little bit. But imagine if
we had that infrastructure company that had transpower and the
gen generation in it. It just pays its five percent,
so the super funds are happy and there's a regulated
wholesale price. The goal of it could be to have
really good ultricity supply, get to one hundred percent renewable,
but also give us the lowest cost wholesale price. And
(21:15):
as they get more money through those connection fees and
that wholesale price, then they can invest more in the network.
So infrastructure should be funded by infrastructure funds and then
retail investors should invest in risk so smart networks meters
and like, this isn't something that would happen overnight. So
the existing listed entities energy companies which are vertically integrated
(21:36):
have ten or fifteen years to you know, to modify
their business to do the risky stuff over the.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Top, knowing they've got the lowest.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Possible electricity wholesale price they can go for. So I
mean that's you know, to me, that is one of
the really big vision things we could be doing in
New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, and you know they are talking up at the
moment what they did with UFB and the success of
that and trying to replicate that model with the Crown
fiber hole in and do it on different types of projects.
What's your sense with this coalition government? You've been interested
in politics, You've been a donor to the act Party,
so you've now.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
Got international into the Greens, right.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So yeah, so you've spread the money around, you're interested
in politics. What do you make about this coalition? And
it's what it's articulating for you know, some of the
stuff we need to happen, but it's going to take
maybe thirty to fifty year vision.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I think I think everyone's in the right place, and
the reality is is that they've got more to do
every day than they've got time to do. So I
think you've got to understand what their goals are and then.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
Do the work.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
And the big thing is like there's no money. So
I think that's where it's interesting. We're business people like
me who are used to raising money in Australia and
working with overseas investors. I didn't understand much about infrastructure,
but I have understood it over the last few years.
I think that's where we can help, where we can say, okay,
we know what we want to do as a country.
(23:00):
We actually had the relationship's going to raise the money,
we want to do it fair. We have different goals here.
There'll be a commercial return, but the appropriate return for
the risk. And then but we you know, we want
to build something that's intergenerational. So I mean, I'm you know,
I'm probably the whitest Natahu people person that you've met.
But you know, one of the values we had at
(23:21):
zero was that.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
Long term intergenerational thinking.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
And my father Ken he was when he was around
he was very proud of his Natalia upbringing. So I've
been reconnecting back with the tribe. Got to spend a
lot of time with Ta Tipinay of the last year
and a lot of the senior people there, and they're
thinking about these intergenerational things. And what I love about
our Kinnomari thinking, which is part about his Zealand culture,
is that long term intergenerational thinking, and that really ties
(23:47):
in really.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
Well with infrastructure as well.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
So there's some real positives around lining people up and
getting us thinking long term and thinking about, you know,
things being better for our children and what do we
leave behind. So and I think, what you know, when
you've had the business success that we had with zero,
then that's the natural thing moving away from that kind
of three year thinking to that long term thinking, which
(24:11):
is why it's quite good backing some of these strategy
stuff into Natahu, which is an intergenerational organization, makes a
whole lot of sense. So yeah, it's been a really
nice connection getting that long term thing in it. When
you have heavy sessions, everyone's like, yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5 (24:26):
But it's all.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
About implementation, manifesting action, getting things happening, and I think
coming from business where again you're judged every six months.
Speaker 5 (24:36):
You just naturally biased towards getting things done.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Appropriate action is one of our values and you know,
after every meeting, what's the next step?
Speaker 5 (24:43):
How do we get to it? Why can't we do that?
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah, and we have done that in pockets.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I think in New Zealand the space industry has been
sort of fantastic and Peter Beck's been at the height
of that. The software is a service in this area.
But there's other areas that it's just very high for
us to get traction and like you know, the energy stuff.
Why is that some areas we've done well. In other
areas we're just banging our heads against the brick wall.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
I think we've been really timid as a nation over
the last ten years and we've just been scared to,
you know, to take that step and be accountable. So
that gets very frustrating for a business person, right where
you have to deliver or you publicly fail. And I
think that's getting the the partnership working with government is
that where you actually drive, you know, you push things.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
You don't take no for an answer.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Straight away, you actually push, push a little bit harder
to make things happen, and then if you can start
changing that culture, then I think it is a culture change.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
So finding a few iconic.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Projects that actually are used to change culture is the
way to do it. So and picking a bite sized chunk,
So running a renewable energy strategy in Southland makes a
whole lot of sense, and then we can get the
model working.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
People can see.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Actually that wasn't that hard. Everyone everyone wins. It's been
done for the right reasons. So when I say that
we're timid, like mean that, and we're not looking at
the effect of globalization that's happening on small countries like ourselves.
