TechMates

Three founders building robots for homes, timber houses and sewers explain why the future of robotics is won on exceptions, trust and supply chains, not hype.Recorded live on stage at the NZVC Portfolio Day as part of Auckland Startup Week, this robotics panel brings together three founders building in the physical world, hosted by TechMates’ Mark Pavlyukovskyy and Hendrik Remigereau. David Inggs is the co-founder of Rocos, a robotics software company that became part of DroneDeploy, which later exited to Procore. Hamish Maxwell is the Christchurch-based mechanical design engineer behind Stansted, which uses robotics to build timber frames and trusses for rapid assembly on site. Shyeon Delnawaz is co-founder of Puralink, which builds autonomous robots that inspect pipes.The conversation starts with 2036 predictions and goes straight to the hard questions. Will humanoids take over, or will purpose-built machines keep their place? David argues that the biggest problem in robotics is exception handling. Software lets you force users down a “happy path”, but the physical world doesn’t. That is why robots thrive in factories and farms, where the environment can be rebuilt around the machine, and struggle in homes and on roads. The panel also covers how to earn trust from customers whose jobs you may eventually automate, and why Shyeon says the best pitch is the opposite of what you’d tell investors.Along the way come a few surprises. One panelist predicts AI will bring back arranged marriages. Hamish reveals that around 95% of the parts in his prototype came from China, and that sourcing servos elsewhere could have made the machine roughly 30 times more expensive. New Zealand sends logs to China and buys them back as engineered timber. The panel closes on what it would take to bring more manufacturing back to Australia and New Zealand.🤖 Humanoids vs. Specialists: Will general-purpose humanoids take over, or will purpose-built robots win? Why the answer may differ between the home, the factory and the pipe.🤝 Earning Customer Trust: Stay close to the customer’s existing workflow, speak their language, and avoid AI buzzwords. Some customers even insisted on taking the founders on site before a robot was deployed.👷 Jobs, Labor and the Housing Crisis: Will robotics replace workers or move them somewhere more valuable? Why construction’s labor shortage changes the conversation.🏗️ Why 3D-Printed Houses Aren’t the Answer: Hamish explains why a new building material means retraining the whole construction chain, from architects to sparkies.Links to NZVC & Hosts:🔗 Learn more about NZVC: https://www.nzvc.co.nzMark Pavlyukovskyy — https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlyukovskyy/Hendrik Remigereau — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hendrik-remigereau-09a03067/
Timestamps:
00:00 — Intro
01:20 — Panel Intro & 2036 Predictions
03:23 — Stansted & AI Arranged Marriages
04:23 — Puralink: Robots Inside Pipes
05:20 — How to Pitch Robotics Without the Hype
06:34 — Stay Close to the Customer’s Workflow
07:36 — Humanoids vs. Specialist Robots
10:32 — The “Happy Path” & the Exception Problem
12:58 — Robots as a Service & the Sock Test
14:45 — Will Robots Take Our Jobs?
17:54 — Audience Q&A: 3D Printing
19:54 — Finding the Right Entry Point in the Value Chain
20:45 — Robots for the World or a World for Robots?
22:55 — Why Procore Bought a Robotics Company
27:20 — Robotics Is in Its Teenage Phase
28:04 — Audience Q&A: China & Supply Chains
30:21 — 95% of Stansted’s Parts Come From China
31:40 — Bringing Manufacturing Back to ANZ
#TechMates, #DavidInggs, #HamishMaxwell, #ShyeonDelnawaz, #NZVC, #AucklandStartupWeek, #Robotics, #Humanoids, #Stansted, #Puralink, #DroneDeploy, #Procore, #Rocos, #NewZealand, #NZTech, #NZStartups, #DeepTech, #Automation, #Construction, #ConstructionTech, #Manufacturing, #SupplyChain, #VentureCapital, #Founders, #Innovation

Brad Feld co-founded Techstars, backed Fitbit, Sphero and MakerBot, wrote the book on startup communities — and just got New Zealand residency because he fell in love with Wanaka and thinks NZ might be the next Boulder, per capita.In this episode of TechMates, Hendrik Remigereau and Mark Pavlyukovskyy sits down with Brad Feld — co-founder of Techstars, partner at Foundry Group, and one of the most influential voices in startup communities over the past three decades — recorded in person at Brad’s home in Wanaka, New Zealand. It’s TechMates’ first-ever in-person recording, and the setting says a lot: Brad and his wife Amy recently got New Zealand residency through the Active Investor Plus visa, and after six weeks exploring the country, chose Wanaka as their base in the southern hemisphere.
The conversation covers a lot of ground. Brad reflects on his hardware investing journey — from backing Sphero when it was just a technically impossible robotic ball, to watching Fitbit go from 10 steps-per-day tracking to 80 million active users, to funding companies like NEMA and Little Bits that had great products but couldn’t crack the economics. His honest diagnosis of why hardware startups fail is one of the sharpest things said on this podcast: once gross margin drops below 40%, you’re done — and the best founders are the ones obsessed with user value, not product launches.
