Silicon Valley is the place most people think of when talking about startups, while Israel, India, China and more recently Australia are receiving honorable mentions as foreign investors are developing an interest and making prominent investments in these geographies. New Zealand often gets short shrift and New Zealand's own financial institutions haven't put much of their own money into the area - often cited as being risk-averse and preferring markets that are less speculative, such as farming. But there is a buzzing startup scene in New Zealand (just check out their leading world class incubators CREATIVE HQ and The ICEHOUSE) and there are also naturally some brilliant startups in NZ! In this article we've rounded up 20 Top NZ Startups (please enjoy!).
#2 Xero
Xero is one of New Zealand's better known startups, and competes with services like Paymo and Australia's Saasu. Xero provides easy invoice generation and sending with options for clients to pay online, as well as cashflow reporting straight from your bank account. Sidebar: Trademe was put above Xero because of its dominance of the NZ Internet landscape but Xero was a close 2nd as it has global aspirations, is a wicked product and has cool home page design!
#3 Pacific Fibre
Pacific Fibre is a New Zealand-based company that aims to solve the major problem holding back the country's broadband: lack of a high-quality pipe to the greater Internet. The company is building undersea fibre cables to connect New Zealand with Australia and the USA.
#4 Martin Jetpack
It's hard to find anything remotely interesting in Silicon Valley's echo chamber of startups today, and it's refreshing to see this Antipodean company bring something exciting to the table. No, Martin Jetpack doesn't use its name for some odd symbology... they're actually building jetpacks. Jetpacks that are so promising they've attracted the backing of major players like US defence.
#5 Ponoko
Another exciting startup, Ponoko asks users to join the 'Personal Factory' movement. It lets you design products or tweak the user-generated designs already in its database, price them, and have them made locally to you. This isn't CafePress - we're not talking about bad quality t-shirt prints. With Ponoko you can make everything from electronic gadgets to furniture.
#6 Webble
In terms of technology, Webble is similar to HiredGuns, but it's a lot more open-ended - though generally much more product-oriented. You list what you want, from large USB sticks to unusual musical instruments, and people can respond with solutions and their offer. The site then facilitates the process of getting the product delivered or service completed.
#7 StarNow
StarNow is the crowdsourcification of the talent industry. Though a glance at the front page reveals a whole lot of Australian jobs, it's a New Zealand product that allows talent to create profiles and employers to post jobs for talent. The site covers your usual array of talent agency skills, such as models, musicians, actors and photographers.
#8 StickyHQ
Sticky is a 'social recruitment' app that is designed to make it easy to get employee referral software from others in the system and reward them for their recommendations. It's pre-launch now but will be an interesting addition to the recruiting app space which has been growing of late with apps like RecruitLoop.
#9 Avancert
Another offering aimed at the recruiting world - in addition to education and customer feedback - Avancert provides a hosted solution for what it calls 'electronic examination and high stakes assessment'. It provides tools for capturing answers to questions in video or text format that can be screened and assessed in detail later, including peer review features.
#10 Yonix
Yonix is an app for business analysts that handles project management, requirements tracking, collaboration on documents between team members and other stakeholders, as well as providing a collection of process templates so that you can get started quickly with your preferred project management methodology.
#11 MusicHype
MusicHype bills itself as the site that gives you a "complete musical picture of what you do online" - meaning it pulls in data from sites like Last.fm to find out and report what you've been listening to, bands you've liked on Facebook, music videos you've enjoyed on YouTube and the like. If you're interested in building a social profile completely around your musical tastes then MusicHype may be worth checking out.
#12 Beek
Beek is designed to be a sort of tourism preview service, giving you access to virtual tours so you can explore the places you're thinking about visiting. Organizations like cafes, restaurants and other attractions can work with tourism operators and Beek to create their own video explorations. Unlike conventional virtual tours, Beek incorporates other media like the general background noise of a location and a guide full of information you can browse as you pan.
#13 Hire Things
Hire Things turns any New Zealander into a rental service. You can hire items out or get them hired in depending on which side of the fence you sit, from equipment to vehicles to jumping castles for a kid's birthday party.
#14 FlexiTime
FlexiTime is an employee time management app that covers a range of features needed particularly by those businesses that bill clients by the hour. Roster your staff and send them out from the web, pay them automatically from FlexiTime's time sheets, easily reimburse staff for expenses and more.
#15 Centruflow
Centruflow's tagline is "make better decisions using pictures" and it is a visualization application for companies. Accelerate your employees understanding of your company's overarching vision by visually illustrating the connections between colleagues, assets, contracts, and clients. Additionally, incorporate the employee rewards program to enhance engagement and motivation.
#16 Virtual Katy
Virtual Katy make professional audio conforming software - that's software that conforms sound to picture changes. The software works as plugins for professional digital audio workstation apps Pro Tools and Nuendo and helps users sync audio and film perfectly on projects as small as commercials or as big as movies.
#17 EKO
EKO is a productivity app, though it's more abstract than your average task management software. EKO allows you to outline your goals, make action plans towards them and track your progress, as well as providing inspiration and motivation resources and including users in a community for support.
#18 iWantMyName
iWantMyName is, apparently, a popular site in Silicon Valley. It's an easy way to search for domains (including over 90 TLD extensions), allowing users to register and manage them in record time, including one-click setup for email, blogging software and other self-hosted web apps.
#19 SilverStripe
SilverStripe build web apps and design sites, but what they're famous for is the open source SilverStripe CMS, which is a more traditional CMS that persists in an age where most sites that aren't custom built are running on systems like WordPress (whether they're blogs or not).
#20 Telogis
Telogis isn't as much the startup it once was, but it is frequently cited as proof that a New Zealand startup can mature and do well internationally. Telogis is a 'location intelligence' SaaS platform that helps companies keep track of their employees and assets and manage job dispatch and work orders with ease and flexibility.
For a country with a population 4.5 million people, it's arguable that New Zealand punches above its weight on the tech front. We know that New Zealanders love technology (mobile phone penetration in New Zealand is 108% i.e. there are more mobile phones than people!) so it's not surprising they're good at building cool tech/web/Internet stuff also! The bottom line? Any country that's making jetpacks is freaking awesome.
Launching a startup? Need a cool logo or web design?
It's challenging to be an aspiring entrepreneur. Tasks such as business planning, logistics, and brand identity development can easily overwhelm you. That's why you can use time management apps to become more efficient.
Plus, you can allocate other tasks to experts who will free you to concentrate on more pressing job matters.
For example, you can crowdsource your logo or web design via a DesginCrowd design contest or check our new DesignCrowd New Zealand site or try our NZ logo maker on BrandCrowd!
Written by DesignCrowd on Tuesday, October 11, 2011
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.