So what we're seeing with tech is global operators that
(26:12):
are funded out of the low cost capital environment to
build global platforms with low marginal cost coming into being
able to enter each new market, you know, really easily.
So one of the projects I've picked up, I was
just chatting to Minister Bailey last week about it. As
credit card surcharges, it's not suddenly they're everywhere, and you
know there's no cost of moving money, Like moving money
(26:34):
costs less than a cent, you know, it's one hundredth
of a cent. Yet we're paying these percentage fees, so
we've got a three or four percent inflation across everybody.
But it's just untidy. These things are meant to be contactless,
but we don't have to content them.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
We've got to.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Accept the surcharge. And why is it a percentage fee?
Costantly no more money to move. So there's been a
whole lot of reasons why banks have been incentivized to
move transactions off our great fpost networ work onto overseas rails.
But these multinationals, you know, with a very few staff,
are taking I think it might be two or three
billion dollars out of New Zealand booking dot Com up
(27:09):
to thirty percent sometimes more of chargers to our tourism
operators here and they don't get the cash till like
a year later when the.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
Service has been fulfilled.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
So doing a little bit of work with New Zealand
Tourism on creating a data architecture where we all work
together as a team.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
Another project I've been.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Picking up as well, So some of those big picture
things that are long term things to fix. Having a
lot of fun just leaning into those projects.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Well that's great because there's so much potential in our
fintech space, and you know there are a lot of
really cool startups working in New Zealand in that area,
but they are constrained because the environment here. Working with
the big banks, they are a stumbling block, are opposition
to a lot of the innovation. You know, there is
supposedly the consumer data right coming, so things are just
(27:57):
so slow to get off the ground. But something like
as you say, we've got this great FPOs network that
has served us, well, why can't we just do contactless
through that as the primary voice?
Speaker 4 (28:07):
Well that's fascinating too because now the phone operators Apple
primarily are in the space right so they won't unlock
the secure enclave so you can do face id direct
banking or whatever. And even the a triple CE in
Australia with Australian banks couldn't break that a few years ago.
So maybe we've got to link our regulatory environment to Europe.
(28:28):
So they've had wins with USBC, wins with the app
store because we're too small, but maybe we've got a
link and so we can open those up. And you
would have seen on the Apple develop a keynote. They're
now doing that kind of Venmo Apple card to cards,
so with you know, as soon as Apple came out
with the credit cards, surely then they're vertically integrated all
(28:48):
the way through and they should have to unlock the
secure enclave.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Got to be careful though.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
I don't want to wake up with a horse head
in my bed, point the breaks go in my car
and the sort of while you know you can ever.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Look, Yeah, you're obviously having good, good conversations, really productive
things with ministers and that. Yeah, that idea that you
floated for the CTO for New Zealand sort of seems
like we still really need it. Was it really disappointing
to you how that sort of fizzled out? Was that
frustrating to you to see that the way that played out?
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
No, it's kind of fun to watch. But that's the thing.
You know, New Zealanders don't want to put their head
up too much. But you know, after being in the
NBR every day with open comments, you.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
Develop a bit of a thick skin.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
So I don't I don't want to get paid to
do anything or have to do anything. I really do
like doing these fun, big projects, but you don't have
to spend every day doing them. You can just nudge
them along and have really stimulating conversations.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I mean, you know, I just want to be ambitious
for New Zealand. And remember back in the old Results
Area nine days where we looked at how to be
the most efficient.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Consumer to government. You know, I think that should still
be our goal, right.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
We should be the poster child where people come down
here to see how things are done and you know,
having good chats with Doo. Hopefully will have online driver's
license so that it'll be part of your Apple Walllet
it'll be a cool one. Working on digital identity is
super interesting. That touches everything we're doing.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
So there's a lot of fun things to do and
they're good to spend time on.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
And that digital identity is integral. We've got the Digital
Identity Trust framework that they're building here. What's your take
on that. Does it make sense for the government to
sort of build a bigger version of real me? Do
we need that sort of authentication?