But the conversation really opens up when Brad talks about startup communities, Boulder, and what he sees in New Zealand. He spent 30 years helping turn a 100,000-person college town into the highest per-capita startup density in the world. Now he’s watching something similar start to happen in New Zealand — and he thinks the non-zero-sum culture, the natural constraints that drive real innovation, and the growing number of VC funds are exactly the right ingredients. What’s missing? Just time.
🔧 The Hardware Trap: Why gross margin below 40% is a death sentence, why software investors kept getting hardware wrong, and what Physical AI is repeating today.
📱 Fitbit’s Missed Opportunity: How 80 million users and a clear subscription model never came together — and what Apple Watch did differently.
🌱 Boulder vs. New Zealand: How Brad helped turn a 100K-person hippie ski town into the world’s highest per-capita startup hub — and why NZ has the same ingredients.
💰 Three Things Brad Looks for in a Founder: Are they put on Earth to work on this problem? Do they want Brad as an investor? Does Brad care about the product?
🎧 Listen On:YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gQnb_WbBSpotify: https://spoti.fi/4is21QIApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/42KZ2x1
🔗 Learn more about NZVC: https://www.nzvc.co.nz
Mark Pavlyukovskyy — https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlyukovskyy/
Hendrik Remigereau — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hendrik-remigereau-09a03067/
Timestamps:
00:00 — Intro
01:20 — First in-person TechMates recording in Wanaka
01:41 — Why Brad invested in Sphero and Little Bits
07:22 — Why hardware investing went wrong
09:22 — The gross margin rule: below 40%, you’re done
10:12 — What Fitbit got wrong about subscriptions
16:24 — NEMA: great product, broken economics
22:06 — Three things Brad looks for in a founder
26:03 — “I’ll be there as long as you don’t lie to me”
32:36 — How Boulder became a startup community
38:24 — Why Brad and Amy came to New Zealand
46:16 — Residency visa and the Active Investor Plus route
51:13 — Can NZ build a Boulder-style ecosystem?
54:07 — Boulder: the highest startup density per capita
58:49 — What NZ is still missing: time
1:06:59 — Halter, Bovonic and NZ innovation
1:15:46 — Why one dominant VC fund hurts an ecosystem
#TechMates, #BradFeld, #Techstars, #Foundry, #NewZealand, #Wanaka, #StartupEcosystem, #VentureCapital, #HardwareStartups, #Fitbit, #Sphero, #MakerBot, #Boulder, #NZTech, #NZVC, #StartupCommunity, #Entrepreneurship, #DeepTech, #Halter, #RocketLab, #StartupHub, #Founders, #AIPlusVisa, #NZStartups, #Innovation

Two investors — one government-backed, one fresh off a flight from San Francisco — make the case that New Zealand is post-product-market-fit as a startup ecosystem, and now just needs the capital, culture, and ambition to go 10X.
Recorded live at the NZVC Portfolio Day as part of Auckland Startup Week, this panel brings together James Pinner, CEO of NZGCP, and Warren Scheffler, a partner from San Francisco-based Pair VC, who recently relocated to Auckland — alongside TechMates hosts Mark Pavlyukovskyy and Hendrik Remigereau. The conversation covers the state of New Zealand’s startup ecosystem, what it would take to get from $1B to $10B in annual venture investment, and why the country already has better fundamentals than most people realise.
James walks through NZGCP’s “Five Fives” ambition — 5,000 startups, $5B in capital, 50,000 jobs, $50B in economic value — and makes the case for why government still needs to be the biggest risk-taker at the earliest stages. Warren brings a fresh outsider’s perspective: New Zealand’s enterprise value per VC dollar is 11X, Kiwi founders consistently undersell themselves to US investors, and the ecosystem’s biggest bottleneck isn’t talent — it’s ambition and connectivity.
🚀 The Five Fives: NZGCP’s plan for 5,000 startups, $5B in capital and $50B in economic value for New Zealand over the next five years.
🌍 NZ vs. Israel: Why Israel is the most relevant comparison — and the one key difference that still separates the two ecosystems.
🌱 The Tall Poppy Problem: Why New Zealand’s cultural fear of failure is one of the biggest real barriers to startup growth — and how to change it.
💰 KiwiSaver & Institutional Capital: Why the money is sitting there, why it’s not flowing into VC yet, and what it will take to unlock it.
🔗 The Four C’s: Capital, Capability, Culture and Connectivity — how New Zealand scores on each, and where the biggest gaps are.
🏭 Deep Tech as NZ’s Edge: Why the physical world — atoms, not just bits — is New Zealand’s natural advantage, and how to lean into it.
