Watch/listen to the Interview:
In this interview Richard Liew talks with James Burnes, Chief Executive at Ministry of Awesome, a Christchurch New Zealand based startup hub helping high growth startups throughout New Zealand to start, grow and scale up. James covers the genesis of Ministry of Awesome following the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011, and provides updates on Ministry of Awesome approaches to startup founder support and programming.
Read the interview:
Richard Liew: For those who may not know who Ministry of Awesome is – let’s just assume there might be some – can you give us your elevator pitch?
James Burnes: Ministry of Awesome is a startup ecosystem organisation that is on a mission to drive New Zealand’s economic growth through founder-led innovation. We run a variety of programs that are founder-focused and founder-led to be able to drive more value for individuals who are pursuing high-growth, globally ambitious ideas to have the best shot at finding success. We run programs like Founder Catalyst, which is our flagship incubation nine-month long program that happens year-round.
We organise Electrify Aotearoa, the Women Founders Summit, and try to drive more awareness and need for addressing equity issues with women having access to resources, funding, systematic change that ensures they have a chance of representing themselves in the way they should within the ecosystem. We help co-lead the execution of Startup Aotearoa, a one-to-one program for first-time entrepreneurs to get coaching and advice from a startup advisor or mentor as
they navigate the first time they’ve gone through the journey.
Locally here in Christchurch where we’re headquartered we operate a lot of events and organisational activities. And then outside of Christchurch where we operate, we work in partnership with other startup organisations to raise awareness about the issues and knowledge that’s necessary for founders to take their ideas and go global.
Richard Liew: Now, can you walk us back through time to, I guess, the genesis of Ministry of Awesome? Because the whole story about how the organisation got started, was started, and why, I think is really powerful. Maybe a lot of people don’t actually realise the humble beginnings from which Ministry of Awesome, which has now been with us for quite some time, actually started.
James Burnes: Well, we started as a result of an earthquake and a city in ruin. And a group of community leaders brought together a space and an environment for thought leaders and innovators and people who are just passionate about what Christchurch could become post-earthquake and imagine that future. Lots of community discussions. We had this event called Coffee and Jam that was intended to let people think and share their ideas and big dreams for the city. Over time, the co-working space developed and there was a natural progression towards a lot of individuals starting new ventures coming out of that space. And in around 2018, 2019, there was a strategic focus by the Board of Trustees to start looking at how can we more specifically support and service founders in the Greater Canterbury region to help them pursue their ideas.
In 2022-23, we started having a lot of demand for our programs so our premier program Founder Catalyst, that incubation program, started accepting more and more companies from outside the region. And today we are a national organisation. So we have entrepreneurs and residents working in Wellington, in Christchurch, and in Auckland. We have teams from across the North and South Island participating in our programs. We do run the Christchurch Startup Hub, Te O Haka, on the Ara campus here in Christchurch, where I’m sitting today. And we have just an incredible mix of programs that are servicing both local entrepreneurs, individuals who are advocates for the startup ecosystem space, and then of course helping facilitate and collaborate with other startup organisations around the country to help co-deliver programs or share in best practices to make sure that founders have the best shot at success.
Richard Liew: Well, you guys have had a few changes in the way you deliver programs over the years. Some of those being, you just mentioned it there, the Entrepreneurs in Residence. I’m keen for you to let us know a bit more about what that looks like. You’re also sort of no longer running your classic three-month type accelerator program, which finishes on, say, a demo day. Can you tell us about what you are doing and why these changes have come about?
James Burnes: Absolutely. In 2021-2022, we took a really hard look at what is driving the most impact and the highest quality results for founders in terms of how our programs were structured.
There were two really consistent themes that came back from all the feedback we were hearing from our past participants and the ones that were currently in the program that were about to end. And it was these three month models simply aren’t enough time. They’re very energetic, you get a lot of activity complete during that window of time, but the journey of an entrepreneur is long and arduous. And when they come out the other side of that program, they have no place to land. And oftentimes it’s in that following three to six months where founders struggle the most because they went from being in a very well mentored and structured environment to then fully self-reliant. And what ends up happening is a lot of founders end up jumping into some other programs. They’ll get into whatever they can just to like find a community, find a home. And so one of the things that we decided to do strategically a couple years ago was move from any three-month programs to focusing on a longer-term program.