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Yeah? I think you do. You just want the key.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
What I've been saying is kind of identity has been
one you know, sign them with Apple sign of a
Google sign on Facebook whatever, link that to your real
me ID and then so it's really easy for consumers
to get to it. And that's only that kind of
winning of sin Ons only happened in the last couple
of years. So when you're running ten year projects and
things are moving so quickly, you do have to be
(31:10):
you know, maybe we're too early with real Me, but
I think that could be solved elegantly now. Tech Spaan's
a really good one. We've put some solutions up to
DIA that could be quite easily solved. I love the
idea of it, all of government messaging app so you
can sign them with real Me and then you only
have one application for government, and then smaller agencies can
drop messaging in. So the Atomic Technology great company, we've
(31:34):
kind of solved that problem. So working with for government
agencies on that at the moment. But I think what
we're seeing through these processes is getting government to say, hey,
just reach out to industry. You've got a bunch of
smart people, you know what don at Rise has done,
and a bunch of other good multinationals. They've got the solutions.
And New Zealand's so subscale we don't have to reinvent
(31:55):
the wheel with a lot of things. But we're also
small enough we can do cool things and be seen
as lee in the world of this like we used
to be ten twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
There was attempts, you know, Siien Taylor and others during
COVID sort of tried to get a lot of this
sort of stuff going in a short time frame solutions
to this crisis that we had.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
It sort of didn't really go very well.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
That collaboration Sam Morgan was involved in there, trying to
basically help the government out to with technology to get
things done. Quacker, Do you get a sense that there's
more scope for for that sort of interaction now?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
I think the rise of the big cloud platforms, you know, Aws, Google,
Microsoft with Azure. You know, there's just the ability to
spin up things were pretty low initial upfront cost. And
we're so small ony five million people, you know, which
is which is the size of a US city. But
you've seen that the conversation definitely changed. I had a
really good, interesting conversation and so daa yesterday around well,
(32:53):
rethink the partnering model just you know, allow New Zealand
vendors to come in with their overseas partners and define
the problem, not the solution, and then let smart people
go and do it and just try a few small
ones first and don't be scared of that, and then
hopefully we can just speed things up about So there
is that cultural change to speed things up. But you know,
(33:15):
we have to be aware too that we are part
of a global world. And one of the things that's
frustrating is we haven't had a national conversation around where
we sit in the world post COVID and with this,
with this globalization where workers can work anywhere in the world.
So I mean, we're not at zero, We're not really
competing against local businesses. We're competing against Microsoft, Amazon. We've
(33:37):
got former colleagues that are living in Queenstown and Wanaka
working for these big multinationals. Like things have changed, So
do we want to welcome the smartest in the world?
In especially geopolitically, we're still seen as a pretty safe place.
But for some reason we've seen to worry about people
coming in here and buying houses. Yet we said let's
(33:57):
put a tax on them. Everyone said, well, that's fine.
Then we knew our price. But unfortunately, the way the
coalition worked, we didn't have that. So you've got super
bright people in the world that want to come and
live here and contribute, and we keep them out, which
seems nuts.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
So obviously, you know you've made money from zero, which
is great for you doing philanthropic stuff, but you're also
investing some of that money back in Radio Ventures is
the company you're involved in, Yeah, tell us about what
you're doing.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
There.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Apparently a deep tech sort of focus to that.
Speaker 5 (34:30):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
So again, because I've done all I've done all this
quite a lot, I don't really want to go and
spend a lot of time in business. I want to
do other things like ride mount and bikes and go
wing foiling and that sort of stuff, and sold these
big New Zealand projects. But just as you know, part
of my portfolio, Rate Adventures is our vcarm and it's
fun being involved with founders. We brought a whole lot
of them to Wellington last year and showed them around
(34:52):
and getting portfolios together and seeing them help each.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Other is really cool.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
So that one there is kind of deep tech, you know,
done sas and that's I'm not too interested in that,
but you know deep research. Atlanta who runs the fund,
she's had her own health issues, so she's you know
fascinated in medical tech and that kind of gets you
to AI. Applied AI is kind of interesting as well.
So that's kind of more moonshot fun stuff where we're
(35:19):
an open star here, which is incredible interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Across from US here they're fusion reacting that they're building.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, I can't understand why Radhi doesn't have a T
shirt that says, actually, I am a nuclear scientist. So
there's some really cool stuff happening in New Zealand. So
doing a bit of that.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
So just on that you you said you've done the
SAS thing. Yeah, are you still excited as with that
as a category for New Zealand? Oh yeah, that would
continue to be a major tech sort of generator.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
Of income for us.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yeah, and I'm involved with a few of those, yeah,
but also doing some really kind of interesting physical things.