🎧 Listen On:
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gQnb_WbB
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4is21QI
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/42KZ2x1
🔗 Learn more about NZVC: https://www.nzvc.co.nz
Mark Pavlyukovskyy — https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlyukovskyy/
Hendrik Remigereau — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hendrik-remigereau-09a03067/Timestamps:
00:39 — Introductions: James Pinner & Warren Scheffler
01:00 — The Five Fives: NZGCP’s bold plan for NZ startups
02:58 — Warren’s story: why he moved from San Francisco to Auckland
04:00 — NZ vs. Israel: the comparison that matters most
05:50 — Kiwis undersell themselves to US investors
07:17 — Is NZ growing fast enough? A contrarian take
09:30 — The Four C’s: Capital, Capability, Culture, Connectivity
10:21 — Rocket Lab’s halo effect and the startup flywheel
12:18 — “We’re post-product-market-fit as an ecosystem”
14:33 — The tall poppy syndrome: audience poll
15:30 — “Failure is the fertilizer of success”
17:00 — Great at introductions, bad at asking for help
19:48 — Rocket Lab: $70B market cap, born in NZ
20:30 — What sectors should NZ focus on?
22:40 — What happens when NZ startups need to scale offshore?
25:36 — Power by Proxy: Apple’s R&D base in Auckland
26:44 — Should government fund growth capital or just seed?
29:30 — The Active Investor Plus visa: where is the money going?
31:00 — Political risk: the K-shaped economy and startup narrative
33:00 — Can NZ handle inequality differently if the ecosystem succeeds?
35:15 — One wish for the incoming government
#TechMates, #NZVC, #AucklandStartupWeek, #NewZealand, #NZTech, #StartupEcosystem, #VentureCapital, #NZGCP, #JamesPinner, #WarrenScheffler, #RocketLab, #Halter, #Partly, #NZStartups, #DeepTech, #KiwiSaver, #Entrepreneurship, #TallPoppySyndrome, #StartupHub, #Innovation, #GrowthCapital, #NZVenture, #Founders, #TechInvestment, #StartupCulture

He built a viral game at 14. Now he’s creating rental millionaires and taking on U-Haul with Lockii.
In this episode of TechMates, Hendrik and Mark sit down with Bodhi Hawken, founder and CEO of Lockii — and the conversation starts exactly where you'd expect: a banned school game, two terabytes of copies, and a school IT guy hitting delete while Bodhi watched. From there, Bodhi traces the path from teaching himself Unity at 14, to building a paddleboard vending machine for his uncle at 17, to coding nightclub bottle service software from the back of LA clubs at 19, to founding Lockii — a fully automated rental platform already turning side hustles into million-dollar businesses.
The core thesis is simple but big: rentals are the next generation of e-commerce, and there's still no Shopify for them. Lockii is building exactly that. Whether it's mechanics garages in California scaling to 50 locations, trailer operators going from $0 to $10K revenue in two months, or floating saunas in Europe — Lockii automates the entire process so operators never touch a booking manually. One customer put it best: switching back to legacy software would save $800/month on software — and cost $30,000/month in staff.But what makes this conversation stand out is Bodhi's obsession with quality over speed. In a world where anyone can vibe-code a feature overnight, Bodhi runs 10,000 test bookings before releasing anything, tracks a "bad day" metric for every operator and every customer, and rebuilds features from scratch until they actually work. His take: taste and quality are the last real moat — and they're exactly what AI can't replicate yet.
🏄 The Paddleboard Vending Machine: The accidental origin story of Lockii — and why his uncle's request to automate paddleboard rentals became the seed of something much bigger.
🔑 How Lockii Actually Works: Booking, verification, IoT locks, pin codes, e-bike power cutoffs — handing a physical item to a stranger without being there.
📈 The Shopify for Rentals: Why rentals are the next generation of e-commerce and how Lockii is turning one-trailer operators into million-dollar businesses.
🎯 Quality as the Last Moat: Why Bodhi tests 10,000 bookings before releasing a feature — and why taste is the one thing AI still can't replace.
🎧 Listen On:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ghhpj9fekuI
Spotify: https://bit.ly/3TttiM7
Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/4xTmPZg
Connect with the Guest:
Bodhi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bodhi-hawken/
Lockii Website: https://lockii.app
🔗 Learn more about NZVC: https://www.nzvc.co.nz
Mark Pavlyukovskyy — https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlyukovskyy/
Hendrik Remigereau — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hendrik-remigereau-09a03067/
00:00 — Intro
01:09 — The Game That Got Banned
03:19 — Learning to Code at 14
07:17 — How Lockii Started
11:51 — The Shopify for Rentals
14:15 — The Future of Rental Businesses
19:50 — Building Software for Nightclubs
24:10 — Lessons from Nightclubs
33:11 — How Bodhi Got His First Startup Job
34:54 — How Lockii Became a Business
38:28 — Building a Reliable Rental Platform
42:09 — How Lockii Works 45:05 — The Hardest Things to Rent
47:50 — Why Lockii Isn't a Marketplace
49:38 — Creating Rental Millionaires
55:56 — Competing with U-Haul
1:04:18 — Why Rentals Are the Future
1:05:40 — AI, Product Quality & Founder Advice
If this episode made you rethink what the next generation of e-commerce looks like, hit Like and Subscribe. Drop a comment — do you think rentals will replace dropshipping as the go-to side hustle?