That resulted in Founder Catalyst becoming a nine-month program, run quarterly, with anywhere from 12 to 17 teams run in each cohort. And they’re getting weekly, fortnightly, and monthly interactions with our team, which is made up of both program manager, program lead, who’s an entrepreneur and tech executive themself, combined with the support with entrepreneurs and residents. So these are individuals who either formerly were an entrepreneur themselves in the business or are currently still running a business, but one to one and a half days a week, they’re giving back to the ecosystem while they continue to manage their ventures. We’ve got some really incredible people that have joined our team to provide that one-to-one mentorship and advice. Irina Miller from Daisy Lab, Janine Granger from Easy Crypto are some good examples there.
We’ve got a lot of focus on presenting one-to-one advice that is very practical, very focused on commercial success, very focused on operational success. And what we’ve really done with the program as a result of adding these EIRs (Entrepreneurs in Residence) and also shifting some of the KPIs we’re measuring, it’s much more focused now on what kind of business traction the founders coming through our programs are receiving. So it’s much less about raising capital, it’s much more about business fundamentals. And that’s the other piece I’d say was probably a transitional shift for us. The idea that the outcome of coming through a program is raising money as the highlight is really not the point. You raise money when you need to raise money to grow your business. You raise money when it’s appropriate timing to grow your business, not because you finished a program. So we’ve also eliminated these high-end production demo days, the big events.
For us, it was not a good use of money. I’d rather put the money into the program themselves than supporting the founders. And we’ve kind of moved to a virtual event because, for us, we have a great relationship with VC’s in the market, and with angel investors in the market. When we see great talent coming through in great companies, we’re not waiting for a demo day to showcase that. We’re making one-to-one connections, we’re making the introductions, “Hey, you need to talk with these groups, this has potential here.” So the founders that are coming into Founder Catalyst, our primary program, are doing so because they understand that we’re about getting shit done and moving the business forward in a way that’s really at scale and not just what I’d call short-term levers that feel more like innovation theatre than realistic value for the founder and the company itself.
Richard Liew: Before we go, let’s just talk quickly about Electrify Aotearoa 2025, coming up on June 24th and 25th. Now it’s a two-day programme but it did start out as a one-day programme. For those that, again, may not have heard of Electrify Aotearoa… what’s it all about?
James Burnes: Electrify Aotearoa is the New Zealand Women Founders Summit. It has been for the last three years a one-day event/conference/gathering of a really incredible array of women founders and supporters of women in entrepreneurship and in high-growth companies. This year, it’s expanded to a two-day program. We had a lot of feedback over the last two years of our event that people love the inspirational stories and the knowledge sharing that happens on stage during our traditional event, but they want more practical hands-on advice and activity.
So this year, we have a two-day program where Day One is a day of learning, smaller workshop blocks with individuals being coached on topics that are very practically driven around where they are in their stage of their venture. Topics that are important have really emerged from past events. We see a need to master things around finance and the economics of capital raising, building more confidence, understanding how go-to-market strategies drive value, and how your use of capital to invest in those things really matters. There’s going to be some individual pitching opportunities between a select group of founders in that program and our investor community who is going to be there.
And then Day Two is that traditional day of inspiration. And what we’re covering this year, which I think is pretty cool, is a story from a founder all the way from “I have the idea”, all the way through to “I went public and I sold my company”.
So you’ve got this incredible storyline that talks from the perspective of how a woman founder has managed the journey, found success, discovered and overcome failure, and created outcomes that are just quite exciting and personalised in a way that only a woman can tell. There’s still tickets available at electrifyaotearoa.co.nz. From our perspective, if you’re a woman founder, whether you’re at idea stage or you’re on the path to exit, there’s a value there. The network, the communication, the support that comes out of that day is just quite incredible. And if you’re a guy and you want to be a part of helping bring equity and opportunity for women founders forward, you should be there too.
It’s a great mix of lively discourse and discussion around what this country needs to make the representation of women founders in New Zealand’s startup ecosystem as strong as it possibly can be, and to overcome a lot of the gaps that we have today, that I think are only addressed when you come to an environment like that where people are having practical, exciting conversations. And there are people there who want to act on it.