So I kind of feel like when you're in a place,
you want to make it the best place you can.
So doing a lot in Queenstown that's leading to the
recloaking of Coronet Peak, cleaning up of some of the
waterways down there. That's been fun, and that ties on
with a lot of stuff I'm doing with Nitahu as well.
(36:13):
You know, spending a bit of money with Southern Lake
Sanctuary doing predator work, which ties in there's some really
neat technology and with that as well. So yeah, it's fun,
like the real luxury. Very lucky to be able to
just play with a few fun things, identify great founders
and give them a bit of advice and just let
them go and do their thing.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, And in terms of where we're going as a nation,
we haven't, as you say, we haven't really had that
conversation post COVID where we are in the world. We're
starting to have a conversation geopolitically about where we are
and Orcus is at the height of that. Do we
join pillar two of Orcus watch your view on this?
(36:53):
Sitting on the sidelines this debate, this tension of how
close do we need to be to China in the
next decade, the political tensions between the US and China
sort of exacerbated and they go into polar opposite fields
on technology. They're not sharing advanced technology.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
What does that mean for us?
Speaker 5 (37:11):
Yeah, you're seeing the sort of bifurcation of the Internet,
aren't you. Yeah. Three, the instincts we've had, we still
have free trade agreements with China in the States.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Last time A look, definitely with China.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Yeah, so maybe we're the broker, maybe the sky towers
where you know, everything kind of links together.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
But that is a real dance.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Remember when Jacinda first came in, I think Turnbull, whereas
part of five Eyes, said look, you have to turn
Hawaiki off when we were, you know, basically using them
to vendor finance our five G network. So she was
under a huge amount of pressure to do that, and
suddenly our farming produce was being blocked on China wharfs
and English as the second language students weren't coming. So
(37:51):
I mean, you know, China plays to win and uses
all the pressure, and I mean that was an interesting
Actually did someone ask her about that, because that was
a very tough time, just as she came in as
Prime Minister. And you know, we're pretty we have this nice,
kind of naive version of the world. But I think
people will tell you there's there is a lot of
tension going on between those places. I think, you know,
(38:15):
with what's happening politically in the US at the moment,
there's a lot of fear over there. And again I
don't understand why we're not making people welcome to come
here invest here, because you know, all the overseas people
that I've met, they come and you pay GST on everything.
You don't really they don't use much roads, they don't
use much hospital, they don't use much school, you.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
Know, and they want to connect.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
They want to whenever you go into a new community,
you want to be useful and make friends. I've always
founded a really good experience with the overseas people that
we've had here, and you know, in simply Queenstown, there's
a lot of Americans in Australia that are that are
here that have always been big contributors to New Zealand
and massive fans.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah. You know, what's your advice to you know, software
entrepreneurs at the moment, Is this a good time to
launch something? They always say, don't let this opportunity go.
It's a great time to test your metal and have
a lean operation. The vcs are looking for really lean
operations at the moment. They don't have as much capital.
What's your advice to people who are coming up like
(39:15):
you were launching zero back in twenty seven to two
thousand and seven.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Yeah, I'm glad I don't have to do it again
because it was so much hard work. But I mean,
we'll be lucky at zero because it goes well when
it's booming, and when things are tight, people you know,
get displaced out of corporate roles and start their own
small businesses. So even when things have been tight as
a sector, the small business sector, there'll be hot spots
and cold spots, but generally has been okay, as we've
(39:40):
seen with all of our numbers, so that's been good,
but it is really tough, like Wellington at the moment,
a lot of people are being restructured out. But yeah,
we does feel like we're a little bit stagnant here
at the moment and a lot of our brightest have gone.
But there's still a great opportunity because if the world's global,
you know, how do we sell menim platform like Shopify.
(40:02):
I mean that pretty much anyone can sell globally or
the drop shipping works and it's a pretty slick experience.
So thinking about your customers being the world and that
there's a lot of education and just aspirational culture change
to make that happen. But work as a mobile now
they can go anywhere and they can get jobs for
(40:25):
anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
What he's up to is what we said we would hear,
and man sure have. There's a lot in there of
what he's up to. It seems like he has his
fingers in many, many pis across local government in Queenstown,
national government, as well as funds and everything.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, it's interesting. He's got his radio ventures, so he's
putting money into startups and pivoted to deep tech, which
is interesting. He's interested still in software as a service.