#TechMates, #Lockii, #RentalEconomy, #Shopify, #StartupFounder, #SideHustle, #Entrepreneurship, #ECommerce, #NZVC, #NZTech, #AutomatedRentals, #SharingEconomy, #Airbnb, #StartupGrowth, #PhysicalWorld, #AIInBusiness, #ProductQuality, #Founders, #NewZealand, #SoftwareStartup, #RentalBusiness, #TechPodcast, #BuildInPublic, #FutureOfWork, #UHaul

Jamie Beaton couldn't legally sit on his own board at 17, but built Crimson into a global education empire — and is now taking on Big Law with an AI visa startup, teaching a unicorn-building course at Auckland University, and quietly betting on the next generation of founders.
In this episode of TechMates, Hendrik and Mark sit down with Jamie Beaton, founder and CEO of Crimson Education, for a second time — and this time the conversation goes deeper. Since they last spoke, Jamie launched an AI-native immigration law startup called Concord Visa, opened New Zealand's largest charter school, and is now teaching a unicorn-building course at the University of Auckland with Peter Beck as a guest lecturer.
🎓 The West Is Losing the Education War: Why India and China's obsession with academic intensity is quietly winning the global talent race — and what New Zealand should do about it.
⚖️ Concord Visa: How Jamie built an AI-native immigration law platform that's already serving Halter, Partly, A16Z and Blackbird — and why Trump accidentally made it take off.
🏫 Fixing NZ Education: Jamie's three-step policy blueprint — replace the national curriculum with A levels, get University of Auckland into the top 25, and give students loans to study abroad if they come back.
💼 The Founder Skill Set: Why a generalist founder mentality beats a single degree — and what the top 20 people on Meta's AI team have in common.
🗳️ 2028 Hot Take: Why Jamie thinks AOC might be the next Democratic presidential candidate — and what AI angst has to do with it.
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gQnb_WbB
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4is21QI
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/42KZ2x1
Jamie Beaton LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-beaton/
🔗 Learn more about NZVC: https://www.nzvc.co.nz
Mark Pavlyukovskyy — https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlyukovskyy/
Hendrik Remigereau — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hendrik-remigereau-09a03067/
00:01 — Welcome back: married life, India tour & what's changed since last time
01:16 — Julian Robertson, Tiger Management & the mentor who shaped Crimson's ambition
04:14 — Why Jamie's mum had to sit on his board at 17
04:44 — The first board meeting and the moment he knew the race had started
06:27 — Investor relations: why long-term capital is Crimson's secret weapon
08:09 — The India tour: 5 cities, 3 days, 4 Subways and hundreds of families
10:44 — Is the West losing the global education war to China and India?
14:57 — "For every weed-smoking Steve Jobs, there's a million Call of Duty players"
15:29 — The founder skill set: why generalists beat specialists in the AI era
17:20 — Why Jamie seriously considered running for National — and what stopped him
19:21 — Policy blueprint: A levels, University of Auckland top 25, and student loans abroad
23:54 — Concord Visa: building an AI-native immigration law platform
26:57 — Did Trump make Concord Visa's business explode?
28:25 — Where else AI will demolish traditional law firms
30:29 — The bigger Crimson vision: from age 5 to first startup investment
33:57 — How Crimson is different from Andela — and why education is still the core
35:01 — The Forbes column on AI and intersectional thinking vs. deep expertise
38:21 — What should parents actually teach their kids in the age of AI?
41:51 — Why human tutors still beat AI for young learners
47:46 — Why writing still matters — and what we lose if kids stop doing it
49:00 — Are we heading toward an AI-controlled dystopia?
51:20 — AOC vs. JD Vance 2028: Jamie's hot political take
53:20 — How to restore faith in technology and entrepreneurship
54:45 — Will anti-AI politics kill New Zealand's startup ecosystem?
#TechMates, #JamieBeaton, #CrimsonEducation, #ConcordVisa, #NewZealand, #EdTech, #AIEducation, #Startups, #NZTech, #NZVC, #Entrepreneurship, #FutureOfEducation, #AITutor, #ImmigrationLaw, #FounderMindset, #Stanford, #HarvardAdmissions, #NZStartups, #AILaw, #GlobalTalent, #Education