Where is New Zealand's next 'unicorn' hiding? - Idealog
In New Zealand, there has been a drought of companies turning into unicorns – a term to define a private start-up that has been assessed a value of over $1 billion.
An Australian fintech company is set to change that by providing support to Kiwi start-ups to get to unicorn status.
“There is so much happening in diverse ways in each city,” says Taylor Fox-Smith, Head of Start-ups in Australia and New Zealand for fintech Airwallex.
“I couldn’t compare the almost very corporatized SaaS, fintech spirit of Auckland with the very aerospace, food tech, deep tech spirit of Christchurch. Then you get to Wellington, and you’ve got this melding of government with climate tech and fintech.”
For the first time ever, Airwallex is introducing its programme for start-ups and founders to accelerate their venture in Aotearoa.
As a unicorn itself, Airwallex can understand the Kiwi entrepreneurial spirit; the founding story of the fintech start-up was four co-founders talking about pain points in a Melbourne café.
Ten years later, Airwallex has become a product that is used across the globe, gaining attention from eyes across the sector.
This gives the company something to resonate with the Kiwi start-up scene in hope of finding the next New Zealand unicorn that will follow in the footsteps of the likes of RocketLab and Xero.
“The role that Airwallex plays in advising or mentoring the next generation is in two capacities,” adds Fox-Smith.
“One is setting a blueprint. We’ve built and scaled over a decade. There are learnings from that journey that I think can apply in a very general playbook for founders to take and apply to their own journey. That being said, we also built and scaled in a very different economic context to what founders are building in, now in 2024.
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“The second way in which we can mentor and advise is actually through the program itself. I probably reflect on my own journey, and my own individual capacity as a mentor and advisor in this program. I’ve spent the last decade of my career working in startups myself. I’ve worked with seed stage climate techs, series B prop techs, and now building a program wherein I am conversing with, and learning from founders every single day.
“I feel like our proximity to, and access to the builders of today is unparalleled by virtue of the journey that we’ve had.”
With New Zealand’s unique talent and skillset, Fox-Smith says the Airwallex for Start-ups programme is providing the best advice and mentoring for an already diverse country, in how each city provides different expertise when it comes to the venture ecosystem.
The Airwallex for Start-ups programme is all about providing advice for three core money movements: capital raising, payment methods and spending money, all key factors to support a start-up to go global.
And having a community to go through all this together is what Airwallex is building.
“Community is so important. I think we talk about this all the time, like a rising tide lifts all ships. But it really is, I think, more often than not the shared pain points, and the shared challenges that help an ecosystem grow better and faster together,” she adds.
“If all you’re hearing is this confirmation bias of how great it is or how successful businesses are, you’re often not listening to the majority who experience quite often a lot of turmoil in that growth experience.”
Fox-Smith says this programme doesn’t take away from existing advisors, mentor and accelerator programmes like GridAKL, Ministry of Awesome and more, but rather is an aid to them all.
Though unicorn status may not be a success metric for some start-ups, Fox-Smith says it is about the journey if anything.
The Airwallex for Start-ups programme has now been launched in New Zealand after a successful run in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia where more than 2000 ventures joined the programme.
This comes at a time as Airwallex begins its process of its product suite arriving in New Zealand.