He's got his company, which you didn't talk that much about, Atomic,
which is very much around infusing AI into customer service
in a software as a service. But really the deep
(41:08):
tech stuff is what he's passionate about and really interested in.
His real passion for energy, he said, what's our version
of Saudi Arabian oil and the equivalent is renewable energy,
So let's double down on that. Loved is thinking around.
We need to shake up off our electricity sector in
terms of structurally how it operates. He talked about the
(41:31):
ultra fast broadband of success of that structural separation of
retail and wholesale in the telco market, what that has
done for broadband. Can we do the same thing for
electricity and really build a grid and renewable generation that
is going to make us able to go truly one
hundred percent renewable. And then the conversations around data centers
(41:55):
and attracting data centers here to work on AI projects.
That really starts to make sense.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Absolutely. I think it's common sense, really and what I
thought was quite clever about it, how he was talking
about it was not necessarily a fundamental change to what
many people have been setting for some time, which is
that we need more renewable energy. We need to be
working towards getting as close to one hundred percent as
we can and building out more infrastructure. We've been saying
(42:23):
that for a long time. But he wants to do
a really clever kind of brand spin on it and
say we should stop talking about it in terms of
reaching carbon zero and start talking about it in terms
of having the cheapest renewable energy in the world. Is
that will appeal to far more people. And I think,
you know, if we look at the past election and
(42:43):
a lot of the rhetoric out of national really on
the campaign trail about easing cost of living, about tax relief,
about all of these things, about just helping people with
their wallet. It makes sense that that would be a
great way to sell what is something that's great for
everybody in the long run.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, very clever thinking on that other stuff that was
of interest, the CTO role that the unfortunately just went nowhere.
People will remember the Clear Current got into trouble over
conflicts of interest over that with Derek Handley, who was
supposed to fill that role. The whole things sort of fizzled.
(43:21):
There was a Digital Council, which I think maybe we're
supposed to pick up some of that slack. It never did,
as Rod said, a committee that sort of fizzled. So
what he's been doing is sort of behind the scenes,
leveraging his relationships to have discussions about things like sur
charges for electronic payments which are still crazy, the fees
(43:44):
that we pay on contact list payments, and that sort
of thing. Digitizing government is talk of an all of
government messaging app. So as he's riding around Queenstown on
his mountain bike, he's clearly thinking about I don't have
a vested interest in a lot of these things anymore.
I've made my money. I'm in a position where I
can give back. What am I going to put my
(44:05):
time and energy into and so hopefully some of that
does come to fruition. We've seen tech entrepreneurs, as I
noted in the interview, sort of get very frustrated when
they put their hand up to help or volunteered their
services because they know how to get things done quickly.
And Rod as one of those guys come away from
government thinking well, that was a waste of my time.
(44:26):
So hopefully he can do it in a way where
he can use all of that incredible knowledge and experience
of technology and business and how to get things done
in a way that has a meaningful outcomes.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, and he kind of spoke about it in terms,
not directly using the term, but basically talking about public
private partnerships, which something that people have been talking about
for a long time and have been talking about a
lot more ever since the government basically closed their past
strings in the last budget, and this idea that we
(44:59):
do need to be thinking about how we can entice
private companies to invest in into infrastructure that is going
to be beneficial to the community, to society and potentially
make a like you said, five percent return on investment
a year that doesn't have to be massive if you
think about it as infrastructural projects rather than stripping value
(45:21):
like has happened with certain projects in the past, then
it can potentially be a really great way to actually
get some of these projects moving forward.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
That's it for the Business of Tech this week. Thanks
so much to Rod Drury for joining us on the show.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
We'll put links to the key things we discussed in
the show notes, and you can go to the tech
section Business Desk, dot Co, dot and z define those
as well as our picks for some of the best
tech stories from around the web this week.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
The Business of Tech is on all major podcast platforms,
as well as iHeartRadio, where you can stream every episode,
leave us a review and share it with your friends
and colleagues.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Get in touch with feedback, ideas, topics, guest suggestions. You
can email me bent Businessdesk, dot Co, dot Z. We'll
find both of us on LinkedIn and occasionally X.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
We'll be back next Thursday with another dose of the
Business of Tech.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Until then, have a great week.
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.