Marketing Director
Zoe-Louise Bell
What does it take to go from a garage startup to a global success story? We asked some of New Zealand's top tech founders and leaders. This roundup distills their key lessons on culture, focus, scalability, and resilience.
The "garage startup" is a powerful myth in the tech world. But every global success story starts somewhere. To inspire the next generation of innovators, we brought together an all-star lineup of New Zealand's brightest founders and business leaders to share their insights on growth, leadership, and the challenges they overcame.
The day was filled with powerful stories and practical advice. Here are the four essential themes that emerged for any business looking to go from garage to global.
Despite being a technology event, the most consistent theme was people. Building a successful company requires finding partners whose skills complement your own—especially for technical founders who need a commercially savvy counterpart. As one speaker noted, this founding partnership is like a marriage; you have to pick a good sort.
This extends to the entire team. Peter Drucker’s famous lesson that 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' resonated strongly.¹ A company's values and purpose, when genuinely cultivated, drive action more effectively than any annual goal. For a business to succeed in its digital transformation journey, it needs an inclusive, collaborative culture where people are empowered to execute the strategy with enthusiasm.
A great idea is not enough. Success depends on both commercial and technical scalability. Our speakers emphasised the need to find a large enough market and a compelling reason for customers to switch. As the classic Avis-DDB campaign said, you have to 'try harder'.² In the digital world, this means creating a superior product and user experience that overcomes customer inertia.
Your technology choices are fundamental to this. Rather than simply picking "Tool X," the leaders explained a process of evaluating the problem first, then selecting the best technology to solve it. This is where a strategic approach to Cloud Engineering becomes critical. A well-architected cloud platform provides the scalable, secure, and resilient foundation needed to grow without being constrained by your infrastructure.
Focus was a recurring theme. As Parkable's co-founder wisely quoted, “Starvation doesn’t kill startups, indigestion does.”³ Trying to do too many things at once is a common cause of failure. The key is to do a small number of things exceptionally well.
The team from Kami, for example, described how their early engineering team of three maintained a lightning focus on building features that added real value for users, getting continuous feedback along the way. This requires making hard decisions and having the clarity of vision to stay the course. A clear digital strategy, which asks "Is it valuable? Will it scale? Will people change for it?", is the tool that enables this focus.⁴
Success is never a straight line. The speakers universally shared that what looks like an overnight success is almost always the result of hundreds of prior attempts, failures, and pivots.
From Lamborghini moving from tractors to luxury cars, to Google's ambitious Project Loon paving the way for today's satellite internet, failure provides essential learnings.⁵,⁶ Every iteration is an opportunity to refine your approach. This mindset is at the heart of modern Software Development and digital transformation. The goal isn't to avoid failure, but to fail fast, learn, and rise again with a better solution.
You Are Not Alone
Finally, the panel reminded attendees that help is out there. Programs and organisations like Google for Startups, Creative HQ, and Digital Boost are dedicated to helping the next generation of Kiwi businesses get their big break.
A huge thank you to all our incredible speakers for sharing their journeys and insights.