Adaptability

[Peter Montgomery]

You're constantly adapting, you're constantly evolving. I think it's just a continuum, because you're always looking ahead, I mean you're taking a guess on your opportunity that that will be something that will be valuable to customers now or in a few years' time, and it will have sustainability. So, um, but in doing that because you're connected with a customer and you're customer-centric, you're learning along with them. So, you're constantly adapting your product and iterating the whole time in terms of innovation to keep ahead, and that's essential as well. You just can't stand still.

[Mahmood Hikmet]

When you're in a technology business, you absolutely have to be adaptable. You can't just assume that you know the answer right from the get-go. The same engineers that started at HMI ended up pivoting into Ohmio, that's why we called it Ohmio, it's HMI with a wheel on either side. HMI with wheels. So, we set out breaking that problem, that very big problem of 'what is an autonomous shuttle?' down into 'well can we solve the- does the vehicle know where it is?' problem. Those very small problems, being able to solve them allowed us to move one step forward so that eventually, we got into work and there's an autonomous shuttle there.

[Philip Fierlinger]

Nothing is perfect, everything..., you know, there's a limit and there's a fragility to things and to people, and to build in- both to build in tolerances for those things to just naturally have buffers and tolerances in. But then also to the approach of constantly iterating. So important to be constantly iterating and experimenting, iterating, experimenting, testing and then doubling down, investing in things that are working. And then bringing that to a business and just saying 'cool, that didn't work we're just going to move on'. And having that flexibility, nimbleness, and you know, lack of preciousness about ideas that... 'okay cool, that didn't work. We're just going to walk away from that'. And I think that that helps in the business identify patterns and identify the ones that are bad patterns and then identify the ones that are going to be these amazing, breakthrough patterns.

[Sam Gribben]

This is something that does get talked about a lot in the startup world, you do need to be very tenacious and... very resilient. You know, a lot of it is just being able to get back up when you fall over and keep going.

People also talk about, you know, being really confident and backing yourself... I'd question that a little bit, you know, like I think yes you need to have a lot of belief in yourself and your team that you can do this. But you don't want to be overconfident, you need to constantly question what you might be doing wrong. It's more about um endurance really, you know, that you can- that you can keep on going, and obstacles come up and they get bigger and bigger and more and more frequent, and you just have to be able to, kind of calmly, systematically work around them.

[Peter Montgomery]

A lot of the businesses I've dealt with, I have a lot of sympathy for them, they- these people are working incredibly hard, I'm not saying they're working incredibly smart sometimes, but they're working incredibly hard and some of the issues that they're facing are the issues they're causing themselves, because, you know, maybe they're concentrating as a business owner on the part of the business they like the most. And maybe they- should be the other part, you know, which might be the sales and some other stuff they're doing that they're not concentrating on as much because they don't enjoy it. And again, this circles back to governance and having conversations, if you do have those conversations and if they are open to it, it's about opening their eyes so that they see it, not that I see it, but they see it. And when they see it in that recognition then they can take action.

[Sam Gribben]

The other thing I see happen a lot particularly here in New Zealand is people worry that someone will, kind of, take their idea, and... almost too much, kind of, belief in the product as being the thing that defines your startup. And I think the reality is very few or no one is going to be in the right place at the right time to take your idea and steal it. There's that small risk but it is vastly outweighed by the benefit you get from talking to lots and lots of people about your idea. And just hearing, you know, like it helps you to refine your pitch what are they understanding, what are they not understanding. Their questions will help you identify the weaknesses you've got in your plan, and it will help you kind of get an idea of the people that you need around you to make this thing happen.

[Ross Pearce]

It's critical in the business environment that we operate in, which is often described as exponential, it's complex, it's ambiguous, things are moving at speed on all fronts, that you have a clear view of from your perspective, from your business, that you have a clear focus about where you're going, and all the forces of change which will influence the business environment that you're going to be delivering into. I think, this is- this idea of sensing the near future, it's not being predictive, but it's saying 'Well we know that AI is going to have a big part to play. We know that climate change has got a big part to play. We know that we're moving from fossil fuels to renewables, that's got a big part to play. We know that on the social front, privacy it concerns and a whole bunch of stuff around those sorts of issues are going to have a big part to play.' So, you really need, as a business, to have a view of what that means for your business, and what that business environment is going to be like for you probably in five, eight years out. Because if you don't, somebody else will and you'll become redundant.

[Bridgit Hawkins]

The most challenging things over the growth of the business was, you know, how long it took. When we first started, I wouldn't have thought that in 10 years time we would have been getting to the place that we thought maybe would be there in 2 or 3 years. And so to keep- to be able to keep the business growing, to keep it still viable, required us to, on times, to say well this is, in a pure sense, this is our business, but actually we've got an opportunity over here that's going to bring in some cash. It might broaden out into something that could become another part of the business, let's explore that and go down that track. So, I think keeping yourself- looking far enough ahead that you can see what you need to do to keep your main goal alive and ticking over was something that we definitely had to do to get through from, you know, from a startup to a business that was able to exit.

[Angie Judge]

As kiwis, we sometimes tend to think a bit too small. And when you're going into a market like the US you have to think on a very grand scale. So, to think on that kind of scale, all the time, not just for one customer but across a global industry, it really challenges the way you think about the kind of problems they have, about how they buy and implement software, and about what they're trying to achieve with that.